Piece of Parchment

by Metemponychosis

Rating: teen
Tags: Alternate Universe, Twilight Sparkle, Princess Luna, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Mystery, Princess Cadance, Adventure, Princess Celestia
Length: 593432

A lost letter from the past sends Princesses Cadance and Twilight, and friends, on an adventure.

While checking the ward spells in her palace's library, Cadance discovers a strange letter sent to King Sombra by someone she didn't know existed, from a nation that never existed. The search for answers sends her and Twilight, along with their friends, on a journey to uncover certain secrets of the past, only to realize that secrets abound in the present, and at the center of it all, there is one particular truth that very important ponies would very much like to keep a secret.

Published 2019-04-29 13:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2024-11-10 16:32:48 UTC

The Mysterious Letter

Author's Note

This story is meant to introduce an alternate universe and, I have plans to follow it up with several other stories, so forgive me if I seem to tease certain things on this one, and it seems to lack focus some times. My intention is to add one or two chapters per week, as RL allows it and if needed, I'll make the differences between it and canon clearer.

Even more importantly: one of the reasons I've decided to post this was the fact that, while I consider myself good with it, English is not my first language and I'd like to perfect my skill with it. Also, my typical audience is in another site and language... I want to broaden my horizons.

With all that said, I hope you people enjoy it. If you don't, well, I'm prepared to know why.

The Mysterious Letter

The library in the Crystal Empire’s palace could get dark after the sun had set, and that was a good thing for a pony trying to inconspicuously study particularly obscure pieces of parchment or ancient books. Even if said pony happened to be the owner the palace in which said library was located. That notwithstanding the peculiar thing about that library was that it contained a special vault designed to keep dangerous magical artifacts including all sorts of scrolls, and particularly the ones which held secrets of the arcane.

As such, all documents within that vault would be reviewed by respected members of the Mage’s Guild which included Princess Luna and none other than Princess Celestia herself, both recognized as two of the greatest authorities in the field given their experience both studying and teaching magic. All others were expected to have similar levels of understanding on the subject so one could expect that when one of them said that something was dangerous, it was dangerous.

Following their appraisal, these documents would always be marked ‘special interest’, and then as ‘open access’, ‘restricted access’, ‘forbidden’, ‘dangerous’ and other relevant and ominous categories; finally, to be stored in one of these vaults.

Cadance wasn’t a bad pony. She understood why some things shouldn’t be so much as touched in such a dangerous world where certain magical artifacts could make a common, normal, nice pony into an evil monster filled with all sorts of powers and unrestrained base desires. She certainly knew of dangerous schools of magic which thrived on causing pain, disease, generalized misery and death, and she wanted nothing with those energies near her natural love-oriented magic.

That way she wasn’t interested in the forbidden magic and knowledge that her aunts sent her for safe-guarding in the vault. She understood the objective in this strategy too: spread the dangerous things so that they are easier to manage and wouldn’t all fall into the wrong hooves if one such vault would be breached. This was actually an honor. After all, in Cadance’s eyes it showed that her aunts considered her to be reliable and experienced enough to deal with such responsibility.

Well, for one Twilight’s palace didn’t have such things for safeguarding. And this felt right, after all Cadance was older and more experienced than Twilight was.

Those thoughts aside, what of an unmarked document she had found in the vault? Somehow it had found its way into the vault and that probably meant it was supposed to have been verified by somepony but got lost and ended up in the same shipment as the identified items.

She thought about it for a second… A potentially dangerous document that hadn’t been studied by her aunts or any of their many delegates for such matters? Maybe it hadn’t been identified and categorized simply because it wasn’t dangerous? But then why would it have found its way into the vault? At the same time what she had on her hooves was exciting! A brand-new discovery. As far as her aunts, Twilight, and all the guilds and societies in Equestria were aware this document simply didn’t exist, and she was the only one who knew of it.

Or it was simply a common, harmless piece of parchment that got into the vault by mistake. The fact that it wasn’t the typical vegetable paper might mean something… Either way Cadance felt confident in her ability to deal with anything she might find in it. Up to the task and willing to prove herself. Well, come on… It seemed to be a simple letter and nothing more. Not even one those scrolls that assist you in performing complex spells.

It had found its way towards her hooves, innocently enough while she was in that secluded area of the library checking the ward spells that kept the vault secure and, had it been breached would alert ponies and other creatures all over Equestria, from herself to the Crystal Empire’s local guard, to her aunts themselves. That put Cadance in the privileged position where she could examine that document without a giant amount of paperwork and permissions in a very bureaucratic process that could stop in any of the steps involved. She wasn’t about to lose this opportunity.

No need to inform her aunts just yet either… She would understand what that thing was and make sure that it wasn’t dangerous. Thus, sitting behind a cyan crystal desk, by candlelight the pink alicorn princess was hunched over the old piece of parchment preserved inside the magical crystalline sheets she put it in. The reflecting light made it a little harder to read, but that was the only way to look at it without it crumbling before her eyes. It seemed very old and, as such fragile. It was never meant to last.

It was a single letter sent to none other than King Sombra by an Emperor Gregor of ‘The Holy Griffon Empire’. The problem with that was: King Sombra trading letters with some griffon monarch? Whatever was this ‘Griffon Empire’? And what was so holy about it? She had never read about it in any of the many history books she’s studied in her princessly career. What the hay was going on?

But certainly, even more curious than the recipient, the author, or even its age was the content of this letter. It was written in an old language that wasn’t spoken anymore, a very formal version of her time’s Griffonese which wasn’t itself a very well known and widely used language to begin with since the usual language of her time was the Common Equestrian.

But one of the things Princess Celestia insisted that Cadance should be proficient at was, at least understanding several of the languages used in their world. So she did her best to translate the letter as she read.

“Hails to you, King Sombra of the Frozen North.

Firstly, it is with sincere admiration and the greatest respect that We acknowledge the most recent conquests achieved by Your Majesty. May history remember what was of the tribes who stood against the Great King of The North and know that The Holy Empire of Griffonia stood at His side.

Now, on to matters at hand. We are grateful for the records Your Majesty has so promptly shipped to our great nation of Griffonia. They have, as We promised been invaluable to our astronomers.

The results of their inquiries are thus:

1. While the Sun would infallibly rise and set at predictable time intervals respective to time of the year so too would the Moon. However, as of the late decade such has not been the case, with gross variation.

2. As Your Majesty has inquired in Your letter the mean temperature of the days has been slowly, but steadily and predictably rising. Additionally, within the same time frame when recorded time of sunrise and sunset showed discrepancies.

3. The afore-mentioned rise of the mean temperature of days is increasing in rate by the day.

We find that concerning and with that mentioned We can assure Your Majesty with the greatest levels of certainty that the night sky above Our nation does resemble a lightless void instead of the typical starry and moonlit skies of not so long ago. As Your Majesty has mentioned, the change was abrupt and has greatly aggravated the general populace.

At first thought, as mentioned by Griffonia’s science-oriented citizens such discrepancies are, indisputably chronologically associated with the arrival, and defeat of the so-called Mad God. While We are aware that Your Majesty cannot be held responsible for such, We fear the denizens of Equestria have taken much too long to deal with the threat he posed and what irreparable damage may have been done.

We are aware of the present fractured state of the Equestrian Republic, but earlier this decade, while in official communication with Equestria’s Mage’s Guild We have been assured by the Archmage himself that their responsibility to the entire world was unchanged in respect to providing the life-giving sunlight and the respite of the night and that nothing had changed.

Aware of the contradiction posed, We have again contacted the Archmage via a very trusted and efficient messenger. He has been assured by the same Archmage that still things were under control. The dishonesty is patently obvious to Our eyes.

We have been advised by common sense and by Our schooled advisors that this situation warrants immediate attention and, in the same manner Our military advisors have called this an insidious, underhanded and cowardly act of war on the part of Equestria.

While it must be mentioned that We do not hold ill-faith against Your Majesty given your forces’ inability to reach Equestria’s original heartland in practical time, We conclude this by informing Your Majesty that on the morn following this letter’s dispatch the First Airborne Army of Griffonia shall be deployed under the command of Captain General Blacktallon.

He is expected to personally meet with the Archmage and understand what the details of the situation are. Following that, he is to deal with it as he sees fit with Our complete confidence and authority.

Thus said Gregor, Holy Emperor of the Griffon.”

Cadance raised her eyes from the preserved parchment lifting her head and staring confusingly at nothing in particular. “Seriously, what the hay?”

Once again she scanned the document as though she might have missed something. Apparently, she hadn’t, but to her recollection not only was Princess Celestia responsible for the Sun, and Princess Luna for the Moon some time before Discord was turned to stone, but there were no griffon invasions at that time. Well, at least, she knew what Griffonia was… Certainly never called a ‘holy empire’ though.

He could only be talking about Discord when referring to this ‘Mad God’. Maybe he would know something about this, but he wasn’t exactly a trustworthy source of information.

What about these variations in sunrise and sunset? Why did they start? Why did they end? They were not happening at the present: Equestria’s Sun and Moon were like clocks. If anything the princesses will usually stop anything to care for the heavens. Temperature rising? What?

Common sense would say that it was because the unicorns were messing up the process since it drained their magic, but that wouldn’t be right: the letter said that the unicorns were dealing fine with the Sun and the Moon as confirmed by the unicorns! Not to mention that Princess Celestia was supposed to be responsible for that already.

Did they lie to this griffon emperor? Did the griffon lie to King Sombra? Why was this griffon talking to King Sombra to begin with? Shouldn’t his letter have mentioned Princess Celestia? Maybe she was too young, but still, records said that she and Luna were crowned immediately at their arrival. Or, at least very shortly after. Which is something else Cadance never truly understood, but that was beside the point now. Curious how these details, when given attention often made the jigsaw that is Equestria’s history look awkward.

Like most equestrians Cadance assumed that the confusing timelines and details were a result of the mess Discord had created.

But this letter specifically contradicted several things Cadance took for certain. Add to that the weird line about the night resembling a black void. Did he mean there were no stars? No moon? That made no sense.

Suddenly the magical lamps that would normally be lighting the library if she wasn’t almost hiding there were alighted and flooded the whole place in clear, blinding light to her dark-attuned eyes. Cadance squeaked and almost let the preserved document fall to the floor. Fortunately, she instinctively held it in her telekinetic grasp and let it rest safely on the desk.

“Cadance?” Shining Armor came out from behind a large bookcase carrying Flurry Heart on his back. “What are you doing?”

“I’m having a heart attack.” Her magic carried her crown back to her head while she complained.

“Sorry.” He approached and the baby in his back called for mama. “Well, you’ve been here a while, and it’s time for bed. We were worried.”

“I’m sorry. I found something weird. It seems King Sombra was talking to some griffon emperor about something wrong going on with the Sun.” Cadance had her eyes shut as she hoof-massaged her temples and explained, then lightly tapped the document’s crystal protective encasing with a golden shoe. “But it’s mentioning events that contradict our own records.”

“Are you sure?” He looked at the document and then at her. “Maybe the griffon was lying to King Sombra? Or vice-versa.”

“Hum… That could be.” She admitted. And if the griffon was lying about the problems with the sun and temperatures, he could be lying about his invading army and that would make sense. Now that she thought of it, Princess Celestia never liked griffons… Maybe the ones from her time weren’t very trustworthy?

“Sombra seems to have sent him records made in the Frozen North, which seemed to independently verify the ones in Griffonia. And both seem to disagree with Equestria’s records of the time.” Her hoof massaged her chin. “Though I’d have to actually see the records in the Canterlot Archives because there is the possibility that even if the letters are wrong about the Sun being under the unicorns’ command, the Sun and Moon could have been acting weird.”

An eyebrow rose in her forehead. “Why only in that decade, though? Probably because of Discord. But, why would he be making it hotter? It’s just weird. Maybe this all happened right after his arrival? No, that can’t be: Discord didn’t stay for a decade. Something doesn’t sit right in this whole story.”

“Cadance?” Shining Armor called her, and Flurry made her needy baby noises that the youngling was convinced were supposed to enchant her mother into giving her attention. “Come to bed? You can see about this tomorrow.”

“I suppose you’re right. I just have to make sure that I understood and translated this correctly, because- Oooow!” She yelped painfully as something pulled on her ear. “Shining!”

“It wasn’t me!” He promptly defended himself, while Flurry Heart vehemently demanded her attention with outstretched little hooves and angry baby noises. Having failed the attention seeking baby-talk, a persuasive use of telec… Teleken… ‘Moving things with horn-magic’ usually brought her mother back to her senses. And, she knew mom didn’t like her using such harsh language, but it was mommy’s fault for failing to give her attention!

“You know what?” Cadance finally looked over the parchment and then at her husband and child. “This looks like a lot of boring work.”

“So, you’ll let go of it?” His head bobbed a little to the side.

“No! I’ll go see Twilight tomorrow morning!” She smiled happily.

***

Soon after waking in the next morning, after her early day duties were performed Cadance rushed to the ‘mirror room’. It was a simple room next to their private quarters which contained a large and comfortable red sofa on which she sat. In front of her was a cyan crystal desk and on it sat a slab of pink Crystal Empire’s patented crystalized metal and that held an oval mirror sitting over it with beautiful golden supports on both sides.

The first time Cadance had ever seen something similar was in one particular stadium where unicorn magic was inhibited when ponies passed under especially enchanted arches on their way to see the event. The idea was to prevent cheating and it was a rather strong magic, it required a lot of power and eventually somepony realized that wasn’t a particularly smart idea. But the notion of complex spells bound to artifacts and its underlying arcane architecture made things like the communications mirrors possible.

Her reflecting bust stared back at Cadance until she charged up her horn with magic, thought of her beloved sister-in-law and projected her magic upon the device. It came alive projecting some light from its crystal component and her image vanished from the mirror replaced by an image of a horn and wavy lines emanating from it in a white background.

Cadance waited for a while moving her eyes about the room and thinking of how she could make it a little prettier. She also reminded herself that Twilight preferred magic-sent letters and such, but these pre-charged divination magic devices, which required only a small input from the user were much more practical. Even Princess Celestia, the bastion of all that was traditional had one installed in her palace. The pink alicorn also thought of Luna who ‘prophesized’ there would, eventually be hoof-held versions of it. Cadance betrayed a small knowing smile as her eyes rolled. As if those would ever get small enough.

Although, she supposed a version earth ponies and pegasi could easily use was way overdue. She knew of projects as she tried to keep in touch with such modern ‘toys’, but manufacturers seemed to keep bumping into design problems. Unicorn magic just made everything easier.

Suddenly, the device emitted a soft chime and Spike’s curious face appeared on the mirror. “Oh! Princess Cadance! Hello!”

“Hi there, Spike! How are you?” She smiled happily, making herself comfortable on the sofa.

“Just great!” The young dragon answered excitedly. “Bought a new board game Shining is gonna love! It’s about the Royal Guard fighting zomponies on Nightmare Night!”

The princess let out a soft chuckle. “That’s great, Spike. Can I talk to Twilight?”

“She’s having breakfast now. Do you need me to call her?” Spike pointed with a thumb.

She dismissed the need to fetch her with a hoof gesture and lightly shook her head ‘no’. “No need. Please tell her that I, Shinny and Flurry will be going to Ponyville soon after lunch. I need her help with some research.”

She watched curiously as he wrote something down outside of her view. “Sure thing! Is it important?”

Cadance raised an eyebrow. “I suppose it is…”

“Uh-huh.” He wrote some more, and then spoke again, looking down at something. “Does it involve harmful magic or any other form of dangerous effects, including, but not limited to: curses, compulsions, high-energy elemental magic, necromancy or quesadillas?”

“It’s just a preserved document!” She frowned a little. “Quesadillas? What? Did Twilight put you up to this?”

While the small dragon said nothing with his mouth, his eyes conveyed all the answer she would need. She grimaced a bit. “It’s just an old document. A letter. Inside a protective enchanted crystal casing. I need her help figuring something out about its contents. It’s in an old language and might be telling of events we didn’t know. But it’s just a letter.”

“Alrighty then. I think I can fill up the rest of this… Is that all?” He was back to his ‘can do attitude, and after she confirmed that she needed nothing more, they said their goodbyes.

***

After all the remaining morning functions and lunch were done Cadance and Shining Armor, accompanied by their maid who pushed Flurry Heart’s carriage, a squad of Cadance’s all-female guard corps, and one from the traditional local guard of the Crystal Empire left the palace. One of said guards carefully carried a black and thin briefcase under his wing. It wouldn’t do to let the princess carry it, after all.

It was somewhat tiresome that they had to drag their entourage around every time they left the palace, but both of them could think of worse things, and had understood some time ago that they were the prince and princess for their subjects, not for themselves. Not to mention that they could be useful every now and then, and if they really wanted, they could simply dismiss their escort anyway. It usually created a situation where none needed be. In the end, it was better to be cautious: it wasn’t a good time to be tempting luck.

As the royal couple preferred the small procession trotted through the streets of the Crystal Empire instead of riding a chariot. It was a bit of a walk, but the crystal ponies liked seeing them. And they drew attention from ponies both outside and inside, staring from within their crystal-y homes, waving and cheering for the royal couple until finally, after a somewhat pompous walk through town they arrived at their destination: it was a big, ornate and ‘crystal-y’ building on the edge of the city. Purple-ish and shiny, it was right at home in the Crystal Empire with some white snow over its roof.

One of the most useful advances in magic and infrastructure and one of Cadance’s and Shining Armor’s favorites was the creation of the Teleporters. They were very expensive to set-up, but practical, cheap to maintain and really increased the tourism income of the Crystal Empire. On the outside they were buildings of variable sizes and architecture made to specification to fit the needs and aesthetics of individual cities where they were installed. Usually when solicited by the municipal offices responsible for tourism and transportation. Or when a princess was tired of taking multiple-day train rides to go see her aunts or sister-in-law.

On the inside their individual layout varied from facility to facility as much as their aesthetic sense but after buying a ticket off the counters, easily accessible from the entrance, a pony would go past a door into the terminal area. There a series of placards would direct traveling ponies to one of the teleportation terminals.

Different companies operated each teleportation platform and they typically offered different prices, travel packages and on-site facilities which ranged from simple waiting rooms to art galleries, restaurants, gift shops and relaxation rooms. But the prince and princess usually preferred the services of the state-funded corporation. It seemed right.

Typically, waiting times were reasonable, but still ubiquitous since the platform’s magical capacitors would need time to recharge. This was important because Cadance and Shining Armor preferred waiting in lines where they would form. They agreed that it was very uncomfortable when ponies tried to treat them with special benefits because of their position. Unfortunately for them ponies loved them too much and always offered them to skip lines, take the best seats, not pay for whatever services every now and then. In fact, some ponies were very insistent on that.

As Princess Celestia once told Cadance, ‘You’re the princess… You’re always right, and you’re always wrong. You’re always humble, and you’re always haughty. They always like you, and they always dislike you. Just relax and smile. Wave if you can. It will be over soon, and just be glad they don’t think you can send them to the Moon over the smallest slight…’

Thus, when they were offered to skip the line Cadance and Shining Armor simply smiled and allowed themselves and their entourage to be herded through the waiting room straight to the teleportation room. They even waved at the ponies on the way. They would be dishonest if they didn’t admit that being able to skip lines wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

Once inside the teleportation room ponies would see themselves in a medium sized room where the teleportation platform would be in the center, and next to it a single desk where the teleportation officer would be waiting. Of course, details such as decorations and uniforms would vary. The state-funded company kept costs to a minimum so it was a mostly empty room with the round teleportation platform in the center, made of crystalized metal and it was connected to the operator’s desk by parallel golden lines.

While Cadence waited Shining took their tickets to the blue crystal pony unicorn on the other side of the desk. She had no uniform, only a blue hat with the Royal House’s coat of arms.

“Fourteen ponies to Ponyville! Anything to declare?” She asked calmly.

One problem that could arise was that the pre-charged teleportation magic could disrupt other kinds of magic and vice-versa, and as such, for security reasons ponies were required to declare anything magical they might be carrying.

Different from naturally cast magic where the unicorn would instinctively adapt the formulae of the spell as it played it in their head pre-charged spells were rigid structures, less like a song that came from the heart and more like a recording of a generic one. That way a unicorn could easily deal with another form of magic disturbing his spell, as they performed a teleportation spell, but the enchantments charged into something could be potentially dangerous when mixed with the teleportation spell held in these devices.

Nopony wanted a repeat incident of the airship captain that got divided into his good and evil sides because of a magical disruption of a teleporter.

“Archaeological document preserved in enchanted crystal!” Cadance said calmly as the guard opened the briefcase he was carrying under his wing.

The unicorn nodded. “Those are fine, your highness. Please step onto the platform.”

Since some spells where widely known such as typical preservation spells, the enchantments of a Royal Guard’s armor, or the powerful ones in Cadance’s royal regalia they were taken in consideration when these teleportation devices were created and whenever they were updated.

They climbed into the platform and the unicorn’s horn charged up with magic which she infused into the desk and a small graphical representation of the small town appeared over it. “Thank you for choosing Equestria Magical Travel Corporation and have a safe travel!” The unicorn chimed happily as she magically activated the trigger step in the spell.

In an instant and with a flash the room had changed around them. The walls were covered in light cream masonry and another unicorn stood behind the desk. “Welcome to Ponyville your highnesses. Please step off the platform.”

They did so as they thanked the new operator and walked out of the door this time to an empty waiting room. They wasted no time in leaving the facility, significantly smaller than the one in the Crystal Empire and well at home in the small, rustic town with pastel colored masonry on its walls and red roof tiles. Even a small plaza with a gift shop, a cafeteria, a small library, some sitting space, and a welcoming booth. There was also an ad for an express train line to Canterlot.

“So… How come Ponyville has a teleporter but Canterlot doesn’t?” Shinning frowned a little.

“Oh. You don’t know?” His wife giggled. “It seems that this facility should have been installed in Canterlot but the prices for the terrain and the aesthetic requirements were so out of this world high that no company offered to buy the slots in the facility. Leasing costs were insane!”

“Wow. But there are a lot of rich ponies in Canterlot.” He wondered. “Didn’t they want the teleporter there just so they could say they have it?”

“Well, yes… But during one of the meetings Princess Celestia let slip that...” She made a serious expression and mimicked Princess Celestia’s voice. “I have become a princess to rule Equestria, not to have my atoms scattered back and forth across the land by this gadget.”

“That’s… Not how Teleportation magic works.” Shining deadpanned.

“Yes, but Princess Celestia doesn’t trust those things. And that is how Canterlot’s slim chances of getting a teleporter were gone forever.”

“Wow. Though.” He chuckled. “At least it seems that Ponyville is making good use of the teleporter.”

They could see small stands in the square in front of the teleporter facility, and the city seemed to have increased in size, growing towards Twilight’s school and her palace.

“Not to mention…” She agreed. “That Ponyville can certainly use the increase in income with tourism, and with Twilight’s school, at least her students can come and go a little easier. I hear Twilight’s asked Mayor Mare to work out special prices for them.”

“Sounds fair.” He nodded.

Once in Ponyville proper Cadance and Shining Armor went straight to Twilight’s palace, where her small library used to be now a much larger and elaborated version of her library, as if the thing had grown to accommodate Twilight’s new life as a Princess. However these things worked in Equestria…

Fortunately, the two weren’t interrupted, and as soon as they arrived, they were received by Twilight and her typical court: her assistant and friend Spike, and her apprentice and friend Starlight Glimmer. Their escorts stayed outside and Shining carried the briefcase for Cadance.

After a short combination of dance, song, greetings and squee’ing over the baby they could get to business, and after a short explanation of what Cadance needed, with no questions asked Twilight led them on the way.

As the purple princess magically opened the doors to her own palace’s library her eyes quickly scanned the main area dotted with reading tables and flanked by large bookcases. Quickly she found her librarian, Miss Goodread as the pale yellow and black unicorn was already going around her desk to welcome her princess and her friends.

“Ah! There you are! We need a few things for a research project: our climate records with temperature and sunrise and set records for the first century of the Age of The Royal Sisters, our copy of the same records made by the griffons, and all we have on griffon history!”

“Immediately Princess!” She said, and wasted no time turning around and quickly went on her way towards the large bookshelves.

“We have a copy of the griffon’s climate records?” Spike asked with huge eyes, actually impressed. “I mean… I can understand history books, but…”

“I need to fill this library.” Twilight explained with a small frown of annoyance. “There are a lot of empty spaces yet. Not to mention the one on the school.”

“So, what is this all about, then?” Spike sat on the next reading table.

The Princess of Love sat on her own chair. “I found a letter sent by a griffon ‘emperor’ to King Sombra, and in it he discussed how the sun had been acting weirdly, and how temperatures had been rising. But, most importantly, he blamed it on the unicorns and not on Princess Celestia after Discord. Not only that, but there is mention of a griffon invasion and what seems like a huge chapter of griffon history that’s gone missing including records of some sort of empire.”

Twilight took the letter for herself to read while Starlight and Spike both stared at the two princesses. Finally, the pony spoke. “So… Does any of this make any difference today?”

“Of course, it does!” Twilight said cheerfully as she sat at the table and left the letter. “Our records might be wrong, and so the ones from the griffons since our documents on their history come from them! Now it is possible that this ‘empire thing’ was simply a nomenclature decision at the time that was revoked later, so… We need to keep an eye for that. The invasion, well it’s possible that it wasn’t relevant to Equestria or that the griffon forces never arrived. So that is another thing to be on careful about!”

“Twilly…” Shining Armor looked at her from the other side of the table. “Is it possible that the griffons could lie about their past? Wouldn’t other nations that had contact with them know?”

“Well, that time was peculiar. Because of Discord. The whole world was a mess while everyone tried to recover from the damage he caused.”

“So…” Starlight was unimpressed. “How does that make a difference today?”

Both the pony and the dragon looked unimpressed, actually, and Twilight frowned with frustration. “If anything, it’s an excuse to travel to the griffon lands and present our data on Canterlot while you two can tour the capital?”

Spike and Starlight looked at each other agreeably, with the dragon looking happy. “Yeah, that works.”

“What are we gonna do, then?” Starlight sat on one of the chairs, and at that precise moment, Miss Goodread dropped several massive leather-bound tomes on top of the table with enough weight to almost make the poor table split in half.

“We are going to check Equestria’s records!” Twilight squee’ed. “First we’re going to do some research on the holy empire and on Emperor Gregor! Then we’ll check records of military movements for evidence of the invasion or even the departure of the griffon force. Finally, we’ll check temperature records from the Canterlot Archives, the Royal Observatory, the griffon records and compare them all. But we’ll start with the letter! We’ll translate this wonderful specimen of a dead language! It’s so exciting!”

“Fun!” Starlight Glimmer laughed awkwardly, immediately regretting agreeing to this. “I’ll be in the lounge if somepony needs help recovering their sanity when you’re done.”

But as she started her retreat she was captured by purple telekinetic magic and put back her on her chair. All she could do was sigh in defeat and steel her sanity.

***

Well into the afternoon, the small ‘study group’ was still at the library, surrounding the same reading table which now contained a fine wooden tray with half-eaten daisy sandwiches and empty glasses.

“This can’t be right… This Emperor Gregor never existed!” Twilight was perplexed as she examined down her notes. The griffons at the time were supposed to be a large collection of independent kingdoms and that was it. “I don’t get it! It was only much later they united, when King George came into picture and that culminated on the First Griffon War when their nobility resisted the Alicorn Concordat.”

Starlight kept her thoughts to herself given present company, but a treaty that was otherwise known as ‘Princess Meddling Accord’… Gee, someone had to offer some resistance eventually. Maybe ponies and the others were too afraid of the alicorns and it was the griffons that finally had the guts to stand up to them.

“Maybe our records of griffon history are wrong?” Cadance offered.

“No, that can’t be! Our records, present here, on Canterlot, and the whole world were made by the griffons! They unified these resources after the unified kingdom.”

Twilight stuttered a bit. “I-I mean… He’s not in the records for griffon rulers, and they have detailed records of all dynasties, of all the independent kingdoms and of the united kingdom, up to the Equestrian Confederacy. They don’t even acknowledge this Holy Griffon Empire… It is as though it never existed.”

“If the griffons collated and distributed the documents about their history…” Starlight started. “It would be very easy for them to lie about it. It’s something a newly minted unified government might be tempted to do.”

Miss Goodread agreed with the other unicorn, nodding. “That is true, princess. It happened before the Alicorn Concordat. They wouldn’t have to answer to the princesses at the time.”

“Do we have any independent sources on griffon history?” Twilight stared at nothing in particular until a smile appeared on her face. “We do!”

Goodread had a smile on her face as she waited for her princess to tell her what to look for. “Trail Blazer, The Lonely! It’s titled ‘Of Memoirs Beyond’! He was a pony historian from the time that took interest in cultures beyond the ocean, but never published his work about it. However, his notes were recently recovered from his home, and published by his descendants!”

Goodread nodded once and smiled. “I’ll find it and see what I can uncover in it about this Gregor, or his empire.”

“And we are going to check the temperature and sunset and rise records.” Twilight agreed.

As the day progressed and turned into night, and then went late into it so did the growing pile of discarded notes in the form of crumpled paper, bread crumbles and drops of apple juice on the table. Then it occurred to Cadance while the younger princess and her lilac friend were hunched over their notes that all they drank in Twilight’s palace was apple juice. She wondered if the fact that Applejack was Twilight’s friend and owner of the biggest apple farm in the region had anything to do with that.

For a brief instant of insanity, amid the numbers, formulae for unit conversion, and facts about the sun, about the moon, she realized Sweet Apple Acres products were sold all the way to the Crystal Empire and wondered if Princess Celestia would eat their zap apple jam without even knowing that Applejack secretly ruled Equestria with an apple fist.

Still, the fact being that all she ever drank was the regional mountain water in the Crystal Empire and apple juice in Ponyville. She glared at Twilight who didn’t notice and made a mental note of the fact that she’d like to try that famous Blueblood chardoneigh or the exclusive Sang Royal from the Royal Winery at least once again before dying, if it wasn’t asking too much! Why in Tartarus did Canterlot Palace even have a wine cellar if Luna liked much stronger stuff and all Celestia ever drank was that Discord-cursed tea!?

The pink princess sighed and massaged her temples. “I need a break…”

Ignorant of her sister-in-law’s thoughts Twilight looked at the records, her notes again, and Cadance’s own notes besides her, as Shining Armor slept with his head on the table and Flurry Heart slept, curled into a ball on his back. “Maybe there was something in the griffon lands, at the time that made those days hotter? I mean, they could easily have missed that if they somehow missed an empire!”

“Nuh uh.” Said Starlight, now surprisingly interested with the whole thing while pointing at the document Cadance had brought. “If that were the case then whatever report King Sombra had sent this Gregor griffon shouldn’t have confirmed the numbers the griffon astronomers came up with.”

“Maybe our data is simply wrong…” Spike offered from his seat, half-asleep but hanging on like the good trooper he was. Still, he was getting bored. “Or even yet, this whole thing is a misunderstanding.”

The princess agreed with them, silently, thoughtfully staring at the documents spread over the table. The dragon and both Cadance and her apprentice friend remained in silence. It was usually a good idea to let Twilight think.

Then Miss Goodread approached her with an open book. “I found a reference to Emperor Gregor. It seems that he did exist because Stargazer recounts his travels to Griffonia, being arrested and taken to the Emperor, who then left him free to tell of the greatness of his empire.”

“Well, what did he write about the Holy Empire?” Twilight asked anxiously.

“Hum…” Goodread hesitated with flopped ears. “He said he fled in the first boat because he was too scared.”

“Oh! Come on! That could be completely anecdotal!” Twilight screamed in frustration. “You know what? We need a third set of the same data so we can rule out foul-play from either parties. And confirm one of the versions.”

“From whom?” Cadance looked at her, and Twilight put her hoof on her chin even more thoughtful than before. Going after the historical records for the griffons would be a dead end: what they had was likely to be the same everyone else had since it was the official griffon history. Sure, she could go around checking obscure references, but that would be too impractical because discrepancies would arise from independent records anyway. They needed something that was objective and the temperature records would be perfect.

The problem was that the records were the same for griffons and ponies. She needed someone else’s. She didn’t know if the zebra did this sort of records. The hippogriffs probably didn’t. It’s possible that the kirin or minotaurs had records, but it wasn’t very probable. The yak? Doubtful. The dragons? Unlikely.

Then the answer materialized in her head, her smile grew, and her ears perked up. “The Changelings!”

Starlight was somewhat surprised and Cadance simply waited. “The changelings? Why would the changelings keep climate records or know about the griffons?”

“Because not only they infiltrated every corner of Equestria before we figured out their spells, but temperature influences the development rate of changeling larvae and of the queen’s capacity for generating them.” Twilight explained, gesticulating and sounding excited. “Before the Changeling Rock, and before temperature management spells, Queen Chrysalis depended on understanding how temperatures change, so that she could lay her eggs in the best period of the year. Since it was that important she actually had her drones keep precise records. Up to a time, at least… It was only when we developed those spells, she stopped worrying about it. So, they should have the data we need. And considering their methods, they might even have good information on the griffons of the time that might explain this Gregor guy!”

“Huh… The more you know.” Starlight wondered if, had she studied as much as Twilight had, she would know this sort of thing.

“What if they threw it all away, Twilight?” Shining Armor looked at them raising his head from the table and waking Flurry Heart. “I mean… It’s a long shot to imagine they have info on Gregor, but they may have thrown away the climate records.”

“Uh… Then, we’d be out of luck, I guess.” The princess shrugged.

“Don’t we have a copy of the Changeling’s records?” Spike asked from his perch on the table.

“Nopony asked them.” Twilight’s librarian shook her head. “And I doubt the Changelings would’ve shared them before the Heartmend Treaty.”

“So, what?” Starlight asked, sounding somewhat worried with what might come next. “Are you going to ask they sent a copy? Maybe a summary of their materials on the griffons?”

“No!” The purple princess was excited again. “We are going to the Changeling Rock!”

“Send them a letter!” Starlight begged. No way Twilight could be talking seriously. And no way she would drag her on a travel all the way to the Changeling Rock. Sure, they have traveled to much farther places, but it wasn’t Canterlot with its gold and silver towers or the great griffon mountain cities… It’s the Changeling Rock! Literally a big rock full of pony-bugs! “Call them via divination magic mirror!”

Twilight shook her head. “It could take days before the changelings replied. They are busy with the new brood, and they don’t have a mirror. Not to mention, it would be a lot of information to collate and send to us.”

Starlight’s hooves met her face as panic began to set in. “For Celestia’s sake! It’s a two-day train ride to Dodge City and then a six-day caravan to the Changeling Rock, half of it through a dead badland. If we’re lucky, and there is one ready to go when we arrive, we don’t get attacked by monsters or some highwayponies don’t get ideas about stealing from the Princess! Because of a weird griffon emperor nopony wants to remember!”

Granted, that did sound important… But… Eight days of travel for something that is likely not going to mater in the long run anyway?!

“Well, there may also have been an invasion we didn’t know about…” Cadance added and Starlight kept to herself what a fat lot of difference that made.

“Well, we could go by train and then walk. Or…” Twilight’s expression changed to a smug smile. “We could ride an airship.”

Queen Mother

It was a beautiful airship, but not one of the typical zeppelins that flew all over Equestria. This one was a modern fast magical flying ship. It had a sleek design with a shallow draught, and thin beam typical of its kind held aloft by twin magic induction engines mounted on its short aft swan style wings and tail. Finally, it had a single mast, holding its main sail and three fore staysails.

Simply put it was a very fast airship built for speed and maneuverability, designed to transport dignitaries on important diplomatic travels and Twilight was very proud of it. Its crystalized metal hull made with crystal pony magic and then enchanted by the best spellcasters in the field was light purple while it’s sails where a soft shade of pink catching the wind and fueling the engines with magical energies as the wind itself also propelled the craft forward. On its bow its registration and name read ‘HHS 0004 - Magic of Friendship’ hoofpainted in black cursive letters.

Since its small size couldn’t hold Cadance’s and Shinning’s escort they went back to the Crystal Empire leaving their protection to Twilight’s personal guards. Which also couldn’t fit because Twilight’s friends decided they wanted a ride too. So, their protection was on the hooves of the airship’s pegasus crewponies, and one unicorn.

While its small crew worked its magical systems and sails, Twilight and her guests leisurely appreciated the view as the ship sailed through the air at a high, but still comfortable altitude. It was a little cold, but that was a part of the experience. She stood on the ship’s bow with her hoof over her eyes and her gold and amethyst royal regalia shinning under the sun while she watched the horizon next to her ship’s captain.

He was a dark-blue pegasus with short-cut mane and tail and a tricorn hat and a stereotypically gruff voice. “We should arrive in two days’ time, your highness. Winds being good. But when she’s charged, we’ll drop the sails and get her to full speed.”

“Good job, captain!” She grinned proudly as she turned to her friends all over the main deck.

Having been joined by Twilight’s other close friends, the ship was somewhat crowded. But as Twilight could attest to, looking at Rarity wearing sunglasses, a blue scarf and a large white bonnet in the wind, it was hard keeping her friends off the vessel as soon as it’s left its airdock.

Pinkie hopped across the deck, Rainbow talked to two of the pegasus crewponies, probably bragging about something while they listened as intently as a pair of fans, Fluttershy held as tight as she could to the mast while Applejack comforted her, Spike spoke to another crewpony who ponied the wheel, Starlight Glimmer held to the railing, looking around, and Cadance was coming to Twilight, accompanied by Shining Armor and her maid, who pushed Flurry Heart’s baby carriage.

“Twily… When did you buy an airship?!” He was still half-dazed after his wife’s healing spell for his airsickness. “It’s amazing! What is its range? Maximum speed?”

“Never mind that!” Cadance was exasperated next to him. “Where did you get the money to pay for one of these?!”

“Well, they’re a bit of a novelty yet and most vendors will ask for an eye and a leg, but they’re not that expensive if you look for the right vendor, in the right city. Las Pegasus is the best. And actually, I used Royal Treasury money.”

Cadance blinked a couple of times. “How did you get Princess Celestia to agree?!”

“Well…” Twilight smiled as though she had found the secret to the universe. “I found out she had ordered her old ship revitalized and modernized.”

Cadance took a few seconds to process that. “Princess Celestia has an airship?! Her?! She didn’t want a mirror! We had to convince her!”

Shining nodded enthusiastically. “It’s probably the Break of Dawn. It’s the hundred and four-gun first-rate ship of the line she sailed on the Second Griffon War. It is in the Manehattan War Museum. Or, likely, was.”

The pink alicorn had a very annoyed look on her face. “Shining, Common Equestrian. I don’t speak ‘nerd’.”

Twilight giggled. “It’s basically an oversized monstrosity with a lot of big guns. I suppose she’s going to have the guns removed and decks renovated to turn the ship into a luxury liner of sorts.”

A ship like that, Shining thought would probably turn into a flying palace. With its gundecks removed, the artisans could do all sorts of cool things with the interior space. After they reinforced the structure, they could put a pool on its deck, a giant bedroom, many guestrooms, probably a game room, a bar, probably an armory for the Princess’ guards and crewponies…

Cadance however, was quickly becoming angry. “Don’t tell me that Luna has an airship too!”

“She sure does. The Mare Serenitatis.” Twilight answered. “A frigate from the same time. And she’s probably doing the same. Though hers will be a lot smaller and faster. Luna doesn’t like drawing too much attention, you know.”

Meanwhile, Shining Armor was far, far away… On a sunny day swimming on the deck pool of his own airship ‘The Emperor’ while Cadance sunbathed by the edge and Flurry Heart played with colorful building blocks next to her. The ship flew easily through the white cottony clouds of Central Equestria, lazily orbiting around the capital. Calm winds and a nice weather for sailing… Flying… Whatever.

“How come I’m the only one that doesn’t have an airship?!” The angry pink princess complained, and Flurry Heart waved her little hooves angrily. She wanted one too!

Cadance, as efficient as she was with the Crystal Empire’s finances couldn’t afford one. It’s true that the Crystal Empire didn’t go so well in that department and that Princesses Celestia and Luna had access to ludicrous amounts of resources in the form of ponypower, expertise and pure money… But Princess Celestia was worse than Cadance’s old matron from her days in the old orphanage. How in Tartarus did she decide that she wanted a flying ship? Where would she go with it? Did she plan to throw the next Grand Galloping Gala in it or something?

For pony’s sake! Celestia poured a lot of money into social events but has been wearing the same crown since… Cadance didn’t know… Since the universe decided it wanted to exist? She was probably that old, anyways!

“Well, your highness.” Rarity casually trotted over to them. “Yours is a representative position. You need impressive… Powers of representation.”

“Ah ha…” Cadance paid attention. That is probably what convinced the old alicorn to invest in such a ship. She probably wanted to throw events in it and use it to draw rich ponies to charity events. That made sense to Cadance.

“Well…” Rarity went on gesticulating with her hooves. “Some less reputable news sources have mentioned that Princess Celestia may have second intentions with that ship. You see they say she gave their consort a particularly exclusive smoking pipe. Then, some say Luna gave him a personalized armor. Following that Celestia gave him a new set of personalized and enchanted sword and pistols. Then, supposedly Princess Luna gave him a new finely cut and enchanted cloak. That is what prompted Princess Celestia to refurbish the old ship as an airship… Supposedly. If you know what I mean.”

“Their new boyfriend sure did the princesses a lot of good, huh?” Rainbow elbowed at Pinkie who giggled at that.

“Oh, we’re so getting one of these!” The pink princess hit the wooden floor hard with a hoof. “Shining?”

The water caressed his coat and the warm sun made him feel like he could simply lay there forever floating on his back with sunglasses on and a soft breeze. It almost didn’t bother him when a shadow disturbed his sunbathing and he removed his glasses staring up at Princesses Celestia and Luna lacking their royal jewelry and smiling very pleasantly.

“May we join you, captain?” The white one said.

“Shinning!!” Cadance yelled his attention back to the real world.

He yelped and looked at his wife and giggling sister and white coated friend back on Twilight’s ship’s deck. “What?”

“I said, we’re going to buy an airship!” Cadance said with a frown. “What is with the creepy smile?”

***

The crowded quarters under the ship’s deck didn’t bother the close group of friends. With some patience, goodwill, common sense and tasty supplies provided by the Pink Party Pony herself they were able to keep a good mood throughout the trip until the end of the second day when they approached their destination. In the meantime Twilight and Cadance filled the others up on their mission and its importance.

Flying fast Twilight’s airship quickly approached the aptly named Changeling Rock: a big, jagged rock formation the changelings have magically carved their home into, the legends say before the time of Equestria. But Twilight and Cadance knew that it was not true. The changelings used to live in an abandoned pony city which name had been lost to the time. The changelings, though, called it City of Queens. At least that was how its name translated to Common Equestrian from their weird chittering language.

They called it that because it was like a meeting hub for all the queens of the Changeling Swarm as well as home to the first changeling ever. Of course, at the time they called themselves ‘mothers’ instead of ‘queens’, and the first one titled herself ‘Mother of Mothers’, and all the changeling broods lived in peace meeting in the city to share knowledge and wisdom as well as to pay tribute to the Mother of Mothers which was, of course in the form of Love. But while this story appealed to Cadance’s motherly fee-fees Twilight suspected that the whole story might’ve been romanticized a little. Or a lot.

Beyond that, the legend was indeed older than Equestria, the Three Tribes or recorded pony history and slipped into myth. Which was not exactly a sign of accuracy, but Twilight managed to track the original story.

It went that a pony lived in that town and that she was the most beautiful pony to ever exist. A pony of unknown name and race that used to say that her beauty was beyond even the beauty of the starry night sky. Not a very smart thing to say in Twilight’s opinion, but such were ponies in these stories. Apparently, she had many suitors, but she was in love with herself and wouldn’t accept court by any stallion or mare claiming that her beauty was too far beyond theirs or any gift they could ever offer to her. And since she wasn’t testing fate enough already not even if the night made itself into flesh and courted her, she would accept it.

It was said that she was a descendant of some goddess of love, and that would, supposedly explain her unnatural beauty and all the admiration that she received from all that laid eyes on her. Of course, one night the Night itself did came down to the world to see for itself the legendary beauty of that pony.

Princess Luna must’ve loved this story…

Regardless, the story went that on such night the pony pranced through the golden oat fields which surrounded the city under the moonlight until she came upon a great and wondrous creature like nothing she had ever seen before. Staring at it was impossible, and it looked like a force of nature given flesh rather than a normal creature. Its body was made of a dim blue light, which emanated from her dark coat as dark as the void between the stars and looking at it was staring at infinity itself. Her mane was a sprawling starlit sky of the most beautiful night ever and her horn was as dark as obsidian, but her eyes shone with the eerie moonlight. The creature was tall and looked down at the pony with its open wings, and they were as if the creature carried the night itself with it.

The pony had indeed never seen anything like it, and she could not tear her eyes from the ghostly lights that stared at her at the same time she felt like her soul was made colder by its stare. It was not something a mortal was meant to see. Whatever that would mean… Twilight would’ve preferred Ponytone color codes.

Anyway, the creature spoke, and her voice was as if a distant storm approached. “Thy beauty is, indeed, unknown amongst the mortals. I would share mine resting place in the skies aboven with such consort as fair as thee.”

“Beautiful and terrifying you are, Night-Made-Flesh.” The pony answered. “But of my great beauty, greater than that of the starry skies you will not boast yourself for I shall not share it with any creature less fair than me.”

“Black is thy heart, foolish mortal. No more beautiful thing than mine night there is. I curse thee, then to suffer for eternity until death takest thee. Thy beauty I shall take, and thy heart shall never know the solace of reciprocal love ever hungered for that which you cannot ever have.”

And that, the legend goes, was how the changelings were born. She called herself Farfalla, Mother of Mothers. Herself and her descendants ‘ever taking semblance to the beauty of others, but never of their own, ever feeding on the love directed at others, but never at themselves. Ever feared and shunned, always hungry and scared of the ones that had all they couldn’t have.’

Ponies fled the town and who knows how in Equestria she reproduced (Twilight imagined nightly ponynappings), but she turned the town into her nest.

It remained until Mother Farfalla had spent her spirit and wished that death would end her suffering. Well, Chrysalis, The Queen Chrysalis, supposedly obliged. And then she killed all of her brood-mother sisters, uniting all the broods under her through conquest erasing their distinctiveness, drowning in blood any lineage that would not serve her purposes or changeling of any age or profession that would not bow to her and call her Queen of the Changelings.

After all, since ponies were stupid and gods were petty why not wrap it all up with matricide, sororicide and ethnical cleansing, with a pinch of tyranny and egomania?

While Cadance simply accepted the legend, Twilight always felt that it either was simply a cautionary tale against narcissism to the point she was convinced the pony’s original name was ‘Narcissus’, or it was one of those stories grammas told about the changelings and what horrible creatures they were.

Then she learned that Princess Celestia might have known Mother Farfalla and the event that drove Chrysalis to commit matricide was the Changeling Swarm being banished from the lands of Central Equestria driven to the Badlands where they would starve. But that is unknown and Princess Celestia would not talk about this dismissing it as an old mare’s tale.

Yeah… Twilight had heard that one before… But good luck getting that old immovable object of a pony to talk about anything she didn’t want to! Still, while the more incautious of ponies could think that the princess actually did believe that ponies believed her ‘old mare’s tale’ excuse Twilight knew her old teacher, friend and eternal mentor much better. Princess Celestia was very old, and ponies tended to forget that. What ponies impersonally treated as legends, were very much painful and personal memories for her. ‘It’s just an old mare’s tale’ was the old mare’s way of politely saying ‘do not presume you have the experience and knowledge to talk to me about this, you impudent piece of uneducated mediocrity’.

Or something of the sort… It would be unlikely that Celestia would say something like that in reality. That legend had a tendency of leaving Twilight in a sour mood. The point is that Celestia’s reluctance to talk about it lent some credence to the idea. At least in Twilight’s head. Still, since the only two ponies in Equestria old enough to know for sure wouldn’t talk about it, Twilight had no way of knowing.

Once she was done Chrysalis supposedly moved her swarm to the Changeling Rock and there they remained until present day protected by the queen’s magic and their own capacity for counterintelligence. It was only after ponies had figured out how to detect their magic that they ceased to plant misinformation and threaten anyone that wasn’t them. Ponies shared the information about the changeling magic and that negated their biggest advantage in the field of intelligence. That is when they became much more reluctant to leave their nest, and eventually this story concluded with the Heartmend Treaty being signed in Canterlot.

But Twilight felt she had already wasted too much time on the past, so she directed her attention to the nicer present, and the big rock in front of her airship.

Seen from afar the rock simply looked like a large black collection of spires reflecting the light from the evening sun, but as the airship flew closer, they could see all the particular details. It showed windows, bridges, balconies for standing leisurely and to use as landing pads, open spaces and several changelings, the new colorful half-pony, half-bug denizens of the Swarm as they flew around their home eventually staring at the approaching airship.

Not only they could see the changelings were flying all over, but they were carrying buckets and all sorts of painting tools such as assorted brushes and rolls. They were painting the black obsidian walls of the Rock in colorful, fluorescent flowery designs accompanied by images of the sun, the moon, stars, and hearts. The rock’s sullener colors clashed but that didn’t seem to bother the Changelings. Not to mention that they didn’t seem to have many accomplished artists among them.

“What are they doing to the Changeling Rock?” Starlight Glimmer stared at their work and then at the others next to her in the railings.

“Thorax said they’re getting it ready to receive the new brood!” Spike looked with a weird expression at the whole thing. “But, uh… It’s not that bad, but it looks weird.”

“Changelings have a dreadful sense of aesthetics…” Rarity grumbled unimpressed next to him and Twilight giggled next to her.

“It’s not that bad, and the important thing is that they’re happy, now. And multiplying.”

“So… They’re friends now?” Pinkie asked. “They don’t eat pony love anymore?”

“Well, they do…” Twilight started insecurely. “But… Uh…”

“We barely know a thing about changelings…” Cadance told Pinkie. “They’ve opened up a little since the treaty was signed.”

Then the princess’ ears folded back, and she barely contained her frustration. “To which meetings I was never invited, but I know something bad had happened and that is why they came to us.”

Twilight frowned a little looking at the black rock. “In the treaty Princess Celestia assured them that they would get all the help they needed as long as there was peace and the new changelings could thrive. Anyway, it appears that since they became well-fed, they changed and started looking like that. Or something…”

“That’s not shady at all…” Cadance still felt a little angry at being left out of the whole thing, since she now considered the queen almost a friend. “The Princesses and Chrysalis dealt with the whole thing behind closed doors, the Senate was ‘notified’, the changelings got support in the form of ‘love and acceptance’, my healing spell, representation on the Senate, and recognition of the Swarm as part of the confederacy and, in return they must stop aggression towards all races and Chrysalis was to make some changes to the Swarm. Seems to me they got a lot and still didn’t really give anything after a couple of years.”

As Cadance talked Twilight’s eyebrow raised a bit because to her it looked like Princess Celestia had just annexed the Swarm and the Senate could suck it if they didn’t like it. Still no one complained. She wondered if it was because everyone was afraid of the problems the griffons had brewing since back then or… Something. It always amused Twilight when Princess Celestia pulled these maneuvers that should make representatives and leaders throw a fit but blew past in the wind as if nothing had ever happened.

“So… How exactly did the problem with the changelings get fixed?” Starlight Glimmer’s voice brought Twilight out of her thoughts again.

Twilight looked at Cadance, who smiled proudly as talking about it immediately improved her mood. “Love magic, of course! The queen could generate new eggs and then all she needed was a male donor.”

The white stallion next to her shivered and Cadance had one of the creepiest smiles ever seen by ponykind. “I believe Princess Celestia’s words were ‘one perfect example of diligence and duty, a physique due of none but the best examples of the race and a sharp psyche, fit for an exemplar soldier’.”

“Oh my…” Rarity couldn’t contain her giggling. “I think the princess was actually courting you, Shinning Armor.”

When more giggling followed, the white unicorn couldn’t find a place to hide his face. “Please, stop.”

“So… Uh…” Applejack looked at the others and talked in her accent. “Are we gonna have new queens? Or something?”

“I don’t have a clue.” Twilight shook her head. “Changelings are being pretty secretive about it all.”

“Well, I would be too if my mom was married to my brother and… Nnnngh…” There wasn’t a hair in Rainbow’s coat that didn’t stand up and the others chuckled.

“Rainbow Dash, changelings are different. You can’t judge them like you would a pony. They clearly don’t think about it like that, and their brothers aren’t defined like that.” Fluttershy looked interested, having forgotten her fear of heights and holding onto the railing, maybe even excited. “Maybe we’ll learn something about it here?”

“We can certainly try!” Twilight grinned happily. “I don’t think it would hurt to ask, they are preparing for a new brood, after all!”

Then the captain called to them from the wheel. “We’re landing! Hold on tightly!”

Crewponies maneuvered the vessel around the large rock formation and softly parked it hovering a few hooves off the ground then quickly deployed a ladder from its side. As the ponies disembarked Shining Armor carried the briefcase with the document on his back and Cadance took Flurry Heart with her. A couple of changelings approached casually and then promptly bowed before the princesses. An awkward moment later the changelings happily greeted them.

“Princess Twilight! Princess Cadance! Welcome to the Changeling Rock!” The first said in a soft male voice.

“Can we help you?!” The second had an excited female voice as her legs seemed unable to remain still beneath her. “We’re so excited you’re here! Did you come to see the new brood?”

“They’re not ready yet!” The male was now as excited as his friend. “But we sure can show you all the new decorations and nursery!”

“We need to see some of your historical records from the Age of the Royal Sisters if you still have them.” No need for too many details right now, Cadance thought… The whole research is already awkward enough.

“We appreciate the help!” Twilight thanked them looking at the pair. And after a second she added excitedly. “But we wouldn’t mind learning more about the new brood either!”

Cadance simply smiled and rolled her eyes discreetly.

Meanwhile, the male changeling had a bit of a confused look with his hoof under his chin as he looked at Twilight and then at his companion, and after a couple of seconds she finally talked also looking somewhat confused. “Well. I don’t have a clue about our historical archives. You’d need to talk to the king and queen.”

The queen? Twilight immediately felt something was wrong… First of all, Chrysalis as far as she knew wasn’t supposed to be queen regnant. Second, she could clearly remember that Thorax was supposed to the new leader of the changelings and Chrysalis shouldn’t have the authority to ‘let them’ do anything.

She took a careful look at both changelings while Cadance still talked cheerfully with them. Maybe they let her retain some authority out of respect? Feeling her ‘princess duties’ tingling, she felt like she should talk to Thorax about it before leaving. Preferably without Chrysalis nearby. On another note Twilight didn’t think they’d keep her around just for reproduction… It would be wrong.

“We can take you to them, though!” The male finally said happily and pointing towards their home with a hoof.

“Lead the way, then!” Cadance giggled starting after the changelings.

As the group followed up the large stair access to the Changeling Rock more changelings flew down or trotted outside to look at the visitors and the Magic of Friendship’s crewponies remained with the vessel as well as the royal couple’s maid.

Once inside the Changeling Rock became a labyrinth of corridors, nooks and crannies, high and low ceilings for no apparent reason, and every now and then a particularly conspicuous room or lounge area, even a corridor that seemed to go a long way. Bioluminescent goo inside of crystal-like containers embedded on the walls provided a milky-white light inside the large rocky structure where the natural sunlight wouldn’t reach and the air became a little too hot and humid for the tastes of the ponies, but nopony was about to complain. This was the changelings’ home after all.

While most ponies in the group simply followed the others around Fluttershy and Twilight seemed particularly excited and curious. Even if she felt something might be wrong Twilight could empathize with Fluttershy’s curiosity, and certainly fell to her own.

Along the way they met more and more of the colorful changelings preparing their home for the festivities and being generally friendly, but as they climbed the winding labyrinthian corridors they soon came to a large rocky door guarded by a couple of changelings that had kept their black chitinous carapace instead of looking colorful.

Immediately Twilight went back to her initial feeling that something was wrong, and they also seemed to have kept their demeanor, because holding their spears they stared at the newcomers with less than happy excitement. Most importantly Twilight and Cadance immediately identified all sorts of protective spells cast over those doors and their weapons.

“What the flaming hell is this?” The guard on the left said, not giving them time to ask why they looked different. “Everyling knows this area is prohibited to all but the Queen’s Guard!”

Twilight, Cadance and friends stared at each other and the colorful changeling female was about to talk when Rainbow Dash flew to the front of the group. “Hey! You can’t talk to us like that! These are both Princesses of Equestria and you can’t keep them from going anywhere they want.”

The changeling soldier wasn’t very impressed as he pushed the pegasus with the butt of his spear. “Back off, lady!”

“Oh! How rude!” Rarity complained angrily.

“Now, now. There is no need for that.” The female changeling stepped in between the two and spoke softly. “These nice ponies simply need access to the queen or the king so that they can look at some of our old records.”

The changeling on the right spoke then. “The king is inside, and you can’t get past this door.”

“Fuckin’ peasants.” The first one added with ostensive lack of patience.

Twilight Sparkle was a very nice and respecting pony, but she could not stand this sort of behavior from her fellow ponies or from changelings. Especially when one of them used such words to refer to the nicer changelings in his hive. That is why she craned her neck and flared her wings in an impressive display of feathers and ‘princessdom’.

“I’m Princess Twilight Sparkle and Bearer of The Element of Magic. This is an important endeavor of archeological research, and you’re being stubborn just because you can! This would be much easier if you just stopped being so mean and let us pass or even simply called the king. We just need to look at some old pieces of parchment and there is no need for this rudeness!”

Even if she never liked pulling rank reminding others that she was indeed a princess usually ended this sort of trouble with problematic statesponies and officials that insisted on creating problems where none needed be. It was a very fair use of her position and her right. Her friends also knew that and paid close attention to it. Though not for the reasons Twilight thought.

The changeling, however, was cleverer than most problematic statesponies and officials and Twilight lacked Celestia’s impressive size and gravitas.

“Lady…” He said stoically. “I don’t give a rat’s behind if you’re the Princess of Friendship or the Princess of the Mighty Rainbow Cannon. This here door ain’t opening for your royal hindquarters and you ain’t going in!”

Of course, it was always amusing when Twilight did try to pull her rank and it backfired like that, but she preferred to think she didn’t hear somepony snorting.

Still, she let out a frustrated cry and meant to insist, when Cadance joined her but with a different strategy that usually worked with officials of other jurisdictions. “Well, I’ve come all the way from the Crystal Empire just to see some documents. It’s really important: I have found a document that’s unheard of and that may change the history of Equestria. I am sure the Queen and King would appreciate cooperation as much as Princess Celestia, especially when our research is done, and we would thank all those who helped us.”

Cadance, for all her niceness, had learned very early that names opened doors. Especially Princess Celestia’s name.

But, also unfortunately for her, the changeling didn’t care she had come all the way from the Crystal Empire, nor did he care about history or that she had dropped Celestia’s name. “With all due respect, Your Highnesses… What part of ‘prohibited’ are you having trouble comprehending?”

They were ready to unleash another round of reasons why they should be allowed further, with added, if unappreciated support from the newest princess on Cadance’s back when the doors opened and none other than the king’s ‘brother’ came out, also clad in his black carapace. “What is all this racket?”

“Pharynx!” Twilight held on to the opportunity. “Can we talk to Thorax? Please?! They won’t let us past the door! We only need a few minutes of access to your archives and we’ll be gone!”

“No. You can’t.” He said bluntly.

Cadance’s hoof met her face and Twilight’s wings fell back into their place and she sighed. “I give up.”

“Hey, Pharynx. Can I talk to you? From one Captain of the Guard to another?” Shinning Armor came up from the group and magically tossed a Bit that tinkled on the floor between them. “Oh, look. A Bit.”

The two of them huddled down together over the shiny coin and talked in hushed voices. Both changeling soldiers remained stoically by the door, actively disinterested while the two colorful ones simply waited with curious expectations. Twilight and Cadance looked at one another with raised eyebrows and the rest of the group drew closer to the two princesses. Maybe trying to listen in but it wasn’t possible.

“Alright, fine.” Pharynx finally stood up with Shining Armor, who grabbed his coin back. “But only the two alicorns. Xipho, show them to the Queen’s Spawning Pool. They’ll find Thorax there. Just make sure they don’t bother the queen. I really don’t want to hear from this, understand?”

“Yessir.” The annoying changeling said with a salute. At least he did a good job of not showing how little he cared.

Pharynx then went off followed by Shining Armor who left the briefcase with Cadance. “Good luck, hon. Come along Spike, we’re going to see the new recreation facilities.”

“Cool!” He waved goodbye to his friends as he followed the pony and the changeling. “See you guys later then.”

“Wait. Wait! What? What the hay just happened here?!” Cadance held the briefcase in her magic and looked confused at the changelings standing by the door, Shining Armor going away and Twilight who looked each way and another, also trying to understand what had happened when Xipho called them impatiently from the other side of the now open door.

“You two ponies coming or what?”

“And what are we supposed to do?” Rainbow Dash pointed at her and friends, all sonorously complaining that they’d been left behind.

“You can wait in the airship, I suppose.” Xipho shrugged going his way. “Or you can see the new decorations. It’s not my problem, really.”

“Hum…” Fluttershy moved her hoof around in a demure way. “I’d really like to see the new changelings… If it’s not a problem. I am a sort of specialist in different species.”

“Whatever… Fine.” Xipho thought she looked harmless enough, anyway.

***

Going up long corridors and stairs Twilight and Cadance didn’t look very friendly and Fluttershy kept to herself while the changeling led them through a rather simple design of climbing areas and redundant passages. Cadance carried the briefcase under her wing and her baby on her back, right next to Twilight. They came through what seemed to be resting areas or lounges with large windows to the outside which provided lighting in these much narrower and darker corridors. The magical illumination was much dimmer and ponies wondered more than a few times if they had already passed the place they were.

Another thing that drew their attention was that the colorful ‘new changelings’ were nowhere to be seen now and they only saw the black carapaces they already knew. This picked at Twilight’s curiosity even more and somewhat at her sensibilities that something was not exactly right, but she thought it was better to keep this in mind and worry about it later. This changeling that led them around the place seemed like he wouldn’t be very useful anyway.

But every now and then they came to open doors beyond which changelings were working in construction and that enticed Twilight’s ever some more.

“What are they doing?” She stopped for a while to look at changelings using picks to break up the rock and shaping it into round corners with their magic.

“We’re building nurseries.” Xipho said, uninterested.

“Oh?” Cadance asked, following him with Flurry Heart on her back as the baby looked around curiously. “To receive the new changelings?”

“No...” That changeling had a talent for speaking in the most uninterested tone possible and still sound condescending. It was annoying Twilight out of her mind. “We’re going to put the old changelings the nurseries.”

Cadance certainly didn’t like the way he talked to them, but something more important was on her mind. “Wasn’t the nursery in the lower levels? I seem to distinctively remember that, from when I visited it with Shinning Armor.”

“Yes…” Xipho answered. “But we’re building new ones. The old ones were converted into the Queen’s Laboratory.”

Something in the way he spoke made Twilight think that he dropped that last bit of information intentionally, just to make them curious. And it worked: she had no idea Chrysalis would have uses for any sort of laboratories. Or that she should be doing anything other than helping Thorax rule the changelings, for that matter.

“Hum… Wasn’t Queen Chrysalis put on some sort of probation?” She asked Cadance, who looked as confused as she was. “For that matter what sort of laboratory would Chrysalis use, and for what?”

“Ma’am, my job is guarding doors and chaperoning nosy ponies around. Not to mention, it’s not like you ponies would understand the Queen’s magic anyways…”

Twilight and Cadance had had just about had enough of his bad behavior. They didn’t need talking to each other to know they’d both discuss his demeanor with his queen and king. Even if the queen shouldn’t be queen regnant anyways. Fluttershy however wanted nothing more than to see the new changelings. Flurry Heart was simply getting bored and wondered why her mother hadn’t left her on the airship with her maid and her toys.

Not long after they arrived at the top of the spiraling corridors and reached a larger double black wood door flanked by two particularly big black changelings each armed with a long, double-bladed and curved sword they held point down to the floor with their magic. Twilight didn’t remember seeing those before. These changelings were as big as Cadance and once again their magic senses flared up!

As they arrived the two guards looked at the princesses then at Xipho who walked in front of them, but they did their best not to look friendly. Still, before either could say anything, they heard a loud crashing noise and a bang from the other side. A loud and very, very angry female voice yelled. It didn’t seem to be Chrysalis, though. It was softer, even in anger.

“This is all your fault! Yes! Yes, it is! Now get out of my sight before I miss it again!” Someone seemed to talk with a much more controlled and apologetical tone, but they couldn’t make it out. “You can’t see her now! Go get the cursed maids before I regret all of this! YES! NOW!”

The three princesses and pegasus simply stopped and their ears moved around as they listened to more shouts and apologetic words before another crash that scared them enough to flare their wings and make them jump backwards. The door opened to a dark room and Thorax came running out of it looking both scared witless and worried out of his mind.

“Come with me! We have to find the eggmaids! Oh! Hi Twilight! Can’t talk! Bye!” He said tapdancing nervously where he stood and then ran past the visitors and down the corridor.

“Oh, there is the king.” Xipho suddenly had a smile. “And there he went.”

The two guards looked at each other and galloped after their king, leaving the ponies with Xipho.

“Can’t we talk to Chrysalis?” Twilight asked sheepishly. “We only want permission to peruse the archives. All she has to say is one ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and we’ll be gone, out of her mane forever.”

Xipho regarded the three ponies and baby for a couple of seconds. Did he really want to deal with this? If he said that they can’t, he’d have to deal with them. If he said that they can go inside, then they would cease to be his problem and would become someling else’s problem. They’d be ‘her’ problem, and that in his head was a bonus. It was settled them.

“In you go.” He gave them his best pleasant smile. “You’ll see a nice changeling in there. Just talk to her and she’ll set you straight. Alright?”

For some reason, Twilight thought that, considering the way he’s been behaving, she ought to do the exact opposite. But then the records were just within hoof’s reach. Not to mention that something is going on in this changeling nest and she ought to find out what it is. And also, another thing dawned on her mind: the Changeling Queen was laying her eggs. It was never, ever observed. She even had Fluttershy with her. It is a conjunction of almost impossible factors! There was no way she’d get this chance ever again!

For an instant she admonished herself over her overactive curiosity, but it was quickly overshadowed by that ominous feeling that something was wrong. It was her duty as a princess to seek out such problems in Equestria as much as it was her duty to protect her lands from monsters and yearly supervillains. Finally, there was the scholar inside Twilight that despaired at the notion of ignoring new and exciting knowledge.

For another instant she stared at her friends… Fluttershy was a fellow protector of Equestria, as much as Cadance who also was a fellow Princess and student of all that was Harmony and Magic.

Finally, she was sure Flurry Heart could use an example of proper ‘princessing’. Or, something…

“Thank you, sir.” She chirped happily and both Cadance and Fluttershy stared at her, completely surprised. Flurry Heart though was unimpressed. She could see Twilight was in the mood to do something she might regret later. In her short life she already had learned that imagination, plans and reality were things that didn’t really go together.

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Twilight?” Fluttershy slowly asked her internally trying to understand if Twilight had a plan, or something.

“Sure!” Twilight smiled excitedly. “Chrysalis is our friend, isn’t she? She’ll understand!”

“She is?” Cadance was even more confused than Fluttershy. Sure she did think of the queen like that, but she wasn’t sure it was reciprocal.

“Sure, she is! Shinny fathered the last brood, didn’t he?” Twilight smiled.

“Well… Sure… But… Hum…” Cadance spoke slowly, trying to figure out what was going through Twilight’s head. Flurry even puled at her mane, but it was to no avail. “I suppose… He did!”

“See? We’re practically family!” Twilight smiled a huge grin, and her left ear flapped. “Think of all the things we could learn about the changelings!”

Flurry Heart facehoofed.

Cadance looked at Fluttershy, who seemed sheepishly excited. Maybe she understood what Twilight had in mind. “Alright. I suppose it’s going to be fine.”

Flurry facehoofed again.

And even if they decided against going in Xipho was gone anyway when Cadance looked around for him. Finally, she had to hurry after Twilight and Fluttershy through the open door.

Once they were past the door they squealed when it closed, and before the they could react further a strong gust of wind blew at them from nowhere and a big crystal in the ceiling shone fiercely, bathing them with a harsh white light. Again, they cried in surprise squirming and flapping wings in mild panic.

“What was that?” Cadance looked over herself and her heavily breathing foal.

“Cleansing spell!” Twilight was just as surprised, as another door opened, and they saw themselves staring into a clinically clean room and that quickly silenced them.

The polished obsidian shone like a mirror, and besides a door on the other side there was only a single large cushion made to look like a flower and sitting on that cushion was a very strange changeling. She looked like one of the ‘new changelings’, but was all white and silvery, with thin, translucent green wings, like a cape.

She had her back turned to the three ponies and her mane was the purest white Twilight had ever seen outside of Celestia’s coat. The changeling carefully looked at five floating images in front of her. The sight alone piqued even more Twilight’s curiosity and she approached closely followed by the other two and the disgruntled baby.

Twilight craned her neck staring at the floating images the changeling was looking at… Whatever she was looking at. Some graphs and some symbols, element names such as chlorine, sodium, oxygen… Questions popped in her head faster than she could process what she was looking at.

“Hello?” She said in the softest and friendliest voice she could muster, but the changeling shrieked loudly and caused the three ponies to retreat a couple of steps. When the changeling turned around heaving deep breaths they could see her wide shocked blue eyes and a pretty ornament on her forehead: a delicate spiraled and horned snake made of silver and held in place with by a thin chain around her delicate horn.

The group stared at the changeling, and she stared at them. Until she finally managed to gather her wits and breath. “What in the… Who… How! Who let you in?!”

She shrieked half-panicked and Twilight laughed awkwardly taking another step back. “His name was Xipho. Said we could see the queen.”

The changeling apparently could only communicate by half-panicked shrieks. “NOLING CAN SEE THE QUEEN!! Not you, not anyone. Not even the King!”

“Well… Hum… Can she give us permission to use the Archives?” Twilight asked tentatively. She knew she also wanted to snoop around at the queen and her hatchery. Maybe figuring out something about what was going on but, also in her mind she had equated the idea of the queen generating eggs that to Celestia raising the sun every morning and Luna bringing the night every evening. She knew she could barely contemplate how that must be important to the changelings. And that was why she thought it ought to be studied and witnessed. Even revered. Finally, everything could be connected.

“NO! You don’t understand!” However, before the changeling could say anything more one of the five floating images flashed red and she let out a frustrated grunt.

“Stay here! I’ll be right back! Don’t touch anything, and for the love of the Queen do not, under no circumstances go through that door!” She shrieked as she pointed a simple door past the images.

And with that she galloped out in a hurry out the door they had come in.

Leaving them alone.

With the door they must never go through.

For a few instants, Twilight thought about how funny it was that the most forbidden things were also the most interesting to the curious minds. A short flash to her childhood made her grimace and reminded her that it was also the over-curious that met the switch most often.

Regardless, the door was right there! Why did fate have to be so cruel after tempting her with a mystery and showing her the way so bluntly?

Cadance and Fluttershy stared curiously at her as she breathed in and out, calmly recomposing her wits. She didn’t have to snoop past that door! She had these curious magical image-thingies the changeling was looking at. Meanwhile Flurry Heart understood how Twilight must’ve been feeling. Certain impulses were hard to resist. Such as raiding the cookie jar before dinner.

Ignorant to the baby’s empathy, Twilight approached the magical images, as did the others and Fluttershy’s soft voice called to her. “Are they magic?”

“They are.” Cadance confirmed, looking over to them. “Twilight?”

“These are simple illusions coupled with divination spells.” The purple one lighted up her horn and looked around. “The casinos in Las Pegasus are using this sort of thing to monitor gaming tables for cheaters. But these are much more sophisticated, and I’ve never seen anything like them before.”

“Why do they need this sort of thing?” The other princess looked back at her. “And can you understand anything?”

If there was one thing Twilight didn’t think she’d be doing that day was deciphering changeling writing. Sure, she understood almost all languages spoken and/or written in her time, and several ancient ones, but she was encountering symbols and words she didn’t understand mixed with things she did, all seemingly belonging to the semantics and morphology of the changeling written language. It was like the changelings had created a jargon of words for things the ponies didn’t yet know. And it both titillated and worried her.

Her heart pounded in her chest and her breath quickened. Numbers, element symbols, beeping sounds, oscillating bar graphs… It was maddening that she understood some, but not enough to piece together whatever that was. She felt as though understanding was just outside of her reach and it frustrated her beyond reason.

Then she squeaked in surprise as another of the magical images started flashing yellow, making a beeping sound. It showed several graphs, one of which seemed to peak above the others, but the names under the bars made no sense to her. Twilight leaned closer, and tentatively, her right hoof approached the flashing image and touched it, as she tried to understand what the things it was showing meant.

Her hoof barely touched it.

It blinked once.

And the Door-They-Must-Not-Pass opened.

The princess shrieked quietly, as quietly as one should do when trying to steal cookies from the jar. “Oh no! I did something I shouldn’t!”

Nothing but a dark room beyond the door, as they approached it, Twilight in front, followed by Fluttershy, softly whinnying, and Cadance, grimacing like she was about to see a monster past the door. Finally, Twilight spoke softly. “Maybe we should see if something broke…?”

“You’re just curious, Twilight.” Cadance said in a semi-accusatory way, even though she was just as curious and as likely to go snoop around. Both ignorant to Flurry Heart’s desperate attempts to draw their attention.

True, Twilight was curious. But she felt compelled to investigate whatever the changelings were doing. She also was intruding. Maybe abusing her position to sate her curiosity. And she had her niece in tow!

In that moment when she almost decided against going in it occurred to her that maybe the reason why some changelings looked like their old selves might be hidden in there. It occurred to her that Chrysalis could be hiding something from Princess Celestia, and if that had anything to do with the way the changelings looked. It could be something dangerous… Their research be damned, this was a priority.

“We have to see…” She stared at Cadance.

“Maybe, we should wait for King Thorax?” Fluttershy trembled a little.

“Chrysalis could be hiding something.” Twilight added. “The black changelings should have turned into the colorful ones, shouldn't they?”

Cadance frowned a little at that. “Well, now that you mention it…”

“Not to mention that if there is nothing wrong, she can simply let us see the archives and we can move on with our research.”

A Changeling, A Pony and a Dragon Walked Into a Bar…

It was a nice and comfy place with a large window on one side. The counter was long and had many seats starting next to the window and coming towards the entrance, and behind it, near the ceiling, was a wooden plaque shaped like a shield that had a carved image of an alicorn sitting on a large and comfortable chair while smoking a pipe. Around the shield a scripture read ‘Chocolate Velvet’s Gentlestallion’s Club’.

The whole of the walls, ceiling and floor where covered in caramel wood and all furnishings had a wooden and velvety decoration to them following in the lines of greens, whites, gold and bronze. There were several tables, some of them occupied by colorful changelings appreciating several drinks, green velveted cards tables, a roulette and a billiard table, dice tables, domino tables. A dartboard on one of the walls and an old changeling was playing saxophone on a small stage, but the prevalent sound was that of cups, laughter and friendly banter. It wasn’t too crowded though: it was an exclusive club, after all.

In one corner, a strange group of one unicorn dressed with a purple cloak, an old and scary looking griffon, two earth ponies, one wearing a leather armor and with a crossbow on his back, and the other wearing an armor, all around a table, with paper sheets, pencils and dice.

Other than that, a thin haze of smoke accompanied the smell from scented cigars, pipes and similar smoking devices.

“Whoa… What is this place?” Spike followed the changeling and the unicorn into it. “It looks great!”

“This,” Pharynx said calmly as they walked. “Is the Changeling Rock’s very own Chocolate Velvet’s Gentlestallion’s Club. You have no idea how hard it was to build this place.”

“Why?” he followed the others to the counter.

“Because Chrysalis would throw a fit if she knew we were building a male’s club inside her nest.” The changeling answered and they sat at the bar one next to the other. “And I think Thorax would freak out too.”

“Why? Was it too expensive?” Spike looked around to the tables seeing changelings laughing and talking to each other, but also at the fine woods and fine velvet tapestry. Such as the large curtains framing the big window. The bar itself was very beautiful, made of the same noble wood. Chess tables had metallic and shiny playing pieces, the cards in the game tables were all personalized with the likeness of ‘changeling things’, including the changeling king and queen, and the king’s brother for face cards. Spike could imagine Discord for Joker. It would be too obvious not to do it. Looked awesome.

“It sure looks expensive.” He finally said, looking back at the others.

“Nah.” Shining Armor signaled to the barling. “The Prince-Consort helps fund these bars. There’s one in the Crystal Empire, in Canterlot, Manehattan, Philly, Las Pegasus, even on Cloudsdale.”

Pharynx seemed to relax once he had sat himself on the stool. “I hear the griffon king is trying to get one on Griffinsky. But I’m not sure.”

“Why not?” Spike looked at Pharynx now. “I’m sure Princess Celestia would be happy to assist, with all the drama going on with the griffons. Why don’t they have it already? The Chancellor should have had one built already.”

“Well… For one, he’s not really king yet and there is a civil war. Sort of… I’m sure the Chancellor has other things in mind, such as preparing an attack to end this whole mess he’s got in his hands. And this club thing is kind of a secret.” Shining explained. “It’s male only, and the less females know about it, the better.”

“Oooh… A secret! Even from Princess Celestia?” The dragon said, holding on to the bar, with huge eyes. “Cool! Nice of you guys to share it with me!”

“Sure, buddy!” Shining bumped his hoof with Spike’s closed fist as the barling came to them.

A simple black changeling with a red black-spotted carapace, wearing a white apron. He also had a moustache. A weird, black and whisker-like moustache. But still a moustache. “Hello, friends.”

“White Mountain Mead. Chilled.” Pharynx made a gesture with a hoof to emphasize as he looked at the available selection behind the counter. “Unicorn’s buying.”

“Blueblood Chardoneigh.” Shining said with a leg behind Spike’s shoulders. “And some soft cider for our buddy.”

“Hey, c’mon! You bring me to a place like this and want me to drink cider??” The purple dragon protested standing up.

“You do look quite young, sir.” The changeling behind the bar said, making his moustache flail around.

“I’m a dragon!” Spike pointed at his chest with a thumb. “I can take it!”

“Yeah… I’m sure you could, Spike. But I couldn’t take Twilight if she ever suspected I let you drink something stiff.” Shining frowned, followed by the Changeling.

“It’s Sweet Apple Acres cider.” He showed the glass bottle with the red apple. “Finest soft cider in Equestria!”

“Eh… Fine…” Spike relented and sat back down as the changeling went to get their drinks. “So… Why, exactly, a secret?”

“When you grow up, Spike…” Shining had a thoughtful and prophetic tone. “And start dating girls. You’ll see that they are awesome. But we need a place where we can retreat and just be with ourselves for a while. You know?”

“Hum…” The dragon said with a hand on his chin, looking around the place. “I think I get it… But I see some girls around.”

“They work here.” Pharynx had his elbows on the counter. “The Prince-Consort recruited most of them.”

“So… Then… What is the difference between them and the other girls?” Spike was curious and eager to learn, staring at his two new-found mentors on gentlemanly things.

“They don’t talk about problems, for one.” Shining explained calmly. “And they look pretty.”

“Aha. I see!” Spike winked conspiratorially at him, and next the changeling brought their drinks. Wasting no time, they toasted and took a sip. “So, you really need some rest from Cadance?”

“Look at it from this perspective, Spike: the Prince-Consort lives with Princesses Celestia and Luna. And he made this place. Well… It was an idea he got from his original world… But still…”

Spike simply nodded thoughtfully, trying to assimilate the idea, but it hadn’t quite clicked in place yet. He got it that the guys needed a place to… Be guys for a while. And talk about stuff they may not want to talk in front of the ladies. He certainly got that too. But he still didn’t get that thing about talking about problems…

Meanwhile, Pharynx spoke again. “So… What is this the princesses want here, Shining Armor?”

“Cadance found an old weird letter and got it into her head that she needed to figure out some things about it. Then she recruited Twilight, and she poured even more oil into it.” Shining laid his glass on the bar. “You see, Spike? This is the sort of thing I’m talking about. With them you and your kid call your wife to bed then go on a trip to see your sister and end up in a changeling nest looking for climate records and a griffon emperor that may not even have existed.”

“Yeah… I get ya…” Spike said thoughtfully with memories of his daily life with Twilight coming back like a flood as the pieces finally clicked together. “You know? Ponyville needs a place like this.”

“Well, I’m sure you could talk to the Prince-Consort.” The bar changeling wiped a big beer glass with a white cloth. “Since you can easily to go to Canterlot, being who you are.”

“Ah… It’s not that easy. When we go to Canterlot, Twilight usually needs me on duty.” Spike was more and more convinced Ponyville needed a place like this. Then he casually turned on his stool, longingly staring at the rest of the place until he saw someone approaching. “Whoa! Ocellus!”

“Hi Spike! Nice seeing you!” She approached carrying a tray with game chips on her back and put it on the counter, then spoke to the barling. “We need more beer on the craps table, Mister Coccinelli.”

The barling nodded and went to care for the order before Spike talked to her again and the other two watched. “What are you doing here, Ocellus?”

“Well, a new brood is coming, so we’re all supposed to be here. I also need to pay for my tuition, so I’m working during vacations!” She said rather excitedly. “It’s fun! Gallus gave me the idea!”

“Uh… It’s free.” She blinked twice, looking confused at Spike. “Tuition is free at the School of Friendship, Ocellus.”

“What? But….” She looked confused for a while more, and then her eyes showed understanding and a little irritation. “Oh… Gallus…”

“Griffons, man…” Spike slowly shook his head and drank a sip of his cider. “It was a good prank though!”

***

Twlilight had imagined a nice lounging room, with lots of space and a comfy large bed where the queen would be laying. Large windows would let the sunlight in, and Chrysalis would receive all sorts of pampering from changelings. Maybe eating some refreshing fruit while other changelings carried the eggs, probably white little balls, or something, elsewhere. Maybe a small group of changelings playing a nice and relaxing song.

As soon as she saw that the door led to a dark room, she had imagined it was a sort of atrium, to separate the queen’s chambers from that changeling’s workstation. Considering the way they heard her yelling at Thorax it was probably to protect the queen’s serenity from such sort of rackets. It made sense in her head.

What happened in reality was that Twilight stepped into the dark room followed by the others and instead of a peaceful atrium they saw themselves on a bridge made of the same obsidian. It bridged the space between two circular walls, and she couldn’t see very well because it was so dark, but she was sure they were on a bridge and that it was a rather large fall on both sides with a ball-like structure ahead. A soft breeze blew around the place carrying with it an acid smell.

“So, I suppose we cross the bridge?” Cadance spoke softly as if she was afraid to wake some monster that guarded the place. “This place smells odd.”

“I think it’s chlorine.” Twilight looked down past the edge. “I think there is a pool full of it under us. But I can’t see.”

The ponies wasted no time in crossing the bridge and Twilight felt like her suspicions that this place existed to protect the queen from the noises outside were validated. In fact, she felt a pang of worry considering if she should even be there, but she had gone too far to go back now.

The other princess and the pegasus followed Twilight closely and their hoofsteps sounded weird in this place. The constant breeze unnerved them, seeming unnatural and the two princesses could feel magic at work. Nothing fancy tough: it seemed that it only served to keep the air from stagnating.

Soon they reached the passage into the inner wall. Now the ambient felt humid and had a stronger sour, acidy smell. The floor was still the same rocky, solid glass-like substance, but it was covered in a thin layer of thick liquid that made splashy noises at every hoofstep. They were submerged in complete darkness and the breeze had ceased.

“Ew, gross!” Cadance started shaking her hoof. Fluttershy was torn between her curiosity and fear. Twilight was completely surrendered to her curiosity. And Flurry Heart had resigned herself to sit on her mother’s back, internally angry but saying nothing, bidding her time until she could actually say anything. One day her mother would be angry at her for entering somewhere she wasn’t supposed, and she would triumphantly remind her of this day.

“Can you feel it?” Twilight waved her horn around in the dark like an antenna. “It’s magic. All over.”

“Yeah…” Cadance answered softly, a little intimidated. “It’s… Powerful.”

Not only magic, but very clearly the queen’s magic. Powerful enough that they could feel it crawling in their manes.

“Uh… Hello? Is anypony there?” With no answer Twilight’s horn shone a small light at its tip and bathed the room in its purple glow. They were in a thin and long, circular corridor that went both ways like it was circling an inner circular room and the walls were made of a thick glass-like irregular resin that looked like it was hoof molded into the wall, different from the rock.

“What is this place?” Cadance whinnied worriedly, but Twilight’s curiosity was in full swing and Fluttershy cowered behind the purple princess, yet at the same time hoofed curiously at the floor and its layer of… Something.

“I think it’s a sort of incubation chamber. This is fascinating. Did she make this all by herself?” Fluttershy said finally, and Twilight started walking along the circular wall touching the irregular glass-like wall with a wing tip.

“What is this made of?” She asked curiously.

“I don’t think I wanna know! Twilight? Eep!” Cadance skipped as fast as she dared next to Twilight, following her around in a low stance, eyeing the walls and arched ceiling as if some monster was about to jump on her back. Even Flurry Heart was starting to get worried by that point.

Fluttershy, taken by a professional curiosity had forgotten her fear and critically smelled and hoofed at the substance on the floor and walls. “It could be some sort of saliva, or some sort of mucus. Like the slime slugs make to crawl. Even a little urine.”

“It’s not urine. It’s ammonia.” Twilight said. “Careful you don’t breathe it too deeply: it’s stronger than that stuff outside. Isn’t it weird that changeling larvae would thrive in a place like this?”

“Well, if they were ponies…” Fluttershy mused. “I don’t think this is a healthy place for a baby pony.”

‘No shit, Shirelock…’ Flurry thought to herself, however when her mother looked back at her worryingly, the baby waved a hoof saying she was fine.

“So, how come changeling foals can live like this, Fluttershy?” Cadance asked, now becoming curious again.

The yellow pegasus hummed lightly. “Well, different species have different needs as much as they are vulnerable to different things. Changelings probably have chlorine and ammonia in their blood. In larger quantities than we do, and they probably perform some job on their bodies.”

“So, changelings have bleach and ammonia for blood. Wonderful.” Cadance was on the brink of freaking out again when they circled the inner wall and their conversation didn’t help, but she went on with them. Soon they came to an area where a green glow came from an archway to the inner room and Twilight moved forward. Scared out of her wits, Cadance held one of her wings in front of her eyes while holding the briefcase under the other, followed close and while at that, Fluttershy critically hoofed at a wall, looking closely at the substance that flacked off.

Coming to the archway, the first thing they saw was an eerie green glow that came from the vaulted ceiling bathing the whole room in an eerie and alien light reflecting off the resin walls like they were inside a dim and sinister green sun. Initially, it was too hard to see and the light was too bright, blinding them unable of distinguishing anything more than a vague form or two and all that registered with their senses where their own breaths, a constant and incessant dripping, the smells and a fleshy noise of something moving around.

“What was that??” Cadance barely muttered the question under her breath, all but hiding behind Twilight who hissed softly, moving her ears around. One step forward and her hoof found the thick liquid, but not the floor. She almost screamed, but Cadance held her. In shock, Twilight let go of the shine in her horn and a few instants later their surroundings started to become clear as the blinding green light subdued.

The floor was littered by green shinny eggs, some five hooves tall, supported on the ground by a thick resin and that pulsated slightly with fleshy sounds while diminutive dark shades moved within them against the green glow, all clustered together. Inside a surrounding disk of floor near the walls was a hole. A deep pool which shone with the same green light from the eggs. From its depth rose a large resin structure in the center of the room. Then they saw that the fleshy sounds didn’t come from the eggs themselves, but from a large translucent and bloated ‘thing’! Like they had never seen before. It moved around in a noisy peristalsis like a giant slug hung to the ceiling by several resin chords, moving forward eggs within, and that it delicately placed on the floor covered in green slime out of a fleshy and long tube.

Flutthershy frowned thoughtfully and rubbed her chin with her hoof. “Hum… I’m pretty sure I saw this somewhere. Was it in a theater? Or in a book?”

Mouths agape, the others held their breaths, trying not to think of all the things the image reminded them of while their wide-opened eyes took in the sight in front of them, and followed back the thin pulsating sack full of eggs to its source in the center and above the pool, upon which sat the Changeling Queen herself. Her gnarly horn shone with the creepy green light, part warm, part cold, all alien changeling magic. She had her eyes half-closed as if in a trance, with slow and deep laborious breaths, shown by a large abdomen filled with tinny shinny eggs. Her large body was held by thick strands of green resin and organic tubes that entered her neck and joint areas of her black velvety carapace on her legs. Filled with liquids and pulsating like they were blood vessels that found their way outside her body and stuck to the ceiling, which was itself covered in a large cluster of wiry and pulsating flesh and dripping a thick goo, like a cathedral of creepy.

“Oh… My…” Twilight murmured and took a step backwards, bumping into Cadance’s legs, who stared at the queen like she had forgotten she can move and breath, with her wings flared, all while Fluttershy held her own face in her hooves and stared in wonder.

It was a loud wet bang that reverberated on the resin walls when the briefcase Cadance was carrying under her wing hit the floor. All four ponies winced in terror as if it announced the end of the world and stared at the large, familiar yet at the same time alien creature in front of them.

The queen’s eyes shone like a green flame, sluggishly opening, unfocused and glassy. Her mouth opened slowly, gradually showing terrifyingly sharp and brightly white teeth, reflecting the green light as she drew a deep and noisy breath then, slowly let go of it. Her body stirred, and the resin creaked under the weight as her legs lazily unfolded, pulling at her… ‘Outside blood vessels’, for lack of a better term. Her nostrils flared and drew in air as her throat grunted like it was slowly opening.

The three adults were already at the brink of panic when the light from her horn evanesced, leaving only the dim light from the eggs and the corners of her mouth drew back in a fierce and unpleasant predatorial grimace. Her eyes finally focused, bright green and draconian, falling right upon the purple alicorn.

Twilight simply let out a small ‘squeak’ and flopped limply to the ground. Cadance screamed and Fluttershy still stared, mesmerized.

“Issy!” Said Flurry Heart, putting up her little hooves and giggling happily.

On her side, all the queen could feel was a headache coming, as soon as she saw Twilight Sparkle. It didn’t keep her from striking at them with a magic blast. Not flurry Heart, though… That one Chrysalis liked. Her magic rocked the whole room with a rumble and a bright green wave of pure changeling magic. Some heads were going to roll for this, but for now her green telekinesis lifted the baby towards herself and her predatorial grin turned to a softer shade of mischievous.

“Hi kid. Nice seeing you again.”

The baby, of course, giggled and pawed at her face.

***

Shining Armor slammed a hoof against the counter speaking a bit too loudly. “And then she said we couldn’t have one because these new airships are too expensive! Because we didn’t need one and they were a fad… Can you believe her? Too expensive… A fad…”

Around them, the bar still had its welcoming and cozy atmosphere. The old changeling playing saxophone had been replaced by another old changeling, but this one was playing the piano. The games went on and the roleplaying changelings now had what appeared to be a changeling queen with a black cloak and a spork the changeling used as royal scepter as she ordered the other players around. Some things that never seemed to run out in the bar were beers and playing chips. Even Ocellus had to leave the group and go back to work.

“Well, they kinda are…” Pharynx argued, toying with his cup on the counter.

“Ponyfeathers!” The unicorn said letting his glass rest on the counter. “How can you say they’re a fad?! They’re useful! Besides, we’re royalty. We need, as Rarity said, powers of representation. Not to mention! As soon as she saw Twilight’s ship she decided she wanted one!”

“I see what you mean, sir.” The barling said friendly, listening to their conversation.

“You just want an airship because they’re cool.” Spike held his chin on his hand while his elbow rested on the counter.

“Aren’t they, though?? Just look at Twilight’s cutter!” Shinning pointed at the window, irrespective of the airship actually being visible or not. “Just imagine what Princess Celestia is doing to her old ship!”

“Well, you may be right, Shining.” Pharynx said mindlessly hoofing around the bar his empty cup, a little bored with the conversation the unicorn had been holding for a little too long. “Those things are fine, I suppose. But it’s not like you really, really need one.”

“Well…” Said the white unicorn. “Would I die if I never got an airship? No. But! But it would make me very happy if I did have one. Why, you might ask. I will tell you why! It’s because they are ships! And they are flying. They are flying ships! Ships that fly! In the air! Like! How awesome is that?!”

“I think you may have had a little too much to drink, Shining Armor…” Spike still held his head on his hand over the bar.

“Well, the Prince is correct in saying that these ships are pretty nice to look at.” The barling said, again friendly. “Not to mention that they can be very useful.”

“You see?” Shinning pointed a hoof at the barling. “You hearing that? He understands. Cheers, man. If I could, I’d give you one! You understand why everypony should have an airship! They are so much fun too! Why just another day, I read this article… It was a Playcolt article, and it was about these airships! And the writer knew what he was talking about! You see: Fancypants ordered one of those…”

Spike held his giggling and Pharynx rested his face on the counter while Shining Armor explained in rich detail why is it that, in that writer’s opinion any high-class male of the Equestrian society should own a private airship, including descriptions of photos of Fancypants and his wife aboard their airship. Shinning Armor, of course, being himself a high-class male of the Equestrian society.

Then the door to the pub opened and in came Starlight Glimmer wearing a costume made from black garbage bags calmly trotting towards the bar and carrying Flurry Heart in her magic, while the baby was wearing some weird white baby clothing.

“Hey guys.” She said happily and Flurry greeted them too.

“Huh?” Spike was as surprised as were Shining Armor and Pharynx, staring at the pony, her costume and the baby and her own costume.

“There you go, here is daddy!” She said as she delivered Flurry Heart to Shining Armor, who took her in his hooves still staring at her costume.

“Is this a… Changeling larva costume?” He looked at the baby he held the baby in his hooves.

Starlight used her magic to get rid the garbage bags she had covered herself with as she spoke cheerfully and sat next to them, signaling the barling with a stiff raised hoof. “Sure is! They’re selling three Bits each! Hi Spike!”

“Uh… What are you doing here? And why is Flurry Heart disguised as a changeling larva?” Shining asked a bit stunned, a bit on the defensive, enough to have recovered from the effects of alcohol. Though he wasn’t entirely sure if he wasn’t dreaming and Princess Luna wouldn’t pop in through the window and proceed to chastise him over drinking while going out with Cadance and the baby.

“First of all, it’s fine!” She calmly showed them a small brooch on her hoof that mimicked the bar’s emblem. “I’m ‘in’.”

“But…” Shinning didn’t distrust her, yet he was a little worried. “What about the others?”

“Ah, they’re not. Geez…” She laughed a little. “Can you imagine Twilight knowing about a place like this? Rarity might be, though… She’s high class.”

“But… No. That’s not what I mean! Where are the others?” He insisted. “Why isn’t Flurry Heart with Cadance? And Where are Cadance and Twilight?”

“Ah. They’re with Twilight.” She grabbed the big glass of beer that came sliding down the counter and took a sip, smiling happily. Changeling beer was good! “They’ve been arrested for disturbing the queen while she was laying eggs.”

Shining blinked a couple of times. Maybe the drinks had dimmed his mind for a while. “What?”

“Did you say they were arrested?” Spike too was having trouble believing it. “How do you even arrest a princess? Where are they?!”

“Yep.” Another generous sip went down. “I’m sure the Queen knows how, and they’re in a dungeon down below. There are some cells and interrogation rooms… You know… A Dungeon.”

“Then why didn’t they arrest you?!” Spike opened his arms in a noticeable level of distress, standing on his stool.

“They did, but I took Flurry and snuck out.” She said calmly. “They put Twilight and Cadance in a magic-resistant cell. But put me with the others in a normal cell.”

“They put you on a normal cell?” Pharynx stared blankly at her. Someling was soon to be in a heap of trouble this. That unicorn has been on Chrysalis’ List for a couple of years before they allied with the ponies.

“Sorry… The Intelligence Department really dropped the ball on this one. I dressed her like that, disguised me as a changeling and came here.” She looked at him with a worried frown. “You’re not going to arrest me, are you?”

He sighed. “No… It’s not worth it. Just stay here till they’re free and it’s fine. How did noling stop you with that disguise?”

“Yeah!” Spike agreed. “You were literally wearing garbage bags!”

“Well, I think they saw I wasn’t a changeling… But I also think they preferred to not get involved…” She said, gesturing from one side to the other with her hooves.

“Disguise by weirdness…” Shining said nonchalantly. “That is a new one. Gotta teach that to our spies…”

“I asked Thorax to talk to Chrysalis and calm her down. I also asked to not get the Princess involved.”

“We already have two princesses involved.” Spike showed her two fingers, watching as she drank.

“You know… ‘The’ Princess.” Starlight Glimmer had decided that she preferred to spare her teacher. Poor Twilight would hear about this from her old teacher forever if it reached her.

***

Twilight woke slowly, with a harsh and acute pain on the side of her head. She moaned pathetically and curled into a ball, trying to fend off the painful throbbing in her head, instinctively massaging her temples with her hooves.

“Wake up already!” Came the anxious shout and she fell off the bed she was in with a panicked scream. When she hit the hard floor, she was almost sure she had broken her horn off.

“Ow… What…” As she reoriented herself, she saw that she was next to Cadance, who helped her on to her hooves. They were in a small room with, literally a pile of hay. At least their bathroom seemed to be a separated room and they each had a ‘bed’ which amounted to a pony sized block of stone.

Wait a second. She was in a cell!

She turned to the bars, where the strange white-silvery changeling was looking at them. That moment Twilight felt a sharp pain in her forehead and yelped in surprise as her vision blurred and sounds seemed distant. Instinctively she shook her head to ease the pain.

“Twilight!” Cadance touched her with a friendly hoof.

“Careful! You’re wearing a magic inhibitor ring!” The changeling actually sounded worried now, instead of furiously shrieking all the time. She had her hooves wrapped around the bars, sitting on the other side and looking at the pair through them. “The Queen has ordered you arrested for interfering with the Spawning Pool. Hum… King Thorax tried to intervene, but me yelling at him earlier may have intimidated him a little…”

“Spawning pool?” Twilight slowly regaining her bearings again and quickly moved closer to the bars. She was somewhat shocked. That changeling sounded like a completely different changeling now that she wasn’t yelling in panic all the time.

The changeling nodded positively. “She’ll come talk to you as soon as she is done. Meanwhile, I’m afraid you’ll have to remain here.”

Then it occurred to Twilight that the changeling was likely calmer and friendlier now because there weren’t nosy intruders at her workstation and what likely was the most important thing that ever happens in the hive wasn’t in danger because of some entitled princess. Having come to her senses, Twilight had her priorities straight this time. A cold hand of fright grasped her stomach as she realized that if the changelings were that worried, she could’ve caused the death of an infant even before it had a chance at life! “Please! Say we didn’t hurt her! Or the eggs!”

“It took a few additional precautions, but…” The changeling shook her head. “The queen’s magic protected them from any pathogens or extraneous magic.”

Twilight breathed a little easier. She could deal with being arrested, but not with causing the death of a changeling infant. Not after all that the Queen and the Princess had achieved. “Did we… Did we really put the new changelings in danger?”

“Well… Not that much. But there are reasons only the queen can be at the Spawning Pool.” She started gesticulating with her hooves. “You see… The pool has substances that the queen produces that will inform the eggs what caste the changeling inside them should be. And we can’t know for sure what would happen if strange substances made their way into the pool and affect concentration ratios. It could generate inviable spawnlings that wouldn’t fully differentiate. It’s a complicated science. Quite a bit more than pony embryology.”

The changeling lowered her head. “Hum… We… We die a lot. Our bodies don’t function in the same ways as yours. The same magic that makes things work right with you doesn’t work very well with us, and so we need to take all sorts of precautions to ensure the least possible are stillborn. That is why we were dying, and the Queen signed the Heartmend Treaty… Princess Cadance’s magic reinvigorated us.”

For a brief instant Twilight realized that the more she listened, the more the whole legend about Mother Farfalla made sense, but that was no time to think of legends and she was shocked at the revelation.

“That’s horrible!” Twilight was shocked and so was Cadance, but the older one let her sister-in-law maintain the conversation, only listening and paying attention. “I never knew any of that. I thought that we had healed you. Like… Completely. And that is why changelings were becoming colorful and happy.”

The changeling looked at her with a weird expression. “Those are the worker castes. The black ones belong to the military castes.”

“Wait!” Suddenly Twilight remembered some important things. “Where are Fluttershy and Flurry Heart?”

Cadance answered calmly, sitting in the middle of the cell. “Fluttershy is with the others in another cell. Flurry Heart is with Shining Armor. Apparently, he was with Pharynx and he attested Shinny didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Your friend, Starlight Glimmer, appeared somewhere with the baby and gave her to her Prince Shining Armor. I think she escaped or noling captured her. I don’t know.” The doctor shrugged.

“I have to go now. There is a lot of work pending the laying of the new eggs. I need to coordinate the other eggmaidens and the Queen is going to be furious if things don’t go perfectly.”

Having said that, she awkwardly left and closed a door behind her, leaving the two ponies alone with each other.

“Goodness. Are you hurt, Cadance?” Twilight turned to her.

“I’m fine. Chrysalis hit us with a pretty hard magical attack.” Then she grinned at Twilight. “After you flopped to the floor like a ragdoll, that is.”

The other laughed sarcastically. “Do you think she’s too angry?”

“I’d imagine she’s furious.” Cadance frowned. “I hope we learned a lesson today.”

“Fine. I know what I did was wrong.” Twilight nodded with a large dose of frustration. “But my intentions were good. I hope she isn’t too angry. Enough to keep us out of the archives.”

“I hope she’s not angry enough to complain to Princess Celestia!” Twilight hadn’t even thought of that and after hearing Cadance her fur stood a little on her back.

While they were talking, they didn’t hear the door opening, but one of the changeling soldiers approached them, talking rudely as he opened the cell with a large key. “Sparkle, you’re wanted in the interrogation room.”

“What about me?” Cadance touched her chest with a hoof.”

“Just the short one.”

“I’m not short!” She flared her wings, I a bit of an immature fit.

The changeling simply looked at the two, one next to the other. “Looks short to me.”

She grunted but didn’t answer. Instead looked at the lock the changeling had opened. Twilight knew those… The lock was enchanted in such a way that if any magic, at all, interfered, it wouldn’t open. It only opened with the normal key-lock mechanism. But, anyway, she went out while Cadance kept staring, and then she followed the changeling, after he locked the door again.

They went down the corridor, past a door and past a bend, passing in front of a larger cell (it had more than one piles of hay and more stony beds) where Twilight’s friends were. They called to her and she stopped.

“Girls!” She stopped by the bars, and Applejack approached.

“Why exactly have we been arrested?” The farmpony asked inquisitively. “I don’t remember doing anything wrong!”

“Unless looking at the decoration is wrong…” Rainbow Dash said sarcastically, from the back.

Twilight huffed. “Apparently, the changelings have very strict regulations about access to the ‘spawning pool’.”

Applejacks’s raised eyebrow didn’t seem convinced and Twilight sighed deeply. “I went into a place I shouldn’t have and now I’m in trouble and they brought you in too because the queen is angry and military changelings are jerks.”

Rarity harrumphed. “At least we can find solace in the fact that everypony is well.”

Finally, Twilight huffed again. “Sorry girls. It’s all my fault.”

“That’s alright, Twilight!” Pinkie chirped happily, indifferent to all the angry ponies around her. “We know how you are!”

At least she got a few laughs off them. At Twilight’s expense, sure, but still…

The changeling soldier let out a derisive chuckle asked as he pushed Twilight along. “Let’s go pony… I don’t get paid by the hour.”

Twilight didn’t have time for much more and resigned to following the changeling soldier down the long corridor. It was dark and it was cold. It was scary and it was the kind of place that gave wings to the imagination in the worst possible ways. Fortunately, Twilight was well aware of that. Not only that, but Twilight understood herself and her own fears. She may still fall prey to her curiosity and scientific searches, but her fears were another thing. And she once read a book about resisting torture.

Throughout her career as Princess Celestia’s apprentice. No. As her Most Prized Pupil. Her Most Beloved Student, her protegee, and then, as Princess of Friendship, a Princess of Equestria, she has had a career as a scholar and as a mage, not to mention as a principal in her very own School of Friendship! She liked to think it mimicked Celestia’s own school of magic for talented unicorns or even Luna’s orphanage. Her work might not be on the level of the legendary, but it was pretty damn impressive.

Throughout her career she fought and defeated all sorts of monsters and terrors, including, but not limited to dragons, chimeras, hydras, evil goddesses possessed with sorrow, mad gods of chaos, ancient tyrant kings, centaur necromancers, giant snakes, evil creepy monsters, ponies possessed by evil spirits, ponies possessed by dangerous artifacts, draconian contracts, shady salesponies, government officials, the Canterlot Society for the Good Manners of Royalty, taxes, the training regimen of Royal Guards, Rainbow Dash’s training regimen, sparring sessions with the other princesses and taking care of Flurry Heart. Not necessarily in that order.

Throughout all that there were only three things that she feared. The first were quesadillas. Well, she didn’t really fear quesadillas, but she simply could not ignore their… Cheesy, oily, character. Cheese was delicious, but quesadillas corrupted cheese in the same way Discord corrupted the minds of ponies! One day, she would convince Princess Celestia of the horror they wrought upon Equestria and then, they would be banished!

The second thing she feared most was her mother. Not that Miss Twilight Velvet was a bad pony. Not by any meaning of the word, quite the contrary actually. Her mother was a loving and caring pony, and that is what usually got Twilight and Shining Armor without fault. Whenever they misbehaved, she would cry! It made them feel worse than if she had picked up a switch and beat their flanks off already.

Of course, there was the thing she feared the most. Disappointing Princess Celestia. One could think that she would fear disappointing her mother first, but Princess Celestia employed a particularly evil form of ‘motherly punishment’. First of all, there was the first layer, the most obvious… Twilight didn’t want to disappoint her because the Princess invested in her. She put her faith in Twilight. Second, she could decide Twilight’s future. Wherever or not Twilight would progress, stagnate or regress in her studies. In the earlier years of her tutelage this was particularly scary to Twilight until she grew more confident when… Never. Twilight admitted she was still terrified of disappointing her eternal tutor. She might in fact be doing that right now, considering she could have ended with the Heartmend Treaty due to her curiosity.

No, don’t think about it. It was all about her academical interest in the Changeling spawning process. It sounded better that way. And possibly an investigation of mismanagement.

But finally there was the third layer of her mentor’s, educational practices. Princess Celestia brokered no quarter for misbehaving foals. While she would understand frustrated foals that misbehaved out of emotional immaturity, she would tolerate no tantrum, and was a firm believer of the ‘spare the rod, spoil the foal’ mentality. And considering Twilight’s obstinate nature, her childish-self tested her limits many times. None of those times intentionally, one should understand, but out of the boundless curiosity of an intelligent and perspicacious mind. But the terrible thing about it, was that hurting Twilight hurt the princess even more, which hurt Twilight and it all became a pathetic cycle, worse than death itself!

Come to think of it, the Princess did incentivize Twilight to be curious. Just not to cross her limits. Which is exactly what she did with the Spawning Pool, and now she was going to face the consequences of her imprudent choices. While Twilight didn’t think she needed to fear the switch or even the magical kindergarten anymore it was very possible that the Princess could revoke her title!

Twilight had her doubts if Princess Celestia could do that but then, maybe she could, since she always seemed to have her way in the political scenario of Equestria. And without her title Twilight would be shamed as the first princess ever to become a princess and then lose her title! Her family would be shamed! Her friends would be shamed! Her whole town would be shamed! Her school! Her students!

What is worse is that because of her being the cause to all of this the princess would let Chrysalis do anything she wanted to her so that she could protect the treaty!

She could see as clear as day the Princess’ deathly sad expression as she was forced to turn a blind eye to whatever Chrysalis decided to do with Twilight a shame on itself and it was all because Twilight had to behave like a foal raiding a cookie jar before dinner!

Finally, Twilight realized this whole line of thought ended up in the diametrical opposite of where she wanted it to go.

Right now, of course instead of mentally preparing for whatever the changelings had in store for her she saw herself standing in front of a simple door and she shook like she was a small filly in front of the Princess’ office expecting to be sent home, never to return to the Princess’ school and having her entire future denied to her.

What would the changelings do to her? There were several ways to torture a pony and all of them made Twilight’s skin crawl and stomach turn. After what she saw in the Spawning Pool she imagined some creepy biological horror, rusted torture instruments, magical parasites that forced their way into your muzzle and crawled around in your brain looking for information, magical batteries, or pure and simple pliers…

She was about to scream but steeled herself while the changeling escorting her stared curiously at the purple alicorn sweating by the gallons and hyperventilating like she was about to have a heart attack. He pushed the door, it opened, and it was just Queen Chrysalis sitting behind a desk with a plateful of quesadillas.

Twilight stared at her and she ate one of those things, holding it in her magical telekinesis. She bit at the thing and that disgusting, greasy cheese escaped from every little hole in the tortilla. It looked like a yellow greasy slime, running down the sides of her mouth and, to add insult to injury it had bacon and minced meat.

She screamed inside and decided that she hated Chrysalis.

Sufficiently Advanced Magic

Twilight sat at her chair, facing Chrysalis from the other side of the desk. The door had been locked and a creepy yellow changeling walked around behind her. He had one of those weird mustaches the changelings had, but his was longer, thinner, and his eyes were too small, with a smile that was too big. He was simply creepy, and Twilight hoped to whatever gods might be listening she wasn’t left alone with him.

But, then again, she didn’t want to be left alone with the queen either, so she supposed she was just done for. At least, she had managed to regain her mental composure. Mostly.

The room was dark but had enough light from the crystals on the walls that Twilight could see who she was with, and it also had the tray with those revulsive things Chrysalis had been eating when she arrived. They were gone now, and whatever cheese had remained in the tray was dry and even less appetizing than before.

The changelings and the pony have been there for some time, and that was an interrogation technique Twilight was well aware of. They wanted to wear her down with repeated questions, incorrect assumptions, and perhaps catch her in a lie, as soon she stated that their original intention was seeing their historical records of the Age of the Two Royal Sisters.

It came to a point Twilight felt like she had spent the whole night in this game… She felt tired and frustrated. Most of all, she felt angry at the changeling that wouldn’t stop pacing around.

“So, you say that Princess Cadance sent you to look for the Queen?” He now moved around the desk, behind the queen. She knew what he was doing… He was trying to catch her in a lie, but Twilight was fine with it. She told them no lies. She completely and repentantly told them the whole truth. Including that she knew that she shouldn’t have entered that place. She didn’t apologize, though… It wasn’t the time for that. Now was the time for a dry and brutally honest conversation. Still… She kept to herself her reservations about the changeling castes or the queen’s position.

Of course, there was something that was freaking her out of her mind. The Changeling Queen herself. She simply remained there, staring at Twilight, listening to her talk to the creepy changeling. As if she was judging Twilight. Though, she probably was judging Twilight… She had a creepy and weird aura about her… Maybe it was the images that kept forcing themselves into Twilight’s mind’s eye. She could even see the places in the joints of her black carapace where those… Tubes stuck to her and her belly was a bit soft.

Twilight felt like screaming, and her skin crawled while she tried to force these things out of her head and remain calm and collected.

“No.” She replied as calmly as she could, but she was getting tired and his pacing was making her even more nervous. “Princess Cadance told me about the document and showed it to me. It prompted both of us to look for access to the archive, so that we could verify the information in it.”

“Are you seriously telling us that you came from Ponville just to look at climate records, pony? For pointless historical records of the griffons, of all creatures? That is the sort of thing you send your subjects to do!” The creepy changeling almost yelled at her. “I think you may have fabricated this letter simply to be given entrance to the hive for an innocent reason and then snoop around! Like in the Queen’s Spawning Pool!”

“I did not! I swear!” His raised voice scared Twilight. He had been creepy, but eerily calm the whole time. “I just wanted to see the climate records to confirm that the letter is legitimate! I wanted to make sure the whole thing was, at least, grounded in reality!”

“Twilight Sparkle…” The queen finally said in her creepy voice. It startled the pony even more than the other changeling’s yelling, making her tremble a little, fixating the pony’s attention on her. “Would Princess Celestia try to sabotage the reproduction process of the Swarm?”

Something about the queen seemed off.

“I am certain I have never seen Princess Celestia resorting to sabotage in any situation before.” Of course, the changelings had to have set-up the room with all sorts of lie-detection spells… She couldn’t feel them because of the stupid ring in her horn, but Twilight wouldn’t risk saying something she couldn’t be sure of. She might trigger a few of the many spells she knew they might be using. And, somehow knowing that made her all the more nervous. “Why would the princess do that, though?”

“We ask the questions here, pony.” The creepy changeling said, back to his calm demeanor, and walking one side to the other; but Twilight noticed something odd. Chrysalis seemed spent, tired. She thought back to what she saw in the Spawning Pool, and no wonder she must feel tired. The pony couldn’t help thinking of Cadance when Flurry Heart was born… She felt a very hurtful pang in her chest… She had intruded into a mother’s… Privacy? Sanctity? She had equated Chrysalis’ job of generating eggs to Celestia’s duty of raising the Sun. Did the Princess feel like that? Like it was a personal thing that ponies constantly intruded on? Worse than anxiety, Twilight realized what loomed over her head was shame, like a black cloak of darkness smearing her thoughts.

And, for an instant, she thought that she may have ruined everything Princess Celestia had achieved with the Changeling Queen.

“Why didn’t you talk to King Thorax, princess?” The creepy changeling asked, moving back to the other side, behind Twilight.

“Because he ran past us!” She said, looking at him, from the side of her eyes. “We heard the doctor-changeling yelling at him and he ran outside and past us. Then he was gone. The soldier, Xipho, said we could go inside and talk to the doctor changeling.” As she spoke, she paid attention to the changeling queen… Was she breathing too fast? Twilight knew of her underhanded ways… When she asked her question, it seemed like something too direct for what Twilight would expect. Was she unwell?

Chrysalis’ head swayed from one side to the other, subtly waving her mane around. Her eyes half-closed and Twilight feared she would faint. Even worse, this might be her fault. It was her fault. Her heart skipped a beat and she felt that cold stone in her stomach again. Her ears fell flat and her throat was dry… Twilight would never want to hurt somepony. Especially the Changeling Queen, after all the doctor told her of how changelings work and after she and Celestia had signed the Heartmend Treaty. Maybe she was still a little worked up from her walk in the corridor, but her eyes even watered a bit.

“Your majesty… You don’t look well. I… I’m sorry. I didn’t want to disturb you… I was curious and did something I shouldn’t have. I came here just to have a look at historical records for the griffons and the temperature changes… Forgive me? Please? Pretty please?” She said with her hooves together, pleadingly. She almost considered surrendering her thoughts about the queen’s position.

“Very well, then. I believe you.” Chrysalis immediately looked perfectly fine. “I thought I was going to stop having headaches when seeing you and your friends after that treaty. I don’t like any of this, but at least I may not have to start a war, all over again, because of your stupidity.”

Twilight needed a couple of seconds to understand what had just happened, as she stared at nothing in particular, feeling somewhat confused. Somewhat used. But she supposed it was fair enough. Not only that, but despite what she said, Twilight had gotten the feeling that the queen wasn’t entirely honest with her… She said that she believed her, but Twilight wasn’t convinced that she did, so she kept her guard up.

“Myrmyrex, get Thorax, release her friends and escort them into the vaults. I’ll be in my office, if you need something.” The queen said as she got up and walked around the desk. Twilight followed her with her eyes and she looked as strong as she’d ever been. In fact, she looked ready to win a fight with a bull.

“Are you sure, my queen? The vaults?” The changeling looked at her as she walked past him.

“Don’t question me, Myrmyrex… Do as I say.” She replied uninterested in anything he could have to say now that she had given him an order. And then, she was gone.

But something about the way they spoke tipped Twilight off that they were using codes, or something like that. Or maybe she was just tired and seeing things where there were none. She’d rather be careful, just in case.

“Well, then…” The creepy changeling said as Twilight left her chair. “Thank you for your cooperation, Princess. As the Queen wishes, I’ll take you to the archives. Though I suppose we should release your friends first?”

“That would be preferable. Thank you.” She said and he gestured towards the door, following her out.

Twilight didn’t resent the queen for playing with her feelings any more than she resented Chrysalis for leaving her with this creep that insisted on walking behind her. In a way, she deserved it. The playing with her feelings, not the creepy changeling. Still, things are moving forward. For real, this time.

The corridor looked much less scary and dark this time. She had to wonder if it was because her mind felt lighter or if it was because the changelings actually changed the illumination. In a certain way, everything felt like a mind game ever since she awoke in her cell with Cadance. She didn’t see it at the time, but why was the changeling doctor explaining anything at all to her? Was she really sad that she had yelled at Twilight and the others? Or did Chrysalis put her to it?

Everything in this place seemed like a half-truth!

Twilight’s walk came to a halt… Why did Princess Celestia sign a treaty with the changelings that only the changelings benefited from? Maybe Cadance was right, after all, at the ship, Twilight didn’t know Chrysalis still had any sort of power. Sure, Twilight thought that the Swarm was annexed into Celestia’s rule, but she still wasn’t sure what they had gained from the whole thing. The changeling mentioned that Cadance’s magic reinvigorated them. She mentioned that they still die a lot and will need a lot of love, like what they’re getting through the inclusion programs in the deal, including her own school. Was this pure… Generosity?

The purple alicorn frowned a bit. The common pony might think so, but Twilight knew Celestia. She was kind and generous… But she wasn’t stupid, and she certainly wouldn’t come out of anything losing, or let Equestria come out of it losing. Besides the typical ‘you gain more by being generous than by being selfish’, she was sure there was more to the deal than what was apparent. Something was going on, behind the curtains, and it was worrying Twilight. Ever since she embarked in this whole adventure, she felt like she was poking at secrets.

“Something wrong, princess?” Myrmyrex asked, next to her and she smiled as pleasantly as she could.

“No. Everything is fine. I was thinking.” She said and resumed walking, followed by the changeling.

“Good. Thinking is very advisable, princess.” He said in a neutral to friendly tone, it was the way he seemed to always communicate in, but this particular time, it felt especially creepy. Twilight must’ve been imagining things. Her whole conversation with the two of them must’ve left her edgy.

Without delay, they’ve arrived at her friends’ cell and, while they were released and celebrated, another changeling brought Cadance. Finally, the two princesses had their hornrings removed and the whole group was reunited with Pharynx, Spike, Shining Armor and Starlight Glimmer on a corridor along the way. Finally, Thorax brought to Cadance the briefcase.

Twilight was now happy, as were the others, because this time things really seemed to be flowing nicely. But, one thing had drawn her attention: they were going down, and she could clearly remember Xipho saying that down was the way to Chrysalis’ laboratory. After what she had experienced in her period within the hive, she wasn’t sure she should be excited or worried about it. Perhaps it would be better if she ignored it altogether. She could try…

“I’m terribly sorry for everything, Twilight.” Thorax said. “I was kinda worried about Chrissy. This whole thing is complicated.”

“Aw, did you just call her Chrissy?” Cadance giggled. “How cute.”

“It’s okay, Thorax.” Twilight chuckled. “It was all my fault.”

“I’m glad not much damage was made.” Fluttershy chirped walking behind them and Applejack chuckled too.

“Well, I’m just glad Twilight didn’t restart a war on account of her curriosity.” She said in her typical accent and caused the others to giggle, except Twilight, who let out a sarcastic ‘ha ha’.

They took some time, going down the happy and colorful halls of the Changeling Rock, ever swarming with the happy and energetic colorful changelings. Twilight felt a small pang of sorrow knowing that they weren’t, necessarily healthy changelings, but a caste of changelings… Then, another question dawned in her mind: how did the queen control which caste each changeling would be born into? Was it like cutie marks? Except nopony can control their cutie mark. Maybe the queen knew some magic that sorted them into these castes as needed? The changeling doctor mentioned that the queen secreted some sort of substance that informed the changelings which caste they should be born into. How did that work? Like a potion? Was it under Chrysalis’ control? It must’ve been, since all the changelings were black before.

Well she mentioned too that ‘the magic that makes ponies work doesn’t do very well with the changelings. Maybe it’s not magic, but something else entirely. It must be some amazing power that the Queen has… Almost as if the Princess could give ponies their cutie marks.

Actually… It was a little scary.

Twilight was jerked out of her thoughts when the group reached a dead end. A section of the corridor had collapsed and there was no way they could proceed through the black rubble. It even had sharp edges from the crystalline rock that made the changeling home. It occurred to Twilight that everything in this place was more dangerous than it seemed.

“Hum…” Thorax said, nervously looking to one side and another.

“How unfortunate.” Myrmyrex said and Twilight was ready to hear him lament that they, unfortunately couldn’t reach the archives and thus, see the records they had asked. Chrysalis was feigning good-will and now things made perfect sense in Twilight’s head.

“What now?” Rainbow Dash asked, with her wings raised and looking frustrated.

“It seems we must take another route.” The creepy changeling surprised Twilight. “There is another way. Through the Queen’s laboratory.”

“Uh…” Thorax looked at Myrmyrex. “That’s a bad idea. Chrysalis is gonna flip if she hears of this.”

Twilight’s heart surged. And next to her, Cadance giggled awkwardly, poking her with a hoof. “We promise we won’t touch anything this time.”

Myrmyrex looked at Cadance and then at Thorax. “Well, the ponies should behave and the queen did order me to take them to the archives.”

***

The walk to what Myrmyrex said was Chrysalis’ laboratory was a short one and devoid of anything special. It was in an inconspicuous corridor, that wasn’t very used, as it lacked all the festive decorations the changelings had been spreading all over the rock. Likely, the military changelings would keep them away.

She still hadn’t gotten used to the idea, but it wasn’t for her to judge. She couldn’t deny that the changelings are happier now than they were before. She had to remind herself that Chrysalis wasn’t necessarily evil and that Thorax would likely keep her in check. The things she had done were because she felt it was how her changelings would have a better chance to survive. She couldn’t forget either that Chrysalis had sought a peaceful end to their cold war.

Or, on the other hoof, that she might very well have murdered her own family.

Her thoughts were interrupted when Rarity spoke to her, right next to her left side. “Darling. You are very quiet. Are you still blaming yourself for what happened?”

“It was my fault, Rarity.” Her ears fell a little. “It’s just that…”

“Don’t punish yourself too much.” Rarity said sympathetically. “You have a tendency of doing that and nothing too bad happened. The doctor talked to us.”

“I’m sorry, Rarity. I think I’m keeping a lot of things in my head… I’ll tell you guys after we’re done here.” She motioned to the changeling in front of the group with her head. “I don’t want to talk too much here.”

Rarity emitted a small and low hum, feeling her own investigative vein stroked. She remained stoic, though, leaving Twilight to her own thoughts. She hadn’t seen anything particularly strange. But, then again, Twilight had been doing a lot more snooping around than she had.

Eventually, they arrived at the entrance to the highly anticipated Queen’s Laboratory. It was a simple door. Not even a guard standing around and that picked Twilight’s common sense. It would dictate that Chrysalis would put at least one guard by the entrance.

That notwithstanding, Myrmyrex opened the door and Twilight was taken by a foreboding sense of something being out of place. It was simply too much of a coincidence that the direct path to the archives happened to be blocked and, because of that, they had to go through the laboratory. Was it just a coincidence that Xipho had mentioned the laboratory while escorting them earlier? She wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

Still, she followed the changelings with the group and, passing the door, they saw themselves in a sort of anteroom with four different open doors, but, most importantly, it had guards. That, somewhat, put Twilight’s mind at ease. At least, things didn’t look so weird anymore. Additionally, those weren’t the ‘Xipho-style’ guards, but they were the far scarier ‘tall-double-sword’ kind of guards. Not only that, but they behaved in a way Twilight would expect guards to act: they looked at the newcomers with less than friendly faces, and then they stared at Myrmyrex and Thorax quite angrily.

“They can’t enter. This belongs to the Queen and the Queen alone.” One of the three said, which made Twilight think it was the commander, or something. “What is going on?”

It sounded female. Twilight was mildly surprised and their guide stopped in front of them, drawing their attention to him. “I’m terribly sorry to disturb your work ma’am, but the direct way to the Archives has been blocked.”

Thorax just let Myrmyrex talk.

“Blocked?” The ‘commander’ didn’t seem particularly convinced or happy.

“Yes. Blocked. A cave-in.” Myrmyrex explained with a hoof gesture, as though he was talking to a child.

For an instant, Twilight thought that they would simply turn them away, but the female in charge turned to one of her subordinates. “Bollocks. Check it.”

“Ma’am!” One of them said before he secured his sword to his side, point-first, and briskly trotted off the door they had just came in.

Then silence took in. Twilight didn’t feel like small talk, and apparently neither did all the ponies and changelings around her. She examined the tall changelings curiously, however. They seemed professional, even if their weapons looked strange to Twilight. In her mind, spears would be better suited weapons for the kind of environment they had to protect. She wished she could, or felt like, asking Shining Armor. He would know.

But Shinning Armor looked tense, next to Cadance and Flurry Heart. And if he was nervous, then Twilight realized that she was becoming extra nervous again. But that didn’t keep Pinkie from walking up to ‘the commander’.

“Hi!” She said and was promptly ignored by the tall female changeling. Then she insisted. “Hiya! Hello! Greetings! Oi! Hola! Hej! Salut!”

The changeling closed her eyes and sighed in defeat. “Hi…”

“Do you like cupcakes?” Pinkie asked excitedly.

“No. I do not like cupcakes, ma’am.” The changeling seemed intent at not looking at the pony.

“What about…” Pinkie started, but the changeling quickly cut her off.

“I do not enjoy any kind of sweet confections whatsoever. Ma’am.” The commander seemed to be trying very hard not to be explicitly offensive, and that earned her a couple of points with Twilight.

But Pinkie didn’t relent. “Oh! What about sour ones? Or bittersweet ones? How about…”

“Ma’am, please do not disturb the queen’s guard.” She said in an almost robotic voice that made Twilight picture the chirper changelings relentlessly trying to be friendly all the time.

“Oh, okay.” Pinkie deflated as she returned to their midst, to be comforted by Fluttershy.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long before the changeling returned. “The way is blocked, ma’am.”

The commander became angry now. “How did a bloody cave-in just happen? I heard nothing of it!”

“I have no idea, ma’am’. All I know is that the corridor has collapsed.” While the two discussed, Myrmyrex stared at the commander, expecting her to acknowledge his presence, which she seemed intent on ignoring.

Finally, Thorax cleared his throat, not looking very friendly right now. “I believe I should have the authority to tell you to stop harassing these ponies and let us go to the archives, commander.”

“Fine! In you go, ponies. Don’t touch anything and go straight through.” She said, exasperated. “If the Queen kills me, I’ll find you and haunt you.”

Satisfied, Thorax nodded and Myrmyrex turned to Twilight and friends. “After me, please.”

The ponies obeyed and quickly followed while Rainbow Dash talked to Pinkie in a hushed voice. “Gee. Talk about hostile work environment…”

Looking irritated, Pinkie agreed silently and mater of factly, while Applejack did Twilight the favor of shushing them. Shining took the lead of the group, leaving Cadance and Flurry Heart with Twilight near the middle of the group and Rarity brought up the rear, cautiously looking at everything. Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash remained slightly in front of Twilight and the others and going after Myrmyrex and Thorax through the left most door, they were in a strange place.

The walls retained the glass-like smoothness and clinically clean appearance that Twilight saw before she entered the Spawning Pool. But it was larger, and instead of an angry changeling doctor, and magical images, this room had four large, green, resin-like structures which reminded Twilight of cocoons with a transparent side so that one could see what was inside. They were empty, left resting on their side, on the ground. They also seemed like they have been opened from the outside at some time and, at present time, they seemed to be slowly disintegrating with a strong smell, like chlorine.

Not only that, but a few shelves had a few strange instruments. They seemed magical in nature, made of noble metals like tin, gold and with diamonds and emeralds. Twilight and Cadance knew, the sort of gems and metals that would work well with magic. They had no idea what they did, though: whatever magic animated them before was gone. Likely because they were unpowered. They both recognized the arcane technology as pony in origin, so they either stole it… Or Chrysalis got them from Celestia.

The pods were another thing of interest. They, each, looked large enough to contain a big male pony, but the princesses had no clue as to what they were used for and thought it best not to ask. Their attention wasn’t the only one drawn to the things, though. The other ponies looked at them too, and Twilight internally thanked them for not asking questions. Rarity though, looked particularly interested in them.

Not stopping, Myrmyrex quickly took them to the next room, which had two doors. One on the side and another on the far end. Additionally, the room had what looked like a stone table that rose from the floor next to a pulpit and a small wood table with a tray. On a passing glance, Twilight saw nothing special about the room and simply followed Myrmyrex until he stopped at the door in the far end of the room. It had what Twilight quickly identified as a magical force field and it completely closed the door.

“Well… It’s locked…” Myrmyrex said in a fake disappointed tone.

“Don’t worry, I can open it.” Thorax said, more to the other changeling than to the ponies and immediately went to work on it.

Twilight deliberately paid no attention to what he was doing, not willing to be misinterpreted, while ponies made themselves more comfortable, looking at each other, spreading around a bit, rather than remaining in the tight pack they were. Shining Armor looked at Cadance and at their baby and Rainbow Dash talked silently to the others. Twilight didn’t hear what she said as her attention had directed itself at the stone table and pulpit.

The pulpit held nothing, as did the stone table, but the tray in the other table held metal surgical instruments. They were clean, Twilight believed. This must be a dissection room.
Cadance approached her and spoke in a low tone, confirming Twilight’s thoughts. “This looks like a dissection room.”

Twilight simply kept a critical eye over the place. “The poor things. I hope she at least dealt humanely with them.”

Chrysalis could very well be dissecting creatures here and studying their anatomy. Maybe it was important to the changelings… They both had no idea, but if ponies would do the same, she couldn’t think of any reason the changelings wouldn’t.

“Twilight!” Rarity called Twilight, in her most hushed voice, and gestured with a hoof for her to come near the other door, where Rarity was.

She didn’t think much of it and went to her friend, while Cadance returned to Shining Armor, and as soon as she came close, she could smell decomposition, despite immediately feeling and identifying a dampening spell in the area. Rarity had a white, embroidered, handkerchief to her muzzle as she pointed inside with a nod.

At first Twilight didn’t understand what she saw, then she realized that there were the bodies of three creatures inside, like they’ve been carefully deposited there. They were covered in white cloths that were stained in caked blood and other bodily fluids which also pooled around them. That wasn’t a good practice… If Chrysalis was dissecting creatures, she ought to be preserving their carcasses and anatomical pieces in ether or glycerin, instead of dumping what looked like whole bodies in another room. They looked big, too. Odd.

Even more odd that the room was illuminated. Maybe it was some quirk of their goo-filled crystals that their light couldn’t be extinguished… But it still felt strange to Twilight that the poor things were unceremoniously dumped in the next room, but still covered in sheets, while clearly illuminated, right next to the room where they would need to stop and open the force-field.

It felt… Contrived. Rarity looked at Twilight as she looked at the blood-stained sheets. Chrysalis was taunting her to look at them. But for what purpose? Twilight was confused. Was this some sort of test? Did Chrysalis really suspect her of being sent to disrupt the Spawning Pool and was offering something that Twilight might not resist investigating if she was working under Celestia’s orders? She did ask if Twilight had been sent as a saboteur, after all.

It would be the easiest thing in the world for her to reach with her magic and lift one of those sheets. Would she find a deer? Or some other animal? Perhaps dead changelings? Dead ponies. Some sort of golems? Like, prototypes for these larger changelings? Anything seemed possible. Still, she consciously decided not to disturb whatever those were.

“What do you figure they are?” Rarity whispered.

“I don’t know what is going on here, Rarity.” She replied, equally in a whisper. “But don’t disturb them… Chrysalis is baiting us, for some reason. The sooner we get out of here, the better. This whole thing took an unnecessary detour because of me and I don’t want to make things worse. Or stumble into something I’d rather not know.”

It sounded ironic, but Twilight felt like she didn’t want to endanger the treaty. Even if Chrysalis might be doing something wrong.

Rarity simply agreed silently with a nod and kept a low voice. “Did you notice those pods in the other room? They were the same ones the changelings used to keep us that time Starlight and the other saved us.”

Twilight hummed… Yes… That was where she had seen them. But still preferred not to make a scene, and both of them distanced themselves from the door, returning to the midst of the group. It didn’t take long for Thorax to finish magically fiddling with the obstacle and, as he finished, they followed him into a corridor, with another door, this time a simple wooden door which opened to a large room with nooks on the walls where rolled scrolls were stored, as well as large bookcases toward the deeper parts of the room. A large and long hall filled with books and scrolls.

“This it?” Rainbow asked, looking up the tall walls filled with scrolls.

“Yes.” Thorax said, looking around. “Where is the librarian?”

A shadow moved between the ponies and the girls let out a collective shriek while a dark green and black changeling walked from their midst. “What do you need? I can find anything in the Archives!”

Not a particularly big changeling, she was somewhat petit and had big eyes behind giant round glasses which made her purple eyes seem even bigger as she stared intently at the king, who raised an insecure hoof. “Uh… Twilight?”

The princess cleared her throat. “Do you happen to have information about the Holy Griffon Empire, or Emperor Gregor?”

“Who?” The changeling looked weirdly at her.

Twilight sighed. “Nevermind… What about climate records for the Age of The Two Royal Sisters.”

“Oh! Those we have that at the hoof!” The small changeling chimed happily and surprised the ponies by running up the shelves with the scrolls like she was an actual bug.

After some more careful looking around, she grabbed one of the scrolls and brought it down, holding it with one of her legs, and then the changeling carefully deposited it over a table. Twilight took a second to fully comprehend what she was looking at: it was not the actual scroll, but it’s casing. It was a thin and black, metallic casing, adorned with the symbol of the Swarm, Chrysalis’ jagged horn and a pair of changeling wings, spread over the length of the cylinder, and on its ends, black metal rods that stuck out. In its length, it was bigger than a pony, and in its girth, it was as large as her leg.

Under her curious gaze, Twilight could identify many spells at work, including the typical ones that old artifacts usually had, to ensure they would last, but it did draw her curiosity that this one carried ancient magic. That isn’t particularly interesting because most ancient artifacts that were made to last would be protected by magic as old as they were. What drew Twilight’s attention was that she recognized that magic as Chrysalis’ magic. If that thing was that old… Was she alive at the time? Maybe she just renovated its magic as time passed and she inherited it from her mother?

“Whoooa… That thing is huuuge.” Pinkie said next to her while Twilight was still collecting her wits.

“So… The technology of breaking up scrolls into different pieces hasn’t arrived to the changelings yet?” Rainbow said, looking at the thing.

Twilight grunted in annoyance, and Cadance explained patiently. “It’s not big because they can’t cut it, Rainbow. It’s like this because it’s special. They made something grandiose because it was important.”

Flurry Heart, on her back, was already getting bored and the big thing didn’t interest in the least.

“That is quite right!” The changeling librarian agreed enthusiastically. “Queen Chrysalis personally created this one and the following ones. My antecessor said that she heard from her antecessor and theirs that she would make one for each age and only certain changelings would know the spell to unlock them. But as time went on, the wards waned and now, even though they are preserved, they can be read as any normal scroll.”

Twilight beheld the thing with a sense of reverence. So, she did create it. That thing could be as old as what passes for present Equestria. Then she looked at the librarian again, letting the other obvious question slip from her mind. “May we see it?”

Cadance almost giggled at Twilight’s respect for the thing. Even if she did have some reverence too, for the meaning of that scroll. So she let Twilight with her new toy.

And Flurry wished she had her toys.

“Of course!” Changeling librarian answered happily. “Just be careful! Though I don’t think I’d have to tell you that.”

Twilight held the big scroll in her magic and its own magic flooded her senses. Its protective spell was ancient and powerful. Much more than needed to protect it from the ravages of time. It probably was a remnant of whatever magic was used to keep it sealed from the wrong eyes, and whatever effect it was supposed to have was gone, but it did fill Twilight with a strange sense of how old the events in that thing were. And the letter Cadance had found put its meaning in a very interesting context.

She did open the scroll, though, pulling lightly at its protective rod at the edge of the parchment. It rolled inside and the strip of parchment came out smoothly. Like the letter, it didn’t seem like the vegetal parchment ponies typically used, but it also didn’t seem like the typical animal skin the letter seemed to be made from. Maybe it was for the best that Twilight didn’t know what that thing was made of.

More important, the scroll did have the information she wanted. It was a well-organized table, ordered by the date as defined by the Changeling calendar, and it contained information about the time of sunrise and sunset, the mean temperature of the day, along with highest and lowest.

It was exactly what Twilight needed, and she had a satisfied grin, staring down at the thing next to her sister-in-law.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then. I’m sure my queen needs me.” The creepy changeling, Myrmyrex said, and left without waiting for anything.

***

It was a monumental effort, though one Twilight and Cadance were well capable of. Translation required a conversion of the old changeling dating system to the modern equestrian one. Not surprisingly, the changelings had a different calendar, and adopted a new one when Chrysalis took charge of the swarm, which lent more credence to the legend of Mother Farfalla, but also meant Chrysalis could indeed be as old as Equestria itself.

Twilight wasn’t sure how to feel about it, and her brain was more preoccupied with more immediate things, such as correctly converting dates, translating months and converting temperature measurements to the current system, which, curiously, was already used by the gryphons of Gregor’s time. It probably was because Equestria already used their present system at the time and it was the changelings that had a different one. Comprehensible, since the changelings had a very specific need and would prefer to keep their information secure if it was found by the wrong creatures at the time.

Still, it would be much harder to find the specific records they needed if the changelings hadn’t been as thorough as they were. Twilight immediately found them as soon as her eyes met them. It was subtle in the beginning, but there was a pattern, like the one described in the letter.

“Oh my gosh!” She said with huge eyes. Suddenly all her tiredness was gone. “This is it!”

Immediately, all the other bored ponies and changelings in the room went to her as she pointed at it with her reading stick. “It’s right here! It started precisely one hundred years before our recorded arrival of Princesses Celestia and Luna! The precise times for sunrise and set began varying wildly, sometimes with hours of difference from the typical times, and the mean temperature got as high as one hundred and ten in areas it should be around sixty. There are even side notes of discrepant stellar positions, vanishing stars and the angular size of the sun increasing!”

“This is insane!” Cadance gawked at the same records while the others huddled around to see. “Ponies must have been dying of exposure.”

“This sounds scary…” Pinkie said next to Twilight, frowning down at the parchment. Not that she could decipher what it said, but she believed Twlight.

“Twilight…” Fluttershy’s voice made her look up. “What could cause this sort of thing?”

“Princess Celestia and Princess Luna can deal with the sun and the stars trivially, but before them… It’s possible that the unicorns were becoming weaker and weaker as the effort drained their magic and soon, they began losing their ability. Or… Maybe, it became harder as time passed.” That was what she was taught, after all, and believed without a second thought for most of her life.

“This doesn’t make a lick of sense.” They all looked at Applejack’s frowning stare and she stared back at them. At Twilight, precisely. “I had never thought about it, but… For how long had the unicorns been moving the sun and the moon? I mean… Suppose it drained their magic, sure, but for how long does a unicorn live? Two hundred years? For how long the world has existed? All that time, they’re all high and mighty, doing their thing, and suddenly, in just one hundred years, things get wacked.”

The ponies stared at each other for a few seconds. Applejack was right. It didn’t make any sense. Ponies like Twilight and Cadance certainly thought of it before, but seeing these records, it’s like staring straight at a liar that can’t keep up.

“With the right magic, one could live for as long as they held their enchantments.” Twilight frowned, a little unsure of her next words. “Princess Celestia has been alive for thousands of years...”

Twilight should know if Princess Celestia used such spells. To be sure, she did light up like a Hearthwarming tree when Twilight peeked at the magic around the Princess and she had so many layers of protective spells on her all the time that simply trying to figure them out would give Twilight a headache… But she should have mentioned such things, especially since her mentor had taught her a lot of such spells and that sort of spell were, not exactly banned, but frowned upon.

“Could a pony live forever? With these spells?” Rarity looked at the two princesses with curiosity.

“No…” Cadance answered a little distracted while Twilight was busy thinking. “There comes a point when the soul would lose all its ability to retain magic.”

“Because they would be casting spells that are too strong?” Pinkie asked and Cadance shook her head.

“No, that’s not it. It’s simply because the soul becomes…Tired. Some ponies are born with powerful souls that can store huge amounts of magic and they are replenished while they use it because they absorb it from the world. But as they get old, they start replenishing their magic less efficiently. Just like older ponies may have trouble casting some spells that require too much power.”

Cadance started making gestures with her hooves, explaining what she was saying. “It flows. From ponies and to them. To and from Equestria, reaching a sort of balance. So, ponies aren’t supposed to live for too long because they’d be, kind of, clogging the system.”

“How does that explain ponies like Princess Celestia and Luna? And Chrysalis, for that matter?” Rarity asked. “I figure she’s pretty old.”

Twilight’s jaw dropped. Did Princess Celestia’s magic directly feed off the sun or something like that? Maybe ruling Equestria was her way of bleeding off that magic to it. It was what ponies did… Following their destinies, living their lives, putting their talents to their personal betterment and that of their communities. Maybe… The simple act of raising the sun every day had a much deeper meaning than simply giving its light and making the day? Was she… Their connection to the sun, which was their source of energy?

The others must’ve been thinking the same thing because Pinkie stared suspiciously at her. “Twilight? Have you been stealing friendship from us?”

“Uh… Not that I’m aware of!” She defended herself.

“I don’t think that’s how it works, Pinkie.” Shining said. “I mean… Changelings feed of love because their magic is wacked. Cadance’s magic is fine so she creates love…”

“Sooooo…” Rainbow looked like she was about to fry her brain. “Twilight creates friendship?”

“I suppose we all would, Rainbow.” Applejack said with a weirded out expression.

Twilight felt somewhat like she did staring at the magical images outside the Spawning Pool… Like she was poking at something she didn’t fully understand, and its real meaning escaped her. And all this talking wasn’t helping. None of them knew one third of what she knew of magic. She frowned… How much of it did she know compared to Princess Celestia?

Like… Everypony knew that ponies needed plants to eat and they needed the sun’s energy by their simple biology, like ponies needed food… But everything in Equestria had a magical edge to it… Then… If the unicorns were trying to control the sun but couldn’t… Things still didn’t fit. Applejack was right. This whole affair didn’t seem like a natural system. For starters, the amount of energy involved in the Sun’s output… How did that translate to magic? How many unicorns did they try to use? For how long did they last? What went wrong? Was their magic incompatible, or something?

Did it simply overwhelm them with its sheer magical output? How can Princess Celestia simply deal with it then? Twilight never tried anything similar, but she knew that her magic connected with the magic in things around her when she cast a spell over them… If that thing in the sky outputs so much magical power, it must feedback ridiculously powerful and complex magic. Enough to damage a pony’s inherent magic?

To be entirely honest, the sun really should be working on its own. Period. It would fix everything and if this system had any logic to it, that is what it would’ve been doing!

Maybe something happened and unicorns had to take control of the sun, but they failed and… Equestria’s magic reacted. Maybe, magically, things were collapsing, and it had to save itself from imploding. But that implied that it had some sort of awareness and agency. And didn’t explain why it didn’t react by simply fixing what was wrong or by giving the unicorns the right magic.

None of it made any sense!

“My point…” Applejack went on and Twilight heard her over her thoughts. Their conversation was a mess and Twilight was having trouble focusing. “Is that this thing had been working as intended for generations before it began going haywire. Then, when things, precisely, became unbearable, the Princesses appeared and got things under control.”

Yeah… Makes sense, Twilight thought.

“We may be trying to see too deep a meaning where there is none.” Rarity offered with a hoof. “Maybe it was Discord that damaged the unicorn’s ability to control the sun and moon. Then… Uh…

“Magic?” Rainbow said. “It reacted with the princesses; they fixed the whole thing. Like us. We met and got the Elements just in time to stop Nightmare Moon.”

“You got it wrong, Rarity.” Starlight countered. “The Princesses came before Discord.”

“Not according to Gregor’s letter.” Cadance said with a raised hoof and Starlight agreed with a hoof on her chin.

The changeling librarian spoke then. “We do have records of Discord’s arrival. I’ll fetch them for you.”

Efficiently, the changeling brought them a book, which she promptly opened and started looking for something. Soon she found what she was looking for and turned the book to the princesses. Twilight was lost in thought… A deep pit of fear had begun to grow in the back of her mind, but Cadance stared at the book, squinting a little and oblivious to Twilight’s thoughts.

“Collated reports by our spies on Discord.” The librarian added. “Says here that Discord made himself friends with the ponies, but as time went on, he began causing so much chaos that Equestria’s society began to collapse and they had to leave. No mention of the princesses… It seems they only heard of them a couple of centuries later. It implies it was after we recovered from the damage Discord caused.”

“The date corresponds with Gregor’s letter.” Cadance said, looking over their notes with a weird expression. “I guess… It’s all a mess. About one hundred years before our records… But in time to be some sort of reaction to the damage. I think.”

“What the hay!” Shinning frowned. “If the ponies beat Discord, why didn’t, whatever they did, fix the problem with the sun?”

“So… I think we may have been right that magic, or whatever, sent the princesses to fix the problem.” Rainbow said hesitantly and the others followed, adding support or their own versions of what must have happened.

For a few instants, Twilight stood silent at the table, staring down at it. A sense of dread crept up her spine like a cold spider, delighting itself in torturing her. This whole story wouldn’t fit even if they could blame Discord for messing with the whole system. It appeared as though the changelings misinterpreted the sun acting up as Discord’s doing. The actual problem seemed to be an ancient one. Older than Equestria, because unicorns had, supposedly, been controlling the sun since… Forever. And, even if Discord could be blamed for everything that happened, it still wouldn’t explain other things like Gregor and his non-existing empire Equestria has never heard of. The discrepancies in the records with things, literally, clear as the day…

Through all the wonder at the theories of how Celestia’s magic worked, at the center of it all, it seemed like somepony had tried to hide something important about how Equestria worked in a very intimate level. Something happened that changed the way things worked and the unicorns couldn’t keep up. Things happened in the past, different from what their history told them and there was one pony that lived through it all. One single pony in the perfect position to withhold and adulterate information from that time. This implied all sorts of things Twilight would rather not think about…

This train of thought terrified Twilight Sparkle more than that of an angry sun going berserk. She didn’t want to think of it before, but it was staring her in the face right now, like a plateful of quesadillas. One single pony in the position to change everything, from whatever deep magic coursed through Equestria, whatever happened in that period that vanished, and that happened to sit atop the world, uncontested. Capable of doing whatever she wanted, including shady deals with changelings and messing with their line of succession.

Twilight didn’t even know the name for that, but she was sure it was wrong.

It had occurred to her that she could spend days in this library looking for records of Equestria, as told by the changelings that had infiltrated her and would give their home a real account of what they saw. She imagined what she would see… But she also imagined she didn’t have much time before ‘somepony’ realized she was poking at things she wasn’t meant to. She needed answers and needed them fast so that she could figure out what to do.

Her voice rang among the other discussing voices, as she raised her eyes from the table and spoke with a certain authority the others weren’t used to hear in her voice. “Thorax. I need to speak to Chrysalis.”

“Hum…” He hesitated… She scared him a little. He’d never seem her so serious and with such a hard stare. “I think she’s not very friendly right now, Twilight.”

“I demand it.” She said calmly. “Under my authority as a Princess of Equestria… I suspect another Princess of corruption.”

In another situation, Twilight might’ve found the collective gasp around her comical.

***

Of Tales and Myths

“Twilight! Twilight! Stop! This is nuts!” Shining ran in front of her looking like he was going to have a seizure any second. “You can’t just accuse Princess Celestia like that!”

The walk to Chrysalis’ quarters was uncomfortable, and that was probably an understatement. Thorax’s presence ensured that it would be a quick one, though, and for that Twilight was very thankful. She really didn’t think herself capable of explaining to anypony what exactly was going through her mind. She didn’t know for sure if she, herself, believed it entirely. Not that it kept the others from bothering her.

“I know, Shinning! That is why I need to talk to Chrysalis!”

“But why Twilight?!” Rarity whined at her side, frantically trying to make her stop. “Why Chrysalis?! She’s… Not very friendly or trustworthy!”

“She’s likely old enough, Rarity.” Twilight was getting angry. “And who else can I talk to? Discord? Princess Celestia?!”

“YES!” Rarity shrieked, but then got her nerves under control again. “I mean, not Discord… But definitively Princess Celestia!”

“No, Rarity.” Cadance walked along, on Twilight’s other side. “She’s just going to dismiss the whole thing… And if she knows of it, she’ll try to make the whole thing disappear before we can investigate. Or even make us stop, permanently. Especially if she is to blame!”

“What about Princess Luna, Twilight?” Fluttershy skipped along, trying to keep up, following them up one of the Changeling Rock’s spires.

The princess shook her head, looking down. “She won’t do either, Fluttershy. She’s too close to Princess Celestia and she also benefitted from whatever happened.”

“Will you listen to yourselves?!” Spike pulled at Twilight’s tail, but all he got was it yanked from his hands and an angry stare from the princess. He was angry though and stopped, opening his arms. “Princess Celestia! We’re talking about Princess Celestia and Princess Luna!”

“I know!!” Twilight snapped at him, turning around. “Do you think you’re angry? She’s my second mother! But you know what else? She’s also made me what I am today! I have to know the truth! It’s my job as a Princess of Equestria! We protect it! From the Princess if we have to!”

Cadance looked angry too, as she stopped and stared at the others. “Princess Celestia taught me everything! She’s made us sit for six hours classes on statecraft! Twilight doesn’t even need to manage public assets and she sat there with me because she knew that she would enjoy it! It was like three friends talking about the job, not a course on some of the most boring things known to ponykind! That is how much we like her! We’re supposed to be family and she lied to us!”

Twilight faced the others too. “Princess Celestia commands a ridiculous amount of assets and she must answer to, literally, everything that is alive in Equestria! Not to mention she taught us that a ruler must be held to higher standards than their people and now we’re seeing that her rule might not even be legitimate!”

Finally, Cadance pointed an accusatory hoof at the others. “You think you’re angry! She’s literally the closest thing I have for a mother! And she lied to me! She’s done the exact opposite of all she’s ever taught me!”

Starlight Glimmer angrily stomped her hoof among the others. “Will you two stop acting like this is personal?!”

“It is personal!” The two yelled together.

What stopped the whole discussion was the baby crying. Cadance had to take Flurry Heart in her wings, close to her chest and reassure her while they climbed the rest of the way in silence.

That was good. Twilight had to mentally prepare for her conversation with Chrysalis. It occurred to her that Chrysalis might have a vested interest in protecting Equestria’s version of the facts. She would have to be as careful as possible not to raise any flags about what she had discovered and speculated. It would probably be best to get her to start talking and let her expose as much as possible by herself.

Twilight only hoped she could keep up to the changeling queen. And none of the others spoke too much or too soon. Yes, she would have to take the lead.

Another thing that worried her was the presence of the black changelings. The whole thing could be even worse than she thought if Chrysalis, not only was doing things behind Princess Celestia’s back, but if the princess was doing things behind everypony’s back. It was like a double problem.

Calming her thoughts, Twilight reminded herself that the colorful changelings still overwhelmed the black ones… If Chrysalis had plans for some sort of schism, she’d have trouble with it. Of course, she was also getting new changelings, exactly now.

Twilight really hoped that through all that she’s been finding out, Princess Celestia really knew what she was doing… She remembered she had suffered the same stress when the princess ordered Discord released, and that turned out to be for the best. Maybe the others are right and Princess Celestia had very good reasons to do whatever is it that she did or, even better, Twilight had got something wrong and was overreacting.

She chuckled darkly to herself. She, overreacting… Like that ever happened.

Was she in the wrong here? Even if the princess had hidden something in their past, she may have done it with a good and noble goal in mind. It was Princess Celestia… The very symbol of all a pony could look up to.

Of course, Twilight knew that Celestia had her shortcomings, but the important thing was that she was the big guardian of Harmony… The one that unified all and turned their world into what ponies more knowable in statecraft than Twilight called a utopia. Yes, it was an exaggeration… But…

Maybe, whatever she hid away, was necessary for the greater good of Equestria? That made sense, right? Well, Twilight couldn’t see how hiding a past emperor and his empire would help Equestria when everypony knew of King Sombra. Or this whole mess about the unicorns, the sun and herself… What if she stole the sun from the unicorns? Used it to reach for power.

They still lived in a near utopia…

Was it still a utopia if it was founded on a lie? On illegitimate rule?

She wished she could simply command her conflicting thoughts out of her head for a while.

When they arrived, they saw themselves in an atrium with large windows, balconies, sofas, chairs, a table. It looked like the changeling version of a luxurious living area. All sorts of spells kept the area comfortable, despite the winds outside and provided security to the area, including powerful spells on the door itself.

It was a black, wooden double door, adorned in green metallic embroidery and guarded by two of the tall, double sword-wielding black changelings. They looked stoic, but seemed to be ready to spring into action, while two more converged towards them from behind the group and four more stood by the balconies.

They made Twilight nervous. Now more than before and Shining eyed them distrustingly too.

“Your majesty?” One of the two by the door talked to Thorax. “Do you wish to see the Queen?”

“Twilight needs to talk to her for a while.” Thorax said calmly. “It’s important. Please tell Chrysalis that I would personally consider it a favor if she talked to Twilight and her friends.”

The guard nodded calmly, looking at the group, and then said nothing. Instead, knocked twice on the door and went inside, only opening the door enough to pass through, and closing it immediately after.

Again, the group found itself passing time, waiting for things to happen. This time, the ponies grouped together tightly. Maybe the tall changelings made them feel threatened as well, or maybe it was the things Twilight said earlier. Like Twilight, they all seemed uncomfortable in that room and the stares from the guards didn’t help.

Fortunately, Thorax stood alone, somewhat isolated in the middle of the room, uncomfortably staring into the floor and rubbing his forelegs together, probably still thinking about the things they found in the Archives.

Cadance approached him with a small smile and this provided Twilight with an opportunity that she took, casually approaching the two, however, careful not to make any sudden movements. He looked at them and smiled back.

“Sorry we blew this on you… This was meant to be a special day.” Cadance said, legitimately apologetically.

“Ah… It’s okay, Princess Cadance.” He said in a shy smile. “You didn’t know it was going to turn like it did. And this sounds very serious.”

He made a small pause and Twilight waited, feeling he wanted to say something else. “Do you think… That you’re right about what you said?”

“I don’t know.” She admitted. “That is why I want to talk to Chrysalis, and quickly… I need to understand what those things mean… I need to figure out what to do next. And she lived through that time… I think. How old is she, Thorax?”

He shook his head lightly. “I don’t know.”

Twilight frowned for a second. In a way, this was a good thing, but it rubbed her in the wrong way to think that Thorax didn’t know how old Chrysalis was, despite being… Married? Whatever he was to her. But then again, Thorax was very nice and might not have asked out of politeness. Twilight would have to not be as polite…

“What about these tall changelings?” The older alicorn asked in a particularly low voice. Fortunately, Thorax took the hint and did the same.

“Chrysalis calls them ‘Praetorians’.” His eyes shifted between the two ponies and the one guard that remained by the door. “They were born in the last brood.”

“Impossible!” Twilight kept her voice low. “They would be two years old!”

“Twilight, it’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!” He barely kept from shrieking. “The others are still growing normally, but these guys… They looked adult in seven days. Our armorer gave them these swords and they simply started sparring like they spent a lifetime learning those things. They know combat spells I can’t figure out! They look at Chrysalis like she’s… Well, their mother. Normal changelings don’t do that… Sure, we all know and understand what she is, but they will stare evilly at you for so much suggesting something bad about her! They stare at us while we sleep, and I could swear I saw one of them trying to cut a lock of her mane! They freak me out!”

Great! Twilight was having second thoughts about the legitimacy of Celestia’s rule and now there’s an evil queen rising an army of crazy super changelings… Possibly with her leave. Just great.

“How many?” Cadance asked, discreetly looking at the guard by the door.

“Seventy-two changelings in the last brood.” Thorax said, slightly sad for a second. “Eight were inviable… But there were fifty okay… Half military, half civilian. And the rest were these creepy tall guys! Though, you couldn’t say when they hatched. Only Chrysalis and her eggmaidens knew and they took them away from the others. They just appeared out of nowhere a week later.”

Twilight and Cadance were a bit confused. Those were small numbers and they immediately remembered what the changeling doctor told them about their failing magic. Maybe Twilight was overreacting. The pink one decided she wanted to know more. “Are these black changelings supposed to be around? I was under the impression that all changelings had changed when Chrysalis was ousted.”

“They changed back when she returned.” He said, curiously. “Chrysalis said some creepy thing like she does when she’s making fun of you, and that was it.”

“Thorax, is it possible that they had disguised themselves to be with you?” Twilight asked.

He shook his head. “No… We’re very empathic. We’d know if another changeling was lying. The fact is that not everyling was happy when she was forced to leave.”

Then Twilight took a deep breath and watched curiously as Cadance talked to him again. “I… Thorax… Is… Everything… Alright? You know… With the changelings… Chrysalis?”

“Actually, yes. Chrysalis is a bit rough, but I’m sure she has the good of the Swarm in mind. All of the Swarm.” He said, worried, even though he had a low voice. “What worries me is that you just said that Princess Celestia may be hiding things… Like… She’s… Done something really bad!”

That, at least, put Twilight’s mind more at ease. She would trust Thorax to keep Chrysalis in check.

Finally, the door opened, and the tall changeling guard returned. “The Queen will see you and your friends, Princesses.”

“Thank you.” Twilight smiled, as she started walking towards the door the guard held open and her friends followed, along with Thorax.

Twilight didn’t know what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t what she saw thought the door…

A large open room, with enough room to park Twilight’s airship in it, with evenly spaced black obsidian pillars and walls. It had large glassed windows, a high ceiling and the floor was entirely made of a very beautiful and shiny, dark green marble. Each slab that combined to form the floor was framed in a gleaming green metal.

The giant room had different areas combined into a single, large room, and those included an office with a giant black wooden table, complete with rolled up scrolls piled, and assorted materials related. The room also had a big and luxurious sitting area, with large and comfortable sofas, a fluffy carpet and a giant painting of Chrysalis hanging from the wall, framed in gold. She smiled. Like she knew something. Secure in the knowledge that she was at the top. Like there was no one else above her and there would never be.

The room also had a giant bed, secluded close to the back, protected by green, gold embroidered curtains. It was big enough to comfortably hold some twenty ponies and its sheets were a deep jet-black satin.

In the center of the room was a table covered in sweets and jars filled with juices. Next to it, two of the ‘Praetorians' kept watch over the visitors and the whole room was littered by works of art, from creepy sculptures of dissected creatures to bladed weapons, paintings and a few richly adorned cups and plates, including painted porcelain, but also gold and gemstones.

And, next to the bed, was a standing piano. Made from black wood and adorned with beautiful green metal embroidery that made one think of the former changeling aesthetic, with its jagged forms and dangerous looking sharp edges.

Chrysalis sat next to it, and her black hooves touched the keys with a lightness and precision that supplemented the magic she used to hit the keys.

Twilight was full of questions, and some anger, in her head, but listening to the queen playing the piano, she was completely at a loss for what to ask her.

The queen wore a stunningly beautiful royal cape of dark-green velvet. It looked so pure it should be put in a museum instead of worn. It added a surreal sheen to the queen’s already shinny carapace and her strong frame didn’t seem capable of such elegance. She looked a little too rigid in her posture, with a rigid neck and back, but it didn’t get in the way of her art.

The ponies simply stared while she played her song and it entered their ears. It wasn’t particularly beautiful, but as all music, it spoke to their souls. Of peace, of a nice rhythm as life went on peacefully and, day in and day out, nothing much changed. It was a fancy march, that repeated its phrases. A dance of acute, happy notes that went up and down, eventually becoming deeper, as the song descended into a more melodramatic tone that sustained its notes, keeping its tempo and phrases. More mature, like growing up, becoming more complex.

Finally, her song concluded with sustained notes, which implied whatever it spoke about would endure, returning again to the higher notes, still sustained, until she left the keyboard.

The ponies simply stared surprised. Of all the things they expected, this was closer to the least ones. It was rarity that first started applauding, stomping her hooves on the marble, but the others soon followed. Not only because it was polite, but even the least musically inclined ones could see the value of what they had heard.

“Wow! Queen Chrysalis!” Spike applauded enthusiastically. “I didn’t think that you, of all the creatures I’ve met in my life would play the piano!”

“Spike!” Twilight called, shocked at him. “What a rude thing to say!”

She looked apologetically at the queen, who stood, carrying an open paper folder. Her green magical telekinesis floated it to the dragon and he held it curiously.

“It’s a pale imitation…” She said as she walked towards the central table. “It was composed by a true master… She invented the piano and then wrote a song with it.”

The dragon hummed and looked at the top of the sheet, and it was titled ‘Cuore’. Then he closed the folder and the cover had a painting of a beautiful prairie under a sunny sky. Its title was written in white ink, at the top: ‘Vivissimo’.

“I’ve never heard of it.” Rarity looked at the folder the dragon held and then looked at the queen.

“She mostly plays different things now. Though it’s still something to behold.” Chrysalis reached for a white éclair with her magic. “Make yourselves comfortable since you’re here to talk…”

The gears in Twilight’s head were spinning again, but she didn’t notice something Chrysalis said. Cadance did. It didn’t make any sense. The inventor of the piano never played it. She was speaking in metaphors, though Cadance didn’t think she knew why they were there and shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Chrysalis was talking about something different, incidentally.

“Well, just because somepony invented the piano, and then wrote a song for it…” Rarity said, holding the sheets in her magic. “It doesn’t mean that another can’t do something worthwhile with it.”

“Quite right.” Chrysalis agreed and her magic floated a cookie to Rarity. “Here…”

In her defense, Rarity did her utmost best not to show how annoyed she was, beyond her ears turned back and unfriendly look, but almost regretted the compliment. Meanwhile, the queen sat behind her large desk and stared at the ponies and dragon who congregated before her.

But before Twilight could say anything, Rainbow spoke as she looked around. “You know… You look like you’re doing very well for yourself, with all this luxury.”

“Changelings are made in this room, Rainbow Dash.” The queen grinned, flashing her sharp teeth, staring at the pegasus over the desk. “This is hallowed ground.”

“Sheesh…” The pegasus grimaced, her ears thrown back.

“Thank you for receiving us, Chrysalis.” Cadance said in a diplomatic tone.

“Thank Thorax.” She said. “If it wasn’t for him asking, I’d have you all thrown off the Rock.”

Then, Chrysalis made herself comfortable at her large chair. “I hope you didn’t see anything too disturbing in your way through the laboratory, though.”

‘Bitch…’ was what Twilight thought, but she stared at the queen innocently enough. “We did our best not to intrude.”

“And did you find what you were looking for?” The queen’s grin was starting to unnerve Twilight. Why in Tartarus was it so hard to simply talk to her? “Since you’re here, I suppose that you found exactly what you were looking for.”

The young alicorn almost panicked. Chrysalis knew! She might even have already warned Princess Celestia that her former student was poking at forbidden knowledge. Her eyes strayed to the stack of scrolls over the desk and her heart raced like it wanted to explode… A simple letter would’ve sufficed, and she wasted so much time… Celestia could be on her way right now!

She needed to think of something, fast!

Her friends stared at her and Twilight drew a blank under the queen’s gaze. Finally, Cadance came to her rescue, taking a step forward. “Chrissy, did you see the letter?”

“No.”

Twilight’s ears perked up. Did she hear it right? “You… Haven’t seen the letter?”

“No!” The queen said again. “I don’t care about it. I was worried that Celestia had sent you to spy and to sabotage, you dummy. We thought that the letter was fabricated, precisely because we know that you ponies follow the story as told by the griffons! Not, in a million years, would I care about some griffon monarch with a generic name. Do you have any idea how many of them existed and the griffons never bothered to mention because they all thought of themselves like their gods walking the earth because they owned a small fiefdom?!”

What in Equestria was this cursed mare talking about then?! Did she really fear so much that Twilight would poke around in that creepy laboratory of hers? She almost regretted not looking under those damn sheets!

But, right then. Twilight was worried about something she thought was much more important.

“Are you kidding me?” She cried angrily at the queen. “This Gregor was just some nobody that happened to talk to King Sombra? What about their conversation about the sun and the night sky? The temperature? The unicorns?”

“What are you talking about?” The queen repeated. “Like I said, I thought it was a ruse and didn’t even pay attention to any of this talk. What temperature?”

While the ponies generally stared with profoundly annoyed expressions, and ostensive irritation, Cadance actually talked to her. “Chrysalis, we discovered that Equestria’s records are wrong when compared to yours. Temperatures and sunrise, etcetera. We think somepony may have changed our records.”

With that Twilight growled and magically grabbed the briefcase with the letter and all of their notes, slamming it open on Chrysalis’ desk. “For pony’s sake! Look at this letter and our notes!”

Nonchalantly, the queen grabbed the preserved letter in her hooves and quickly scanned it, before stopping and staring at Twilight, next to Cadance with a small scowl.

“Put your hooves up.” She told them, and the both of them obeyed innocently before the queen grabbed a beating stick from her desk and promptly hit their legs, while scowling fiercely, and causing both to yelp painfully.

“It’s pronounced ‘Grigor’, you simpletons!” She yelled at them while the others did their best not to laugh. “Celestia ought to put the both of you kneeling on corn until you can read this thing right!”

The two princesses massaged their sore legs, whining and staring angrily at the queen and Cadance replied thoroughly offended. “It’s a dead language, you know?”

“Quiet. I’m reading. This guy actually was important.” She snapped back at her, focusing on the letter

A few minutes passed as the queen scowled again, but she looked curious. Twilight and Cadance waited as she seemed to check and re-check their notes, more than she worried about the letter. She then stared thoughtfully at the two princesses and then back at the letter. Finally, she let it rest on the desk and stared at nothing in particular.

The others could practically hear the spinning gears in her head.

Finally, her thoughtful scowl turned softer and she started to giggle, then to laugh and within seconds she had surrendered to one of the most heartfelt laughter they had ever seen. It sounded weird in her voice, but at least it wasn’t the typical evil laughter.

“What is so funny?” Rainbow asked, feeling like the queen was making fun of them.

“Millenia later, it had to be her own students to happen upon a random letter that happened to mention this mess. And of all of Celestia’s students, it had to be The Twilight Sparkle!”

Her audience didn’t seem particularly amused, but she surrendered to laughter again, trying to regain her breath. “Through the millennia, I’ve seen Celestia spinning schemes and planning centuries ahead before her efforts bore fruit. I’ve witnessed as she forged her great empire of rosy-colored sugary friendships and I’ve watched as she either struck down her enemies or formed alliances with her faithful, shifting her pieces all over the gameboard, until she had all under her sun. I have, myself, surrendered to her and felt like a child before that ageless gaze of hers… And one tinny letter escaped the grasp of the mighty Matriarch.”

Twilight wasn’t amused. Not one bit.

“Well, it is kinda funny.” Pinkie chuckled.

“Then again…” Chrysalis stared at the two princesses. “Perhaps it was only right that you two would be the ones to find this tiny crack and explore it. Oh, thank you, Twilight Sparkle. Thank you so much for this moment.”

“Will you stop making fun of us and start talking?” Cadance stared angrily at the queen. “This is serious!”

“Fine.” She still sounded like she was having too much fun. “I see what happened. You found this letter and it told you some things that didn’t seem right. Then you poked around and figured out that what didn’t make much sense was the story you’ve believed your whole lives. Now, from the start… Make yourselves comfortable. It’s story time.”

They did. Chrysalis guards politely brought them pillows and chairs. And as they did, Chrysalis started talking.

“You are wondering who was this Grigor fellow and why he didn’t seem to exist. It’s because the griffons hated him enough to erase him and all his… Let’s call those ‘achievements’ from their history. And they had help from a certain pony with a lot of power in that time, that also had a lot of interest in that period vanishing from history. So, they helped each other, even if said pony still wasn’t as loved by the griffons.”

“What did he do?” Twilight rolled her eyes at avoiding saying Celestia’s name but was actually surprised. In her world there just wasn’t anything anyone could do to earn so much hatred from their own people.

“Before you understand Grigor, you must understand the kind of world he was born on.” Chrysalis relaxed into her chair again. “Do you remember the Windigos?”

“Of course!” They said in unison.

“Some believe that, in a similar way the ponies summoned the Windigos, they summoned Discord into Equestria. Some say it was because their leaders had become corrupt, which led to more in-fighting. Others think that it was because ponies got bored with their easy life and started messing with magic they shouldn’t. A few think it simply was inevitable, like a random monster. The fact is that Equestria was a beautiful republic, founded on the principles of Friendship, by some nice ponies you know about.”

Twilight nodded and Cadance grinned as she spoke. “Yes. Princess Platinum, Clover The Clever, Smart Cookie, Puddinghead, General Hurricane and Private Pansy.”

Chrysalis grinned. “Except Platinum was not a princess, and was a vicious viper, Hurricane was a megalomaniacal plothole, Pansy was a tool, and Smart Cookie was incredibly dim-witted. The only ones worth a damn were Puddinghead and Clover. And… Star Swirl. Still, Puddinghead kept to the business of his family, Clover only cared for his studies and Star Swirl… He was the mighty, the great and powerful Archmage. Full of himself.”

“I don’t understand.” Twilight looked dejected.

“Ponies change, Twilight Sparkle.” Chrysalis said plainly. “Their journey looking for a place to run from the Windigos changed them. Well, Star Swirl wasn’t with them, but they influenced him. They became friends and changed each other. Then, the Fire of Friendship banished the Windigos and they brought the others to the new land. They founded Equestria and for three hundred years, it flourished so fast and so brilliantly even other nations wanted to be a part of it. They founded the Senate of Equestria and it was composed of representatives from all provinces of the republic, all races that composed it, yadda, yadda... Meanwhile, the Archmage governed the Mage’s Guild and they cared for the sun and the moon.”

“Sounds… Great.” Starlight was confused, as were the others. “Why did you say that corruption might’ve summoned Discord?”

“Because they changed again. By the time Discord arrived, they were back the way they used to be. You will notice they lived far longer than any of the ponies today. Huh…Platinum was over five centuries when she died.”

“They didn’t want to let go of their power…” Twilight mused. “They used life extension spells. But why would that have summoned Discord?”

“Like I said, nobody knows why Discord appeared. But I wonder, because any creature that is drunk with power don’t usually simply hoard it: they use it.”

“You think they abused their stations and became corrupt?” Applejack asked.

Again, Chrysalis nodded. “Regardless, Discord came and he… I don’t know what exactly he did, but he knew very well what he was doing. The Republic fell within days. Nations worldwide crumbled. He… He messed with our heads. Ponies, griffons, yaks, dragons, changelings, everything became… Corrupted, for lack of a better word. Insanity reigned and all he touched would laugh without stop and destroy everything they could. I don’t understand the process of what he did, but it was like he could flick a switch and turn creatures to vicious monsters. Ponies were particularly vulnerable, but all would fall to this madness. Everything died by the millions and nothing could stop him.”

Twilight frowned distrustingly and her voice carried a very derisive tone. “Discord… Caused a ‘zompony apocalypse’?”

“Well, despite your unfaithful way of speaking, this analogy isn’t very distant from the truth.” The queen sneered at her, then breathed in. “Then one day, everything stopped. We didn’t hear him in our heads anymore. The survivors were freed but our world was consumed by destruction. You never realized Discord was that bad because you caught him early, and most important: before your time, somepony had sanitized the whole story.”

“It was along the following century that the sun started acting up.” Chrysalis smiled creepily. “Stars vanished. The moon grew dark and the days grew hotter and hotter. We felt it in our magic, even the earth ponies, the yaks and all the less obviously magic creatures. Magic itself was damaged. The answer was obvious… Discord must have caused some sort of lasting damage.”

The queen stared out a window. “By that time, the Swarm had begun to reorganize its spy network and we found that, like us, the whole world felt something was wrong, and worse: there was no trace of his magic left. The new conclusion soon came: our world was dying. Things were spiraling out of control because the sun was on the fritz.”

“Did Discord damage the sun?” Pinkie asked with a confused frown. “This sounds so weird.”

“No…” Twilight answered, thoughtfully looking downwards. “They didn’t find his magic anymore. How did the ponies defeat him? It sounds as though they wouldn’t be able to summon the Fire of Friendship, nor did they have the Elements of Harmony. What happened?”

“I don’t know.” Chrysalis shook her head. “Whatever happened, happened at the worst of Discord, no one, even the equestrians, could spare the resources to record what was happening. But I do know that Equestria’s founders had survived. They lived in a small town called Everfree, near the ruins of the capital. Yes, that Everfree. It was then a small fiefdom ruled by two families… The Bluebloods and the Brightmanes. A few other noble families shared their little town, but the gist of it was that the Bluebloods and Brightmanes owned the town. Star Swirl still headed the Mage’s Guild and he was responsible for the sun and moon, along with his colleagues. And doing a bad job of it. We found records of members of the guild going insane from so much as touching that thing with their magic and losing all of it within months in the beginning, and days near the end.”

“Wait… The Bluebloods?” Cadance asked surprised.

“The very same.” She took a sip of a glass with a red juice before continuing. “Star Swirl seemed to know what he was talking about so everyone took him seriously when he said that our world was indeed sick. The problem was that the ponies were its disease. I don’t know what happened, but he was convinced that what summoned Discord was some evil within ponies. Something very wrong with ponies, specifically. Of course, that part bothered the rich ponies in charge, and they tried to keep him down. But Star Swirl was desperate, like a madpony. Desperately looking for the ‘Goddesses Reborn’. Because they would take the power away from the ‘bad ponies’ and would be able to fix the sun, control the day and the moon.”

“It was amid that madness that Grigor was born.” Chrysalis nodded once, speaking slowly. “The griffons love a big bully and in a dying world, they flocked to him like he was made of candy. He united the griffon kingdoms, but that wasn’t enough for him. He called himself a descendant of the griffon Patriarchs, the creators of his race and he might’ve been right… He was able to cast spells by speaking enchantments, like they were. He also said it was their divine mandate that he ruled the world and demanded to be called a god. He was the kind of guy that when Celestia would offer you a friendly hoof, he would nail your hoof to the wall of your house and rob it, then leave you to die. Griffons of his time actually liked that… ‘If you can’t defend, it isn’t yours.’”

“Giant prick…” She concluded with a sneer.

“Griffons can do that?” Rainbow asked curiously. “Do magic, I mean?”

“Today, only one can…” She answered. “It’s in their blood. Their heritage. That is why the Lion can claim to be a descendant of the Patriarchs and amass the support he has. The thing is: while he could have found out about the Patriarchs easily, he would need training for his spells At least the right words of power.”

Cadance hummed thoughtfully and Twilight intruded. “Of course, it doesn’t help that the current chancellor is being accused of embezzlement.”

“Ha!” The queen laughed. “In the dark corners of Griffonstone, today, agents of the Lion whisper of secession, armed rebellion if the Lion is not made their king. But some of them also point claws and say that their proud race was ‘defanged’, ‘castrated’, ‘demoralized’… ‘Subjugated’.”

Chrysalis made a gesture over the table. “The thing is, griffons rallied to him. Maybe they hoped he had a solution because the sun was baking everyone alive. Despair and panic spread throughout the world and we felt like we had a countdown over our heads. But for the griffons, that didn’t see what happened in Equestria, it could easily be that Grigor actually did solve something. All he would have to do is sit his ass atop a mountain and shout a few impressive words nobody else could understand.”

“What happened in Equestria?” Cadance asked. In her head, she was beginning to put the pieces together.

“Something curious happened then…” The queen said mysteriously. “Get this: a cult of ponies appeared. They worshiped the creator deities of Equestria and called themselves Children of the Sun. They spoke of an ancient pact the ponies had broken and that was the problem. Ponies were supposed to uphold six virtues that their leadership had forsaken and thus had forsaken Harmony itself. They cried that the salvation would come, through the Goddesses Reborn. The same ones Star Swirl seemed to be looking for.”

“You see where this is going…” Chrysalis grinned a little more. “They claimed that their goddesses came from the sun and the moon and that they destroyed Discord and would return, eventually, to bend the evil ponies and would restore the purity of their souls through freezing night or searing day and relight the Fire of Friendship.”

“Wow…” Starlight Glimmer said sarcastically. “And I thought Twilight was overbearing with the friendship thing.”

“Excuse me?” Twilight looked at her and the others laughed for a while. “Also, what creator deities of Equestria?”

“Beats me.” The queen shrugged. “Anyway… Finally, it came to a point where the sun simply refused to set. It had grown as big as a quarter of the sky and so bright it blinded anyone who went outside. We had no idea why, but not only that, magic had become corrupt… It wouldn’t work. I had made my peace and was ready to die, surrounded by my children.”

Ponies, dragons, and changelings stared comically at her while she made silence for a few moments. “Then…”

“The sun exploded!” Pinkie cried in anxiety.

“It did explode.” The queen said looking at her and causing her to gasp in shock. “It made infernally hot winds and what remained turned darker than the night. All light vanished and it made a terrible sound, like a crying ghost. Reality began to break down around us and I felt like that thing in the sky was trying to swallow us whole.”

“Chrysalis, are you telling us the truth?” Twilight looked annoyed among her entranced audience. Cadance was annoyed Twilight interrupted her and stared but said nothing.

“Of course, I am!” The queen said, surprised.

“Really?” Twilight was now angry. “The sun exploded? And then turned black?”

“Oh, I’m sorry Sparkle. I would’ve taken a picture for you, but cameras hadn’t been invented and I was too busy trying not to piss myself while the universe broke down around me.”

“The sun cannot turn black!” The purple alicorn shouted. “That thing generates energy. How can it turn black?”

Chrysalis shrugged. “I don’t know. Go ask your mentor… She’s the one that understands that freakish thing up there.”

“I can’t believe this! The only pony I could always trust, can’t be trusted anymore and I’m sitting here listening to a pathological liar telling me about goddesses and the sun exploding!” Twilight screamed in frustration, making angry gestures with her hooves.

“Twilight…” Applejack’s voice calmed Twilight a little and she looked at her. “I think you may be judging Princess Celestia a tad too harshly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe…She did tell some lies. Maybe the story we have is a romanticized one, where our founders were great and stand-up ponies, where the princesses were received with a party and they simply decided the Sisters should rule Equestria because they have the characteristics of the three tribes and all that, and that one day Celestia simply rose the sun and returned everypony their magic….”

“Your point?” She stared at her friend’s green eyes almost like she wanted to intimidate her.

But Applejack wasn’t impressed. “What good will it bring if we keep pushing and find some ugly truth?”

“Who are you and what have you done to Applejack?” Pinkie eyed her suspiciously. “Did you miss your element jewel or something?”

“Pinkie, honesty is important, good and all. But we’re at a point where if we keep digging, we’ll break the dam.”

“Applejack!” Twilight yelled. “Chrysalis mentioned the Bluebloods! They are still alive! Archduke Blueblood could have a legitimate claim to the throne of Equestria!”

“What the hay?!” Applejack shook her head. “Twilight! Listen to yourself!”

“I find it extremely difficult to believe that the archduke could maintain the confederacy in the same way the Princess does.” Rarity said as though the mere mention of the name was offensive. “I believe that the throne is in good hooves with Celestia and Luna.”

“Yeah!” Rainbow gained the air, flapping her wings excitedly. “But we should do it! I mean, Chrysalis might be telling us horseapples, but imagine if the Princesses kicked some butt to protect Equestria from the evil ponies!”

Pinkie immediately stood up and started kicking the air with her forelegs. “Like… Princess Celestia had to fix the sun! And then they had to take control of Equestria from some evil king and Star Swirl helped them! And then she fought the evil griffon emperor! And then ponies started following her because they were so awesome! And then…”

“Or maybe Princess Celestia thinks herself some angry goddess that decided to punish the whole world because of some stupid thing!” Cadance said angrily, bringing down the excitement level in the room to glacial levels. “Or perhaps she killed somepony and stole the crown for her! Or even, she held Equestria hostage with the sun, along with the whole world!”

The ponies, the dragon, and the changelings present stared at the teary-eyed princess, but she went on before they could say anything. “I don’t want to live in a world were the closest pony I have for a mother has done something awful! Like, like… Conquering the entire world in a giant war just because it was her divine right or something like that. But if that is what happened, she needs punishment! For lying! To all of us!”

Twilight understood their points. She lowered her eyes and took in Cadance’s words too. Now that she was calmer. The fact was… The world already belonged to them. Twilight included herself in it because she was a Princess of Equestria. She was the same Celestia was… Given the adequate proportions… When Twilight traveled to distant lands, griffons, yaks… And changelings… They all saw a Princess of Equestria in her. A justiciar trusted by what they recognized as the very magic that made their world work, to right the wrongs. To protect.

Sure, some insisted that Celestia made her an alicorn, but they were wrong, the dragons didn’t care about ponies and their laws and the buffaloes had their own thing going… They were friends. They were listened if anything happened and they would listen to Princess Celestia. Especially Ember, nowadays. They welcomed the decisions of the princesses.

Wasn’t that exactly what Princess Celestia was? An alicorn, like Twilight. Twilight didn’t choose to become a princess. Neither had Cadance. It happened. Whatever power actually ruled the magic of their world, it decided that she ought to be one. As it did with Celestia. With Luna… Even if Luna became Nightmare Moon, she was chosen too.

Twilight frowned a little as it dawned on her… Princess Luna did something wrong, but she was still made an alicorn. Rather than thinking that this magic would make a mistake, Twilight would think that she was made an alicorn despite that. Whatever happened was part of some greater plan. And that made sense, considering Princess Celestia might have done something wrong… She was still the ‘north’ Equestria followed. She was nothing short of their sun.

Whatever she did, it ought to be celebrated, or remembered, like Nightmare Moon. Not pushed under the rug and forgotten. Especially because, thinking clearly, and remembering the old pony she knew, her old mentor probably did something amazing. Legendary. Maybe she weaponized the sun, or, maybe… Just maybe… She fixed the sun. It didn’t make much sense that an evil pony would become what Celestia had become.

With a renewed purpose, she turned to her friends again. “We have to find out the truth. Not because Princess Celestia must have done something wrong; but because whatever happened must be made known so that all can judge for themselves. And knowing her… It probably was something outstanding she didn’t want to take credit for.”

Cadance seemed convinced enough, and as her ‘partner’ Twilight was too.

“What’s our next step, them?” Starlight asked, stepping next to Twilight. “We know for sure that things happened we didn’t know. We know the sun got all screwed, that Discord arrived sooner than we thought, in relation to the arrival of the Royal Sisters and that things may not have been very friendly. We also know that Grigor, the griffon Emperor, did exist and was a threat.”

“Well, Chrysalis didn’t know much more about what actually happened when the princesses arrived or how did the ponies deal with Discord.” Applejack said with her accent. “I reckon we need to figure out what happened to the griffon army?”

“Good one, Applejack!” Twilight grinned excitedly, and the changeling queen talked behind her, from her desk.

“It did arrive in Equestria. They certainly sent letters back to Grigor. We never caught one of them, however. They used good messengers… Griffons can fly far.”

“They were probably destroyed…” Twilight caressed her chin. “The griffons certainly would’ve destroyed everything they got their paws on when they sanitized their history.”

“What about what they didn’t get their paws on?” Spike offered with a raised finger. “I bet this Grigor guy knew when things started going south for him and took precautions.”

Twilight agreed with a nod, and then looked back to Chrysalis. “How did he end?”

The queen grinned mischievously. “Celestia offered him friendship. When he didn’t accept it, she beat him to death with it.”

Twilight turned around and looked more directly at her. “Wasn’t she busy fixing Equestria?”

“The griffons called for help. The nicer griffons that would rather live in peace. After Celestia and Luna did become the rulers, news of them spread far and fast.” The queen said calmly. “How did you think that things started with the griffons? But their nobility didn’t like it one bit. Then she offered them friendship, and most were smart enough to accept it. For the time.”

“Well, small wonder the griffons thought ill of the princess!” Applejack looked at the princesses. “Up to this day and with the Princess Meddling Accord…”

“The Alicorn Concordat, Applejack…” Cadance frowned.

Twilight nodded. That much she knew: the part the griffons omitted was about Grigor. It probably was around that time King Grover did his thing. Maybe he united the kingdoms did join the confederacy, in a similar way to their told story. Yes… That made sense.

“If the Lion knows how to use their speaking magic…” Cadance said. “He certainly found other documents of that time.”

Applejack smiled. “Five Bits say he has a bunch of letters and, I reckon, a scroll or two.”

“Nice!” Rainbow grinned. “We have our next destination! Griffonia!”

“Yes!” Twilight said “All the way to his fortress in the north.”

“Uh… Yeah, Twilly…” Shining said coming closer to her. “You’re not taking my wife and child to a place ready to burst in civil war.”

Cadance raised an eyebrow at that and Flurry Heart seemed ready for a fight!

“Aw, come on, Shinny. You’ll be there to protect us.” Starlight Glimmer giggled, drawing the same from the others. “Not to mention… Have you forgotten who you’re taking to?”

“Yeah!” Rainbow jumped excitedly. “We’re Equestria’s flank kicking squad! We’re escorting Princess Twilight Sparkle to talk to local leader.”

Shinning wasn’t amused. “Dash, we’re not talking about ‘chasing off monster adventure’. It’s going to be griffons. With combat barding. Muskets, swords, pikes. And not necessarily nice town militias: gruff and violent mercenaries commanding scared conscripted griffons. Far from Equestria’s heartland and the eyes of the Princess.”

“Oooh… Bad griffon boys.” Pinkie elbowed at Rarity who giggled more than she would like to admit.

Twilight did her best not to giggle. “It’s going to be fine, Shining Armor. We can watch for ourselves.”

“Twilight, you have never been shot at. No one ever tried to murder you with a mace. You have never killed another being that wasn’t a monster.” He argued and she got a little angry.

“I have dealt with dragons, Shining Armor. They don’t shoot: they rip you apart and breath fire on you.”

She stared for a second. “No offense, Spike.”

“None taken.” He waved a hand casually.

“Shining…” Cadance used her ‘not angry yet but you better wise up tone’ “We routinely fight monsters, train hard and do pretty well in our weekly sparring sessions. Specially Twilight and her friends.”

Shinning Armor sighed in defeat. “Fine. Can we, at least take your guards with us?”

Twilight grinned and offered him a hoof. “That, we can do BBBFF.”

He simply smiled and bumped her hoof.

“Cool!” Rainbow said, excited again and flapping her wings. “We fly to Ponyville and teleport to Griffonia?”

“Griffonstone, more precisely.” Twilight added. “From there, we charter a flight to Griffinsky. Or the next best thing.”

All agreed, except for Shining Armor, who was still worried. Finally, Twilight turned to Chrysalis again.

“Thank you, Queen Chrysalis. You were invaluable.” She said with a smile.

“I’ll drown you in chlorinated water next time I find you in my Spawning Pool.” The queen answered with a blank expression.

Cadance stared at her with a similar expression. “That reminds me… We are still Princesses of Equestria and I would really like to know what is it with the tall changeling soldiers?”

“Eye candy.” Chrysalis replied nonchalantly. “What queen doesn’t love strong, tall guys in uniform?”

Twilight kept staring at her, holding a very annoyed expression, and Cadance almost accepted that line of thought. Until the queen spoke again with a smug grin. “Surround yourself with some studs, Twilight. Celestia has about two thousand and an alicorn like a dream.”

“I think it’s about time we left…” Twilight said with an inkling of annoyance in her voice. The others simply agreed and followed her out, as did the others after Chrysalis guards opened the doors.

But then, Cadance stopped by the door and the others passed her. She turned around and looked at the queen sitting behind her desk. Each stared the other in the eyes for an instant. The princess didn’t really have much energy left on her after all that’s happened since they arrived in the Changeling Rock, but there was one other thing that kept bugging her from the back of her mind, like a small, infuriating pebble stuck under her horseshoe.

“Chrysalis… Are we… Friends?” She asked, cautious, but certain.

“I suppose we are.” The queen said, her own gaze falling. “I’m new to this friendship thing… But I haven’t killed you for intruding on my Spawning Pool. Why do you ask?”

Twilight was somewhat surprised… Maybe Cadance would’ve gotten better results if she had talked to the queen from the start.

Cadance sighed. “What about the legend?”

Twilight stared at Cadance with curiosity. She, likely, had been wondering the same things she had since they arrived.

“What legend?” Chrysalis Frowned.

“Of Mother Farfalla.” Cadance said.

“There is no legend of Mother Farfalla. It’s the Legend of Queen Chrysalis.” Chrysalis said plainly.

Cadence rolled her eyes impatiently. “Is it true, though?”

Chrysalis hummed and smiled, slowly flashing her sharp teeth. “The thing you want to know, and is afraid of asking is… ‘Did Night-Made-Flesh exist?’ And ‘Is she Princess Luna?’ After all, the Children of the Sun preached about the Goddesses Reborn. Star Swirl believed them and… What do you know... We have a princess to care for the day, and another to care for the night. Legends are dangerous things, though. They change over time and they often fit too well what the people who spread them wanted to believe. Particularly in times of great strife.”

“Is it true, though?” Cadance repeated herself letting her frustration slip into her voice. “Didn’t you just tell me to stop beating around the bush?”

“You are not listening, Cadance. There was a time I made changelings believe that Princess Celestia ate changeling larvae.” The princess simply stared at Chrysalis with a blank expression. “It’s propaganda. You demonize your enemy and sanctify your allies.”

Cadance nodded once and turned to leave after excusing herself. The others followed, including Twilight, but she was a little confused. Did Cadance believe that Luna was the goddess?

Herself, Twilight thought it was well within the realm of the reasonable that Luna was Night-Made-Flesh. Hold the ‘goddess’ thing… It made her think it was a thing of the time. The legend may have ‘retouched’ her appearance and gave it some more drama… At the same time, it seemed a little strange that Luna would do such a thing. But, if she really did resent ponies not liking her night enough, she might have been offended at the rejection, already in an unbalanced mental state.

Thought, it did make her think why is it that she wouldn’t reverse the curse now.

Finally, she grunted internally. This whole affair was a mess and she was tired. She wanted nothing more than to return to her airship and sleep. Even if it would be in its tight quarters.

As the doors closed, Chrysalis remained in her chair and Thorax approached her. She had an amused expression and tapped the table lightly with a hoof.

“Is that why you created the Praetorians?” She looked at Thorax and he sounded and looked like a lost puppy. “I though I looked well enough.”

She merely sighed. “I have to go to Canterlot… I was planning a trip, but I need to hurry… Celestia needs to catch up with them before they reach The Lion. You need to stay and make sure all the reporters that will flood in after they hear Twilight and Cadance were here can’t learn of what they found.”

“This sounds serious…” He said ominously, despite his earlier question.

“It’s not. Not right now. But remember that saying about the children playing with fire while the mother is away?” He nodded yes. “Cadance and Twilight are flailing around with a flamethrower.”

The queen paused for an instant and grinned mischievously. “Not to mention, I can’t wait to see the look on Celestia’s face when I tell her…”

***

The Pony Who Sold the World

The Senate was a large building annexed to Canterlot Palace, big enough to house one office for each of the elected representatives of all regions of the Federation and the Hall of Friendship which was a large meeting hall organized as an oval hall and divided in three areas. The first and largest with seats for each representative and their subordinates as well as several chosen members of the legislative branch of every federative unit.

Though the terms ‘Senate’ and ‘Hall of Friendship’ were used interchangeably because the vast majority of the population didn’t care enough about the difference to care. They were the ponies, griffons, yaks, tall ponies, zebras, hippogriffs and whatnot that helped The Princess rule their world.

The Hall of Friendship was divided in four distinct parts. The part where chosen representatives sat was known as the House of Chosen. In the center and towards the back was, simply, the Podium, with a simple pulpit. The whole thing had a ‘amphitheater feel’ to it because of its physical disposition.

Behind the Podium was the House of Majesty where would sit the respective leaders of every nation in the Federation that the people elected. Or were where chosen in some magical convoluted way. Or simply born out of the right parents. The Equestrian Magistrate was still looking for expressions to include all that might apply. The preferred ones were ‘king or queen’, ‘princess’, ‘president’, ‘chancellor’… There were others and it was a mess, but it worked because there was one above them that knew how to make it work. At least that was how they thought.

Atop and in the back was the Golden Throne who must shine upon all with her wisdom. Because some millennia ago a crazy wizard decided it would be a great idea if the freaks with the wings and horns ruled a city since they united the traits of the three tribes! Four legs too, but those were kind of unmentioned… Of course, it wasn’t that simple at the time and there may have been a few angry debates, some families, cities and whole countries throwing themselves at war and even one or two murders or marriages… But that was the gist of it.

There was also the fact that she could make the scary ball of we-don’t-know-what in the sky work and that her ‘little sister’, could make the stars and moon play nice, not to mention scare away the Nightmares. But those were a conversation apart and ‘little sister’ was more of a caring way of referring to her because both were so old the difference was negligible and both kind of felt like they were the mother of Equestria. Or mother and cool older sister. Or something. That too was kind of a mess.

Above the House of Majesty were banners for each of Equestria’s federative units with the Coat of Arms of the Two Royal Sisters in the middle. Behind the House of Chosen the decoration included a sword crossed with a hayfork and a hammer. Those and the banners were meant to remind the members of each House of the power the other represented.

‘The Princess’, The Mare, The Big Alicorn, and several other equally silly titles for Princess Celestia sat on her golden, blue, red and white throne, surrounded in gold and silver adorned with an image of the combined sun and moon, right above and behind Queen Novo, on her wooden chair. Next to her was the minotaur president and on her other side was the griffon chancellor, Silkfeather. Not his real name, but he had accrued the nickname for being so good with words. More to the left of Queen Novo was the Saddle Arabian Sultan, Withen.

Those were the leaders who felt their actual presence was necessary even though their representatives and those of their people were present as well. They had the chance to skip meetings should they want. But not her. She had to sit her flank there every time they met, even for the dumbest of reasons.

Actually, she knew that the minotaur president was there simply because he was having trouble with insomnia and some of these sessions were a panacea of cure for that.

The griffon on the Pulpit, Senator Geoff for the Snow Mountains Hold of Griffonia went on and on his discourse to the point Celestia wasn’t entirely convinced the griffons weren’t trying to waste all their time and stall any meaningful conversation. Maybe it was some sort of evil plan to disrupt the government process. The meetings had turned into an endless cycle of accusations and praise from one side to the other and themselves.

What infuriated her is that she had already declared that the griffons were entitled to choose their own leadership and that was an internal issue of their nation and that The Golden Throne wouldn’t impose a decision upon them unless they couldn’t reach a reasonable agreement, and neither should the Hall of Friendship. They seemed to have taken this as an indication that she would move in favor of their positions if they managed to annoy her enough with the undeniable rightfulness of their chosen side.

And that was without the Majesties and representatives whose nations felt entitled to weigh in on the discussion. Such included Mount Aris and Saddle Arabia, right next to Griffonia and that was why both Novo and Withen were present.

When the griffon finally finished his speech and was equally booed and praised by the griffonian assembly, Princess Celestia collected the piece of paper in her desk and spoke with all the dignity she always did. “Thank you, Senator Geoff from Snow Mountains Hold, Griffonia. Next the assembly will recognize Chancellor Gail of Griffonia.”

Of course, it was always amusing when the chosen representatives of any one nation didn’t agree with or simply didn’t like their Majesty. Not so much the griffon she called, a white and blue old one rose from his seat in the House of Majesty he was booed by a series of the griffon representatives (and their aides, of course).

“Respect for his Majesty, please.” Goodness gracious, she could feel the headache coming already. “Need I remind you that Chancellor Gail was chosen by the very same griffons that chose you to be here?”

Why did she have to say that? She regretted her words as soon as they came out of her mouth. She simply wasn’t used to the climate this whole affair had brought to her house.

One of said senators rose from her chair. A particularly feisty and angry brown griffoness from one of the cities in Snow Mountains Hold with a penchant for hurting others’ reputations and what Celestia chose to think of as ‘personal reputation’. “That was before we started calling him Silkfeathers because he was so wimpy! And certainly, before we saw that he was stealing our nation’s money! And I’ll be damned if he isn’t also stealing Your Highness’ money meant for your griffon subjects!”

And then her vociferous speech was received with clamor. Of course, because Celestia was convinced that Princess Celestia’s Money was very important when it helped attack their political enemies, but it was an attack on their nation’s sovereignty when it went against their interests. Oh… Her poor head.

“Will the esteemed senator allow her Chancellor to speak, and thus allow us to listen?” Novo had already lost her short patience and Celestia could see the storm rising. She had hoped that such a scene could be avoided… There were actually important things in the agenda that she would like to see addressed. But Novo didn’t relent. “There are more things that ought to be addressed than your Lion being crowned king of the griffons or the nth speech telling us ignorant why is it that he is the best thing ever as though there are no other ways of ruling a nation beyond his intended autocratic monarchy!”

“You are an autocratic monarch yourself, you stupid hen!” The griffoness cried shrilly and was followed by the typical round of laugher, shocked cries and reproaching comments.

“Order, please!” Celestia’s ears turned back. She really didn’t like the recent way senators had taken to hurl insults at one another and the Majesties when they disagreed with something as a way to disrupt the discussion. She despised that tactic and it made her regret the whole idea of the Hall of Friendship and of popular representation. It seemed that these creatures forgot the reason they were there the moment they passed the door. “I should remind you that Queen Novo is to be respected as all members of the assembly and that Chancellor Gail is being investigated, and he is to be considered innocent until proven otherwise.”

“This is outrageous!” Someone yelled in the House of Chosen, without revealing themselves, obviously. “Why is Princess Celestia protecting this political criminal?”

And then, like a dam that broke the whole assembly devolved into a group of uneducated teenagers throwing insults from one side of the room to the other as though they were morsels of food in a food fight at the cafeteria.

“Order please!” Her hoof hit her table several times to no avail. “Enough! The meeting is adjourned! We shall meet again in two hours!”

Since no one but her personal guard next to her, Chocolate Velvet, seemed to have heard her, she simply left her throne and retreated into the back room. They could scream and whine all they wanted now. Without her there, it had the legal force of a bunch of foals whining to each other. Her guard obviously followed her.

Now, the malicious tongues spread rumors that when the Princess did so, she would indulge in the ‘well-endowedness’ of her newest consort and personal guard because of the sounds that came from that door behind the Golden Throne, but in reality what followed was a session of the Princess thrashing about in the large couch and screaming into a pillow and then proceeding to rip it apart with her teeth, hooves and magic.

“You know, the pillow isn’t to blame. It’s the third one this week.” The brown alicorn by the door told her with a bored expression. But then he closed his eyes and protected his face with an armored leg when the pillow started hitting his face repeatedly while enwrapped in golden magic. “Ow. Neither am I.”

Finally. she relented with a sad sigh, forcing herself to relax in the couch. At least she could keep next to her newest consort and champion. Well, that was an exaggeration, but he would be her champion. Celestia was patient and her beloved was devoted. Like Sir Mockingbird was her champion way back during the First Griffon War and others in the times of wars, bloodshed and death. Or those valorous souls in a forgotten past, like Wild Oats and Cinnamon. Best not to dwell on those memories. The present, with its angry senators and potentially evil griffon tyrants was still better.

“I can’t believe this!” Her hooves found her face and her whine spoke of teenage levels of angst he was more used to find in Luna. “My enemies have been defeated. I left many broken in forgotten battlefields and I even managed to take away all the power and fortune from those evils within the ranks my nation and I diluted their bloodlines until they meant nothing. I managed to make friends out many of my enemies. Somehow, I still ended up surrounded by bloodthirsty beasts that start stabbing each other as soon as I turn my back! I’m their greatest savior when I agree with them and the greatest threat to the Confederacy that I joined when I disagree.”

Federation and confederacy were other terms that were used interchangeably, like Princessdom, Principality, Diarchy, Tetrarchy, Empire… The mess of a part of the charm. She just liked Confederacy more because it implied that joining was voluntary. It meant little in reality, just like she was a Princess and only she and Luna remembered why the title stuck.

“Yay democracy?” He chuckled and that caused her to giggle. “Hey, I thought that I was the greatest threat to Equestria since the bookworm nerd.”

“Pff. Believe me… The drama they caused when Cadance appeared was worse than Twilight’s crowning or our marriage. Maybe Luna is right. They yell and whine at her and she just ‘uh-huh…’ “ She giggled some more and then she covered her eyes with a lazy leg. “That was not how it was supposed to be. They were supposed to trust me and that was it!”

“This is naivety, Celestia. You’re smarter than that.” He approached her slowly.

She sighed and turned on her belly, letting her head rest on the armrest and her wings relax. “You’re right…”

“It’s usually the elected ones, Celestia. Some feel like they own their electorate the fiercest of representations without fully understanding the issues or even their desires. Then there are your bloodsucking vampires. I suppose the majority falls in between. This is nothing new to you.”

“Yes…” She agreed lazily. “But I suppose it is good to be reminded of that every now and then.”

He approached her and she sat on the couch, letting her back to him and his hooves promptly began massaging her shoulders and back, eliciting a low soft moan from her.

“Are we going to have a tournament this year?” He asked her while his hooves worked the strain out of her muscles. It always amused how different she was from Luna and Cadance. She had a different kind of elegant softness. One that was tempered with a larger frame and powerful muscles under her pristine coat.

Those were not really the thoughts he should be entertaining at the moment and her answer distracted him. “Absolutely. Especially with this whole mess with the griffons. You have to win this time, though.”

He let out an uncomfortable laugh. “Ah. Don’t worry. I’m going to win this year.”

“I should hope so.” She stared back at him with a grin. “Else Luna will have to dance with Sir Mustang Wings because I certainly won’t. That or Twilight and Cadance will have to start taking part in these rather than simply eating and participating in the festivities.”

Then someone knocked on the door. Both froze and silenced themselves. At least until Celestia whispered to him. “Quick! Make some grunting noises!”

“What?” He whispered back.

“They’ll go away if they think we’re… Busy!” She whispered with urgency. “Do it already!”

“Are you serious?”

Then she kicked his nearest leg and he yelped.

“Oooh… Yes… Just like that! Oooooh!” She just stared at the door with her best impression of delighted lover, or a choking drunk bear. Chocolate Velvet wasn’t sure.

That notwithstanding the door opened and revealed both Queen Novo and Sultan Whiten staring at her with less than pleased expressions.

“I can’t believe you actually opened the door!” She stared at them.

“You are naïve sometimes Celestia.” Whiten wasn’t particularly amused.

Then Novo followed up. “Not to mention that Princess Cadance published an article worried for the Senators. She found out that these meetings lower libido faster an imitation of King Sombra.”

Celestia simply stared frowning at them for a second. “I don’t know what part of that concerns me more! What in Tartarus is Cadance doing with the money I send her?!”

The two Majesties walked inside, and Novo sat after her companion closed the door behind them and held her griffon paws together to her chest. “Please, do something about The Lion! He is going to turn everything on its head! I don’t even understand how the griffons think that they’re going to keep their position in the House of Chosen with him in power! He is going to strip their power away!”

“I am doing something about the Lion, Novo.” The princess stood from the sofa. “I am taking precautions while I am respecting the griffons’ right to choose their own leadership. He has certainly promised his supporters a comfortable place in his court while the others will certainly lose their position. But this sort of reform is within his power to make if the griffons chose to give him that power.”

“But Celestia they don’t understand what they are doing!” The queen disputed. “They have it inside their heads that The Lion will take care of them like they see you caring for the ponies! Everyone, really… But that is beside the point!”

“How can you know that he won’t? You are afraid for your nations. Not for his. This line of argumentation is hypocritical, and I expect better from both of you! And if he does fail at that, then that is a lesson they need to learn.” Celestia spat back. “And then when he does, they can turn back to us!”

“But my life is limited!” Novo insisted earnestly. “You know this! You keep saying this. It will be damn hard to live my life to its fullest with a brutal tyrant next door! I don’t want to Skystar to grow up in fear of the Lion like I did with the Storm King! Please Celestia! Help us!”

“I will give you a lifetime supply of awamat! If you do something about The Lion before he can be made king!” The white and gray tall pony whined. “Please! You are making me beg!”

“You too are looking at this in a completely wrong way!” It wasn’t common to see Celestia openly chastising someone, but Chocolate got the feeling she did it more to snap the two out of their panic. “The Lion needs to see that the legitimacy of his rule is recognized or else the extremist among his followers will be validated. Not only that, but you are both blind to the reality of the situation: this is an opportunity to do business with a new leader whose entire promotion comes from moral correctness.”

“They have slaughterhouses in their cities! You abhor that!” The hippogriff barely kept from yelling.

“I know. But that is a cultural trait of theirs that we need to change with understanding and patience. You are only bringing this up because you want to demonize them.”

“I would say that systematically murdering a race is pretty demonic.” Her tall pony companion argued back. “Specially one that is so dependent on their caretakers.”

“I agree, but it’s not that simple and much more nuanced than that! If I try to fight them bluntly on that issue, we won’t get anything but a secession war! Please, be patient! I have enough trouble with Justiciars treating the issue as though it warrants a war!” Then Celestia frowned. “Not to mention that hippogriffs predate fish and other sea creatures. And even saddle arabian tall ponies, as much as other ponies give fish and sometimes game meat imported from north Griffonia to their pets! This line of thought is hypocritical and damaging to mutual coexistence.”

There was a good measure of uncomfortable silence until Celestia spoke again, back to her typically calm voice and expression. “Please. Trust me, as you always do. I will not allow them to harm you or your beloved ones or your people. But I cannot allow you to do the same to them.”

“The Lion is dangerous. But he can be brough to understand our points of view if only we begin by understanding his. We are not at the time for impulsive action yet. And most importantly, that seldom solves problems.”

Since they still didn’t reply, she went on a little further. “Reach out and show that even if he thinks you… Us… Inferior, we are good folk willing to give him and his species the space they need so that we can find a common ground where we can coexist.”

The two visitors looked at each other and exhaled. It was actually quite funny. It was always amazing to see Celestia ‘at work’ and it always amused Chocolate Velvet. Though it probably helped that her subjects were reasonable to begin with. The Lion worried him too, and he knew that he worried Celestia, even for reasons she hadn’t disclosed. Heck… Luna freaked out about the griffons every now and then, but both Princesses seemed adamant that the right way to deal with The Lion involved parsimony.

“Should we go back?” Novo pointed backwards with a thumb and Celestia simply shrugged.

“I doubt we would be able to do anything meaningful.” Then she smiled. “Might as well go for lunch.”

They stared at each other for a second before Withen agreed with a sigh. “Yes. It doesn’t seem like there is much good to be done here today. Well, thank you for talking to us, Celestia.”

They said their goodbyes and left, leaving the two alicorns alone in the back room until the chocolate colored one spoke after she kept silence for too long, thinking somberly staring at the closed door.

“So… Lunch?”

She smiled at him. “Let’s see Luna. I’m sure she’d like to have lunch a little early and we can spend some time relaxing together.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He grinned at her, following her out, but they were stopped by a pegasus pony of the palace’s staff.

“Sorry to bother your highnesses.” He said demurely and then showed her a sealed letter he produced from his saddlebag and held in his mouth, offering it to Celestia.

“Oh. Thank you.” She smiled and took the letter to read. The pony simply bowed respectfully and left.

“What is it?”

“Nothing too important.” She caused the letter to vanish in a puff of smoke. “Let’s meet Luna and have lunch. Hopefully Harmony will reign again in this place after some time.”

***

Chrysalis watched as that thing Twilight Sparkle called an airship departed from the Changeling Rock. The large windows of the royal quarters let her keep watch over them for a long time, as the craft gained speed and disappeared against the evening sky.

She was actually angry. Her privacy had been invaded, none other than Twilight Sparkle had been snooping around in her nest and now she knew more than the queen wanted her to know. It infuriated her. The whole thing should have progressed much more smoothly. She was, indeed, furious. Had Celestia tried to blindside her?

A couple of years or so ago the queen wouldn’t have batted an eye before annihilating the three adults and baby. At the present Chrysalis understood better.

Thorax still waved at the departing airship, like a moron. A year back, she probably would’ve broken a beating stick on his head while screaming all the ways he disappointed her. In the present she couldn’t help but smile at his dorky way. Did Cadance feel like that about Shining Armor? Did Celestia feel like that over Chocolate Velvet?

A year back, she wouldn’t bear to call those creatures surrounding him as her children. Her children were supposed to be strong. They were intelligent. They preyed at the ponies.

Now the Swarm was exactly what that failure of a mother of hers wanted! All of this! Mother Farfalla, Chrysalis and her sisters, everything because of one stupid pony and one petty goddess! But the worst was that Chrysalis had almost fixed everything! She had the genes for the worker castes under control! She had the genes for the king right where they deserved to be, crushed under her hooves! She had her fierce and love-starved warriors! She was supreme! She was The Queen!

During that time, Luna’s refusal to admit she was Night-Made-Flesh from the legend simply infuriated the queen even more back then. She had demanded a compensation but Celestia and Luna were adamantly denying it. In the end she didn’t have a choice.

It took Chrysalis being starved to near death for her to see how foolish she was too. Add to that the fact that in the first days past Cadance’s magic she felt like it had ruined the perfectly woven layers of magic that ran through the Swarm. The best traces of the Swarm, honed and distilled into perfection, were gone! It was a mess again.

This is how Chrysalis felt before in her own way… The ravenous hunger made her aware, the burning anger fueled her magic and she could feel the insatiable yearning that pulsed through the Swarm compelling her children to seek out their prey and feed upon it like wolves upon the lambs.

Without her the Swarm had turned back to what her mother wanted. A week after Cadance’s magic she needed a good portion of her magic just to bring back her soldiers so that creatures of the badlands wouldn’t sense their weakness and eat them alive. Like the giant anteaters that lived to the south… They creeped her out. Back then she still wasn’t used to it and her body insisted on informing her of all the chemical signals those unhinged aberrations flooded her nest with. Those happy feelings. Their empathy as they took every step possible trying not to hurt each other’s feelings. It made her crawl under her carapace!

In the present watching the airship fly away the happy feelings her swarm offered her made her safe in the fact that they wouldn’t be starving anymore. Did she regret killing her mother? Chrysalis hadn’t come to that point yet. She still thought that her brutal tyranny was what kept the Swarm alive until then.

Did she resent Luna? Maybe she wasn’t Night-Made-Flesh… So many layers of lies and secrets in this whole mess the Sisters have created.

Looking at her desk she saw one of the letters Celestia had sent her. When she came to senses about what had happened in the Spawning Pool Chrysalis had never felt so betrayed before. It was a strange feeling. Why did she care so much?

Curse Celestia. Two years ago Chrysalis thought she had found an ally despite all that Celestia had convinced her to do. It did reinvigorate the Swarm, but they had lost their edge. They were now weak and if Celestia wanted she could wipe them off the face of Equestria forever. Or worse… Let the Lion do it for her.

As she watched the changeling returning inside her teeth showed in an angry grimace. Celestia sure got what she wanted. Everything! Had Celestia maneuvered her in a way where she would promise the world and then take everything from her? Had she committed a strategic mistake in trusting the old matriarch? She knew of what Celestia had done to the noble families that ruled Everfree after she took to the throne. Most ponies didn’t remember, no one still alive to remember and today they wouldn’t believe. But Chrysalis had seen it. She saw the monster Celestia could turn into.

Or was all this a result of Chrysalis frustration? She had tested Twilight, but she might have known she was being tested. Was Chrysalis projecting into the naïve pony all her malice and cunning, trying to see something that wasn’t there simply because it would’ve made sense to her? Or better yet, to her old self she regressed into in a moment of anger?

For the first time in her long life Chrysalis had trusted someone… She hadn’t sent a spy to make sure Celestia was making good on her part of the bargain. She did everything she promised.

Chrysalis held to the thought that despite all that she had felt these two years, Celestia knew what she was doing. She was thus confused. She didn’t expect Celestia, of all the creatures, to try and deceive her. After her own mother and sisters, all the wizards and hunters that tried to trick her Celestia was the one that seemed the most like she could meet in peace and simply trust, leaving all the tiresome lies and masks. Maybe that was why that particular betrayal hurt so much.

She felt frustrated too. That was the problem with lying: she got so used to lying and being lied to that when someone was true to her it felt that she was being lied to even worse.

Anyway, she must see Celestia. Both to make sure she hasn’t been doing foul-play and to warn her of Twilight’s visit. It was time to deliver on one of her promises too. It was decided, she had to go fast too. Celestia would lose Twilight if she made it to Ponyville and teleported to Griffonstone. She only had a day or so, but it would be enough. She didn’t have to rely on an airship after all: long-range teleportation was a privilege for few, and Chrysalis included herself in that group.

***

It was a very nice morning in Canterlot. All of Equestria really. The sun had only begun its journey across the sky and ponies around the capital started their day, but in the palace the day begun much earlier. Its staff ought to have everything prepared for its daily routine as soon as the princesses had performed their duties to the cycle of day and night of Equestria.

On this particular day the Royal Guard recruits were taken to another place on a ‘field training exercise and so, instead of the typical yelling of the drill instructors and racket of their recruits the sounds that dominated the palace’s backyard was that of the tinkling and rasping of fencing weapons. A rug with the relevant markings had been spread over the grass near a round table that was overtaken by all the delicious things a luxurious breakfast of ponies would include.

Not only this was a fine morning, but Celestia knew that she was going to finally get something she’s been waiting for a while. It was something special. It would be the fulfilment of a dream. Rather the latter part of a dream already in the process of being fulfilled… But, details! So, she decided she’d do something special for her new, unlikely friend.

The two fencers moved about, forward and backward lightly on their hooves which barely touched the rug. Their necks and bodies were protected by white padded barding while their legs where protect by similar leggings. Their weapons danced close in front of them striking and deflecting while their users danced balancing their movements and avoiding the other’s blade.

Since her opponent wasn’t very used to the physical rigors of standing on her two hind legs and holding a fencing weapon on a foreleg, she had opted for the unicorn style of rapier fencing, telekinetically holding their weapons by the handle.

That proved to be a mistake.

“This mare is a cheat! If grabbing her weapon was allowed, I would have won three times over!” One of the fencers said in fake anger with her very familiar and usually kind voice muffled by her fencing mask. “You do it more to infuriate me than to win!”

Next to them was a well-groomed earth pony with sand colored coat and whitening black mane pulled back and tied behind his neck. He wore a formal outfit in blue, impeccably dressed as he watched the bout with careful eyes. “Might I remind her highness that I am the referee?”

“You’re a sore loser, Celestia.” The other fencer accused with a playful tone. Her black coat appeared where her barding and mask would allow and both had their manes and tails bunched and tied as to avoid any accidents, and hers was light green.

“I am a sore loser when I am being cheated on!” The blades hit each other, striking and deflecting, went and came, brushing past each other and both hit the padded barding of the other, both lighting in magical blue and red in the areas they were touched over the necks of their wearers.

“Point for Lady Morticia and she wins the bout fifteen to fourteen.” The pony said to the delight of the black coated fencer and causing the other to fume in frustration. Both of them raised their weapons and saluted each other and their referee.

“Oh, for pony’s sake!” Celestia complained to no one in particular as she removed her mask. “You are unbearable!”

“With all due respect, your highness. If you suspected your opponent would play unfairly, you should’ve requested the full judge team.” The pony next to them said in a haughty tone, looking at the princess. “Excellent technique however, Lady Morticia had the priority with a superior parry.”

“You are becoming as blind as bat, Épée. She held her weapon too far from her barding.” She replied as she let one of the servant maids of the palace take her mask and proceeded into undoing the strappings of her barding. The other fencer was doing the same, allowing her delicate face and velvety black coat to shine in the morning sun next to Celestia’s pristine white. “And you, I shall have your blade tied to your barding next time.”

“I’ll have you know, princess.” The black coated mare said in a mock offended tone. “That this whining over being defeated, fairly might I add, is very unbecoming. Maybe next time, we should try a cake eating contest.”

Celestia laughed, and the other chuckled more reservedly while she followed the larger mare towards the table were Luna sat and ate a cookie. “You’re better with the saber, Celestia.”

Next to her stood a couple of helpful young mares, wearing the palace’s maid uniforms. As the pair sat next to Luna Celestia talked to the maids. “It’s alright. You can leave us.”

The two smiled and bowed respectfully then retreating from the area while mister Épée’s assistants retrieved the rest of the equipment used in their fencing match. Celestia then served tea for herself and her companions.

Lady Morticia was a strange unicorn, tall as the white princess yet lacking much of her bulk. She watched while Celestia served them and released her mane to fall over her back. Finally, Celestia gave her the tea.

“I am glad for your visit.” The alicorn said tasting her own tea. “Still, I must ask if there is anything wrong. We expected your visit next week.”

Luna simply sat at her place, eating another cookie and listening.

“Yesterday, Twilight Sparkle, Cadance, Shining Armor and Twilight’s entourage showed up in the Changeling Rock.” The black unicorn said with a serious tone and Luna stared at them, frozen mid bite into her cookie.

“What happened?” Celestia asked with a worried tone having left her cup on the table. Suddenly all her happiness had vanished, and the meeting turned serious. She almost regretted the fencing match and Luna’s presence.

The queen under the unicorn disguise, though was afraid of the answer she might hear. She was afraid she’d hear a lie, or a truth that confirmed her fears. It would mean that she’d done a terrible strategic mistake. One she thought herself above. Still, she had to answer. “That prized pupil of yours…”

Under a storm of emotions, the black mare spoke in an angry tone. Anger being the emotion she felt easier to express given her fears. “She violated my Hatchery and entered my Spawning Pool. She even brought one of her friends, Cadance and the baby.”

“The baby?” Luna raised an eyebrow. “She took Flurry Heart?”

Their visitor sounded violated. While she never had much interaction with her, Celestia had the impression that she didn’t usually sound like that and Luna looked worriedly at her. She shook her head. Celestia would treat this as if one of her little ponies came to her asking for help. “I don’t understand. Was she touring the hive? Visiting Thorax?”

“She wanted access to the Archives.”

Celestia frowned. “How in Equestria did that get her to the Spawning Pool?”

“Apparently a not very professional changeling in my guard thought that it would be faster for him to deal with them if he threw them at another changeling, who had to leave in a hurry and left them alone in the anteroom. Twilight decided she could get my permission to see the Archives and used that as an excuse to snoop around.” The queen under the black mare told Celestia as honestly as she could her gaze shifting between the two princesses.

“I hope you punished him appropriately.” Luna commented with an angry frown.

“This is beyond the pale.” Celestia said with her head lowered. “Not to mention a pure violation of somepony’s privacy… And a break of royal decorum. I never expected Twilight to do something like that. Much less Cadance.”

She shifted her eyes, looking more ashamed than anything, but it was a good kind of shame, that of a mother who first heard of her child having done something particularly stupid and unwarranted rather than that of one who had been caught in a lie. And Luna… She looked about ready to burst into tears and apologize, even if she hid it well, certainly afraid that the changeling queen could revoke her side of the bargain. The black mare breathed a little easier. They really didn’t know…

There were many things those mares were better at than she but lying was one of her specialties.

Then there was Luna who sounded like she was ready to take a switch to their flanks. “It’s outrageous. One would expect finer social tact from an adult, and from a pair of princesses, some more.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Chrysalis.” Celestia shook her head. “I expected them to be more sensible.”

“In their defense, I don’t think that they understood what they were doing and had no ill intentions.”

“Do you want us to do something about it?” Celestia asked sheepishly. On a side note the sight amused Luna. It was not usual to see Celestia wearing that expression.

“No… I don’t think it’s needed. They got enough of a scare. Besides, there is something else I must talk to you two, and I have something to give you.” The black unicorn said with a particularly toothy grin.

“Oh! Is it ready?” Celestia clapped her hooves together excited and grinning like she’d been promised a gift. Luna simply perked her ears.

“Yes, it is.” The unicorn smiled too as her magic produced two small, rectangular and rounded steel cases. One marked with the moon and the other with the sun and both shone in the sunlight as the unicorn held them in their magic. “These cases are magic-resistant, but once open anyone else’s magic will ruin it.”

Luna and Celestia paid attention like a pair of her students would as the queen under the unicorn went on. “Each has two shots. The needle must go deep into muscle and every drop of the liquid must be injected. You should take one before sunrise and the other before sunset. And you before moonrise and before moonset. It’s when your freaky magic acts up and how you know it’s time, anyways. So, it shouldn’t be a problem. If you don’t do it right, it’s magic won’t be effective, and your own magic will reject it.”

That worried the white princess, while Luna held her case in her magic staring at it like it was an ancient magical artifact. “What could happen?”

The unicorn shrugged. “At best you’ll feel the hangover of your life, at worst you’ll produce little monsters that look like they came out of a kindergarten papier-mâché nightmare.”

“This isn’t funny, Chrysalis…” Celestia chastised her.

“I know! You don’t want to know how many times I had to incinerate the laboratory trying to make your perfect coltfriend work.” The queen chuckled darkly, back to her old sarcastic self now that she felt better. “If he starts having nightmares with fires, you know where it’s from.”

Luna’s eyes grew as big as the plates holding the cookies on the table and Celestia barely restrained her annoyance. “She’s joking Luna. I’m the one that performed the spells that formed his body and bound his soul.”

After a while, Luna grinned a bit. “Well, it would make for a great Nightmare Night story.”

Celestia sighed and Chrysalis chuckled before she spoke again. “By the way I’ve disposed of the test subjects. Wouldn’t want an angry clone coming after you in a hundred years…”

“Cease with these jokes, Chrysalis.” Celestia threatened her and Luna stared at the metal case sitting on the table, in front of her.

“Did they suffer Chrysalis?” She asked, looking a bit sorrowful with her ears folded.

“No.” The queen said plainly, and it took her a few seconds before she realized why it was important. Then she lowered her voice. “Not in the way you’re thinking. I had to experiment, but they were never conscious. Nothing more than flesh golems to test the substance and if the biology would work with it. They’re gone now… Incinerated. They didn’t even look like you.”

And thanks to Twilight not being too nosey, nopony else had to see them. Inside, Chrysalis felt relieved. What a mess for nothing that would’ve been. She almost regretted putting Twilight through her laboratory now that she knew what the purple alicorn actually was after.

Meanwhile, Luna discreetly looked over to Celestia. Her older sister had grasped the metal case and hugged it like it was a foal. In her expression, with flat ears and closed, trembling eyes, she saw tears being held back. It hurt Luna, knowing how much more this sort of thing hurt Celestia, for all her understanding of how these things worked. She respected her feelings and said nothing, instead simply looked away.

“We thank you, Chrysalis.” Celestia finally said a bit saddened and very thankful. “It was a lot of work, but we will make the most out of it.”

“Well, I’m glad it worked.” The queen dressed as black unicorn relaxed a bit on her chair, but she also noticed Celestia’s unsaid sorrow. Though she didn’t respect it quite as much as Luna. She didn’t understand. Thus, she tried to lighten the mood. “What’s next then?”

“We should heal the changelings.” Celestia said, but the queen shook her head.

“We would go back to being ponies. Not to mention we would need my mother.”

“There are ways to have Farfalla back.” Celestia suggested carefully, intent on putting all her cards on the table. “It would be most unnatural and profoundly unpleasant, but I believe it is a sacrifice she would be willing to make.”

“No.” Chrysalis said again. “It’s our identity now. It’s who we are. And some ponies are better off dead.”

A small silence prevailed for a few seconds before Luna spoke again. “Then, the next step is adding your biological sciences to equestrian medical services.”

“Perfect! Where?” The queen was excited, making a gesture with her hoof, but neither of the two could see if she was making fun of the issue. Anyway, Luna answered to her.

“No. We’ll start with older ponies and terminal diseases. Not with a place.”

“Old ponies.” Chrysalis laughed. “Is that what we’re doing? Because I don’t know anypony older than you two. I thought I was buying my seat in the House of Majesty.”

“I told you, Chrysalis.” Celestia chastised her again, in a much softer voice, however. “The changelings are entitled to representation anyways.”

Luna raised her eyebrow. “Considering Thorax is the head of civilian affairs; shouldn’t he be the one to seat in the House of Majesty? I thought that was why Chrysals was buying anything.”

“Yeah… I doubt that we would be very welcome without you two telling the others that they don’t need to freak out. Even if you put Thorax there.” Chrysalis said sarcastically. “If that happens though, you can expect to find his head next to you on your bed next morning. I am more than able to rule the Swarm by myself.”

She was going to threaten them with Chocolate’s safety but thought better. That would’ve hit too close, and Celestia didn’t seem like she could take a joke right then. Instead of that Celestia spoke softly. “Chrysalis isn’t buying anything Luna. She is entitled to it. She’s been ruling the Swarm for centuries. Besides, they can share the seat once Chrysalis feels more confident in him.”

“Yeah, right…” The queen said. “Just don’t put me next to the yaks and it’s fine.”

What followed were a few more seconds of silence as the three collected their thoughts. While the queen felt relief that she hadn’t been siding with the wrong ones and Luna felt happy that things were working right, the older one blocked intrusive thoughts of some copy of her that had a life stolen for her selfish reasons. Sometimes Celestia hated knowing the things that knew.

Besides that, Luna was happy that with some luck Equestria would soon meet a new age of medical advances and Celestia looked forward to the next alicorn baby to be born in Equestria. At the same time, she knew all of it would reflect positively with the whole mess the griffons had brewing. Come what may, ponies would look forward to a happy and prolific royal family. Not to mention that, her more selfish reasons aside the things the changelings have shown combined with zebra potions could make the soon arriving war much easier to bear. She’s seen too many of them, and this time she hoped that, at least they could better tend to the injured.

If only she could tend to the dead.

Finally, after a few cookies and sips of tea, Luna’s ears perked up. “How are you and Thorax doing?”

“He’s…Trying very hard. I appreciate it. I really do…” Chrysalis held a cookie in her magic, smiling thoughtfully. Then her expression turned sour. “But it’s the most boring sex I’ve had in ages. He won’t even pull at my mane.”

“Eeew!” Luna complained. “Too much information!”

“Grow up, Luna…” Chrysalis said accusingly and Celestia giggled.

Good, both Chrysalis and Luna agreed independently, Celestia was her happier self again. It almost hurt physically to see her sad.

Still, Luna grunted in annoyance, back to Chrysalis. “You said you had one other mater to discuss?”

Chrysalis let her smile show. “Oh, right. Remember I told you Twilight wanted access to the archives?”

“Yes.” Celestia looked curious while Luna munched through a cookie. “What did she want there?”

Chrysalis grinned. “Cadance unearthed a letter addressed to King Sombra signed by your old friend Grigor of the Holy Griffon Empire, and took it to Twilight, and that is why they went to the Changeling Rock.”

Luna had seldom seen Celestia’s face turn from happy to sorrowful, then back to happy, and finally to serious and to barely contained terror in such a short time. She almost held her breath as Celestia held her own before speaking. “What did the letter say?”

“Nothing much. It was about the sun going haywire soon before you came. They realized that some of the things they had been taught were… To put it lightly, untrue. They’re now wondering who that wonderful Grigor fellow was, how did the ponies deal with Discord before you and the Elements and on their way to Griffinsky, to talk to the Lion, since they thought that he’d have more documents of the time and area.”

That was another thing that Luna didn’t see often. Celestia was angry. Or afraid. Knowing how deep that rabbit hole went Luna figured it could be both and she, herself, was very preoccupied, but seeing the mighty Celestia so terrified of her former apprentice finding out certain things she did her best to hide in the past… It was the sort of thing that a pony only saw once in their life.

Knowing Celestia and the whole story Luna couldn’t help but be amused and couldn’t control her giggling. In fact, her nervousness made her even more giggly. “That house of cards lasted for millennia, only to fall because Cadance found a random letter and took it to the one pony that would not rest until she knew all there was to know about it.”

Finally, Luna burst out laughing. “Harmony has a sense of humor!”

“Luna, this is serious!” Celestia chastised her. “You know as well as I do that there are things from that time that should remain unknown. Not to mention that you are as much implicated as I am!”

Try as she might the blue alicorn simply could not control her guffawing anymore, but her expression changed becoming more and more frantic. “Sorry! I’m just happy I was here to see your face when that thing finally blew on you! Oh, my stars… What a mess. We need to stop them before this becomes public!”

“Oh my…” Chrysalis grinned mischievously. “Tell me you killed someone important.”

“No!” Celestia snapped back at Chrysalis. “What did you tell them Chrysalis?”

“I tried not to tell them more than they already knew… Just enough to satisfy them. I incentivized them to go to Griffinsky… It’s a long journey and should give you time to react.”

Celestia let a sigh of relief. It wasn’t so bad. There was plenty of room for maneuver. Twilight would try to return to Ponyville and them teleport to Griffonstone. She could intercept them at Ponyville, talk with them and make this whole thing go away. Better not to raise too much of a racket… Talk to some ponies, make sure that Ponyville’s teleporter was a closed door and get the city’s guard to take them into custody. Discretely. When the dust settled and they rested for a bit, she’d meet them at Twilight’s palace and talk it over some tea and cakes. Everything would be fine.

Finally, out of her thoughts Celestia saw that Luna and Chrysalis stood sitting next to each other, staring at her.

“See? She’s hyperventilating.” Luna said pointing with a hoof, and the black unicorn disguise looked inquisitively at her with half-closed eyes and a hoof under her chin.

“That is disgustingly cute. I hadn’t notice it before.”

“Are you two done?” Celestia threw her napkin on the table after cleaning her muzzle and got up. “Luna, we have to stop them. I’ll contact the Ponyville Militia and get them to capture Twilight and her friends. I’d rather not be too aggressive or get too many ponies involved, and if this fails, you must talk to them in their dreams while I work our next maneuver.”

“Perfect, sister.” Luna wore a serious expression. “So… Should I stay here in Canterlot?”

“No. I need you to go to the Crystal Empire. Cadence may go there if things go wrong for them in Ponyville.”

Luna frowned a little confused. “Do you really think that she would abandon the others?”

“No. That is not it.” Celestia shook her head. “I think that she might try to leave Flurry Heart there or she might want to collect their barding and weapons. Having you there to intercept and get her under control would be a good thing.”

“Yes. That makes sense, sister. After I’m done there, should I return to Canterlot?”

Celestia nodded. “I will probably be out a few days and you will have to take care of things here.”

“I will Celestia!” Luna put on a brave face despite being terrified of all that entailed: if Celestia was leaving, she’d have to hold court. She’d have to preside the senate meetings. Talk to the weird tax ponies! She wanted to ask her sister to stay and let her go, but the thought died quickly: Twilight was much more likely to listen to Celestia in person than to herself… Her realm was the dreamworld where she too would do what she could when it was time.

Despite being sure she never let anything show her older sister held her face delicately on her hooves and touched her forehead with hers. Luna would never know how could Celestia tell. “You’re their boss, Luna. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”

Sitting on the table, holding her cup in her telekinesis and taking a sip, Chrysalis looked at them. “Isn’t that the sort of thing you tell to somepony who is afraid of dogs?”

“Don’t forget you’re Chrysalis’ boss too.” The white one said with a grin and Luna giggled, to the queen’s dismay.

“I’ll wait to find them in their dreams until, and if your plan in Ponyville fails.” Luna said with a smile. “Be careful Twilight doesn’t get to your nerves… You tend to do stupid things then your close ones are involved.”

“Thank you, Luna.” The older sister said with a small peck on Luna’s muzzle.

Then she trotted inside the palace, while Luna and the changeling watched. Then, the queen came near Luna, carrying her cup of tea with her. “Would this be a bad time to discuss taxes? I mean… Technically, I have dozens of children.”

Luna sighed. “Won’t you return to the Changeling Rock?”

“No.” The queen said nonchalantly. “There are some forty babies in there and Thorax can deal with them. I’ve been doing that for the last millennia.”

Luna frowned. “Don’t you have to care for them? Feed them, or something?”

“No!” Chrysalis made a disgusted expression. “That disgusting milk business is a pony thing. Now that Celestia made me unlock the civilian castes they can circle the love around until they get more.”

The Princess War, pt 1

In the morning of the second day the Magic of Friendship kept a fast cruise towards Ponyville. The group of ponies in the princess’ sleeping quarters all woke together since remaining asleep just wasn’t possible once Flurry Heart decided she wanted her mother’s attention and that of course, was the baby’s prerogative. Nopony would complain. Fluttershy even thought it was a little cute.

The small cabin in the back of the airship was like a very small and spartan home for seven with only the barest of decorations. Holding ten ponies and one small dragon it was a bit overcrowded but as in two-day trip to the Changeling Rock that certainly didn’t bother the close group of friends.

Cadance was just happy that she had found food the baby could eat. Of course, mashed apples but it was better than nothing. And the weird changeling larva suit did a decent job of protecting Flurry Heart from the cold air. Though she had a suspicion that her daughter was more resistant than most babies, when comparing her to all the things the older mothers and books in the subject told her about it, she wasn’t about to test the idea. She was just satisfied the baby was happier than she was after the angry shouting in that night in the Changeling Rock. They had been all tired and this morning, after a couple of nights of sleep and some food they were all in a better mood.

While the other ponies spread throughout the airship Twilight remained laying in the bed next to Cadance who was feeding the baby with their maid’s help. Shining Armor sat at Twilight’s desk, writing something and speaking to the captain. Spike remained in the room too, idly lounging about somewhat paying attention to his brother and the ship’s captain. Additionally, Applejack and Rarity stood nearby too, one casually looking out the window and the other carefully brushing her mane while discreetly eyeing the ponies.

“So…” The dragon suddenly spoke next to the alicorns. “Are we going to take Flurry Heart with us?”

The mother sighed. “I was thinking about that Spike. I don’t really want to take her. But I think I have to go with Twilight.”

“I could stay with her in Ponyville, Princess Cadance.” The maid said. A petit aqua-colored crystal pony with a light pink mane cut in one of the many the fancy styles in the Crystal Empire. “Or, if you wanted it, I could take her back to the Crystal Empire through the teleporter.”

Flurry Heart immediately protested, and Twilight stared at one and then another. “Alternatively, you could take her with us. I mean, it’s not like we’ll be in any sort of real danger.”

“Sure…” Spike ‘agreed’ sarcastically. “It’s not like three princesses in griffon lands will draw much attention from angry griffons that don’t like the princesses.”

Twilight sighed in defeat. “Spike may be right. Maybe leaving her and Miss Calcite in Ponyville would be a better idea.”

“I suppose.” Cadance agreed and, next thing she knew a significant quantity of mashed apples found its way towards her face to the sounds of a very angry and displeased baby pony. Twilight grimaced and the baby’s mother swore that her baby could understand every single word they said. She wasn’t sure, but thought babies were not supposed to be like that.

“I don’t think that she likes the idea, your highness…” Calcite offered her one of the napkins.

“Well, too bad!” Cadance’s magic held the napkin swiping it over her face. “She doesn’t have a choice.”

The baby protested again, but Cadance pointed a hoof and stared seriously at her. “No.”

While Flurry Heart seriously considered biting her hoof, Shining Armor approached them. “So, Twily, what’s your plan?”

“When we arrive on Ponyville, we’ll dock the ship. You and Cadance can go to the teleporter, buy our passages in advance and send Flurry back to the Crystal Empire with Miss Calcite. Meanwhile, I’ll be in the palace with Starlight and Spike checking if there is anything that needs my attention and the girls will make sure everypony knows we’ll be traveling for a while and also grab their things.”

“We should also buy some more supplies.” Applejack offered.

“And take them through the teleporter?” Twilight shook her head vehemently. “No. Too expensive.”

“Gee. It’s not like they’re going to charge us, Twilight.” Spike countered.

“Spike! Operating these teleporters isn’t that cheap! We can’t impose like that on them!” Twilight craned her head and almost shouted. “We can buy anything we’ll need in Griffonstone.”

“We should buy a few things, Twilight. No doubt take a few apples from the farm.” Applejack insisted. “We can afford to pay their weight at the teleporter. Not to mention that things should be fine in Griffonstone, but we really don’t need to gamble. We got enough problems as it is!”

They didn’t notice, but Cadance dreamed about griffon rum. One day…

“Applejack is right, Twilight.” Rarity added. “There is also the issue that griffon food is dreadful.”

The farm pony nodded positively. “I’ll take Pinkie to the market and get some other things. Not much, just enough.”

“Alright then.” Twilight acquiesced. Not only Applejack and Pinkie Pie understood more about those things than she did but letting them do their thing was usually a good idea. The discussion over, ponies retreated into their thoughts for a while and Spike thought for a while if they shouldn’t just go to straight to their destination. Probably wouldn’t be a good idea without proper supplies, even if they should be in a hurry.

“I’ll take them to the teleporter, Twilight.” Starlight offered after a few seconds. “Ponies there could create a fuss because it’s them and the sooner we can move on the better.”

“Alright.” Both princesses and prince agreed.

“And what do we do when things go wrong?” Shinning asked.

“Hum… They won’t?” Twilight wasn’t too sure herself.

“Yeah… They always do.” Spike stood with Shining Armor, arms crossed.

Twilight frowned. She hoped that nothing would go wrong. What could go wrong? Well, it was Ponyville, for starters… Not to mention that Twilight was hopping that Chrysalis wouldn’t bother, but nothing kept the Changeling Queen from already having sent a magical letter to Canterlot and having told Princess Celestia everything. It probably was a good idea to have a second plan. “We… Meet back at the airdock? Maybe we should leave the briefcase in the ship… If things went wrong and we needed to flee it would already be here and we wouldn’t have to carry it back while having to deal with whatever problem happened and our supplies.”

“Twilly, I have another question… Why don’t we talk to Discord?” Shining asked her. “Seems like he was at the middle of it all from what Chrysalis told us.”

“For the same reason we’re not going to talk to Princess Celestia. We can’t trust him, Shinny.” Cadance told him. “I mean… It’s Discord. Not to mention that he might want to stop us. Like I bet Princesses Celestia and Luna will.”

“As a matter of fact, we really shouldn’t trust Chrysalis either.” Applejack said from the window. “I mean, she may be an ally now, but there ain’t nothing holding her from lying about anything. Including that story of hers.”

Saying that the orange pony remained silent for a few seconds before speaking again. “It pains me to say it… But I’ve been convinced that maybe trusting the princesses wouldn’t be that good an idea either, considering what they might do to protect whatever they must. Discord, well… It doesn’t even need to be said.”

Twilight remained silent but she didn’t necessarily agree. She thought that it might be worth the risk if Discord talked to Fluttershy. She’d keep that possibility in mind, after all the best word to describe Discord is ‘chaotic’. He might be concerned with assisting the Sisters, but he might also not care enough to take their side and not spill the truth. He still wasn’t the most reliable of sources, but honestly, neither were Chrysalis or even her old mentor at that moment. But he might do until she found any form of evidence upon arriving in Griffinsky. Which should be an adventure on its own.

Finally, she wasn’t sure she believed Chrysalis story about what happened, but she didn’t really have much of a reason to lie. She did confirm that the Legend of Mother Farfalla was true. Or at least closer to true than most ponies believed. Then she wondered if those things were connected. They didn’t seem like it… It would be nice to find something about a possible Day-Made-Flesh, but she could never find anything.

For some reason it simply creeped her out that Princess Celestia and Princess Luna could be some weird kind of deities. She didn't quite understand where did the Children of the Sun's belief about the Goddesses Reborn come from. It was a bit specific and, at the same time vague. The very concept of a god was obscure among ponies and tended to be more associated with the yaks and the buffaloes. But, regardless that whole affair most likely was colored by the perceptions and hopes of the ponies of the time who must have sought solace in the stories of other races.

The problem was that the whole story was incomplete. And that was why she needed to figure it out.

Come what may she figured she ought to be prepared for anything. And thus, what Rarity would say next didn’t surprise her.

“Twilight. Princess Cadance.” The white unicorn began from the window. “We must gather the others and have a conversation. Before we arrive at Ponyville. I’m afraid we may be sticking our hooves in a situation that is a few degrees above us.”

Both understanding what their friend had in mind the princesses agreed, and the others were called to a meeting in the ships deck, near the bow and including the pegasus crewponies. There Twilight raised a hoof and asked for everypony’s attention.

“Attention everypony, please. I think it would be reasonable if I explained to you what is happening.” She said but didn’t go on immediately instead measured the reactions of her crewponies and read both apprehension and curiosity on their faces. “Princess Cadance has found an old letter that indicated some things we needed to investigate… But before I explain, I want all of you to promise me that you will keep silence over anything you hear. If you can’t I ask that you leave now. It is very important that the secrecy of our mission isn’t compromised, or we could lose the chance to do it properly and the consequences could be dire. In fact, they could be dire one way or another because we will delve into a web of lies and there could be civil wars and a lot of pain and…”

“She means that she needs you to keep your mouths shut or take a flight.” The blue pegasus next to the princess said with a blank expression while her audience of pegasus crewponies wondered why was it that the alicorn started breathing heavily and her eyes seemed to grow bigger with every word.

Twilight took a deep breath and then stared at the group of pegasi in front of her group of friends. They stared at each other expectantly and then back at their princess until their captain spoke their minds in his gruff voice. “We’re ponies of Equestria, m’lady. Way I see it, we’re loyal t’you. ‘Sides, you need us to keep the Magic of Friendship flightworthy and we’re kinda like you’s royal guard already.”

With that said, the other pegasi went back to staring at each other and soon were nodding instead of staring expectantly. The captain, after a final look over his crew nodded at his princess with certainty.

“Well, thank you very much.” The princess said with a smile.

Finally, the two princesses explained the whole situation, their findings and suspicions, to the airship’s crewponies. While it seemed like some of them regretted their decision of jumping in, none of them seemed too likely to betray them or something of the sort. At least that was what the two princesses betted on, hopping that Applejack had some sort of ‘honest pony’ power that would tell her that one of them was likely to betray their mission. Or something of the sort.

Seeing that Cadance thought it better to speak before any of them thought too long about those things. “We need a clear plan. We can’t be sure of what will happen, but we must be prepared to deal with anything as best as we can.”

Then Rarity said the exact opposite Cadance hoped she would say. “I believe we should be prepared for dire consequences that might come from our actions. Whatever may be the truth we are going against Princesses Celestia and Luna. I though it should be mentioned that the two of them would be… Dangerous at worst and formidable opponents at best… Should one fall ill of their graces.”

“Well… About that…” Twilight drew attention to her again. “I don’t think that the princesses should hold any grudges… I think that they’re the nice and dedicated princesses we know and love, but they may have done something and thought at the time that hiding it was a good idea. Today I believe our society has reached a level of maturity where we can deal with some bad things about our past.”

Twilight almost grimaced at her own words when images of ponies panicking at a bunny stampede floated before her eyes.

“So, you’re saying we know better than the princesses?” Pinkie raised an eyebrow. She didn’t seem very convinced either.

“It sounds bad when you put it like that, but yes.” Twilight said adamantly despite it all.

“Well, we are princesses too…” Cadance added not amused. “It must count for something.”

At least, the crewponies still didn’t look like they were ready to mutiny any time soon.

***

All cities under the grace of the Royal Pony Sisters were protected by their local militias. They were commanded by a trusted official chosen by the local and by the county administration. Obviously villages, cities, towns, hamlets… Whatever their size needed protection and Ponyville was under the protection of Lord Protector Lieutenant Grape Donut.

A few years back he had excitedly accepted the job when Mayor Mare, after being elected for the first time asked him to replace their former commander of the local militia. His first act as Lord Lieutenant Protector of the town was recruiting additional militiaponies, modernizing their equipment and making sure all of them were prepared.

Turned out there was good reason Mayor Mare asked him: Grape Donut dreamt his whole youth of taking that job when he was ready. And to make sure he would be ready he prepared himself: he studied from the best militias in the land, from north to south, west to east, he made sure to understand all the tactics and procedures used by militias all over Equestria’s mainland and also the ones used by militias of other races.

It was the second happiest day of his life because the next day he asked his sweetheart in marriage and she accepted. But the most important thing was that Ponyville’s Militia Commander was ready to take on the world, all dreams of grandiose as the town’s protector against all the monsters that lurked around! The title of ‘Lord Protector Lieutenant’ was even better. It was a title of nobility, it meant he could take control of the city in case the mayor wasn’t available, he had a military patent under the Princesses service, and it said ‘PROTECTOR’, right in the face!

Two days later the Princess’s Protégé arrived in Ponyville. Some ten years later he hated his job. Possibly his life.

Ponyville had become home to the Fourth Princess of Equestria and to the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, to one of Equestria’s most powerful spellcasters, and if that wasn’t enough the Third Princess constantly visited along with her personal guard and with her husband, who happened to be one of the best knights in the land and Captain of all three branches of the Royal Guard. Five, if one counted Twilight’s budding Royal Guard and the local militias themselves.

Not even the crown-sponsored knights, the monster hunters, typically visited Ponyville if not on vacation or to meet the Fourth Princess and ask her hoof in marriage or some other knightly thing like that.

Because of that what passed for crime in Ponyville was the random abandoned cart or somepony’s dog eating another’s petunias. Monsters? They either avoided Ponyville like the plague or the princess and her friends would take care of it. Failing that any monster too tough for them was too tough for the militia to handle anyway or it was some weird supervillain that for some reason always ended up near Ponyville. So, why bother?

Ponyville’s militia accrued the reputation of uselessness and incompetence and its militaponies took it in with excellence. Grape Donut was convinced that if somepony ever made a theater piece about Ponyville it would certainly neglect its local militia. At least his job paid. And he could give all the comfort he wanted to the kids he wanted but would never have because romance died the day he and his wife realized what kind of life they would live. It was, of course all his fault.

Thus the pony decided he would sit his flank in his office and eat all the donuts and drink all the coffee available in the region until he couldn’t find any more. Then he’d get all the way up to Canterlot, tell Princess Celestia how much he hated her and her new princess and then jump off one of the city’s balconies.

Of course, Ponyville had one of the best bakers in the land so he kept postponing the climbing Canterlot Mountain part of his plan and kept to eating all the donuts Sugarcube Corner could produce. The irony that one of Twilight’s friends worked there didn’t escape him though. He just couldn’t do anything about it.

He would totally tell the Princess a piece of his mind though, if he saw her one day.

Of course, Grape Donut wasn’t the only pony ‘working’ in the Ponyville Militia Headquarters. There was also Semolina Pudding, a light cream earth pony mare with rosé eyes and a red mane she kept all curled and shiny. She happened to have married Grape Donut, fallen all over his knightly ways and dreams of protecting the town the day after his appointment as the town’s Lord Protector. Now she also hated the Princesses and possibly her husband but didn’t spend her time eating donuts. Instead she would spend all day staring at the reception room’s clock until the damned thing would tell her she could go home or reading tales about the great knights of the land. Her title of nobility might be worth something in another town. But in Ponyville it was about as valuable as Twilight’s leftovers.

When the door opened her reaction was changing to the next page of the adventures of the dreamy Sir Stout Lance. When she heard somepony clearing their throat she stared at the clock… The damned thing had barely moved a few minutes from the shift’s start, and it felt like she had spent a whole hour there already.

“Semolina!” She heard the mayor’s angry voice and made the monumental effort of lowering her book to see Mayor Mare’s angry scowl at her.

“What?” She asked drily.

“Would it kill you to give a little attention to ponies coming through that door?” The Mayor sounded more offended than angry. Not that Semolina cared, anyway. “Roseluck’s garden was ruined because you ponies took so long to do anything about those rabbits. Again!”

“The horror…” The other whispered.

The mayor sighed. “Nevermind. I need to talk to Grape Donut. It is very important!”

“All right… Fine…” Semolina walked from behind her desk and kicked the door that led to the office space and her husband’s office in the back. “LARD TUB! MAYOR MARE WANTS TO TALK TO YOU! BRING YOUR FAT FLANK OVER HERE!”

The mayor grimaced and recoiled at that, but shifted her ears trying to listen to what seemed like an answer. The only word she could make out had something to do with female private parts.

“Will one of you losers drag that waste of a pony here?” The receptionist talked to nopony in particular staring at the thirteen ponies sitting by the desks and doing several things, none of them related to crimefighting or typical militia business.

“Nevermind, Semolina.” The mayor said trying not to show her distress at the scene in front of her. “I’ll go talk to him. Thank you.”

“Whatever.” She went back behind her desk and took her book. Paid no attention to the mayor as she stared at her with some concern in her eyes. To Mayor Mare she seemed to have seen better days and she could swear that her coat seemed dull. She thought Semolina should take better care of her coat, for her sake. Ponies look sick when their coats are dull.

But it wouldn’t be worth it to talk to her now. Past the door the cigar smoke and the odor of coffee and donuts were almost thick enough to physically resist her. She stared at the ponies sitting on their desks. Not a single one wore their leather barding, at least two of the desks were empty and one of the militiaponies, a particularly cute and young pegasus mare flirted with one of her coworkers. Somehow, the mayor doubted the two missing ones were outside doing any kind of work they should be doing.

Rather than bothering with them the mare went through the desks straight to the wooden door with a bronze star hanging on its side with the Lord Protector Lieutenant’s name. She didn’t bother knocking, and instead simply pushed the door and went in. His office was rather small with a file cabinet, his disorganized desk with its ever-present box from Sugarcube Corner full of donuts and also a thermic bottle next to a coffee mug.

In the wall was a picture of a strapping young earth pony with a bright grape-colored coat and brown mane, happily smiling at the camera and with stars in his eyes. Under the picture, behind the desk was the actual Grape Donut. A severely overweight earth pony slouched over his chair with a disheveled brown mane and a discolored coat and not caring one bit about the what the mayor might have to say, by the lifeless look in his eyes.

“Mayor Mare…” He served a mug of coffee and offered it to her. “Coffee?”

“How can you be so inactive drinking so much coffee?” She stared at him and then let her frustration show in a sad face and a sigh. “What happened with you? You were so happy when I asked you to be our Lord Protector!”

“This is the Ponyville Militia, Mayor Mare.” His voice was distant, and he looked at nothing in particular. “This is where dreams come to die and cutie marks weep.”

“Well, it is your job to motivate your troops! They look like they could use some motivation.” She pointed a hoof at him. “For crying out loud! Semolina treated me like she hated her job!”

“She does.”

The mayor sighed again. “Well, I got a letter about you!”

“What? Is the Archduke complaining to you about ponies complaining about me?” He swayed his head from one side to the other with each word, almost in a scornful way.

“It is from The Princess!” She barely contained her voice, desperate to rouse the pony into the importance of the situation.

“Which one?” He stared blankly at her. “We got five. Or was it six?”

“The Princess.” The mayor stared angrily at him.

“What does Twilight care about me? She doesn’t even know I exist.” He rolled his eyes.

“No!” Mayor Mare rose her voice a little more. “THE Princess! She’s asked me to see why is it that you haven’t answered to the three urgent letters she’s sent you!”

He blinked twice. “The Mare’s sent me three letters?”

“One in the night, another right before dawn, and another some fifteen minutes ago!” She hoofed angrily at the floor, counting.

He blinked twice again and looked for his inbox, somewhere under all the mess of papers, donut crumbles, colorful sprinkles, more papers with random doodles and several drafts for different versions of his abdication letter that never got sent. When he did find the inbox there were indeed, three rolled up scrolls in it.

“Huh… What do you know… This thing does work.” Under the mare’s angry stare, he grabbed one of the letters and quickly read it. “The princess wants me to detain Princess Twilight Sparkle and her friends, along with Captain Armor and Princess Cadance. Apparently, there’s been a misunderstanding and she’s coming over to talk once we have them secured.”

The mayor grinned hopefully. “Well, if The Princess is asking… Do a good job and maybe the ponies will like you more and I can get more funding for our militia!”

Yeah… He could imagine all the love he’d get from Ponyville for arresting their heroes. Or how hard her personal guards will beat the daylights out of him. Maybe he should just find the last draft of his letter and get it sent to the commissioner’s office. But then he’d have to listen to Semolina complaining and yelling at him the whole week. It would probably be better if he did what the princess was asking, after all.

***

Twilight’s airship approached Ponyville at a low altitude. The captain kept the ship on course, unworried. A pirate attack would be the biggest danger short of a storm or strong winds, but neither were very likely in that fine day. As the good airship crewpony he was he had checked the weather schedules before they departed Ponyville and there were no planned weather interventions in their flightpath for the whole duration of the trip to and back from the Changeling Rock.

He didn’t know about his crewmates, but he didn’t worry about his conversation with the princesses and their friends. Whatever happened he was sure they would end up fine. And if things went according to plan he’d request being included into the Princess’ guard as it was in the process of being commissioned. He could picture himself on one of those magnificent bardings, bearing the sigil of the princess and created in the enchanted forges atop Mount Canterlot by the Royal Guard smiths and enchanted by the princess herself. It made sense… Her guards would crew her airship.

Commanding an airship took more than good eyes and great instincts, but a certain connection to her own magic. As if it had a soul of its own each one was different and took some time getting used to. And the princess’ airship was a furious beast that required a tight leash.

Unicorns and earth ponies usually lost control of these modern airships because of the lack of visual references, but pegasi were made to fly. They could feel every ebb and flow of acceleration, and the captain could swear that he could feel in his very bones whenever the ship asked for more power against the crosswind or when her sails got in the way of her performance. It was like they became one as soon as he stood behind her wheel.

That was why he thought it was weird when the Princess came to him and asked if anything was wrong. He knew the unicorns could feel if something was different with the magic the ship radiated, but he had complete control over the airship, and he knew she was perfect as could be.

“Nay, Princess.” He said under her worried stare. “Everything is shipshape.”

She had her ears turned back and something bothered her. She had never felt like that before. It was as if somepony was hidden behind every corner, every shadow, watching her. She felt a strange sensation of being intruded upon. Like somepony had entered the house, which was weird because she not even was at home.

It was the weirdest thing… Even though she was safe in her ship, with her friends and family, every sense in her body was trying to tell her to be careful. That she was not alone and could be in danger.

She grumbled. “Keep your eyes open, please.”

“Aye, Princess.” He said, a little distrusting of something he couldn’t quite identify. He trusted the princess and her instincts, though. Meanwhile Twilight went down into her quarters where the others were preparing to disembark. She didn’t say anything but kept paying attention, looking for whatever was wrong and eluded her.

Without delay, the ship made its way towards her drydock out of the city and close to Twilight’s palace. It was a simple hangar, like a big barn with doors and the internal structure to secure the ship completely powered down. She thought it curious that the captain had decided to dock her aft-first but said nothing. He probably was acting on her words and preparing for a quick escape. The crew moored the ship and they started disembarking.

She was already walking on the wooden planks above the ground when the captain called to her from the railing. “I’ll keep’er spinning… Just in case, princess.”

She thanked him silently but didn’t think much of it and took the way to her palace while the others would do as they had planned and would meet with Starlight Glimmer, Shining and Cadance in the teleporter facility.

***

On the way to the teleporter Flurry Heart was in an awful mood and Cadance kept trying to console the baby, saying that she would be at home with her toys. But Flurry didn’t care! She was being put out of the action. Besides, being far from her mother meant she’d have to take the formula and she hated it. But adult ponies were stupid, and her mother didn’t understand that she should take her in that travel too.

Along the way things seemed normal on Ponyville, until they came to a street near the teleporter facility's square that gave them a good view on the building and the area in front of it. And, while it all seemed perfectly fine to Cadance, Starlight Glimmer and the maid, Shinning put his leg in front of Cadance and told them to stop. They followed him, hiding behind the nearby corner and he frowned as he watched the area ahead.

“What?” Cadance asked in a low voice.

“Something isn't right…” Too few ponies stood in the square next to the teleporter not to mention that stands were closed and what ponies stood there frowned and talked discreetly to each other. He could read frustration in the air.

“What??” The princess insisted a little louder.

“I think they locked down the teleporter. It could be an ambush.” Shinning’s instincts were at full steam with the conversation they had earlier. He had accepted the possibility that he might find himself helping his wife, sister and friends against his comrades. Depending on how things went it might cost him his position and the admiration of his ponies, but what kind of knight would he be if didn’t stand by his honor as father, husband and brother? They were all taking chances and he was no exception.

“Who are ‘they’?” Starlight stared from the corner under his head.

“Ponyville’s militia. I can’t see them, but they must be looking for us.” An open area… Certainly ponies on the roofs, not only inside the facility, he wondered.

“Ponyville has a militia?!” The unicorn looked up at him. “As in… Local militia?”

“For Ponyville’s size, the must have a few militiaponies and some ten ponies to capture. Since I haven’t seen anypony from the Royal Guard, Princess Celestia probably sent a letter and ordered our detainment. That means they are spread out thin.” He talked slowly and in a low voice. “They’re inside the building, waiting for us with others likely watching Twilight’s friend’s homes.”

“What do we do?” Cadance asked while Calcite kept the baby close to her, in her hooves instead of in her carriage and Starlight was still trying to parse the idea of Ponyville having a local militia. “Can’t we overpower them?”

“I’d rather not take too much of a risk, and there’s a lot of open space ahead. Hum...” He sounded distracted, looking around to the sides and up. A pink alicorn in the middle of the street already drew too much attention and ponies were already staring at them. “Stay here.”

With that he scurried to the other side of the street that led to the square and vanished behind a building. Cadance called him in a low voice without an answer. The princess stared at the others and for a few minutes nothing happened until they were scared by somepony yelping and a skinny brown earth pony in a leather barding fell from the thatched roof of the nearby building on the other side of the street followed by a musket and Shining Armor, who jumped down after the pony.

He held the pony by the barding. “Start talking!”

The pony shrieked loud enough to draw attention from even more ponies in the area but Shining hoped not the ones inside the facility. “The boss got a letter from Canterlot that told us to arrest you! That is all I know! Pease don’t hurt me!”

“How many? Where are the others?” Shinning shook him a little and the terrified pony wailed for a bit before answering.

“We’re fifteen, sir! I swear! They went to the homes of the princess’ friends!” He said before he broke down crying.

“Get a hold of yourself, pony!” Starlight was more annoyed at the way the militiapony behaved than the fact that he was going to shoot at them. “He didn’t even hit you that hard.”

“I just wanna go home!” He cried some more.

“Let him go, Shinning.” Cadance touched his shoulder with compassion in her expression, concerned over how bad the poor pony seemed to be taking the whole thing. “He looks terrified.”

Then a few seconds passed and her expression changed to anger and her wings flared. She grabbed his barding with her magic and shook him violently while Shining grimaced and took a step back. “You were going to shoot at my baby with a musket?! What is wrong with you?!”

The pony shrieked again and covered his face with his hooves. “Those are crystal subduing bullets your highness! I’m just following orders!”

“He’s making too much of a racket!” Starlight looked around at the ponies already starting to mass around them. “We better let him go!”

Cadance released him from her magic grasp and yelled angrily at him before he scrambled and galloped away from the teleporter. Meanwhile Shining Armor checked the militiaponie’s weapon he now held in his magic and grimaced with his ears back. “It’s a scoped Withersworth… But yeesh. This thing looks awful. Who maintains these guys’ guns?”

“We got to go!” Starlight told them. “The others will know what happened.”

“Yes.” Cadance agreed. “Back to the drydock.”

“Dammit…” Shining dropped the weapon, ready to follow the others, but Cadance stood there, looking like she was thinking.

“Chrysalis sent the princesses a letter or something.” She said with a frown. “We should’ve known she’d do this. They really are trying to catch us.”

“What do we do?” The poor crystal mare began to fear the consequences of what her princess was doing, and her drooped ears and voice made her distress clear.

“Don’t worry, Miss Calcite.” Shinning reassured her with a friendly smile. “Nothing bad is going to happen to you.”

“But what about you, sir?” She asked full of worry. Not only her job could be at risk, but she also loved her prince and princess, and certainly didn’t want to see them hurt in any way.

“We'll have to hope that Twilight was right and that the princesses aren't secretly some evil villains.”

“The sort that would consort with Queen Chrysalis?” Starlight asked sarcastically.

“Well, I was hoping she wasn’t evil anymore…” The Prince rubbed his neck uncomfortably.

Cadance wasn't about to tempt fate or take risks. “Shinning, take Flurry Heart, Calcite and Starlight to the dock. This is getting serious and we’ll have to fight. I’ll go to the Crystal Empire and grab our things.”

“What if they’re waiting for you there?” He asked.

“The princesses are more likely to be here, Shining. If they did something, they likely sent a few of their guards. My own guards will help me.” Cadance concluded and then teleported away.

***

Rarity trotted without too much of a hurry. She wouldn’t keep her friends waiting but there wasn’t any need for her to be seen galloping through town in such an unbecoming way for a lady.

The town was peaceful enough and she greeted several of her acquaintances along the way and soon enough could see her store and home in Ponyville. She hummed a song to herself thinking of the things she must do before leaving for the teleporter. It wasn’t such a big list, but she ought to be prepared: she had to account for Opalescence, Sweetie Belle, her appointments. Her parents, her sister and her friends taking care of her stores in Manehatan and Canterlot should be able to deal with everything, though. So, it would be preferable if she presented herself at the teleporter as soon as reasonably possible.

Almost to the door of her house however, she was approached by two ponies in brown leather barding. “Miss Rarity, excuse us.”

She looked at them and try as she might, she couldn’t understand why in Equestria those ponies wore that leather armor in the middle of Ponyville. Not to mention that she almost gasped in worry: they looked sickly. Their colors looked drained, somehow. One was a light-grey and white pegasus and the other a dull yellow and caramel earth pony. “Hello? May I assist you?”

“We’re with the Ponyville Millitia, ma’am. You need to come with us.” The pegasus said in an authoritarian way that rubbed her the wrong way, but Rarity wouldn’t let first impressions mark her perception of ponies she’d never seen. So, she responded with good humour.

“Oh my! We do have a local militia! I had forgotten entirely!” Oh… The local militia. Silly Rarity! She had completely forgotten they existed and giggled for a while. “I’m terribly sorry. How may I help you, brave militiaponies?”

They didn’t find it funny, though, and stared coldly at her. In fact, Rarity noticed her comment offended the ponies and she almost worried for her safety when she received what seemed like a very resentful stare from the earth pony. This sort of thing wasn’t normal in Ponyville and while she knew she’d attract attention to herself due to her work, both of them, it was impossible to be liked by everypony. And that pony seemed like somepony that really didn’t like her. For some reason she didn’t understand. Maybe she didn’t give him attention or something someday. Some ponies were like that.

There was also the very likely possibility that Princess Celestia had ordered she and her friends detained. Well, so much for a peaceful journey… And unfortunately, she could not allow herself to make these ponies’ work any easier.

“Well, I understand sirs.” She finally said, resigning to a colder and more formal tone. “Would you, magnanimously, allow me to see my little sister first, though? I must grab a few personal effects too.”

“No, ma’am. You’re coming with us now.” The earth pony frowned at her, but his companion, the pegasus elbowed at him a little distressed.

“Come on dude. She can’t run away and what would she do? She just wants to tell her sister to not worry. Or something. Gee.”

His partner didn’t look happy about it, but he agreed. “Fine. But be quick, Lady Rarity. We’ll be watching you.”

With that, she profusely thanked them, and the three ponies made quickly to her home. Once there she opened the door and went inside, closely followed by the two militiaponies. Which irritated the unicorn some more.

“Sweetie Belle! I’m home!” She called and her sister appeared at the top of the stairs while the two ponies in barding entered too. She didn’t remember inviting them in, and she felt yet a little more aggravated by that, but she didn’t think she had a choice. The pegasus closed the door and the earth pony stared unfriendly at her.

“Hi Rarity!” She chirped but frowned at the sight of the two ponies she’d never seen before. They didn’t seem like costumers, that was for sure. “Uh… Is everything okay?”

“Absolutely, dear. These nice ponies are with Ponyville Local Militia and they have requested that I accompany them.”

The filly frowned some more. “Ponville has a militia?”

“Yes! Yes, it does, miss.” The pegasus had lost his patience. “Can you hurry up, Lady Rarity?”

“Absolutely.” She had about lost her patience with these two ponies, but for now resigned to obeying. “Sweetie, fetch the briefcase under my bed, please. The large one, for travels.”

“Sure thing, Rarity.” With that, the filly disappeared on the second floor and left Rarity with the two militiaponies.

“May I offer you some tea?” Rarity couldn’t manage her more friendly voice, and instead her offer came cold and insincere voice accompanied by a cold stare. “Some coffee?”

“No, ma’am. Thank you. We would prefer to leave as soon as possible.” The pegasus said, really doing his best to keep his personal feelings about that unicorn out of his mostly professional posture.

“Sure. I certainly understand.” The unicorn kept her poise despite feeling a little insulted and more than a little threatened. Now, Rarity wasn’t a vengeful pony, but she felt threatened in her own house, with her little sister. Mayor Mare would be hearing a few choice words of hers about these ponies, that was for sure.

After she was herself done with them, actually.

The three remained silent for a few seconds, before the white filly returned and brought down a very expensive and impressive looking black casing, long and with her owner’s cutie mark emblazoned in it and also with a shiny silver finish. It had a handle, but both unicorns carried it with their magic.

That thing looked more expensive than the entire equipment for the militia and that fact stung the two ponies more than they cared to admit.

“Thank you very much, Sweetie Belle.” She said while she laid the briefcase on the floor, her back to the two ponies and opened it. The two militiaponies stared at her and before the two understood what was happening, the unicorn had produced a pair of exquisitely crafted and adorned, white and indigo wheellock pistols. The next thing they realized was that they were both staring up their long white metal barrels.

“Will you two gentleponies kindly step into that closet, please?” She asked politely, pointing at it with her eyes. “Peacefully, if you will. I am afraid these are loaded with real magic disruption ammunition from our last scuffle with the coeurl. Nasty, nasty monster and I really don’t want to know what happens when you shoot a pony with this sort of ammunition.”

The two took a second to understand exactly what was happening but obeyed. The earth pony didn’t take it kindly though, while he followed the pegasus toward the closet. “What you’re doing is a crime ma’am! You’re making it worse for yourself.”

“Oh, I know, darling.” She said sorrowfully while the two walked into the closet. “It’s a shame, really. There was a point where we clearly should have stopped, but it lies in the past. I am afraid all we can do now is keep going and hope for the best. Ta ta.”

She closed the door and locked it, giving the key to Sweetie Belle who simply stared passively. Then she proceeded to don her white and blue gambeson (with a stylish skirt) and her Element of Generosity jewel. “Sweetie, take Opal and go to dad and mom’s home. Take some of her ration, if you will.”

“Sure thing, Rarity!” She chirped. “Uh. What about these two?”

“Don’t worry yourself with them.” She said with a cold stare. “Somepony is bound to miss them eventually. However, I do want you to stop by Twilight’s home and tell Lieutenant White Leaf that I didn’t like the way these militiaponies imposed and that I’d consider it a personal favor if she took care nopony bothered you or our friends.”

The unicorn finished by holstering her pistols in front of her chest and sheathing, on her side, her gleaming rapier. Its white handle adorned with a sapphire for a pommel made it a beautiful weapon. Finally, she covered herself with a blue satin cloak and clasped its brooch in front of her neck. “I should be away a few days and we may or may not end up dethroning Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Do be careful. These things tend to be quite dramatic.”

“Uh… Sure.” Her little sister struggled a bit to understand, lacking context.

And with that, Rarity departed, leaving the briefcase and the small unicorn sitting next to the closet’s door. “So… Uh… I gotta go. You know, do what Rarity told me to. See you guys later.”

Hurrying away, the filly didn’t hear the angry complaints from the other side of the door.

***

Twilight walked next to Spike and quickly made it to her palace. The wooden doors were open as she ordered they should be (another thing she had learned from Celestia, even if she didn’t really ‘do’ administration). However, both her guards were missing from their post by the door.

It wasn’t a big deal. They, most likely were helping one of her staff with something. She turned to Spike. “Go to the school and see if they need anything. It’s vacations so there shouldn’t even be anypony there. Then meet me here. I’ll grab my barding and weapons, or Shinning won’t stop complaining the whole travel.”

“Sure thing.” He said excitedly and went off while Twilight entered her home.

Once inside, she quickly crossed the atrium and made her way to the audience chamber. She wasn’t home, so it, obviously had closed doors. What bothered her was that she still had that weird and insistent feeling that something was wrong, but now it practically screamed at her that she was in danger. Or that she should be careful. Or something of the sort. It was too vague and all that feeling managed to do was annoy her. She grunted at herself… Something less vague might be have been useful.

Opening the doors to the audience chamber she saw something big, white and golden. The sound she made defied classification. It was a combination of a squeak, a ‘meep’ and a panicked scream while she closed the door as fast as she could.

“Twilight! Wait!” She heard Celestia’s amused voice call to her from the other side of the door.

Wait? No. She galloped and did it as fast as she could without slamming into things steering towards the library. So fast she almost couldn’t open the door in time for her to go through it. In there the large room was empty of ponies except for her librarian who stared confused at her. Hiding behind a bookstand the princess grimaced and gestured with a hoof for her to leave.

The unicorn did so, as naturally as possible and closed the doors behind her only for Twilight to hear her talking to Princess Celestia through the closed doors. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but she figured the Miss Goodread was trying to stall her old mentor.

Almost in a panic Twilight scurried to the deepest place in the library and tried to keep an eye on the doors while also trying to think of a way out. She couldn’t teleport: Princess Celestia would track her spell and in open ground she would catch up to her. If she stayed The Princess would eventually find her. If she tried to run, she would grab her with magic. Fly out a window, she’d teleport and then grab her with magic. The library wasn’t big enough for her to keep sneaking around.

Fight her? Twilight almost laughed out sarcastically at the idea of fighting Princess Celestia head on. And on her library.

Finally, If Celestia caught her she’d make Twilight stop her investigation, and while she didn’t really want to think about it there were all sort of unpleasant ideas in her head about how she might do that.

She caught herself breathing too shortly and too fast already filling her head with even more unpleasant images of what an evil Princess Celestia could do with her and that she wouldn’t even remember. She needed to calm herself with her breathing exercises. Her anxiety wouldn’t help so she did her best to calm her nerves and remember the actual Princess Celestia she knew. And as soon as she could think straight again, she quickly began removing the pieces of her royal regalia while staring at the doors past three rows of bookcases.

The plan was to sneak past her and vanish out the doors. Without a teleportation the chances that Celestia would pick her track would be more negotiable.

When the doors opened slowly, shinning with golden light of her magical aura Twilight hid again, carefully peeking by the corner to see the open doors with Princess Celestia walking in, followed by the dark brown alicorn that followed her everywhere this past year.

“Ponyfeathers… She brought him too!” She whispered to herself and looked again at the pair. While Princess Celestia looked her typical self he had a brown saddle-arabian blanket on his back and a horn adornment in two pieces and was all trussed up in gold with a ceremonial peytral and a gold fishnet on his mane, like a saddle-arabian escort. Gee… At least, he was not armed or wearing real barding, which was good. It meant they weren’t expecting a fight.

Not that Princess Celestia needed weapons to fight… But…

“Twilight, why are you hiding from me?” Celestia asked looking around by the door. “You’re confused. We should sit down and talk over a cup of tea.”

Then she gestured Chocolate Velvet to stand by the door and slowly walked towards Twilight. Thinking fast she scurried to one of the room’s corners. She couldn’t see them anymore, though she could sense all the magic that whirled around Celestia, and she was still moving towards where Twilight was drawn by the homing magic in her regalia.

“Please, talk to me, Twilight. I’m still the Celestia you know. Despite what you may be thinking because of all the things you found.” It hurt her heart listening to the princess talking like that… She sounded hurt that Twilight wouldn’t trust her, but she couldn’t afford to trust her. She wouldn’t bet all the things that could go wrong on anypony’s feelings. At least before she had some more answers. Twilight could always make up to the princess if she was wrong, but if she was right…

“Twilight, please!” Celestia pleaded again. “I promise you all will make sense with a short talk.”

Then, another voice sounded in the library, a bit gruff though calm and stoic. “Princess. One of the local militiaponies has found Prince Armor and Princess Cadenza.”

The beacon of magical energy that she was shifted and started going towards the door again. “Where?”

“The teleporter.” Twilight recognized this voice. It belonged to Lieutenant Crucible Wings, trainer and executive officer of the Princess’ personal guard. “Said Princess Cadenza and Prince Armor violently assaulted him, along with Twiligth’s friend and that he fought valiantly, but they escaped him. Said he wants compensation.”

“Is that so? I’ll talk to him.” The princess said and Twilight could hear her hoofsteps walking towards the door trailing her magic. “Don’t hurt her, Chocolate.”

Pfft… As if he could… Twilight quietly giggled to herself. Things had changed and a few seconds after she moved to the corner of the bookcase line closest to the reading tables so that she could see him slowly closing the door with his amber telekinetic magic.

“So, how’s the knight thing going for you?” She asked playfully. “Slayed many a monster in the princesses’ bedrooms?”

His ears immediately perked up and he looked her way, but he stayed by the door and laughed sarcastically. “You should know that I captured a shockroach on Princess Celestia’s bedroom!”

“You captured it?” She rose an eyebrow, despite him not being able to see it.

“She… Didn’t want me to kill it…” He said with droopy ears. “Asked me to release it in the garden.”

“Oh… Hum…” She let escape an awkward laugh. “That’s… Nice… Sparing the life of such a small and humble creature is very knightly… I’m sure it’s worth a few points with the Equestrian Chivalric Society.”

He laughed sarcastically again. “Is this the sort of thing you teach in your school, Twilight? How about you surrender, and we can enjoy a nice cupcake after Celestia tans your hide?”

“Sorry, Chocolate… I can’t do that. Don’t you want to know the truth, though?” She said. Maybe there was a chance he’d change to her side. She knew that he liked Celestia and Luna, but she also knew that he was curious about anything around them. A hidden past could be something too tempting for him. Specially if she played it right. “I mean… Princess Celestia and Princess Luna seem to have done something in the past and they have tried to hide it. Something big, related to the unicorns and the sun. What about whatever happened with that griffon Emperor, Grigor?”

“Twilight, I don’t care. She told me what you’re doing, and I honestly don’t care.” He said, slowly walking towards the bookcase he could hear her voice coming from. “I’m loyal to Princess Celestia because I don’t think that she’d do something wrong. And if she did, she certainly had very good reasons. Luna too.”

She hummed to herself, moving away from the corner. “I understand. Funny, though… You sound a bit like me… But what if she tricked you? Tricked us?”

“It’s surreal to hear this coming from you, Twilight. What? Do you think that Celestia and Luna are secretly evil, or something?” His head came around the corner and they stared at each other.

“Actually…” Twilight showed a smug smile. “I’m wondering if you already learned how to teleport.”

In an instant the princess executed the spell inside her head, her magic made it a reality and she was on the other side of the door promptly closing and locking it. Inside the library he panicked, and his hooves clopped on the floor then banged at the door. He screamed angrily and banged some more. “Open the door, Twilight! I mean it! I don’t want to blow up your house!”

“Uh-hu… Quiz on teleportation magic once this is all over, mister.” She said with a giggle and started walking away from the door.

He screamed in frustration again, banging on the door, but she knew he would be fine. She should hurry, though. It wouldn’t be too long before he realized he can open the windows and fly out. Even with his size.

Quickly now, she must gather her barding, her weapons and her Element of Magic diadem. Not only would they make Shining easier to bear, but they would certainly be useful in a hostile situation and it seemed that things had, indeed gone wrong.

Like they always did…

She really needed to hurry. While she could deal with any of her guards she’d left behind, Twilight would rather not try her luck against Princess Celestia. She’d rather survive this whole mess, and hopefully remain her friend.

Pushing those thoughts out of her head she started towards her armory in the basement. Careful before every corner that she wouldn’t be ambushed by any Royal Guards Celestia might have left behind. But the way to the armory was short and uneventful. Through the halls, down the stairs and past a few corridors and she found herself staring at the double doors of the armory. She expected to see at least a few of Celestia’s guards making sure her own guards didn’t try anything. With a touch of annoyance, she realized that she’d like to know why her guards weren’t trying to protect her.

Finally, opening the doors to her armory, she found her guards in there. All two of them… Lieutenant White Leaf and Sargent Raspberry Pancakes. One a white and green unicorn female and the other a plum and pink earth pony female, both wearing her guard’s purple enchanted armor.

“What the hay are you two doing here?” Twilight did her best not to yell.

“Uh… We’ve been asked to wait here while Princess Celestia talked to you.” White Leaf said frowning a little.

The purple princess facehoofed. “Did you notice that Princess Celestia is trying to apprehend me? You’re supposed to protect me!”

“From Princess Celestia?” White Leaf raised an eyebrow, and Twilight had to admit it did sound weird. But still… “What is going on?!”

With a sigh Twilight quickly summated the relevant events and conclusions to them while she retrieved her spare set of royal jewelry and wore them.

“Whoa… That is kinda big.” Raspberry said. “What do you want us to do, Princess?”

“I don’t know…” Twilight rubbed her forehead. “I’m afraid the girls could be in trouble.”

“We’ll escort you back to the airship.” White Leaf said decidedly, and the other nodded. “Then we’ll leave you with the crew and look for the others.”

“Hey! It’s not like I can’t fight and help my friends!” The princess felt a bit offended her guard would think her defenseless.

“Sure, princess…” White Leaf raised an eyebrow again. “But you ought to defend the airship. I’m not entirely sure the crewponies can do that without you. Especially if Princess Celestia is running around.”

“Oh. Right.” Twilight acquiesced, and then giggled uncomfortably while she reached to an upper shelf and retrieved her black and purple briefcase, adorned with her cutie mark.

The Animus Imperative

Away from the commotion, in a grassy field crossed by a small stream of water some distance from Ponyville, Princess Cadance could mentally prepare for the task ahead.

Teleportation magic was difficult and if Princess Celestia was around she would notice her. In fact, Cadance could feel her presence around. She wasn’t close enough to exactly pinpoint where she was, but she definitively was within Ponyville. Probably looking for Twilight and it almost offended Cadance that she didn’t try to apprehend her. Maybe the other princess thought that Twilight would be an easier target, or something. She didn’t know… She was distracting herself and should worry about not screwing up her teleportation to the Crystal Empire right now.

While her magical reflexes should keep her from teleporting into the terrain or an object and she knew the area well enough to avoid any danger, there was still the problem that teleportation magic was complex and required a monumental amount of energy to succeed. If she failed all that power would blow on her face and her horn would explode with an amount of spectacle relative to the amount of recruited magical energy. Trying to teleport that far it would be weeks before she could feel comfortable enough to cast anything more complex than a telekinetic grasp.

Considering the way their little adventure was going the risk of her being stuck in a bed with a blown horn was prohibitive.

Still, she had to do it. Things were getting serious, she had no time to travel by non-magical means, and Twilight wasn’t experienced enough to deal with the potential snowball this whole mess could become.

She thought back to past days when Princess Celestia taught her magic. The problem with teleportation magic (almost all magic) is the distance. That much was obvious and the study of such magic was governed by a thaumatological equation: energy required equals Blink’s Constant multiplied by mass divided by two, multiplied by the distance to the power of two, all multiplied by magical attrition, divided by the added magical coefficient of initial and final locations.

Not only that, but all those variables must be included in the final formula that should be cast properly, without interruption. She grunted. No wonder ponies invented the teleporters. This thing was like playing the piano, without a sheet and correcting the song for the taste of the listener, depending on the place you’re playing it!

It was possible that she simply couldn’t do it, but all her life she’s been urged to try. To reach out and to accomplish her goals. First by her matron in the orphanage, then by Princess Celestia, by her friends, and finally, by Shining Armor and even her little baby.

Finally convinced she decided that her instincts would guide her. They always did. She quickly ran the calculations in her head and remembered the details of her destination, took note of the place she stood and how it felt to her magical senses.

She took a deep breath and her horn ignited with magic, coming alive inside her head with a melody like an anthem for a beloved, distant place: her brain played the magical notes that channeled magic towards her will. She could feel it flowing in her whole body and in the air around her, a feeling that can only be described as anticipation. The world seemed brighter. More real. The magic which permeated all made itself evident, shining as though things had a life of their own. It responded to her with a melody of its own. Her mental melody reached a crescendo like an uncontainable euphoria and, in her mind’s eye two coordinates approached each other exponentially faster. Her horn burned with raw power until finally a threshold was broken. For a mere instant, the spatial component of the space-time mesh of the world bent to her will and distances meant nothing to her.

The world returned to normal around her and reality conformed to the fact that the pink alicorn now stood in another location. Air moved in where she was before and submitted to the might of her magic where she stood, destroyed and recombined in ozone with a single flash and bang.

The simple connection she felt to everything was exhilarating for a few seconds before magic returned to normal. It did so in the same way molecules reorganized, and the violation of relativity was forgotten without hard feelings from the magical reality of her world. That was why magic existed, after all. To break from the mundane and to reach for the outstanding. And that was how she felt. Most importantly, the vast majority of ponies simply couldn’t do it: what she had just done was a privilege of few.

It was so different from artificial magic too... Her whole body tingled while the euphoria washed over, past the surge of magic, and now everything returned to normal. Her horn was a bit sore and a small headache threatened. It was an effort. But now she couldn’t worry about that. She was before the entrance to the Crystal Empire, and the cold air reminded her of that.

Suddenly she became very aware of the magic that permeated her home. It was like the city welcomed her, but there was something wrong. That was something Cadance wasn’t entirely familiar with, but she had experienced it a few times before, so she knew what was it that she felt. It was the innate magic of her realm, warning her: someone was there, uninvited by her. Intruding upon her realm.

It was familiar too. It was the powerful and ancient magic that washed over her every evening when day changed to night, and right there in the cold of the Crystal Empire, it made her tremble a little. Suddenly, her hurt feelings of the princesses not hunting her were a happy memory and the thought of falling on Luna’s ill side made her tremble more than the cold did.

She had hoped the Night Princess would be at Ponyville and that her magic was simply masked by Celestia’s, but she was instead waiting for her in her home. The princess frowned a little, cursed her stupidity, and prepared for a possible conflict, quickly recalling all the defensive spells she would need and prepared to cast them, despite her sore horn.

Her first reaction included all sorts of concealing spells, and she thought of letting go of her royal regalia, but then grunted at herself... She probably lighted up like fireworks when she arrived, and Luna certainly knew she was there. All she could do now was prepare for when Luna teleported from Tartarus knew where and attacked.

But it never happened and Cadance realized that all Luna had to do was wait for Cadance at her own palace, the only place she would have anything to do upon arriving because, certainly Luna already had made sure nopony would be in condition to help Cadance. The pink alicorn hadn’t felt that stupid in quite some time, walking right into a trap like that.

All she could really do was hope her personal guards had remembered all the times they trained for an emergency because Cadance was sure that her Royal Guards were already done for under Luna’s command.

That and spring the trap, hoping to come up on top. Fortunately, it seemed like she had time to prepare since Luna wasn’t coming after her.

Her royal regalia contained a plethora of defensive and supporting enchantments meant to protect her from any assailants, even if she would not be aware of them, and also meant to assist her if she needed to actively defend herself. These include different kinds of warding enchantments such as different kinds of magical shields for starters, and if something was to happen, she should be ready for it. The problem was that Luna had one set like hers, that she must have personalized to her tastes.

For now, though, she would try to mask her presence and enter the city in the most secretive way possible while keeping her regalia. That should prove enough of a challenge and she may have to rely on luck but in the end, she just hoped she wouldn’t have to fight Luna. At least until she got her barding and weapons.

***

Things had barely started, and Grape Donut was already having second thoughts about this whole idea of apprehending the Princess and her friends. And sister-in-law… Another Princess. Also, her brother, his technical superior. What a mess.

Maybe, to be very honest the only real reason he had agreed to getting involved was because that would keep Semolina’s mouth shut. Therefore, he felt cheated as he had agreed to capturing the Princess and her friends, but Semolina still wouldn’t shut her mouth.

“Well, of course you would come here. It’s not like you could even try to catch somepony like Rainbow Dash anyway. Well, it’s not like you could keep up to Pinkie Pie either.” She said, walking besides him, by the small houses of Ponyville. “You better hope that Princess Celestia’s guards will catch those ponies because you and that bunch of losers you call militiaponies couldn’t catch a cold to save your lives. And it’s all your fault, you know? You’re their boss.”

Inside his head, the Lord Protector of Ponyville reminded himself to be mature and just let her talk. As much as he disliked it, he couldn’t say that she was wrong. There was also the fact that he was having trouble breathing inside his barding, but he liked to think that he would still not have made a scene if he could walk and talk at the same time.

Fortunately, Sugarcube Corner wasn’t very far from the militia headquarters and they soon arrived. Summoning up his favorite comic series from his childhood, he kicked the door open, and spoke with his most serious and commanding tone. “Pinkie Pie. Come quietly, or there will be trouble.”

That earned him surprised and curious stares from all the costumers: harmless fillies and colts enjoying ice creams and all sorts of sweets while his companion rolled her eyes behind him. Miss Cake greeted him with a friendly smile and a waving hoof from behind the counter. “Oh. Hello, Grape Donut! Pinkie isn’t here, but I have your daily order ready.”

“Oh! Great!” He grinned excitedly, but immediately caught himself and shook his head, back to his serious demeanor. “I mean… That is good, ma’am, but I need to talk to her. Official business.”

“Official business?” Miss Cake recoiled, a little surprised. “What kind of business? What is Pinkie involved in?”

“Princess Celestia has requested that we apprehend Princess Twilight Sparkle and all of her friends.” He said. “Which includes Pinkie Pie.”

The mare stared at him with nothing but confusion in her face. “Why would she ask you to do that?”

He deadpanned. “We’re the local militia… It’s our job to arrest ponies.”

“Oooh.” She seemed surprised. A little too much for Grape’s tastes. “That is right. Ponyville does have a militia force… I had forgotten. I’m sorry… Well, Pinkie isn’t here.”

“Did she say where she would go?” He still kept his poise professional. It was easy for him because his callousness towards ponyvillians simply not knowing he even existed would require additional energy. And he could feel Semolina judging him from behind.

“Pinkie said she’d go to the teleporter to meet her friends and that she would be away a few days. But I couldn’t say where exactly they’ll be going.”

“I see…” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“What now, Shirelock?” His wife reminded him that he hated his life. “You already have some of your losers waiting for them in there. Are you going to pretend they’re going to do their job right this time?”

Miss Cake stared at one pony and then at the other, smiling awkwardly, doing her best to pretend she didn’t feel somewhat distressed at the way she talked to him.

“I suppose we should go to the teleporter and make sure that the others have things under control. Thank you, Miss Cake.” He said, finally and turned to leave followed by his wife.

Then he came back inside, picked up the box with the donuts and left the bakery again, followed by his wife. She stared hard at him. “You couldn’t leave those things there, could you?”

He stared back at her, both walking casually while he had the box on his back. “I don’t see the benefit of leaving behind perfectly fine donuts.”

“You are pathetic.” She said with her most venomous stare.

‘And you’re a bitch’, he thought, while he also couldn’t see how some ponies could marry more than one mate, but he thought it a better idea not to say anything. At least the donuts would be delicious, and he could distract himself thinking about them while she kept on telling him all the ways she thought him a loser. Surrounded by losers, that would never be anything in his life, like all the other losers he had surrounded himself with.

Amid her onslaught, he decided that it would be better if he, indeed went to the teleporter. Despite Semolina’s opinion, that was where they stood the biggest chance of capturing the princesses and their friends.

But he’d leave the donuts sitting safely in his desk first.

***

Cadance quickly skipped across the streets of her town, sneaking from corner to corner like a fugitive. She hated it and thanked Harmony her subjects were tucked away inside their homes, no doubt following martial law summoned by Luna.

Weirdly enough, she hadn’t seen any of the town’s local militia, or the Royal Guard, much less her own personal guards. It was odd. If ponies had been directed to stay inside, there ought to be patrols.

Nevertheless, she pushed on towards the center of the town and her palace and her mind wandered while she carefully watched the streets and windows for patrols or observers.

She had grown used to the cold in the Crystal Empire. Some ‘shrink ponies’ said that the ‘feel-good magic’ from the Crystal Heart helped a lot with that, as ponies weren’t supposed to live in the cold because they became sad, or something like that, or even away from the sun. They had a much lower incidence of sunlight in the Crystal Empire and that was also something that supposedly made ponies sad.

It was a bit strange that ponies would come to a place like that to begin with, considering they fled from the wendigos and their winter. There was some study Twilight had once shared with her that said crystal ponies may have changed to live in the cold: some smart ponies had figured out though archeological studies that they migrated from Central Equestria some thousands of years ago to settle in and as the time went on, their magic adapted to the cold, making them ‘crystal-y’ and cold-resistant.

More importantly, they were the ones that brought the Crystal Heart, but where it had come from was a big mystery and the reason ponies moved in was forgotten.

Peeking into a narrow alley it seemed to Cadance that as of lately everything happened thousands of years ago and was a mystery. How did nopony notice these things before?

Sneaking between the crystal-y homes of her subjects these thoughts did little to improve on Cadance’s mood. The more she thought about the whole mess she had uncovered with that stupid letter the more she convinced herself that it should be Luna and Celestia that were in trouble, not her, and that she ought to be pressing Luna for some answers rather than hiding from her.

She cringed a little though. In reality, if she tried that, she’d probably end up locked in a cell with more than a few singed feathers. While Cadance’s combat expertise lent itself to fighting monsters and the occasional evil overlord, Princess Luna supposedly had fought in wars. More than that… Luna had killed ponies. Intentionally.

The thought of fighting someone until they couldn’t anymore and then intentionally taking their lives was a foreign concept to Cadance.

She thought back to Shining’s words in Chrysalis’ chambers about how they had never been actually shot at or attacked with murderous intent. She tried to think of Princess Luna, the awkward princess who could barely stand sitting on her own throne and have everypony staring at her actually fighting somepony to the death.

Cadance didn’t know for sure, but she was pretty convinced by reading historical accounts and martial manuals that one simply didn’t fight in an open combat in the same way they fought in a duel, like their sparring sessions.

Luna certainly fought in the First Griffon War, but ponies don’t like wars and they did a poor job of recording the details of the battles. At best, what survived the passage of time were the general happenings of the war, such as specific sieges and battles, but with little to no detail. Not a single one about The Sisters fighting in the war, too… Odd, at best; discrepant, at the least.

Cadance frowned… Or maybe the Sisters pushed it all under the rugs too.

Then voices caught her attention and she quickly hid behind the next corner. She could see the street where three thestral members of Luna’s Royal guard stood with three of the creepy tall changelings. They stood by a barricade of sandbags that closed most of the street.

The three thestrals wore Lunar Royal Guard barding and had magic shock batons strapped to their armors, while one of them had a squad leader insignia, Luna’s cutie mark and the two-and-three chevron insignia, on his shoulder. The changelings wore their own armor and had their double-bladed swords secured on their sides. It was a bit odd that they had no rank markings. Maybe they did so in a different way Cadance wasn’t aware.

“Changelings… Just great…” Cadance murmured angrily to herself though, before making sure she remained hidden behind the corner and that they hadn’t seen her, before peeking out again.

One of the changelings had the attention of the others while he showed them his right forward hoof which looked limp while he held it from the ground.

“Blimey. There it goes again. It’s all tingly and limp.” He even let it sway a little from side to side to make a point while another changeling stared at it.

“You should get that looked at, mate.” The second one said grumply.

“No. Really?” The limp one answered sarcastically. “Any more brilliant advice?”

Cadance just stared at their whole interaction. It was like staring at a train wreck… You know it is terrible, but you can’t tear your eyes from it.

“Well, he’s right.” The leading thestral intervened. “It doesn’t look like you’re fit for duty.”

The third changeling, a female, trotted next to them. “Well, you better not. If they notice there’s something wrong with you, the eggmaidens will put you down and you’ll be recycled!”

“Queen almighty!” The second changeling looked at her. “You’re still going on about that hogwash? How would that even work? You’d think they’d cut you up and serve to the Queen in a platter with bloody side of lettuce and sliced tomatoes!”

“Not me!” The female took a step back and reached for something inside the chest of her barding, producing a lock of green hair bond together by a wire. “Mother’s protecting me!”

The thestral stared confusingly. “Is that… Is that from Chrysalis’ mane?”

“It absolutely is!” She held it triumphantly in her magical telekinesis. “It holds the Queen’s magic! She gave it to me!”

“You mean you cut it while she slept, and King Thorax shrieked like a kindergartener when he woke up and saw you holding a pair of scissors next to them…” The other changeling still looked grumpy, and now bored.

“Well, she could have stopped me…” She deflated a little, only to sound grandiose again. “But didn’t! She just went back to sleep! So, she completely gave it to me!”

“You’re madder than a sack of ferrets.” The grumpy changeling complained while the female still showed the others her prize.

“There ain’t one of us that ain’t properly fucked, mate.” The limp one said a little distressed with his still unmoving hoof. “What, with you and your conked humor.”

“Seriously…” The grumpy one stared. “Get one of the docs to see that.”

“Ah, it will be back to normal right quick.”

“Well, I think that having a lock of the queen’s mane is pretty normal” Said one of the thestrals. And then he proceeded to bring out a small glass vial from his saddlebag. Inside, it held a couple of blue, fluffy, feathers.

The others stared at it, but it was the thestral squad leader that had his mouth agape in shock. “Are those… What in the actual… Are those Princess Luna’s down feathers?”

“They are my lucky charm!” The owner said excitedly. “And they smell like blueberries!”

“Soldier, that is legit messed up.” The lead said with a wrinkled muzzle. “I’ll have you appointed with the shrink as soon as this mission is over.”

Finally, the third thestral, the one that was actually paying attention to the street spoke in a calm voice. “Princess Luna hates this sort of thing. She’s gonna make you swallow that thing if she catches you with it.”

With that the thestral stared sadly at his charm, but the female changeling came up to him and happily put a leg over his armored back. “Leave the bloke alone! You’re all just jealous you don’t have their protection!”

Then she smiled at him. “Say, how ‘bout we date after our shift is over?”

While the squad leader stared at the pair, with mild amusement at his blushing face, and the limp changeling stared angrily at his heel as though he could command it to work properly already, the others looked bored. Cadance, while she thought that the couple was somewhat cute, tried to reassure herself that none of her guards would harvest her feathers from her bedding, and she also worried for these changelings. Something about them still didn’t seem quite… Okay.

She was about to double back and leave them, taking another path, when the bored thestral perked his ears.

“Heads up guys! Contact!”

All six of them stared at an approaching crystal pony. Green and rosé, he pulled a cart hitched to him. It was covered with a blue cloth and whatever he was carrying inside tinkled like glass at every unevenness of the road. The princess recognized the pony, he was dating one of her own personal guards.

The pony kept walking towards them, despite looking a little insecure and Cadance felt he could be in danger, so she decided she’d watch over him until they let him go.

As he approached, one of the thestrals flared his leathery black wings and raised a hoof. “Greetings citizen. You have to stop.”

“Uh…” The pony hesitated and trembled a little. “Hi… I… Uh…”

“It’s alright, sir.” The thestral leader tried to calm the pony down with a relaxed voice and demeanor. “Nopony is going to hurt you, but you shouldn’t be out. Also step away from the cart, please.”

With that the other two thestrals unhitched and herded the pony away from the cart while the female changeling approached it, doing her best to sound cheerful and friendly while she lifted the cloth over it.

“Hello there!” She told him before looking inside. “It’s just a bunch of bottles.” She said, letting go of the cloth and turning to the crystal pony. “What’s in the bottles, mate?”

“It’s a special drink!” The pony said too quickly for their tastes, but their leader figured he was just nervous. “It… I went to the distillery. And I was just coming back.”

“Well, there is a curfew, sir. Under Princess Luna’s authority.” Another thestral, the one that had the charm stood next to his superior. “You’re not supposed to get out of your house unless it’s an emergency.”

“Well…” The pony looked slightly offended and frowned. “This is an emergency! This stuff is done, and I had to store it! I mean… I was in the distillery, not at home.”

The lunar Royal Guard sergeant wasn’t amused, but Cadance, in her hiding place, smiled broadly. “Sir, this is not an emergency, under the present circumstances. I’ll kindly ask that you leave your cart here and let one of us escort you home.”

“What?!” The pony reeled in shock. “I can’t leave this here!”

The thestral was beginning to lose his patience. “I’m sorry sir, but you don’t have a choice.”

“No, no! You don’t understand!” The crystal pony shrieked and waved his hooves frantically before letting pure, unadultered bliss into his voice. “It is a malt made from genuine mountain ice and moonrye! It’s the purest water, combined with the purest moonlight absorbed by the wild iced rye that grows at the base of the Everwinter Mountain! You have no idea how valuable this is! The rye only grows once per year and matures from absorbing moonlight, exactly on the longest night: Nightmare Night!”

The changelings were completely lost, but the ponies froze. He couldn’t be talking about… IT!

The pony made a serious expression. “I harvest it and then climb the mountain during the day so that I can get the best light from the moon. Then I spend months at the peak, slowly malting and mashing the rye, showering it in moonlight every night until it is ready to be cooked, distilled and bottled.”

Finally, he grinned radiantly. “It only lasts for three days and is so strong it was forbidden for one thousand years and the only one who can down a whole glass, not a bottle, mind you, of it is the moon princess herself. This, kind gentleponies and changelings, is legitimate Everwinter Moonshine!”

The squad leader’s eyes almost jumped out of his skull. That thing was legendary. Nopony even knew where it was made. Until then…

“Ooooh!” The thestral next to his commander grinned. “I heard of it! They say you can hear Nightmare Moon howling when you drink it.”

“Actually, it’s a few seconds after, sir.” The crystal pony corrected him with a raised hoof. “It needs to get to your head, you know!”

“Everypony’s heard of it!” The previously bored thestral was now as excited as the rest of them.

The sergeant had heard of it too, of course. That thing was so rare it’s said that it’s sold out in the same day it’s put on the only store that sells it, a stand in the Crystal Empire’s market. That thing really was legendary, even more so between the Lunar Royal Guards, with their love to anything related to the Moon Princess. But also, whose salary couldn’t reasonably afford one tenth of one single bottle.

“That sounds dynamite!” The cheery changeling said next to the cart. “I want one!”

“Well, this thing is confiscated property.” The leader finally said, forcing his mind into professional mode, which drew disappointed looks from his subordinates and the weird changeling. The grumpy one still looked grumpy and the third one was still worried about his hoof and uninterested. “It will be returned to you as soon as the whole situation is resolved, sir.”

“But… But!” His subordinate indecorously grabbed his barding, frantically shaking him. “It’s gonna go bad!”

“Well…” The green crystal pony started. “I’m sure nopony is going to mind if I give you guys a bottle…”

“Are you trying to bribe us?” The leader asked with a hint of anger while he adjusted his helmet and stared daggers at the crystal pony.

“No!” The crystal pony promptly defended himself. “It’s just that… It really will go bad. So, you guys, at least, could have one. On the house… You are Lunar Guards, after all. You guys gotta taste this! Not to mention, Princess Luna always gets one gift bottle ever since her return, anyways. You can take another to her.”

“Alright. Fine!” The squad leader finally agreed to the delight of his subordinates and the excited changeling. “Only one bottle.”

Squeeing excitedly, the changeling lifted the cloth again and grabbed one of the bottles from under it and then stared curiously at it. It was filled with lightly shinny clear liquid and the bottle itself was covered in a thin sheet of ice. Additionally, it didn’t have a cork or cap. It was simply a closed glass bottle with a neck next to the rounded top.

“Ooooh. How do you open this thing?” She asked, mystified by it. “Do I need to break it? Snap the top?”

“Yep. That is it!” The crystal pony said. “It’s kinda like sabering a champagne, though. Gotta do it properly. Shake it some and then tap it above the neck on a surface.”

Like a child with a new toy, the changeling did exactly that while the others watched and the drink became a fizzling white mixture, like the thing contained a blizzard contained inside. And, as soon as the thing so much as tapped the edge of the cart, it exploded with the howl of a windy blizzard and chilling white powder showered in every direction, covering the present ponies and changelings, as well as the whole street in a fine sheet of shinny white.

They screamed and tried to cover their faces, only to realize they couldn’t move… The thing literally crystalized around them, entombing them from the neck down in a chunk of cold ice. Partly distressed, partly angry, and also worried, the squad leader looked around for the crystal pony only to find him casually brushing the sparkly powder from his crystal coat and smiling triumphantly.

“It also…” The pony said grinning. “Is a powerful ‘Diamond Dust’ spell if you shake it too much.”

“You dodgy bugger!” The female changeling yelled angrily and charged up her horn with green changeling magic, ready to zap him into oblivion when she heard a sharp female voice ordering her to stop.

“Quit it, cockroach.” On top the nearby homes, the ceilings were littered with ponies from all tribes, wearing pastel colored robes and armed with bows. A dozen crystallized metal arrows pointed down at them, while one particular unicorn pony with a creamy white coat and blonde mane pointed one arrow at her. “We’ll turn your face into a porcupine.”

The changeling shrieked and the aura around her horn collapsed. If she could, she would have dropped to the ground and covered her head. “Please don’t! I don’t want to die virgin!”

The pony stared weirdly at the changeling and lowered her bow, and her friend next to her shrugged and did the same. The situation under control the ponies got on their four legs, with their bows secured on their backs, and dropped to the street level.

“Great job, Verdite!” The milky white mare cheered, bumping her hoof with his.

It was in that moment that Cadance decided she should show herself, and did so walking out of her hiding place, smiling as her ponies recognized her, starting with an aquamarine crystal pony that drew attention to her.

“Great job, everypony!” The princess greeted them, and all the robed ponies cheered happily while their leader, the white unicorn, bowed before the princess. “Great job Milky White!”

“Princess Cadance! I'm so glad you’re alright!” She said with a huge smile, grabbing Cadance’s leg. “We didn’t know if something had happened and the dummies in the Royal Guard did everything Princess Luna told them! So, we decided to capture a few of them to get some answers. These changelings drew our attention… They seem to have more personality than the others.”

Cadance stared at he the group and one of the changelings perked his ears. “Good news guys! My hoof is working again! Oh… Wait… It's numb because of the cold now. Nevermind.”

“Bloody moron…” The grumpy one said to himself.

Cadance stared at her personal guard for a second and then walked towards their captives, stopping before the Royal Guard sergeant who stared stoically at them.

“Hello?” She tried.

“My name is Zephir Wings.” He said in such a completely robotic tone Cadance might’ve thought she was talking to a golem. “Staff Sergeant with the Lunar Branch of the Royal Guard. Eighty five years. Identification zero, forty-seven.”

Cadance recoiled a step with a weirded out expression and her companion facehoofed. “She just wants to know if you're hurt, you bozo.”

“I'm not hurt, princess. Just my pride” He said, talking like a normal pony again.

“You're supposed to tell me you mission, too.” Cadance said.

“That is if I fear for my well-being or that of my squadmates, Princess.” The pony soldier replied stoically.

“Hello?” Cadance insisted. “I get laid with your boss.”

The pony stared at her for a second. “Fair point Princess.”

“Don’t tell her mate!” The changeling with the lame hoof struggled in his ice casing. “We were made to endure yak musical torture! She's nothing to us! Nothing!”

“Oh, for crying out loud!” The third thestral cried. “This bunch of idiots here present was supposed to inform the Princess if you showed up. We were supposed to guard this place and these nutjobs were supposed to alert the queen when you showed up. Can you take me in now, please? My balls are freezing!”

Cadance nodded to her white companion, who hoofed at the ground a couple of times. “C'mon ladies! Let’s get them ready to move. A patrol is bound to show up eventually anyway.”

With that, ponies quickly started chipping at the base of the ice mounds with ice picks and Cadance went to the female changeling. She smiled friendly at her, despite how uncomfortable the changeling looked. “Hi?”

“Hum… Hi…” The big changeling said. She didn’t seem so threatening as they were in the hive a few days ago. This one looked like she would be more at place in a… Cadance didn’t know. There was something deeply disconcerting about this changeling, despite her looking so similar to the “commander” they met in the Rock. This one too seemed formidable, but her eyes were so unsettling. Maybe it’s because she’s scared she was captured?

She meant to talk to the changeling, but Milky was right… A patrol was bound to show up soon, and that was if these guys weren’t supposed to report periodically. Vanishing quickly was probably a good idea.

***

Luna walked briskly next to Chrysalis and they both could hear the angry shouting in the next room.

“I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve told them not to do this.” The queen complained, more to herself than to Luna, though the princess paid attention.

Cadance’s palace was too big in Luna’s opinion. It’s crystal walls created too much of a racket every time somepony spoke too loudly and they reflected too much of the bright light that was everywhere because of the white clouds and snow that seemed perpetual. But if Cadance liked it, she was fine with it.

She could also remember Celestia saying it had an important function, when she sent off the ponies to colonize this place, but she couldn’t remember. She was too young at the time and the shouting was driving her to anger.

Chrysalis’ magic opened the door and they were greeted by the sight of one of the changeling queen’s Praetorians laying in a couch with a pillow over her head and her superior shouting at her like she was an angry mother. Meanwhile, the changeling head doctor used her magic to examine the laying soldier, covering her in its glow.

“Brilliant! Our first operation outside the Rock and you’re acting up like a bloody child! You’re embarrassing me in front of the Queen!” The angry officer yelled at the other, much to the doctor’s annoyance.

“Will you stop yelling at her? It’s not helping and it’s not her fault!” She stared with hard eyes and flat ears at the other, who huffed angrily and looked the other way. Where she suddenly was scared at the sight of the open doors and the queen, followed by the princess.

“How many times do I need to tell you snowflakes not to yell at your subordinates.” The queen stared down the angry one, causing her to sit on her haunches and let her ears fall. “I’m the only one that yells in this nuthouse.”

Then the queen turned to the doctor, while Luna still looked curiously at the dejected big changeling. “What is wrong with her?”

“She’s inherited Bossy’s archetype is what’s wrong with her.” The medical changeling complained rubbing her temples.

“Not her…” Chrysalis kept her own temper in check this time and indicated the changeling in the couch with a nod. “Her.”

The doctor sighed. “We thought she had Grumpy’s archetype, but she actually inherited Laggy’s.”

Luna walked next to Chrysalis and listened in curiously while the doctor went on with frustration. “Her H.H.T. axis is borked. I don’t think she’s fit for field duty.”

“Can’t you help her?” Luna looked worriedly at the three of them. Even if she didn’t fully understand what they were talking about, it seemed bad. “Give her a healing potion or something?”

“We can deal with messed up genetics, but there’s no healing potion that can fix messed up psychematics…” The small changeling sighed.

“What?” Luna recoiled a bit and the queen sighed.

“The things that make heredity work, Luna.” Knowing she was going to ask, the queen went on. “Apparently, I’m all kinds of messed up so my children earn that from me. Simply put, most changelings develop into reasonably healthy adults because they found a mostly healthy environment that counteracts it. But the Praetorians are made with a modified version of the process, and that really messes things up.”

Luna wasn’t convinced. “Chrysalis, Chocolate Velvet told us how these things work. That is not how it’s supposed to be.”

Chrysalis didn’t let that upset her, though. “He only understands the physical part of it, Luna. Souls, as we know them don’t exist in his original world. Whatever happened to my mother really messed up hers and I inherited it. And my changelings inherit it from me. But because it’s magical in origin, it can work out in the normal ones. But not in the Praetorians.”

Chrysalis sat by the one in the couch. “With the samples I got from Celestia I realized that I’m what would pass for an ‘alicorn changeling’. Probably all the brood mothers were… But, because the curse messed up our souls, hers is purer. So, I figured I could use it to mess around with our biology and psychematics… Our souls. To create more ‘alicorn changelings’.”

“The result were the Praetorians…” Luna said. “But something didn’t work as you planned.”

“I didn’t want other queens that I couldn’t boss around… I wanted loyal super-soldiers, so I made several modifications and made them psychologically dependent on me. But they kept developing seven different flaws that always repeated themselves. We called them Archetypes. They’re parts of me that kept showing up in them and overpowered their entire expression of their own souls. They turned insane and their mind collapsed.”

Luna kept listening to Chrysalis, keeping quiet and letting the queen tell her all she wanted. “Eventually I decided that instead of disposing of them, I should study them and that worked. I figured out how to suppress my own instability in them and I finally managed to make Praetorians that worked. They still inherit the Archetypes, but they were under control.”

She put a hoof on the laying changeling’s back. “This one is as normal as she’ll ever be… But she’s inherited the archetype that messes up her hormonal system… ‘Laggy’. She needs medication to fix that and soon she’ll be fine and won’t ever be overpowered by her Archetype. Unless the original one dies.”

“How, exactly?”

“Well, I thought I was done with it, and disposed of the overpowered ones, but the original Archetypes kept showing up as the Praetorians grew up and overpowered them… Always seven at a time. So, I studied them some more and figured out that their souls lacked the mechanism that allowed them to go to wherever souls are supposed to go when they leave their dead body.”

“They can’t die.” Luna gasped quietly and was going to say more, but instead kept her mouth shut and let Chrysalis continue.

“They dislodge the souls of the heathy ones of the right Archetype and simply take their place… Letting them live fixed the problem on the Praetorians, but since they’re dependent on me, if I rejected them, their mind would collapse and they would go insane in the worst ways possible. So, I got them a place with my soldiers, close to me. And now, we got seven broken ‘Chrysalises’ running around, unstable as Pinkie Pie in a bad day. Drawn to each other and to me, like a splintered soul seeking to be reunited. I even grew to like them.”

“Chrysalis, this is horrifying.” Luna shook her head. “What have you done?”

“Ah… Now, here’s the kicker…” The queen stared so harshly at Luna, from her higher stature, that the princess recoiled a bit. Not so much her poise, but the shift in tone surprised Luna in a second moment. “I thought it was curious… Because my mother died alright. And so, did my sisters…”

The queen saw understanding in the cyan eyes. “They can’t have inherited that eldritch piece of madness from me. So, I looked further into it…”

Luna’s jaw dropped a bit.

“Your adored old sister is the fucked-up abomination that lacks the mechanism to go to wherever disembodied souls are supposed to.” Grimacing like a demonic beast about to pounce, she grabbed Luna by her peytral. “Isn’t it funny? She can’t generate children and she can’t die, which is exactly what every single soul in this fucking insane asylum of a world is supposed to do.”

Her face approached Luna’s. “Care to explain, dear little Moonie? Because I don’t think that a glorified sex-toy is all you and Celestia wanted from me…”

Luna’s eyes hardened though, and she projected her magic forward, pushing away the queen. Chrysalis pushed back in a display of her own strength and immediately regretted. She might as well have tried to push a mountain.

“Choose your words carefully when you refer to my sister, Chrysalis.” Luna imposed forward with her wings flared. “Friendship is a two-way road.”

The queen smiled mockingly, not intimidated. “So are favors, Moonie.”

“We have told you what you needed to know, Chrysalis.” Luna managed to look down at Chrysalis, despite being shorter. “When we trust you enough, we may choose to tell you more.”

The two stared at each other while the doctor by the couch seemed worried, but the changeling laying in the couch didn’t worry at all. Suddenly the sound of someone obnoxiously clearing their throat attracted their attentions. Myrmirex stood by the door with a large looking thestral. The first wearing his robes and the other in his Lunar Guard barding.

“Are we interrupting something, my queen?” The creepy changeling said. “We have news of our little trap. It seems a little fly may have landed, despite us doubting Princess Luna that she had arrived.”

The two of them kept their eyes locked for another second before Chrysalis finally looked at her servant. “Where is she?”

It was the thestral who answered with a grave voice. “Princess Cadance’s personal guards seem to have attacked one of our checkpoints with a sort of blizzard spell. Three lunar guards and three praetorians are missing.”

“I’m surprised Celestia let Cadance simply have an additional guard.” Chrysalis mused.

“They’re not guards.” Luna said and showed a small blush in her face. “They’re harlots she employs at the Bordello of Candy. They just dress ceremoniously to accompany her around.”

Chrysalis grinned mischievously. “Resourceful little courtesans these, that can take on three Lunar Guards and three Praetorian changelings.”

Luna simply blinked twice, unable to find the words to reply to that.

“Now, that ‘Bordello of Candy’ sounds like the kind of place that would come out of Cadance’s perverted little mind.” She grinned some more. “I think we ought to see it.”

“Fine!” Luna huffed a little flustered. “Get your changelings to watch the palace. We’re going with my guards at the place.”

The queen agreed with a grin and looked at her assistant. “Get Bossy to bring back all the Praetorians and keep the palace locked down. The princess and I are going on a date.”

***

Twilight left her home with the entirety of her Royal Guard: all two of them. But still, they were a sight to behold! The princess wore her magus barding and her focus scepter stood securely strapped to her side. It was lightly armored, made of purple magically tinted gold and fit her body over a silken white and purple robe. Long and flowing, along with a white cape marked with her royal seal: a winged oval which contained her cutie mark, all in her colors. Atop her head she wore her biggest badge of office, as it was known by the ponies around her, the Big Crown Thingy.

Well, Twilight didn’t like that name! Ponies who called it that were the same ones that would call the Alicorn Concordat as the ‘Princess Meddling Accord’. It wasn’t that big, it wasn’t a crown, but a diadem and it wasn’t a thing. It was one of the most important things… Artifacts in Equestria: the Element of Magic.

She was flanked by her two guards, both of which carried their purple tinted muskets and halberds on their backs. Ponies moved out of the way and stared in wonder as if something in them drew them to reverence. When the Princess wore that thing… Artifact, she meant business.

For some it was the simple display of wealth and position. Ponies were drawn to follow authority figures. Especially those with enchanted armor. They made things easier and took care of the big problems like monsters and evil overlords. They allowed ponies to focus on the simple things like caring for their flowers, tending to their little shop or whatever their job was.

For the younger, it was the jovial beauty and radiant celebrity. A pony that drew their eyes and hearts. She inspired them to be better. To reach higher. This was one of those ponies that, by the simple virtue of existing compelled them to be the best they could, and then go beyond. A Bearer of an Element of Harmony, she didn’t get there by being born into a caste. The pony that wanted nothing more than to take care of the library but answered to the call and got there because she made do.

For others, it was the combination of wings and horn. They saw her as the continuation of the ultimate authority in their entire existence. She seemed to shine under the sunlight with a special glint of how much she existed to show ponies the way. The youngest generation of the ponies that made things work and made Equestria into a utopia.

And finally, for those that were attuned to it, the magic she radiated hit them like a grape-scented wind and made them think of the amazing power that moved reality and that she commanded with her will like it was hers to play with.

But, for certain ponies she was all that and more. She was a beloved friend, with all her shortcomings, but that still managed to break through Discord’s confounding magic. The one that brought them together as a single unified force that thwarted the evil of the heartbroken princess of the night. The one that stood against the dark magic of King Sombra and of Lord Tyrek. The one that taught, learned and lent strength and wisdom. The shinning beacon in the fog of animosity.

The heir to the Sun and Moon.

The one they would follow to the depths of Tartarus or against the godlike power of the Matriarch of Equestria.

The annoying smartypants little sister.

The aunt that gave the second-best toys… Suddenly Flurry Heart looked around at the armored ponies, none of which capable of giving her milk or was the head honcho. She realized she was on the wrong side of this whole mess. Fortunately, nopony could understand what the baby said to herself.

Twilight wished they wouldn’t do that. It drew a lot more attention than she needed, and it made her remember Archduke Blueblood. She only wore that whole paraphernalia because it was her due and it made her better at her job.

Still, Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rarity stood with Shining Armor, the baby, Starlight Glimmer, the maid and the dragon. They looked like they were posing for a photo shoot, with Pinkie wearing that festive gambeson of hers and Applejack with her Stetson and brown leather barding, next to Rarity and her stylish gambeson. Not to mention Shining Armor next to Starlight and Miss Calcite holding a grumpy baby.

What were they thinking? They were staring at her in the middle of the road!

“How come I don’t have a fancy jewel to wear?” Starlight asked nopony in particular.

“Get used to it.” Spike chuckled next to her.

“Girls, Shinny.” Twilight grinned through her annoyance, trotting next to them. It was impossible to not get excited next to them. Before a big mission. Even if it was that particular mission. “We’re missing Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash and Cadance, right?”

“Cadie went to the Crystal Empire to fetch our things.” Shinning said. “She can teleport to the ship.”

Cadance’s raw power never ceased to amaze Twilight. She teleported all the way to the Crystal Empire! Wow! “Well, let’s get to the airship and prepare to defend her until we can leave.

“Twilight, what do we do if Princess Celestia is waiting for us at the hangar?” Pinkie didn’t sound so sure, suddenly.

Twilight steeled her resolve. This time she would have her friends and all her assisting regalia. She could even stand to hope the ponies of Ponyville would side with her. Her diadem weighted ever so slightly heavier in her head. She was doing what she was meant to do. Couldn’t hold back a smile.

“We’ll confront her. And we will succeed… We are doing what is right.”

Spike pointed behind her. “What about angry looking ponies in barding and with guns?!”

She turned around to see a group of twelve ponies. They were all earth ponies and one unicorn. One female. They wore a particular leather barding that Twilight wasn’t used to seeing often. They were led by a breathless obese pony and a resentful looking mare.

She flared her wings. “Lord Protector Grape Donut. I thought I would eventually meet you.”

He just blinked a couple of times, completely flabbergasted to the point of forgetting all his resentment and dyspnea. “You know who I am?”

“Of course, I do! You are the appointed head of Ponyville’s Local Militia!” Twilight put herself in a fighting stance. “You are certainly here because Princess Celestia ordered me arrested! You must know that I am well within my rights… Neigh… Duty to investigate and prosecute as a Princess of Equestria! And I will fight for it, if I must!”

“Did she just say ‘neigh’?” Applejack looked like she’d eaten something past due. But Rarity shushed her and flashed a grin like she was watching the best drama since the Tale of Nightmare Moon in theaters.

But the target of Twilght’s words didn’t react so well... The fat earth pony grimaced and fought back his tears before hitting the dirt with a strong hoof. “Stop mocking me!”

Twilight took a step back, half surprised, half confused. “I am not… What?”

“This is all your fault!” The pony accused her and to Twilight’s greater confusion, she watched as the ponies next to him agreed and nodded with hard expressions. Some of them pawed at the packed dirt road as though they were ready to charge. Ponies on both sides, the same ones that recognized her majesty, watched as confused as she was.

“If it wasn’t for you, it would be me these ponies would cheer for!” He accused with a step towards her, actually looking intimidating, despite the distance. “I was the one that was supposed to protect the town!”

Ponies reacted with shocked surprise at his statement and a few of them started booing and raising accusatory hooves, taking sides with their princess. But the fat pony never relented, despite being called jealous and loser. He had endured worse. His dulled grape-colored coat didn’t shine in the sun and his leather barding had seen better days, but he stood his ground. “I’ll arrest your purple flank and drag you to a cell if it is the last thing I do!”

More booing and angry shouts, but he still stood his ground. He would not give up. And for the first time, something different happened: his ponies stood with him. Then, he finally said it. “By the authority of her Royal Highness, the Solar Diarch of Equestria Princess Celestia, I order you and your cohorts to stand down and surrender your weapons! You are under arrest!”

Ponies gasped at the mention of Celestia’s name. Suddenly, the whole town wasn’t so sure. A rift seemed to form, and ponies began arguing among themselves.

“Wow. He’s kinda good.” Shinning said next to Twilight, but she stared downward, still somewhat confused until she finally understood what was happening there. Besides the pony trying to arrest her, that is.

“Oh no…” She whispered to herself and a sense of guilty grasped her stomach, one very similar to when the Changeling Queen and her lackey interrogated her.

Then Rarity stepped next to her, looking serious and holding her wheellock pistols in her magic. “What a loser. Let’s do this, Twilight.”

“Rarity! Wait!” The princess shrieked and her magic forced Rarity’s weapons down. Her white friend and others stared at her. “These ponies are sick!”

“Indeed, they are!” Rarity agreed with an aggravated tone. “You wouldn’t believe the way they treated me!”

“No!” Twilight shook her head in distress. “Really, really sick!”

When they stared at her again, this time with confusion, she explained. “They are suffering from PISD!”

“Pissed?” Pinkie frowned confused.

“No! Psychic Imperative Stress Disorder!” She looked at the militiaponies, still waiting for them to surrender, and then back to her friends. “Ponies are born with talents and destinies to guide them and will seek to fulfill them subconsciously. But if they can’t… They’ll become restless, aggressive and unpleasant! Eventually their talents become corrupted and they will devolve into malcontent evil creatures that want nothing more than to disrupt other ponies’ happiness until they can’t even be called sentient anymore!”

Wait.” Applejack stuck out behind Rarity. “You mean… Cutie Mark Failure Insanity? That is a thing? I thought Applebloom was trying to wrangle me!”

“She probably was.” Starlight stood next to Twilight. “But it is a real thing! It’s the psychological mechanism that makes ponies seek their cutie marks and look for roles to fill in the community where they can share their talents with others. I tried to exploit that.”

“Discord abused this mechanism to turn you girls against me when he escaped!” She turned to the ponies opposing them. “These ponies need help! It’s my fault they’re like this!”

“Oh, come on, Twilight…” Starlight rolled her eyes, a little disappointed since she was agreeing with Twilight until then. “It’s not your fault.”

“If we didn’t live here, they would be the ones to protect Ponyville! Because we live here, they can’t fulfill their destinies!” Twilight sounded frantic. “It is my fault! I need to help them!”

***

Not far from there another crowd had formed. A group of ponies tripped over themselves to serve the big white alicorn sitting in a pillow next to a coffee table. Next to her was her loyal guard, dressed in gold and looking like the image of serenity at his post. They made a point of ignoring the kerfuffle not far from them. The Princess was in their establishment and they would serve her! She would have her tea and pie even if Ponyville was about to turn into a battlefield!

They noticed the brown alicorn that arrived too, and they would assist the Prince-Consort however way he would need too. Even if the blanket over his back looked like it belonged in a pile of rags and his mane was a mess. They started by taking away the pony-sized chair and providing a pillow.

“Celestia! I came as fast as I could! Twilight escaped!” He said as he sat and put his hooves on the table.

“I know.” She said calmly and smiled at him. “What happened to you?”

“Twilight banished me… It took me a while to escape…” He said.

“She locked you in the library and you crawled out a window.” She concluded with an amused smile and he grunted.

“Yes.”

She giggled while he stared at what she was watching beyond the crowd and other angry crowd full of angry ponies shouting at each other, to see Twilight exchanging words with her friends and shouts with some armored ponies.

He looked at Celestia. She was still watching the scene. “She’s right there. What are you doing sitting here?”

“I am watching Twilight do her thing.” The princess grinned brightly. “It’s awe inspiring.”

Chocolate looked at Twilight flapping her wings and shouting at the armored ponies. He couldn’t hear what she was saying but rallied the crowd. Then, the pony leading the others said something else and he too drew cheers from the crowd. Ponies shouted and pointed hooves the same as Twilight and the other pony.

“I think there is a civil war ready to break out there, Celestia.” He sounded worried, but she simply kept smiling.

“Of course, there is… I thought you would be used to it already. They make they make drama for the noblest of causes and silliest of mistakes. They discover things and they explore their knowledge. They find secrets and do all they can to unravel them. They make mistakes and they comprehend. They are alive.”

He stared at her, drooping his head in curiosity, and she went on. “I make mistakes too. Sometimes.”

“Huh?”

“I sent Twilight here to find her friends and to distance her from the canterlotian nobility. She was too naïve. Too well intentioned.” Her face turned sour. “You have no idea how unbearable Cadance was as a teenage little rising noble.”

He let out an unintentional chuckle.

“In doing that, I put Twilight at odds with some ponies and they became incapable of fulfilling their Animus Imperative.”

“Their what?” He looked

“Their Animus Imperative…” She mused. “Ponies today call it their ‘destinies’. If Equestria was a song, ponies would be the melody, and their Animus Imperatives would be their instruments. Like a song, it ebbs and flows. It changes. It grows and diminishes. If a wrong note is played, others react, and the song is healed.”

He couldn’t keep from staring at her. She spoke with such wonder. A sense of bewilderment. “If there was a war to be fought, brave ponies would be born. If famine would strike… Farmer and merchant ponies would answer to the call and fix the problem. One way or another.”

She smiled at him. “When an old queen lost her little sister because she failed her Animus Imperative, six wonderful ponies were born and brought forth the Elements of Harmony to mend her soul.”

“Balance was restored, and Harmony prevailed.” She looked at the crowd again.

“So…” He started carefully. “Twilight being here was a problem. How do things fix themselves?”

“Well, we’ve found ourselves here, right now, haven’t we?” She looked at him, letting him process what she had said until he nodded, but them looked at her.

“What is my Animus Imperative?” He asked curiously.

“Why, it is to please me.” She gave him a mock superior smile. “Isn’t it obvious?”

He deadpanned and she gave him the final forkful of her pie, putting it in his mouth before standing up. “Come on. Time to take our places to fix the problem I’ve unwittingly created.”

He stood too. “I don’t think it can be called your mistake, Celestia. If you hadn’t sent Twilight, bad things would’ve happened, right?”

“Correct.” She smiled cheerfully. “But bad rulers concentrate power and cast blame. Good ones delegate power and take responsibility. Come on, Sir Velvet. It is time to shine!”

The Princess War, pt 2

“Twilight, I understand wanting to help these ponies.” Applejack stared at the militiaponies and then back at her. “But I think we got bigger problems to deal with! Besides, how would we even help them right now?”

“We are waiting, princess!” Grape Donut called loudly backed by his ponies with muskets trained on them. Almost a dozen barrels aimed at her and friends, certainly loaded with magical subduing bullets but that wasn’t the point.

Rarity thankfully, like the others remained quiet and patiently ready.

Twilight bit her lip and her eyes shifted nervously among the ponies in front of her. She had heard both of them but wasn’t sure how to deal with the situation and found herself in a bind she didn’t know how to get out of. Those weren’t new in her life, but she needed time to think and she wasn’t preemptively prepared for the situation as she usually was.

She had made an argument as well as a small show of ‘princessdom’ to stall, but she was quickly running out of time.

She knew she and her friends could defeat these ponies in a fight even if they were already at a disadvantage, but then… How would they feel? It was an awkward situation to be in! She had to hurry too because Princess Celestia would notice the commotion eventually, and right then she would not be able to confront her. The sooner she left the better. She preferably should go already on her journey because she would need a lot more evidence than she had if it came to an official hearing. Which is what would happen if she ended up being captured too soon.

That is considering the Princess didn’t do something to her, and she still rather not think too much of all the things an evil Princess Celestia could do to her.

At the same time, she felt she had to do something about these ponies. If they just beat them and left, they would be left even worse than they already seemed to be. Wouldn’t they? The worst part of it was that she wouldn’t be sure how to proceed even if she had everything in her favor.

She knew that she would eventually find a way of dealing with that satisfactorily, but she didn’t have the time… Lord Donut already seemed like he’s patience was exhausted.

“Lord Donut!” She finally called. “Listen to me! We are on an important mission and you must let us go! I promise that we will get things right as soon as we’re back.”

“Do you take me for stupid, Princess?” He only got angrier. “This is your last warming!”

She scowled. Great time he had picked to start doing his job. It just so happened that she was starting to run out of her patience too! Things could only get worse from there.

“Halt!” A familiar voice called from the sky and Chocolate Velvet dropped out of the blue, both figuratively and literally, standing close to Grape Donut’s ponies and drawing everypony’s attentions with his flamboyant display of large wings and shiny golden armor over his flowing white and blue robes.

“Princess Celestia finds herself extremely disappointed, Twilight Sparkle!” He pointed at her in such a dramatic display of attention-grabbing theatrics the princess imagined Rarity must have felt her title for drama-queen threatened. “Her Highness could not believe the mayhem you have created!”

Her eye trembled a bit. “That I created?! It’s all because-“

“Hush!” He shouted petulantly and standing on his hind legs. “Whatever you think you are doing is irrelevant! Were it not for you this would have been a perfectly fine day for Her Highness’ subjects of Ponyville!”

Back on his fours he turned around, letting his mane and robes flail around making him seen even bigger and addressed her while looking at the assembled ponies. “Now because of you and your retinue, ponies are pointing hooves and yelling at each other! Harmony weeps at such display of disarray.”

“Harmony weeps…” Applejack sighed. “For pony’s sake.”

“But!” Twilight caught and quieted herself, finally understanding what he was doing. He had managed to get the attentions of the general populace assembled nearby and had a similar effect on Grape Donut and his ponies too.

“No quarter for your insolence young princess!” He stared back at them and she shut her lips, but… Oh boy… Was he lucky she couldn’t put him in his place right then. “Had you and your misguided gang surrendered at first opportunity, as is expected from distinctive members of the nobility in such a situation, you would have spared the town of this most disruptive commotion!”

“He is enjoying this far too much…” Rarity mumbled to Twilight, unamused. “Really…”

The worst part is that some ponies seemed to be agreeing with him!

Finally, the alicorn turned to the line of militiaponies keeping his muzzle high. “Lord Protector!”

“Sir?!” Grape Donut started. “Yes! Your Highness?”

Her Highness expects Ponyville’s Finest to ensure that this situation is dealt with and order is restored with the utmost celerity!”

“Absolutely, your highness!” The pony thrust forward his chest, as much as his tight barding would allow, at least. “As the princess commands!”

“Outstanding! I shall leave you to it, then.” He jumped a little hop, flapped his wings, gained height and flew over the houses.

There was a moment of silence.

“I thought he was going to help us…” Semolina Pudding, like the others stared up the rooftops where he had vanished.

“Typical Canterlot. Doesn’t matter. It’s our job.” Their commander spat on the ground and then stared again at the princess and her group of friends. “You have been sufficiently warned! Have at them, ponies!”

In that exact moment a large magic energy shield manifested in front of the group of ponies backing the princess. A solid, curved wall of purple energy marked with the design of the star within a shield topped by three stars. The crackling of muskets signaled the assembled ponyvillians to spread in barely contained panic amid screams and even louder thundering hooves. Magical crystal bullets exploded harmlessly on the shield with a sequence of bangs and soft flashes.

A purple body shot up to the sky, the young dragon flew away between the houses with a white bundle and the pink pony dragged the crystal pony away, so fast Grape Donut barely noticed it. Muskets were fired again and two of his militiaponies fell to the ground with gasps as the magic in the bullets exploded on their faces, away from their barding, and released their subduing magic. Smoke rose from the Princess’ guards’ muskets at either side of the shield.

He didn’t have time to think, but figured they still had the advantage. His own ponies drew their batons and he was actually proud at the way they kept the formation. They would wait for his order to charge.

He also noticed that the orange pony, ‘The’ Applejack, charged towards them from one side of their magical shield and, from the other side, ‘The’ Captain Shining Armor also charged at them. Both were unarmed, it seemed, though the orange one had a holstered firearm in her barding and a greatsword. She didn’t seem keen on using them though, and he had no idea how an earth pony could use a greatsword effectively.

“Captain Armor!” The unicorn guard of the Princess tossed him her halberd and he caught it in mid sprint with his magic. The thing spun its momentum off in his magical grasp next to him while he closed the distance, pointing the butt side of the weapon towards his ponies.

They were two. And his ponies were more than ten. Grape Donut was perfectly convinced that they could beat these two for a starter especially after Twilight’s two guards had discharged their muskets.

“Charge them!” Grape Donut cried, but it was followed by cracking thunder in the sky. A storm of magical projectiles rained on them spiraling down from the purple alicorn who held her scepter next to her, high above.

His ponies where bombarded with a hail of exploding purple light and scattered, driven to panic by bright flashes and loud bangs. A broken formation, completely ineffective and still being hit by the princess’ magic.

Gunfire came from the back. He didn’t even know how, but both Ladies Rarity and Starlight Glimmer were BEHIND his line and the white unicorn moved like a ghost, blinking out of existence for an instant while his guard hit nothing but the air and then had his muzzle smashed by the guard of her hoof-held rapier when she reappeared. And next to her, the pinkish unicorn tied three of his ponies back to back with a spell. Complete with a bow.

It was near this moment that Semolina realized that she was not one of the fighters, should not be in the middle of all that, and did the only thing that she really could: dropped to the ground with a shriek and covered her head under the scary magic. Grape Donut though, thought fast and jumped on top of her to be hit in her place by the princess’ magic.

The result was that he found himself immobilized by a large pink ball of bubblegum. It smelled of tutti-frutti, but most importantly he realized they were hopelessly outclassed. The orange pony threw one of his against the ground and then kicked another, sending him reeling back. The scuffle ended when Captain armor tripped his lanky brown earth pony guard with the butt of his weapon and then pinned him to the ground with it holding the weapon with his hooves for leverage. Cleverly, his pony didn’t resist.

Half his ponies, including himself were stuck inside stupid bubblegum balls, and the others cowered a safe distance away or had surrendered.

“Hurry!” Twilight cried from above, pointing with a hoof and her friends broke into gallop, accompanied by her and Spike right above, as well as Pinkie Pie and the crystal pony maid, seemingly coming out of nowhere.

“I’m not prepared to do this sort of thing!” Miss Calcite did her best to keep up in her uniform, and Pinkie giggled, keeping next to her.

“Get them!!” Grape Donut did his best to remain still, but his bubblegum casing kept rolling around with him. “Get up and chase them! Go! GO!”

His shouts ended when the rolling ball shoved his face on the ground, but a few of his ponies did manage to find the courage and followed his orders. They would have to gain quite a significant ground in their chase, but they were not out yet. A part of his mind allowed him dreaming they could still stop their quarry. Even if they couldn’t, they would still try.

Far ahead, Spike flew next to Twilight and handed her the happily cheering baby, whom Twilight smiled at while quickly looking her over. She seemed to be alright.

“Twilight!” Applejack called her from the ground as they ran between the houses and the group divided itself in the narrow spaces. “What about Rainbow and Fluttershy!”

“They’ll have to catch up!” But she thought for an instant. “Rainbow will be fine! When the ship is moving, we’ll look for Fluttershy! Right now, we have to reach the Magic of Friendship and hope the crew kept her!”

***

Chocolate Velvet followed Celestia in a quick trot in between the ponyvillian houses, also using the small alleys, but different ones as they meant to go to the Militia Headquarters instead of chasing Twilight and her friends.

“I’m not sure this is going to work the way you intend, Celestia!” He nervously followed the quick pace she imposed. “The local militia can’t catch Twilight!”

“Of course, they can’t.” She didn’t stop or look back at him. “Twilight and her herd are seasoned adventurers with the best enchanted equipment we could make. Not to mention that they are constantly training and participating in our weekly sparring sessions. I never intended for them to succeed.”

“But… Twilight will escape!”

“Temporarily, yes.” She remained as calm as ever. “But Chrysalis said they are going to Griffinsky, the Lion’s Fortress in Snow Mountain hold. The only way they can reach it in Twilight’s airship is through Manehattan. They’ll need supplies and stopping at Manehattan will be enough risk already. Snow Mountain is to the North-East, and though griffon lands cover most of the eastern continent, she knows that she must go straight there because she is running from me and the Chancellor is desperate for support. He would invest in capturing a wayward princess for my favor.”

He listened quietly, still following her.

“She won’t make it to Manehattan, though. We will ambush them near Baltimare. Unfortunately, the Bordello of Candy is closed, but I’ve made reservations in a local casino resort!” She giggled and pranced excitedly in place for a while. “The guards will love the idea and Twilight, Cadance and their friends can relax for a while before we have a conversation. After all, if I went to Twilight now, she would feel cornered and could confront me. It would turn very ugly.”

“But, perhaps most Important…” She stopped at an intersection and looked around to see if anyone was around, them looked back at him. “We have to figure out what happened here.”

He was confused. “I thought you said that it was that they couldn’t seek to fulfil their destinies.”

“The Animus Imperative, yes.” She turned to him. “But I should have been aware that there was something wrong in here. I am willing to wager a significant amount of cake that somewhere along the administrative chain somepony was comfortable letting them be miserable because trying to fix the issue was going to involve a lot of work and bring attention to them filling their saddlebags with public security funds.”

Since he simply stared expectantly at her she went on. “Royal Treasury money for Ponyville’s militia is coming down to Ponyville through Canterlot County and complaints about the militia should be going up, but they never reached me. If the militia is not being useful, the local administration is going to reduce their funding because local resources can be used in any way they want. But that would be noticed by the Canterlot County administration and they would need to figure out what is going on, and then adjust the amount of money that is directed at Ponyville for public security, and also report to the Royal Treasury so that we stop putting money were it isn’t needed, because County and Royal resources can only be used for what they are destined. The whole system is coordinated by the administrations, they are supposed to communicate to each other, making each other’s job easier.”

“Well, if nopony knew that Ponyville Militia was wasting resources, then these would keep being transferred, but since they would not be needed at their destination, nopony would notice if they vanished. Not to mention that complaints are stopping somewhere in the chain. Complaints create noise, you know.”

“It could be somepony in the Ponyville Mayor’s office, it could be Lord Protector Grape Donut, but it could also be somepony in the County Militia Administration. It could be the archduke. It could be somepony in the royal treasury. It could be Shining Armor, since he is the one that gives me the reports from every branch of the Royal Guard and Local Militias. I believe the problem is with the County administration, because their inspectors report directly to the head of their department, so the Lord Protector for the County could be in trouble.”

Then she put a wing over his armored back and grinned like he was his buddy about to do some mischief. “So, here is what we are going to do: I have sent Crucible Wings to delay the airship. And you will join the militia and make sure that they don’t lose too badly… They need some motivation. Meanwhile, I will be in the Militia Headquarters or the Mayor’s Office, rallying my ponies to audit the whole thing.”

“What if I manage to capture Twilight?” He asked and gave him the smuggest of smiles and poked his chest with a hoof.

“Then I will get you something special, Sir Chocolate Velvet.”

***

While the majority of Ponyville’s local militia was ordered by their Lieutenant to converge and engage their targets in the streets, those were the ponies involved in the ‘Teleporter Fiasco’, as Semolina called it. The ones that held the damn thing and never even got involved until their boss told them to stop wasting time there.

The truth is that the ponies that had been sent to the Princess’ palace didn’t engage her and instead kept a standoff observation of their target. Nothing to do with the fact that she left the palace accompanied by two Royal Guards. Not at all. Later, they rejoined with the others.

The ponies sent to Sweet Apple Acres never arrived, instead remained with the ones in the teleporter because that seemed like less of a hassle than dealing with the Apples.

The ponies sent to Carousel Boutique never reported back and Grape Donut feared the worst. They probably went for lunch or something like that…

Other ponies that hadn’t reported in yet were the two pairs sent to Fluttershy’s cottage and to Rainbow Dash’s cloud mansion. The first pair was expected to succeed in their mission of apprehending the shy pegasus, but the second pair was pretty much considered out of action already.

The thing is that, despite his initial lack of faith in his mission and troops, Grape Donut knew what he was doing, after all, at one moment, he was very motivated with his career. So, when he found in town an old acquaintance from his time studying everything there was to know about military doctrine, he asked for a favor.

Because of that the two pegasus guardsponies of Ponyville were supposed to lay a watch over their resident Wonderbolt’s mansion and wait for his friend’s arrival. And so, they did. One a light gray male with a soft electric blue mane cut in the mohawk style, and the other a deep blue female, with a red and white long mane. Both wore their ‘pegasus-cut’ leather barding, complete with wheellock pistol on a holster and magical stunning baton.

They laid on a nearby cloud keeping watch over the cloud mansion. They hoof-made a small mound behind which they could hide and rest their front legs while holding their spyglasses. The ones issued by the militia weren’t very good or pretty, but they got their job done.

“I’m not seeing her on the upper floor.” The male one said in a calm and low voice. “Do you see her Candy?”

His answer was a soft snore.

“What? Candy?!” He looked to his side and was greeted by the sight of the cute blue mare laying on her back and snoozing without a care in the world. How she managed to sleep with the barding on he’ll never know but stared hard at her and called her in the loudest whisper he’d manage. “Candy! What the hay! Wake up!”

She started for an instant and stared at him. “What?! Is she out already?!”

“No! You’re sleeping!” He was almost angry. “Come on! This is our chance!”

“What?” She rubbed her eyes and barely seemed to focus on him.

He couldn’t decide if she was just still sleepy of if she really had forgotten what they had come there to do. “Candy! We gotta watch Rainbow Dash! If we do this right, Princess Celestia is gonna say nice things about us, we’re gonna get more funding and we’re gonna get better equipment! Ponies will like us more! Mayor Mare might even authorize a raise in our salary!”

“Yeah, yeah… I know.” She righted herself to lay on her belly, fumbling with her barding for a while until she found her own spyglass. “I just don’t think it’s going to make that much of a difference, you know?”

“What do you mean?” He watched as she held a sad face and brought her instrument to her eye rather disinterested in whatever she might ever see there.

“Canterlot doesn’t care about us…” She lowered her spyglass for an instant. “Sorry to burst your bubble. Really. But we won’t get more funding or fame. There’s somepony in Canterlot that’s dinning every night in a fancy restaurant thanks to us and money that should be coming to us.”

“Wow.” His eyes widened. “Do you really think so? I don’t know… Gramma always told me that Princess Celestia watched over us from her palace in Canterlot.”

The mare rolled her eyes. “Yeah… She’s too busy making sure that the rich ponies get richer so that they keep supporting her. How else do you rule a nation for… Heck… Thousands of years?”

“Geez, you’re very cynical, know that?” He frowned in a small display of annoyance. “Just because there are a few annoying ponies in Canterlot, it doesn’t mean that all of them are bad, or even that Princess Celestia is in cahoots with them or something like that. The princesses are perfect and everything they do is for the good of Equestria even if we don’t understand it right away.”

Then it was Candy’s turn to show a frustrated expression. “Let me know when you grow out of childhood crush on the princesses. Then we can discuss about us trying to apprehend one of their friends because the Big Mare in Canterlot decided we should. Twilight is probably missing her tribute or some horseapples like that.”

The pegasus mare then frowned deeply and spoke in a low, serious voice. “I hear they do all sorts of weird parties and orgies in those fancy airships of theirs… It’s the sort of thing too much money will do to you. It’s disgusting…”

“Yeah… I need to grow up, right?” The other pegasus deadpanned, but suddenly the cloud shifted a little and they turned around to see a big, scary griffon standing next to them. Emphasis on ‘scary’.

While she squeaked like a rubber toy, her partner gasped and let his spyglass fall through the cloud.

“Kept you waiting, huh? Are you with the Ponyville Militia?” He asked in a rough voice, the typical voice you’d expect from a hardened veteran. For some reason.

Griffons were big by the definitions of most ponies, and also scary by the same definition and, when they had the attitude to match, they were doubly scary. This one was all that and gray bodied, with their typical white head were a bizarre scar went up the right side of his face through his eye that was covered with a black eye-patch. His left eye seemed perfect, though. They didn’t know if its natural color was that icy gray or if he, somehow, had such a hardened and cold look about him that his eye seemed so. It made sense in the head of a pair of intimidated ponies.

He seemed ready for business too, wearing a black studded leather armor complete with metal plated armbands and leggings, not to mention gloves that allowed his claws through. The two ponies didn’t know why he carried weapons because those claws and his intimidating presence seemed more than enough to put out anything, but he had a collection of them. He carried one of the famous griffon revolver muskets on his back, on his side he had one of those new and fancy revolvers, though the revolver itself wasn’t adorned in any way. Finally, he had a knife across his chest.

He looked like a soldier, not like a law enforcement officer. That rubbed Candy Crush in the wrong direction.

For a second or two he simply stared at the two until the female pegasus cleared her throat and smiled awkwardly, offering a hoof. “Ah… Yes! We are with the Ponyville Militia! I’m Candy Crush. And he is Flight Worthy.”

The griffon bumped her hoof with his fist but spoke coldly. “I’ll have to report you to your superior officer for gossiping on watch duty.”

‘Definitively military…’ She grunted internally. ‘At least he didn’t catch me sleeping…’

The two ponies though, exchanged a glance, and then Candy insisted. “Hum. So, you’re our contact, right? What do we call you, then?”

“Flying Snake.”

“Oooh… Cool name.” She laughed awkwardly. “Were did you get the cool scar to match?”

“Don’t we have a job to do?”

“Oh! Yeah! Right! Uh…” While Candy Crush fumbled with her words, Flight Worthy approached the griffon with a more professional demeanor.

“Our mission is to apprehend Rainbow Dash. We’ve been scouting her mansion and she hasn’t left yet. She’s supposed to leave for Ponyville soon however, since her friends are waiting for her in Princess Twilight’s airship dock. We also have seen her through windows, and she seemed like she was getting ready to leave, grabbing stuff and such.”

The griffon hummed after acknowledging the pegasus and surveyed the building. “I’ll infiltrate from the top. You two create a diversion at the entrance.”

Candy Crush immediately realized she was getting the short end of the stick, the one that usually got beat up and was rewarded with a pat on the back, but before she could complain her companion had his chest all puffed up under his barding, looking like he belonged on the Royal Guard with a headful of all those words they used to make a pony do stupid things like ‘duty’ and ‘honor.

She simply sighed to herself and followed her companion to the door, waiting while he banged on it with his hoof. “Rainbow Dash! Ponyville Militia! Open up!”

There were a few seconds of silence, when Candy Crush eyed the top the cloud house and saw the griffon sneaking in through a window. Eventually, the answer came from inside. “Why?”

“Because you have to! It’s an official order from a royal-sanctioned law enforcement authority!” Flight Worthy shouted back and put his ear to the icy door only to have it smash against his face and throw him off the steps.

“Open enough for ya?” The blue pegasus chuckled like she had made a good joke and Candy Crush immediately drew her magical shock baton, holding it in her mouth and quickly taking the chance while her target was distracted. It was one quick and fluid motion that would’ve filled Royal Guards with jealousy.

Surprisingly, she also did manage to hit her target with its crystal point, completely surprising Dash, but nothing happened other than a small click. The two stared at each other, confused for a second, before the militiapony prodded her with the baton a few more times, without better results.

“Oh, for pony’s sake!!” She grabbed it with a hoof and shook it angrily.

At least Rainbow Dash had remained where she was, staring at the thing as much as Candy was, more curious than anything. “Wanna try again?”

The militia pony snarled and tried to hit the other in the head with the thing in her heel, but she was nowhere near as fast as Rainbow Dash, who jumped in and headbutted her causing both to roll down the steps. The baton fell through the cloud and Candy hoped to whatever gods might be listening the griffon wouldn’t take long to help when she landed on her back with Rainbow Dash over her.

Out of options under her opponent, she bit at Rainbow’s mane and pulled as hard as she could, bringing her down over herself and caused the surprised pegasus to yelp painfully. That earned her a kick on the belly that, even under the barding’s protection knocked the air out of her.

“Now you’re gonna get it!” She had lost her grip on the other’s mane and Rainbow pushed her against the cloud, making it a weird fluffy hole she was stuck on. She couldn’t even see it, so fast it all happened, but she heard when her assailant’s hoof connected, and bone broke with a harsh jolt of pain all the way to her neck.

Candy’s hooves found her muzzle with another jolt of pain and a muffled cry. She prepared to receive another hit, but what happened instead is that the griffon tackled the pegasus and tumbled away with her.

Mid-tumble he drew his knife and tried to hit his target’s jaw with its butt, but before he could connect she kicked him with all four legs at his midsection and flew away, landing a good distance from him, watching while he recovered himself. She kept a fighting stance, with flared wings and pawed at the cloud menacingly. “Who the hay are you?!”

He stood on his hind legs and stared back at her while he sheathed his knife. “Crown-Registered mercenary and bounty-hunter. You’re in contempt with Ponyvillian Local Militia and I am under contract to take you in. Now stand down before I hurt you bad!”

“Heh! Make me!” Her muzzle flashed a cocky smile.

His eyes narrowed in concentration.

His hand flew faster than any griffon’s and drew his griffon-made revolver. Fast as lightning it shot its five magic ball bullets and all five of them collided on the icy wall the pegasus literally pulled out of the cloud in front of her. That she then kicked and turned into thousands of sharp ice shards that showered against the griffon. Stupid… He was old enough to know not to fight a trained pegasus on a damn cloud.

“Dammit!” He grunted with a wing over his face. Feathers froze and shredded, his whole wing burned with cold and hundreds of diminutive cuts.

Next thing she had flown away with her cocky laughter.

A rainbow trail led inside her house, her bedroom he remembered, and then towards Ponyville. He thought of giving chase immediately, but the blue pegasus from the militia had not climbed out of the cloud yet, and she could be injured; so he went to her, finding her laying on her back, holding her muzzle in her hooves and with a bloodied barding.

“You’re injured give me your hoof.” He laid by the hole in the cloud and reached with his arm, pulling up the injured mare.

“You okay?!” The griffon gave her some space after she had stabilized herself in a sitting position with one heel over her muzzle.

“Bitch broke my muzzle!” She stared at the blood on her heel. “I can’t believe this! I don’t get paid enough for this! Oww…”

“Baton malfunctioned?” He was checking his own flight feathers but noticed the pegasus seemed to be in undue pain, so he turned his attention back to her. “Let me see.”

She raised her muzzle a bit for him to see. “It’s not that bad. Hold still. It’s broken, alright, but your militia’s doctor should be able to set it.”

“Pfft. Our ‘doc’. He went to Canterlot after he had got enough credit with the Canterlot University and never returned.” She grumbled angrily. “We go to Ponyville’s hospital when we’re injured.”

“Get a hold of yourself soldier. Job’s not done yet: she flew to Ponyville. The rest of the militia must be getting ready to assault her meeting point with her friends.”

“Yeah, yeah…” While the griffon grabbed his revolver rifle, she went to Flight Worthy, still out cold, laying on his side with barely a scratch and a small bruise on his cheek. She rolled her eyes… She got punched and headbutted resulting in a broken muzzle. He got hit by a giant door and barely got a bruise.

She kicked him in the belly through the barding and he yelped more in surprise than in pain and stared at her. “What happened to your muzzle?!”

“Rainbow Dash kissed me. What do you think?! Get up already, she flew to Ponyville.” She turned her back to him and walked toward the griffon. Really didn’t want to know how her face looked like right now.

Fortunately, the griffon was already done working his flight feathers and was ready to go. “Can you fly?”

“Yeah.” She grumbled some more. “Not like I got a choice anyway.”

“Stop complaining.” His berating deep voice almost made her recoil. “Your technique was sloppy. Had it been a real fight you’d be dead now.”

She didn’t answer. Simply jumped off the cloud and took flight ahead of the other two.

***

Brisk Bronco and Marble Hoof walked the small trail out of town, bordering the forest and were very happy with the job they had gotten. Capturing Fluttershy ought to be the easiest task of this whole operation. Both earth ponies, one was a larger than the typical specimen, with yellow coat and orange mane going with his eyes. Would’ve been impressive looking if not for his dulled colors and near constant pissed off expression. The other was a deep brown with a sand-colored mane and green eyes with white hooves, hence his name, and was much comelier, not to mention a normal size.

While the first was known for being aggressive and often intimidated ponies by threat of violence in the random jobs they actually got in the Militia, the second was levelheaded and remained one of the quasi-professional militiaponies, even if he had some weird ideas. He was one of the last members to join and still retained some semblance of sense of duty. He liked to think that was the reason the Lord Protector had paired him with his partner, for example.

That is, Brisk Bronco was never a very sweet and nice pony, but he could swear he had gotten worse when things started going south in the militia, and his strength started serving more as a liability than an asset. He knew his friend wasn’t bad or anything, but he did have a short temper and often didn’t seem to understand basic things about living in a community.

Soon the pair reached Fluttershy’s Cottage and all her animals seemed to be apprehensive over something. Maybe they realized their caretaker was going to travel for a while?

While Marble hoof stopped to look at a pair of squirrels hurrying up a tree, the other went up to the door and violently banged on the door, yelling like a deranged psychopath.

“Open the door Fluttershy! That is an order!”

“Dude! What are you doing?” The other held his hoof on his own. “Are you crazy?! That is not how we approach a suspect!”

“She’s not a suspect, bro!” Simply banged on the door again. “She’s a criminal that we gotta apprehend and she’s a mare. Gotta show them who’s boss. They get uppity if you don’t put them in their place.”

“Gee… And I wondered why Blackie left you.”

He banged some more on the door. “Fluttershy! Open this door before you regret it.”

“Man, how did you pass the ‘de-escalating approach’ training?”

“I showed that pansy-flank instructor who’s a savage brute.” He smiled to himself. “Yeah… Showed him good.”

He was going to bang at the door again, but it opened. They didn’t see the yellow pegasus they expected, though. Instead, it was a light-green earth pony mare with a messy reddish mane and purple eyes in a very relaxed expression.

“Dude. Your aura is like… All aggressive. Do you need something to relax?”

“Who are you?” The big earth pony stared her squarely in the eyes. She simply blinked slowly.

“I’m Tree Hugger. I’m taking tea. Herbal tea. With my friends. Do you want some?”

“I don’t want no tea!” Brisk aggressively put his hoof on the doorframe. “Get Fluttershy out here, now!”

Marble gave up and sat to the side, massaging his forehead in frustration while the pony by the door seemed unfazed. “Fluttershy’s a little scared right now. Of you. So, could you like… Stop yelling and such?”

“Lady, get your friend out here before I go in and smash your faces in for interfering with militia business!” Her mane waved about with his angry shouting, but her face remained serene.

“Be right back.” She stepped away from the door and turned inside. “Discord. This pony wants to smash your face in.”

“Great… Will you let me do the talking, please?” The smaller and frustrated pony pushed the other back to see the draconequus standing before the door when next he looked.

He raised an eyebrow and petted his beard. “I don’t recognize you two. Who are you, again?”

“Ah…” Marble raised his hoof, all friendly and smiling. “Hello, Mister Discord. I mean… Lord of Chaos, right? Hello! I am Marble Hoof. Nice meeting you!”

When the creature simply stared critically at him the pony went on. “You see, we’re here to invite Lady Fluttershy to come with us. She’s needed at the Ponyville Militia Headquarters. That is all!”

Then he gave Discord his most friendly and confident smile.

The Lord of Chaos narrowed his eyes, though. At that Fluttershy appeared from the door, smiling sheepishly. She wore two robes, and the one on top seemed to conceal light barding, if Marble hoof could thrust his eyes. Over her back, her saddle had several pouches and straps with all sorts of containers and she also wore a pair of matching saddlebags.

“Fluttershy, my dear… I believe you said you would be going on a trip with your friends?” He still stared at the two militiaponies.

“Yes.” She grinned awkwardly. “That is why Tree Hugger will be caring for my animals.”

“Where are you going, again?” He looked at her. “Last time I saw you with this outfit, the diamond dogs had uncovered some old monster in a mine.”

She simply hummed quietly. “Well, it’s an adventure.”

“And yet these two… Dumbbells for Brains and Smarmy Hooves, came here to take dear little Fluttershy to Ponyville… Wearing barding and with these shooting sticks ponies call pistols. Because you’re needed at the militia headquarters.”

The two simply nodded.

“Sounds fun!” He concluded with glee. “Let’s go!”

“Discord!” The pegasus called frantically. “Wait!”

He snapped his fingers and all four of them vanished in a flash. Tree Hugger simply, calmly, closed the door.

***

Those of the militia that were not in condition to chase Twilight and her cohort right away returned to the headquarters, as was the standard procedure. They would care for what injuries they had suffered, nothing too serious, such as bruises, one chipped tooth, a small cut, a few mildly burnt coats and copious amounts of tutti-frutti bubblegum.

Despite his embarrassment of being rolled around inside his bubblegum casing, Grape Donut was aware that his ponies were really doing their best, even properly setting up assistance for those more injured when they arrived in the offices area, an effort Semolina, as the one that actually wasn’t injured in any way, took the lead on. It felt magical to see things working like they were supposed to, for a change.

They were soon joined by his contact the bounty-hunter griffon, and his two ponies sent after Rainbow Dash. Semolina quickly went to see Candy’s broken muzzle because Flight Worthy’s bruise wasn’t too serious. The griffon said he’d himself tend to his burnt and scrapped wing. He did go talk to the Lord Protector, though.

“Thanks for coming, Snake.” The pony said, offering him a pack of ice and them going back to removing the sticky substance from his coat. “Did she give you trouble?”

“I was stupid. Underestimated her.” An ointment over his wing’s muscled parts alleviated some of the burn. He looked around for a few seconds. “What is the situation? The Princess seems to have hit you tough.”

“We would be dead if she meant it.” The pony sat on the floor with a frowny expression. “They’re not out of the town yet or the ponies that chased them would be back by now… We must go… They’re probably at Twilight’s dry dock.”

“I’ll be on it as soon as I can get my wing ready to fly.” The mercenary was wrapping bandages over his wing and his disposition surprised and made the pony think of how much that thing must’ve hurt, and he wondered where the griffon got the motivation to keep going. Oh, yeah… Sort of the problem with the militia. Right.

The door opened and a Royal Guard pegasus came in, all white and blue with his golden barding. He brought all attentions to him when he simply stood by the door. Then the Princess entered, and the ponies gasped. She was followed by Sir Chocolate Velvet, who closed the door behind her.

Ponies bowed before her and she gently responded the act with an ostensive nod of her own before she spoke. “Lord Protector, your ponies are chasing Princess Twilight to her airship. She means to escape the town.”

He rubbed his hooves together, suddenly completely overwhelmed by his self-consciousness of the present situation. But before he could say anything, she continued. “The ship will take some time to power its magical engines, I am told, and your ponies can still join those who chased them and are, no doubt, attacking the airship right now, before she leaves her berth.”

He swallowed his insecurity. “Yes, your highness. We’ll redeploy as soon as we offered first aid to our injured.”

The princess nodded, looking around at the ponies doing their best not to stare and busy themselves with getting ready to go back out there. Then Semolina came to Grape Donut with a very worried expression. Honestly, it almost scared him that she called him by his actual name.

“Grape! Candy Crush’s not well… I mean, her muzzle is broken. She needs to go to the hospital and get medical help.”

He frowned a little. It was very fortunate that, of all that happened, it was only their ‘pretty pegasus’ that had a more serious injury. He worried, though, if it would leave her with any sort of scar or deformity… She wouldn’t take it well. Then he noticed the princess was near his pony. “That is gonna be a problem. The hospital is probably full of scared ponies and the odd injured in the stampede. She may have to wait.”

And that made things worse, because he knew her injury should be tended to fast.

Meanwhile, Celestia approached her slowly and stared curiously. The beautiful blue pegasus sat atop one of the desks and held a wet cloth to her muzzle. She looked away from the princess, but Celestia took it as shame. Her beautiful face had a very swollen and dark colored muzzle, that also seemed a little offset to the side.

“Chocolate.” The princess looked back at her knight, whose ears perked up at the mention of his name. “Her muzzle is broken. See if you can help her.”

He quickly trotted up to her taking the space Celestia left for him and reached for the cloth with his magic. “Don’t worry. I was a doctor before becoming a knight.”

He looked at her now exposed muzzle and the pegasus shifted her eyes to Semolina, standing nearby. The latter shrugged and put on the desk a tray with first aid supplies she was carrying. Candy resigned to remaining still and let the alicorn examine her, which he did by touching her with his telekinetic magic.

“It’s an incomplete fracture.” He stared intently at her muzzle and she blushed a little. “I can set it in place. Now I’ll cast an anesthetic spell. Hold still.”

Suddenly her muzzle ‘clicked back in place’ and she squeaked, more in surprise than in pain. The alicorn quickly rolled up some of the bandage with some sort of ointment and placed the two rolls inside her nostrils, them covering and fixating her muzzle with more bandage on the outside. Then he stepped back.

“Try to keep it still. I’ll write a note to the local doctor in the hospital… They’ll give you pain medication, a healing potion, and a medical leave.”

“Yes sir… Thank you.”

Semolina put her hooves on the desk, staring at the pegasus and then at the Prince-Consort. “How the hell did you become a knight after becoming a doctor?”

He chuckled a bit uncomfortably. “It’s a long story.”

She felt it a better idea not to meddle.

Meanwhile the princess had noticed the griffon that seemed out of place in the middle of all the ponies. She smiled warmly at him. “I thought I would find you next to the Lion.”

He dismissed the notion with a hand gesture. “The guy is an idiot, princess… Doesn’t take a much brighter griffon to realize that he wants nothing with our species and its greatness, but with his own.”

“I see. Well, I am glad to see you here, anyways.”

“I met with the Lord Protector some years ago, Princess. Of course, at the time, he was a bit different. But we talked a fair bit… He wanted to learn about law enforcement and griffon fighting techniques. Today I was going through town, tracking down another griffon and we met. He asked some assistance with the situation. It felt like helping an old friend…. He grew on me when we talked some years ago.”

The griffon looked around and no one seemed to be paying attention to them. “They’re in a bad shape, princess.”

“They are…” She agreed discreetly. “Would you be available to hire as consultant? If I remember correctly, you were good at pacification efforts during the war.”

“Huh. I’ll have to think on it and talk to the others, but we’ll see, princess.” He nodded before testing his wing. “Most likely yes, and I think I’m good. I’ll talk to them and join the deployment.”

The princess nodded to him and he went his way between the desks and then Chocolate joined approached her. “I’ll be joining them, Celestia.”

“Good luck.” She smiled. “Don’t be afraid to use you magic.”

“So… Uh…” He started grinning awkwardly and shifting his eyes. “Could you disable Twilight’s ship for me?”

“Oh my! A noble knight asking a damsel for help? What is the world coming to?” He didn’t seem too pleased with her quip, so she stifled her giggling. He did have too soft a spot for her opinions of him and sometimes took jokes too seriously. “No. Getting our plan to work is more important than your ego right now.”

He dropped his ears and made a sad face at her, but she didn’t pay it any attention. He was like an insecure child sometimes. It was that silly ‘proving himself’ thing that made her wonder if he thought she didn’t know how to judge character and needed him to prove something to be worth her attention. Tiresome and unalluring. “Your insecurity is also very unbecoming in a crown-sponsored knight.”

She tolerated it though. It would work itself out, eventually.

And he was going to mention that Twilight had made fun of him because of the shockroach. But… Oh well.

“I’ll just join them…” He said, pointing with a hoof and walked away.

***

The group of ponies rushed through the town, reuniting when they entered the open field of the suburban area that kept to Twilight’s airship dock. One thing particularly worried Twilight: she hadn’t seen Celestia since she’d left in the library. Neither had she seen any of her Royal Guards, except for Chocolate Velvet. She either had some sort of stratagem about to be deployed or she had intentionally taken a step back because of the situation with Ponyville’s militia.

Either way they were likely to face the final opposition before leaving town. It even felt good that she was playing a part in dealing with this silly problem with the local militia. She just hoped that it actually worked.

It was a little weird because even if Celestia would let others do their job, she would usually lead from the front, and that made Twilight very, very anxious. The bad thing was that if she managed to learn anything about warfare, it was that if you didn’t understand what your opponent was doing, then, most likely, you were being led into a situation that benefited your enemy. The really bad thing was that she had learned that from the Princess.

Fortunately, the big doors of the airship’s hangar were in sight and there was no sign of problems. She looked to her side where Shining Armor was still holding onto her guard’s halberd. “I think we’re gonna make it! The crew said they would keep her engines running and we left all we’d need in there.”

“Pinkie and I managed to bring a cart full of supplies.” Applejack galloped right behind them. “It’s not much, but I reckon we can manage until next stop. Wherever that might be.”

It dawned on Twilight that even if they managed to leave, they would be hunted and ambushed along the way. Probably all the way to the Griffon lands, and if they were lucky, they might disappear from Celestia’s immediate grasp there. If there was such a thing as escaping her grasp, but that is also where they would find themselves under threat from griffon separatists. That was, if Shining Armor was correct about all the problems in there. Maybe she could claim diplomatic protection from both sides and use her rank to reach the Lion without too much trouble. With that thought, it occurred to her that she didn’t really have much of a plan. Would she arrive and simply ask if he had anything about Grigor?! It was a start, she supposed.

But, of course, they’d have to leave Ponyville first.

They reached the large wooden hangar and came in trough the side door. Went past what would be the administrative parts that Twilight never bothered with and soon reached the airship’s berth. Much to Twilight’s panic, she could not feel the magic energy the ship should be radiating, nor could she hear her engine’s low hum.

Before she could say anything, though, the captain appeared on the railing and waved an anxious hoof at them. “Princess! Ship’s engines be down.”

No, really?

“What do you mean ‘down’?” The crew quickly put out the access plank for their passengers and the captain met them on the deck.

“A pony sneaked ‘board and shut’em off!” He said. “Looked a Royal Guard! Got ‘way too!”

“Great…” She growled with her ears folded back while Spike hurried, taking Miss Calcite and Flurry Heart to the more protected cabin and the others hurried to other places in the deck, generally looking around with anxious faces.

It had probably been Crucible Wings. Figures the Princess would try to do something about the militia but wouldn’t leave it all in their hooves. “How long?”

“Couple minutes!”

“All right. It will be fine!” She massaged her forehead. “And we’re still missing Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy! Tell your crew to arm themselves, Captain. We may have to defend the ship in the dock. And don’t wait for anything: as soon as she’s ready to go, go!”

“Aye, highness.”

The pegasus hurried to his place at the wheel where he could communicate with the ponies working in the lower deck. Suddenly she remembered something important. “Oh my gosh! The letter!!”

She flew and rushed past ponies and the doors into the cabin where Spike was with the baby and the maid, straight to the place between her desk and cabinet where the briefcase with the letter was. Seeing it was not enough: she opened it and there was the letter, still safely preserved in enchanted crystal sheets.

She breathed a little easier. Crucible probably didn’t know to steal the letter. Had he done that; her mission would be needlessly more complicated. And, she was about to relax when Starlight called for her. She left the briefcase and rushed out to the railings to see her friend standing in the entryway to the empty administrative area.

“Twilight! They’re here!” She waved her hoof about in the general direction of Ponyville. “They’re here!”

The princess flapped her wings and placed herself hovering over the deck. “Pinkie! AJ! Barricade the side door! Rarity, help us hold the main doors!”

She waved at Starlight to help her and met the other two at the bow where all three of them charged their horns and began fortifying the door with a spell that took the form of a light purple set of chains, complete with a padlock that clicked into place.

“Hum… Won’t we need to leave…” Starlight stared at Twilight. “Through there?”

“They’re gonna try to kick down the door! This way we’ll, at least, hold them long enough to get the ship ready to leave.”

“If you say so…” The other didn’t seem too convinced and Rarity stared at the thing worryingly, but Twilight didn’t have time to reply.

There was a blast outside and a several musket shots. She flew down to the ground level and stopped at the sound of another blast and saw both ponies, Pinkie and Applejack, coming towards her. “What the hay?”

“They have grenades!!” The pink one held Twilight by her barding. “Grenades!!!”

“Suppose they’re a mite angry.” The other stood next to Pinkie and Twilight pointed at the ship with a hoof.

“Get onboard! We’ll defend her from the deck! The armory has muskets and pistols!” She flew up again while the two rushed by the access plank, that was later recovered by the crewponies. “Capitan! We have to go!”

“Not yet!” He had his hooves on the wheel, but the ship was as dead as a piece of junk.

“Twilight! Get down!” Something pulled her hindleg down and a bullet whistled past her. Two of the militia ponies stood by the door that led to the administrative section, their squadmates gave them new, loaded muskets from behind cover and Shining Armor reinforced the ship’s railing with this personal shield spell, taking place behind it with both of Twilight’s Royal Guards, all three of them with muskets from the ship’s armory. Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rarity joined.

“Don’t shoot yet.” He said. “Let them charge first.”

Two more shots exploded harmlessly in the shielded railing and four others of the militia ponies broke windows in the offices and took positions by the low walls, suddenly putting the ship under near constant salvos of musket fire. Ponies dropped to the deck and kept low.

“They’re just wasting magic bullets…” White Leaf held her musket in her legs and her back to the shielded railing.

“It has just occurred to me that they’re wasting taxpayer money.” Applejack complained next to them with an angry frown.

“Well, Darling… Technically, we are all are stealing taxpayer money by using our barding and weapons against the Crown…” Rarity held her pistols next to her, by the orange pony’s side.

“Didn’t Twilight buy this ship with taxpayer money too?” Pinkie added

“All I know is that I pay taxes all the time in my farm.”

“Girls… This is not the time!” Twilight yelled over the racket the muskets created.

“Convenient, isn’t it?” Pinkie glowered at her and the princess rolled her eyes.

Suddenly a rainbow trail fell from the ceiling and Rainbow Dash was crouching next to them, with the casing for her barding and weapons on her back. “Hey guys.”

“Why aren’t you wearing your barding?” Twilight stared at her and the pegasus shrugged.

“Had some trouble along the way.”

“Did you see Fluttershy?!”

“Nope!” The pegasus shook her head. “But I came in through the roof hatch and I saw a bunch of ponies coming this way, I think they might be the whole militia, including a mean griffon bounty hunter.”

“Watch out!” The captain called from the improvised battlements and as if on cue, something exploded on the ship's hull, something else exploded in the air and, finally, a small green, fizzling ball fell on the deck.

Ponies screamed and jumped out of the way as far as possible, but Shining Armor’s horn ignited and formed a small shield around the object. When it exploded, it did so with a dull thud.

Immediately, the unicorn grimaced and took a hoof to the side of his head. “Magical concussion grenade… They’re not issued to local militias. Only the Royal Guard uses them.”

The cacophony of musket fire continued, and the smell of powder bothered them very much, but Shinning raised his head just enough to look, while Rainbow stood low with the others.

“Just how many loaded muskets do these guys have?” She asked angrily.

“They’re probably shooting pistols too. And reloading them at the same time.” The orange pony pushed her Stetson back into place. “They might not know the ship can be restarted, or something. If they did, they would already have tried to rush aboard.”

Shining Armor returned to their midst, down on the deck. “It’s Prince Charming.”

Rainbow poked him in the shoulder with a dirty smirk. “You know you used to be ‘Prince Charming’, doncha?”

“Absolutely, Rainbow Crash.” His riposte came as fast as was expected from a Royal Guard.

“They called him ‘Princess Bait’ in the Academy.” Twilight giggled with the others. “Hey, is it true Princess Celestia got you to her bedroom in the graduation?”

“What the hay!” He cried. “Of course not!”

Twlight smirked mischievously. “They say it was motivational.”

White Leaf shook her head. “The story goes, actually, that it was more of a Jus Primae Noctis thing at the wedding.”

“Who have you guys been talking to?! This is nuts!” He cried.

Another volley of grenades exploded, this time none over the railings, but it cut short the conversation. Ponies flattened against the flooring and Rarity wailed at them. “Focus, please!”.

Suddenly a hook caught on the railing. Shining Armor took the musket in his telekinesis and raised to shoot it, followed by the two other royal guards and friends, but they were surprised by a volley of small grenades. Ponies screamed again and Twilight protected her friends with a shield while the captain protected the two guards with his.

Next two ponies jumped aboard, they wore the militia leather barding and carried pistols in their mouths. Rarity, the closest, shot the first with one of her pistols and wacked the other in the head with the side of her rapier. Both were rendered stunned or unconscious and she took a step back, while re-holstering her pistol (with a spinning flourish) and taking stock of the situation. Other ponies were boarding the ship from other points and her friends rushed to defend the deck. She saw herself alone against a big gray earth pony who didn’t think twice and swung his magical shock baton at her exposed head.

He was so slow Rarity simply took a step to the side and promptly smacked his face too with her rapier and he was out in one hit. She looked at her weapon and whined, though. “I swear Stark Aria is beginning to bend with all this improper use.”

“It’s an enchanted sword, Rarity.” Twilight tied the four legs of one of the assailants with a spell before turning to Rarity with an annoyed expression. “It doesn’t bend.”

By the ship’s bow Pinkie quickly pushed a climbing pony off the railing with the butt of her firearm and Applejack shot her musket at another. Then three magical projectiles exploded next to them and sent both ponies flying back, but also knocked their muskets to who knew where. They quickly got to their hooves again, and found themselves standing near the huge brown alicorn that jumped over the railing wearing his golden armor, complete with chained mail over his head and neck, a vicious looking cap over his horn and his white robes over the plated armor and fully plated leggings. He held a kite shield, white with the crest of the Royal House on it and a longsword, all shinny white, with a blue crossguard. It all weighted so much Applejack could swear she felt the floor tremble.

“Whoa, Nelly!” She cried, barely dodging a swing of his sword. “Twilight! Shining! Help!”

Pinkie produced a few small black balls from the pouches in her barding and cheerfully threw them at Chocolate Velvet. They exploded harmlessly on his armor but staggered him back and he lost the tempo of the use of his sword and shield. In the same moment, Applejack stood on her hindlegs and drew the firearm from her barding, a lever-triggered revolver. Black with mother of pearl handle adorned with her cutie mark, and with a golden lever. She held with her hoof bent over her cannon, pulling the lever while she pulled the hammer with the other hoof, shooting a salvo of five magic bullets straight at his chest, neck and head.

He sat and shook his head a couple of times. Shinning came out of nowhere with the telekinetically held halberd and thrust its butt at his chest, but the alicorn caught it with his shield and deflected it to the side. The captain was open for a riposte and his sword in position. But he caught himself, not willing to actually injure his friend with a thrust of his sword. Hitting someone with the flat of the blade was bad enough, and if he struck with the edge, he might even kill him. A thrust would be a death sentence.

Then Twilight flew from the other side, away from his eyes that focused on her brother, and thrust her scepter at him with a force spell, sending him flying across the deck. He fell flat on his back, lost his sword and shield, and barely rolled out of the way when Twilight flew above and shot several magic projectiles at him. Her horn shone, as did the gems in her Element of Magic, filling the poorly lit hangar with purple magical light. Despite missing him, the small missiles dented the deck’s flooring.

He jumped and righted himself with his huge wings and was the last in the ship, except for the gray griffon flying overhead shooting his revolver at Pinkie Pie and hitting her on the forehead. A small light shone where the magical bullet hit, but she never felt it’s effects.

“What?” She looked around, confused.

“Be careful, Pinkie!” Applejack started next to her.

The griffon banked his flight to the side and dodged shots from the ship’s crew, aiming his revolver and shooting at Shining Armor, who didn’t wear any barding with hard to penetrate shielding enchantments, but the bullet stopped at a magical barrier of his own making.

Twilight rushed past her brother. “Rainbow! Get him!”

There was just no avoiding the pegasus. She took off too fast, flew too fast and tackled him too fast. He did however manage to grapple with her midflight, and landed a punch on her belly, grabbed one of her front legs about to immobilize her, but she spun around and they hit the hangar’s wall with his back and her weight against him. Fortunately for him, she wasn’t very heavy.

He never saw the spinning kick she landed on his face and that sent him against the wall again, though.

In the deck, the alicorn raised a pure, flat amber magical shield against a volley of musket balls fired his way. Apparently, a huge alicorn in golden barding drew a lot of attention. He looked for his sword but couldn’t find it. Twilight rushed low, under his shield wall, with her wings open, dragging her cape and robes, and swung a sword at his feet. The thing gleamed over the reflective floor of the ship with a purple light and whistled through the air almost too quick for him to react. He kicked at the sword and deflected it away with his armored shin. Sparks flew and the thing dented his armor, but he reared over her, shooting an amber magical beam at her.

She would have giggled at it if she had had the time. Instead she deflected it with her horn and threw it back at him. Hit in the chest he staggered, and then she and blast him with her own magic beam. Hit squarely in the chest again he flew backwards and fell on his back through the wall of the administrative section and next to a group of tired militiaponies.

He sighed loudly laying on his back. “Don’t be afraid to use your magic, she said…”

He caught sight of Grape Donut yelling at his ponies to stand up and assault the ship again but didn’t have time to watch. He stood and jumped through the hole in the wall, then jumping and flapping his wings to reach the ship again.

Starlight saw him and grimaced, shooting magic out of her horn in a reflex, he tried one of the techniques Celestia and Luna had taught him, blocking with a wing, spiraling and changing direction, but her magic still connected and closed him on a pink bubble that caused him to crash in the main mast in an awkward way with his neck.

She squeaked, but soon saw he was fine and turned to fight a new wave of attacks by the militiaponies coming up the ship’s berth and jumping at the railing by the aft. “They don’t give up!”

Twilight looked at the alicorn to be sure he would try anything too soon and he was stunned, but indeed, their assailants didn’t seem to give up already. Applejack still resorted to fighting mostly hoof to hoof next to Pinkie who… What the hay was she doing with that rubber chicken?! Though it really shouldn’t at that point, it baffled her that Pinkie managed to knock out one of the militia’s ponies with a rubber chicken!

Rarity seemed to be leading a group of the crewponies holding the ship’s wheel and her two guards had placed themselves on the access to the lower decks. Shining Armor wrestled one pony’s baton out of her grasp by the bow. And then, hit her with it.

Rainbow was fighting hoof to claw the griffon on main mast’s rigging. She couldn’t believe the balance they had, but that was an intrusive thought. She worried at the realization that she and her friends were used to fighting monsters that they felled with one or two strikes of their rather deadly weapons. Not to mention that Applejack had a few bruises and cuts, meaning her barding’s magical shielding was beginning to fail. She was tiring and her own magic couldn’t power her barding’s. They weren’t used to protracted fights like this one and were also using their weapons in an awkward way. They had to win this soon or they would be too tired to defend themselves.

Then, Chocolate Velvet stood and found his sword. She grinned at him. “Nice sword. Did you name it?”

He frowned under his chainmail. “You know very well I can’t name an ordinary sword, Twilight; and you know I don’t have the rank to use an enchanted weapon. You’re being a jerk today, you know that?”

She giggled to herself. It was so easy to get under his skin. He swung his sword at her, and she batted it away to the side with hers, while she also tried to grab his away from his telekinetic grasp, but he shifted his body with the sword to keep it close enough to keep it under his grasp.

“Sorry. I also don’t have a shockroach for you in the ship.” She couldn’t see his face under the mail, but his eyes said enough of how angry that got him. He swung his sword heavily at her but missed when she stepped to the side and then thrust at him with her scepter.

He almost fell again but flapped his wings and charged his horn. His sword swung at her from afar under a particularly strong telekinetic grasp. It was in that moment that Discord appeared out of a bright flash next to Fluttershy and the two militia ponies.

Ponies gasped in horror at the sight of his sword stuck trespassing Discord’s head. Rarity fainted next to the captain, who held her. Twilight shrieked covering her eyes with her wings and ponies simply stopped fighting, staring with varying degrees of disbelief.

“You know, this actually does hurt.” Discord said in a flat tone with the sword sticking harmlessly, and rather comically out of his face.

The alicorn shrieked. “I swear I didn’t mean it! I was aiming at Twilight!”

“You wanted to hit my friend with a sword?”

“No!” He shrieked again. “I mean yes! But it’s not like that!”

“Do you… Hum… Need any help, Discord?” His yellow pegasus friend asked from below.

“No, Fluttershy, thank you. Twilight, what did you do? Why are you ponies trying to kill each other all of a sudden?”

“Aaaah…” She said as nervously as her eyes shifted to the side. “It’s complicated.”

“Wait a second!” The obese Lord Protector of the town raised a hoof, next to Applejack and a couple ponies of either side. “Can I order lord Discord’s arrest? Or is he kind of out of my jurisdiction?”

Applejack laughed. “It would be fun to see you try.”

“Anyway…” Grape Donut went on. “Which side are you on?”

“Well, I suppose I’m not on the side poking me with a metal stick.” He pulled the sword out with a pop and made it vanish. “Which side am I on, Fluttershy?”

“Oh, Twilight’s side, Discord.” She cheered a little.

As if on cue, the airship’s engines resumed their low hum and flooded the area with their magical radiation.

The princess grinned. “Get them off the ship, Discord!”

He summoned a pirate’s bicorn hat, an eyepatch and held a hook with his left hand. “Aaar. It’s the plank for ye, ponies!”

“Nonsense! “We’re still on the fight!” Grape yelled angrily only to notice his ponies and griffon friend sitting on the ship’s berth. “Come on!!”

“There are not enough Bits in Equestria to make me fight Discord.” The griffon said. “Sorry, Grape.”

“Ah, whatever.” The fat pony walked with heavy, angry steps and jumped off the ship, leaving only the chocolate colored alicorn near the bow. He rubbed his hooves together and lowered his ears meekly.

“Can I have my sword back?”

“No.”

“But…”

“OUT!”

Discord didn’t need to yell again, especially not with the fire and brimstone. He jumped off the ship in a heartbeat.

“Alright then!” Twilight grinned and directed her magic towards the seal they created over the main doors, effortlessly dispelled it and opened wide the doors. Looked around, making sure all who should be on the ship were indeed. Rainbow had a few red scratches but seemed perfectly fine. Satisfied, she pointed a hoof at the captain.

He was still holding Rarity, with her flirty eyes and giggling at him. Twilight didn’t feel like telling him to ‘punch it’ anymore.

“Can we go, please?” She pleaded.

The pegasus let her friend be and resumed his post by the wheel. “Right’way Princess!”

The magical engines roared, and the ship almost immediately overcame inertia, accelerating towards the open doors. From the railings, Twilight saw the ponies from the militia, sitting on the boardwalk of the dry dock, next to the griffon and next to Chocolate Velvet. The ponies looked angry. They stared at her ship in the same way a defeated hoofball team would look at the winners. The griffon looked professionally devoid of outward expressions of his feelings. It probably was just a job that went south for him. Chocolate Velvet, though, looked both humiliated and angry. She knew it was a dangerous combination and it surprised her because she hadn’t seen it in him before.

In all the months he lived with the princesses and routinely met with her, he always took the little jokes and quips in stride and laughed with them. In fact, he quite reminded him of his brother, in all the best ways. He was proud in his place and she could see what the Princess saw in him: a kind heart, a sense of duty and of honor, a love for the knightly ways that struck Celestia’s romantic vein.

She never wanted to hurt his feelings. When had that happened?

She smiled awkwardly, trying to look friendly and did her best to cheer him up. “Don’t worry Velvet! It will work out for you, eventually!”

She didn’t have much time, anyway, to worry about him. The ship was departing, she had Discord onboard her airship and still needed to figure out her investigation.

The ship hovered a few inches above the ground, accelerating fast. A few Militiaponies, some four of them looking to enter the hangar by the now opened doors jumped out of the way, and others came from inside shooting at the hull to no effect.

“Whooee! We did it!” Applejack cried and ponies celebrated all over the deck, jumping and bumping hooves as the airship started gaining altitude over the city.

“Where to, princess?” The pegasus captain asked with a bright grin on his face, behind the wheel.

Twilight thought for a second. “Cadance can catch up to us. So, uh…”

She ran up to the bow’s railing and looked around with her heel over her eyes. “Manehattan! We should avoid Canterlot’s proximity, though. So, keep us straight, a little to the right for now.”

His expression turned sour. “That not how ye call a maneuver, lass.”

“Oh. Excuse me!” She looked back, with her legs on the railings. “I thought that it you job to speak ‘fancy shipish’!”

The other ponies laughed around the deck, punctuating the good vibration at their victory. Things seemed much more relaxed now, with the ship several hooves above the town, flying at a comfortable speed for agile maneuvering, should it be needed.

***

Inside the empty hangar, ponies gathered their magical subduing batons, pistols and muskets, left to the side during the fight or dropped one of the many times the princess’ friends had beat them into submission. The air smelled of burnt powder and a few curious ponies started showing up, staring from outside the large doors.

“I’m actually proud of you guys…” Grape Donut’s voice called his ponies’ attentions to him. He was a bit sad, a bit proud, indeed, but mostly, he was satisfied. “We actually did our best.”

“They kicked our flanks, chief.” The lanky brown earth pony said casually. “Gee… I think Captain Armor wiped the floor with me three times today.”

The others laughed. It was a low, unenergetic laugh that died abruptly, but it was a laugh.

“It wasn’t a fair fight.” The griffon swatted the dirt off his armor. The bandage in his wing was filthy with dirt. “The Princess and her friends are formidable opponents on their own right, Captain Armor is probably the best knight of the Royal House and Discord… Well… There was nothing to do. If he hadn’t shown up, we might have won. They were getting tired and making mistakes.”

To Chocolate it didn’t look like they were making mistakes, it only looked like they had kicked their flanks, period. And made fun of them, in his case.

He stared at the griffon with his back to him. What exactly was that feeling? Was it anger? Frustration? Disappointment? Probably a combination of those. Did Celestia tell the griffon to say those things to these ponies? What was the point of it? They still got beaten. Maybe it was a ‘pony thing’ he didn’t entirely understand yet.

Though, he kind of did. These ponies felt useful again, even if they lost. That was the point of that whole theater he put in front of the town. They were doing what they were supposed to do. It seemed that their head weren’t very complicated. Well, he was doing what he was supposed to be doing too, but he didn`t feel satisfied, proud or even sad.

That feeling was betrayal.

Be got beaten, and it was not a fair fight. He didn`t have a chance. Like these ponies, did she know that he couldn’t ever capture Twilight? Had she manipulated him? Yes, that was it. It did feel a bit like she had toyed with his feelings to get him to do what she wanted.

Something flipped in his head and it didn’t seem anymore like Twilight was teasing him anymore. Like a friend. No, she was making fun of him. Suddenly it seemed like, all those months, he had been lying to himself that he was beloved and not the proverbial third wheel. It occurred to him that she wasn’t being friendly, and neither were all of them.

Did she, by the way, even like him? She and her sister covered him in gold and silver and in caresses. Now it felt like it was it only to parade him about like an accessory, the incompetent knight that looks nice.

They praised his noble heart and his desire to serve. Celestia said he’d be her own royal knight. She said she made him for her. It suddenly felt like all of them were making fun of him. That they told him what he wanted to hear. When did his memories of Celestia’s angelic laughter turn to mocking cackle?

Did he even stand a chance at his mission? Sure, ‘the plan’ worked. But why did she say that she would reward him with he managed to capture Twilight? For how long had she laughed at his innocence after he left?

Well, could he capture Twilight? He had to know. It seemed like a lot hung on it now.

A sword lay on the dirt floor under the ship’s berth. Where did that sword come from? It wasn’t a fancy one: a sword, dropped at the dirt floor under the ship’s berth. She wasn’t his expensive… ‘Unnamed, unenchanted, boring longsword’, but it was a sword. A well-maintained, properly oiled, arming sword that probably belonged to one of Twilight’s ponies and probably wouldn’t be missed.

He couldn’t remember ever pouring so much purpose and letting so many feelings drain into his magic. It probably made his aura shine a bit too brightly, and that was why the griffon saw seen when he reached for it with his magical grasp. They stared at each other and the griffon nodded at him. He nodded back at the griffon.

What went through the griffon’s head? Discord still likely was on that ship. Those ponies that showed them who’s boss would still be there. Why did he decide he’d come with him?

Both galloped through the large hangar doors and the prince removed the chainmail cowl of his armor, leaving it behind when they jumped. Their mighty wings flapped, and they gained speed and altitude. He didn’t care Discord was on the ship, that Shining Armor was on the ship. He was going to complete his mission, or he would drag that damn ship down with him to the pits of Hell.

***

Rarity approached Twilight while the ship turned, slightly banking towards port side, but not enough to threaten any pony’s balance. “Twilight, I wanted White Leaf and Raspberry Pancakes to stay in Ponyville. I wished for them to keep watch over my family. I was quite worried with the way those ponies treated me… I fear they might try to… Retaliate.”

Twilight shook her head. “I don’t think it should be a problem, Rarity.”

“The Princess is in Ponyville and she’s likely to sort the whole situation.” Then she put a hoof on her chin. “Actually, that might even buy us some additional time. But, regardless… I don’t think that our friends are in any sort of danger, Rarity.”

“Well, if you say so, Twilight. I do hope that you are right. Sweetie Belle is too innocent to deal with some sorts of ruffians.”

“Don’t you worry, Rarity!” Applejack joined then. “The Apples are there and they’ll lend a hoof if yours have need of it.”

A claw tipped finger touched the princess’ shoulder and she turned to see Discord. Their old foe turned beloved friend. The Sprit of Chaos. Emperor Grigor’s Mad God. The one Chrysalis said had driven ponies insane and brought the world to the edge of destruction.

He was right there!

“Mind telling me what is going on, Twilight?” He had his arms open and his voice sounded frustrated. “This flying thing of yours is giving me a headache.”

But before she could say anything, they heard one of the pegasi keeping watch on the deck. “All hooves hoay! We got flyers astern low!”

The ponies and draconequus gathered in the back of the ship and stared at the brown alicorn and the gray griffon. The former furiously flapped his wings and gained ground on the airship, carrying a sword in his magic and galloping in the air like he was possessed. He climbed above and behind the ship while the griffon maneuvered to approach from above too, but from the other side and drew his revolver musket.

“How fast are they actually flying?” Applejack asked Twilight, but she was simply watching worryingly. Had Celestia been there, she would’ve said Twilight was ‘doing her thing’. Understanding the problem.

The armored alicorn closed the distance and charged his horn, willing his magic power into the blade, along with all the shame and humiliation. An angry scowl in his face and a raging grimace along with a fiery determination. His magic propelled the sword with a shout of pure fury and the blade ripped through the air like a shot from a ballista in blazing amber magic.

Present passengers watched with huge eyes and expectant expressions as the weapon drew closer and closer to the airship. It flew straight and proper, like inevitable destiny.

It plinked in the housing for the central engine of the starboard wing and dropped like a rock.

Faces turned to disappointment.

“Lame.” Said Pinkie. “Pfft… Get on our level!”

“I don’t get what the princess sees in him.” Rainbow added with a bored expression.

“We’ll, he is very persistent.” Rarity offered.

“He’s too dumb to give up, is what he is.” Applejack concluded and turned around.

“He does look handsome.” Fluttershy said hopefully.

Discord snapped his fingers and a comically large anvil was tied to Chocolate’s neck and pulled him down screaming.

Twilight stared from the railing while he fell with his wings bent upward and the griffon dove after him. She understood what was wrong, but this time there was no chance to try and fix it… A simple talk might suffice, but Royal Guard airships might soon close in pursuit or Princess Celestia herself could show up. Or Discord might decide to leave.

“Don’t worry, Twilight. He’s tougher than he looks.” Her brother said next to her. And she knew that, but she didn’t know if Chocolate Velvet knew that. Or even if Shining understood her thoughts.

It was so unfair… She was so happy for helping those ponies and her friend was out of her reach.

The Princess then pushed it all out of her head and turned to the “Mad God”. “Discord, we need to talk.”

A Song of Ponies and Changelings

The Love Room was probably not the best name for that particular room, considering it existed within the Bordello of Candy, but it was analogous in function to a ‘war room’, and Cadance didn’t want to name it that. So, the Love Room was the nervous center for all the ‘operations’ within the Bordello and ‘away missions’ as well as it housed Cadance’s map of all ponies with relationship problems in the entire world.

If not for the powerful magic map, the room would actually amount to a bunch of ponies in desks in front of the map managing records of all the princess’ ponies and their activities, the finances and supplies of the establishment, and Cadance's “Love Management Center” with its enormous archives, relationship tracking charts and the parts that were supposed to be an access to an alchemy lab, complete with classrooms, and the area reserved for the Dream Achievement Initiative, but Princess Luna refused to disclose dream her ponies could fulfil in real life. Spoilsport.

To be very honest, to this day it still amused Cadance that Princess Celestia took the whole thing as seriously as she did when she first asked for help in getting the whole place built and operational. Most ponies didn’t, and maybe this was a sign that either Cadance was right and that Princess Celestia was the so-called Illuminated Despot ponies, as referred to the old leaders that actually did invest in the betterment of their magical and societal knowledge.

Or maybe she just wanted to let Cadance follow her talents? Princess Celestia often did things Cadance didn’t understand. She supposed one time too many.

Regardless, her map allowed her to locate any couples having trouble in their relationship, but also allowed her to track ponies she’s personally known by means of colored blips and their cutie marks or symbols that represented them. She could see Princess Luna in her palace, but not Queen Chrysalis. She could see Princess Celestia in Ponyville and Chocolate Velvet, a few miles away from her chasing Twilight in her airship, Cadance supposed, which was represented by Twiligth’s cutie mark.

She sat in front of the large table, on her crystal highchair, adorned in gold and with her cutie mark high up high, and was brought out of her thoughts by one of her ponies, a handsome light-blue and salmon, with pretty green wyes, crystal pony called Azurite. He wore a few traditional decorative collars with scales of shinny gemstones and called her attention hum-humming politely next to her, on the side of the table.

“Princess, I have the reports from the interrogations of the Lunar Guards and of the changelings.” He showed her a few sheets of parchment on his mouth and laid them on the table. “We have names, registration numbers and ranks from the Lunar Guards and have also confirmed that they came accompanying Princess Luna. Her entire guard is here, which makes sense, since her goal was to spread her guard though the town and to keep our local Royal Guards under watch in the barracks.”

The princess paid attention, so he proceeded. “The changelings gave us no information and wouldn’t buckle under any offers or promises, and… Well, your highness knows we can’t really threaten them.”

Cadance kept to her thoughts and raised her eyebrow at the ideas she had inside her head on how to make them talk, but she wouldn’t do any of those things.

“We did manage to learn one thing about the Changelings, through the Lunar Guards, though.” With her attention again, he kept going. “It seems Chrysalis wasn’t supposed to be here, but after talking to the princesses in Canterlot, she decided to stick with Luna. There seems to be something wrong with her guards and princess Luna isn't happy about it. She also brought all of them, along with several ‘normal’ black-carapace changelings. Most importantly, the changelings have occupied the palace.”

Cadance's mood plummeted. It was almost like the two were cheating against her, teleporting entire companies along with them.

Not to mention that none of that was a particularly huge help and it frustrated her. It seemed that Luna, not being an idiot knew exactly what Cadance wanted coming home. With her guards in the streets, she couldn’t seek help from the vast majority of her subjects and with Chrysalis’ changelings in the palace, she couldn’t simply sneak in, grab what she wanted and teleport away. Maybe she could deal with the changelings, but as soon as she tried anything, Luna and Chrysalis were sure to show up. A fight was just not the way to deal with this.

She wanted to talk personally to those changelings and try to understand more about them, as she had a very strong feeling that there was something wrong with them, but more than that, they might be the fruit of some very shady business between the Queen and The Sisters. She had a feeling, and it might just be because of the whole legend surrounding Chrysalis that it might have a connection to whatever happened in the past.

She also worried for her fillies and colts around the city. She didn’t think that Luna’s guards would hurt them, but she couldn’t be sure about Chrysalis’. Lighting her horn and interacting with the map magically, she located all of them throughout the city, sneaking around and returning with the locations for the roadblocks. Maybe with the full picture in front of her, she might find a gap in Luna’s setup and exploit it to, at least reach the palace.

Then one of her said fillies entered the room, wearing her outdoors cape and carrying her bow and arrows on her back. “Princess! Princess Luna and Queen Chrysalis are coming here! They figured out you’re likely hiding here!”

Well, it wasn’t a particularly well-hidden secret anyway… She tapped her chin with a hoof. If she played it right, she could use this to her advantage. A smile appeared on her muzzle and the idea of a conversation seemed more approachable than an open fight. They would be on her home field, surrounded by her supporters… She wished she could appeal to their base desires but knew that wasn’t likely to work on Luna in that situation, however that didn’t mean she couldn’t use her charms and talents to help her!

***

Chrysalis was just happy that Cadance had a suitable coach. She was afraid she’d be forced to change to another form just so that she’d fit or that she would have to face the cold outside and walk to their destination; but apparently, the princess was ready for visits from the others. Celestia would need a big one when she visited, after all, and heavens forbid Celestia would have to walk.

Or herself. Queen Chrysalis was above walking, much less in that freezing cold.

Anyways, they had decided that it would be a better strategy if Chrysalis left her soldiers, both the Praetorians and the regular military caste changelings in the palace in case Cadance tried to sneak around them.

Another thing on her mind was the realization that she’d been putting resources on that research of hers with the Praetorians. While ponies had coaches with magical internal heating, the Rock barely had a ventilation system worth noting, and was pretty much used by her Spawning Pool. And then her bedchamber was like a personal palace. In a way, she was a bit conscious of the fact that she was hogging resources for her use. Even if she could say that the Spawning Pool benefited all the Swarm.

Did she really need her dissected statues? Her archeological artifacts and fancy weapon displays? Her piano? Her giant bed? Maybe she could put those things for sale?

Preposterous… It was her due as the Queen. The Princesses too had all sorts of comforts. Heck… Celestia and Luna literally had a hoof-made consort to them, complete with a cure for their inability to bear children. It was curious though, that Cadance didn’t need any of that to bear Flurry Heart. For starters, Shining Armor was a normal unicorn stallion. Sure, as normal as one of those ‘Sparkles’ were, but still…

It wasn’t only that. The ponies had a wealth of small magical comforts her changelings didn’t. Maybe she should have swallowed her pride sooner and looked for some friendship, for a change. She felt silly: at the time she feared Celestia would force her to sell her treasures to help with the Swarm’s financial situation. It hadn’t even occurred to her that Thorax might already even had liquidated everything while she was away.

In the end, they have all been so nice to her. Ironic that she’d ended up putting resources on The Sister’s project along with her little secret of the Prateorians. It’s a shame it ended up turning out a mess. Maybe she could salvage the Praetorians and make them more viable.

She stared downward, consumed by her thoughts before her eyes shifted up to Luna. Each sat on one of the two long seats, with the alicorn on the back one. On each side were the closed doors and windows that showed the city’s empty streets.

Luna’s guards pulled the coach at a steady pace with their clip-clopping filtering through the windows, as if they were used to it and it also dawned on the queen that she didn’t have any sort of carriage to use like that. At the same time, she doubted her soldiers would pull her around with the same sort of proud Luna’s ones did. Maybe her Praetorians… But it’s not like they’d have a choice anyways.

“Luna?” She looked at the other and her voice was soft.

“Hum?” The princess kept staring through the window.

“I’m sorry.” The queen’s eyes shifted, despite Luna never looking at her. “I shouldn’t have tried to intimidate you.”

“No, you’re not.” The blue alicorn seemed barely interested. “You’re upset you didn’t have it your way.”

The queen didn’t answer right away but her voice and expression turned sour. “You sound like Celestia.”

“We’re both experienced in dealing with spoiled children and nobles.” The other replied casually, almost as though she wasn’t paying attention to the conversation.

Chrysalis scowled and raised her voice. “That was completely unnecessary!”

Luna then giggled and smiled at the queen. “You’re doing fine, Chrysalis. Next, you’ll try to do better because you’ll feel ashamed that you ‘fell’. Then you’ll proudly behave. Eventually you’ll see an opportunity and you’ll try to exploit it to get ahead, thinking that you’ll get away with it without getting caught. Then, when you do get caught, you’ll feel upset you didn’t have it your way, will catch yourself at that and will be ashamed again and will try to do better.”

The princess smiled ever slightly more softly. “It doesn’t end.”

“I guess… That’s living…” The queen concluded and the other agreed with a soft nod. “I suppose you know me more than I’d like to admit.”

“It’s how children behave.” Luna smiled mischievously and the queen growled loudly but didn’t reply. Luna actually was right, after all.

“You understand me, don’t you?” The queen flashed her a conspiratorial grin. “Maybe I should be consulting with you instead of Celestia.”

“Good try.” Luna gave her a knowing grin. “But that is not how it works. You’ll be lucky you don’t get sent to Twilight’s School of Friendship after this stunt.”

Chrysalis shuddered at the thought.

“Though, I have to admit… In your place I might have done something similar. You did figure out something you weren’t supposed to.” Hearing that, the black one felt a small amber of pride in her chest, but then Luna added more. “Celestia will be furious though. You did something that borders on the darkest of necromancy and she abhors that. You’re lucky it was completely unintentional. You also caused them much more pain than any creature should ever have to bear. You’ll answer for that.”

“Well, it was kind of Celestia’s fault!” Chrysalis defended herself.

“No, it wasn’t!” Luna was completely amused by the idea. “You were doing something that you shouldn’t. Then you tried to hide it, even when you realized that something was very wrong, until you thought that you could use it for your gain.”

The queen didn’t answer.

“We can fix this, Chrysalis.” Luna added. “It is your responsibility, but you don’t have to deal with it alone. At least now that you opened up about it.”

Chrysalis frowned. “I just…”

“I know. You’re afraid of the Lion. Deep inside, you want to protect your children from him.” The princess nodded understandingly, interrupting her softly. “Most of the smart creatures aren’t amused by the whole circus the griffons have raised in the Senate and are afraid. Don’t kick yourself too hard.”

“You’re not doing anything!” She practically accused Luna. It was a weird feeling and, once again, lost between emotions she was not used to have boiling in her chest, she went with the easier one: anger. “You’re both worried about some pet project of yours. And now there’s Twilight and Cadance running around with that asinine research of theirs and the whole house of cards that is ready to collapse on you two! It’s the last thing we needed!”

Luna’s eyebrow rose. “You’re the one that sent them to the Lion.”

“I had to tell them something that they wouldn’t recognize as deceiving!” She raised her black hooves in frustration. “Trust me. I know lying.”

“We are doing something about it, Chrysalis.” Luna remained calm. “Several things, in fact. Our navy is being renovated for airships, as we know the Lion has an airfleet of his own. Celestia has recalled a very good officer to command our new flying armada. She has been transferring assets to regions surrounding the griffon lands and to our loyal provinces within. I have been visiting the dreams of key individuals, and it is no coincidence one of Twilight’s students is brother to the Lion. What is more, Celestia has shifted the classes in her school towards the politics of war and peaceful coexistence. She’s been stimulating Queen Novo to make acquaintances with him, so that she may influence him, and she has been openly condemning the Lion’s main source of support: the corrupt leadership of the griffons. You may not see it, but Celestia has all of Equestria just short of mobilizing against the Lion. He won’t be able to move out of Snow Mountains for more than a week before his forces are annihilated if it comes to a war.”

“But she’ll allow him to become king.” She spat back.

“The griffons are entitled to choose their own leaders, Chrysalis.” Luna remained calm. “It is one of the bases of our system. It would fall apart if citizens couldn’t choose representatives to sit in the House of Chosen and if their leaders, elected or inherited, couldn’t sit in the House of Majesty. Our relationship with them is one of respect. They trust Celestia’s leadership. Her wisdom, and in return we must respect their choices. Not to mention that Celestia believes the Lion may turn out to be a good ruler for the griffons. Even if he hates us, he may learn to coexist when his supporters realize that we are willing to compromise.”

“I suppose ruling an entire world is a bit more complex than a rock full of bug-ponies…”

“Actually, it is just a big mess.” Luna giggled. “Celestia is taking care of that… Just in her own way. She wants to avoid too much of a hassle, but also to avoid too much of a disagreement with Twilight and Cadance. Equestria needs us to be in good terms with one another. That is actually her goal… Ponies, griffons, everyone come, and they go, but if Twilight or Cadance held a grudge against us the consequences would be too much. Which is why we’re here to deal with Cadance.”

Then Luna frowned in annoyance. “Actually, that is why I’m here. You’re just intruding.”

“Oh, Luna… You wouldn’t have a clue to check the obvious place where she’s likely hiding with her little guerrillas. Not to mention, you have a tendency of speaking too much and not even noticing.” She finished with a venomous grin that Luna didn’t completely understand. But it lost importance when they retreated back into their thoughts.

Silence followed again and the two of them retreated inside their own heads, which bothered Chrysalis because it gave her the time for introspection. She frowned and her eyes shifted from one side and the other until she finally looked at Luna again. “I shouldn’t have made them…”

Luna nodded softly. “I’m not sure you understand the depth of what you did, Chrysalis. You mentioned disposing of them as though they were broken possessions.”

For some reason she couldn’t completely understand, hearing that greatly upset her. It started with a feeling of annoyance, but it grew until it became regret and, finally, a strange hopelessness when the depth of what she did hit her with its full force. Her eyes burned and her mouth trembled a bit, but the worst of all was the tightness in her throat. Her eyes closed tightly, and she soon found herself strangling a sob, like a dagger of regret someone punctured her throat with.

“Chrysalis?” Luna called her softly, worriedly.

“They were in pain… I know I shouldn’t have done it, but it was done, and I had to deal with it… And it only got worse.”

“That is why we don’t deal with these things Chrysalis. Do they have memories of ‘past versions’?” Luna asked and the queen shook her head slightly.

“Not on the conscious level, at least. They look up to me, and I don’t think that they would if they did.” Her voice trembled a bit with the very pungent memory of the joke she made about the laboratory on fire and wondered to herself how could she have been so callous to joke when she had done all that to her… Children? “They call me mother, Luna. They love me helplessly and I made a mess of their heads and their bodies trying to make them into soldiers I could push around without a thought. And now the other changelings are afraid and have distanced even more from me. Thorax is afraid and is constantly trying to not upset me. Twilight and Cadance suspect I may be a monster”

Well, she was… Dumbass. At least Luna didn’t seem to judge her. She simply listened patiently.

“I’m just doing my best. I’m trying to be like her… A good leader. But… I don’t know how.”

Luna shook her head softly. “Don’t try to be Celestia, Chrysalis. It’s impossible. Celestia is ordained to be what she is… Be a better yourself, instead. Especially because Celestia is far from perfect. Even as far as being a leader, a ruler, or commander, a sister of friend. She's done her share of dark deeds, in times of need, that were ‘justified’... She’s taken revenge, she’s acted in anger and in prejudice. She’s simply more experienced now, at avoiding certain mistakes. As I am. And as you’ll be, eventually. See us as an example, but don’t try to be us.”

The queen listened to Luna even though she was used to be listened to. She hated these feelings and instead reminded herself of her importance to the Swarm, and how she was the most important thing, and that was why Celestia and Luna had spared her. Without her, the changelings would be condemned to spiral into oblivion. That was better… Ignore that pain and crush it down in the back of her mind, keeping it occupied with more important stuff.

“I know!” The queen shook slightly. Talking to Luna made her feel better, that things would be fine, too. “But I keep ruining things! Ponies love you two and you don’t need to mess with their heads!”

Luna watched carefully how Chrysalis seemed to be feeling and her sorrow seemed to be replaced with frustration now, so she allowed herself a giggle when the queen smiled awkwardly. “Actually, you literally fix their heads! It’s quite the opposite.”

“Chrysalis, I know it’s trite to say, but the secret is doing to then what you would like then to do for you, were your roles switched. You also don’t have to undo your mistakes of the past. Do it right from now on and everything will be fine. Threat the other changelings like your subjects instead of resources… If you want them to treat you more like you’re their mother, or beloved queen, give them reasons to see you as such. Eventually, you won’t feel so bad you literally made the Preatorians to see you like that. You’ll have earned it, at least.”

“I’m trying! But it’s so frustrating when most the Swarm is keeping their distance from me all they can, and at the same time the Praetorians are doing everything to make me happy even when I’m mean to them! It’s so heartbreaking when Limpy is holding his hoof from the floor and is actually trying so hard to-”

“Wait!” Luna’s ears perked up and her eyes went wide as a pair of plates. “You actually named one of them ‘Limpy’?!”

The queen just stared at her.

“Chrysalis, you can’t name them after their flaws! I thought it was just the name you gave to the archetype that overpowered them. You literally called them by those names? What were you thinking?!”

“You see?!” The queen shrieked. “I keep doing these things!”

“All right… It’s fine.” Luna rubbed her temples and took a few deep breaths with her eyes closed. “You’ll rename them. You’ll start by renaming them, and it will be fine!”

The queen simply nodded.

“I know there is Bossy, Limpy, Grumpy and Laggy. What did you name the other three?”

She kept her mouth shut for a few seconds, causing Luna to stare at her. “What did you name them, Chrysalis?”

The other one changed to a more casual and faux-relaxed posture, gesturing with a hoof along with her words. “You know I believe that it is very toxic to dwell on past mistakes. It is much more productive to focus on what lies ahead of us. Wouldn’t you agree, Luna? Not to mention, we need to devise our strategy to catch Cadance if she is present at the Bordello. That is, after all, the reason we left the palace, is it not?”

“Fine then.” The princess smiled smugly. The important thing was that Chrysalis understood she shouldn't have done it. “But I’ll be watching you.”

***

The Bordello of Candy was not simply a glorified brothel like Luna had imagined. It was a palace from the Era of the Two Sisters sculptured in stone and adorned with copious amounts of stained glass that housed a glorified brothel, a rowdy casino, a lewd hotel and a lascivious restaurant, all themed after the old age before The Sisters had unified all of Equestria. And she knew that only by looking at the flyer she picked at the entrance. What in Tartarus was that filly thinking?!

Apparently, it was also the headquarters for Cadance’s personal guards too, but that wasn’t apparent in any way from the outside or in the flyer.

It was like one of the old cathedrals of the Two Sisters ponies insisted on building throughout the earlier days of their rule, but instead of a place ponies would go to reflect on the wonders of Harmony, it was a place where ponies would go to actually do the things Luna saw on their dreams and were the reason she kept a bottle of bleach on her vanity. She only needed to figure out a way to bleach her brain that didn’t hurt.

In the cold night, it was covered in fresh snow, sitting at the top of a mountain, and the courtyard, within the fortifications, was converted into a place coaches, chariots and the like would be left while their owners visited the place. The original fortifications still remained, with its towers and main gate, and the only approach was a single road that connected to the city bellow. Literally, all Cadance did with the outside was add several forms of decoration, such as banners and heart icons.

“Unbelievable.” Luna grumbled. “I suppose that I should have expected that Cadance wouldn’t be as daft as I imagined.”

She wore a pure black velvet cape and hood, with blue satin rimming while the changeling queen wore dark green velvet and black rimming.

Chrysalis stood next to her, by the coach they had just come in. “Cadance is crazy enough to build a brothel when Celestia and Twilight have built schools and you have an orphanage. But I had to admit I didn’t expect her to have a personal guard, all of her own, with a headquarters disguised as a brothel.”

“It is eye opening, indeed.”

The two of them crossed the open parking space, and surprisingly enough, there were a few pony-drawn vehicles in there. Mostly richly adorned coaches made of wood and adorned with crystalized metal pieces, as well as gold or silver.

“I can’t believe that ponies would be here during a curfew.” Luna stared at one of such coaches and her companion chuckled.

“They probably were caught outside and couldn’t go home. It is the perfect place, though. It’s full of stiff beverages, luxurious food and pleasant company.” Luna rolled her eyes, but the Queen went on. “I wonder if I can find any of those freaks that are into changelings!”

They both laughed a little and soon they reached the tall wooden doors to the establishment. They found themselves facing a big white griffon wearing a silver cape closed in front of his chest with a heart brooch. “Greetings. The Princess is expecting your majesties.”

“Is she now?” Luna stared curiously at the griffon, who then gave each a small envelope, all pink and closed with a wax seal of Cadance’s cutie mark.

“She has asked that I give each of your majesties a token. You can use it to gain entrance to the Bordello at any time and make use of the services provided.”

“Thank you.” Luna looked at the outside of hers while the other ripped open the envelope and produced a small crystalized metal, shield shaped, brooch with Cadance’s cutie mark, but with an arrow though the heart.

Luna then stared at hers, devoid of external expression, spinning it in her telekinetic magic. “I don’t know if I should feel flattered or if I should order my guards storm this place, bring Cadance out and then tie her to a pole and whip her flanks until she has grown some common sense.”

The queen chuckled staring at hers. “Don’t be a prude, Luna. Also, she’d probably like that.”

Luna’s ears lowered and she grunted audibly.

With a quick look over the small brooches, both knew exactly what to do. Luna held hers up towards the doors and they opened by themselves, allowing passage, and after both had passed through the doors, they magically dismissed the small artifacts into nothingness.

“A brothel with a magic lock…” The princess mumbled to herself. “I could teach that child a thing or two about ‘love’.”

The changeling queen followed the princess into the atrium while Luna kept mumbling and complaining to herself. “How come the Equestrian Society for the Good Manners of Royalty isn’t rioting in front of this place right now? I can’t wear a dress slightly provocative for my consort without them throwing a fit.”

They were in a luxurious, if rustic, atrium with a few couches and long chairs, all in clear mahogany and colorful upholstery in satin and velvet, and that kept a few ponies, mostly crystal ponies, leisurely sitting and talking to each other, while drinking from elegant crystal glasses the servants of the Bordello offered them. In fact, one of them offered the Princess a glass with a green liquid, complete with a slice of lemon, but she ignored the pony, still mumbling to herself. The queen took it for herself, though.

The walls were in polished stone, gray and cold, adorned with tapestry of the princesses and beautiful sconces holding shinning white crystals, instead of torches. A giant golden and crystal candelabra also offered magical light from its shinning gems and the windows were framed in red curtains. Statues showed mares and stallions in different and situations and scenes, most of them related to gracious dancing or risqué posing. The sound of ponies talking and laughing coexisted with the ringing of crystals, but conversations stopped though, as the arrival of both drew attentions from the whole room.

“Look at this place…” Ponies couldn’t tell what with, but the princess definitively seemed to be angry about something even if they couldn’t entirely hear her. “And I couldn’t put a statue on my orphanage… I wouldn’t be surprised to find more ‘detailed’ statues any time soon.”

The queen left the glass with a confused crystal pony that was talking to another and staring at Luna, and then she came up the princess’ side.

“Luna, you sound like an old lady complaining that the skirts are too short.” The queen complained right next to the pony. “You are ruining our style.”

The princess stopped and raised her head and perked her ears. “Style?! We are not here to indulge! We must-"

Green telekinetic magic interrupted her tirade and pulled her muzzle to the Queen, who spoke low and seriously. “Do you want the whole of Equestria to know something is not only wrong, but also out of control?”

Luna hum-hummed ‘no’.

“Then keep your muzzle shut and start having a good time. Ponies come here to enjoy themselves!”

When the queen let go of her, Luna smiled awkwardly at the ponies staring at them. “Don’t mind us. Please enjoy your stay.”

Chrysalis smiled regally. “The princess is nervous. I am her first female date after her marriage.”

Luna suddenly realized that there was a high probability she would commit regicide that night. She could feel a headache coming just imagining the newspapers. Ponies stopped paying attention to them, however.

“Aren’t you worried what Thorax might think when you say things like that?” She whispered to the queen.

“Of course not.” Chrysalis grabbed another glass carried by a servant, in a tray in his back. A black drink, in a large glass. “It is good for him to always worry he could be doing better by me.”

Then a pair of ponies approached them. One a very cute milky white and blonde unicorn wearing a fluffy white dress, and the other was an aqua colored crystal pony with a pink-ish mane and a flowy light green dress. Both wore large headdresses with white metals and multicolored feathers.

“Hello Princess Luna! Queen Chrysalis!” The unicorn greeted them cheerfully. “May we take your cloaks?”

While the queen calmly unhitched her cloak, Luna held back her irritation, but spoke with a less than friendly tone. “So, which are you two? Cadance’s little courtesans or guerrillas?”

The crystal pony covered her mouth with a small smile and the white unicorn giggled, snorted, and kept giggling for a while.

“Well, at least you’re having fun, aren’t you?” The queen smiled coyly and the four kept to a more reserved tone, distancing themselves from the patrons, entering a different hall, to the side.

Luna spoke again. “Tell us you cared well for our captured soldiers.”

“Ah, they’re fine, your majesty!” The white one said. “I’m Milky White, and this is Topaz. Very pleased to meet you.”

“The pleasure is ours.” Luna replied, calmer now, and the queen didn’t speak but nodded softly. “Tell us more about them. You certainly know the drill.”

“Oh.” Milky waved a hoof dismissively. “They received rooms in the hotel and have been put under watch. They also have been fed and received water.”

“Very good.” Luna nodded. “What about Cadence?”

“The princess would like to convene with your majesties.”

Both guests looked at each other and the Princess spoke again with the pony. “Fair. Can you take us to Cadance, then?”

The unicorn nodded happily. “She has directed us to take your majesties to one of our meeting rooms!”

Then the crystal pony took Chrysalis’ cloak and Luna’s, but as soon as they turned to show them the way, Luna raised a hoof. “Wait. What exactly goes on these meeting rooms, normally?”

“They are business meeting rooms, Princess.” The crystal pony said calmly, turning to her. “We have a hotel in the premises after all, that does receive ponies interested in doing business with potential customers.”

Milky then raised an eyebrow. “Not to mention that we do clean our rooms…”

***

Cadance’s room in the Bordello was almost as luxurious and comfortable as the one on her palace. It was, however, much more rustic and she loved it. It gave it a sort of ‘old world’ feeling that not even old cities like Canterlot had anymore but could still be found in the out Palace of the Two Sisters, in Everfree. Something drew her to that period. Sometimes she thought that ponies of the present were a little too nice. It made her feel awful to think like that, but it seemed that all the fun was in the past, especially when the Two Sisters had these secrets, hiding what they had done, as though they were ashamed of their younger years, when they could be really wild.

When she felt like that, she wondered if she didn’t actually envy them. That she resented the fact that she had been born in the era of being too nice and boring. She tried to imagine a Princess Celestia that would lead hosts of soldiers into battle during the First and Second Griffon Wars. Fighting her in their sparing sessions, she felt like a force a nature… Meeting her on a battlefield, no rules, no safeguard spells… It must have been terrifying.

She had found a few pieces of anecdotal information here and there, mostly quotes from obscure books and journals of ponies long gone that painted a picture of a queen that would take anything she wanted and would share her quarters with whoever she ever liked. Granted, Cadance might have been reading from the wrong sources, that romanticized that period and had the big white alicorn as the center point of a convenient narrative.

The big alicorn princess, armored in gold and backed by dozens of knights… Maybe some of her aunt’s romantic streak has rubbed off on her. She was a princess, had married a knight and did attend to the tournaments and festivals, after all.

It was a bit weird to imagine Princess Celestia like that, at least until Chocolate Velvet came around. He seemed to have lit a fire on the old alicorn that Cadance hadn’t seen before.

And then all this present mess happened!

It was sad from another perspective. The following day would be Heart Day, her very own weekly festive day meant to bring families together, when the whole family would come together and celebrate, but instead of preparing for it, Twilight was on her airship going to distant griffon lands, Aunts Celestia and Luna were hunting them and her plans of including Chrysalis and Thorax in the family festivities were more busted than her plans to play matchmaker for her aunts.

It seemed like being a princess was much more fun in those older times.

Nevertheless, she sat on her comfortable chair, in front of her richly adorned vanity, wearing a clear pink bathrobe adorned with her cutie mark, allowing her hooficure to polish her hooves and her maid to preen her wings while another took care of her mane.

With closed eyes, the princess took a deep breath and spoke to herself. “I am very happy… Hum… No. I am immeasurably happy! Yes, that sounds much better… Hum… Maybe Overjoyed? No… That is too much.”

Somepony knocked on the door and entered soon after. It was Milky White, Cadance`s second mare in her Bordello, and the one pony she’s been expecting. “They’ve arrived, princess. Princess Luna doesn’t seem very happy, though.”

“Auntie Luna is just nervous. She’s not used to the sort of place this is. And Queen Chrysalis has a strange way of making us feel weird too…”

“Are you nervous, princess?” One of her maids, a vivid blue crystal pony with a green mane asked her while she worked the princess’ mane.

“I am. A bit…” She admitted. How wouldn’t she be? She felt immersed in Luna's powerful magic that overshadowed Chrysalis' own. “Aunt Luna could really hurt me if she meant it.”

Fortunately, she had a plan!

“The fact that she didn’t….” Her maid wondered. “Shouldn’t it encourage you to think that this whole situation is just a silly misunderstanding?”

“I wish…” She said, staring back at the mirror with worry. “But I’m afraid that my aunts may have done something very wrong in the past and then tried to hide it. It’s possible that their rule is illegitimate and that they may have done something so outlandish that they must answer to it. Not to mention several things that seem odd and out of place even now.”

“Princess, this is dangerous. Your Highness and Princess Twilight Sparkle are going against the most powerful mares in the world. Milky admonished her from behind. “I mean… they are older than Equestria as we know it… Should you really be trying to get them to answer for things they did in that time?”

“I am a Princess…” Cadance said, frowning a little. “I’m dangerous too. Not to mention that the consequences of what they did are still felt in the present time. Take Archduke Blueblood. It seems as though he could have a strong claim to Equestria’s throne. Hum… More likely to the ruins of Everfree, I suppose. But that is not the point. It is that compensation might be due. As is fitting reprimand for what they may have done.”

“I’m not sure I follow though…” Milky White appeared on her mirror, from behind her while her maid worked her mane. “Why do you need to spruce up to talk to the Princess and to Chrysalis?”

“If I am to have any luck with my plan, Princess Luna must see me as a respectable Majesty. The sovereign and legitimate ruler of the Crystal Empire, and thus, I must look the part.” She said with a flair of raised muzzle and majestic poise. “And Chrysalis will react better to an attractive, sexy mare.”

“Eeeh… If you say so…” The pony shrugged.

“Trust me.” Cadance said with a grin, staring at her eyelashes flapping in the mirror. “It’s one of the things I’ve picked up from Princess Celestia: if you’re going into a difficult negotiation, you can afford to have all that you can in your favor. Including your appearance.”

“Sounds like dating advice, actually.” Milky wasn’t very impressed.

Cadance frowned. “Well, politics and sex are somewhat similar. Both are dirty, noisy and someone always gets covered.”

Milky did her best to remain calm... There was always Yakyakstan, after all. But she also worried for the sort of dating advice Flurry Heart would get growing up. Well, she was stuck with her princess and could only hope Cadance knew what she was doing.

Her maids kept quiet and to their job of preparing the princess’ mane for her meeting with Chrysalis and Princess Luna, but the silence didn’t last long: a letter arrived via ‘DragonFire’, not magically traceable, and requiring of specific magical knowledge and one willing dragon, both of which her sister-in-law and partner Princess conspirator had in abundance.

“Twilight!” She grinned happily, grabbing the rolled-up scroll in her telekinetic magic and quickly opening it. It had been written hastily, but Twilight’s exquisite hornwriting was unmistakable.

‘Made it out of Ponyville!

They had an army, but we had a Discord.

He is, also, willing to talk about events of the past. The airship is on its way to Manehattan, and we will wait for you to talk. Don’t take too long though. I don’t know for how long Fluttershy can entertain him.

Twi

P.S.: Chocolate Velvet needs cheering up. If you find him on your way, don’t hit him too hard.”

Cadance burned the letter with magic and ‘squeed’ excitedly then clapped her hooves together. “Oh! Perfect! I just need Princess Luna to spill her beans now!”

“Now…” She took a deep breath and started reciting a speech after clearing her throat. “I am immeasurably happy that you both have come to this meeting. I expect that through mutual respect and understanding we can reach a favorable agreement on how to proceed with the actual situation, preferably in a way of justice and friendship!”

He grinned at herself in the mirror. That sounded perfect.

***

It was a nice room for a business meeting room, to the point Luna worried the white unicorn might have lied about what it was used for. It looked like a meeting room for business, but if there was one who knew how weird could fantasies get, it was Luna. So, she carefully examined each and every inch of the room while Chrysalis sat by the small round table covered in sweets, drinks and fruits.

The room stood on the top of a tower and a window showed the city below behind the falling snow, but inside the temperature was very comfortable as was the aroma from the vanilla incense. It reminded Luna of the place they would keep a noble hostage prisoner. The whole thing gave her weird feelings.

Luna and Chrysalis sat next to each other, patiently waiting for Cadance to arrive while the queen tasted a few sweets here or there. Luna, on the other hand, wanted to be out of that place rather sooner than later because she didn’t want to think of the drama if a photograph of her in that place ever got published.

“Try to relax a little, Luna.” The queen said tasting a small sweet of chocolate and black licorice. She bit half of it and tasted the filling with the tip of her tongue. “You might as well enjoy.”

“Do you remember that we came here to apprehend Cadance, not for an actual date?” Luna’s ears folded back.

“Of course, I remember, but I don’t see why we can’t have fun too.” The changeling smirked and offered Luna some sort of sweet, a small tartelette with passion fruit, covered in yellow and its black seeds.

Fortunately, the door opened with one of Cadance’s… Luna chose to categorize them as ‘associates’; along with the white unicorn mare who called herself Milky White. And then, Cadance came in as though she was the star of an opera. She wore a flowing white dress with golden arabesque embroidery and a lot of the regional gems wreathed into her intricately woven mane.

The trio looked regal and convincing to Chrysalis: a monarch and her aides. She thought that the young and fit alicorn, with a well-groomed mane and brushed coat looked luscious. Luna too. In fact, Chrysalis decided that the best situation possible, right then, would be to stay in the Bordello with both of them!

Luna though cringed internally at the pink alicorn next to one unicorn guard/courtesan and another crystal pony one, reminded of the appointed generals that would come from conquering nations into subjugated ones to rule in the name of their conqueror, and then tried to weave themselves into the local culture like they belonged in an effort to show respect for their culture and quell rebellion that resulted in even worse insult and resentment.

Fortunately, Cadance was well intentioned, and it seemed that neither the crystal ponies or daft alicorn noticed anything. Even if the Crystal Empire was liberated, and she still stood like a sore hoof as a leader from another culture to Luna. Thankfully, it was all Equestria in the end and the ‘alicorn factor’ always made things easier.

What the hay was Celestia thinking when she gave it to Cadance like that? She certainly remembered as well as Luna the monumental gaffe that sort of thing was shortly after ponies started growing a conscience about culturally sensitive subjects.

Then the pink princess put a hoof over her chest and smiled happily, taking a breath. “I am immeasurably happy you both have come to-"

“Cadance, whatever you think you are doing, is not going the way you think it is.” Luna said from her seat. “Sit down already so that we can talk.”

The pink alicorn frowned frustrated and sat down angrily at her chair.

“What do I need to do to get you and Twilight to abandon this quest of yours?” Luna sounded mentally taxed by the whole affair.

“You could start by talking about what the hay you and Auntie Celestia did that made you feel the need to hide it!” Cadance frowned. “Then we could talk about compensation for all the wronged parties! And an apology for lying to your fellow princesses! Or even better, the whole of Equestria! An official confession would be nice too!”

“Very well, if it will make you feel better, I'll try to answer your questions to the best of my abilities.” Luna tried to relax as best as she could.

Chrysalis smiled amusingly. Cadance looked so cute when she was angry.

“Nice! But first there is another thing.” The young alicorn grinned and her horn shone somewhat fiercely, letting go a bang of magical energies. A golden ring manifested around Luna's horn. “There! I believe now you see that you are in a position of captivity and must yield, as the target of an investigation.”

While Chrysalis wondered what in Tartarus Cadance was doing now, Luna remained stoically calm at how out worldly preposterous that child’s notion of herself was. “I only hope this thing is a real inhibitor ring and not one of the toys your cohorts certainly use in this place for other ends rather than a serious interrogation.”

Cadance frowned a little more. “This is a real ring, alright. It was made to specifications to inhibit alicorn magic specifically because I feared I would be forced to keep you or auntie Celestia under control, precisely in this sort of situation! I served as a template myself!”

“I do hope this is some mighty magic, otherwise you would look like an infantile fool.” Luna remained eerily calm and it was starting to creep into Cadance's confidence.

It was then Chrysalis rose a hoof, almost worried. “Cadance, you do see me here, don't you? How do you expect me to not free Luna and help her dealing with you?”

Cadance then smiled confidently again. “I sure do! The thing is that I expect you to see that we both can work together and that you sided with the wrong party in this whole affair.”

“Do tell.” The queen grinned, narrowing her eyes in curiosity.

Luna unwieldly grabbed a glass of orange juice with her hoof and, nonchalantly took a sip from it. “How amusing. Princess Cadance is playing at intrigue. Somepony call Mister Marlin. We have the ending for his book series right here. All we are missing are some gelded soldiers, a dragon, an obnoxious bastard, an incestuous couple and a foolish child who thinks herself queen. Oh, wait… We already have the child.”

After staring angrily at Luna, Cadance turned back to Chrysalis. “Don’t you want to know the truth about what happened? By what you told us in the Rock, it seemed like it was a significant episode for you.”

“I don’t really care.” Chrysalis shook her head. “I stand to gain nothing from it.”

“Well, that is where you are wrong!” Cadance grinned a little too much. “Together we can figure out not only what is happening now, but what happened in the past. Seek a compensation! How about that?”

Chrysalis wasn’t impressed. “I already know what is going on in the present. I am a part of it, dimwit. And I am not interested in whatever happened in the past.”

“But… But… You told us a scenario that looked like the world was about to be destroyed, or something just as terrifying.”

“I don’t care, Cadance.” The queen was beginning to tire of the game. “If whatever happened wasn`t their fault, then there is nothing to bother then with. If they caused it, then I’m already on the winning side.”

“Surprisingly, things didn’t go as you planned… And you are angry about it because your ego was hurt.” Luna accused her. “You are wounded that you were lied to. We did it to protect you. To protect all of Equestria. You are welcome.”

“It’s not about me! Twilight is angry too!” Cadance struck the table with a hoof. “We already know that you did something, that you hid a lot of information about this griffon empire, about your arrival and the unicorns tending to the sun and the moon. The only reasonable reason why you would do something like this would be because it would jeopardize your position now!”

“Is that what you think?” Luna looked almost bored. “That I and Celestia did something so horrible that we would change history books, consort with the griffons and hide their own blemish and then we’d pretend it never happened.”

“That is exactly what you did!” Cadance hit the table again, in anger, this time causing all the cute little sweets to jump and glasses to clink together. “You two think yourselves above reproach and that is why you do things like the treaty with the changelings and think that everypony else has to shut up and take it, like it or not!”

“Is that what this is?” Luna still remained stoic, if haught. “You’re upset you weren’t invited for the negotiations with Chrysalis? When you’re behaving like a child right now, can you blame us for keeping you out?”

“That is not the point!” Cadance shouted this time. “I understand you think you do these things for the good of Equestria, but you can’t decide what is good for Equestria by yourselves.”

“Tell me, Cadenza.” It really infuriated her the way Luna called her ‘Cadenza’ with that tone, but she controlled herself. “What could the whole of Equestria do if Celestia decided she was done being nice to all of you? What would the yaks do? What would the griffons or the even the dragons do? There is an unspoken law that is true to every universe, Cadenza. Might does make right.”

“This is horrible!”

“No, it is not. It is a simple fact that the strong has power over the weak. Creatures like the old Dragon Lord and emperor Grigor believed that the strong had the right to abuse the weak, while me and Celestia have the duty of protecting the weak. And even then, there are several ways of doing so and it has changed as time passed on.”

Luna took another sip from her glass. “The truth is that the same game is played with different rules by different players. Most creatures in Equesria don’t even realize that the only reason they are alive is because we have allowed them to, and they would cease to exist if we demanded it. You are included in this and you should learn to play by the rules that were presented to you; and instead of learning it, you are offended you weren’t deemed ready yet.”

While Cadance was stunned that Luna had just told her some truths, Chrysalis had far more practical things in her mind and was frustrated over the fact that Cadance not only let Luna take control of the conversation, but also failed to extract any meaningful information out of the younger of The Sisters she could use.

She had hoped to come out of it unscathed, but Cadance was being an idiot and Chrysalis had to take the reins of the conversation. But she didn’t really worry about the past that concerned Twilight and Cadance so much. The queen worried about something much more practical, such as what was their plan with that stupid coltfriend of theirs and on what she had invested the Swarm’s resources on. So, she raised a hoof with a petulant smile that almost worried Luna. “Actually, I would like to know some things about Chocolate Velvet.”

“What about him?” Cadance’s ears perked up and her expression changed from frustration to curiosity while she looked at one and then the other.

“You are making a mistake, Chrysalis.” The blue alicorn warned her, narrowing her eyes.

“I don’t know, Luna.” The queen flashed her a grin full of sharp teeth. “I think that you may have made a mistake not sharing the whole truth with me.”

“Have it your way then, but you will regret it.” The blue princess rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue. “You were doing so well.”

“What. About. Him?” Cadance insisted; her instincts told her she had found something important and her frustration levels felt a lot more tolerable now. Suddenly it seemed like he was part of the mystery and it filled her with curiosity, not to mention that the fact that he was a friend made it even more urgent. Perhaps a victim in The Sister’s schemes? What did he have to do with this whole thing?

Chrysalis obliged. “Didn’t you think it was strange that he came out of nowhere?”

Luna fumed. For the first time she seemed legitimately angry since they left the palace. “Cadance, she will violate the privacy of an individual and of the deal we have made because of this asinine investigation of yours. Cease this now before it is too late.”

“No.” Cadance frowned. “You wouldn’t have had to hide anything if it wasn’t wrong to begin with.”

“Well spoken, Cadance.” The changeling chuckled. “Well, Twilight’s friends found him near Ponyville, like he had just popped into existence there. Didn’t it strike you as strange?”

“I assumed that it was a way to protect his origins.” Cadance said softly. “I assumed that, like me, he had come from an orphanage or something of the sort, and the princesses were trying to protect his privacy of scrutiny from the news.”

“Chocolate Velvet was made.”

“What do you mean?” The alicorn shook her head in confusion.

“He was, literally, built magically.”

“What?” She recoiled a bit. “Like a flesh golem? A Hoofenstein’s monster?”

She recoiled more; with the acid taste of the sweets she ate while getting prepared for this meeting returning to her throat. “This is revolting!”

“Calm yourself, Cadance. You are imagining the wrong thing.” Luna stared angrily at her.

But Cadance was busy contemplating images of a pony being assembled piece by piece in some sort of dark laboratory, complete with a leaky ceiling and magical sparks all over a metal bed. “It can’t be! He is too lifelike for that!”

Chrysalis grinned a small evil grin. “I don’t know if this is better or worse, but we didn’t harvest organs or parts for him. Celestia cast several spells that formed his body. It took several days, almost a month. Not only that, but Celestia stuck him with a soul she plucked from who knows where. She needed me to keep him alive during the process until he was ready to survive. She paid me with my name in the House of Majesty.”

Then the queen tilted her head a little, with an amused half-smile. “It gets better. They both, Celestia and Luna, had me prepare a cure. It seems like they were incapable of generating foals, and with some experiments I did with the samples Celestia had given me of herself, I have discovered that her soul lacks a part of it that would allow it to go to whatever it would be supposed to go if she died. How about that?”

That was a lot to take in for poor Cadance. Maybe comparing him to a fictional creature made to invoke feelings of dread and from a cautionary tale was unfair, but the whole thing seemed otherworldly bizarre!

Cadance could definitively understand her aunts wanting somepony special for them, particularly considering the specifics of their position and, even if they could literally have any stallion or mare they desired, such would not be a good idea. But having a pony literally fabricated for them was surreal. It bordered on the insane and something Cadance would imagine as a megalomaniacal project for some exceedingly rich and powerful noble, completely out of touch with reality.

Then it hit her that her aunts were exceedingly rich and powerful nobles. She stared at Luna who stared back at her, apparently stoically, but she knew her aunt and could see it in her eyes. Luna was furious.

What about this weird detail about Auntie Celestia's soul? How did that factor in?

“Why?!”

While Luna couldn’t believe how unsavorily stupid Cadance was being, the queen shrugged. “I imagine that their little coltfriend was a luxury they wanted? Why don’t you enlighten us, Luna?”

“Chrysalis is being very disingenuous.” Luna huffed. “For starters, the actual deal was for her to release the changelings from the most extreme forms of her control over them, and for them to share their medical advances with the rest of Equestria. Chocolate Velvet was supposed to be a collaboration, and she was never meant to experiment and create her Praetorians or unravel Celestia’s privacy.”

“Privacy?!” The queen launched. “That is one way of putting it, I suppose.”

“In reality…” Luna went on. “The worse one could gather from the situation was that Chrysalis was allowed to take the seat in the House of Majesty in Thorax stead. It was meant as a display of good will and that we trusted her with the position.”

“Does he know?” Cadance shook her head slightly, still trying to understand the logic behind that and Chrysalis shook her head.

“I wouldn’t tell him. I don’t think it would be healthy for his head to know this sort of thing.”

“Auntie Luna?” Cadance tried touching her hooves with her own, but she retrieved them from the table.

“Now…” Chrysalis spoke again. “Since I have invested a considerable amount of resources from the Hive in this curious project, I would like it very much if the actual reason behind his creation was disclosed to us. I insist, Luna.”

She stood quiet for a few a few seconds, then she showed them a manic grin. “You are not going to like the answer.”

Cadance became intimidated, nervously holding onto the table's edge and the queen narrowed her eyes. “I’ll take my chances, Luna.”

“Celestia merely lusts after him.” She said plainly.

“No, really.” Chrysalis narrowed her eyes some more, adding more than a dangerous edge to her voice.

Then the blue alicorn giggled and laughed. “Oh, my stars. Everypony is so used to seeing Celestia scheming and plotting that nopony believes that she, like everypony else, can do things for the simplest of reasons!”

“She's become so madly in love with him that she’ll cater to his every whim and she’s become so jealous of him she won’t even let me near him without her supervision!” She laughed and followed with louder laughter, putting a leg over her face. “He caters to that stupid knight fetish of hers and so she gave him all the best enchanted armor and weapons we have. Custom fitted and heavily adorned with the most expensive things one could put on a barding and matching weapons. It’s cost us millions of Bits. Equestria is almost broke.”

Luna sighed and took a sip from a glass with grape juice. While Cadance had her mouth agape in shock, the queen had become furious, grimacing and snarling like a feral dog.

The princess stared at Luna, and then at Chrysalis, and then back at Luna and finally back at Chrysalis. “I… I don’t know what to say!”

“I am going to murder Celestia and that freak of hers!” The queen said, hitting the table so hard Cadance ‘meeped’ in surprise. “I am going to have my army ready for when you and Twilight come back with whatever you find in the griffon lands. We’re going to have these two removed from Canterlot and… Put in an asylum or something!”

“Crissy! You can’t be serious!”

“Oh, yes, I am!” The queen growled. “We have the Lion to deal with, and now Celestia has to, finally, be going senile!”

“Chrysalis! This is… You can’t! I mean!” Cadance almost panicked before she managed to grab her wits again, massaging her forehead with a hoof. “Chrysalis! Listen to me! It’s not that serious! They just… Had a living being fabricated to their specifications like he was a piece of furniture… And then… Aunt Celestia has gone insane like… Wasting millions on him… And.. And… Parading him about like a piece of ornament… Oh my goodness! This is awful!!”

She quickly lost her wits again. “What do we do?!”

“Like I said…” The Queen stood from her chair and stared directly into Cadance. “I’ll have my military ready. You and Twilight go get whatever information you can that we can use against these two. Try to get the Lion involved, it shouldn`t be too hard now.”

“I need my barding and weapons! Shining’s too!” She touched the queen with a hoof as she passed by getting her to stop and look at her.

“Go to the palace. I’ll get my soldiers to assist you. Do it quickly, before Luna’s guards realize something isn’t right.” Chrysalis said, barely stopping on her way out.

“Chrysalis! Wait!” She turned on her chair and called, but all she saw was the door closing on the queen’s wake. “Oh…”

“I am amazed at how easily she can flip sides and switch emotions to suit her needs. I wonder if she even realizes she does it.” Luna said calmly. “It’s going to take a long time before Chrysalis learns that she won’t get anything like that.”

Cadance stared at her, confused, worried and somewhat a little distressed. Luna went on. “Things didn’t go as you planned, did they? You wanted to know about things in the past, but Chrysalis was only interested in the ‘investment’ she made; in the end, neither got what you wanted to hear because you’ve allied yourselves with the wrong party. Feeling like a fool, already?”

Since Cadance simply stared dumbly at her, Luna went on. “Now, remove this ring before somepony gets hurt and come with me to Ponyville where Celestia is. The sooner you abandon this quest you’ve embarked on with Twilight Sparkle, the better, and we can try to make you understand the situation.”

“No!” Cadence shouted, pulled out of her shock. “You need help! You both need help! You… Three! All three of you need! Help!”

Luna simply stared calmly and wondered how could the wondrous mystery of Harmony have produced such an idiot, but her playful side got the best of her and Cadance did her best not to freak out. More. “What you did is not normal! I don’t really understand what is going on, but we’ll figure it out!”

Obviously, she failed.

Luna smiled ever so slightly. “What isn’t normal, Cadance? Messing with historical records, making secret deals with evil queens or custom designing a coltfriend?”

She stared blankly for a second or two. “All of those!”

Luna giggled more than she would like to admit. “Calm down, Cadance.”

“No! I’m fine! I’m perfectly fine! You need to calm down!” The pink alicorn held onto the side of the side of the table like it was the only safe thing in existence and Luna found it curious and funny how ponies always got their manes into a mess when they became nervous. Cadance`s was shedding its gemstones by the second as though not even the intricately woven traditional mane do could withstand the stress she went through right now. “This is fine! This is perfectly fine! It’s not like there is a war about to start, or Chrysalis was out of control, or The Princesses that rule the world could be going insane, or there was an artificially made pony running around! EVERYTHING IS PERFECTLY FINE!”

“For pony’s sake, Cadance.” Luna did her best not to laugh. “Stop for a second and breathe. You already knew he was from another world. This is not a difficult leap to take.”

“I thought you and Auntie Celestia meant that he was from a distant place! Not that you had him made like one would order a dress!”

“Take this thing out of my horn and let’s talk. I’ll show you some things that will make everything easier to understand.”

The other princess shrieked though. “No! You’re staying with that hornring until we have the situation under control! You’ll stay here! In the tower! Where it is safe!”

With that, she turned and rushed towards the door, slammed her muzzle on it, opened the door with her magic using much more force than needed and rushed out, closing the door on the way out, got her tail stuck, opened it again and then closed it.

Luna stared at the closed door. Then at the two ponies that remained. They didn’t seem much better off than Cadance was. “Can I expect you two to be more reasonable?”

“Sorry, Princess!” Milky White said. “We’re keeping you here until Princess Cadance says you can go.”

“It’s for your own safety, princess!” The crystal pony said seriously.

Luna stared at them for a while. It always amused her when ponies told her they wouldn’t let her do things. But she also didn’t want to hurt these ponies, and the situation was amusing, but under control. “Fine then.”

She then proceeded to taste the fine sweets on the table.

***

Cadance hurried down the stairs, clip-clopping frenetically on the stone stairs and crashed into Chrysalis with a panicked shriek as soon as she left the stairwell.

“Cadance?! What in Equestria are you doing?!” She turned, yelling angrily. Fortunately, the corridor was empty, and ponies wouldn’t hear them in distant rooms thanks to the music and cheering sounds of festive ponies.

“I’m sorry!” The princess took two steps back frantically. “I’m sorry! I just…”

Chrysalis held her with her hooves, sitting in front of her. “Cadance, calm down. I understand. This is your first revolution and you are scared. Trust me, these things are normal. This sort of things used to happen all the time in the past, before Celestia and Luna.”

“That doesn’t sound nice at all!” The princess yelled louder than she had expected.

“Now now, this place is full of ponies that don’t need to concern themselves with this whole mess. So, what you are going to do is go to the palace, find your things, and take them to Twilight’s airship. There you will tell them all we learned here about what your aunts are doing and you are going to convince Twilight to stop losing it like you are now, and then you will both to go to the Lion, figure out how this whole thing wraps together and the three of you will call for a vote of no confidence in The Sisters.”

“If it is necessary, my army and the Lion`s will be ready to support you and ponies will be lost without The Sisters. Understand?”

Cadance seemed to be paying too much attention to her. “Did you understand?”

The pony nodded a little too fast.

“Can you do that?” She nodded too fast again. “Good. Now, we both will walk out, and I will deal with Luna’s guards that pulled us here. Once in the palace grab what you need, and from there, teleport to Twilight’s airship.”

“Okay…” Cadance breathed out, finally. Then she frowned. “Wait a second. If Celestia and Luna are removed from office, who would take their place?”

Chrysalis put a hoof on her chest. “I would humbly accept the nomination.”

“Yeah… Right…” Cadance frowned.

“This is not the time, though. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, we need to get you to your palace and to Twilight’s airship. Come on.” She put one of her membranous wings over Cadance’s back and the two of them walked through one of the many corridors in the Bordello, soon reaching the central room where Cadance held a faux-throne.

It was the main area of the restaurant that made use of the original main hall complete with three sets of long tables before the throne and a giant candelabra that generated light. Ponies sat by the tables, enjoying their meals but when the pair entered, they cheered for the princess and she found herself waving awkwardly at them while the queen simply kept her confident smile.

Fortunately for Cadance’s nerves, the pair found no resistance until the entrance hall and past the main doors, where they found Luna’s guards, talking to her griffon greeter. She worried they would become distrusting of the queen escorting their ‘prisoner’, but she soon found something different over her back and the membranous wing of the queen had been replaced by soft feathers.

When she next stared, it was Luna next to her, escorting her towards her coach.

“Princess. It seems everything went as planned.” The big thestral guard greeted them, joining the others in a respectful bow.

For a second Cadance worried, but there were no unicorns in the group to recognize the changeling magic at work and the ‘Princess’ voice was a perfect imitation. “Queen Chrysalis knows how to make an impression on a pony. Cadenza saw that she had no alternative, for the good of the rest of Equestria.”

“Princess, is that so?” The griffon eyed the pair suspiciously.

Surprising even her nerve-wracked self, Cadance’s voice was under control, as were her shudders and she managed to sound regal enough. “Auntie Luna has explained to me a few things I didn`t know and… Honestly, it all makes perfect sense now.”

The griffon nodded, satisfied. “Very well, them.”

One of the thestrals opened the windowed door for them and ‘Luna’ encouraged Cadance with her wing. “Kindly take the young princess to her palace so that she may remain in comfortable captivity. Chrysalis’ guards will care for her needs and security. You may return and enjoy the services of the Bordello, if you so desire.”

“Your highness.” The thestral guards agreed.

“Now, you would not give these fine gentlestalions any trouble, would you Cadenza?”

She smiled awkwardly. “Not at all, auntie.”

With that, Cadance boarded the coach and away she went. The queen under Luna’s guise realized that something wasn’t exactly right. She moved her ear, listening to nothing in particular as she narrowed her eyes.

“Is something wrong, Princess?” The griffon asked, curiously.

“No…” The blue alicorn said, looking around in the parking area, only to return her eyes to the griffon. “It´s nothing. Just keep to your post.”

She went back inside, not worried if the griffon would do as she ordered and hurried all the way back to the tower where Cadance had imprisoned Luna. Opening the door, things there remained the same, with Luna still wearing the hornring, and drinking something, awkwardly holding a wine glass with her hoof, and under watch from the unicorn and crystal pony Cadance had brought. A few gems littered the carpeted floor, but that didn’t bother the queen as her green magic changed her back to her original form.

“What are you up to?” She barely accused Luna of something she didn’t know of, walking to the table.

“I am tasting the yak spiced wine. It is stronger than I expected. I quite like it.” Luna said a little surprised.

“No.” Chrisalis sat on the chair opposite to hers. “You are planning something. No way in Tartarus that simple hornring would keep your magic inhibited for long! I thought you were deathly worried that Twilight and Cadance would talk to the Lion, but you are sitting here, like you are on vacation!”

“Oh. That.” Luna put her glass back on the table. “Celestia ought to catch Twilight and I figure Cadance will be there too, then she’ll stop them. Furthermore, I’ll reach out to them in their sleep, as I had planned with Celestia.”

“No.” Chrysalis put her hooves on the table and stared fiercely at the princess. “You are planning something: this doesn’t add up to the way you acted when we arrived. What about my soldiers. And about Chocolate Velvet?”

“Ah… Well…” Luna grinned her a small excited smile. “A time for everything… I figured I could simply enjoy the experience!”

“Luna, what are you talking about now?”

“It’s been thousands of years since I’ve been held hostage! My sister went to rescue me with a whole Battlehorn Legion. It was pretty impressive…” She said rubbing her hooves together. “I’d like to experience that again… And… Well… This is a tower, I am a princess, and you are an evil queen. And now we even have a knight under the Royal House…”

Chrysalis looked right at her for a few seconds as her brain had to restart the process of understanding what she had just heard a few times. “Luna, remember that conversation about you and Celestia going insane? You are not helping.”

That had to be a distraction. Now that Luna knew that she wasn’t happy about Chocolate Velvet she was trying to distract her. The princess certainly knew that Chrysalis could create some mayhem in Celestia’s way to protect Twilight and Cadance. There was no way Luna really was waiting for her prince charming to come and save her! That was madness and there was also no way Chrysalis would believe Luna thought she would believe this insanity.

She stared at Luna, rubbing her chin with a hoof, and her eyes narrowed at the princess, who then stared submissively at her with the saddest eyes the queen had ever seen. “I guess you’ll have to force me to tell you what you wanted…”

The queen wavered, but held on, lowered her voice. “This isn’t funny. You and Celestia managed to make a millennia spanning, multi-world mess!”

Then the alicorn pouted like she was the cover for one of those magazines stallions (and Chrysalis) bought only because they wanted to read the articles. “But I thought I should enjoy myself a bit…”

Chrysalis breathed in deeply. “Luna…”

Those big blue, innocent eyes and her waving starry mane… The Queen wavered. She could think of thousands of ways this whole mess could go wrong and how she was walking into whatever scheme Luna had set with before her eyes. But… It was Luna… One of the most desired mares in all of the world.

Chrysalis sighed. She was, certainly a flawed creature and almost felt like betraying Cadance, and in a way, her own people. But… Luna!

She sighed again, and then gave Luna her best malevolent grin. “Well, then… I suppose we will have to turn this tower in to an adequate interrogation room befitting of the Bordello of Candy.”

Amid all that, the crystal pony turned to Milky White. “Uh… What is going on?”

“I’m going back to Princess Celestia’s Royal Guard…” She sounded so, so tired…

Author's Note

Next chapter shouldn't take too long to come out, but there are two spin-off stories that should go in between this one and the next. Well, they need to be written.

Machine Hearts

It was getting late, but Twilight had relaxed a bit after Discord had said he would stay with them, since whatever she wanted to talk about was so important. She only hoped things didn’t go wrong for Cadance in the Crystal Empire. She hadn’t, after all, returned the letter Twilight had sent her a few hours ago. Though that could be because if she did it might draw attention and she might be trying to sneak around the Crystal Empire. Twilight figured she would simply have to swallow her anxiety and be patient.

Fortunately, Discord was entertained talking with Fluttershy and playing games with Shining Armor and Spike. He should remain with them until next morning, and while they waited for Cadance, Twilight, Rarity and Starlight Glimmer made sure they had more non-lethal ammunition for their firearms. She wouldn’t have anypony in her group shooting real bullets anywhere, as long as she could afford it, and her ship’s armory had plenty of the pre-requisite crystal balls and the supplies needed for reloading the firearms in their armory and their own many times over. Next to them, Twilight’s royal guards prepared the small paper cartridges with the measured powder and the magical bullets when they were ready.

She even had the luxury of sparing Shining Armor to be with Discord and Spike, the three mares and their pegasus helpers ought to do the job enchanting all the ball bullets they’d need.

They sat by a large and heavy wooden table fitted with a rustic black metal structure and that had two jars filled with the crystal balls, one with the clear ones and the other with the shinning pink ones, with the active enchantment. On the other side of the armory, Applejack was busy with the repetitive process of reloading her caplock revolver and still had Fluttershy's soothing ointment on her bruises. Nothing too worrying fortunately, just a couple of bruises that got under her barding in the fight with Ponyville’s town militia.

For some ponies that lacked proper training and equipment, they sure hit hard. Regardless, Twilight knew her friend and knew that she could endure much, much more. Earth pony stamina was already recognized, but Applejack’s was legendary. Which only made her even more stuborn.

“Somepony really needs to make this thing more practical.” The earth pony complained absentmindedly while pushing the bullet on one of the chambers, and then sealing it.

“Do you need any help, Applejack?” Starlight looked up from the crystal ball she focused her magic on.

“Nah. I rather do this my own.” She carefully placed the percussion cap for one of the weapon’s chambers and the unicorn wondered, one more time out of several, just how could the earth ponies do that sort of thing with their hooves. “I’m almost done anyway.”

Twilight focused on her own thoughts and the repetitive nature of the simple spell she cast on the ammunition helped her. Memories of their conversation with Queen Chrysalis reminded her of just how careful she’d have to be with Discord and she tried to mentally organize what questions to ask. She also entertained the notion that he might not want to answer, and in that case, what would she say to dissuade him. She found some solace in the idea that, this time, at least she’d have the advantage of actually preparing for the conversation.

Maybe a good idea would be to condense their findings on a few notes and avoid too much detail. Let him provide de details for them.

And, in the worst-case scenario, what would she do if he decided to stop them or something of the sort.

Suddenly Cadance’s familiar magic pinged her senses and woke her out of her thoughts. The other unicorns looked at her and soon followed her outside and up the stairs to the deck, where they were soon joined by the others, except for Spike and Discord, but also the crystal pony maid, who watched over the sleeping baby.

The day had turned to night and Twilight hadnt even noticed it, but that wasnt important and she saw Rainbow Dash flying back towards the ship, signaling to the captain to slow her down. Only then did she see her sister-in-law flying towards them, carrying a pair of large black suitcases, flying awkwardly with the two unwieldy things in tow.

Oddly enough she wore a beautiful white and gold dress, which made her flying even worse, along with the Crystal Empire`s traditional mane-do, but it was a mess. When she landed, Shining Armor hurried towards her, in front of the others and helped her with those big cumbersome things.

“Cadie! What happened to you?!” He left them on the floor and touched her mane softly.

“Oh, it’s awful, Shinny!” Her ears fell and she looked dejected.

“Tell us what happened!” Twilight urged her, drawing closer in distress. “Are you hurt?”

“No! But…” She hesitated for a second while her eyes shone with tears forming in them. “I’m afraid Princess Celestia may…”

She hesitated again, more and more agitated, with her wings flared and stepping nervously on the floor. “By what Luna’s told me, she may be becoming insane!”

“What?!” Both alicorns wished they could find the collective gasp humorous, but Cadance seemed very serious and scared.

“What do you mean ‘insane’?” Applejack blurted out.

Rarity hummed nervously. “Well, Princess Celestia has always been a bit on the eccentric side. I am sure this is simply a misunderstanding!”

“I knew it!” Pinkie’s ears pulled back. “It all makes sense now!”

“For the love of Equestria, Cadie! What are you saying?!” Her unicorn husband held her in his hooves and shook her slightly.

“Oh my gosh!” Twilight found her breath way too short and her head flooded, in a mere second, with all sorts of anecdotal evidence of what Cadance had just said, why that was bad and, also, additional reasons to panic, such as the paralyzing chaos that was sure to explode in the entire world as soon as that reached the news and how much that would help The Lion’s cause. How that would cause even more chaos and how the entire world would END!

“For crying out loud!” Applejack yelled in the middle of half-panicking ponies. “Spit it out already!”

“Alright!” Cadance caught her breath and inhaled deeply, next to Twilight who did the same. Applejack had to admit it looked rather cute… For an instant she wondered if she could get some sort of photography award if she caught all three of them, Celestia, Cadance and Twilight doing that in a single shot. That notwithstanding, Cadance managed to speak clearly again. “When I arrived in the Crystal Empire, I figured Luna and Chrysalis were there too! So, I decided to sneak to our palace, but along the way, I came along my personal guard capturing a group of Luna’s Royal Guards and Chrysalis’ creepy big changeling soldiers!”

Ponies paid attention, particularly Twilight. “So, I figured I’d hide with them in the Bordello and interrogate the changelings and thestrals, but before we got much information out of them, Luna and Chrysalis arrived. I tried talking to them, but Princess Luna wouldn’t say anything, and Chrysalis didn’t care about the events we are trying to research, and then she got Luna to talk about Chocolate Velvet and Princess Celestia, instead!”

“I’m sure Princess Luna hid something from Chrysalis since she insisted, and pressed Luna because she was sure Auntie Celestia had some ulterior motive behind… Creating him!”

While ponies wondered what exactly Cadance meant with that specific word and she explained to them in the most near-panic way possible, Twilight figured she already suspected something like that. It really didn’t take a genius to figure that out. What is more, Twilight didn’t understand why that freaked Cadance out that much… Especially considering she was a pony whose special talent was making others fall in love with one another… Maybe she felt cheated or something, since she liked pairing ponies in pairs that ‘worked’ inside that head of hers. Regardless, Chocolate Velvet was a nice pony that loved the Princesses and had that romantic streak that some ponies of her time could afford to have more of: he was insecure, but he also was brave, persistent and chivalrous. In fact, he reminded her of her brother’s best qualities. He was fine in Twilight’s book, whatever his origin.

With those thoughts, Twilight turned her attention to her sister-in-law and her distressed voice getting higher pitched and faster with every word when she seemed to be reaching the important part. “And then she said Equestria is almost broke because all of the things she gives him! Enchanted armor! Enchanted weapons! And how he caters to her knight fetish and-”

“I’m shocked Queen Chrysalis believed any of that!” Twilight interrupted her, more interested in the relevant stuff, and that caused ponies to look at her, particularly Cadance and her frazzled mane. “Wait, you believed that?”

“Princess Luna had a magical inhibitor ring on her horn, and Chrysalis didn’t hurt her or anything, but she was very… Intimidating.” Cadance defended herself despite the slight sting of insecurity, starting to feel a bit like a fool. “You know... In that way Chrysalis knows how to be intimidating.”

Twilight grunted. “Cadance, we just fought him, and he did have some fancy armor, but nowhere near that sort of thing. It wasn’t even magical because he doesn’t have enough rank in the chivalric society. He’s climbing their ranks like anypony else... Certainly didn’t look like Princess Celestia was favoring him. And there is no inhibitor hornring in existence that can contain Princess Luna's magic! You both let her distract you from what we really needed to figure out with something that is inconsequential! And also, plain wrong!”

“Where is she now?” Twilight asked a little too loudly and Cadance’s ears fell as did her gaze.

“Chrysalis’ taken her prisoner.” Cadance rubbed her legs together. “She helped me avoid Luna’s guards and she is now taking care of Luna in the Bordello.”

That could be a problem… Twilight didn’t trust Chrysalis to be nice… Or even civil to Luna if she believed that The Sisters tried to cross her. But Twilight couldn’t afford to deal with that now and Princess Luna could certainly take care of herself. She also relented, when remembering what a blunder she would have made of their conversation with Chrysalis if it wasn’t for Cadance. She simply sighed, a little worried she might’ve been too hard on Cadance, in her state.

“But…” Cadance did feel like a fool after Twilight’s answer to her worries. “There is more… Chrysalis figured out something. Auntie Celestia gave her some ‘samples’ of herself... Whatever those were... And Chrysalis experimented with those. She figured out there is something wrong with Princess Celestia's soul.”

That got Twilight’s attention and Cadance felt a little better, knowing she hadn’t completely blundered her interaction with Luna and Chrysalis, and then she concluded. “There seems to be a part of her soul that is missing.”

“How does that happen?” Rainbow blurted out in the middle of the shocked ponies, before Twilight could formulate a proper question.

“You can damage one's soul through necromancy, or some powerful enough magic…” Twilight muttered looking down and thoughtfully. “We don’t really understand a lot about souls other than they are the magical component of our bodies. It’s a sort of duality: we have bodies with physiological functions and a soul that animates that body with magical functions… Hence, the changelings and their situation.”

There was a bit of silence, as ponies let Twilight think with a hoof on her chin and looking down with a frown. Maybe it related to Celestia's connection to the sun? Maybe it related to how she can live for so long without losing her magical potency. Maybe it was something completely unrelated. What about Luna? It frustrated Twilight that Chrysalis hadn’t thought of figuring that out by checking on Luna’s soul or something! Chrysalis was no science-mare or scholar… She was a moron! Ugh!

She looked up. “Did she say anything else?”

“It’s the part that would let her go to wherever souls are supposed to go when she died.” The pink alicorn said staring at Twilight, as if she expected her to immediately figure out what that meant.

Twilight only hummed to herself and thought some more before speaking. “Well, I don’t have a clue how can Chrysalis claim that, but she’s probably been studying souls a lot longer than I, and if I ever got to study one, I’d probably not even know that it had parts to it, but if our bodies have different organs, I suppose it makes sense. So, what does that mean? I don’t really know”

“That Princess Celestia is immortal?” Fluttershy offered.

Twilight shook her head. “That is not how I’d design an immortal soul in how we know magic flows in Equestria. If her body died, she’d just be left wandering, and the reason one is supposed to expire is that their soul needs to rest. Or something like that.”

Was that actual scientific knowledge on the subject or was Twilight operating on anecdotal information from ponies that didn’t really know what they were talking about? She wasn’t sure where that information had come from, now that she thought of it. She hated that.

“But if her soul was damaged, that would make sense.” Cadance replied uncertainly. “Wouldn’t it?”

“No. Yes? I’m not sure. That sounds very specific and capricious. Not to mention that if her soul was tired because it’s been alive for too long and couldn’t leave to rest, she would never be able to cast such powerful spells as she can.” Twilight kind of agreed, but not entirely, and then disagreed. “It could be that because her soul was damaged, a part of it that took the damage stopped working, or Chrysalis doesn’t fully understand what she saw. Which is more likely.”

“Or maybe you high falutin ‘smart ponies’ are trying to talk about things you don’t know apples from oranges about.” Applejack grinned like she’d caught them stealing the cookies before dinner, and the two princesses smiled sheepishly. “I reckon we gotta talk to Discord.”

“Yes...” Cadance grunted quietly. “I suppose that of all of us, he is the one most likely to know about that.”

“In the morning.” Twilight cleared her throat and smiled some more. “It’s going to be a dense conversation and we'll need clear heads. Not to mention that Cadance clearly needs some rest. We all do, after the whole affair in Ponyville.”

“I am simply relieved we did not stumble upon on Princess Celestia.” Rarity sighed. “I am positive she would have ruined our escape.”

“She avoided us, Rarity.” Twilight said. “She certainly noticed something was up on Ponyville and decided to distance herself. You can be sure she would’ve been with Chocolate Velvet if that wasn’t the case. Or that she would, at least would’ve showed up at the end.”

Which made Twilight think... Celestia certainly intended on acting against them again. She needed to figure out when and how, try to anticipate it because fighting the Princess head on simply wasn’t an alternative.

But it was too late, she was tired, and they needed to rest right then. They retired for the night. Including Discord, nestled like a big cat with Fluttershy. Cadance slept with Shining Armor and her baby, respectfully close to Miss Calcite. Or at least as much as the small quarters would allow. Ponies found places to spread a blanket and pillow and sleep. It was a cozy place filled with friends, more than a crowded bedroom.

Twilight found her own place in a corner, but she didn’t sleep. The small light from her horn let her review her and Cadance’s notes, her notes from the conversation with Chrysalis and their general thoughts on the whole thing, as much as a list of things she meant to ask Discord and a condensed version of their findings, organized in bullet points and in chronological order. It was going to be a long night.

***

Coming out the door, Twilight stretched for a while and wandered the deck of her ship. Her friends still slept, and her crew was nowhere to be seem. Under the starry sky, under Luna’s moonlight, the airship sailed fast, creating a chilling wind, but she resisted it. It bothered her that the Magic of Friendship’s crew was nowhere to be seen, though… She was pretty sure that the airship needed tending during night hours.

She didn’t let that keep her from pacing around though, actually enjoying the fast wind caused by her vessel’s flight, while the actual wind flapped her sails and made her magical engines hum ever slightly mightier, as though they appreciated the wind too. She knew well that the sails didn’t simply catch the wind, but they fed the mana batteries with the magic they captured from it. Something didn’t seem right, though: the ship was supposed to have her sails furled when at full cruise speed.

Whatever it was, it didn’t bother her for long, and for an instant, it filled her with a sense of wonder that her world was brimming with magic. From the magic that formed matter itself to the magic that allowed unicorns to bend reality, pegasi to control the weather and earth ponies to coax juicy fruit and life from the land. It was ratter beautiful. In a very intimate level, she wasn’t quite fully aware off, it made sense that it was like that.

She thought of the magic of Harmony, which lent ponies their destinies and their talents, as though some invisible hoof put little magical cogs to work where they were needed; from the humblest of ponies keeping their small subsistence farm to the mighty magic that moved the heavens.

The magic that moved the heavens…

It seemed almost mundane when she thought that the unicorns used to do it and almost made Princesses Celestia and Luna not really needed, until one remembered that doing so drained the unicorns’ magic. Why did that happen? Wasn’t it their job to do it? Was Harmony so cruel that they would be undoing their gift by performing their job? Or was it all a lie Twilight had been told to hide an even worse truth?

What about changelings? Was there really a curse? Or did Harmony put them to perform some unknown duty Twilight couldn’t understand? Did Star Swirl understand it? Did he see the princesses as something special when he saw that they could do effortlessly what he couldn’t?

Did he try to do it? Was it what caused the problems that Emperor Grigor mentioned in his letter? The raging sun and the dark night? The black sun Chrysalis had mentioned? Something important was just beyond her reach, but she couldn’t see what it was. She couldn’t grasp it. She felt like when she was staring at the magical screens, outside Chrysalis Spawning Pool… Trying to read meaning in a language she didn’t fully understand.

She stared at the stars and they looked different. They were… Alien. Their soft twinkling turned to angry flashes and they began to fade away.

Was this the sky that Sombra and Grigor saw? One by one, they blinked out of existence leaving only the moon which evanesced slowly, leaving Twilight alone on the deck of her ship, staring at the black void.

Nothingness.

A strange sense of dread crept into her consciousness like an insect crawling up her leg out of some dark hole she didn’t even see was there. The sky seemed scary. There wasn’t a point to fixate her gaze and she felt like an impossibly dense field of nothing threatened to swallow her. She looked at the horizon and the sea was a lightless, fading indistinguishable mass. There was no light to see anything past the airship’s railing.

She took a few steps back. “Girls? Shinny?”

She called, but no one answered. She was alone, cornered at the back of her mind, a little pony under the gaping void. Her legs were weak and her breath quickened. Her heart beat too fast in her chest and her ears. Her lungs burned and her mind slipped into panic when she realized the wind had stopped. The ship’s magical engines ceased their low hum. Magic itself was gone, like a warm feeling, so familiar she had never paid much attention, that had suddenly vanished, and left her abandoned in a world that looked and felt broken. Irreparably defective. A corrupted existence. Something her mind simply wasn’t made to understand.

She closed her eyes, but the darkness didn’t relent. She knew. It was still out there: she could feel the lack of everything; she could hear the nothingness, like a static given off by a defective phonograph. It was the sound of a dead world. There was nothing she could do and all she tried was fight back the sobs in her throat and curl into a ball in the cold floor. It was something at least, but soon, it was just a place from where she couldn’t run from to escape the void that closed in on her. Like a predator closing in on its prey.

Suddenly a voice. It felt like an anchor to stay her sanity from losing itself in the starless void, and it was a voice that gave back her hope that things would be fine again.

“This is what the sky looked like then, Twilight.” Luna’s voice reached her and the small alicorn felt her wing over her back, giving her it’s warmth of reality, pulling her mind back from the void. “It is mine now, and it will never look like that ever again.”

Almost too afraid Twilight opened her eyes and they were greeted by the most wondrous of night skies, where the moon shone proudly, and the stars could almost be heard in a twinkling melody.

Slowly she rose and looked at Luna, who stared down at her, smiling softly at her friend. “Princess Luna… I’m dreaming. I… Thank You…”

“You shouldn’t keep to certain thoughts before sleep.” Luna admonished her like a mother telling an unruly child to behave. “The mind wanders and rarely finds its way back without its rational part. You become an easy prey for the Nightmares.”

Was that how her magic worked? Luna could somehow grab the mind of ponies lost in a storm of mad thoughts and feelings and bring them back to rationality? Or was it the simple realization that they were in a nightmare that brought relief? The sight of the friendly and helpful princess amid the confusion and fear? Twilight then caught herself wondering how she had never thought of that before… Luna simply watched for ponies and their dreams. Period. Now, with her recent thoughts, she seemed to reach deeper into what seemed like an unreachable backstage of her world.

“Let us go to Ponyville and eat some of those hayburgers and soda you new ponies like so much? Maybe we can convince Celestia to disclose something to sate your curiosity?” Luna gave her best friendly smile.

Twilight shook her head. “It’s not about my curiosity, Luna…”

“Well, it was worth a try…” Her ears fell.

“You said…” Twilight spoke softly, back to Luna.

“Yes.” Luna acquiesced. “Ponies learned to live with it. But they feared it. They stayed inside or got lost in their travels. Animals lost their way. Many lost their sanity. It haunted their sleep, and, without me, they trembled with the residual dread of nightmares, only to be greeted by a sun that ravaged their very world. It slowly sapped their sanity.”

“How did ponies deal with nightmares before you arrived, Luna?” Twilight wondered.

“Nightmares are dangerous monsters, Twilight. They feed on the fear and if they take root, they can cause all sorts of damage to a pony’s mind.” She shrugged. “Must have been a fruitful time for them.”

That was another thing that didn’t add up. Luna took a great importance in her job of protecting ponies and their dreams, yet before she had arrived, they stood generations vulnerable to the nightmares. But Twilight opted to not disclose those thoughts just yet.

“Why did it happen?” Twilight asked then. “The missing stars and the weird sun?”

“Because the unicorns lost their magic and couldn’t keep up with the magical requirements of bringing the night, nor with the increasing complexity of the spell required by a damaged reality, one cycle after another. The sun became a monster that threated to burn everything, like a furnace out of control.”

The same lie just better suited to what she knew Twilight knew. It saddened her, in a first reaction, but she understood… She had been convinced that whatever the reason, The Sisters lied because they thought it better. It didn’t irritate her less, though. “But…”

“There are no ‘buts’ Twilight Sparkle. It sufficed until it could no more, and when it became broken, we came and took our responsibilities to keep it.” Luna said plainly. “We repaired it and we sustain it and are sustained by it.”

The younger alicorn shook her head lightly, feeling overwhelmed. Whatever the truth was both Luna and Celestia were still impressive. She felt like she stared at a force of nature, out of their control, given flesh. “What are you?”

“We are ponies. We are creatures of Equestria, given the destiny to keep the day and the night.” Luna said, again, plainly. “There are no gods. No demiurges. No creators, deities, or idols. Nothing more than talents and ponies to use them. Cogs in a machine… The most wondrous of machines, but still cogs in a machine. We happened to be given those which required we live longer, be stronger, and look different. And there may come a day when our magic isn’t sufficient anymore, and then others will take the mantle from us. And we will rest, as all life eventually does.”

“It doesn’t look like a natural system…” Twilight spoke sadly with a lowered gaze.

“What do you mean?” She drew Luna’s curiosity, and she shifted from the ‘larger than life speech’ to a stare of curiosity. It seemed curious to Twilight that Luna seemed to be caught off guard by that question.

“Never in our history we cared for the animals, and then lost our ability to do it, needing somepony with special powers to do it. It was always natural for us to care for them.” She explained, despite that curious hiccup. “The same goes for the weather. We didn’t lose our ability to control clouds or seasons, and then needed somepony with special powers to do it for us… What about nightmares? Ponies stood generations without you protecting them, but I know that you take great pride at the importance of your job as guardian of our sleep. You’re lying, Luna.”

Luna stared at Twilight for a few seconds before speaking, as though she, herself, had a little trouble processing Twilight’s words. “You can’t know that, Twilight Sparkle. You don’t know that it won’t come to happen… You can’t know the future.”

She didn’t say anything about the nightmares, though, and Twilight raised her voice, letting her anger at being treated like a filly get the best of her. “There is also this Emperor Grigor! And the discrepancy with our historical records! And this weird nonsense that ponies would simply let you two come and take the crowns simply because you have the characteristics of the Three Tribes! Were there no other ponies in positions of power that felt threatened? We have very old and powerful families in Equestria that certainly had stakes to the crown. Did they leave it all to you two? Don’t treat me like a foal, Luna!”

The younger princess took a second to catch her breath and reorganize her thoughts while Luna simply waited. “And there is this weird feeling that… That I keep staring at a picture you and Celestia put before my eyes, but every now and then, I can hear something clicking on the other side. Ever since I decided to poke at our past, I feel like I’m being lied to!”

She sighed, frustrated, and went on, pleadingly. “If there was a huge war and you two came up on top, why not tell that story? Did you do something so terrible that it would make everypony change from your side? Did you weaponize your powers? Is that why we have laws that forbid us from weaponizing our powers, like the Elements of Harmony and Cadance’s love magic? Laws that forbid you from engaging in psychological warfare within dreams? Was it genocide? Did you two steal Equestria from somepony? What was it? Did you steal the moon and the sun from the unicorns or something? What about all those things you told Cadance and Chrysalis about Chocolate Velvet? What the hay are you two doing?! What the hay have you two been doing for the last millennia?!”

“Twilight, calm yourself.” Luna asked softly.

The younger one waited, keeping her gaze over Luna, which looked to the side and not directly at her, then Twilight went on. “Maybe… You’re more than a simple pony… Are you… The goddess from the legend of how changelings came to be? Are you Night-Made-Flesh?”

The problem was that not even that explained how would ponies be protected from nightmares before her arrival. Unless Luna was the goddess, and took care of both the moon and dreams, but something happened and she lost her ability, but then became the Luna she knew and then took care of the moon again. Nothing made sense! Still, Luna shook her head softly and Twilight waited for a few seconds before yelling angrily at her again. “Talk to me Luna! I deserve it!”

“My original name was Moonlit Nights. They named me Lucenotturna, after the goddess’ actual name.” She smiled softly. “But simpler ponies, the common folk, and myself, couldn’t pronounce it correctly, so, instead of correcting them, I took to calling myself Luna. To my naïve, little filly mind, it made sense, since I was tasked with the moon and the stars. Not to mention that I was so full of myself at the time that I considered it the most reasonable thing in existence that if I wanted another name, I should have it. It was amusing to see ponies like Star Swirl afraid of correcting a six years old filly. Well, not Star Swirl… But he thought it was cute.”

Just the mental image of a group of well-dressed adults and educated ponies towering next to a foal pronouncing a word incorrectly and then smiling awkwardly instead of correcting her made Twilight giggle.

Luna smiled some more. “Celestia was Sunny Days. Did Chrysalis tell you about the Children of the Sun? They acted from the shadows and figured out we were ‘The Goddesses Reborn’ and they influenced Star Swirl. You have no idea how stupid he felt when he figured out we were the ones he was looking for. Turns out what happened is that they figured out our talents and started tipping him off. That they were convinced we were the goddesses was a weird coincidence.”

“Why isn’t that in our history books, Luna? Sounds like a cute and interesting story.” Twilight frowned. “They make it seem as though you two simply popped into existence and ponies decided you should be the princesses. At least with this story about the goddesses there is some context. And what goddesses are these? There isn’t any sort of records about ponies believing anything of the sort, short of legends, such as the one about Mother Farfalla.”

“Because none of it was a cute story, Twilight.” Luna’s ears folded down. “Little Luna sitting on her big throne is a small part of the story. The rest of it was ugly and nothing good really can come out of it. Celestia told me I was spared the worst of it because of my age, but even as one of The Sisters, it wasn’t as nice as you would think. This story developed in a time when ponies had forgotten civility and we didn't want to be the ‘Goddesses Reborn’, any more than we’d want it now! It doesn’t fit the modern times, and, in retrospect, it was more of a trouble back then and we never felt comfortable with ponies calling us that. We were the baker’s daughters. Celestia’s perspective in life was marrying some other poor nopony and having foals, not ruling an entire world. This whole thing was thrust on us and we barely had a choice.”

“Are you saying that you regret it?” Twilight asked shocked.

“No... Not really... We were given the tools for our jobs, and we do enjoy fulfilling our destinies.” Luna took a step back. “But... But it was complicated.”

“Is that what you’re trying to hide?” Twilight raised an eyebrow at her. “That ponies once thought of you in this way? No, there has to be more by what Chrysalis told us. Come on, Luna!”

“It is pointless to try and hide it from you. You are too clever for your own good!” Luna fumed. “You are stepping out of line, however, and you are going to cause problems you are not ready to be responsible for yet! We did lie to you; we did help the griffons cover a large portion of their history and we did benefit from it by doing the same to our own. And we do not regret it. It was for the better of Equestria as a whole.”

“Regardless, it is our history and we should be allowed access to it. I am a Princess too! I deserve to take part in such decisions!” Twilight spoke louder and hoofed at the floor in frustration.

Then the night princess frowned, and Twilight knew she, really had stepped out of line. “You deserve nothing, Twilight Sparkle. You ought to trust your elder princesses. It is true that there are mysteries and secrets we know of, but you are both not prepared to know of yet. As I have told Chrysalis she is not trusted enough with certain knowledge, so are you and Cadenza. There are things Celestia doesn’t trust me to know yet. Knowledge is dangerous in a world full of magic, and you ought to know that!”

Twilight sighed loudly in frustration, which Luna thought was somewhat amusing. She wasn’t used to having ponies behave like that near her. At least she believed the honesty in Twilight’s questioning. Most importantly, Twilight shook her head slightly and spoke again. “Fine. What about Discord? Chrysalis told us some crazy things. What was that all about?”

Luna stared down before staring back at Twilight. “I was too young. I didn’t understand. All I knew was that me and my sister were suddenly important, and we had to grab the Elements and do something with them. And rich ponies tried to murder us… Star Swirl helped us. Some important ponies helped us. And the sun was doing weird things. I don’t understand Discord’s motivations and I am not about to pester him about it. He has enough bad dreams about those times.”

Twilight grunted with a hoof on her forehead and then looked at the other princess again, she didn’t believe a word out of Luna’s mouth, but also felt it had come to a point when it would be pointless to insist. “Did you lie to Cadance about Equestria being broke?”

“Of course, I did!” Luna’s ears perked up and she almost jumped off the floor. “I was surprised that she believed it. I don’t think that Flurry Heart could make Equestria bankrupt if we gave her an unlimited credit line to buy toys! Do tell her that… I felt bad lying to her and expecting her to be wiser. She trusts Chrysalis far too much to see that I do not.”

“Alright. Can you tell me the truth about that?” Twilight asked with a hoof up, as if negotiating and Luna rolled her eyes.

“Chrysalis is going to open changeling medical sciences to the whole of Equestria, but it’s filled with technical and complicated things about our biology that we don’t fully understand, therefore, she thinks she could still control it for her own ends and shut us off from fully deploying it, since we’d be dependent on changeling doctors and then, she’d have something to bribe us with. But Chrysalis is not as smart as she likes to think, and Celestia anticipated that finding a medical professional from a world with much more advanced medical sciences than her own. We wager that after he’s learned the changeling language and our own magical sciences, he should be able to avoid any traps Chrysalis puts in our way, and help adapt them to our own doctors. Actually, Chocolate Velvet comes from a world with much more advanced science in every area, and he has vowed to help us in any circumstance it might be important.”

“Hah!” Twilight was suddenly very happy. “I knew Princess Celestia knew what she was doing with the Heartmend Treaty! Wait! What the hay is he doing running around trying to be a knight?”

“The knights you know today are very much mercenaries that hunt monsters and participate in fairs.” Her expression turned sour. “And eventually bother the princesses with marriage proposals... For some reason they never bother my sister, only me.”

Twilight giggled and Luna went on. “There was a time they were much more like scholars and… Well… Benefactors to society. Think of Star Swirl and of his friends. Think of the Pillars of Harmony. Many became rich and would invest their money in others and wished to make everypony’s life better. They upheld the Elements of Harmony, much like you and your friends, through the ages. Though, most ponies that could reach those ideals today are satisfied with monetary aid, Chocolate Velvet is fascinated with the magic in Equestria and with ponies in general. Maybe because of his own experience in his original world, he is very interested in the pursuit of philequipy, philosophy, of magic and all sorts knightly pursuits that make Celestia sigh like an enamored filly.”

Twilight couldn’t hold her giggling at that description, but Luna still went on. “That is not the only reason he is here, though. Celestia has had this project in her head for a while. Chrysalis being able to assist and the timing with our deal, our need for his technical knowledge and his availability were a coincidence. There is the additional benefit that since he is in love with us, we can trust him. We do appreciate his aspirations, too.”

“It is a bit weird that you two had a consort made for you, but I’m not judging at all.” Twilight mused. “I’m just curious, beyond the practical reasons with the treaty, that is. Beyond that, couldn’t you really find a nice ‘knightly’ pony?”

“Twilight, have you considered that we are immortal?” Luna asked her and the younger one nodded softly after an instant.

“No… Not really. Though it is one of those things we have a tendency of not thinking about, but I think I understand.” It made sense, when she put it like that, but Twilight looked at her. “Is that why Celestia is missing a piece of her soul, or something?”

“Chrysalis is fumbling in the dark, like an idiot trying to understand things she has no basis to understand.” Luna’s expression of slight disappointment made Twilight think that she might have disappointed her with her question, or maybe she didn’t make the right connections, still, the princess of the night grinned smugly at Twilight. “And you are in an even worse position to discuss this.”

“Ouch…” Twilight grunted angrily.

Luna giggled at Twilight’s reaction, then she smiled a little more softly. “Twilight, why don’t you trust us? You really don’t need to know about these things.”

“Because I am an adult, Luna. You both have elevated me and Cadance to share your titles and now you are trying to keep secrets from us.” Her eyes shifted to the side then back to Luna. “We are aware we may be hurting you both by not trusting you, but if we are right and you’ve done something wrong, that deserves correcting and we could not afford to stop. If we are wrong, we can always apologize. We… At least I trust you enough to believe that.”

“Also, I could ask you why is it that you don’t trust us!” The younger princess concluded with a nod of certainty.

“I warned Celestia against allowing you both becoming princesses. She told me it wasn’t her decision to make. I didn’t understand and she said that I didn’t need to know yet. It infuriated me until I realized that Celestia knew what she was doing. When I learned the truth, I was dejected at my notions of impeding you both. Maybe Celestia is suffering from the same fears I did… Maybe she really knows it is best not to allow you two to know certain things just yet.”

“At the same time, it is within your power to seek for these answers.” Luna nodded softly. “It is a fair position to take, Twilight, considering the possible implications of your suspicions. Was the situation different, I am sure Celestia would be very proud of you, as I am, and I salute your resolution.”

Twilight grinned happily. “Does that mean you’ll be straight with me?”

“No!” Luna grinned like she does when doing mischief in Nightmare Night. “It means I’ll tell Celestia she can hit you harder!”

Twilight wasn’t amused. “Where even are you right now? Shouldn’t Chrysalis have taken you prisoner or something?”

Luna shrugged. “I’m sleeping in a tower in the Bordello … Cadance’s hornring probably melted away by now.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Wait… They actually imprisoned you there? Can’t you leave?”

“Well, I could…” Luna pawed at the floor, a bit insecure. “But I really want Chocolate Velvet and Celestia to come save me. And Chrysalis is such a convincing evil queen… And there is this tower…”

“Oh…” Twilight grinned in understanding. “Oh! Alright.”

The two giggled together for a second and then turned to an awkward silence for a few seconds before Luna spoke again, softly. “Twilight… It is possible that your quest is fair and that all that you can find is something that the general populace should know… But I beg of you… Very few things in existence have as much power to hurt Celestia as you do.”

Twilight nodded softly. “I understand Luna…”

“She lives and breathes for Equestria first and then for herself. She worships the ground you and your friends walk on and I worry for what could happen if she found herself cornered against you. That is certainly why she hasn’t initially forced a confrontation on your territory yet, but as you draw closer to her secrets, she’ll be left without options. I’ve seen Celestia best kings, emperors, witches and necromancers; evil monsters, dragons and eldritch abominations from beyond the stars. But she loses to her feelings for her family every time.”

Twilight felt a warm feeling of pride swelling in her chest with Luna’s words, and watched as the Night Princess took flight. “Farewell, Twilight Sparkle. And know that next time we meet, I shall not be so kind. I stand with my sister.”

The dreamworld faded into nothing and Twilight knew she had crossed yet another hurdle in her mission. She allowed herself some pride for her victory, even if she barely learned anything from Luna. She had earned the feeling, just a little more, that her mission really was a right one. She only hoped that she and her friends could get Discord’s help next.

***

Morning came cold in the altitude the air ship sailed even under Celestia’s bright sun. The crew had furled all the Magic of Friendship’s sails and she traveled the air so fast that standing in the deck could be dangerous for non-winged ponies.

Twilight wondered if the pegasi didn’t feel the cold of the wind. They actually seemed to enjoy it, like Rainbow Dash in her morning exercise routine flying wide circles around the airship. She had left Cadance and Shining Armor caring for Flurry Heart, with Miss Calcite and Spike still slept. Discord was… Being discord, talking with Fluttershy about some weird happening in far equestrian lands.

It was only when breakfast came that all of them were together, and Twilight didn’t fully understand why was Cadance so delighted with the food Discord summoned with his magic, but if she was happy, Twilight was happy too. It was a lighthearted and quick affair because all of them knew that they needed to talk to Discord and the conversation itself could turn ugly if he didn’t like where it was going. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to notice their insecurities.

She didn’t fear Discord would harm them, not anymore, but he could close doors definitively for them, or worse, side with Celestia and Luna, and then their mission would be over. This time, Twilight would be careful to let her friends, especially Cadance, assume the lead in the conversation if they felt necessary.

With the end of their merry meal, Twilight asked the Captain to take the airship to a more comfortable altitude, where her flight wouldn’t be as efficient, but they could stand comfortably on the deck. She didn’t bother with the presence of her guards or the crewponies, though, as they seemed to have melt into the group as part of their mission.

“Very well…” Discord was curious, rubbing his hands together. “What is so important, Twilight?”

She simply gave him the letter and their notes. And her very organized and condensed summary of their findings.

“Oh…” He rubbed his beard. The things floated in front of him and they, literally, heard gears spinning in his head. “I thought you wanted to know about Star Swirl. Celestia isn’t going to be happy about this.”

“I’m sorry, Discord…” She said carefully. “But this is important.”

“Not really.” He said, and for a brief instant of panic, she feared he might make the letter disappear, or something, but he gave it back to her and he kept a serious expression. That was never a good sign. “You could go your entire life without ever touching this and it wouldn’t make a difference. In fact, I can guarantee you will all be happier if you forget this.”

He grinned pointing with a thumb over his shoulder. “Come on! Change course to Las Pegasus! They’re making a huge raspberry jam pool and we can get them to let us in early. With two princesses, we might even get a tour of the place!”

“This actually seems big, Discord.” Cadance argued to his other side. “It’s been thousands of years for this lie, that allowed Princess Celestia and Luna to stay in power uncontested.”

He frowned. He didn’t like what she had said, and it became clear in his voice. “You got it all wrong! And I am not telling you anything.”

“Why not?!” Cadance screamed angrily frustrated. “You and Auntie Celestia owe us explanations! Something happened that she hid! It’s obvious she did something wrong! That you both did something wrong!”

He laughed for a few seconds before controlling himself. “Oh, Cadance. We don’t owe you anything.”

“How can you say that?” Twilight’s temper quickly flared up too. “By the sounds of it, millions of creatures died and suffered because of what you did!”

He waved a hand at her, dismissing the idea with a derisive huff. “Ah, your species is always suffering and dying.”

“Discord!” Cadance yelled at him, flaring her wings. His dismissive attitude towards the subject infuriated her to the point Cadance seriously considered doing something she might regret later. Fortunately, she restrained herself, remembering it was Discord. He was now their friend and was simply trying to let go of the issue.

“Why don’t you want to tell us, Discord?” It was Fluttershy’s soft voice that broke through.

“Dear Fluttershy… It was a mess. It took sacrifices to fix and If I told you, then it would be undone. There are things that should be left in the past and have no place in today’s world. I understand what their royal highnesses here want, but if I put you on the right direction, at the end of the road, you would find only bitter resentment. Old wounds that never could really heal and it could end Equestria. Literally.”

Cadance frowned. “Luna said the same thing… But… Shouldn’t the truth make things better? It’s not just about some war, is it? About the princesses abusing their powers or something like that.”

“Oh! Is that what you think?” Discord laughed, and then laughed some more, pointing a griffon finger at them. “It was not something they did. They saved you from the mess that you created! You were the problem! Well… Me too… But mostly you!”

“I don’t know what happened… But it sounds like it was a long time ago.” Twilight said softly, staring him around his accusatory claw. “We’ve matured as a civilization. We used to steal and to kill. We made wars between ourselves and our leaders have lied, cheated, took by force what wasn’t theirs… We’ve taken lives for petty reasons. But we’ve changed! We uphold the Elements of Harmony… They are our morals now. Kindness, Laughter, Loyalty, Generosity, Honesty and the Magic of Friendship. They joined, not only our race, the ponies, but all races of our world… The griffons, the yaks… All of them, even the angry dragons. We join forces and we fight any evil that might threaten our world. Our home. We fought evil spirits and monsters. Homes were destroyed, but we rebuilt them. Friends were gone but we mourned and honored them. Hearts darkened, but we healed them.”

Ponies listened to Twilight, as did Discord. Pegasi stopped working around the deck and the princess let her ears fold down and she moved closer to her yellow pegasus friend, hugging her from the side with a wing. “Through Friendship, we even changed the heart of the Spirit of Chaos when he, himself, had given up on him.”

“Oh, for goodness sake, Twilight…” He covered his face with his lion’s paw.

“Discord…” Pinkie grinned, and ponies giggled around him. “Are you crying?”

“I am not…” He passed a finger under his right eye. “It’s this stupid airship and it’s weird magic doing strange things to me.”

He sighed deeply. “Alright, fine! Chrysalis was right. It was the same thing that summoned the Windigos that drew me to the realm of the mortals.”

Twilight quickly grabbed her notepad. “Wait. What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure you are ready to learn these things, but if it hurts you, or something, I’m sure you can find psychologists with discounts for the saviors of Equestria… Anyway, it’s gonna be Celestia’s problem, not mine.” He made himself a comfortable chair and a comfortable checkered robe, sitting on the chair. “Pay attention. Magic exists as a fundamental property of our world, and one important thing is that Magic can’t move around on its own. Before you ponies, Life couldn’t grow anywhere outside the place it was created because it depended on magic, and then, when you migrated and took magic with you and made it flow through the whole world; Life flourished all over.”

“Whoa!” Twilight’s wings flared and she scrambled to keep notes. “That is a lot of information all of a sudden!”

“Keep up, Twilight.” He was slightly annoyed. “You’re not in magical kindergarten anymore.”

“Where was that place?” Cadance asked. Not that it mattered, but she asked out of curiosity. He simply shrugged, though, and went on.

“Your minds formed around a simple concept of one drive and a moral compass: you had a motivation and were supposed to spin it around in your heads through six virtues you were supposed to withhold. Six virtues that, supposedly, made Harmony stronger through the magic that you radiated to the world, after you were done using it for whatever you would.”

“Wait.” Twilight called again, while she took notes. “Six virtues? The Elements of Harmony?”

“Your six Elements of Harmony, yes. The jewels you wear are the physical representation of what Harmony was made of. I’m not entirely sure, something like that. The important thing is that it was important to keep Harmony existing that you upheld these things. And you also had your motivation... If you were supposed to be generous, kind, etc., you needed an action through which you would be generous, kind, and etc... The Animus Imperative. It is the cornerstone of your little minds.” He touched Twilight’s head with a claw. “It was cast into your brains even before the Elements, before you even understood that you were alive. It is so powerful it can overrule the Elements and crush them into neat little packages of self-justification.”

Ponies and dragon looked confused around him, so he blew at his bubbly smoking pipe before he went on. “Never wondered where you had come from, did you? Never wondered that someone might have put you together. Forged you minds, or better yet… Put together your world. This is not questioning your minds were made to wonder about.”

“Who did?” Applejack asked the obvious question.

“That, dear mudpony, is the right question.” She gave him the evil eye at being called mudpony, but he didn’t bother. “And the answer is… Nobody. Things started existing, and Harmony grew from Magic. It is not a sentient creature. It doesn’t exist anywhere. It simply is and it seeks balance, or harmony. It tells ponies what to do by giving you this directive and expecting you to run it through the Elements of Harmony. So, if a pony is born with the destiny to… I don’t know, make candy… They are supposed to make the best candy for their friends. So, they are compelled to fulfil their Animus Imperative and they have the six Elements to guide their actions.”

He put a hand on his chin. “The funny thing is… Not even your creation was direct. Even that is a reflex of Harmony, rather than a direct action.”

“A little clearer?” Twilight asked, confused.

“Harmony doesn’t ‘do' things. All of this is a reflex of it, but not through direct action. It doesn’t have agency like we do. It can only steer you in the direction it needs you to go.”

“So, the Elements of Harmony are a moral compass to help us fulfill our destinies, which are given to us with this Animus Imperative.” Twilight mused. “Okay. I’m following. But I never knew this term. Isn’t it the same as our ‘Destiny’? We're born with innate talents that help us with it and that steers us towards our destinies, right?”

“Right. But, ‘destiny’ is an easier way for you to understand. You didn’t need to concern yourselves with the inner workings of you headmeats. All that mattered was that you spread magic with you to all corners of the world and that you upheld the Elements of Harmony, and had the tools to be happy little ponies. The point of it was that ‘destiny’ is how you perceived the Animus Imperative.”

Twilight was starting to get worried. “Discord, this all sounds very… Intentional. Designed.”

“Because it was. Just not by an intelligent force, but a magical one, that caused events to follow in the right direction, deployed the right tools.”

“But why?!”

Discord shrugged. “Because it existed and ought to remain existing? Maybe it was because someone or something in another universe imagined this and magic made it a reality in our world? Maybe it was a reflex of something that happened in another universe? Maybe there is no reason at all, it just is… You will go nuts trying to figure this one out, Twilight.”

“How do you know of these things if you weren’t around?” Cadance stared at him suspiciously, as did all the others, suddenly aware that all he was saying could’ve been a lie.

“Well that is because Magic is my nature, Amore. Magic is Chaos and resists Order. Too much Order and nothing will happen. Too much Chaos, and causality is completely irrelevant, making existence impossible. Just enough Chaos and just enough Order, and not only a reality can exist, but it can dream through Magic and Harmony is created.”

“That is quite interesting, Discord.” Rarity told him with a pleasant smile. “But I’m not sure where you fit into that.”

“I didn’t exist as I do today. I was… A force of nature. I was… The Chaos in the equation of reality. I was only made as I am now when ponies summoned me into existence when they sought to control the most powerful and ancient forms of magic. But there is one catch: the Windigos were animal-like. I am intelligent, I understood what was going on. Sort of…”

“Who was the ‘Order’?” Twilight asked, again, staring up from her notes.

“Beats me…” He shrugged. “I suppose it’s something that was never summoned into the world. Maybe we lack the ability to summon it because we are quite literally made with magic. I dunno.”

Fluttershy put a hoof on Discord’s leg. “How does that end in you killing ponies?”

He hummed. “So, what would happen if some ponies decided not to care about the Elements? They would do things their way. Suppose they decided that Honesty was a waste of time and they could make it much easier if they lied.”

“I don’t understand.” Twilight shook her head. “How would that happen?”

“They could do that, and rather easily, because you’re supposed to struggle with the morality of the Elements. If you weren’t, you couldn’t corrupt the Elements inside your heads, right? Gotta have your free-will.”

“So, we are supposed to see our Animus Imperative through the lenses of the Elements of Harmony in us. But some ponies don’t. I’m not sure how, but what happens then, Discord?”

“The Elements become corrupted in them.” Discord made a serious expression, crossing his arms. “That is how you ‘discord’ a pony. Though the correct term would be ‘disharmonize’. They get worse and worse until their Animus Imperative is broken, and they… Let’s say… Divorce themselves from reality.”

“Because of the Elements, ponies are inherently good, but if things go wrong, through their warped logic and views, they see that things are ‘wrong’, and it hurts them, they want it to stop, but they don’t know how to fix it, because their compass is warped and nothing works. Many times, they’ll justify what they're doing as fair, just… Or that everyone else is wrong, and that their way is the only one. And think themselves the only sane ones. Or, they simply don’t care.”

“Instead of a fair ruler, you’d get King Sombra.” Twilight mused. “Instead of Princess Luna, you’d get Nightmare Moon.”

Rarity gasped and took a step back in shock. “Is that what happened to those ponies in the Ponyville Militia?”

“I think it’s what happened to me!” Starlight’s eyes almost bulged out of her head.

“Ponies fluctuate in between these extremes... No pony is ever perfect, and no pony is ever entirely gone.” Discord added. “At least not normally, and not even Sombra or Luna reached the deep end. They just couldn’t come back from that.”

Twilight nodded sternly. “When life doesn’t treat a pony well, they can lose sight of their Elements… They become sick. And then they get worse, because things start looking futile, pointless. Hopeless. And then… They break. They must seek their Animus Imperative at all costs… Even at the expense of the Elements of Harmony. But they don’t see it like that… They think that they are right, and everypony else wrong.”

“We just never understood it as something inherent to our souls, deeper from within our beings. To the ponies that study the mind, it was simply how our psyche worked and how it could go wrong.” Twilight frowned. “We are… Quite simple, on an intimate level…”

“Correct.” The draconequus nodded.

“This thing’s scary, guys! Why didn’t they make it so that ponies couldn’t become… Bad?” Rainbow was actually paying attention. That made Twilight proud!

“That would take our free-will away…” Cadance answered looking at her. “If you didn’t have the chance of being ‘disloyal’, you would never be ‘loyal’ because you couldn’t ever have done otherwise. I think harmony needs us to make ‘the right choice’.”

“Can somepony tell me why is it that we’re talking about this thing about how pony minds came to be?” Applejack asked, somewhat frustrated to Twilight’s eyes. “And not about the events we wanted to talk about?”

“Hold your horses, Applejack.” Discord gestured her to calm herself with some annoyance. “This is important if you want to understand the important things in this whole story.”

The pony grunted. “Fine!”

“How did that summon the Windigos?” Twilight went back to her notes. “And you?”

“The magic ponies spread became corrupted, and then it corrupted the very magic of the land. The Windigos were born out of the chilling winds of the North. Some detail of the situation maybe it’s the metaphorical distance from the Fire of Friendship. But when they summoned me, they wanted power. They wanted an advantage over the others and they knew where to look for it: they sought ancient magic, the sort that created this universe. They sought destruction in the power of creation. They knew what they are doing.”

He stopped for a second. “Looking back, they could’ve done much worse.”

“They tried to summon you? Intentionally?” Fluttershy asked.

“No. Not like that. But, with the Windigos, they might have seen their actions as the only way to survive. Then with me, they were fine, but became greedy, unrepentantly evil. That is probably why they managed to summon the Fire of Friendship and beat the Windigos… When ponies figured out that it was better to live in harmony with each other, the problem healed itself. But it happened again because they didn’t learn their lesson, even with all the wealth they had, in all areas of their existence…”

“The Republic Chrysalis told us about.” Cadance’s ears perked up.

“I don’t know about that; they simply called it ‘Equestria’. It was a big assortment of different kingdoms, not too different from today. I never bothered with pony politics, but I do know that they had an enormous… You know… Ponies that made the rules.”

“A legislative body.” Twilight offered. “A senate?”

“Yes, yes… I suppose. The ponies that make decisions. Instead of a princess, they had a council and a ‘senate’. I think the idea was that the peoples of Equestria would send a few of them to speak for them and the Councilors would listen to them and decide on things depending on what they talked about it. It was just boring.”

Discord kept quiet and thought for a while, finally lightening up. “Even though Star Swirl wasn’t a member of the Council, since he wasn’t one of Equestria’s founders, he told me he was always present. I know he had good intentions, but it was a bit on the tough side. Some ponies really didn’t play nice.”

“I guess it was their fault what happened?” Cadance asked. “You being summoned, I think.”

“I don’t know the details. But, like with the Windigos, it wasn’t something just a handful of ponies could’ve done. Even if they were really evil. It wasn’t a single pony, or a group of them. But enough of them were ‘damaging the system’. It’s like a dam that accumulated enough cracks, until it broke. They summoned me.” He put his griffon paw on his chest.

“Okay… That all seems reasonable enough.” Twilight admitted. “But why did you try to destroy the world?”

“Ah… It didn’t begin like that. You ponies are a lot of fun to be around… When I first arrived, we had lots of fun. We made mischief all over the world…” He seemed, to the ponies, to remember it fondly. “The griffons were too grim for my tastes, though. The yaks were stupid, and dragons were… Rawr… Gold! Gems! Rawr… It was boring and it felt like you ponies really were the reason the world existed. But there was something wrong.”

He made silence for a second and his audience waited. “Star Swirl was my friend, at least in the beginning, and the one that figured something was wrong. That I wasn’t supposed to be there. He wanted to study me and he saw there was something weird with the unicorns. They scared me too. The Elements of Magic and of Generosity are supposed to be the strongest in them, but they were different. Generosity was stained black with self-interest.”

“Yes…” Rarity grimaced. “That does sound bad.”

Ponies stared at each other and Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Can you see it?”

“Well, not ‘see’ it.” He raised his muzzle. “It’s more like… A feeling.”

Rarity shifted uncomfortably to one side and then the other. “Is it wrong… today? I mean… We’re not exactly perfect.”

He had mentioned that ponies weren’t supposed to be perfect, but she would feel better if he confirmed that things were under control in the present time. That whole affair with the Black Sun Chrysalis mentioned was scary.

Discord laughed. “Ah, Rarity. Even you, the purest, distilled examples of the Elements of Harmony are supposed to struggle with them. No. It was not like that. It was darker and deeply rooted. I never understood why it was like that, but I knew that something was wrong, and unicorns didn’t work as intended.”

“You keep talking about them like they’re a broken machine, Discord.” Twilight wondered if he noticed that and he nodded.

“I figured ‘Hey! These ponies are broken. Gotta fix them!’ Since it was Generosity that was warped in their heads, I tried to put them in a situation where their lack of it would cause them to wise up or leave.”

“Leave?” Pinkie asked. “As in… ‘die’?”

“I didn’t think of them as individuals. To my naïve self, they were like defective pieces of a machine. I didn’t see ‘dying’ as the end of a creature, but rather as a process through which the world functioned. They were like toys, and I figured that things would work themselves out. So, I took a few bad ponies and flicked a switch in their heads. Turned the Elements upside down and it worked like a charm. The normal ponies called them The Lost Herd and they created a lot of Chaos.”

“How in the hay was that supposed to fix the problem?” Twilight hit the floor with an angry hoof.

“I thought that the ‘broken ponies’ would be lost and isolated and that the good ones would figure out a solution to the whole mess. They had done it before, so… But what happened was that the bad ponies abused the good ones. You see, they were good, so they would help any who needed it, even the bad ones. Especially because evil isn’t always overt… They betrayed them and I never noticed… But turned out that I too had a mind that could be warped into something dark…”

Ponies stared at him with shocked, gaping mouths and he looked down. “I fell in my own trap and before I knew it, I rejoiced in seeing ‘justice’ being done. I thought that ponies were bad, and that was why they ‘broke’ and joined the Lost Herd. In the end, I thought that all ponies were bad and that the whole thing needed to be remade from scratch. So, I pushed further, and the world was about to end with a flood of mad ponies destroying everything. Actually, mad creatures in general, but ponies were the best: they really messed up the normal ones.”

Twilight wrote a few notes while Cadance looked at her, but then she looked back to Discord. “What do you mean with ‘remade’?”

He made a gesture with his lion hand. “You ponies came from somewhere. And when you died, your souls would go somewhere and then came back, in a new life. You weren’t the same ponies as before, but the magic you carried worked in the same way, so I figured that if I sent all of you to that place, you would come back ‘working right’ again. I never had the time to realize that you had become different individuals, that something was lost when you passed away.”

He lowered his eyes. “Now I know… It was horrible. It would have worked, but, turned out ponies have feelings. I saw a crying pony and thought that they had something wrong in their Element of Laugher… Similarly, I saw a greedy pony and thought that they had something wrong in their Element of Generosity. I never thought that maybe they were too greedy because they were scared, or because they thought that others were being unfair to them.”

He frowned and his eyes saddened. “I certainly didn’t understand that all the suffering I was causing them was what brought even more of what I was trying to fix. I have to say… It was good to talk about this. I feel awful now, for what I did. I had... shoved it aside.”

“It does make sense Discord…” Twilight mused. “From the looks of it, and from a certain perspective, if you didn’t understand that ponies experienced feelings.”

Cadance approached him. “You were not supposed to be there. Whatever created you didn’t give you the tools to understand empathy. Maybe not even your own feelings because you never grew up like we do… Learning to be with others. You understood everything through a distorted logic.”

“Some ponies fought so hard…” He looked away. “Everything lives today because of them… Star Swirl… There was his friend, Cinnamon… What a great pony she was. Celestia herself, too. She dragged you ponies back to Harmony, kicking and screaming… But everything that she and her friends did is gone from History and all you have is a fairy tale that is more… In line with your perfect little world. It seems unfair now. I wish you could know her then. She cracked me up trying to sell sweet bread to Star Swirl for five times the price.”

Cadance twisted her mouth and lowered her ears, thinking hard and Twilight nodded after a few seconds. “I want to know about Princess Celestia, but is there something that is fundamentally broken inside our heads? Like… If we reach it, it makes us go bad?”

“It seems so…” Cadance nodded. “But I think it was something simpler. Maybe something happened that we weren’t prepared to deal with… Older than what Discord did. Maybe as old as ourselves. But hiding it isn’t the solution! If we don’t know what it is, we can’t defend ourselves from it if it happens again!”

Twilight agreed. “Yes, I agree, but-”

“Not to mention that this doesn’t explain why is it that Celestia and Luna vanished with centuries of our history! We’re talking about something that is clearly older than Discord!” Cadance spoke over Twilight.

“But that doesn’t mean that it is unrelated, Cadance!” Twilight stared a bit angrily at her. “Stop trying to prove that they did something wrong all the time!

“They did! They are lying to us even now!”

Twilight and Cadance stared at each other, as did the other ponies, until Applejack spoke to Discord, tired of, and putting an end to all the guessing work and pointless accusations. “Is that why she did it? Is that why Celestia and Luna hid a piece of our history? They really mean to protect us?”

“They changed history to protect you. Maybe even themselves from whatever it was that made ponies go bad in the first place.” He nodded softly. “I don’t know why they hid this period, specifically, and I am sure you are right that whatever it was, it was older than all that, but I don’t know how it all fits together.”

Twilight said nothing, and while ponies argued, inside her head, she was sure it was something to do with that talk of Goddesses Reborn. Maybe the Children of the Sun did something that awoke something that was dormant and, maybe that was even what caused the problem with the unicorns and the heavens. Maybe, before, they didn’t lose their magic to it, but whatever happened damaged Equestria, the sky, the unicorns, or even magic itself, and ponies blamed it on Discord? Maybe not a good idea to ask him right then... He was talking about what they needed him to and he might not even know.

It kind of fit with Celestia’s and Luna’s half-truth, half-lie, and with the story they’ve been getting.

But Cadance stomped the floor with a hoof. “No! You don’t hide good things! If she fixed something that was wrong with the world, she wouldn’t need to hide it. She didn’t need to hide that to protect us from whatever it is this weird thing that makes ponies go evil! There is more to that, and maybe you don’t know it, but she does and isn’t telling us!”

“Cadance…” Twilight seemed to have lost part of the conversation but touched her leg softly. “Luna spoke to me in my dream… She said she lied to you about Chocolate Velvet and Celestia because there were things Chrysalis couldn’t be allowed to learn for now.”

She looked at Twilight and spoke softly. “She told you?”

“The secret deal they made with Chrysalis is meant to spread the changeling advanced medicine through all of Equestria, and that Chocolate Velvet has knowledge that will help them keep Chrysalis to her part of the deal.” Twilight then added with a relieved smile. “They know what they are doing, and they mean the best for us.”

But Cadance took a step back, “But… You just told me that. And everything will be fine!”

She stared frantically at Discord, tap-dancing nervously on the floor. “What about these ponies that Auntie Celestia erased from history? Don’t they deserve to be remembered? This Cinnamon you mentioned! She was important enough that you remembered her! You made it sound like Celestia herself has done great things, but those are gone! We know of the wars and such, but… She fixed a broken world! Didn’t Twilight convince you that we changed? Come on, Discord! Tell us more!”

Twilight nodded softly. She agreed… Despite their initial disagreement, Cadance was right. Kind of. She already thought that ponies needed to judge for themselves. Now, more than ever. And knowing whatever it is that is broken in them would be important.

Discord, though, sighed. “What would you two do if I helped you?”

They looked at one another, then at their friends, and back at Discord and Twilight spoke. “We’ll make sure that all creatures know the truth. Understand what happened so that they can judge for themselves and if that is the case, guard themselves against this… Broken thing in our heads. And then, when everything is said and done, we can remember those ponies we have forgotten and let their examples speak for themselves!”

“You thought of that beforehand, didn’t you?” He stared unamused at her.

“I did my homework. Forewarned is forearmed.” She stated categorically.

“Fine… Fine.” He said. “But let me warn you… You’ll be going down a rabbit hole I don’t think you can climb out of and be the same. And you’re dragging your friends with you.”

The two princesses looked back at the others.

Rarity giggled. “We’re already challenging the highest authority in Equestria… What is a little insanity between friends going to do to us that we haven’t already experienced?”

Rainbow laughed. “Sounds awesome! I wanna know about those ponies! And if something can make me go bad all of a sudden, I wanna know what it is.”

Pinkie shrugged. “Eh… Ponies already call me crazy anyways…”

Fluttershy didn’t say anything but didn’t complain and Applejack wasn’t amused. “I’m having déjà vu. We’re just gonna get ourselves into more trouble for things we really didn’t need messing with. Ah, what the tarnation…”

Spike and Shining Armor thought back to the club in the Changeling Rock… They could each spend some time there. They both, silently, agreed that this whole pursuit was a waste of time and needless exposure to danger. In fact, Shinning Armor would probably be calling an end to this whole affair if he didn’t think that his sister and wife can take care of themselves.

Flurry Heart wasn’t happy either. Why didn’t anypony ask her what she thought? She was going to get herself to live with Princess Celestia first chance she got! Seriously?! There must be a law, or something, that says baby ponies can’t be subjected to things such as these weird adult pony talks!

Poor Miss Calcite and the pegasus crewponies just got carried along anyway, as did Twilight’s guards. But loyalty was something they understood.

Twilight showed them a smile that told them that she was happy they were onboard, but on the back of her mind she wondered if the whole problem wasn’t something more complex and nuanced, something that couldn’t be explained as simply as a ‘lose wire’ in their heads. It was too simple. Yes, Discord explaining to them how their minds worked was fascinating and explained many things through a different lens. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was still hidden away, tucked away in the secrets the Sisters had created and it would be dangerous if they were so intent on hiding it.

Anyways… Regardless of what the problem was, they would be better served by knowing what it was. She trusted modern ponies to be better than their ancestors.

Discord joined his hands. “So, what is your plan?”

“We’re going to Griffinsky.” Twilight smiled. “We’ll see if The Lion has somethings that could shed some light into what happened. Maybe then, force the Princesses to confess and make the Senate launch a full investigation.”

“Chrissy expects us to de-throne Luna and Celestia...” Cadance added, somewhat meekly.

“Oh, Chrysalis...” Discord laughed and shook his head. “Bad idea, though, going straight to the Lion. That kid is going to have all the evidence you’ll need to show that Celestia and Luna did hide something, however, without the right context, it’s not going to work, because you’ll still not know the answers you really need. You will need knowledge about ponies that is older than History itself or you, and the Senate, will not understand why those things happened… You need to go to Manehattan.”

Twilight nodded and took notes and Cadance agreed. “We’re going there already. We’ll need supplies. Why do we need to go there?”

“In Manehattan lives a prench pony. She is hiding there because if Celestia catches her, she’ll be done for.” He said, and it surprised the ponies. “She has a weird power of accessing pony ‘soul memories’ and, you are in for a ride when you find her. With her help, I am sure you will find a few answers that I can’t give you. Most important: she’ll give you… Feelings.”

“How do we find her?” Twilight asked curiously, but decided against pressing Discord for more.

“Her name is Naminé. I don’t know how she looks nowadays, but when it gets to the news that you two had a disagreement with Celestia... Ask around in the markets and places full of ponies. She’ll find you.”

“Naminé…” Twilight wrote it down. “Curious name for a prench pony that sees old memories, I suppose. Thanks, Discord.”

“Discord…” Cadance called him again. “Can you tell us what is wrong with Princess Celestia’s soul? Chrysalis said it is damaged, or something of the sort. Is it… Bad? Is she… Going to suffer because of it? Or something? I learned of it from Luna and Chrysalis and it got me a bit worried, because they didn’t really tell me any details.”

“Is it contagious?” Pinkie added and stared back when the others stared at her. “What? This is important!”

“It is something that has hurt both Celestia and Luna…. You’ll figure this out with Naminé.” He said with weird sad eyes, but they changed to mischievous with a mysterious glare. “And it’s going to be a doozy!”

Then he returned to a more serious stance. Almost… Saddened? The princess wondered. “Some things you can’t be told, Cadance… You have to see… Experience these things. So that you feel their weight.”

Cadance rolled her eyes. “Oh, fine then.”

Twilight was simply worried that Discord was being too serious again and she almost regretted this whole conversation. But they had come too far to go back now, and Discord turned to her. “I am going to do everything that I can to keep Celestia off your backs.”

“Thanks a lot, Discord.” Twilight smiled at him, despite her nervousness. “Thanks to you, I think we can actually make it.”

He remained silent for a second and slumped a little. “With some luck she’s going to remember that I’m important too and she won’t kill me or something…”

They expected him to teleport away after saying that, but he didn’t. He made the initial motions, such as raising his hand to snap his fingers, but never did. Instead he stared at the ponies. “Remember that your first impression of things will be one of preconceptions. You will see things that will need you to understand that everything has a meaning within its context.”

“That sounds awful weird coming from you, Discord.” Applejack raised an eyebrow.

“I simply want to make sure that you ponies don’t hurt yourselves along the way and that you don’t come out of it with the wrong ideas.” He stopped for a second. “What I mean is... Careful with Naminé. She is dangerous because she doesn’t understand the things that she knows, and knowledge without wisdom... Well... It defines me when I was created.”

“Discord…” Twilight took a step closer. Most of the present didn’t fully understand what is it that Discord meant, but a flash of memories brought her conversation with Luna back to her. “Did you know Night-Made-Flesh? What was she?”

“Careful, Twilight. This is exactly what I mean. Talk to Naminé and reflect on what you will learn.” Then, he did teleport away, leaving Twilight with a bitter aftertaste of her nightmare, wondering if a monster made of the void lurked around, somewhere in pony dreams. It seemed like researching ways to ward off Luna’s magic was in order, if that was even possible. That and hoping that Discord could keep Celestia busy enough that she’d have to worry less about her and more about their adventure.

Author's Note

Fixed al the mentions of 'wendigos' to 'Windigos'. Stupid autocorrect

Extra - Royal Knight

Author's Note

Well, this was a mess. Royal Knight was originally supposed to be a spin-off one shot, longer with a stare back at Chocolate Velvet’s origins, but the version of Chrysalis explaining her change of heart in the next chapter turned out awful no matter how many times I tried re-writing it. I thought it would be easier to leave it in as something that isn’t entirely relevant to the main story, but I wanted to put it in because of what it says about both Chocolate Velvet and Celestia. So, ‘extra’.

With luck, the other spin-off, ‘The Court of the Harpy’ ought to work much better.

Extra - Royal Knight

The sky was blue as was typical in Canterlot County. One or another white cottony cloud dotted the sky, bright with Celestia's sun. Déjà vu… He had been in a similar situation before when Twilight Sparkle and her friends had left for a picnic and found him lying in the grass, not far from their hometown. Like that day the air smelled freshly of grass and he again felt like he could just lay there forever.

Except, this time, it was not because of the warm heat caressing his body, soft grass like a natural mattress and peaceful feeling of waking up after a long night of healing sleep. He was still stunned with the several-hooves fall with an anvil tied to his neck. Discord could have killed him. Granted, he had shoved a sword through his face, but it was an accident and it was not like it could have hurt the draconequus anyway.

Ouch… His whole body hurt, and he wasn’t sure, but he might have dislocated a wing.

Then the griffon intruded in his view of the nice blue sky, with his white head and ugly scar.

“You alive, kid?” His grin accompanied his gruff but well-humored voice. “That looked great. It’s a shame it didn’t work.”

“Yeah… Tell me about.” Chocolate covered his face with his leg. “Why did you come? Did Celestia put you to follow me too?”

The other had started to untie the rope on the alicorn’s neck. “What? No. It just looked like you had had enough of their shit and I was getting paid, so... Not to mention, I like seeing your kind fight.”

The alicorn sat on the grass. “Let me guess. Second Griffon War? Sided with the ponies against your race?”

The gruff veteran chuckled. “More like griffons and our egos against all the races of the world. Ponies simply were our target and we learned the hard way that the other races don’t take it lightly when you mess with the ones that makes the day and night work… But yes. Most griffon ‘veterans’ that wound up as mercenaries came from that. Let’s say I was on the wrong side of the battlefield and I regret it today.”

His curiosity and interest in Equestrian History got the best of him over his gloominess. “What happened?”

Flying Snake went around to stare at Chocolate. “I was young and stupid, also like most griffon mercenaries. Let some radical speech get the best of me and almost got myself killed. Decided I’d prove my mettle against the commander of the enemy forces in the Battle of Saddle Valley and found myself fighting The Mare herself.”

“Ouch…”

He smiled. It was a bit of an awkward smile from the grizzled looking warrior but was a sincere smile. “So, I wanted to see what you can do.”

“Well, sorry I disappointed you.” Chocolate replied back to his gloomy mood.

“It’s okay. You’re young and inexperienced. These things come with time. Ah, done!” He had finished untying the anvil and stopped for a second. “What is your story, Sir Chocolate Velvet? It’s not usual for Celestia to endear herself to her knights nowadays, I hear. Nor for alicorns to come very frequently.”

“You could say I got a second chance in life. I made a deal with Celestia. Now I’m the Prince-Consort and Knight of the Royal House. I’m just not very good at it.”

“Actually, you handle yourself well in a fight. Well-trained, at least, and with a good head for fighting. Maybe you don’t understand who you were fighting against.” The griffon grinned. “Though I think you should, as a royal knight.”

“Well, I do. A lot. We spar every week. Though I gotta say that Twilight, at least, doesn’t hit as hard as Celestia.”

“Well, she’s right. Monsters are gonna hit you hard, and if you’re gonna be a monster hunter, you gotta be trained the right way. My point that you didn’t do anything wrong. You need more experience.”

“Yeah. I suppose I do.”

“That is not a bad thing. Nobody is born knowing these things.” The griffon opened his wings. “Well. I’m going back to Ponyville. Princess said she might need a consultant for the local militia. It’s easy Bits and the Royal House always pays in time.”

“I’ll be here for a while.”

The other shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’ll tell the princess that you’re fine. See you later.”

The alicorn looked towards the sky. Twilight’s airship was nowhere to be seen and he expected to hear the griffon’s wings flapping away, but instead he heard his voice again. “Kid.”

The griffon was still behind him, staring at him. “I know that stare. You’re thinking. Don’t. Look, I get it: you’re in a position where everyone… Everypony expects you to be awesome and badass, but screw them. You lose some, you win some. It doesn’t mean anything and the only one you gotta answer to is yourself. And even then, you can still be too hard on yourself. It’s only going to make you feel miserable and drop your confidence. Well, I suppose Celestia too, but she is the most forgiving creature in existence.”

Then the griffon took off, and flew away, quickly gaining altitude over a few seconds before disappearing in the distance. The alicorn simply laid on his side and sighed a profound sigh of frustration, letting his head lay on the grass. After a few minutes he got an urge to do something, but instead decided to simply lay there and feel sorry for himself some more, as though the solution to his woes would materialize from thin air.

What did materialize were more unproductive thoughts… He appreciated the sentiment, but the griffon wasn’t the Prince-Consort, Knight of The Royal House, expected to be the best because the Princesses chose him over the entirety of noble class. Sometimes it wasn’t even ponies, but yaks and griffons that would bother him over that. It’s not like he regretted his decisions that led to his situation. Not at all. He simply wished he didn’t have to deal with that additional drama. Then again, he did want to be a knight, he was tied to the princesses and those beget drama by the virtue of their position; so, he supposed he should have thought of that.

Maybe he just thought that things would be different. And then he caught himself feeling sorry for himself. How exactly should things be different? He berated himself for falling in that old trap of blaming everything around him, except himself, for his failures.

Everything around him was as perfect as it could be, and he had only himself to blame for his failures. From the position he had gained, to the friends that took him in as one of them, to Princess Celestia that did everything in her power to make him belong.

Maybe the problem was that he wasn’t very deserving of everything, then. He knew how improper for his status he was. His mind wouldn’t let him forget his insecurities, especially in his present situation.

Time passed and Celestia set the sun to give space for Luna’s night. In a moment of clarity, he saw that laying on the ground and thinking sad things wouldn’t help and that he should go back to Ponyville, Celestia would, after all, be worried for him, if he took too long to return.

At least he would like to think that she would. Well, she would also know that he, likely was pathetically feeling sorry for himself. If he kept that up enough, he might even manage to end her patience and ruin his new life.

No pressure.

Damnit! He was doing it again! Fortunately, no one was looking to see the big brown alicorn hitting himself over the head like a lunatic until he regained his composure.

Still that wouldn’t keep the other thoughts out of his head. His eyes found Luna’s stars and he let out a sigh. Couldn’t help wondering if she missed him or if she was too busy doing whatever she was doing about Ponyville’s local militia. He felt so childish again, considering Celestia was working and he was thinking like an attention whoring child.

Though he was supposed to be special to her, wasn’t he? How could he think of her like that when he doubted her feelings for him?!

He sighed again, and stood, rising to his four legs and stretched his neck upwards, as well as his wings and grimaced at the jolt of pain. Left one was definitively dislocated and moving it reminded him of misaligned gears. He would have to deal with that.

Which way to Ponyville, though? He had kind of lost his way while falling out of control barely keeping his speed survivable with a freaking anvil tied to his neck. Come to think of it, he actually did alright in that regard. His flying training did manage to rub off something on him.

Yeah… Celestia had put him on a mission he had no way of succeeding, supposedly since he failed at it. It was odd… Every time he fought with Twilight and her friends, he had the impression that he could win, but in the end he always lost. Well, it was to be expected since Twilight and her friends, especially with Shining Armor were experienced fighters and adventurers. He had been at it for one single year, and even then, not even a complete year.

This time it hadn’t been a sparring exercise. He thought it might have been different especially with Celestia talking like he did have a chance, but he ended losing anyway.

He caught himself, yet again. That line of thought was rather childish in retrospect, and he had already spent too much time feeling sorry for himself and Celestia wasn’t necessary infallible and could guess wrong; not to mention it was getting cold.

He looked around and saw Mount Canterlot. Looked to the sky and located a group of stars Luna always put in the same place, a reference for travelers. Panicking while he dropped from the sky he had lost his sense of direction, but he felt satisfied he had regained his bearings, and so started a slow walk towards where Ponyville ought to be.

He could smell water nearby and a drink would be welcome. Studying the terrain, he tracked the smell and turned to his ears for the sound of running water, soon finding a small creek of crystalline water, rapid running and cold. It probably came down from underground since Mount Canterlot was too far.

He tasted the water and it was clean, good as cold water always was, especially when one was so thirsty. He, of course, saw his reflection in the water too. His chocolate brown mane was a mess, but he was mostly unharmed. Not his armor, though. He hadn't even noticed yet, but in the place where Twilight had blasted him with a magical beam, his robes vaporized, and the metal underneath pretty much melted together and became a brittle and useless mess.

Goddamnit! These things were expensive! Well, that was what he got for fighting the freaking Bearer of the Element of Magic in a mundane barding. Just how powerful was she anyway? Celestia had told him that magic becomes easier to use, in all of its levels, the more one used it. In fact, Luna had told him the same thing and so did Twilight in one of their study assignments.

Though when he did study with Twilight, they always ended discussing the differences between their worlds. Twilight just couldn’t resist it: at the end of every session, she’d ask about a different aspect of his former life. Once, he blew her mind with Newton’s Theory of Gravitation, and then with General Relativity. She organized a meeting with Celestia and Luna and made him talk about it until he exhausted all he knew of it. Then it freaked her out when he said his knowledge of the subjects were at the layman’s level. According to her, the common pony barely knew more than the practicalities of most sciences in Equestria.

The subject also fascinated Luna, of course, though she was more reserved about it than Twilight. Later he found out princess thought her stars were better…

Another thing his mind brought up in that train of thought was that Celestia simply listened and soaked in what he had to say. Like Twilight, but instead of finding things in common, she simply accepted what he had to say, and after a long night of recounting all he could about physics in general, Twilight went home and he was left with Celestia and Luna for dinner. They talked more about magic, and maybe it was because Luna had had a few more glasses of wine than she should have, but she told him that there is more to magic than what unicorns typically did. There was ancient and powerful magic in words, feelings and sensations, in existence itself… Whatever that meant. Magic that the common pony didn’t even know existed. Though he would hardly have used that word to describe Twilight.

Celestia explained that Twilight had a problem. She believed in a too rigid structure on how magic worked. The most powerful magic existed before the time of mathematics, of universities and blackboards ponies filled with extensively lengthy formulae. Magic came from the heart, not the brain. She did use music to teach him magic in the beginning, and the flow of arcane mental images that caused magic did seem like music to him.

That was why nopony taught pegasi how to fly, or earth ponies how to coax life out of the ground. And, if he managed to break free of these shackles, he would become amazingly powerful.

He hadn’t taken that very seriously until their wedding night… Whoa. Digression. The point was that he was supposed to study the magical science, thaumatology, but the two of them kept warning him that those where a guideline. There was immense power ‘outside’ the rigid structure of the academical study of magic, waiting for him after he had mastered the mundane.

To be fair, he couldn’t imagine Discord running a magical formula in his head, so it made sense.

Back to the subject at hoof, he did have the money to replace his armor and his robes, but it felt bad wasting the Princesses’ money like that.

He raised his front leg and took a look at his shins. Twilight`s magic sword literally melted pieces of it off. She could’ve sliced it off along with his leg if she meant to! That is why one didn’t fight without proper protection a monster capable of channeling magic or a creature with enchanted weapons.

Duskshine, Twilight called her sword, a replica of Star Swirl's Spellbound. Because, of course it was…

He angrily ripped off the burned remains of his half-disintegrated robes and along with it came his wheelock pistols, all four of them, ruined, with metals melt together and charred wood parts. They were completely useless and away they went with the robes and plated metal armor. Some plates were in useable condition, but they were custom-made and the whole thing would have to be made again and, right now, they did little more than irritate him.

He still felt bad throwing it away, though. It was a gift, after all, and it wasn’t magical, enchanted armor, but it was very expensive and Celestia and Luna did give it to him. He was very happy when he first wore it. It was a shame it was ruined now. His sword was a gift too and only Discord knew where it was.

He sighed again. He'd have to wear his Royal Guard armor, the one that did have its enchantment, but was meant more as ceremonial since he’d always be near the Princesses. He was meant to ‘grow out of It’, eventually, when he had got his actually enchanted armor as a Royal Knight. Technically, he had been knighted already, but they were only allowed to wear such armor and wield such weapons after they have proved their skill and valor. It was meant to inspire the inexperienced into improving and seeking great deeds and making a name for themselves. He was also sure it was meant to keep the richer ponies bound to a code of honor and of humility, but also show them the value of such items. How much more dangerous an enchanted weapon was when compared to simple steel.

But sometimes, it only got in the way. Pff… Great… Now he felt like an entitled little brat.

He lifted the mess of metal and cloth in his magic, somewhat conflicted about simply throwing it away, but he didn’t think it could be salvaged. It used to be beautiful, with its shinny white metal and gold embroidery. Not to mention his pistols: they were a work of art.

What? Should he bury it or something? He felt stupid.

Part of him though couldn’t help imagining it as a metaphor for the good-looking knight that is ultimately useless at anything other than looking good. Especially next to The Sisters and their immense power.

When he moved it out of the way his left wing reminded him it’s joint was out of place. Sure, it hurt, but it didn’t feel that bad. He was sure no tendons or nerves had been ruptured and the dislocation felt like it was only partial. He could get it back into place with his telekinetic magic and then all he’d need was immobilize it and take some anti-inflammatories. Or rather a healing potion… Whatever. For an instant he wondered if he should learn the more advanced medicinal magic. Those could be useful even as a knight and Royal Guard.

Heavens forbid, he would be able to help one of the Sisters if they ever got injured, but that was an issue for another time.

He stepped on his robe and bit at it, pulling a swath of cloth. Expensive linen, but it was still cloth, and even though it was not perfect, it should suffice. Then he folded his wing and pulled its shoulder articulation back into place with a pop. The pain didn’t even bother him that much. Apparently, his training did harden him a bit, after all. Finally, he tied his wing into place.

Then he turned his attention to what remained of his robes and armor.

“Throw that trash away.” A harsh female voice said with its eerie reverberation and aggressive tone. “I would give my favored knight something far better, if I had one.”

‘Subtle…’ He thought and didn’t even have to look to imagine the changeling queen approaching him. Her hooves disturbed the grass and her magic radiated, oppressive, enveloping him as she walked past behind him, until she stood next to him looking down at the things he held. “You don’t look very happy. I suppose I wouldn’t too.”

He didn’t answer, instead stared at her. He had seen the queen a few times before, always in a formal situation and close to Celestia and Luna, so she hadn’t intimidated him much. Typically, he avoided her despite her curiousness about him. Now, alone with her, in the dark and with insistent thoughts about her fame and his infame she looked dangerous while she circled him, staring at him in a very uncomfortable way that made him fell naked.

Well, he was, but the point was the way she looked at him.

“What is the matter?” She asked in what he identified as false concern and then disguised mocking when she looked him in the eyes. “I thought Celestia had covered you in the most expensive of enchanted armor.”

She let her eyes wander again and smiled very indulgently. “Though I wouldn’t cover those flanks.”

“Yeah…. You probably also heard she refitted her old airship because of me too.” He sat on the grass holding the armor in his hooves… And his flank away from her. “Newspapers do everything they can to make me the biggest problem in Equestria. You’d think they’re more afraid of me than of the Lion.”

Why was he even talking to her? He didn’t even like her and it would be better for him to simply leave.

“By the looks of it…” She stared down at the broken barding again. “Celestia could be doing a better job of taking care of you.”

“Chrysalis, what do you want?” His patience had reached its limit. What he felt, he realized, wasn’t exactly fear. It was more a sense of annoyance. “I really don’t feel like entertaining these games right now.”

“I thought I should tell you some things about yourself.” She was serious, like he had never seen her before, when she would usually mock and make fun of others, of him. “Celestia had your body made and needed me to keep you alive long enough. You were not born like ponies usually are.”

His eyes bulged. “What… What do you mean?!”

She grinned. Just a barely perceptible grin of satisfaction while she paced around him. “You’re not normal. You’re a freak she created just to entertain her perverted little fantasies. All you’re supposed to do is look pretty next to her. Luna said it herself.”

“Oh no…” He deadpanned. “I suppose I must change to your side and let you pamper me with all my desires as though you’d want me to like you so that you would use me to hurt Celestia and Luna.”

Then he faked a small sad cry and she frowned, stopped pacing around him when he scowled at her. “You’re late to this party. It was one of the first things she’s told me, and not a moment too soon because it seemed like every creep from Yakyakstan to Saddle Arabia wanted to recruit me in their little scheme to attack the Princesses.”

“Then I think you ought to have more self-respect than that.” She frowned right back at him, accusingly. “Do you like being her toy?”

First, he grinned smugly. “Well, first of all, better to be her toy than yours.”

“I mean, it’s not my fault your cutie mark is a heart shaped chocolate box…” She grinned mockingly. “I bet Cadance was jealous.”

Second, he gave her a neutral stare and she rolled her eyes. “Not to mention that I know what I’m doing here. You don’t. If you knew the things that I know, you would be begging me to follow you.”

“I knew it… Luna was lying. Though I am confused, Chocolate Velvet.” She grinned a little more. “I thought that you had a problem with the way Celestia treated you. Sounds like you know your worth, that I should say, seems to go beyond appearances, yet you are here, moping around like you’re not happy. What am I missing? Better yet, what are you missing? Because I’m pretty sure I could give it to you.”

“Seriously, Chrysalis, stop. You’re not the first viper to pull this with me, this month alone. You’re the fifth to try and make me their ally. Those nutjobs from the Pillars of Canterlot Society, some loser from the Male Rulers Association and three of those rising nobles that think they can take on the Crown and rule from the shadows like they’re in a cloak and dagger novel. Please…”

“Well, I am almost offended you think I am on their level…” She moved in front of him, seductively, carrying her hips and letting her tail dance in front of him. “You should think more carefully on what I could do for you, and what you could then do for me, and what we could do, together, with Equestria. If we only moved The Sisters out of the way.”

“Do you take me for an idiot, Chrysalis?” The brown alicorn scowled angrily at what he saw as a personal offense. “We don’t even know what would happen to the sun if you killed Celestia. For that alone, I could go to the Senate right now and accuse you of plotting against her life and the entire world would fall on your head faster than even she could protect you. Then, even if you got Celestia killed, all you’d have would be a bunch of useless titles because Celestia has Cadance as her secondary inheritor and Luna as her primary and regent. If you managed to kill both Sisters, you’d still have to deal with Cadance, and then, even if you did, the empire would splinter into all its individual kingdoms. She’s managed to carve for herself and her sister an unassailable position. First because everyone loves her, and second because they see her as their protector from idiots like you and the Lion.”

“Oh… Nice speech, Bishop Velvet.” She mocked him derisively. “When is the Church of Celestia opening its doors, so that the rest of us, the mere mortals can bask in her glory?”

She smiled delightedly next. “Also, it sounds like you know some things about the dear Sisters, because last I checked, the common pony believed that the Sun can be moved with a team of unicorns…”

“Go to hell, Chrysalis…” He turned, walking away angrily. Ponyville was the other way, but he wanted some distance from the changeling queen for the time being. His head was hot with frustration and anger. He couldn’t trust himself to keep a level head talking to her.

She laughed and followed, though, keeping a small distance. “You are young. You didn’t see that she started just as any of us, the humble queen of a pathetic, dirty fiefdom in the middle of what survived Discord. She never did anything that couldn’t have been done by you, or I.”

He sighed, stopped and turned in defeat. “What is your point, Chrysalis?”

“My point.” She stopped next to him and her hoof touched his chest. “Is that you think way too highly of her. Celestia, and her little sister, are every bit the evil monsters that you think I am. In fact, they have lied and killed quite a bit more than I did.”

“You see…” She went on. “Moving the sun and the moon was nice and all, but it was expected. It was the legions of Battlehorns that made a lot of difference, because normal creatures don’t give their realms to be ruled by someone else.”

“I don’t care! I don’t even know what is a Battlehorn, and as far as I am concerned, Equestria is in the best hooves it could ever be.”

She rose an eyebrow, holding his leg so that he wouldn’t turn away. “Do you know this weird feeling right now? It’s called ‘cognitive dissonance’. How come you are fine with Celestia lying and killing, but you are not with me? She is lying to you, using you right now.”

His leg pulled away from hers. “It’s because I doubt you would ever do it because you believed it would be the best for Equestria. The difference between you and Celestia, and Luna, is that while I’m sure you would make everything about yourself, they made it about unity and coexistence when it was possible.”

“Oh, aren’t you a good little trooper?” She mocked him with her unnerving smile.

He was about to tell her a collection of bad words he remembered from his original world, but a bright flash drew both of them to the arrival of the white alicorn. She wore her typical royal regalia, looking around for a second or two before she finally saw them. “Chocolate? Why didn’t you go back to Ponyville? Oh my goodness! You’re hurt!”

“In quite a few ways, I have heard.” The changeling queen grinned at her.

“Is that so?” The princess smiled full of confidence, though Chocolate Velvet wasn’t sure what she was so confident about. “I am terribly sorry then. I seem to have interrupted something. Please, pay me no mind.”

“Actually, Chrysalis was just leaving. Or I was just leaving. Either work for me.” His unfriendly expression should have scared both away, but Chrysalis was too annoying and Celestia was too motherly for that.

“So, I suppose that you are perfectly fine with everything that is going on in your perfect little home…” He didn’t answer right away, just wished she was gone already, and she knew she had hit the right spot. She laughed jovially. “Come on, stud. Talk to me. You wouldn’t be here, sulking like that if things where perfect. You know I can help. Ah… I understand if you don’t want to betray Celestia since she has done so much for you already despite what difficulties you may be encountering… How about you start by telling me about yourself?”

He let out a frustrated sigh, sitting on the grass and staring distantly to Mount Canterlot under Luna’s stars. “My parents were very rich. We were leaving the movie theater… It’s like a regular theater that you have here, but instead of watching the actual actors playing the performance, you see a series of projected images, very fast, giving the impression of movement. With music and sounds…”

“Sounds amazing!” Celestia had sat on the grass and clapped her hooves together.

“Less pointless details, more story, please.” Chrysalis rolled her eyes.

“Well, we left the place late in the night and our car was on the other side of the alley. We had crossed it before, but it was still day and it didn’t seem that scary. At night, we didn’t even see where that guy had come from. He smelled bad of alcohol and pointed a gun at mom, demanding her pearl necklace. He was trembling more than we were and Dad tried talking to him, he asked him not to hurt us, and said that he wanted to help. Dad had all sorts of social assistance corporations in the city… He could have given that guy a decent job, a better life.”

“What happened then?” Celestia asked softly, as though she already knew the answer but felt that her consort needed to say it.

Chrysalis remained quiet, memorizing the details in his story and filing it away so that she could use them to exploit his feelings as soon as the opening showed.

“He grabbed Mom’s collar and it broke. The little pearls fell to the street. She screamed and that scared him. He shot Mom.” Chocolate went on. “Then he shot Dad and ran away. They died there…”

The white alicorn stared at him with her ears flopped down and Chrysalis let some worry into her voice. “What happened them? How did you survive into adulthood?”

“I inherited my parents’ money, even though that couldn’t bring them back.” He said gloomly, but then he puffed his chest and rose his head in a heroic pose. “I vowed that I would avenge my parents and that I would fight crime. I used my money and all the resources in my father’s corporate empire to make myself stronger and better. I became not the hero the city deserved, but the one it needed! Criminals feared me and I even had my own theme song. Nanananananananana Batman!”

The two stared at him for a few seconds, stuck between confusion and surprise while he ‘sang’ with the most annoying high-pitched voice they have ever heard until Celestia started grinning and then giggling uncontrollably. Chrysalis just grunted and angrily hoofed his shoulder.

“You are an idiot.” She growled. “You are both idiots! And I hate both of you!”

Chrysalis growled some more and Celestia smiled at Velvet. “You can tell her what is bothering you.”

“But-” He started, but she silenced him softly shaking her head.

“I got it!” Celestia grinned. “I’m going to sit there and cover my ears so that I don’t hear what you tell her.”

For a few seconds, both Chocolate Velvet and Queen Chrysalis stood next to each other staring at the ridiculous scene of Princess Celestia stepping away from then and sitting with her back to them covering her ears with her hooves.

“Fine!” He grunted. “I thought that Celestia had sent me to fight Twilight and her friends knowing that I couldn’t beat them. But then, she needed me to motivate the ponies from the militia and didn’t care about how I felt. Then again, I am goddamn tired of Twilight making fun of me because of me being more of a pretty accessory rather than an actual knight.”

He let out a sigh this time. “I know I sound like a child. And I don’t like this. But…”

He couldn’t say anymore. Chrysalis was listening and he wasn’t enough of a fool to believe that she would be nicer to him than Celestia was. Or even be nice. And it wasn’t about that. He was frustrated with himself, his own lack of power and skills. He knew that Twilight’s teasing, now that his head was cool, was friendly teasing. He could never find malice in Twilight. Or any of her friends… Maybe Rainbow Dash… But that wasn’t the point.

“I understand…” Chrysalis did her best to sound understanding. Could even have fooled him if he didn’t know better. “You feel cheated. Sounds like somepony made a promise that they are failing to fulfill.”

They stared at Celestia’s back a few paces away, covering her ears. “Well, then I don’t think that she could be making my point much easier to prove.”

Chocolate felt awful… She was not going to because she didn’t need to. Unlike himself, she did have faith in him. Maybe he should have more faith in her. It’s been a year they’ve been living together, and she’s tolerated his childish way far more than he would have.

That thought stung. But he supposed he deserved that and in a much harsher way than he thought it. What could he say about her faith in him when his own faith in her left a lot to be desired? It was, usually, so easy for him to trust Celestia… He wished he could will these conflicting feelings away from his mind.

He didn’t mean to, but his inner feelings certainly showed outside, and the changeling queen was next to him, metaphorically, like a tigress about to pounce. “Well, you certainly don’t seem very happy.”

He was tired of that charade, though. “You can’t offer me anything, Chrysalis. And the reason I’m not happy is because I am frustrated with my own abilities.”

Instead of becoming angry, as he expected, she grinned maliciously. “You are wrong. I can give you all the strength you would ever need or desire. We are unlocking the secrets of the flesh and of the soul. Sounds like you could help me even more with what you know. You have enemies, I know. We can destroy them. I can give you all you would ever need to make them suffer. Let’s see… How about those snobs in the Canterlot Society for the Good Manners of Royalty? Or whatever stupid name they gave themselves? How would you like to flatten a few of them against the nearest wall? We can do that, and I know you will like that.”

“We don’t even need to be that specific.” She grinned even more, this time like a predator about to pounce. “You could name any one of those annoying pricks that make your life a personal Tartarus because they’re angry Celestia chose you for whatever she needed you, and not them.”

She walked around him like she had done before, throwing her tail around seductively. He was sure it was meant to invoke a feeling of seductiveness, at least, but it was simply vulgar in his eyes and he wished she’d realize that wasn’t helping her case. Still, she walked around him, like a snake coiling itself around its prey.

Regardless, he knew that she could do all that, and more.

“Or maybe, you would prefer to take revenge on the one that’s fooled you?” She finally stopped in front of him, smirking and raising an eyebrow. “Maybe you don’t have the abilities you would need, or maybe she would prefer that you don’t.”

“What do you mean?” She didn’t exactly surprise him, but her words made him see one important detail: as much as he knew, what he knew was told to him by Celestia, and she could, easily, have hidden things from him. Matter of fact, it was possible that, since Celestia needed Chrysalis for whatever magic they did that made him, the queen could know things about him that Celestia didn’t. Or, worse yet, did know, but wouldn’t tell him.

What an easy jump it was, from that to thinking that Chrysalis might tell him things that Celestia didn’t know she knew and didn’t want him to know. What if she did have some ulterior motive to have him close to her. Something she didn’t disclose to him, after all, she did hide things from the others… Why else would she resort to a complete outsider and not one of her own ponies to be with her and her sister?

Great. Just great.

“Well, it looks like you’re not so sure anymore…” Her voice startled him, and to his panic, his inner thoughts showed. He could see it in her grin that she saw right through him.

“What do you mean?” He insisted, tried to sound angry rather than scared, hoping she wouldn’t read just how unsure, bordering on the scared he was right then. “I want to know.”

“Well…” She started with a silky and venomous tone. “Maybe Celestia only needs your… Body. And not in the way that I had assumed.”

“What?” His head cocked back. “I don’t…”

“I have some reasons to believe that Celestia intends on using you to be reborn.” The queen, again, seemed much more serious, more direct than she usually was, staring intently at him. “You see, I messed around with the pieces that Celestia gave me… Do you know what for?”

He didn’t. His mind drew a blank that was soon colored in all shades of horror with ideas and fears that were likely worse than the reality, had he tried to picture the kind Celestia involved in them, but also a possibility… He knew stories. Some of them absurd tales ponies told themselves about the Sisters. Some reasonable tales of not such a nice pony. Most of them whispered far away from the throne room, repeated by his fellow Royal Guards when the princesses weren’t around, conspiratory musings seeking to know the truth from the one that was closest to them.

Tales of deities and of monsters. Of queens and far away, ancient wars only the princesses would have witnessed. Of ancient magic with weird powers and dangerous repercussions.

Even Twilight poked at him for answers, once or twice… He had plenty of material to fill his head with… Bad things. The idea of the monster hiding within the nice and pretty pony was too alluring, too amusing and fascinating to ignore.

Also, too clichéd.

His head turned to the white alicorn still ridiculously sitting on her haunches with her back to them and covering her ears with her hooves like an innocent child in a game. That just so happens to have a golden and respected crown over her head. Her weird mane that waves about like it’s caught in an ethereal wind that touches nothing else. He knew her power. He knew her knowledge… Every bit as dangerous and terrifying as Chrysalis’s fangs.

His eyes found the queen, standing next to him, staring at him with draconian eyes and a blank, inscrutable expression. Waiting for her words to fester inside his head.

Well, what about her? Every bit as evil as she looked to the point even her own changelings called her a monster. Every pony, griffon, yak and dragon – even the dragons – called her a monster.

He sat on the ground, looking at nothing in particular through concerned eyes. Perhaps two monsters, one overt and explicit, despite its secretiveness and covert methods; and another, hiding and lurking under its openness and charming ways.

“Come with me…” The whisper came in the reverberating voice of the readily apparent monster. “Leave her… I can hide you where she can’t find you. Safe and sound, while I get things ready.”

“What do you mean?” He whispered back, more in reaction to her own whispering than on his volition.

“I have samples of what Celestia gave me… Her flesh and her soul.” She grinned mischievously; sure she had defeated an old enemy. “With them, I’ve created powerful changeling soldiers, and with time, I can unlock powers we haven’t imagined yet in you. I’ll make you any way you wish to be.”

They both stared at the princess’ back before the queen went on subtly seductively, promising everything and anything if he would only leave that geriatric moron sitting on the grass to find an empty field of grass where they now stood. “Do not concern your thoughts with ideas of golden and white armor or naïve knights running around the land slaying monsters for the sake of a princess that pays you no mind enough to give you decent means to get your job done. You won’t need any of that and you know as well as I do that they are bloated with self-importance.”

She had laid herself over his back and her legs surrounded her chest, caressing him with her velvety black carapace. “Leave the mantle of Servant and become King. To take whatever you desire, under no laws… A god among the mortals, as sun, moon and land yield under our will.”

Images of black coats and red eyes, certainly with bat wings and jagged (or broken) horns floated before his mind before he caught himself being utterly ridiculous. Other than that, Chrysalis’ words didn’t have the effect she desired, mostly because he saw something important: she meant to turn him into a monster.

His eyes drifted back to the white alicorn, with her back turned to them, still ridiculously holding her hooves to her ears. He wondered for a second if she realized how silly that looked. But, then again, he had already learned that Celestia didn’t care about looking silly. And that was when she didn’t intentionally. He simply didn’t know which was the case this time.

Celestia was manipulative, just like Chrysalis as a matter of fact. Still, trusting her was so much easier. On the other hand… Hoof… Didn’t that just mean that she was better at that? He would be lying to himself if he said that Chrysalis’ words didn’t scare him… What if she was right and Celestia really had hidden motives to keep him close to her? He didn’t fully understand the magic behind the things those two did to bring him into the world… It was well within the boundaries of the reasonable that she would surprise him one day and he would be powerless to resist.

The Royal Knights are known for being pompous and self-important, but they also do protect the entire world from monsters that would wreak havoc in every city they ever came in contact with. Chrysalis made fun of them because she knew he yearned for their acceptance. If not for that, she likely would never have mentioned them.

With that said, Celestia made sure he understood his situation, instead of trying to use it to sway him to her side. She also didn’t try to buy his loyalty with ridiculous promises -that he was sure the queen could follow on-, but the Princess instead let him be whatever he wanted. At the time, he had the feeling that she wouldn’t even force him to help them with their joint project with Chrysalis.

Maybe it was part of her ruse, so that sometime in the future she would be able to use him for whatever nefarious intention Chrysalis hinted at, and he would be none the wiser, but his heart told him the most convincing argument of all: he liked being with his princesses. Both of them. Memories of intimacy told him they felt the same… They would be vile to play such a game in their moments of passion. He couldn’t keep his thoughts out of the wedding night.

Though, for some reason, he didn’t have problems imagining Chrysalis actually doing so.

The bottom line was that both Celestia and Chrysalis, could be lying to him, but one of them didn’t try to buy him with promises of power and ridiculous abilities. Instead, she trusted him to make his own choice, and let him struggle in his own personal battles. While ridiculously sitting on the grass and covering her ears.

He sighed once, deeply, and then he stood on his legs and walked slowly towards the white alicorn without a single stare towards the other.

“You are making a mistake.” He could hear the anger in her voice. He didn’t answer though: he closed his mind to her or else he might never make a decision. That infuriated her even more. “You are unbelievably foolish if you think she didn’t plan for this! Under that ridiculous display of hers, she knew every word out of us and you have no idea what she would’ve done to both of us had you chosen my side!”

He ignored her and approached Celestia, still sitting on the grass, covering her ears. A light touch on her back roused her and she smiled at him.

He smiled back, a little shyly. “Let’s go back to Ponyville?”

Her hoof touched his cheek. “I’ll be right behind you.”

And with that, he started on his way towards the small pony town. Celestia stood and turned to Chrysalis, though. The queen managed to sulk angrily, but the princess didn’t find it endearing as she approached her.

Chrysalis spoke first though, with her typical mocking smile. “What did you do with him to make him into such a loyal good boy?”

“I treat him like a pony, not an asset. That’s ‘the secret’.” Her voice wasn’t very friendly or match the queen’s lighter tone. In fact, Celestia didn’t look like she was in the mood to entertain any of Chrysalis games. “What are you doing here?”

“I wasn’t aware I am not allowed to roam freely, Celestia.” Her mocking smile became even deeper.

“Do not test my patience, Chrysalis. There was no need for this childish game.”

“Oh… You are worried that you could’ve lost him.” Her mocking tone was starting to get on Celestia’s nerves. “Sounds like that it was the perfect idea.”

“I trusted him enough to know that he wouldn’t turn his back on me.” She said. “But your irritating game was a provocation that you could have afforded to avoid.”

“And you…” The queen narrowed her eyes, staring angrily at the alicorn and poking at her chest with a hoof. “Could have afforded to be a little more forthcoming with your little scheme. Luna has just told me that you came up with your dreamy knight in shining armor purely for… Carnal reasons.”

Despite her best efforts, the princess simply could not stand the idea and her anger crumbled in a fit of laughing. The queen smiled at that, and paced about, in front of her from one side to the other like a prowling cat. “I am glad you find it funny, Celestia. Because I swear on the Changeling Rock I did not. And I am also ready to know the real reason behind this whole drama with his creation, because as you know I have invested significant resources into this project. He had better benefit me in one way or another.”

“You are seeing this through the wrong mentality, Chrysalis.” The princess said calmly, after regaining her breath. “This is not about you helping me. I didn’t need you.”

“Nonsense!” The queen exclaimed triumphantly. “Are you actually going senile? You needed me to keep him alive!”

“You needed me, Chrysalis. I could have waited for another millennium if I had to. But you could not.” The princess remained calm. “The changelings wouldn’t have you. The ponies wouldn’t have you. Neither would the dragons or griffons. You had managed to make an enemy out of every single government and even individuals that could have helped you out of charity or even self-interest. Mostly because you never gave a chance to peaceful coexistence, but also because you tried to subvert or abuse every attempt at helping you. When Thorax became king, nopony cared that you had left and that you were going to die. Alone and starved in some Harmony forsaken hole.”

She was furious. If she could, she might have murdered the pony in front of her right then and there. She inhaled deeply through flared nozzles and stared as though she could set Celestia on fire by its sheer intensity.

None of that perturbed the pony, who simply remained calm, stoically staring back at her.

When, in a few instants her inner fury had run its course, the queen relented and closed her eyes softly. She backed out, sitting on the grass with a heavy sigh.

“I am terribly sorry, Chrysalis.” Celestia said sympathetically. More than the other liked. “This is a terrible thing to hear, but it is the truth. You are between friends now, though. You don’t have to act like that all the time, and no one has the desire to hurt you. In fact, we could have a much easier and fun time if you understood that.”

“Oh, spare me, Celestia.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re not my friend. You are hiding things from me. Things that are relevant to the deal we made.”

Then the princess’ eyes narrowed. “So are you. But I am giving you your space. I am trusting you.”

“Right…” Chrysalis almost choked on her words and chuckled nervously in a most uncharacteristic way for her. “I better go, now. I… Well, Luna needs me.”

She backed a few steps and them her green-tinted magic teleported her away, leaving the Princess alone next to a small magical scorch mark in the grass. She didn’t linger however, going after her consort at a slightly hurried pace.

She soon caught up with him, who looked back at her approach and smiled at her.

“Are you feeling better?” She asked, while she took the lead in the walk.

“I am… She… Uh… It was a bit unsettling.”

“Chrysalis isn’t the problem, Chocolate Velvet. Your insecurity is not cute. It is not endearing.” She said without looking at him following her. “If you cannot trust me to be honest with you, then I cannot trust that you would do the same to me. If you do not trust me intrinsically… This is not going to work. Not with me, not with Luna.”

Then she stopped walking and he stopped next to her, looking at her, whose eyes aimed at the ground. “We wanted a lover. A companion to share our long years. Not a foal for me to raise. Especially because Luna would simply lay that on me, being the older sister.”

“I understand, Celestia…” He said calmly. “I have a question for you though…”

He couldn’t remember ever seeing her put such an angry expression before but didn’t have time to react. “I could have just left you lose in Equestria, but you chose to be with us... Did you join me simply because it would give you a higher status? Because of my access to resources?”

“What?” He grimaced and took a step back, blurting out words before his head caught up with his mouth when he understood her point. “I mean… Ah… I’m sorry… You’re right. You won’t hear of this again.”

“There is more I need you to understand: yes, you could have beaten Twilight. She and her friends are used to fight monsters. You have the training of a Royal Guard… Fighting ponies is included in your job.” She frowned a little more. “Yes, I have used you to motivate those ponies… It is my job to use ponies who put themselves at my service. That is why I need you to trust me.”

Finally, silence set in and they walked in silence for a few minutes, under the starry clear sky. He followed her under a little cold air, but not enough that it would bother them too much through their coats, and the grass made for silent steps. He spoke softly when he did. “Chrysalis said some things I think you should know of.”

She had softened a little. “I am sure she did. Chrysalis has a tendency of becoming arrogant when she thinks she is winning and of giving in to anger when she thinks she is losing. In the meantime, she is conniving and self-centered… We will talk about it later. We’ll see to your injury once we’re in Ponyville. Then we dinner and after that, you can tell me all you need.”

They walked in silence, again, for a few more seconds, until she turned to him again, and her horn glowed with its golden magical aura. She grabbed his left ear and pulled it like he was a misbehaving child.

“Ow! Celestia! OW OW!” He protested but her magic didn’t budge in the slightest and he was sure it would rip his ear off before he escaped her magical grasp.

She stared at him with a deep crimson tint in her cheeks. “I swear I am going to make you regret vanishing on me like that!”

“Ow! Okay! I get it! Let go!” He paused for an instant. “You’re sending some very confusing messages right now!”

“Hush.” She pulled at his ear, forcing him to walk faster and in front of her. “We’ll discuss this too when we arrive at Ponyville’s inn. Make haste!”

He broke into a panicked gallop with a squeak and she followed, flapping her wings angrily. “I will teach you rascal to respect your matriarch!”

The Stupid and The Petty

It was very early morning and the sun had just begun its journey, flung across the sky by a pony Cadance thought she knew well. Flurry Heart slept peacefully with Shining Armor in the Magic of Friendship’s private room along with her maid, Miss. Calcite. Most of Twilight’s friends still slept there too and somehow it bothered her that she felt she needn’t worry that they slept right next to Shining Armor without her presence.

She wasn’t in a very good mood which she knew was very atypical for her especially with such a nice day all around her. Just a few clouds decorated the blue sky and Twilight’s airship flew fast at a high altitude with a relaxing wind. Rainbow Dash kept to her morning exercise routine flying laps around the airship and the crew minded their businesses.

Maybe she kept thinking too much about those books that likely romanticized the past way too much since she left the Crystal Empire. Especially because ‘the past’ wasn’t what she thought it was and that made those books even more fanciful. She was also still frustrated with herself at her failed attempt at playing the politician as ponies did in those books. She felt so foolish too, but she was drawn to those stories about the powerful matriarch that united the land.

She was bored, and boredom bred ill thoughts. She loved feeding and bonding with Flurry Heart, but the baby needed her rest after her meal and Cadance often was left wide awake after. In the Crystal Empire that wasn’t a problem because she could always find something to do or she could call her aunt via magical mirror and talk to her about something that happened. Something she could need assistance from her age-old wisdom.

She never really connected a lot with Luna but she was her aunt and Cadance both respected and enjoyed her company in the many times Luna had approached her and they did some pleasant thing. It even came to the point that she sought Luna’s company once or twice.

They mostly watched the stars and Luna sure loved them and was quite proud of her ‘art’. It got a bit overbearing at times, but Luna was a pleasant company nonetheless and Cadance enjoyed what time they spent together.

Then there was Celestia. The mighty Celestia. Queen in everything but title for whatever stupid reason which both eluded Cadance and seemed irrelevant. The closest thing Cadance had ever had for a mother, even warmer and closer to her than the old matron of the orphanage she lived as a filly. Her power was undeniable and for the past few days it felt unbearable over Cadance’s head.

She liked Celestia too much and was beside herself with happiness at the pride her aunt radiated when she was ready to take on the Crystal Empire, but after the start of their journey she felt betrayed and wasn’t sure she could trust her beloved aunt anymore. Sure, she had told herself repeatedly that Celestia wasn’t a bad pony and that everything certainly was justified… But deep inside she was hurt. She wondered if Twilight felt like that too.

Probably so, but not in the same way: Twilight never wanted to be a princess to begin with. She never wanted to wield power and make things happen the way she felt was right. Probably because Twilight had been a privileged child from her birth with a nice family and was recruited quite early to Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.

At the time Cadance had already been adopted by the Princess as her niece. Not as a daughter, just her niece. What a strange detail that was considering recent discoveries. Like Blueblood who didn’t even get a title of princedom but an archduchy. It was an important one though: he was responsible for Canterlot County second in richness only to Bay County. But it contained the capital city and the Royal Court.

Well Cadance knew that the tile of Princess worked different than it did in other countries before Modern Equestria and other parts of it. A Princess was even ‘more’ than a Queen. The later would be somepony who holds power for whatever reason, mostly heritage, while the former was more than a ruler. She was supposed to be a guide a leader as much as a ruler. In practical terms it only meant that Cadance was supposed to do what Celestia told her to and was the administrator of her empire.

Twilight was a peculiar example since she never bothered with the political side of her position and was spared the same obligations Cadance had to contend with. Especially with Mayor Mare taking care of the city that was already under Canterlot County and the Heartland Archduchy.

The problem was that Cadance sometimes felt that things were not as fair as they could be, and this feeling had surfaced with a vengeance after the routine of the travel reared its head.

The Sisters ruled all. Celestia had the Sun and Luna had the Moon. Literally everything and the heavens. Twilight had the Elements of Harmony and along with her friends she was an emissary of Friendship and made it flourish everywhere. What did Cadance really have? A plot of land that wasn’t good for much other than tourism and if not for the crystalized metal the new airships used that would be all. And, as soon as the market was saturated that would be a big whatever. Or worse, as soon as other places managed to manufacture it.

Cadance did have a unique and impressive power over Love but she just simply wasn’t allowed to go around making ponies fall in love. It was a waste: so many ponies she knew loved each other but never managed to express their feelings until it was too late because their special ponies had already made commitments. Fiery passions that lit in secret and died in silence while she was forced to watch and do nothing. In the end it felt like ponies loved The Sisters because they were so good at ruling Equestria and were so powerful. That they loved Twilight because she was a beacon of everything a pony could ever strive to be. Cadance was just the local ruler of the cold place nopony really liked visiting more than once for the novelty. She could still remember the mean remarks journals made about her receiving a city from her aunt that materialized from thin air.

How come Twilight could go around doing the friendship patrol and Cadance couldn’t use her very own and unique power?

Twilight always was better than everypony else, after all. The little wonder foal… Youngest filly to Celestia’s school. She didn’t even take the courses on political theory like Cadance did. She never went to the classes reserved to future leaders and rulers like Cadance. Instead Celestia simply sent her on her way to become the great Princess of Friendship, the Bearer of the Element of Magic, while Cadance sat her flank administrating the cold plothole of the world in Celestia’s stead.

It was not Twilight she resented though. It was her aunts. They were the ones that were always in control. Oh, how she would like to see Celestia and Luna trying to explain something to the whole of Equestria for a change.

Her thoughts were interrupted when one of the pegasus crewponies called an alarm. “Look lively, lads! Airship astern!”

Cadance’s first reaction was looking around, high and low in all directions because she had no idea what an ‘astern’ was, until she noticed the crew running towards the ship’s back and she followed them, along with the others that came out of the private quarters and from the underdeck.

“Where are they? Who are they?” Twilight asked nervously and one of the pegasus crewponies pointed at a golden speck against a cloud.

Twilight squinted and more than a few ponies onboard imitated her until they finally saw it. “Wow! You guys have good eyes!”

The Captain approached with a spyglass and gave it to her who took it in her magic and looked through it. She saw an airship, not too different from hers, but the hull was deeper, and she had a wider beam. The hull was crystalized metal, like her ship, but it had a golden tint. Not only that, but that thing had a battering ram and she was positive she saw at least two front-side cannons and a ballista!

“Magnificent…” A deep green pegasus with a black bandana frowned sarcastically. “The Gold Pricks.”

He was promptly chastised by the Captain via his hoof forcefully connecting to the back of his head, while Twilight simply lowered the spyglass. “The what now?”

“Gold Pricks…” Another pegasus sighed with annoyance. “T’is how the crews call the Royal Guard in the Manehattan Bay area.”

“You guys were pirates?!” Shinning Armor gasped while Cadance and the others busied themselves giggling with different levels of modesty.

“We was, your highness.” The Ship’s Captain said calmly. “Got caught, did our time and got pardoned.”

That notwithstanding, the unicorn stared angrily at his sister, who put a hoof on her chest. ‘What? They’re hard-working ponies!”

“Pirates are the opposite of hard-working, Twilight! They take what others worked to buy!” He shook his head. “You put my baby and wife in a airship full of pirates!”

“Ain’t like that, Prince Armor.” The Captain calmly shook his head. “Tis the life. The community. We live isolated and we share amongst ours. We did steal, aye. But we paid for it.”

“You share what you stole, while you hid from the law!” He pointed an accusatory hoof at the Captain, but then he touched his forehead and sighed. “I’m sorry… It’s just…”

“We understand, your highness… A pony of the Guard wouldn’t like us. No hard feelings.”

“Relax, Shinny…” Cadance grinned next to him. “Twilight knows what she’s doing.”

“Can’t you stay on my side?”

“I’m sorry….” She giggled behind a hoof. “I’m still not over you being the Captain of the Gold Pricks.”

He simply grunted and turned back to the ship’s captain. “Are they gaining on us?”

“Nay.” The other looked through his spyglass again. “We’re losing them quite fast.”

“So… False alarm?” Pinkie wondered.

“Nay lass. They’re onto us.” The Captain looked worried.

“But… If we’re faster…” Pinkie insisted, letting one ear fall to the side of her head.

“They’re hounding us, Pinkie.” Shinning propped his legs on the railing, staring at the pursuing ship. “They’re likely coordinating with ships from other detachments and are likely to not leave us in peace.”

“Hum…” Fluttershy stared at the ship and then at the ponies with her, and then back again. “They’re not going to fire shipboard weapons at us, are they?”

“Nah…” Shining shook his head. “I don’t think so. And if they do, I can protect the ship with a shield spell, and so can Cadance. We should be fine for now.”

Twilight also kept staring at the pursuing ship and rubbed her chin. “I want a meeting so we can discuss how to best deal with this. As soon as we’re done with breakfast.”

The others agreed.

***

It was too damn early; she had slept way too little and she regretted messing with Chocolate Velvet the last night. Not only Celestia had defeated her, without even trying, but she felt bad she caught herself trying to ‘do wrong’. And worse, Celestia had trusted her while implying that she knew Chrysalis was up to no good. Again. Damnit!

Fortunately, Luna was there to help her alleviate her frustration. Luna seemed to understand her.

She also regretted, almost as much, tasting that stupid drink the crystal ponies made for Luna. But it was all worth it. At least until the present moment when she wasn’t sure if her headache came from the hangover or if it came from the present situation.

She sat at a table almost dozing off next to her best eggmaiden and two of her soldier changelings. Also, in front of her was one of her Praetorians; the one whom she’d unfortunately named Limpy. The queen had to admit that her regard for Shimi, her eggmaiden, had raised even higher because her patience remained unwavering while her own plummeted faster than an enemy of the Five Herds into one of the Manehattian rivers. And she was his mother. Well technically she was mother to the whole Swarm but that was beside the point.

The shiny silvery changeling sighed. “One more time. What is your name?”

“Limpy.” The big, scary, naturally armored and magically mighty formidable, biologically tuned killing machine that was the Changeling Praetorian said with his accent Chrysalis had no idea where it had come from.

“No. We want you to understand that your name is not Limpy anymore.” The patient Shimi said. “Your name is now… Uh…”

She looked at Chrysalis. “What was his new name again?”

Chrysalis rose her head from her hoof and thought for a second. “It was… Hum… Steve… There.”

“Your majesty you can’t call a changeling ‘Steve’.” One of her soldiers frowned.

“I just did.”

The eggmaiden sighed at the queen’s dismissal but it didn’t bother her that much because she knew it was futile and she was stuck with her queen no matter what. “Very well. Your name is now ‘Steve’. Understand?”

‘Steve’ nodded positively and ‘hum-hummed’ so. The changeling doctor then smiled and asked him again. “So, what is your name?”

“Limpy.” His certainty was enviable.

Chrysalis’ head found the shiny crystal table with a bang. Her horn hit the table and sent a small shock from its root, but she didn’t care. She had come to a point she just couldn’t feel physical pain anymore. The doctor simply sighed. “I’ve told your majesty… It’s been imprinted. We can’t just change a changeling’s name like that.”

“We change literally everything about ourselves! I refuse to believe I can’t teach him a new name!” She then turned to her formidable soldier. “Why don’t you understand that I want to give you a new name!? ‘Limpy’ is a disagreeable name and I want you to have a beautiful name. Perhaps an intimidating name since you are one of my great elite soldiers.”

He frowned. “Mother! You would never give me a disagreeable name!”

The queen inhaled and exhaled ostensibly. “I am sorry, but I did give you one. I have a terrible sense of humor but now I am trying to change your name! Princess Luna said that I should, and she is right. I am trying to be a better ruler and mother, so I need you to understand that ‘Limpy’ is an ugly name.”

“Don’t you worry mother!” He frowned full of determination. “You can test me all you need. I won’t fail.”

“I… What? Testing you?! What in Tartarus are you talking about?”

“He’s rationalizing it. He’s convinced you’re testing him… Somehow…” Shimi said unsurprised. Damned if she knew how their heads worked.

“Unbelievable!” The queen growled. “I am not testing you! I am giving you a command!”

“But all names are pretty.” He complained holding his hooves to the table in distress.

“What?” She craned her head in confusion. “Who taught you that?”

“It’s in Princess Twilight’s book!”

“What?” The queen asked again.

His horn shone with green light and a book materialized in his telekinetic aura. It was a beautifully crafted leather-bound book with a velvety red cover and golden letters that read ‘All Foals Are Beautiful’.

“What the…” She snatched the book from his grasp and opened it, then started flickering through and her scowl got deeper and deeper the further she went. “This is a book for foalings! It is meant to prevent little abominations like that pink filly in Ponyville from realizing that her mother is worse than I am and commit suicide or something! Not to mention you are not a child! You are mommy’s big killing machine!”

“But I don’t like this new name!” He frowned like a child about to throw a temper tantrum. “You named me Limpy and I’m bloody proud of it!”

The queen scowled again and held up the book for him to see and spoke in her angry voice. “Whose head do I need to put on my mantlepiece for this?”

There was a bit of a silence among the changelings in the room and Chrysalis felt compelled to start executing changelings at random until she got an answer but that probably wouldn’t go very well with Celestia and one of the two soldiers did tell her eventually.

“King Thorax authorized a bunch of reading materials my queen.” The one on the left said. “It probably was one of Princess Twilight’s suggested books… You know… With the friendship crap and all that.”

The Queen stared at the damn book and sighed, next holding her hooves to her face in exasperation and then she frowned while she skimmed through the book some more. Maybe she could find something in there that would allow her to make Celestia let her kill Thorax and then stuff his body and display it next to one of her specimens in her private quarters. But that wouldn’t be very likely, and she might eventually miss him.

“Hum… What now your majesty?” Shimi’s ears flopped.

“I’m going to tell Luna to read Twilight’s book! Problem solved! All names are pretty now, thus saith Princess Twilight Sparkle!” She said with a grin and gave her soldier back his book. “There you go Limpy! Now I need you to get Bossy for me.”

A white flash manifested on the other side of the table and interrupted her. Discord appeared before them holding his finger up about to say something.

“No.” The queen said.

That surprised him. “No what?”

“Whatever you’re going to say the answer is ‘no’. I am tired Discord. Too tired for you. I drank too much and I spent almost the whole night awake with Luna and now my head hurts.”

“Too much information Chrysalis.” He crossed his arms. “Anyways I need your help with something. It’s more important than whatever you might be doing.”

“Why are you bothering me?!” Her face turned to a pained expression. “Go bother Celestia.”

“Celestia is the problem. I need you to-“

“No.” She refused to listen.

He snapped his fingers and a rope tied itself around her muzzle then he ignored her malevolent stare. “I need you to help Twilight. She needs to talk to an important pony in Manehattan and Celestia is going to be on the way. So, you can start by distracting Celestia.”

Her eyes, in a very uninterested way, still said ‘no’. He sighed. “You can do ‘drink too much and spend the whole night awake’ with her too…”

Her eyes opened suddenly, and she tried to speak through her tied muzzle but all she managed was a series of unintelligible mumbles. “Good. See you later.”

“Wait!” She finally yanked the rope from her muzzle and raised a hoof. “What is happening?”

“You know. They’ve talked to you. I’m going to help Twilight and Cadance figure out that whole mess. By keeping Celestia busy and out of their way.”

“About Emperor Grigor? About that whole mess of erased history? Are you mad?” She scowled fiercely again. “They are going to ruin everything if they give the Lion something he can use against The Sisters! That jerk already has too much legitimacy and I don’t want him spoiling my view from the House of Majesty in the Senate!”

Then her headache returned with a vengeance and she put a leg over her head. “Ow… Wait… Ouch… Damn.”

“Do you need a minute Chrysalis? Really, I can wait.” He grinned quietly and she grunted and stared at him as though she could kill him with her eyes. “I am confused, however. I thought you hated Celestia, Luna and Starlight Glimmer with a passion. Also, Twilight. And…”

“Shut up!” She yelled as loud as her headache would allow and everyone made silence. “They’re… Helping me now. Besides, I don’t think that Celestia is going away anytime soon.”

“Aaaw… Did you make some new friends when I wasn’t looking?” He pulled at her cheek with his lion’s paw and she batted it away with a hoof.

“Enough! What is it that you want you infernal…” She simply grunted in anger.

“I told you. You need to distract Celestia from them.”

“Why would I do this?” She grunted again. “I want to be on good terms with The Sisters and couldn’t care less if Twilight and Cadance are sad over this waste of time.”

Celestia was nice to her. So was Luna. Chrysalis wished to be in good terms with them and not only because it was ultimately beneficial to her but because Celestia did have this loony bin of a world under control and she wanted Chrysalis’ changelings to be well.

Her eyes drifted to Limpy while he watched over the draconequus like a guard dog about to jump and rip his throat out at the smallest hint from her. Not that he actually could do that, anyways. There was also Shimi with her concerned expression and then at the couple of her soldiers in the room, both bored and uninterested.

If the Lion managed to oust the Sisters thanks to Twilight and Cadance being insufferable idiots, her changelings would again be in danger. War? That would be the least of her worries. The Sisters are the thing keeping the world from turning against her children and The Lion wouldn’t think twice before annihilating them and claiming to have cleansed the world of the threat they posed. That is if he could fight Chrysalis… But the point is that the Swarm couldn’t fight the whole world.

Although this weird griffon magic that resurfaced recently had an unknown quality to it and that got her worried too.

Regardless, Celestia would have her children thrive and live happily. Being respected. Being loved. Being themselves. In the last months for the first time since the birth of their race the changelings could go wherever they pleased without disguising themselves. It was because of Celestia’s student and her own student. It was because of Celestia’s way worked in some weird way Chrysalis didn’t understand yet. Ponies respected her and trusted her that she knew what she was doing. The last thing the whole damn world needed was The Sister’s legitimacy being put in distrust.

The Lion was dangerous. More dangerous than Tirek or the Storm King or King Sombra ever were… Chrysalis knew the kind. He didn’t want power. He didn’t want victory. He wanted to subjugate to destroy and claim that he did it. Just like that prick from the past that Twilight and Cadance insisted on messing with. Not to mention that she could seduce and manipulate her way with those, but The Lion was… Fanatical. Immune to the luxuries she could provide or to common sense.

It hurt her to admit, but she was afraid of him.

Memories of centuries ago, of Celestia systematically destroying the ruling families came back with a shudder. The Lion was dangerous, absolutely, but so was Celestia when she was angry. She didn’t want to think of what she could do to him, or her, if they managed to break her serenity. The difference was that she was on her side and wanted everyone to play nice with each other.

Then it hit her. And it hit her so hard she covered her eyes with her hooves and sighed profoundly. “For fuck’s sake. I’m becoming my mother.”

“Actually, Farfalla was much more beautiful than you are… With that golden mane and eyes of hers. She also had a much nicer temper.” Discord mentioned casually. “But if you are concerned about the Lion you should know that he is under control.”

She didn’t have the energy to be angry at him or at her soldiers’ inane giggling, but she did think that Limpy’s murderous glare at Discord was cute.

She shook her head and sighed in defeat. “Discord I’m in enough trouble as it is and if I start getting in Celestia’s way she is bound to lose her patience with me. More importantly The Lion is not going to help me, and he is bound to gain leverage with the fruits of Cadance and Twilight’s research. Whatever they find there will uncover this mess about Celestia’s agreement with the griffons that rewrote History. This whole quest of theirs is a problem especially now. Especially for me.”

Not that she expected Discord to understand a smidgeon of how politics worked in the Equestrian Confederacy.

“Oh, come now, Chrysalis. I know you are still hiding something from Celestia. It is your nature to lie just as it is mine to cause trouble.” He smiled smugly. “Not to mention that you are wrong: I don’t know what the problem was, but Celestia fixed it and that was much bigger and older than the griffon’s case of egomania. Probably as old as ponies themselves.”

“How does that help?” The queen stared inquisitively. “And how are the two things connected?”

“It was a chain of events Chrysalis. Things started going wrong at the same time Grigor started his murderous spree, yes. But that was a repercussion of whatever happened in the past. It was a coincidence, or not, that Celestia started unifying Equestria at the rough same time the griffons were happy to rid themselves of Grigor and they helped each other. They got rid of their dark evil emperor and all the mess he created, and Celestia hid whatever caused to the problem to begin with.”

She had thought of separate events… It had never occurred to her that the whole mess was connected, one long age-spanning chain of events. Suddenly things clicked in place and she craned her neck thoughtfully. “Ah. Wait. The mess you’ve created was part of something bigger.”

“No Chrysalis. That is the thing: some ponies were evil, but they were not evil just then. Whatever happened that summoned the windigos happened. It was an ancient problem. Something they kept doing that corrupted Harmony over and over until Celestia put it to rest and healed the world. It might have had something to do with the griffons and their big bad emperor. Or not… Doesn’t matter. The important thing is that Celestia hid whatever it was, and that seems to have solved the problem.”

She didn’t seem to react to it. He thought it curious but waited until she finally scowled at him. “Discord what actually happened? Because I’m having trouble understanding how exposing this thing again won’t simply make it worse, if Celestia saw fit to hide it.”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. Celestia is the only one that does. But ponies changed.” He offered her a lion’s paw. “Twilight’s convinced me that they are ready to understand and face whatever the problem was. And I am guessing Twilight, together with Cadance, can figure it out. With some help. That is why they must get to Manehattan and find a pony called Naminé. She is the key, otherwise all they will have is evidence that Celestia did hide something and THAT would help the Lion.”

“Celestia disagrees either way.” The Queen argued.

“Well, Celestia is wrong!” He put his hands on his hips. “She does that from time to time. Ponies have changed and in no small part due to her. I have! It’s about time she realized that too.”

Chrysalis wished she could say that she changed too but kept that tidbit inside her head.

“Then why didn’t you send them immediately to that pony?” She cried, instead and raised her hooves frustratingly, but he only rolled his eyes.

“Because I don’t know where she is neither how she looks now. Manehattan is a big city. She is hiding from Celestia and will only come out when she realizes that she can help the two princesses.”

“What is her deal?” She was becoming suspicious. “Why would she come out of hiding because Twilight and Cadance want it?”

“How should I know? Some ponies are so crazy they make me feel normal!” While she was suspicious, he was becoming impatient. There was much to do. “I only know that piece of work because she pestered me about reading my soul memories or whatever. Then she vanished again when she gave up.”

She took a few seconds processing what Discord had said and finally admitted defeat. She didn’t like it. She still thought that this whole mess would best serve everyone involved if it remained buried. But Discord wasn’t the type to commit stupid mistakes. He thought that this would be beneficial… She might as well cooperate and earn some good girl points after it’s all said and done. She also didn’t like the idea of Celestia being around until she figured a way to deal with her Praetorians, but It occurred to her that she managed to dig her own grave deeper and deeper the more she tried to fix this situation by herself. Maybe swallowing her pride and allowing Celestia to help would fix this whole mess.

No need to disclose any of that to Discord, though. “Luna wants me to play evil queen so that Celestia and Chocolate can come here and ‘save’ her. I think I can stage an idiotic mock battle and… Well… Some entertainment. I also have a seven-headed hydra of a problem for her to fix… But that won’t keep her here for long enough, and she’s bound to leave anyway if she figures she needs to deal with Twilight and Cadance.”

“Ah don’t worry. Celestia’s also gotten herself into a whole… What do you call it when ponies that work for the Princess steal her money?”

“Stupidity.” She deadpanned. It’s how she would call it if her changelings were stealing Hive resources from her. “Or death wish.”

“No that is what we call changeling queens that try to be funny with The Lord of Chaos.”

She rolled her eyes. “Embezzlement. Why in Equestria would they do that? A pony could live their entire life without working and get away with it.”

He shrugged. “Beats me if I know. Because they like expensive things, I suppose. Not even the world almost ending can make certain ponies wise up. Anyway… She’s got one such scheme to crack. The point is that she’ll come eventually, and things are piling up on her plate. I may come up with something more, but you need to keep Luna busy too.”

The queen laughed. “Easy. Luna is trying to shirk her duties at the Senate. How do you know that Celestia will come, though?”

“Ah she will. Dear little Luna wants it. Celestia’s spoiled her since their parents died and Luna is an eternal teenager. The thing is…” He pulled at his beard. “Twilight will take time to get to Manehattan so you should stall and then stick to Celestia and Luna. And when they do catch up to Twilight, likely in Manehattan, you can help our young princesses. Hopefully after they’ve already talked to Naminé.”

She raised a hoof, dismissively. “If it’s that important that she meets this Naminé I can send my infiltrators to Manehattan to find her and facilitate their meeting. Our magic isn’t as useful as it once was, but we should be able to manage it. With some luck, they can manage a meeting without Celestia looming over them.”

“Good, good. Meanwhile I’ll make sure that Celestia can’t reach them or that they have a fighting chance.” He crossed his arms. “Anyway… Once The Lion hears of this, he might want to help Twilight and Candance… But I would prefer not to get him involved.”

“Can’t you do us all a favor and kill the Lion already since Celestia is not willing?” She could hope.

“Of course not! That is wrong!” He gasped and she kept staring in silent frustration over the context of this whole multi-age mess. “Well, I’ll see you later Chrissy. Bye.”

With that he vanished into a flash. The queen was silent and her changelings on the room waited for something. A command. A question. Anything. A few seconds passed before Shimi broke the silence. “Your majesty… Do we want to get involved?”

“Discord likes Twilight and her friends.” She said quietly. “I don’t think that he would try to harm them… And by association he wouldn’t do so to us by getting us to help. He likes Celestia… Whatever outcome he expects is good for her and then for us.”

The small silvery changeling blinked twice at the queen. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Chrysalis looked for a good few seconds at her Praetorian with the stupid name she gave him without thinking. “We already are Shimi. It hadn’t occurred to me but whatever happened to Celestia and Luna that damaged their souls or whatever the hay happened probably came from this mess. Everything is connected. In fact, our own creation might be implicated…”

One of her soldiers made an ominous sound and the other giggled like an idiot. Chrysalis figured she was getting too soft.

“Oh…” The small changeling hoofed uncomfortably at the table. “What do we do then?”

Before answering the queen magicked into existence a piece of parchment, a pen and an inkwell. “I’m going to write a letter to Celestia…. I want to draw her in and if she is too busy, she’ll send Chocolate Velvet and a couple of knights along with her Royal Guards. That should help. I guess…”

“At least I get to play evil monster prisoner in the Bordello of Candy.” She gave a creepy smile, but it became sarcastic. “Hopefully Chocolate Velvet isn’t too attached to some weird vow of chastity or some stupid thing knights do… If I’m lucky Celestia will be distracted long enough that I can figure out how to tell her about the Praetorians.”

Chrysalis kept a small frown, wondering how she could get Celestia’s stallion to be interested in her after last night, but her charms never failed her. There was silence in the room other than the soft and continuous chime of the Queen’s magical telekinesis and the scratching of the feather on the paper. But she stopped and rose her eyes to her eggmaiden who stared directly at her in that judging way that only she could direct at others in the Swarm.

“What?” She asked in her characteristic unfriendly tone.

“Don’t you think King Thorax feels bad when you do this sort of thing?” She accused with words and stare over her crossed legs and angry expression. “It’s bad for your relationship and therefore it’s bad for the Swarm.”

“He can get laid with anyone he wants too!” She defended herself more than argued back but failed to convince Shimi, her soldiers, or even herself. She would likely geld him if she ever caught him staring the wrong way at another thing. Alive or not.

“Anyways he knew what he was getting into when he agreed to marrying me.” She said nonchalantly and raising her muzzle. One of her soldiers said something, chuckling and elbowing the other who barely tried to hold his laughter. “Hey! He’s your king! Show some respect!”

She growled at the two and they recoiled and silenced immediately. Then she noticed the eggmaiden staring at her with a smug grin of superiority. “Fine! I’ll talk to him or something. Next thing my eggmaidens are going to start giving me orders!”

***

The private room in Twilight’s airship had a decently sized table meant for meetings between the airship’s owner and its captain or other relevant ponies. Since Twilight and her friends were used to sleeping in the crowded place, they were fine with the meeting over the map table anyway. Though Applejack was getting aggravated at Rainbow’s constant shuffling of her wings by her side. She understood that forcing Rainbow Dash to stand still, pay attention, and keep quiet for more than a few minutes could be considered a form of torture but she was trying to get her job done! Besides, Flurry Heart behaved better, for pony’s sake!

Not that her pegasus friend understood any of that when she stared at her and then back at her notes scribbled on a piece of paper. “As I was saying, we checked the pantry and we do have enough food for everypony… And dragon… However, we do not have enough for a single day past the shores. And considering we need to cross the ocean to get to Griffonia, we’re in trouble.”

Twilight grunted with her hoof on her forehead. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to stop… But I guess that’s just not possible. Can we sneak into a town? Get what we need and leave?”

“Not likely…” Her brother shook his head. “They are chasing us. That would be impossible.”

He grunted in frustration and frowned. “As if they’d need that to track us… We’re carrying the Elements of Harmony, two alicorns, a bunch of enchanted barding and weapons, and the airship has two giant mana batteries. No way we can sneak this thing near anywhere. An academy cadet unicorn could sense us without even trying. Not to mention we’ll need a lot of stuff. We can’t bring it to the middle of nowhere without drawing attention even if we could hide the ship.”

Flurry Heart protested from behind her mother's head and he amended while Cadance looked up and giggled. “Right… There alicorns.”

“Aye. Ship’s made for speed princess. Not for sneakin’.” The captain agreed. “We can keep running, but we’ll eventually have to stop.”

“Okay… Could be worse. Ideas?” She sighed.

“Uh… Actually, it is worse Twily…” Shining grimaced next to her and Cadance. “Princess Celestia likely has ordered the deployment of the local militias of every city, town and village, not to mention forts and detached garrisons all the way from Canterlot to Manehatan, and probably in Griffonia too. Luckily not many of them are equipped with modern airships because they’ve been moved to the griffon lands, but knowing precisely where we are, they can plot our course and intercept us. If we’re lucky we can avoid most of them because the ship is so fast, but they’ll certainly keep airships chasing us all the time and try to ambush us.”

“So, is there some good news for us?” Glimmer growled next to Twilight who stared intently at the map.

“Well yes.” Shining stared sarcastically. “We can hope that Princesses Celestia and Luna won’t be throwing strategic level spells at us.”

Cadance noticed, but kept to herself, that the general mood wasn’t very nice in the room. This room sure could use some love.

“So…” Twilight spoke again. “We should avoid all cities and keep to our best possible speed… We’ll need supplies… We may be forced to fight them.”

Rarity hummed also staring down the map. “And what if we abandoned the airship? Leave it somewhere near Manehattan and they take another direction?”

“No way!” Rainbow flared her wings hitting both Applejack and Fluttershy but never took notice. “We can’t just abandon them!”

“Rainbow is right Rarity.” Twilight shook her head slightly. “We don’t know what could happen to them.”

“If that is what you need Princess…” White Leaf said, full of resolution. “We’ll do it.”

The alicorn simply shook her head again. “No. I can’t be sure you won’t be mistreated.”

“Not to mention…” Shining Armor continued for Twilight. “Airships would be docked, and teleporters locked down as soon as they saw us approaching any major town. This alone shoots down most plans we can come up with.”

“We’re not getting anywhere.” Twilight blurted out frustrated. “Come on everypony! We need ideas!”

“Why don’t we fight Princess Celestia head on?” Applejack offered and attracted bulging eyes all over to her.

“Because that is likely to hurt a lot and turn us into small piles of ash when Princess Celestia uses the sun’s fire on us, or something?” Spike rose an eyebrow at the suggestion.

“Actually, Princess Celestia’s magic doesn’t throw ‘sun fire’ around. Elemental magic is easier than that. It just so happens that her magic is Plasma, Life, and Harmony oriented. Therefore, her magical elements are a combination of Fire, Lightning, Magnetism, Light, Life and Harmony.” Twilight said not very confident. “And she’s been rated to output three point eighty-six times ten to the power of twelve Hornpower. It wouldn’t hurt and wouldn’t turn you into a pile of ash. You would feel nothing at all, and it would disintegrate you and then damage the fabric of reality for generations to come.”

She paused for a second with a hoof on her chin. “Though not all that may be available for her to practically pour into a spell… There are limitations on how much magical energy can fit in a place at any one time, in a single formula.”

Twilight shrugged. “In practical terms her Hornpower output is ‘what the hay’ and means that she finds it really easy to cast spells other ponies might struggle with and that she can make spells a lot more powerful by pouring more magical energy than needed into them. Which is one of the reasons the Senate has proposed legislation that prohibits Princesses Celestia and Luna from participating in warfare spellcasting.”

She then put her hooves on her face in frustration. “And is this why every little tyrant wannabe, like The Lion hates the Princesses. In an emergency the Senate will grant the princesses special powers and they can do whatever they deem necessary, such as when Nightmare Moon, Tirek or Discord appeared. Not that Princess Celestia doesn’t already do whatever she wants, because everypony loves and trusts her so much she can get away with freeing Discord out of the blue and annexing the Changeling Swarm like it’s up for grabs! And I was forgetting that working together with Luna, they both could probably end existence as we know it! Ugh! This is what we’re going against!”

She concluded with a frustrated and stifled scream against her hooves and ponies stared at each other. Starlight stared at the others while Twilight recomposed herself. “What she means is that the Princess doesn’t have to overdo her spells. She can cast a low-energy spell just the same as a fast runner can simply walk.”

She paused. “And also, that she could return us to our base components if she wanted.”

Non-magical savvy ponies made silence for a while, considering what Starlight and Twilight explained. Until Pinkie finally spoke to her. “What are your kinds of magic Twilight?”

Starlight answered while Twilight stared at the map again. “Alicorns are attuned to all kinds of magic Pinkie. It’s like Destiny’s given them a ‘cheat’ so that they can do whatever they need to deal with threats to Equestria.”

Then she continued. “But being ‘oriented’ means that they are that much more powerful when casting spells of their elemental orientation. Pegasi are Air and Water ‘focused’, which functionally also gives them the Ice element and means that they can access those elements when using their magic, but not others. Earth ponies are Life and Earth focused and unicorns are Arcane focused which lets us use things like telekinesis and mimic all kinds of elemental spells. But some individuals are also oriented into other elements like Rarity that has Earth oriented magic too. That said, Princess Luna has Harmony, Gravity, Mind, and Ice orientation in her magic. Twilight is Harmony oriented while Princess Cadance is Love oriented.”

“Actually…” Twilight corrected her still staring at the map over her hooves. “Cadance’s magic is Harmony and Life oriented which is why she can do healing magic really well and her love magic is a personal variation of her Life orientation. But there is some weird thing going on in the Crystal Empire that has started to give her Earth magic in the form of crystal manipulation and some Ice magic. These things are fluid and ponies can internalize a kind of magic like the Crystal Ponies that moved to the north and became ‘crystal-y’ over time. Alicorns seem to incorporate magic like that much faster.”

“And how much Hornpower can you output Twilight?” The pink pony was still curious.

“Pinkie! You wouldn’t ask these things of a unicorn!” Rarity frowned at her.

“But Twilight is an alicorn!” She complained but the others returned to the conversation that was more productive.

“Well what I meant…” Applejack insisted. “It that Princess Celestia is not going to use all her power to stop us. Not to mention that her position is based on trust. Even if she’s done something wrong, she’s not going crazy because that would erode the trust the peoples have on The Sisters.”

“Which is the reason we are in this situation. Applejack.” Twilight looked at her. “If Princess Celestia has done something bad in the past, it could erode her position now.”

“And…” Applejack insisted again. “That is why she won’t do anything too harsh to us! Even if you’re right about her being evil. Or something.”

“She doesn’t have to.” Shining put a hoof on the table. “She’d wipe the floor with us and that is if we managed to avoid the Royal Guard at all. She doesn’t need high level spells for that.”

“Not to mention that she could spin things her way to the Senate, anyways.” Cadance added.

“Is it just me or are we screwed either way?” Rainbow deflated a little.

“We might as well give up!” Twilight sighed her frustration out. “There has to be a way to deal with whole mess!”

Her brother spoke again. “If we didn’t need supplies, we could come up with a plan but… We can’t just grab things somewhere and drag them to the ship somewhere safe. We’ll need a working dock with a crew and access to supplies. Only places we can get that, Manehattan and Fillydelphia, are also the places we’re likely to get the most resistance. Well there is also Baltimare but the point of going to Manehattan is that we need to see this Naminé and is the closest point in Central Equestria to the Griffon Lands.”

“Ugh!” Twilight grunted and stared up in barely contained frustration. “We could take days trying to find a pony we don’t know in Equestria’s largest city! This will never work!”

“Shining…” Rarity called with that voice she uses when she has a magnificent idea. “How big a dock do we actually need?”

“Not that big?” The unicorn wondered.

“Aye. She needs only the hooves and carts to bring the supplies to a berth with a cargo ramp.” The Captain added.

“Well…” Rarity smiled mysteriously. “Manehattan has more than one port dedicated to cargo.”

Ponies stared at her and Shining narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“Manehattan grew so fast and so large that its city sponsored port simply cannot keep up with all the demand. So, private individuals built another port in the south part of the city.” She said with a radiant smile. “It is a small port that has significantly less protocols and likely breaks quite a few laws, but it is functional and should make our task much easier. Not to mention that I personally know the manager.”

“Sounds like the sort of place they’d steal the airship rather than resupply’er, lass…” The Captain wasn’t convinced.

“Better than the sort of place they’d lock down the airship and arrest the crew.” Shinning grinned.

“Can they be trusted Rarity?” Twilight asked hopefully.

“Why they can be trusted enough. I bought several rolls of fabric through them for the store.”

“Great… Twilight bought her airship with my taxes and Rarity just admitted to smuggling goods into Manehattan.” Applejack covered her face with her hat.

“Applejack, please.” Rarity used her passive-aggressive patient voice. “The movement of goods is regulated. The port’s regulations are what is lax.”

“None of that matters. They’ll still see us coming.” Starlight reminded the others. “This thing is like a giant magic beacon.”

“Well if we can dock the ship without being seen they’ll know we’re in Manehattan but will still have to find us if we find a way to mask the ship's presence. And the first place they’re likely to search is the main port.” Shining grinned too. “With some luck we might be able to keep the ship hidden for long enough and then, when we’re ready we can just blast out of there seaward. It’s not foolproof but it could work.”

“We come in at night. Fly slowly. Maybe let the ship lose mana to the atmosphere so that her batteries aren’t so full. Engines at low emissions.” The Captain nodded. “Might be it will work. We’ll have to shake any pursuers before we approach the city, so they don’t see where we aground her, but it’s doable.”

“Cadance and I can cast a magic dampening spell on the ship. She’ll need to power down though.” Twilight and Cadance smiled at each other.

“Uuh… Princesses…” Applejack seemed confused as did some of the present ponies. “I mean no offense to the ponies that actually understand magic but… Using magic to hide magic?”

“Oh. It’s very possible!” Cadance giggled. “It’s how counter spells work!”

“And this being artificial magic it’s even easier. It just takes a lot of energy.” Twilight grinned next to her. “Cadance here should be able to do it with some effort.”

“Sounds like a plan!” Rainbow announced excitedly.

“They’ll track me and Twilight, even without our regalias or barding and weapons.” Cadance complained but then let go. “I don’t think this is going to work that well but at least we’ll be able to defend ourselves a little easier.”

“At least we’ll have a chance.” Twilight agreed with her. “I think it’s our best shot so that’s what we’ll do.”

***

Lord Protector Grape Donut left his home early accompanied by his wife. He meant to be at his militia’s headquarters before his ponies so that he could hear ahead of them whatever the verdict was. Princess Celestia’s ponies and herself were done studying all the records he kept in his archive. Finances, operations, militiaponies and their interactions with the citizens of Ponyville, all communication between his HQ, Canterlot County’s administration and Ponyville’s Mayor’s Office.

Lots of ponies were involved not only himself and his subordinates but many ponies that worked for Mayor Mare and ponies above her in the administration hierarchy all the way to the Royal House. This thing was intimidating.

The most impressive part of it was that Princess Celestia just so much ‘snapped her fingers’ -It was a griffon expression he thought was really cool- and the entire system seemed to grind to a halt and ponies began procuring the necessary records for the audition. Mind-blowing that in little less than a couple of days they were ready to present the results. At least as far as the culpability related to Ponyville’s administration and his militia. Well, Ponyville is a small town and his militia hasn’t been doing much anyway.

Almost as though she was reading his thoughts, Semolina Pudding’s voice next to him drew his attention. “Grape, do you think we’re in trouble?”

It hadn’t occurred to him sooner, but he could be in trouble.

“I don’t know.” He admitted. “I haven’t done anything, but I think that someone way above us may have set us up to take the fall if their scheme was found. Not to mention… I was completely incompetent as your boss.”

“I’m scared, Grape.” She kept her head low as they walked. “I wasn’t really a role model either. The blame is on all of us.”

Walking towards their headquarters he felt a sense of dread creeping up his spine and turning his stomach. He remembered well enough all the promises he had made to himself about turning in his resignations and literally ending his life… But that was before he saw that half of the town took his side against the Princess of Friendship and her sister-in-law, another Princess, and their heroes. It was exhilarating!

“I can’t believe it…” He blurted out, frustrated and incredulous. “Our real chance at doing something right and we blew it. It was a mission from The Mare herself.”

They stopped for a second while he rubbed his forehead and sighed. His mate touched him tenderly in his shoulder. “Let’s go, Grape… We’re in this together.”

It also had occurred to him that not only Semolina wasn’t nagging him the whole time, but she also talked to him like an actual pony. She clearly was as worried and sorry as he was. That was good. Probably?

She simply walked quietly to his side after that and seemed to be lost in her own thoughts too. He decided against bothering her.

They entered the market and they were met with an uncomfortable silence. He saw both dejection and sympathy in the faces around them and nopony bothered them on the way. It only added to the somber tone of his thoughts.

“Lord Protector.” He turned to the side; someone had called him. It was the old Granny Smith the Apple Family’s old matriarch holding out an apple to him.

“Ma’am.” He greeted her respectfully while he grabbed the apple. Next to her was Applejack’s older brother, Big Macintosh. What an absolute unit of a pony that guy was. He wished he could have him in his militia instead of their buff pony.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into my Applejack but I can assure you that she is a good pony.” The old mare said with a sad expression. “But I know for sure that she believes what she is doing is right. I just want you to know that we’re sorry for that whole mess.”

“Eeyup.” The younger Apple agreed.

“Thank you, ma’am. We appreciate it.” Semolina said next to him with a surprisingly pleasant smile.

“Ponies ought to know better than to question The Princess! If it weren’t for her this here town wouldn’t exist, you know! Suppose the other princesses are confused. Young’uns do that every now and then, you know.”

“Ponies just don’t always agree ma’am.” He smiled softly. “Nice talking to you.”

The old mare waved goodbye while they walked away. “Good luck!”

Walking away he offered Semolina the apple without really thinking about it. She took it and had a light red tint in her cheeks. But he didn’t see it, too worried about their future. After that they walked in silence for a few seconds while they took note of just how many ponies didn’t stare at them and the silence their presence brought to the market. The town seemed divided because the princesses had a disagreement. Princess Celestia seemed worried about that, alright. Maybe the whole affair could grow in proportion and then all Equestria would be split between the two pairs of princesses. What a mess that would be, if that was the case.

Amid all that, it seemed like the town finally realized what those ponies in the militia were there for. They seemed to respect them; though they didn’t know if for siding with the right princess or for finally doing their jobs. Maybe ponies realized that they did their best. They hoped that the Princess' ponies would take that into consideration.

He sighed looking up. “We failed at our job Sem. It was important… The Princess must be furious and with this investigation she’s ordered… I think we might lose our job and our titles. I will be lucky if I don’t end up in a dungeon.”

She didn’t say anything and simply kept quiet for the remainder of their walk to the Ponyville Militia Headquarters and arriving it seemed the same it always was, a long house with some windows and nothing special about it.

They went past the entrance door and past the door to offices area. It had been taken by several ponies they had never seen. Mostly canterlotian unicorns wearing a fancy jacket or a tie, one or another wearing reading glasses. His militiaponies milled about trying not to interfere with their work and at the same time tried to glimpse some clue as to their fate. So much for being there first like the responsible leader he ought to be.

Mayor Mare was there too, and she quickly approached the pair.

“Grape Donut…” Her ears hang low on her head and her eyes showed deep concern, speaking as hushed as she could. “They found something bad in the paperwork back in my office. It seems they are going to accuse Meadow Flower with something!”

“But… She is such a nice pony!” He gasped as quietly as he could. “What did she do? What are they accusing her of?”

The mare shook her head half in panic already. “I don’t know! They wouldn’t say! They’re waiting for The Princess to arrive then their boss will talk to her in front of everypony. But it sounds bad and I’m afraid it will rebound on all of us!”

“But we didn’t do anything wrong! I mean… We were kind of incompetent… But…” His ears fell after his initial shock. “That is my fault! Not yours! Or Meadow’s!”

“Well it’s not only your fault…” Semolina mentioned sadly and wondered if it hadn’t simply become too easy for ponies all over to ignore the problem since the militia wasn’t necessarily important most of the time. “I suppose we all here have our share of the blame.”

Before they could continue the door to the Lord Protector’s office opened and a small beige unicorn came out of it with a well-kept caramel mane in a ponytail and wearing a blue suit. She did speak with authority though. “Lord Grape Donut. Kindly come inside. The Madam Justiciar needs to see you.”

He gasped so deeply it was more like he had inhaled. Deeply. Around him the ponies gasped.

A Justiciar! One of the ponies that Princess Celestia hoof-picked to preside investigations and administer punishment to corrupt government officers in her stead. Somehow, he had managed to get both the Princess and one of her justiciars angry about his militia!

Now he had to face one of the most dreaded nightmares of public officials in Equestria! He heard tales of very rich and powerful ponies losing everything! Dukes, Counts, Viceroys… And a king… Ponies, griffons and yaks… Their position, their money… Shunned by their rulers and the people they were supposed to serve, forced to live under bridges and forced to eat forage.

To be honest most of those stories must’ve been exaggerations since very few ponies could image Princess Celestia allowing such extremes. But he had failed her too! She would surely leave him at the Justiciar’s mercy! What could such a terrible monster do to poor little him? He should have been a better commander. A better administrator. A better husband! A better pony! And now he was going to Tartarus or something like that!

He imagined one of those tall and elegant unicorns with a long horn with all the power to end his life along with his career. His head hung low, but he would face his executioner with pride: he may have failed but he did the best he could in the end!

He didn’t linger and opened the door to pass it, closing it behind him. Then he found himself staring at a pleasantly looking white unicorn mare sitting at his desk. A delicate muzzle holding small reading spectacles in front of black-specked golden eyes. She wore the typical Justiciar red robes with golden chain and amulet of her office, with its hood down, letting show her frazzled pink mane.

Grape Donut simply stared at her instead of the big and scary monster he had imagined.

“Good morning Lord Grape Donut.” She said calm and educated, organizing papers over his desk and he immediately remembered how screwed up he was. “I’d like-“

Instead of listening to her as a normal pony would he dropped to the floor crying like a foal. “I know! I know! Shameful! I don’t deserve mercy! I messed up! I really messed up! It is all my fault too! But the others aren’t to blame! Please-”

“I was going to ask if it is alright if I ate one of these donuts…” She stared at him without letting his display affect her.

“Oh… Absolutely.” He blurted out looking up from the ball of pathetic crying pony he had become. “Make yourself comfortable.”

She grabbed one of the sweets in her telekinetic magic and inspected the sugar-coated confection. “The Princess had already decided how she was going to deal with your unit and none of you are to be prosecuted for misappropriation of Her Royal Highness’ assets. You’re in trouble alright but it’s none of my business after you were cleared out of stealing Her Highness’ money.”

He blinked a few times dumbfounded. “Why did you want to talk to me then?”

“Because something prompted Princess Celestia to order you ponies to arrest Princess Twilight and Princess Cadance along with their retinue. Prince Shining Armor… Captain of her Guard? The Bearers of the Elements of Harmony. Something big and weird is happening. And it seems like I should make it my business…” She bit the chocolate filled donut and munched at it. “Understand?”

He took a few seconds to process that. “Uh… All I can say is that the Princess believed that Princesses Twilight and Cadance were confused about something. I didn’t really question her orders.

His hoof uncomfortably found the back of his neck and he chuckled even more uncomfortably. “To be honest I was afraid of even trying to get involved.”

“I see… Did you learn of anything during the operation?”

“Princess Twilight did say that she had the right to investigate something. And that she was in an important mission. And also, the Prince Consort did say that Princesses did something wrong…”

The white unicorn hummed pensively and bit at the donut again. The other pony simply stared in confused silence. “Hmmm. We’re done here. I need to talk to Celestia now.”

With that she finished her donut and jumped over the desk. He stepped out of her way and then followed her outside to the offices area. The Princess had just arrived with her knight in white silks and Royal Guard golden barding. The whole room fell silent as a graveyard.

“Golden Rule?” The princess blinked twice. “What are you doing here? I didn’t call for a justiciar.”

“Well a good one has a nose for trouble princess.” The unicorn grinned way too smugly and pointed at her chocolate dirty muzzle.

“Your muzzle is dirty…” The princess said mildly amused and the other simply licked it in, still staring at the Princess in such an intense way that left Celestia confused. “Hum… Well, your report?”

“Absolutely!” The unicorn became serious and magicked a paper folder to the princess who proceeded to read it while the unicorn talked. “We did find evidence of embezzlement. Money that should be getting here wasn’t and the reason that nopony noticed is that records were adulterated in the Mayor’s Office. Specifically, to hide it. A pony working for the Mayor’s Office by the name of Meadow Flower oversaw the transfer of resources to the local militia. In the militia’s side though, there was no record whatsoever. I just don’t understand why is it that the responsible for the resources within the militia didn’t suspect something was wrong.”

The princess sighed and closed the folder. “I don’t think he was paying a lot of attention. It seems too obvious too. Take me to Miss Meadow Flower. please.”

The unicorn nodded and both walked to the group of ponies that was Grape Donut, his wife, the mayor, and the mare that called Grape to the office. Chocolate Velvet walked next to the two mares and remained quiet, simply watching while the ponies stared dejectedly at each other and then at the princess and her Justiciar.

“I would like to speak to Miss Meadow Flower. Extra-officially, please.” Celestia stared down at the ponies and one of them, a soft beige and tan maned earth pony raised her trembling hoof. She seemed terrified and Chocolate Velvet wondered if it even was a good idea for the Princess to talk to her. He doubted she would be able to draw anything from her right then.

“It’s me… Princess.” The poor thing trembled and seemed as fragile as the smiley daisy in her cutie mark.

“Do you understand the accusations that are being made against you?” The small pony nodded ‘yes’. “Is there anything you would like to tell me?”

The pony simply looked down and shook her head softly. Chocolate expected the princess to return the folder to her Justiciar and let her do her job. Instead Celestia looked at the folder again and then back at the pony. “Miss Meadow Flower, Miss Golden Rule has reviewed the record of your bank accounts and you don’t seem to be accumulating wealth. In my many generations of lifetime I have never seen a pony steal from the government and then throw that money away. You adulterated the records on behalf of somepony else, not for yourself.”

Meadow looked away and spoke softly. “They’ll hurt my family Princess.”

“No. They won’t.” Celestia lowered herself to stare at the little mare. “Whoever they are I can protect you and your family. But I cannot do it if I don’t understand the situation. I must maintain a relationship of trust with all institutions that form our government, and if I start protecting ponies that don’t deserve protection, that trust will erode away. Please understand that you will be prosecuted for participating. The judge may or may not consider that you did not accumulate wealth as a sign that you were likely coerced into this. If you cooperate and disclose to the investigators all the details of the situation, I will grant you lenience and protection to your family.”

The little mare stared at the princess for a second or two before she spoke again. “They approached me on the way to work half a year ago… They said they’d hurt my wife and husband and that we’d never see our foals again if I didn’t do what they wanted or told anypony about this…”

“It will be alright.” Celestia told her softly and smiled. Then she stood and looked at the other ponies. “Lord Protector?”

The princess calling him almost startled him and he immediately stood at attention. “Your highness?”

“Are you willing to keep your position?” She asked and he sensed the honesty and practicality in her voice.

Was he though? He had to stop and ask himself the question inside his head. The princess was certainly right to ask him such a question and he likely wouldn’t have thought of it if she didn’t.

“Hum… Boss?” Ponies stared at him and one of his subordinates Marble Hoof, ‘the smart one’, called him almost with doubt and worry in his voice. “You haven’t answered yet.”

He looked at the pony and at the others. Several sets of eyes watching him. Some worried, others already showing disappointment. His griffon friend, a way off next to a wall didn’t stare, instead he looked at the floor, but the pony knew he too waited for his answer.

His eyes found the Princess next to her amazing knight. He hadn’t thought of it, but Sir Chocolate Velvet represented so much of everything he had hoped for in life. The great and powerful protector of ponies that slayed the monsters which preyed at ponies… Ponies like him that helped the Princess make Equestria the awesome place that it was. He had forgotten theses dreams, hadn’t he?

But could he be compared to the knight in front of him?

Well, he could. Even the great knight that followed The Princess around failed. Even if he was bigger and stronger, simply more powerful than Grape Donut would ever be. He just didn’t know if he had the moral ground to ask the princess to let him keep his job. In fact, he should be ashamed of himself for his sloppy command of the Ponyville Militia and he didn’t think that he could bring himself to ask the princess for a second chance.

He was ready to give her his answer, but she spoke first. “I need to tell you something important first. It is good that all of you listen to it.”

He mumbled and hesitated first caught off guard by her request, but he eventually agreed. Ponies paid attention. His mind flooded with all the nasty things he had once thought of telling her.

Face to face with The Princess words failed him. He couldn’t even bring himself to tell her how much he hated Twilight Sparkle. He also realized that ironically, she was the one that actually knew who he was and took him seriously.

Finally, the princess said something. “Some creatures like the diamond dogs only live for eighty years. Some insects live for weeks and others live for only one day. Small animals can lead lives as short as ten years. Some unicorns lived up to five centuries. The average earth pony lives some two hundred years. Some of you can live up to two centuries and a half. You look so young though… How old are you?”

“I am…” He hesitated. “I’m twenty-five your majesty.”

Hearing that she laughed, and he stared at her. She was so beautiful, and her laughter sounded so… He lacked a proper analogy. He hadn’t been seeing many beautiful things in his life lately.

Meanwhile Chocolate Velvet wondered where the hell she was leading this conversation.

“Do you know how old I am?” She grinned at the earth pony.

“Not really your majesty…” One didn’t really go around asking how old was Princess Celestia.

“I am six thousand one hundred ninety-five years old.” She lowered herself and said with a larger grin. Something seemed off about that number, but none of the present couldn’t process just how many years that was.

The Lord Protector simply stood there, looking at her and listening. The conversation was much different from what he expected. “You are like little candles in the wind. You are born and you shine so brightly. You dream, you aspire. You struggle and you change. You change the world around you. The light you, all of you cast brings beauty to the world. But your time is limited! As you shine you are consumed… Every second a little bit of you is spent and when your light is exhausted it is over. You can’t afford to spend your time alive worrying about things that should be. You need to live your life to its fullest extent, to shine as bright as you can, and not worry about how you did everything wrong, or how you should be doing better. Because the sunrise is more beautiful if you watch over the river without the pretension to fish more. Do you understand?”

“I think I do, princess.” He said, looking down, until her magic pulled his chin up to look at her smiling candidly at him.

“Let me worry about things. I have time. You need to go live your life.”

He smiled back at her. “Thank you, princess.”

“Now…” She towered above him again. “Do you wish to keep your position as the Lord Protector of Ponyville?”

“Yes princess!” He had a huge grin on his face.

“Excellent!” She smiled some more.

Ponies celebrated with restrained joy given the present situation, but they recognized the happiness in his and the princess’ smiles when Grape Donut turned to his ponies. “Well, if you guys will give me a second chance, I’d like to get started on working to make ourselves the best town militia in Equestria!”

He was glad at the answer he got from his militiaponies. They felt like a group of friends. Or maybe it was just him that had a good mood. Something in the middle, perhaps? The important thing was that they seemed to have a future as the town militia. Mayor Mare even smiled at him and friendly put her leg over his back.

Looking at the scene from outside, one thing stood out to Chocolate Velvet. They didn’t give up on each other.

“Celestia. This just arrived.” Crucible Wings approached and offered her a scroll interrupting the celebration. Taking it in her telekinetic magic, the princess opened the scroll while he talked. “Chrysalis’ made Luna her prisoner in the Crystal Empire and her guards can’t save her… Or something. It appears they don’t have the numbers to siege the Bordello of Candy where Chrysalis’s holed up with her.”

With the open scroll in her magic, she stared at the pony like she was having trouble comprehending what he had just said. She blinked twice. “How did that happen?”

He simply shrugged. Celestia then turned to the letter.

‘Dear Princess Celestia.

I have taken your little sister Princess Luna hostage and for her safe return to Canterlot I demand her weight in small Princess Celestia toy figurines.

Under no circumstance must you or any Knight of the Royal House attempt to rescue her from the second tower to the left of the main structure of the Bordello of Candy or I, The Very Evil Queen Chrysalis shall be waiting for you with your sister for you to see me torture her.

Queen Chrysalis

P.S.: I feel sorry for trying to steal Chocolate Velvet. Definitively do not bring him.’

“I cannot believe these two!” She said with an irritated frown staring up from the letter. “I sent Luna to the Crystal Empire to capture Cadance and she is fooling around with Chrysalis!”

While Chocolate Velvet’s mind was amid immature mature images about Nightmare Moon and Chrysalis doing things that shouldn’t be mentioned in public, Crucible Wings was more useful. “Chrysalis has ordered her escort to take over the Bordello and Luna’s guards did mention some estrange looking changelings, princess. This may be worth investigating.”

The princess sighed with her ears turned back. Chocolate did tell her of his conversation with Chrysalis in dinner last night, and she already knew Chrysalis might be up to something naughty… Terrible choice of word in the present context, but regardless it seemed like something that warranted attention. She couldn’t figure out why was Chrysalis taunting her. Something didn’t add up and since Chocolate Velvet mentioned that Discord seemed to side with Twilight and Cadance, she had a feeling that more problems would crop up to distract her from her hunt of the wayward princesses.

“Princess, it sounds like your highness is needed. Please let us try to capture the princesses again!” Grape Donut approached her with a hoof over his chest.

Her face immediately softened. “I would allow you to join the Royal Guard in the pursuit Lord Donut, but I am afraid they are above your capabilities for now.”

“We would’ve won if Discord didn’t show up, Celestia.” Chocolate was back to his professional self. “I was frustrated, but Twilight and her friends were getting tired.”

She nodded at him and looked at the ponyvillians. “I could provide you with an airship and a teleportation to Baltimare for you to have a chance, but not within practical time. Our more capable airships are in Griffonia or securing the shores.”

“I have an airship, princess.” The griffon mercenary raised a claw. “It’s not the fastest, but it is a good warship of griffon make and is equipped to board other airships.”

He then grinned and raised his hands. “I’m supposed to help train them, anyway.”

Her ears fell and she shuddered with thoughts of these poor underprepared ponies plummeting to their deaths from thousands of hooves. She shook her head. “I cannot allow it. Airship combat operations aren’t a thing for civilian militias.”

Then she was surprised at the obese pony frowning at her. Ponies just didn’t do that to her! “Didn’t you just tell me to go live my life and let you worry about stuff?”

Surprised, she sat on the floor and raised a leg. “I did... But. That was not… I mean…”

“You played yourself, Celestia…” She wished she could kick that smug smile out of Crucible Wings’ face. Not to mention Chocolate’s matter-of-fact nodding, complete with lidded eyes.

“Fine!” Her ears turned back, and she stomped the floor angrily which amused Chocolate Velvet to no end. “But please be careful! I don’t want any of you to lose your lives because of this!”

“I promise, your highness. We will be careful.” The pony told her in all seriousness.

“And I’ll take care of them, Princess” The griffon pointed a thumb at his chest.

“Very well.” She nodded once. “I shall pay for the teleportation fee of your airship to Baltimare. Keep me informed and when it is time Sir. Velvet will join you with a full battalion of my Royal Guards. Crucible, kindly ensure that Lord Grape Donut and his ponies are thoroughly prepared for the mission with the best equipment available to the Royal Guard. And Mister Snake, make sure these ponies are as prepared as possible for the task ahead.”

The Princess then turned to the Justiciar Golden Rule. “Collect Miss Meadow Flower’s testimony and make sure that the process runs smoothly on Canterlot. You know the workings of the job. And, Madam Mayor, I assure you that I will return your ponies as soon as possible.”

“Yes ma’am.” Said the Royal Guard and the griffon mercenary.

“Thank you, Princess.” The mayor nodded with a smile.

Candy Crush, the ‘cute pegasus’ of the group didn’t say anything, but slowly and incredulously shook her head. Those ponies were out of their minds! No way in Tartarus she would get herself mauled or possibly killed so that the princess can get laid in a luxury hotel she couldn’t afford with her pay.

Feeling left out of the excitement, she huffed silently and turned to the door without looking back. Nopony seemed to have cared she left, so she didn’t care either. Outside was the same Ponyville of always that never paid her much attention. She started making her way home and after a few yards she stopped to a hushed voice.

“Hey, pony… Though day at work?” A male voice with a bit of an accent that pulled on the ‘s’, a bit squawky.

She turned to see a smug looking griffon sitting on the dirt path and leaning against the wall. He wore a bandolier with a pouch. She was sure it was adorned with some large animal teeth, and she didn’t like it one bit, but other than that, it was a young and comely griffon with purple coat and golden eyes, but a mustard colored head.

“Yeah, what is it to you?” She made every effort to sound as unfriendly as possible. For a second she thought he was going to hit on her.

“Oh, nothing. I just wish to purchase some information…” He grinned as he produced a hefty pouch of Bits. “I hear that the Crown doesn’t really care much for you… I thought I’d show some appreciation for your time. You see, we appreciate the dutiful where I come from.”

“And where would that be?” She closed one eye and stared at him.

“Does it matter?” He threw the pouch to her. “We use Bits for currency.”

It was a pretty heavy pouch. Probably enough to pay for some three months of her salary… Get her muzzle fixed for good. Sounded almost fair, but she still felt like she was betraying her… Friends?

“You’ve been holding it for some time, pony.” The griffon winked at her. “I think we know what you want.”

“All I know is that Princess Celestia wanted Princesses Twilight and Cadance detained. And that she’s planning on an ambush near Baltimare.” She said quickly. Before she might regret it.

Just as soon as she closed her mouth the door to the headquarters opened and it was the ‘other pegasus’. Flight Worthy appeared out of it and called her from the door and as soon as she heard his voice she squealed and hid the pouch under her wing. “Candy! We’re wrapping up to go to Mister Snake’s airship! You need to pack your things!”

She meant to return the pouch to the griffon and apologize. Alert the Princess of what she’d done. But he was gone.

“Come on, Candy!” He called again impatiently.

Well… She couldn’t give up the money now.

Winter Has Come a Long Time Ago and We Never Noticed

Author's Note

The rewriting of chapters has come to the point I'm going to work on Chapter 6. I'll change Celestia's musings with a more entertaining scene. I'm also working on another story that relates to this one. So, next chapter will come, but it will take some time. (more than usual).

Winter Has Come a Long Time Ago and We Never Noticed

Celestia had barely began the day and it was very cold in the northern region of Griffonia known as Snow Mountains Hold, and if there ever was a more aptly named region of Equestria, Discord didn’t know. The cold didn’t bother him though because there seemed to be some quality chaos to be had in that place. The only thing bothering him is that it felt funky.

Chaos was typically fun, but in that place something about it felt grim and ‘wrong’ in a way that reminded him of a time long ago. So, since he was the Spirit of Chaos it was his job to figure it out. As much as it was his job to do anything, anyways. The point was that he was curious about it and if he could fix it all the better.

He stood at the edge of the ridge, holding his eyes out like a pair of binoculars looking down a restrained and long valley with a snaking path in between the tree lines at the base of the mountains.

Finally, after more time than he cared for he saw something that could give him a hint as to what the problem was. It was a long file, some three or four columns wide of griffons marching in the shallow snow. They wore light blue coats and helmets on their heads. Each carried a backpack and one of those shooty sticks that seemed to be everywhere those days.

Whatever was the problem with Chaos in that area it seemed to swirl around those griffons, so he decided to approach them. And by that, it meant that he teleported right in front of the first griffon in the formation.

“Hello!” He flashed and banged out of nowhere and the griffon screamed with a scared jump backwards into the next griffon behind him and the next one bumped into both of them in a chaotic cacophony of pained and surprised screams and yelps. Until one of them in the mass of surprised griffons finally gathered his wits.

“Whoa! Guys! It’s Discord!” He adjusted his helmet and shouted excitedly.

What followed was another mess of excited griffons and he took a moment to regard them in more detail. They all wore that light blue cloak over themselves and a helmet that reminded Discord of a shallow plate strapped on to their heads. They did indeed carry backpacks filled with he didn’t know what and those noisy sticks in their backs. And under their cloaks they wore light metal armor, shiny and polished, barely enough to keep a couple of protective spells on them, as far as Discord could see. But he wasn’t very knowledgeable in these things.

Other than that, they were a diverse group of griffons. Different sizes, different builds and colors, almost like ponies and different levels of excitement. Then he understood. That was an army, like those that would march around in the times of the Pony Republic, of independent nations and before Celestia and kill each other over some stupid thing like plots of land and shiny things.

And the reason Chaos seemed so weird was that these griffons wouldn’t be coming back from whatever their destination was. The strands of time had connected, and he didn’t know exactly how yet, but a soon-coming death hung over them like a disgusting foul-smelling miasma. It was a breach of their destinies, not the path their lives were supposed to take, and he didn’t like it at all.

Things weren’t supposed to be like that anymore. Celestia had changed that.

Well, the nice thing about time was that it was dependent on causality. If he could break those strands of time, nothing like that would happen. “So, where are you guys going?”

“We’re marching towards Griffindell, Lord Discord.” One of the more ecstatic griffons told him.

“What is a Grifindell?”

“It is the capital of Snow Mountains Hold…” One of the less ecstatic griffons told him. “We’re supposed to apprehend The Lion and end his rebellion. Along the way we’re supposed to take a nearby city so that they can’t reinforce Griffindell. Or something.”

“Yeah!” The first spoke again. “His hiding like a kitten in Griffindell and we’re gonna flush him out and take him to justice.”

He hummed to himself and stroked his beard. “Is that so?”

Odd. He was pretty sure that Celestia was fine with The Lion becoming their king. Or something. But before he could inquire the griffons any further another of their kind rose above flapping his wings further down the column. “What is keeping the column?!”

He, a gray and white griffon approached with a retinue of more griffons in blue cloaks, but instead of a chest plate, this one had a fancy uniform under his cloak, with blues, gold, a bunch of medals Discord had no idea what they meant. All he knew is that as soon as the griffon saw him his angry demeanor changed to a… Discord called it high-nosed one.

“Lord Discord. Everything here is under control.”

“Oh, I’ll bet. So, who are you?”

“I am Major-General Grommer, and I am in command of this division!”

“From back there?” He pointed.

“I understand what you mean.” The griffon kept his poise. “The nature of warfare is changing, Lord Discord. It is irresponsible for a leader to put themselves in a position of vulnerability. Leading the column is better in the paws of our scouts.”

“If you say so…”

He was going to compare him to certain leaders he knew, but before he could say anymore griffons started coming out of the tree lines and it took him little time to understand what was going to happen had he not gotten in the way. The griffons in Grommer’s army, division, whatever seemed to have understood it as well since they grouped together while they were circled by the northerners.

It amazed Discord how different these griffons were. They wore cloaks too, but theirs were white and harder to see them in the snow. Kind of obvious but he figured it had little to do with camouflage, rather with the fact that those griffons hunted animals of the region and then wore their coats when the ‘city griffons’ wore cotton cloaks. While he didn’t judge the merit of each in keeping their wearer warm, it spoke to him something about the makers of those cloaks. That wasn’t new though, as Discord was aware that some griffons hunted wild animals, despite the ponies’ protests. What did surprise him was the size and physical power of these griffons. Maybe living in the wild made them stronger?

No one really said anything. Not even Grommer as his griffons were surrounded and seemed to have already surrendered without even an order. They were outclassed and even them could see it clearly.

These griffons were larger yes, but they also protected themselves with a different philosophy. Full armor in their chests and helms that better protected their heads. They had their shooty sticks too, but they also had other weapons such as swords, war hammers and axes. There were some young ones too, but even they seemed gruffer, wilder. Or dirtier… Discord wasn’t sure. All he knew is that things were far from solved yet.

A pair of griffons soon approached him, one male and one female. He actually had a collar of big pointy teeth around his neck and didn’t wear a helm or helmet, carrying a huge war hammer. A big black and light gray griffon with yellow eyes, hardened and serious accompanied by an equally tough female that was pure white with blue eyes, but she instead wore a more elegant cyan cloak, adorned with light feathers in the rim and she favored the sword. They each had a discreet golden diadem in their heads, but she had little feathery crests instead of the usual griffon feathers at the top of her head, like a cat's ears.

One funny thing though: both of them summarily ignored Grommer’s salutation and instead addressed Discord.

“Lord of Chaos, I am Graham, and this is my mate Geena. These griffons have trespassed in our land with the intention of taking our homes and our cubs from us. We are well within our natural rights to defend ourselves and our possessions.”

“Outrageous!” Grommer cried. “These griffons are in conflict with our great nation’s laws and in contempt with our leadership. They are rebellious and must be brought to submission for the sake of our nation’s sovereignty. They don’t even plan on splitting the nation in half. They want it all for themselves. Even if the majority of the population thinks they are uneducated savages!”

Of all the things he had planned on doing that day, playing arbiter to griffon disputes really wasn’t one of the things he had expected to do. But that is chaos for you. What drew his attention was how much more under control and disciplined the big griffon, Graham and his mate seemed to be as they simply stared with mild amusement as the general… Colonel… Whatever ranted on.

“In an age of civility and friendship these brutes want to go back to a time of irrational rulers that didn’t answer to anyone! That is why we are going to fight, and this Lion is going to answer for sedition even if we fall here!”

Though it amused Discord that the griffons had decided to attack The Lion behind the Princess’ back while spouting a speech about friendship and unity. He knew Celestia, Twilight. Luna and Cadance. They wouldn’t be backing this hypocrisy.

Still, he wasn’t entirely without reason, even if his rant did seem shallow and tacked on when his army had been surrounded and even his own soldiers cringed at his words and they would all already have been murdered by now had Discord not been there.

“So, can I convince you not to kill each other? That would be a nice start, I suppose.” Discord finally said. “I don’t think that these griffons should be here and the griffon’s… Uh…”

“Chancellor.” One of the griffons in the front reminded him.

“Yeah… The griffon Chancellor is doing things he shouldn’t. Or something like that.” He shrugged. “I doubt that Celestia agrees with this attack and neither do your representatives in Canterlot. In fact, I doubt that most griffons want this war to happen.”

The big Graham took stock of the situation and looked at his warriors. Discord didn’t see any outward signs of a preference. It seemed like they trusted his leadership, unlike the other griffons under Grommer that did seem a little nervous. Finally, Graham spoke.

“These griffons have come to us with ill intent and were incompetent enough to be surrounded. They also disagree with our way of living and would return to fight us eventually. Their lives were forfeited when they chose their side.”

“Can’t you take them prisoner, or something?” Discord argued. He really didn’t want to see this turn into the slaughter it was shaping up to be and this seemed like a good opportunity to put ‘Celestia’s method’ to the test. “I mean, I know you guys don’t like all that friendship talk, but these are griffons too and they just happen to be a little different. I’m sure that if we talk, we can reach an agreement. No harm really done yet.”

Grommer was fortunately smart enough to keep his beak shut, but Graham didn’t seem very convinced and he shook his head. “We can’t keep that many prisoners.”

His mate took a step forward and looked at him. “They can make camp outside the city and then we’d have enough warriors to keep watch. I believe they understand their situation and are smart enough not to try anything. They have their own food and we can share with them for a while until this situation gets sorted out.”

“I’m not feeding these sugar guzzlers.” He frowned. “My hunters aren’t going to risk their lives against magical monsters seeking food for them.”

She stared at him a little harder. “Well, they are going to eat what we give them, regardless of the liking it or not and our hunters will hunt either way. These kittens might as well learn something about being real griffons.”

He shifted his posture, staring at her like she was being unreasonable. “They are adults enough to pick up a gun and dream of killing and robbing us. You know what happens in these situations.”

She didn’t budge and gave him an even harder stare. “Celestia teaches honor as much as Lady Gwendolen does. Look at them. They don’t know what they are getting into. Most of them aren’t old enough to have met a queen. Grant isn’t much older than they are.”

“Dude!” One of the blue-coated griffons cried. “Did she just call us virgins? Not cool, bro! Not cool!”

“Be quiet, cub.” She frowned at him.

“Yes ma’am…” His eyes shifted down.

“Geena, Grant is already mated, and his mate is expecting a cub. He is also a very skilled caribou hunter. I wouldn’t be surprised if a caribou ate one of these.”

“It is not their fault they were raised soft milkdrinkers.”

“You know… I’m not really comfortable with the way you are talking about us.” ‘The cub’ was summarily ignored.

Discord cleared his throat. “What you do here will have an effect moving forward...”

“Fine!” He finally acquiesced and addressed Grommer. “Tell your griffons to surrender their weapons and to not cause trouble. I swear that if I have to, I will kill any one of them just to spite her.”

Grommer seemed not to like it but was wise enough to not say anything as his enemies collected weapons and organized their prisoners and he was soon followed by Graham to address his soldiers and they spoke of things that didn’t interest Discord.

“Huh… What do you know? Asking politely did work.” He was still amused, though. Then he noticed the griffoness, Geena was still there, looking up at him and waiting for him to notice her. He grinned and offered a closed fist for her to bump. “Thank you for your help!”

She offered him an open hand and waited patiently until he understood and opened his own to shake hers. Finally, she spoke to him. “It is an honorable thing to see one’s cub die in a worthy battle, but it is better to see them live to know their own grandchildren.”

“Maybe we should change generals for mothers.” He pulled at his beard, grinning amusedly. “I thought you were all murderous and grim isolationists.”

“Well, I am very proud of the game meat we sell to the hippogriffs, even if I don’t like them very much and it seems like a guilty pleasure of theirs. And I appreciate the pearls I can find in our market thanks to them. I also like very much fish seasoned with the herbs the ponies grow…”

“Sounds like you shouldn’t be fighting at all. Is it really all because you don’t like your leaders?” He scratched his head. “I mean, can’t you just choose others? I know Celestia is fine with this.”

“You should go to Griffindell. There are some griffons in there you should meet.” She smiled motherly at him. “I am a local leader with my mate, and we are vassals to The Lion. He can explain better to you what is the problem. And Lady Gwendolen is our repository of our culture and traditions. She can explain all you wish to understand about us.”

“Maybe I should.” He concluded thoughtfully.

***

Another morning in the Magic of Friendship didn’t have warring griffons and it was exactly like the previous. Ponies were beginning to tire of the monotony and one of them was Flurry Heart. She was in a foul mood. She bit Cadance. She cried at Shining Armor. And Cadance wasn’t sure, but she could swear that the baby had called Miss Calcite something nasty when she tried to help.

And then she refused to eat. Because of course she would.

She was sitting on the meeting table with Shining Armor on one side and Cadance on the other, holding a small baby spoon in her magic and Shining held the baby with all the care in the world. Twilight, Starlight Glimmer, Rarity and Rainbow Dash stood on the other side of the room, staring like they were watching a horror theater piece.

Shining Armor looked like he hadn’t eaten or slept in days and Cadance’s mane was a royal mess. Her ears were folded to the back of her head and she still had a small scowl. And that was from some half-hour of dealing with the angry baby. To be honest Twilight wondered if it wouldn’t be a good idea to separate her from the baby for a while. She had read on a book recently that it would help once in a while.

“Come on dear… It’s delicious.” Cadance half-growled.

No, it wasn’t, she knew it wasn’t. It was the Discord-cursed mashed apples that seemed to be everywhere in this cramped and busy airship. In her place Cadance might be making a bigger tantrum but the baby pony simply closed her eyes and shook her head angrily.

“That is why I’m never having foals…” The pegasus whispered to the two mares next to her.

“Yikes…” Starlight agreed silently.

“Oh, it’s not that bad.” Rarity giggled mutedly. “She’s just in a bad mood, nothing more natural. Babies go through these spells. Especially out of their typical environment.”

Twilight though, took a few steps forward. “Maybe I can help?”

Cadance gave up with a sigh. “Not going to hurt, anyway.”

She stood and gave Twilight her place by the table and also the little spoon.

“Hi Flurry Heart! I’m auntie Twilight!” She chimed at the baby who scowled a little, distrustful of whatever this new strategy might be. Cadance watched from a few hooves away and could imagine Twilight reading a book on babies and acting like she had figured out the secrets of the universe when it said that you should reinforce the names of the baby’s relatives or something like that.

“Look what I have!” She magically held the spoon to the baby and gave her an exaggerated smile. “Yummm! Apples!”

‘Noob.’ Mother and daughter thought at the same time.

But then the baby complained with an angry cry and turned her head to the side.

“Heeeey. These are special apples!” Twilight insisted. “They came from the best apple farm in all of the world! Don’t you know Applejack? They came from her farm!”

Flurry stared with utter disdain at the yellowy white mass. Cadance had to agree… It looked rather disgusting. Or maybe it was her mood at the moment.

“Ooooh. You don’t believe me? Look.” Twilight still insisted. She showed the baby how tasty the apples were eating the whole spoonful of it. “Hmmm. Yum… Yum… Are you sure you don’t want some?”

Flurry Heart simply pushed the bowl of mashed apples to her.

Cadance smirked and struggled against her giggling. “At least she’s being polite because it is you. If it was me, she would have thrown that thing in me.”

But Rainbow fell on her side laughing enough for both of them and Starlight hid her giggling as best as she could too.

“That doesn’t work, Twily.” Shinning chuckled.

“Mom did that with us!” She complained as though the baby was cheating.

“Does that mean she’s smarter than you?” Rainbow started laughing again, laying on her side and flaying her legs.

But the younger princess didn’t let that dampen her morale. She could still win this and for that she used her best weapon… Magic. A big (from the baby’s perspective) Luna plushie manifested next to her and Flurry immediately reached out with her little hooves. “Oh! It’s Princess Luna! I think that Whammy would like a new friend, right?”

“That’s cheating!” Cadance pointed a hoof at her.

“All is fair in love, war and foalsitting!” She spat back triumphantly.

“You’re not supposed to buy her with toys, Princess…” Miss Calcite glowered from the other side of the table. “It reinforces bad behavior!”

Flurry didn’t care. She grabbed the toy from Twilight’s magical grasp with her own. “Well… It’s hers now.”

“Do you think that Princess Luna visits her dreams too?” Starlight approached, staring at the baby happily frolicking around with the new toy.

“She does!” Twilight nodded. “She has told me so before.”

Cadance frowned, looking at the baby and then at Twilight. “Really? Did she say what she dreams about?”

Twilight shook her head. “Princess Luna doesn’t tell others about your dreams.”

“Hum… Yeah… She doesn’t.” Cadance stared at the baby rubbing a leg under her chin.

“Uh… She’s a baby.” Rainbow stared. “She doesn’t even know what privacy is. And I guess it would be helpful for the parents? I mean, maybe it could explain why it’s hard to make babies eat sometimes.”

“Ah, Rainbow.” Twilight waved a hoof at her. “It’s usually because the baby is eating things out of proper mealtime. Nothing mysterious or related to dreams.”

“Yeah… There’s nothing mysterious or weird going on in the world, right?”

“Point taken…” Twilight rubbed her chin staring at the baby.

An awkward silence followed while the adults stared at the miniature alicorn biting at Princess Luna’s ear and staring innocently back at them.

“Yeah, she’s just a baby.” Starlight frowned. “She probably dreams with Cadance and Shinning Armor and her maid giving her sweets of something.”

“At least she’s happy now.” Cadance watched the baby giggling to the plushie and hugging it.

“She didn’t eat though.” Rainbow reminded her.

The princess sighed again. “We’ll just wait till she’s hungry.”

Just as the discussion was settled, Applejack came in through the doors with a cheerful prance. “Howdy ponies. Who didn’t eat? What is going on?”

“We’re having trouble feeding Flurry Heart.” Twilight said. “I think she’s had enough mashed apples.”

“Nonsense. Apples are always good to you!” She came closer. “Let me see if I can’t get her to cooperate.”

Twilight and Cadance stared at one another, but Cadance shrugged and Twilight decided that it wouldn’t hurt.

“Hi, little one!” She said grabbing a spoonful of the thing. If she hadn’t grabbed that disgusting thing Flurry might have conceded a smile and a giggle to the orange pony because she liked Applejack and the way she spoke. “Don’t you like my family’s apples?”

Flurry frowned holding tighter her new toy… She understood what was going on, but she was not going to give in her previous victories.

“Well, I understand. You like your new toy and it’s more fun than eating some old apples. But you know what else?”

There was a small pause and then the pony scowled at the baby. “There ain’t nothing else to eat, so it’s this or you’re starving till Manehattan.”

The baby was smart, understood the message crystal clear and let Applejack give her the spoonful of mashed apples.

“There you go!” Applejack smiled happily at the baby and fed her another spoonful of the thing. “What a nice filly!”

Then another. And some more until finally the whole bowl of mashed apples Cadance had prepared was done. The orange pony let the spoon on the bowl and smiled radiantly.

“Good work, Flurry Heart! See you later!” She rubbed the baby’s head softly before retreating. “There you go Princess! Just call if you all need any help!”

Then she left and the ponies were left staring at the door. It was Rarity who spoke first. “I… Worry about Applejack sometimes.”

Then a rolled-up scroll suddenly appeared in front of Cadance with a magical puff and smoke. She gasped and grabbed it in her magic, staring worryingly at it like it was a bomb.

Twilight grimaced at the thing. “Careful, Cadance! Could be a trap!”

“I think it’s from Sunburst.” She looked at Twilight first and then opened the thing and read it while the others waited. Then she gasped again.

“What?!” Rainbow blurted out hovering close.

“It is from Sunburst!” The princess cried. “Miss Goodread went to the Crystal Empire and talked to him. They checked our library and they tracked a historian that knows of Emperor Grigor!”

“For real? Who are they?!” The other princess gasped too.

“It’s a griffon called Gerdie. She went to the Crystal Empire to research about King Sombra and they found her in the library!” She stared at Twilight from the letter. “I can’t believe our luck!”

“Neither can I…” Shinning grunted. “It’s a trap.”

“But… Shinny! It is from sunburst!” Cadance whined.

“I’m sure it is, Cadie.” He changed to a more concerned than angry tone. “But there’s nothing keeping Princess Celestia from using him to write you a letter and then set up a trap for us.”

“Sunburst wouldn’t do that!” Starlight hoofed angrily the floor.

“He wouldn’t if he had a choice, Starlight.” He argued back. “As far as we know, Princess Celestia may have forced him. I know it sound awful. But that’s the sort of business we’re dealing with.”

Starlight didn’t answer. Prince Armor was probably right anyways. But Cadance did. “I still want to see.”

Her husband sighed. “Cadie. It will be dangerous.”

“But what if this griffon lady does have some important information?” She pleaded. “We’re flirting with danger ever since this began. Those militiaponies in Ponyville could’ve hurt us. So could Queen Chrysalis! Princess Luna! I was in the same room as her! We have to take risks, or we won’t accomplish anything!”

“Wait… There’s something wrong.” Rainbow’s ears shifted a little. “Ah… It’s usually Twilight that does the speech.”

Starlight giggled next to her, but Twilight agreed. “Cadance is right, Shinning. We’ve fought some ponies that meant to hurt us. It’s not like those ponies in Ponyville were in a very stable state of mind. I think the worst is in the past.”

He grunted again, this time with his ears pulled back. “Fine. It’s not like I can forbid you or anything. But let’s be careful, okay? The Royal Guard will certainly catch up to us and we’ll have to fight.”

“You’re the Captain of the Guard.” Rainbow frowned. “Can’t you tell them to stand down, or something?”

Shining shrugged. “Celestia’s authority overrules mine, Rainbow. It would be silly for them to stop doing what she commanded because I tell them. I mean, they could switch sides, but that is very unlikely.”

“Well, I’ll talk to the Captain. Come on, Cadance. We’ll need to set up a meeting point or something.”

“Wait.” Starlight Glimmer approached the table and sat by it resting an elbow on it. “Captain Armor, can I ask you a question?”

“Please, Starlight… Call me Shining. My recruits call me Captain Armor.”

The others giggled a little, but Starlight went on. “What are the chances that we’ll actually win if we are forced to fight the Royal Guard?”

“Not very high, but not undoable if we’re ready, and it depends on the resources they have in the area.” He shook his head. “I think that they shouldn’t be too different than fighting Ponyville’s militia, but they are better equipped, motivated and trained. They keep formations and they follow orders better. They fight different too… I mean, they’re more military than law enforcement, but those boys and girls should have enough discipline to keep from hurting somepony.”

“You don’t look very happy about that, though.” The mare paid attention to his posture and he didn’t seem very excited. Maybe it was fighting his subordinates that bothered him. She felt it would be better to get him to expose his feelings.

“Are you doing that counseling thing on me?” His ears turned back, and she shrugged. Finally, he sighed. “I’m not worried about the Royal Guard or even the princesses. It’s the griffons.”

“Hum. Tell me more about this.”

“She’s definitively doing the counseling thing with you, Shining.” Cadance chuckled while the others took their places by the table.

This was serious business though, and Twilight urged him to go on. “Shinny, you’ve been worried about the griffons ever since we mentioned going to Griffonia in the Changeling Rock.

“We’re going into The Lion’s territory.” He said. “That guy is… Dangerous. I don’t like messing with him.”

The pink unicorn frowned. “I keep hearing I should be worried about this guy… But he’s just the local governor of one of Griffonia’s holds.”

“He’s a leader, Starlight. He makes griffons think the same way that he does.”

“Oooh…” She bit her lip and avoided his eyes for a while. “Yeah… So… What is up with the griffons?”

His ears fell. “I don’t know if you can shoot the Elements of Harmony at a formation of griffon line infantry. We haven’t had a war for centuries. And worse… Warfare conventions are changing and it’s likely they won’t use that either. Do you know why we use muskets?”

They shook their heads collectively, paying attention. Miss Calcite paid attention too, drawing closer to the baby who was oblivious to the conversation.

“Griffons started using the muskets in the Second Griffon war and we were forced to start using them too because our tactics stopped working. We couldn’t just cover our ponies in heavier armor because they just didn’t work anymore as they did against the pikes. The griffons though are typically much stronger than the typical pony, that means they can fight with heavier armor, carry sturdier muskets and they can simply stand in place and rain bullets at our soldiers. That is why they developed their revolver muskets and the designs have been evolving since. Also, they don’t really care if they get hurt. They just tank it, but ponies don’t deal very well with injury.”

Ponies didn’t look very excited around him.

“It gets worse. They now have machining tools that allows them to make smaller moving pieces and they are also ‘riffling’ the barrels of their guns. It makes the bullets spin and that increases the precision. They also have new ammunition. While we stayed with the crystal balls, the griffons had been studying better bullets and metal casings.”

They didn’t seem to understand. “This allowed them to create loading mechanisms that reload the weapon after each shot. They seem to have weapons that can fire some ten times before being easily reloaded and one of our spies mentioned a weapon that can cut down a tree line. This is scary stuff girls. We’re used to big bad guys that do a whole lot of fanfare, but they are one. Even when they had an army with them, that would go away once we dealt with the boss.”

“Don’t we have combat spellcasters in our military reserve?” Rarity frowned. Magic could be pretty scary too. She’s seen Twilight casting some pretty scary magic. She and Starlight knew several high-energy elemental spells that could wreak havoc if they wanted. Not to mention griffons too. “Don’t we also have griffons that would side with us?”

“How many Starlights and Twilights do we have? The griffons can manufacture those things and put them in the hands of a griffon with some weeks of training, but a trained combat spellcaster takes years to train. And most unicorns want nothing to do with it, and that is another problem. We’re falling behind because our scholars are worried with other things. We use magic for everything.”

“And griffons…” He went on. “That is the problem. We’re seeing that they are siding with The Lion.”

“Why, though?” Cadance frowned. “We offer friendship and all its benefits. We’re just stronger together.”

“That is the problem, Cadie. The Lion has something that is convincing griffons to join him. I don’t understand. No one does. They leave family behind sometimes and go to Snow Mountains hold. They’re keeping it a secret and it’s making me very nervous. I don’t want to see Equestria split in a war with the griffons, even if we end up winning. Most ponies don’t study war. They don’t know what a war actually is. And I think that is why Princess Celestia is being so careful in this whole mess.”

He turned to Starlight. “And Twilight and Cadance want to go right into the belly of the beast.”

Starlight worried for him. Prince Armor did seem very worried, but not in the funny way Twilight did when she got herself all worked up over something silly. He knew what he was talking about, and the two princesses in question paid attention to what he was saying too. “They just… They hate us. I don’t understand why they hate us so much. Most griffons are fine with us, but not them. And they are changing the ones that do like us.”

“Did you ever have contact with them? These griffons from Snow Mountains?” Cadance asked.

“Once. Right after I graduated from the academy. Some griffons lived in Canterlot and we had been called to assist a Foal Protective Services seizure.”

“Whoa!” Twilight almost jumped out her chair. “Those actually happen?”

“It’s not common.” He shook his head. “Normally parents admit it when they have trouble with their foals and accept help from social services, but this time was different. It was beyond helping.”

***

It was a hot night and I was stuck with nightshift in the Royal Guard HQ, by Canterlot Palace while everypony else was either having fun or sleeping. It was a nice place for sure, with the Princess liking the Royal Guard so much, but it was still a night shift. Like sticking your bird in a ruby incrusted golden cage. That’s the life of a recruit fresh out of the academy. The higher ups got food from the palace’s kitchens and the company of the cute maids that worked for the Princess, meanwhile, they stuck you with a partner and you do shifts together with the other pairs of Royal Guards. We’re supposed to be sitting there, waiting for something to go wrong, but since the local militia usually took care of things, we spent most of the time doing the most useful things we could think of. Napping, eating stale donuts with cold coffee and chatting up the ladies of the street.

***

“And you spent time doing…?” Cadance eyed him with a smug grin.

“Napping, of course.” He said with a straight face. “I was studying to join the Officer’s Academy and I was constantly so tired I couldn’t do anything to one of them if they came up to me!”

“Why are you talking like this, Shining Armor?” His sister stared annoyed at him.

“Excuse me? When did I ever get to tell a story in the last nine years?” He stared back. “How do you know that’s not how I tell a story?”

She sighed. “Fine…”

***

That night was particularly boring until a runner burst open the door with orders for a squad of Royal Guards to accompany the Locals in a tough one. Foal Protective Services didn’t usually have trouble with their job, nor typically did it at night, but this time it was a griffon family they needed to visit, and it was no ordinary visit. A scared citizen went up to the Locals HQ and denounced a violent domestic dispute. For FPS to go out in the middle of the night, the Locals knew it was serious and so did we. Turned out FPS looked it up and the address was a griffon family in a middle-class neighborhood. The father was a nasty griffon by the name of Greywald with a history of violent altercations with neighbors, store owners, local militia, you name it. This business had bad mojo written all over it.

This guy Greywald… He had been involved in domestic disputes before and his mate had been to the doctor with a scratch or two a few times too many. So, when his cub was born someone in the FPS had the enlightenment of putting his name on a watchlist. Well, it didn’t take long for that to pay off. The cub was only one or two years old when this whole mess happened.

Of course, it fell on to my partner, Corporal Street Wise and me to join the Locals and an FPS agent on the way. We met on a street next to our destination. It was a narrow street, not uncommon of Canterlot in the middle-class neighborhoods, with the terrain prices being what they are in there, but it was nice enough with a few small but fancy apartment buildings and even a neighborhood watch, thus the situation we found ourselves in.

I never caught the names of the two Locals and didn’t pay much attention to them either. There wouldn’t be much to say, anyway. It was back in the times when our barding made everyone look the same. The only difference was that they wore the leather barding of the Locals and we wore the golden one of the Royal Guard.

Huh… Maybe if they had called the Princess things would’ve turned out different. But that is beyond the point now.

The FPS agent though was a mean pissed-off looking griffon lady. Think Gilda with more years and more griffon and you’d be on the right track. They knew way back when to have agents dedicated to specific demographics. They said things would end up in blood if you sent a pony to take away a griffon cub, or something like that. The point was that the griffon lady was supposed to know this Greywald from some time ago, his mate Grinea and their cub. She never told us the name of the cub, though. Or her own.

We gathered in the corner and the curious citizens listening to the racket were wise enough to skedaddle out of there, so we had the area to ourselves and we gathered to discuss our game plan. The whole time the FPS lady seemed worried about something, and I suppose that rubbed off on me.

“Gentleponies…” She began. “I believe you already know we’re going to deal with disturbance of peace. Domestic violence. You need to know that this Greywald is very dangerous and has been known to resort to violence. That is why you were called. We are worried the cub is clearly exposed to a hostile environment and we are worried he can get hurt in one of these… Outbursts.”

“Furthermore, the Local Guard is supposed to take the mother into protective custody and in the morning someone from Special Victims will be there to talk to her. Someone finally decided he hurt her enough already.”

“But isn’t that whenever griffons make out?” My partner elbowed one of the Locals and chuckled at his own joke, but the griffon agent didn’t find it funny, so he did us the favor of shutting up and the Local in charge broke the uncomfortable silence.

“It’s an apartment. Second floor, only one door. Between the four of us we should be able to keep him from causing trouble and if he does, we should be able to restrain him and let our Miss FPS here do her job.”

“Please, try to avoid violence if you can.” The griffoness insisted. “Let me talk to him and leave his mate alone for now. She’s not the problem.”

“Right on.” My partner said. “Let’s get this done!”

We rushed past the doors to small studio apartment buildings and we knew we had the right one because we could hear the cub crying and this Greywald guy yelling like he was possessed. Something about pampering and spoiling the kid. We entered the building and climbed the stairs as quickly as we could and my guts were telling things would be going south in a hurry, but we had a job to do.

As soon as we arrived, Miss FPS knocked on the door. “Mister Greywald, please open the door.”

Things only got worse from there. We heard glass cracking on the other side and the female cried and begged him to stop.

“Recruit! Get this open!” My partner barked at me, shoving the griffon lady out of the way, and I did. I cast the spell they teach you and my partner kicked the door open. All Tartarus broke loose after that. Damn griffon met us with a musket. Shot Street Wise before we even saw the cursed gun. Magical disruption bullet too. The barding stopped most of the damage, but it fragmented and got him good.

I dragged him out of the way and made him swallow a whole vial of healing potion while the two Locals went in with their magical stun batons. I was distracted checking my partner and I only came to when I heard the FPS agent screaming. I’m not going to describe what I saw in there, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget. Well, I didn’t have time to feel sorry for what was left of the Locals. They didn’t carry firearms at the time, but Royals did. I grabbed my pistol and shot the bastard. Got him in the gut and he threw a freaking flowerpot at me.

Damn thing was heavy and could’ve done a number on me, but I managed to protect myself with a shield. Of course, he flew out. Only when our griffon lady rushed after him through the window I noticed the son of a gun had taken the cub with him. I wanted to chase, but my partner was out bleeding, and the griffon lady of the house was curled up crying in the corner with blood all over their apartment.

***

“Ponies just don’t do this.”

“My goodness…” Twilight gasped softly. “You never told me that.”

“Yeah… It’s not the sort of thing you tell your little sis in the family dinner.”

“You can stop talking like that now.”

“Fine!” He crossed his legs and folded back his ears.

“Shining Armor.” Rarity called him. “Whatever happened them?”

“Street Wise got better but left the Guard. Captain White Wall, the Royal Guard’s captain at the time told me they found the FPS agent and she didn’t make it. That guy had hurt her a lot when she caught up to him. Miss Grinea got better and still lives in Canterlot. Greywald was found dead in a cargo ship that made it to Griffonstone. Bled out on the way. No sign of the cub though. Never appeared ever again.” He sighed. “I imagine he died somewhere in the street because he was never registered in an orphanage. Princess Luna wasn’t around so… We lost him.”

“Yes… He would certainly have been registered if he ever was adopted.” His sister agreed.

“I almost gave up myself after that.”

“Shinny, I understand what you mean…” Cadance said softly, caressing his hoof with hers. “But you can’t judge all griffons because of one really bad griffon. Griffons like Chef Gustave Le Grand would never do something so barbaric.”

“Or Gallus.” Twilight added with some pride.

“The point is that they could if they wanted, Cadance. And the griffons in the place you want to go all want to.”

“We will be careful. We’re probably going to help The Lion some with our research and that should give us safe-conduct through his lands.”

“I hope so. Maybe I’m worrying too much.”

“Yeah. It kinda runs in the family.” She grinned at him and he chuckled.

“Touché.”

The ponies giggled and Twilight pointed outside. “We better talk to the Captain. We need a place to meet with Sunburst, Goodread and their griffon friend. He might know where.”

The two princesses left without any delay and headed astern where the Captain held the ship’s controls.

“Aye, Lasses?” He greeted them with a smile.

“What is the nearest city? Preferably somewhere small and out of the way?” Twilight asked.

“Ahh… That’be Haybale, lass. More a rural village than a town. More a place where the farmponies gather fer drinkin’ after the day’s work is done. Plantations all over and not a soul in gold armor, if ye catch me meaning.”

“Perfect!” The pink one chimed with a large grin. “I’ll write a letter to Sunburst and we’ll find a place to meet there!”

“Whoa! Lasses! Mind sharing?”

Twilight giggled. “Sorry. One of our friends just sent us a letter telling us he found something important to our investigation. We really need to see him, and we plan on meeting there.”

“Aye…” He sounded worried. “The Guards be right behind us, lasses. They’ll catch up to us if we stop.”

“I understand your worries, captain. But it’s a risk we’re willing to take.”

‘Aye, princess. You say, we do.”

***

Every teleporter facility should be equipped with an array of terminals so that different operator companies have a chance of buying a slot. In the minds of the ponies in charge competition stimulated variety and excellence, and they were right. The result was that several companies bid on the slots and soon after each facility was completed all the slots were taken and the users had a variety of prices and services to choose from.

Cargo transfer platforms were an exception. Not only they required a larger size to be reasonably useful, but their operation required too much magical energy from the facility, meaning that their operation was too expensive and time-consuming.

It was simply much more useful to put whatever one wanted transported on an airship, even the older zeppelins and have it shipped across Equestria. The problem is that even a modern airship with magical engines could take days or weeks to reach a destination and certain products with very low shelf-life, typically obscure or exotic magic things needed to be on their destination within the day or they would be lost.

Usually, those would be such rare and expensive items their owners would do anything to ensure their safe arrival. Including paying ludicrously high prices for the teleportation fee. Add to that the fact that only one platform could be built by facility and teleporter operator companies started foaming at the mouth whenever one was under construction.

It was said that the auditions for the freight transfer platform whenever a new facility was built would involve seductive ponies, Bits being thrown around, swearing, blunt objects, arson and generalized threats to Harmony as a whole.

So, like a mother that would take away the toys causing the children to fight among themselves, Princess Celestia decided that the freight platforms would be state owned. The profits would be reverted to the Royal Treasury.

But that still meant that the platforms would require operators such as those the teleporter companies already had trained. Rumors said that it was one of the few times Princess Celestia swore in her ages-long life.

Since she was the owner of the platforms though, the Princess decided that she would preside the auditions in hopes that the ponies would behave with her. Rumors said that she almost murdered a pony in one of the first meetings.

Following a series of unsuccessful meetings, she decided after much screaming into pillows and ripping them apart that the Royal Guard’s Magical Engineering Corps and that her School for Gifted Unicorns would train private individuals that wanted to work for the state as teleporter operators.

Then the Teleporter Operators Union sued the Royal House.

Rumors said that Princesses Luna, Cadance, Twilight and Flurry Heart managed to avoid an event unknown to the general public that was believed to involve the dissolution of the Senate, of the Equestrian Confederacy and of all civil institutions. But this was never confirmed.

Finally, the Princess decided that she would choose what company she would grant the operation of each of her teleporters. The next day after the meeting newspapers proudly reported on the heroic actions by Doctor Kind Hope of the Canterlot Royal Hospital in saving the life of the marketing representative for EqMagical Travel who had been forcefully fed a pouch of Bits. Unconfirmed rumors said that the princess had ordered the recently married Prince-Consort to make that pony swallow those Bits after they tried to bribe her. Unfortunately, he didn’t understand that she was being emphatic, rather than giving him a direct command.

Finally, the drama ended when Princess Celestia tossed pieces of paper with city names in a room full of ponies, soft batons and a table for three behind thick bars. Prince-Consort Chocolate Velvet called it ‘The PG Gladiator Games’, but nopony understood what he meant by that except Celestia and Luna.

“And that is how freight teleporters were made!” Marble Hoof told the others with a huge grin.

“So, what are the chances that any of that is real?” Semolina sat next to Grape Donut, who was close to his griffon mercenary friend. The others milled about.

“Not very likely…” The mercenary had become bored with the overexcited pony.

Their arrival had been mostly without commotion. A group of ponies and a griffon traveling together wasn’t ordinary, especially with a large griffon of military build, but it also wasn’t particularly strange. Their arrival did turn a few heads among the authorities, though not enough that it would cause disruptions. A few documents were checked, and questions asked, but the problems ended there.

The whole group sat in the large room that was the lounge. It had a giant window showing the platform and in the back it an ice cream and a pizza vending stands. Rows of seating were available to representatives of companies waiting to receive whatever cargo might be teleported in under their responsibility. It was a luxurious place, meant for rich ponies representing rich companies. Not for backwater town militias and griffon mercenaries.

“Wow!” Marble Hooves had his face glued to the giant glass window, staring at the thing on the other side. “This is so cool!”

The platform was in the open field, surrounded by a tall fence and was little more than a raised metal and crystal platform, but the pony could imagine and wonder at all the magical components underneath that made the thing work. A few ponies seemed to be cleaning the platform, collecting debris and carefully inspecting it. On the back and to the side of the platform was a tower with forward inclined glasses.

His head shifted a little to the side. “Is that a control tower or something?”

“Yes! That is exactly what it is. A control tower!” A griffon approached him. Not nearly as big as Flying Snake with a light tan body and white head, not only that, but wearing a pair of glasses and a white coat, but also with a much friendlier attitude. “Hi! I’m Tech Guy!”

“Hum… Weird name…” Marble bumped his closed fist.

“Yeah…” The griffon frowned a little. “My real name is Gemmerich”, but everyone just calls me Tech Guy. You know… The one that actually went to college and knows what to do if the magic components start dying on them.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, TG.” The big griffon drew their attention and started making the presentations. Marble Hoof didn’t even notice, but a group of griffons and diamond dogs, of all the creatures, had just arrived by the large doors to the lounge.

“Diamond dogs! How cool!” He gasped.

“Guys, this here is my mate, Geneva.” A griffon stooped next to him, waving and grinning at the ponies. A white and big griffoness with white body and yellow head along with her green eyes. “She is our weapons specialist. If it shoots, smashes, cuts or pokes, she’s the griffon you wanna talk to. That over there with your geek is my geek. You can call him Tech Guy and call him if anything looks like it is about to blow up in the airship. He had another nickname, but we didn’t really care.”

“Ha ha…” The griffon in question sighed. “Hi, ponies.”

“And this here…” He gestured towards the small griffon with the black-spotted yellow body and white head. “Is Ocelot.”

Flying Snake was still talking. “And that over there is Mama, and her pack. Best airship crew ever!”

It was a group of ten or so diamond dogs that waved at the ponies. All of them wearing their typical jackets and hunched postures. Except for Mama, who had a pearl necklace.

“Hum. Nice meeting you guys.” Grape Donut greeted them, next to his wife.

“Isn’t it a bit weird? A pack of diamond dogs and three griffons?”

“Diamond dogs good airship crew!” Mama said. “Honest work for dogs, yes? Can shoot griffon weapons too. Better than raiding pony traders again. No?”

The other diamond dogs agreed with her and meanwhile a white earth pony mare, wearing a dark-blue suit and carefully tied black mane approached with a clipboard hanging from her neck and a very unfriendly expression. Next to her a young and meek beige and white unicorn.

“Mister… Snake?” She sounded professional, if unfriendly.

“Yeah. That’s me.” The others made silence. “And you are?”

“Can I have your real name… Sir?” She didn’t answer and stared angrily.

“That is it.”

“No, it is not.” Then she sighed. “The Princess has requested that your airship be teleported with the utmost urgency, so we’ve made some of our costumers very angry for shifting the schedule around. Therefore, we would greatly appreciate it if you moved it out of the platform as soon as it’s arrived. The magical capacitors take half an hour to power back up… After that we’re losing Bits by the second the platform is not cleared.”

“Ah, don’t worry miss.” He waved a paw dismissively. “We’re leaving as soon as she’s here.”

“Thank you, sir. EQMagical appreciates it.” She seemed to relax a little and became more friendly. “She should be arriving within minutes. Amber Flower here will take care of teleporter operations. She is a trainee with EQMagical from Bay County University and is accredited with the Teleporter Operators Union. If you have any question, please direct it at her.”

With that the mare turned to the other costumers in the lounge, the ones that were actually paying to use the platform and looked particularly miffed about the change in the schedule. And while she talked to them, Marble Hoof approached the unicorn mare that talked to the griffon mercenary.

“I don’t really have any questions.” Flying Snake shrugged. “Just thanks for you work.”

“It’s a pleasure, sir!” She smiled and then turned to the militiapony unicorn. “Yes?”

“Cool job that you have!” He grinned excitedly. “Is it hard?”

“Any unicorn can do it, really.” She smiled a little more at him. “You just need some training. That is all.”

Then her boss returned. “Come on, Amber. The platform should be ready to go soon.”

“Hey! Ma’am!” Marble Hoof approached the professional mare. “Is it true what they say about the construction of the freight teleporters?”

Her face conveyed the ultimate form of chagrin. “We don’t talk about that, sir.”

And then she turned her back to him. Amber hurried after her towards the door.

“I expected they would be angrier, considering we’re intruding on their schedule.” Grape Donut came nearby with his new griffon friend while the two mares left.

“The Princess has this weird power…” The big griffon said. “Ponies will move mountains if she asks. I can guarantee that if we were by ourselves it would cost us an arm and a leg, and we would be thrown days down the schedule.”

It didn’t take long and a steam whistle sounded. The ponies on the platform rushed out of it until a few seconds later the whistle stopped, and the platform powered up with pink magical light. Ponies stared from the other side of the glass like it was new year’s fireworks. Unicorn horns itched and a low humming sound resonated through the glass. There was a bang and the air smelled funny, but there she was.

It had a metallic hull, hardly pristine but rusted in several places, clearly a seaship converted into airship, but it lacked sails. What it had was a pair of tall charcoal-stained chimneys, and instead of the elegant swan wings of the princess’ airship, this one had its magical engines mounted on the sides of the hull. She was shorter and had a deeper draught. It seemed sturdier and it even had shipboard weapons, including a few broadside cannons and a pair of ballistae near the bow. It even had a griffon reaching forward and screaming in flight for figurehead.

“She’s a beauty, ain’t she?” The big griffon grinned.

“Wow! This is so cool!” Marble’s eyes shone like a child’s before the Princess of the Night. “It’s a converted griffon steamship!”

“It’s a piece of junk!” The pegasus mare of the group half-panicked. “We’re all gonna die in this thing!”

“Hey! The Pequod is a fine airship!” The griffon grinned some more. “It’s saved our asses more than once.”

“It is a piece of junk…” His mate wasn’t amused.

“No, it’s not! It’s a nice ex-whaling ship turned into a chariot of the gods!”

“The princess’ airship will leave this thing behind faster than Brisk Bronco’s fillyfriends.” The pegasus mare facehoofed.

“No, no.” Mama raised a finger. “Pony pretty airships fast, yes. But need recharging mana batteries with sails. Griffon steamship not so fast, but stronger and constant. Turns better too!”

“Mama’s right, pony.” The mercenary added. “We’ll catch them off-guard when they’re recharging the batteries and don’t have the juice to run. Not to mention we’ll ambush and hook them with the ballistae. They’ll drag us with them if they run until we reverse our engines. Then they’re going nowhere.”

“Cool!” Grape Donut grinned. “Let’s get this thing flying!”

***

Waking up in a bed in the Bordello of Candy was a special treat even for one from royalty, used to all the comforts and luxuries the ponies provided to their beloved rulers. Even if in his home in Canterlot he had every luxury he would ever desire, the Bordello had that special feeling attached to it. A stone ceiling and walls that brought an exciting rustic feeling and the windows that showed snow had clung to the metal framing outside. The wind cried outside but the flickering light and warmth from the fireplace met that and created a fantastic feeling of comfort and safety.

The room’s decorations were shields and on top of swords and spears hanging on the wall, a banner with one of the insignias of the Royal House, a white field with the combined images of Equestria’s Sun and Moon combined with horns and wings. Another had the insignia for Princess Cadance, the Crystal Heart with golden arabesques. It was the sort of thing that Chocolate Velvet liked. This awesome pony heraldry.

The bed was great too! The mattress was denser than most ones out there. It was a sort of ‘alicorn problem’. Their bodies were bigger and so they needed bigger beds, but they were also heavier, and normal mattresses were uncomfortable to them. The one he was lying on was perfect, like the one on his bed in the palace.

Bed sheets were great too! The kind of soft satin one would expect to be on the beds of royalty. All in whites and soft pinks. Not his favorite colors, but that didn’t detract from the quality.

Last night was almost as surreal as the day before. The Siege of the Bordello of Candy would go down in history as the most bizarre battle ever. He had to admit that Chrysalis does play the evil queen really well and her Praetorians put up a fierce fight. Once or twice he wondered if they understood it was a mock battle. Was it though? Things were confusing and even more in the following night.

The look on Chrysalis face when Thorax walked in with Celestia was a thing of legends, Luna trying to explain to Celestia how come Cadance had escaped was the best though. Things worked out wonderfully though and Friendship prevailed.

He didn’t really know if he could say that ‘Friendship’ was what happened, but something along the spectrum. The important thing was that things worked out in the end, they had some fun fighting each other and seeing Celestia in action was one of the most awesome things he’d ever seen.

Really poor choice of words considering what happened in the night… But the sentiment is right. Equestrian culture was a bit confusing at times. Regardless, his mind roused softly with memories and with Celestia’s creamy aroma still on the sheets, as much as Luna’s blueberry-y one.

And Chrysalis’ bleach-like aroma.

He grunted taking a hoof to his head and lifted his head slowly. It was still full of headache-inducing alcoholic byproducts and he feared any carelessness might cause him to hurl up. So, feeling the mattress sir under somepony else’s weight behind him, he turned slowly, and his snout collided with Thorax’s.

He screamed and jumped up while the other screamed too but fell on the side of the bed. On the other side of the large bed Luna’s head rose from the pillow with sleepy eyes and then collapsed back into it after seeing nothing important was happening.

The brown alicorn ‘eeped’ and reached to help Thorax stand. “Thorax, I’m so sorry! I’m just not used to waking up next to another stallion.”

“It’s alright.” The other held onto Chocolate’s leg and massaged his antler with the other hoof. “I can’t say that I am either.”

A bit far from the bed, in the giant room, Chrysalis sat on a comfy reading chair, holding a book in her green magic aura and stared at the two with some level of disdain. “You two are so immature I don’t really understand why we put up with you.”

“Good morning to you too, Chrysalis.” Velvet growled, sitting in the center of the bed.

“Can’t you say something nice, for once?” The other glowered at her.

The queen closed the book and sighed. Thought for a second.

“You didn’t embarrass me.” She smiled exaggeratedly and clapped her hooves together. “Yay!”

Then Celestia came out of the bathroom. “Come on! The sooner you get out of bed, the faster you’ll feel better! We have a lot to do today!”

“Can’t we take a day off?” Chrysalis frowned. “Really… Let’s pretend today is Heart Day, since we never really stop on Heart Days like everyone does. And then do it all again.”

“No. We need to help your special children.”

“Don’t call them ‘special’, Celestia.” The queen fumed. “It makes it sound like they’re retarded.”

The princess stared angrily at her for a second. “Fine. Let’s call them your soul-scarred, lame-bodied, mentally-unstable, brain-washed, nightmarish failed attempt at super-soldier secret children.”

“Sarcasm ill fits you, Celestia. It is too early, and they are probably sleeping now.”

“No, they are not. They are afraid and they need you to be their mother and their leader.”

Chrysalis was going to say something, having inhaled and closed her eyes in the most condescending way both males watching could imagine but a knock on the door stopped her, followed by Discord’s voice.

“Am I going to be traumatized by what I see if I open this door?”

The princess giggled. “No, Discord. It is quite safe.”

The door opened and he stared inside. “Seriously, Celestia. Put those golden things on. You look naked without them.”

“Ponies go around naked all the time, Discord.” She deadpanned.

“Well, yes!” He struggled with the words. “It’s different! Trust me.”

“He’s right.” Chrysalis added. “You do look naked without those things. I mean… More naked.”

She huffed and went back into the bathroom, coming out wearing her royal regalia. “There!”

All the present nodded agreeably, except for Luna who was still sleeping, and Discord proceeded. “I need your counselling, Celestia…”

“Why?” She grinned the most amused of grins. “Do you have a guilty conscience over helping Twilight and Cadance with their personal quest behind my back?”

He blinked twice at her and then pointed angrily at Chrysalis. “Did she tell you something she shouldn’t?”

She cocked her head. “Actually, I wasn’t aware that Chrysalis was helping them too.”

The queen facehoofed, with both hooves and profoundly. “Discord, you dunce!”

The princess giggled in a good mood. “Oh my. It makes a lot of sense now. Though I already suspected. What did you tell them?”

“I told them about the Animus Imperative.”

“The what?” Chrysalis raised an eyebrow, but she was ignored.

“About the things that I did. I didn’t tell them about you, though. I… Uh… Sent them to Naminé.”

The princess sighed and her ears fell sadly. “Naminé is confused, Discord. She’s going to fill their heads with the wrong ideas. She’s going to show them things that she herself doesn’t understand.”

“Well, that is the thing. Twilight has shown me that ponies are more mature. And that she and Cadance will figure out the meaning of the things that happened.”

“It is only going to cause hurt and heartbreak, Discord.”

“That is what I told them! But they insisted! But I agree with them that, especially in these days, there are things in that history that ponies could afford to know. Maybe be a little humbler.” He opened his arms.

She sighed. “So, where is Naminé now?”

“I wasn’t going to tell you, even if I knew.” He crossed his arms, but then he waved a hand dismissively. “That is not what I came here to talk to you.”

Her ears perked up. “What was it then?”

“How come you are so patient and lenient with him?” The Queen complained almost like a child.

“Well, for one, Discord didn’t try to make super-soldiers behind my back with resources that I’d given away for the sake of a project of mutual trust and interdependency, as though I was trying to teach a valuable lesson about friendship.” She stared. “And also, I understand Discord. He is bound to those ponies and I rather we all remained on good terms. Finally, this whole thing will go away when I catch up to Twilight if the ambush we planned near Baltimare works. If things go well, I won’t have to worry about anything Discord has told them. Unlike your children.”

The Queen grumbled and sunk back into the chair, quieting herself.

The princess turned back to Discord. “Well, tell me what happened, Discord.”

“I was in northern territories of Griffonia and I just kept two armies of griffons from killing each other.”

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “Next time let them kill each other. Less griffons would be less problems.”

“Don’t listen to her. You did a wonderful job.” Celestia smiled at him. “But why were those griffons there? What are the details?”

“I believe that they were acting behind your back. They were going to attack The Lion’s fortress and I know they’re not supposed to.”

“You are right. Not only they’re not supposed to do anything like this, but it was likely to get all of them killed. There is a reason The Lion is so proud of Griffinsky.” She nodded. “I will have my Justiciars investigate this with the utmost urgency. Silkfeathers is very likely behind this.”

“There is one other thing… The griffons there. The Northerners. They were really respectful to me. Even friendly. They even listened to me. I didn’t expect that, and I know they are hostile to other griffons and ponies. I don’t really know what to make of it.”

“Interesting. Maybe there is something in their localized culture that draws them to you. You should learn about and cultivate that.”

“What happens when Discord turns against you because he’s suddenly siding with the griffons?” Chocolate grumbled sitting in the bed, next to Thorax.

“Please, Velvet. Cynicism is Chrysalis’ job.” She looked back at him. “Discord is not going to turn against us. He’s learned that lesson already. At most, he would try to convince us that we are wrong and give ample way to a conversation, if he sees that the griffons are right.”

“Welp, sounds like a mission.” Discord pointed with a thumb behind his back. “Some griffoness said I should go to Griffindell and see a Lady Gwendolen.”

“She is The Lion’s mate. She keeps to herself and never leaves the city. If you manage to befriend her, we could have an opening to reach The Lion and then find an easier peaceful solution to this whole situation.” The princess giggled. “Then Chrysalis wouldn’t have to act so though because she’s so afraid of him.”

All they heard was a petulant harrumph.

***

In the Baltimare Teleporter Facility, one hour had passed and the old airship was still in the teleportation platform. The schedule was about to spontaneously combust, and the world would end in a meeting room full of suicidal corporate officers. Not really likely, but that was how Top Brass felt and she was about to rip her mane out. She stomped her hooves on the crystal platform until she was close enough to the airship that she could talk to the ocelot-griffon with his back to the railing.

“Excuse-me, sir!” She called in her most passive-aggressive professional tone, but the griffon didn’t answer or even react.

“Excuse-me! Sir!” She tried again. This time with the voice she’d speak to her foal when she was about to ruin his day. But the griffon still ignored her.

He didn’t ignore her though when she launched her clipboard with the precision of a guided magical missile to the back of the griffon’s head.

“Ow!” He finally turned to her and held on to the railing. “What the feather?!”

“Get this piece of junk out of my platform!” She pointed out with a hoof as though she could move it by sheer force of her anger.

“They’re having some troubles with the boiler. This thing isn’t one of these new fancy airships that you snap a finger and they fly, you know!”

“Do you have any idea how much debt you are causing simply by keeping this thing in here?!”

The griffon shrugged and she was glad there was nothing alive next to her because she would have murdered it.

Finally, there was a bang and the two chimneys started bellowing black smoke up in the air.

“There, are you happy?”

“No! I’ll be happy when this thing is so far away that I never have to see it ever again!” She spat back. “How does this thing even work?! How can you need steam to run a magical engine?! It doesn’t make any sense!”

“Beats me. All I know is that they have to boil the water and pressurize the system yet. So, it’s still going to take a few minutes. You better relax.”

She screeched so high the diamond dogs working the boiler thought there was a leak in the steam system. Some three quarters of an hour later the thing’s magical engines were running (however those cursed things worked) with enough force they managed to get it off the platform. Its mechanical legs let off steam and retreated into the hull, sealing off with their feet while the airship gained altitude and accelerated forward and upwards.

“Ugh. Finally!” She then turned to the ponies in hardhats inspecting the platform. “Get this thing ready! We’re doing overtime tonight!”

With the fury of a raging dragon inside, she stood quietly by the side of the platform while the ponies quickly cleared the platform and all of them waited for the next transfer in.

Nothing happened and she groaned tapping her hoof on the floor while the ponies exchanged concerned stares.

A few minutes passed and still nothing happened. “I can’t believe this!”

She stomped off towards the tower with an infuriated scream. Opened the door and climbed the stairs grinding her teeth together until she finally came through the door into the control room where a brown earth pony stallion in the company’s uniform was next to one of the platform’s magic control panels with the young beige unicorn, Amber Flower, staring confusingly at her panel. On the other side, there was another unicorn with another panel, doing something to it with his magic.

“Don’t tell me that thing damaged the platform! I’ll kill myself!” She screeched and drew attentions to her.

“No.” Said the stallion. “There’s an unscheduled transfer coming in from an unregistered platform.”

She blinked twice. “Is that even possible?”

The unicorn next to the stallion sounded confused and stared up at Top Brass. “Hum... I can’t explain it… But it seems so.”

“Great. What are you doing in the university if you can’t even get this thing to work?!” She walked closer. “Can’t you deny it and get to the right transfer?”

The other unicorn let up his work on his panel. “It’s not letting us do anything.”

Then the door opened, and one giant griffon walked in. All dark-gray and white head with green eyes. The two mares squeaked at the sight and the male unicorn hid behind his panel. The earth pony walked around the panel. “Sir. You can’t be in here.”

The griffon sat and unslung his musket from his shoulder and pointed it. “It’s cool. The boss said I can shoot any ponies stupid enough to not have understood that they are not in control of the situation anymore. So, kindly understand that you’re not in charge here or you’ll just give the cleaning staff a lot of unpleasant work because I can guarantee you that this isn’t loaded with your pony magic stunning crystal balls.”

He spoke with an accent none of them recognized and then another griffon entered, but that one was actually a little smaller than griffons tended to be and was brown furred with a darker head. He also carried a firearm with him but kept it on its back.”

“Alright, listen.” The pony stood. “I don’t know what you want, but there is no money in here.”

The smaller griffon laughed and said something in another language none of the ponies understood, warbling and sing-y.

Finally, another pair of griffons entered. The first was fit and serious with purple body and mustard-colored feathers on his head and he also spoke in that same language. He turned to the other griffon that followed him and said some another thing the ponies didn’t understand.

While the big griffon by the door closed and locked it, the one that had entered with him walked past the smaller one with a grin. A big yellow and white griffoness wearing a white coat over her body, she approached the terminal with Top Brass and the young unicorn, pushing the earth pony mare out of the way violently and causing her to crash to the wall with a yelp. Top Brass wisely chose to make herself as small as she could and be quiet.

The griffoness was about twice as big as the small unicorn frozen in place by the terminal, trembling and looking up at her like a terrified mouse. She stared down at the pony showing a cruel grin and malevolent magenta eyes.

“Please don’t hurt me… I’m just an intern from the university.” She pleaded with the softest of voices.

“Oh… The Bay County University? I graduated there you know?” She grinned maliciously and the pony squeaked and lowered herself on the ground. “It was nice being a researcher there until they decided my ideas were too dangerous and Celestia kicked me out. So, I don’t really like it there. Or ponies that go to that particular university. In fact, I don’t really like ponies at all.”

“Ma’am, please don’t hurt her. It’s not her fault.” The stallion said and the purple griffon told her something with an irritated tone, but she ignored both and turned her attention to the magical terminal.

Then purple griffon said something else to what she answered calmly and turned back to the unicorn next to her. “I’m gonna need a small sample of your thaumatic flux, if it is not too much to ask.”

“My what?” She stared with confusion, almost like she’d forgot she was scared.

Then the griffoness slammed the unicorn’s head horn first into the panel and it lit up with magical light.

“Thank you.” The griffoness grinned at the now unconscious unicorn and puled the sleeve of her coat revealing a gold and crystal device in her wrist. After fiddling with it for an instant, the platform outside started the process of powering up and the steam whistle sounded.

“What are you doing?” The white mare still was in the floor, but some of her courage had returned enough to be angry that these griffons were doing something to her platform. “Do you brutes have any idea how expensive this is?”

Then she noticed the purple griffon stood next to her and winced when he lowered his body to be on the same level as she, staring at her with his piercing golden eyes.

“Do you see gentlegriffons? This is the thing we were talking about yesterday.” He spoke to the other griffons, particularly the yellow female that approached, but stared at the pony and spoke perfectly in the universal language of Common Equestrian with a calculated and cold voice. “This pony doesn’t understand the situation she is in. She thinks that the worst that can happen here is that her company is going to lose some money and that she’ll lose her monthly bonus. Maybe her boss will yell at her. Perhaps she’ll have to postpone that vacation and her little foal may have to spend next Hearth Warming without that toy he wanted so much.”

“The interesting thing about this…” He went on. “Is that her boss doesn’t understand the situation either. Neither does her little foal. They are all going to be angry that this mare didn’t perform exactly as she was expected. Ponies don’t understand when their lives are in danger anymore. They don’t fear for their lives. They think that their princesses are going to save them. That their heroes are always around the corner. They’ve learned that their side always wins, and how could they not? They are the good guys. They are the chosen ones that bring Friendship to the rest of us savages.”

Outside a flash announced the completion of the teleportation procedure and the smaller brown griffon said something in their strange language, to what the purple answered and the smaller one broke the glass of the tower. The group flew out and the room was flooded with the coarse sound of magical engines, different from the typical ones they knew. More important than looking out though, the stallion went to the pony mare on the ground.

“Miss Brass, are you injured?” He held her softly in his hooves.

“I don’t think I am.” She stumbled a little with the words, and only them she realized how much she was trembling. “What just happened?”

“They teleported an airship!” The male unicorn now was at the broken window and stared down, shouting over the horrible sound those magical engines were making. “I've never seen anything like it!”

“Stop gawking at it and go call emergency services!” The older stallion yelled at him from the blood-stained terminal. “That griffon hurt Amber Flower.”

The unicorn turned from the window and gasped at seeing his co-worker next to his boss with a cracked horn letting go little sparks and blood on the carpet.

***

New Friends New Revelations

Author's Note

Welp... Update. This damn virus has ruined the schedule I had planned. Anyways... Update!

New Friends New Revelations

The princesses and the queen had already left for breakfast. Celestia wanted to talk to Discord before he left and made sure that they would have ample time to talk to him. However, while Chocolate Velvet was curious about all those things they were likely to talk about he had just received a letter and he had a feeling he was not going to like what he was going to read.

He didn’t really think that his presence was necessary, and not that he didn’t like to be involved, but his head took some more time to reorient itself after last night. He supposed that with age came resilience. Even in that regard.

The result of staying behind was that he was left alone when one of Cadance’s handmaidens… Hoofmaidens? One of her ponies that worked in the Bordello arrived with a letter for him. He wasn’t entirely sure how did they know to send it to the Crystal Empire and not to the palace in Canterlot but that wasn’t important right then.

It was a letter from the Equestrian Chivalric Society informing him that as an aspiring knight he ought to perform great deeds of honor and might, which was almost the exact of opposite of what he had been doing these past days. So, it didn’t really surprise him that much that he got a letter like that from them.

What surprised him was that they had the guts to tell him that his fellowship could be revoked because of that. He had to wonder what went on in the head of some pampered up idiotic noble sitting his haunches in Canterlot that complained about ponies going on and killing monsters to protect the population that they were not being ‘knightly enough’.

He simply sat in the corridor by their room’s door, staring angrily at the letter he held with his telekinesis, trying to process its content when Thorax approached him. “Hi, Chocolate. Uh… Can you talk?”

“Hey, Thorax. Sure.” He smiled and folded the letter before stuffing it inside his peytral and then smiled at the changeling, as friendly as he could to the nice changeling king. Unlike Chrysalis, he liked the always nice guy. “What’s up?”

“I uh…” He rubbed his legs together while staring to the side. “It’s about Chrysalis. I think I need to talk to somepony about her… And well... We’re both guys and I guess my best friend is Spike, but we have ‘being married to important mares’ in common.”

“Yeah…” The alicorn mused. “I guess we do. And I suppose Cadance isn’t available… Well, I’m not sure I can be of much help, but I’ll do my best!”

“It’s alright!” The king smiled back at him and them Chocolate pointed down the corridor fot the changeling to walk with him. The alicorn believed that proximity sometimes called for some distance, and it seemed that was exactly what Thorax needed to talk about Chrysalis. He also thought it would be better to not stick to a place, rather walk around a bit not to draw too much attention.

Therefore, they walked together down the stone-walled corridor. It had windows every few paces and a long beautiful red rug that made the two somewhat conscious about simply stepping on the thing. Thorax simply wasn’t used to this sort of luxury and Chocolate paid attention to his new friend. There were also pedestals with beautiful vases or amphorae, all with tasteful love-related themes. Whatever it was that they could see in this corridor, it had a beautiful style. There were also elegant paintings of ponies or some other creature. From the arched ceiling beautiful candelabra provided illumination by means of magical crystals. It all attested to Cadance’s good taste in decoration.

It amazed the brown alicorn that Cadance managed to make that place so titillating but without becoming tacky. Talk about talent.

Outside the snowfall seemed to have picked up and one could barely see beyond the glass and the snow that accumulated on the metal framing. Even more so than before. Inside the temperature was comfortable and the howling from the wind was barely noticeable.

They kept in silence for a while until after a few paces Thorax finally spoke again. “So, I guess I need some advice in dealing with Chrysalis’… Let’s call it nastiness.”

“I bet you do.” Chocolate chuckled in good humor and the other laughed reservedly.

“Well, you remember how nice she was last night. And then how mean she was this morning. It makes me angry that she can completely ignore that she’s hurt you once, and then hurt you again after she’s been so nice. Once she even apologized.”

“And when she does this sort of thing she did when we woke up. I really don’t know how to deal with it.” The ‘stag beetle-pony’ wasn’t complaining, rather his tone indicated more frustration at his inability to deal with his partner. It was a shame Cadance wasn’t available, and they were what each had at the moment. “She’s just so mean and angry all the time with some small moments of niceness.”

“I think that she’s convinced that she needs to do this to get what she wants, Thorax. She just lets her guard down once in a while.” The alicorn looked at him. “I mean… Celestia thinks so. And she also thinks that Chrysalis will benefit from a loving and caring partner such as yourself. She wasn’t that bad at night when she was legitimately having fun playing evil queen. Anyway, the fact that she acts nice when she lets her guard down makes Celestia think that she is good inside and does want to come out but thinks she can’t afford it.”

“Yeah…” Thorax agreed, staring down sheepishly. “I suppose. It’s not very often, though.”

“Celestia told me that Chrysalis suffered a lot in her life, Thorax. The sort of things that makes one hard and callous.” He stepped a little closer in their walk. “Not that I think that you need to suffer because she did... But it seems to me that you want to help. Patience will go a long way with her, I believe. And showing her that she can be nice and still get nice things.”

He paused for a second. “As long as you aren’t getting yourself hurt because of her. I agree with Celestia that you can help her, but I certainly don’t think that you must sacrifice yourself because of her. I feel like I can’t stress this enough.”

“I want to help her, Velvet… I know she’s nicer inside. She’s let me see that side of hers sometimes. I think that maybe I could afford to be more romantic and that could bring her out more often.” Thorax added after a small pause.

“Really?” The other stared forward, thinking for a second. “I don’t think that you should violate yourself because of her… I mean… She needs to do her part too and you shouldn’t go too much out of your comfort zone for her.”

“Oh… I like her.” His cheeks reddened a little. “I’m just not sure how to show it to her.”

“I think you’re already doing a great job, Thorax.” The alicorn grinned at him. “But if you feel like you want to make a gesture, I believe Cadance would be able to help you, if you’re willing to let this whole mess blow away. I mean, it’s not like you’re in a particular hurry, right?”

Thorax grinned friendly. “Yeah. But… Your cutie mark is a heart shaped box of bonbons. You’re kinda good with romantic things too, aren’t you? Romance is kind of a knight thing too, isn’t it?”

The alicorn stopped and blinked a few times, causing the other to stop too and look at him. “Huh. I suppose you’re right.”

Thorax grinned some more. “How do you get romantic with Luna and Celestia?”

Chocolate put his leg on his chin and thought with a hum. “Well… They are sophisticated, but they put heartfelt feelings over grand gestures. I imagine that if we are aiming at Chrysalis’ real heart inside the shell, that ought to help. Okay… I know something you can try. Dressing up all gentlestalion-like and treating her like a lady. It works wonders with Celestia and Luna.”

“I never really tried that. I was afraid she’d make fun of me.” Thorax grinned excitedly. “But I can try! It’s not like she’s gonna divorce me or anything if she doesn’t like it. Right?”

“Awesome!” The alicorn put a wing over his back, closing in conspiratorially. “So, next time you’re gonna be alone with her, you should… I don’t know… Do you changelings polish your carapace or something when you want to look sophisticated? It just dawned on me that Chrysalis is the only one of you that has a mane!”

“We don’t really do this sort of things because we’re not really used to this sort of things amongst ourselves…” Thorax explained while his eyes drifted down. “I mean, changelings usually turned into other creatures to... Uh… Flirt. We always did it to other species, it was always some sort of manipulation.”

“Thorax!” Chocolate took a step back and his wings flared. “This is awesome!”

“It is?” One of his eyebrows rose.

“Yes! You get to brave the unknown! To create the traditions!”

“Oh!” Thorax grinned too. “You’re right!”

“You just have to catch Chrysalis’ fancy! Now that may be hard, but we’ll work this out and when this whole mess is done with, I’m sure Cadance will help!”

“Great! But what do I do now?”

“We’re going to try some ornaments. Celestia loves my golden mane fishnet.” Then he paused for a second and his ears perked up with a smile. “I just had a great idea. She’s gonna love it!”

***

In the restaurant a few of the tables had been set aside and put together to welcome the Princesses and the Queen. The other patrons remained respectfully a table away because they seemed to be talking about something important with Lord Discord. Except for the maids and waiters that worked in the Bordello’s restaurant. Their table was well stuffed for a breakfast of royalty with all sorts of tasty fruits, juices and sweets.

Breakfast had extended way into the morning, but their attentions were on the photographs spread on top of the table, not on the food. One of them showed a city from afar. It covered a mountain and its base with a big fortification at the top and itself surrounded by black stone walls that connected tall hills at each corner. The sky was a heavy mass of dark gray clouds.

“This is Griffindell.” Celestia held the photo for Discord to see clearly. “The capital for Snow Mountains Hold. The mountain is ‘The Roost’ and the four hills are called ‘Sentinels’. At the top you can see Griffinsky, The Lion’s fortress. Though the entire city is fortified. Its population is composed of six-hundred and fifty thousand griffons. Most of them local griffons and some that decided to join them from surrounding cities, and some other cities in the Confederation. Mostly Griffonstone, Manehattan and Fillydelphia.”

“Why?” He wore a pair of star-shaped glasses and took notes with a small notebook and a wobbly spiral pencil. “Why are they going there?”

“Because they are stupid.” The changeling queen grumbled but was ignored.

“Well, that is what you are going there to find out.” Luna grinned.

“No. Discord is going there because he can reach out to those griffons without them immediately closing up.” The white princess shook her head.

“Yes.” Luna agreed, rolling her eyes. “But still, information would be good.”

“I understand.” He nodded winking at her. “I’m not going there to spy. I’m going there to make friends. But If I learn some stuff that is a good thing.”

“Yes!” Luna giggled happily.

“There is something fundamentally messed up in a world where you sent the Spirit of Chaos to spy on the griffons and not the changeling infiltrators.” Chrysalis mumbled.

Discord pointed casually at the queen. “She actually has a point. Can’t changelings just go in and figure this stuff out? I mean… I know I’m not going to actively spy on then… But…”

“They’ll identify any changeling in disguise, Discord.” Celestia shook her head. “Just because they don’t have horns, it doesn’t mean that they don’t control their own kind of magic.”

“And that is one of the things you’re not going in there to spy on.” Luna added and Celestia sighed.

“Yeah…” Chrysalis’ sarcasm practically dripped off her teeth. “The ‘not really magical kind of magic’.”

The others ignored her and her salty mood while Celestia explained further. “Griffon magic is very similar to pegasus magic, Discord. Such as The Lion’s spoken magic and there are some anecdotical evidence that they have learned some sort of enchanting magic, that may be a form of the same magic. They are clearly doing something we don’t understand because Luna has trouble peering into their dreams. Be very careful with what you say or do in there, though. They can become distrustful very easily and they are naturally reclusive. Your job is to help us understand their position. The most important reason you are going is that they opened up to you. Don’t ruin that… It’s a friendship. Understand?”

“Yes ma’am!” He saluted and caused the princesses to giggle. They had been at this for hours, talking to him about all they knew of these griffons and griffons in general. She was proud at Discord’s ability to maintain his focus and his interest in the griffons. Nothing like a little attention to make anyone agreeable.

“Good. Now, look at this one.” Celestia showed him another photograph. A nice view of a stone mansion with a beautiful flowered garden by its side and surrounded by black stone walls. The focus of the photograph was a pair of griffons. The male was big, with a powerful and fit body covered in a blackish-brown fur and whose head was covered in white feathers topped by a discreet golden diadem with a single ruby.

“He is Gilad. Also known as Lord Ironfeathers. And also, as The Lion. With him is his mate, Lady Gwendolen.” Almost as big as he was, her figure was more elegant, even if she still looked physically powerful and her coat was a snowy white with black dots in her hindlegs. Her head was white too, but her feathers followed a distinctive pattern with black and white that made her look like she wore a black cowl over her head. Discord looked agreeably at her. She had black on her beak, on her forelegs and wings in a way that made it seem like she wore a cape or something.

“She looks… Odd.” He twisted his head upside down, staring at the photograph. “In a good way.”

“She is a dimwitted cute face The Lion keeps next to him. Probably has some ‘desirable talent’…” Chrysalis sneered. “That and the griffons like her… for some reason.”

“Griffons say she is the most beautiful griffoness in existence. But you know how these things go.” Celestia rolled her eyes. “The photograph may not do her much justice. Anyway, she and Gilad have a single son, whose we know very little about thanks to their isolationist nature. No more than that he is their son and a few irrelevant details.”

“We also know little of the city nowadays, other than that it is the mustering point for The Lion’s army and other than that it is a city as any other. A very militarized city, and the fortress at the top is yet unconquered with nigh impregnable defenses that the griffons boast as being the only fortress of the old world where an alicorn never set hoof.”

“Please…” Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “If it was up to me, I would go there and tap dance all over the place just because of that.”

“And that is why you don’t have any friends.” The white princess stared at her, but then turned back to Discord again. “This is not a problem, Discord. I don’t care if I can’t ever ‘tap-dance’ on Griffinsky. I will gladly stay out of there for all eternity if that means we can coexist in peace and harmony. That is why I want you to be open about your motivations to be there. They have to trust you and through you, see that they can trust me.”

“You are being naïve, Celestia.” The queen was rather bored. “Whatever Discord says, they’ll assume that he is there to spy for you.”

“I can’t do anything about it, Chrysalis. All I can do is be honest with them. In time this will earn their respect and their trust. And that is why, Discord, you will tell them that you are there because I asked you to cultivate a friendship with them. You will be our mutual friend, a bridge between us.”

“I understand, Celestia. I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will.” She smiled confidently at him. It was a smile Discord didn’t see often and felt some of pride at earning it. “Now. There is one last thing you must know. The griffons there don’t speak Common Equestrian, or even the modern Griffonese. They speak an archaic form of the modern language and I don’t have a clue why. One historian that visited Griffindel years ago mentioned that they see this language as sacred and not to be taught to others. I imagine it has something to do with the spoken magic that Gilad can use. Do you think this will be a problem?”

“Not at all!” He waved dismissively. “I can deal with that.”

“You should also know that our Justiciars, over the years, have found them to be very resistant to opening up to cultural exchange propositions. Two years ago, Twilight introduced a law project with the idea of facilitating and promoting language tutoring to the children as soon as they were old enough. Preferably as they learned the local languages of their cultures.”

“That failed in Snow Mountains hold.” Celestia’s head shook. “Their ‘Loremasters’, what passes for teachers in there treated it as an attack on their sovereignty. If anything, this should let you understand how important their language is to them. Well, there were other things, but they are not entirely relevant now and it might be better if you learned them by yourself. Simply understand that they put a lot of pride in their culture.”

“So…” The queen grinned maliciously. “Did your old friend Grigor use the same language?”

“Chrysalis! Don’t mention that in public!” She looked around, but no one seemed to be paying attention, much less have heard.

“We can’t say for sure it was the same language.” Luna said reservedly. “To be entirely honest, the griffons could be lying about The Lion’s use of that kind of magic and it could be an entirely different language. That would be a good reason for them to keep it so secret. But it was real in the past. And what worries Celestia so much is that if The Lion knows the language enough to teach himself and the other griffons, something very significant from that period must have survived.”

“The Lion has exquisitely played a very hidden game. He definitively knew what he was doing and hid it from us, while using whatever it is that he has to lure other griffons in.” Celestia admonished them with her serious tone.

“So, it may be the case that there is nothing to fear and that prick is bluffing?”

“I don’t think that this is a bluff, Chrysalis.” Celestia sounded very worried. “He clearly has something that is convincing griffons to join him. And I doubt it’s simply their advocacy for hunting rights and vapid griffon pride.”

“This whole thing sounds tricky.” Discord frowned at the scribbles he called notes. “Maybe it would be a better idea to let Twilight get to him and sort this out.”

Then it was Celestia who frowned. “Twilight and Cadance will want to present whatever they find at the Hall of Friendship, and now that you’ve told them about Naminé they’ll tell The Lion things that are going to turn the whole affair on its head, and then he’ll feel completely justified in pressing for separation and will cause a war.”

He crossed his arms and pouted. “Maybe you should disclose the truth, then. Since you’re the only one who knows what caused this mess to begin with.”

“I think I deserve to know… Since it seems that I have suffered because of it.” Chrysalis put her hoof on her chest, all self-pity. “How about a bet? If Twilight can figure out that Luna is the goddess from the legend, she must apologize to all of Equestria.”

“How dare you, Chrysalis?” Luna managed the most accusatory and at the same time blank stare at the queen that present company had ever seen. “With Cadance that didn’t interest you in the least.”

“Then I was talking to a confused filly Luna.” The queen grinned nonchalantly at her. “Now I am talking to the mares themselves. Besides… I’m your friend…”

“How cute.” Discord grinned. “What difference would that make?”

“Stop it. You will not bother Luna with this, Chysalis.” Celestia chastised both in a low voice. “The Goddess never existed outside the ponies’ imaginations and ‘the truth’ belongs in oblivion. It will cause a rupture and all that has been done to fix it, by ponies much braver than you, will be undone. None of you were there to help. None of you went through what I and Luna suffered because of that, much less understand the situation at the time.”

“I better go…” Discord said after a few seconds of angry uncomfortable silence. “This conversation isn’t fun.”

Then he vanished with a snap of his fingers, a flash and a bang.

Left behind the three mares remained in silence until Chrysalis rubbed the side of the table with her hooves. “I apologize… I suppose I’m in enough trouble because of my Praetorians…”

One of Luna’s eyebrows rose. “What are you up to?”

“I’m trying to say I admit I was wrong in bringing up again that issue about the goddess!” She growled. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Even if there was a cure, we changed so much we’re something completely different.”

“Don’t worry, Chrysalis. Luna is an adult. She can deal with it. After breakfast we should see your children, though.” Celestia grinned smugly. “Since she is trying to shirk her duties in Canterlot, Luna has volunteered to probe their minds in their sleep.”

“Well, this is more important than another speech about The Lion…” Luna defended herself vehemently.

“I’m not worried, Celestia.” Chrysalis said calmly. “What is worrying me is that Chocolate Velvet and Thorax still haven’t showed up yet.”

“Oh. They’re probably talking about stallion things.” She giggled.

***

The Magic of Friendship flew as fast as her magical engines would take her through a cloudy sky. The Captain had put her on a downwards flight towards a cluster of white cottony clouds high above the still green corn fields that surround the small city of Hay Bale. Non-pegasus ponies hid in the underdeck and the pegasus crewponies tied themselves to the main mast. Her sails were furled, and the wind whizzed past its solid crystalized metal structure.

Behind her a Royal Guard frigate dived and her own magical engines roared trying to keep up with the princess’ faster and more maneuverable airship. Its own golden-clad pegasus crewponies had tied themselves to it too and held on to their posts against the wind and they looked right in place next to the airship’s golden hull.

One of them, a dark gray pegasus with an off-white mane his helmet turned into a crest held on to a tight rope with one leg while the other pointed onward and his voice rose above the wind. “Keep us above them and line’er up to shoot! We’re not going home without our quarry and they must slow down eventually! Be ready to heave guards! The Mare will pay a sumptuous dinner to the crew that captures the little princesses!”

The ‘Little Princess’’ airship gained some distance on them, but they would be well under the ballistae’s effective range when they would be forced to slow their descent. So very typical for a non-military captain to allow his vessel to be outmaneuvered like that. Not too long now and Frigate Captain Wild Tango would have the honor of informing Her Royal Highness that her wayward princesses were captured. But not before he gave himself a stern lecturing to them. The strong wind made his smile larger than it should be, and then some when he realized he could ask for another assignment after this was done. A place in the frontlines when the war finally started would be nice to accumulate glory and heaps of gold.

In the Princess’ ship crewponies shouted directions to their captain and made sure, once more, that everything was tied down for the impending maneuver. In the middle of all that the two adult alicorn princesses aboard the airship held to the outer side of the railing and screamed when the airship trespassed a small cloud flying so fast Twilight was sure she would become a hole in the ground when it was all over.

“I hate you, Rainbow Dash!” The other princess shrieked holding on to the railing with her legs as though her life depended on it. It probably did, anyways and the small icicles that grabbed at her didn’t even bother her at that point.

Both of them wore their enchanted barding and Cadance’s robes flailed about in the wind as though it not only had a life of its own but was also intent on dragging her along in the wind.

The pegasus in question was next to them and had an enormous grin on her face while her mane also flailed madly, and she shouted at them over the roaring wind. “Almost there!”

Rainbow too wore her very special magical barding. A very light white steel barding with leggings that let her hooves exposed, each with a pistol strapped to it. Her element of Loyalty jewel adjusted neatly to her gorjet. Her wings were also exposed, and sharp articulated folding blades covered their leading edges, with the cutting edges folded in while not in use.

“We’re going to need a new bearer for Loyalty if this doesn’t work!” Twilight screamed back at her.

“It’s cool!” Rainbow reassured her over the wind. “We train for this all the time in the Wonderbolts!”

“We are not Wonderbolts!” They shrieked again and Twilight was going to tell her how much she hated that plan but her pegasus friend shoved them from the inner side of the railing.

“Now! Go!” She grinned more than she should while the two let go and screamed when they were caught in the wind and the cloud they had just reached. A large and wet cloud big enough to engulf the entire airship when it rushed past the cloud.

Twilight held on to Cadance’s leg and they tumbled about inside the cloud. Soon the pursuing airship roared past them and the turbulence it caused made their flight even more erratic. Though calling it flight was a particularly bad misnomer. In reality they fell through the cloud in the most ungainly way possible. And they also screamed all the way until they popped out of the cloud’s underside. Cadance twisted and twirled and regained control of her flight, hovering just under the cloud with scared bulging eyes and some frost stuck to her mane.

“Whew…” She said to herself, looking around to regain her bearings.

Twilight plummeted past her with a shrill screech and in a mess of flailing robes, wings and legs. At the sight her sister in law screamed and fired up her horn, grabbing Twilight by the rim of her robe and hanging the other princess in the air by her belly.

“Are you okay, Twilight?!”

“I am going to murder Rainbow Dash…” She shed a few frost sheets when she wiggled for a while.

The pegasus in question screamed past them with wings folded back and a spinning flourish towards the ground.

“What are the odds that she’ll die because of that?” Twilight grumbled.

“Well, it worked!” The other giggled. “The Royal Guard’s airship went on after your airship. I just hope that Starlight can keep up.”

“She’ll be fine. She’s very powerful.” Twilight freed herself and adjusted her robes. “We should hurry though.”

“Princesses?” The two alicorns squealed and turned to see a confused cyan and salmon pegasus mare hovering next to them. She wore a cute blue vest with golden rimming and a cloud and sun broch. “Are you hurt? Did you fall from the airships? That was some dangerous flying!”

“Oh!” Twilight recognized the vest. “You’re with the Haybale weather team!”

“Yes!” The mare beamed. “Can I help?”

“Oh! Ah…” Twilight chuckled nervously at the pegasus. “We’re fine!”

Cadance chuckled too. “Don’t mind us.”

“But you’re princesses…” The pegasus frowned. “And you’re wearing some serious barding.”

The two stared at each other’s robes and shinny barding with their colors. Cadance also had her metallic crystal bow on her back, and her quiver in the place of a saddlebag. Both looked ready for a fight rather than a friendly visit to a small rural town. Not to mention Twilight’s sword and magical staff.

“Yes. But… Uh…” Cadance’s eyes shifted away from the mare.

“We’re here to inspect the… Bar.” Twilight quickly concluded while the three mares hovered next to each other.

“Really?” The pegasus perked up her ears. “That’s a thing princesses do”?

“Totally.” Cadance added with all the certainty she could muster and nodded and grinned as friendly as she could. “So, could you point us to ‘The Barn’?”

“Oh! It’s that big building with the white roof!” She pointed with a hoof at a large barn smack in the middle of the small town. There really was no other place it could be, but at least the pony believed them. They were new in town, after all.

“Thanks!” Twilight grinned. “Uh… Keep up the good work!”

“Thank you, princess! Do you need anything else?”

“No. We’re set.” Cadance grinned at her a little too much. “Come on, Twilight. Sunburst is waiting for us.”

They left the pony spouting another polite thing at them and waving while they flapped their wings slowly to lose altitude and moved towards the structure and the waiting pegasus by the entrance.

“Well, that was awkward.” Twilight grunted.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have come with our barding and weapons? They draw a lot of attention.”

“No, I think it was a good idea to bring them. We’re likely to meet some sort of opposition and it would be very unlikely that we could have walked in here without drawing attention anyways. I bet we’re going to end up fighting our way back to the airship and having them will be a huge help. Besides, Shining wouldn’t ever let us go without them.”

“You’re probably right.” Cadance acquiesced with a sigh and they kept silent until they landed next to the establishment’s large double red doors.

“What took you guys so long? Down is the easiest way!” Rainbow complained and pointed at the ground with a hoof.

“Calm down, Rainbow.” Twilight gestured patience at her. “These ponies can’t suspect we’re doing anything out of the ordinary here. If anypony asks, tell them you’re escorting us while we visit the Barn.”

“Lame.”

“Well, that is the story we’re going with!”

The Barn was a good name for an actual barn with red-painted wood walls and white roof that was converted into a bar and restaurant. It was a cozy place with a ‘farm atmosphere’ that would be right at home at Ponyville. It even had a few decorative hay bales and farming equipment here and there.

While they walked inside, it occurred to Twilight that Hay Bale was an important place as it produced much of the food that fed the south part of Equestria Heartland. It was a small town, but it supported large farms and a small army of farmers. She smiled at the thought of how important these ponies were.

Not to mention that Twilights curiosity was piqued to the extreme. Most of the things that decorated the place were different from the typical farming equipment shed usually see at Applejack`s farm. Her head moved in every which way and her eyes absorbed every single detail in distilled inquisitiveness.

Rainbow Dash tried to look intimidating with flared wings and a mean expression she was used to seeing bad ponies wear in the books she used to read.

Cadance wondered if she could buy something to eat that wasn’t related to apples.

Regardless, almost every single pair of eyes turned to them and Twilight smiled awkwardly when she noticed. Cadance waved for a second, a little more in control. “Don’t mind us. We’re just looking for a friend.”

Rainbow said nothing and simply tried to look menacing.

Thankfully it didn’t take long for ponies to go back to minding their own businesses after understanding the princesses were busy with something and wanted to be left on their own. And whatever Rainbow Dash was doing. Regardless, the princesses appreciated it: much nicer and easier to deal with the simpler folk than the nobility on their own towns and on Canterlot.

Thus, the trio walked calmly with muffled hoofsteps on the straw flooring as conversations resumed around them. The bartender, a fit white and red earth pony mare with a green handkerchief around her neck simply stared at them and nodded politely when they stared back. Soon, they found Sunburst, Miss Goodread and an elderly female griffon with green soft eyes and shades of gray in her fur and feathers and also wearing a pair of small reading glasses. The three sat at a corner table, near the back of the barn.

“Ah! Princesses! Rainbow Dash!” The unicorn stallion waved and happily beckoned them over to their table with some glasses of orange juice and prench fries. The two princesses didn’t take long to sit themselves with them when they noticed that Sunburst looked awkwardly at them. “Why are you dressed like that? I mean… I know the situation is weird, but this… Uh…”

Rainbow Dash sitting behind them and staring menacingly at the ponies nearby didn’t help the awkwardness.

“Shinning Armor insisted…” Cadance sat by the table next to Twilight who looked just as much annoyed as her sister in law was, but they stared each at the other and softened. “He was probably right that the likelihood of us being attacked by the Royal Guard or by local guards until the end of the day is pretty high.”

“Oh my…” The griffon lady seemed worried. “Are you in danger right now?”

“Not right now.” Twilight tried to calm her. “Our airship is leading our pursuers astray while we talk and will return for us later in the day. We have until then to talk.”

“Well then. I brought you something but left it at the cottage Mister Sunburst has rented for us. We need to talk first.” The griffon nodded professionally and kept a reserved tone in their corner of The Barn. “Princesses, Mister Sunburst and Miss Goodread have told me that you have uncovered evidence of one Emperor Grigor. Who supposedly ruled the Holy Griffon Empire before King Grover unified and griffon kingdoms into the present Griffon Kingdom. Is that right?”

“Correct!” Twilight grinned at the promise this meeting showed right off the gate.

“Unfortunately, I must tell you that he is believed to be a mythological figure.” She said and Twilight deflated. Cadance simply frowned and the others listened. “He and the Griffon Patriarchs were a myth King Grover had to fight in order to unify the griffons and their different cultures after he set out to form the unified kingdom. This isn’t typically discussed outside griffon historians as it is a very shameful moment of our history and he is simply not known by mainstream historians. Not only the fact that we had some very distasteful beliefs that needed to be suppressed, but also that there was a separatist movement that argued King Grover betrayed an ideal our race was supposed to follow. They used this Grigor as a set piece of what a griffon ought to be as a descendant of the Griffon Patriarchs.”

“But the letter…” Twilight whined.

“They told me about it.” Gerdie nodded softly. “Letters can be forged, princess. Even if they are very old. They are also a common form of fiction from that time. Writers would mention that they went someplace, or that they saw something that was a common idea. Or that they talked to someone important or even made up conversations between important people. Sometimes, they’d make up characters that traveled and talked to important creatures.”

“That is… Ugh!” The princess grumbled. “Why would somepony do this? Or… A griffon? Didn’t they care about historicity or facts? Where they just making things up?”

“Well, it wasn’t history, per se…” Goodread offered. “They were likely aware they were reading a story when they read those. Not real facts. That would explain why it is so hard to find anything about this Emperor Grigor.”

“I understand!” Twilight argued back. “Like our legends. Fictional stories that have a moral directive. Like the whole Hearthwarming Tale. But we believed that was true! So, maybe the griffons did something similar?”

“Hearthwarming is taught all over the world as the real story, Princess. This story of Emperor Grigor wasn’t, and today it is nigh unknown.” Gerdie shrugged. “They probably thought that this gave some sort of credence to their stories. Or maybe it was something usual and that writers simply liked doing. There are books about Princesses Celestia and Luna that follow this idea. Today, griffons wouldn’t even like these stories, because we put our very real and savage past behind us. Even if it wasn’t as bad as anything Grigor might have done, he would still be a reminder of a blackened past we hate. Our reality does inform our tales and myths, after all.”

“No. No, that can’t be right.” Cadance shook her head. “The Changeling Queen claimed to have lived as his contemporary. And Princess Celestia is upset we are delving into this whole story. For a different reason, but she supposedly interacted with him too.”

“Yes!” Twilight’s ears perked up. “Not to mention that Discord didn’t exactly say it, but he confirmed that something happened at his time. And, also, Princess Luna confirmed that they helped the griffons change history!”

Those words had a strange effect on the old griffon lady. She frowned and the life seemed to drain from her eyes. Her paws trembled a little as she grabbed the side of the table. “My goodness… Princesses, are you sure?”

They stared at each other before Twilight nodded at the griffon and worried for her. “Miss Gerdie… Are you feeling unwell?”

Sunburst served her a glass of orange juice from the bottle in their table and she took a sip, then smiled thankfully. “If the story about Emperor Grigor is true. Just to be sure. What did the Changeling Queen tell you about him?”

“That he was a real jerk?” Cadance offered with some curiosity. “And that he united the small griffon kingdoms.”

“She told us that some of the griffons hated him, and they asked Princess Celestia for help. Also, about this speaking magic of the griffons. She spoke of the whole thing as though it was very real.”

“Hum…” The little griffon lady hesitated quietly thumping her fingers on the border of the table. “We can’t talk about this here. If Emperor Grigor was real… Well… Hum… There are some very scary things you should know.”

“It’s alright, Miss Gerdie.” Cadance reassured her and touched her paw with a hoof, along with a friendly smile. “I think we’ve been dealing with scary things ever since we set out on our little adventure.”

“Still…” The griffon didn’t seem very convinced. “I’d prefer if we talked about it in private, and I must show you what I brought. If your letter is real, then the ones I brought might be too. And worse… The whole myth, not only the existence of Emperor Grigor.”

The ponies exchanged looks before Sunburst rose his hoof. “Okay. I rented a small house for a couple of days with the excuse that I was here researching the soil. It should give us the privacy we need. It`s detached from the town, but close enough and Miss Gerdie left her things there.”

***

A flash and a bang announced Discord’s arrival. It was a snowfield with barely a distinctive characteristic in all directions, but the visibility was awful anyways. A strong blizzard castigated the place and everywhere the only colors were shades of white sounding as though the world was about to end in the roaring wind. He blinked and magicked his map into existence, staring at it with some confusion while it flayed in his hands.

“Huh… This map seems to be somewhat inaccurate.” He shrugged. “Oh well…

He teleported again, but didn`t seem to have moved more than a few meters. And again, with similar results. After a few attempts he still found himself in a similar place. In fact, he couldn’t see much of a difference, but that could be due to the terrain being pretty much the same and surrounded by the same snowstorm.

He turned around. “What?”

He could see the spot where his feet had disturbed the snow a few paces behind. “This is unexpected.”

He focused on his own magic and forced his way through space again several times only to end up in the same place he was before. Finally, he put his hands on his hip and frowned at no one in particular. “What is going on?”

With a renewed effort he inhaled deeply, clenched his fists and strained his magic, disappearing in a flash with a bang and reappearing in the same place he already was. He crossed his arms. “Okay. Something is most definitively not right here!”

After grumbling and frowning some more, he put his hand on his face and sighed. A little calmer, his eyes squinted, and his nostrils flared while he sniffed the air. Chaos was weird in that place. The problem wasn’t his ability to teleport but magic in the surrounding region. For some reason he was failing to ‘connect’ with it in order to teleport away. He taped his chin… Celestia did mention Luna was having some trouble peering into their dreams. Maybe those things were related?

“Naughty griffons have been doing something weird…” The question was how they were even doing it. Maybe this whole griffon magic thing was real, but that didn’t really surprise him. Everything was magical in the world. The question was understanding it. Though figuring out how to circumvent it first was more important right at the moment. And he had no idea how to do it.

“Well, this is embarrassing.” He snapped his fingers a few times with colorful sparks, testing his ability to perform magic and it seemed to work, he simply couldn’t teleport and confirmed the problem was the area, not him.

He calmed himself some more and listened. His ears moved to one side and the other. Being around ponies he was used to listening to some sort of chiming melody when magic was active in the area, but this time he heard a voice. A ghostly and penetrating, disconcerting whisper that stung his ears and rose every hair in his back. It quite literally made him wobble like gelatin.

The wind bit deeper and colder and he wrapped himself in his arms (several loops). “Oooooh boy…”

In an instant it was over, and the normal cold wind of the blizzard remained.

It took him a few seconds to reorient himself and close his jaw back in place. Celestia had once cast a spell over the Elements of Harmony to keep him from messing with them and it was one of the uncanniest things he had ever felt in present times. This thing he had just experienced came to a close second.

Shaking the weirdness out of him, he focused again. He felt the magic whirling past him in a fast-moving mist of raw magical energy forged into a teleportation disruption spell that literally made decoupling space and time impossible. It was exceptionally complex in nature and it sparked with power like lightning crisscrossing an endless cloud.

And there was that whisper. Like a breeze hidden under the howl of the wind, like the citric aftertaste that follows a cupful of Solar Sangreal from the Royal Winery. Eerily echoing the words that gave form to the spell in a language completely alien to Discord.

It was disconcerting, but at least he knew what it was. Unfortunately, he was no closer than he was before to probing into the spell and allow himself through.

He grumbled again. He really didn’t want to walk, or something, but it seemed as though he didn’t have a choice. So, his shoulders slumped, and he sighed profoundly with a groan and set on to walk.

The chilly wind bothered him somewhat with its howling. It reminded him of some of the monsters that used to live in the old world. Well, timberwolves were known to howl too and they still existed. He supposed the problem really was boredom. But he kept from focusing on the spell that surrounded him. It made him uncomfortable.

The problem was that he wasn’t very used to walking and it was a bit of a bore. Or a lot, really. He couldn’t understand how normal creatures simply walked! Even with the blizzard, all that featureless white all around him was draining him of his will to simply move a step at a time.

It then took him some time, but he realized something important. His boredom was part of the spell that permeated the area. It was very subtle and masterfully woven into the spell. Now that was a defensive spell Discord could respect. He had better reevaluate his opinions on these griffons. They were clearly more than brutes, he realized, the more he thought about them. And this one, capable of casting such a spell… Discord wanted to meet them.

That was what the ponies called ‘strategic level spell’ and they required unreasonable focus and power, not to mention knowledge of the workings of the Chaos in Magic. The only ponies Discord knew that could do something of the sort by themselves would be Celestia, Luna and Cadance. Queen Chrysalis, too. Twilight and her friends if they had the time and the Elements of Harmony. Or the Crystal Heart.

Thinking of that dampened his excitement. Memories from long ago surfaced and the expressions of the ponies he had hurt around those things floated before him. Would he ever rid himself of that shame? He doubted.

He shouldn’t allow that to drag him down, though. He did his best. He changed. He was helping now. Celestia was happy with him. The ponies liked him, and he had an opportunity to help deal with the big bad problem of the hour.

Finally, he giggled with a happy expression, more and more interested in meeting these griffons. That put an extra giddiness in his walk and silenced the spell that surrounded him.

His mind didn’t take long before it began to wander as he walked, though. He thought of Twilight and Cadance and their quest. He hoped they wouldn’t get themselves hurt in the process. Not only because of the griffons, but because of the things they were likely to discover.

Things were kind of crazy back when.

Not that things weren’t always crazy in this world of theirs… But they were crazy in a bad way.

Regardless, he walked and after a few hours of hiking in the snow he was glad his magic at least still worked to keep him from sinking in the cold white, and also fortunately, the storm subsided. He could even see a tree line marking the boundaries of a forest and, to the other side, the gentle slope of a snow covered mountain. Very few vegetation besides the trees, but Celestia’s sun still shined above in-between the clouds. He stopped for a second and let its warm light caress his face.

Ponies didn`t pay that thing enough respect. They didn’t understand it and the one that did preferred that it remained just a big ball of fire in the sky.

His eyes closed softly. It was only a few seconds when he noticed another living thing approaching. It was a young griffon with a dark-gray head and light-gray body covered in a light metallic armor staring dumbly at Discord as he came out of the tree line. He had one of those muskets on his back, with an added pointy thing under its… Point. Attached to the woodwork of the weapon. His blue eyes conveyed his shock and his raised forepaw made it almost comical.

“The Lord of Chaos!” He blurted not long before another griffon approached staring at him and then at Discord.

The other was bigger and older, wearing a similar armored vest, but his was heavier and adorned with animal pelts and feathers. On his back he had a big sword and a bow with a richly adorned quiver filled with green feathered arrows. Discord hadn’t seen one such weapon in a long time. Both griffons were very similar-looking, except for the elder’s eyes that were steel-gray and somehow seemed… Less naïve. Discord had trouble explaining to himself the feeling those eyes conveyed other than they simply seemed to have seen much more.

Finally, there was also a little griffon child, no more than six years old, all steely gray with blue eyes and wearing a light gray coat over her tiny form. She also carried on her back a pair of slain white bunnies with red marks where the arrows had fatally wounded them, tied with a leather strap around her neck. She stared at him with huge and curious eyes while she and the other young let the other take the lead, approaching Discord respectfully until he nodded and spoke. “Lord of Chaos.”

“Uh. Hello.” It was awkward. Discord wasn’t used to this sort of treatment, and not only that, but they showed their respect very differently from what the ponies usually did. And that is not even considering he had no idea why these griffons even would show him respect at all. Most ponies simply acknowledged he had been given a title, he was powerful, but they treated him as much as an equal as they did to any other pony that didn’t have both wings and horn.

That said, he waved at the trio of griffons. Where they hunters, he wondered.

“Is there any way we can be of assistance?” The older one asked, taking the front. While the younger one resigned to sitting on the snow and watching, the little one already walked around him.

Before Discord replied to the older griffon, the child spoke cheerfully to him, but he didn’t understand what she said. It took Discord more time than he’d like to admit noticing that the older griffons spoke to him in Common Equestrian despite Celestia having told him that they spoke a different language in that region. He figured they imagined he wouldn’t understand their language.

Regardless, the little one either didn’t know the Common Equestrian or expected ‘The Lord of Chaos’ to know her language. He rose a finger and then snapped his fingers materializing a small golden badge with an upwards pointing arrow he then pinned to his chest.

The small one giggled at him and he spoke after clearing his throat. “So… Can you understand me?”

Both males stared at him inquisitively but the small one approached further and giggled again, speaking in her own language he now understood. “Yes!”

Discord feared that the older griffon would chastise the cub for approaching without permission, or something of the sort, but instead he simply let her stand in front of him. “Did you come here to see The Lion? Everyone wanted to see him!”

He rested his hands on his knees and lowered himself in front of the small griffon. “Why, yes. I would like to meet with him. Do you know where he is?”

“He’s staying in our town!” She chirped excitedly! “Brokenhorn! He’s staying in our Jarl’s mansion!”

“Hum. What is a ‘Jarl’?”

“It roughly translates to ‘count’. And is it’s equivalent to this title in Equestria Heartland.” The young male said helpfully while the older simply let them talk.

For some reason Discord imagined the older griffon would be stricter, but he seemed to be fine with his younger talking in his place. It’s probably because the griffon seemed so intimidating at first glance. Interesting.

“Ah. I see. Though… I get the feeling that I’m disrupting something.”

Then the older griffon finally spoke, calmly. “An archlich has been spotted nearby and seems to be causing a number of monsters to wander off from the Frozen North. My liege has come to slay the creature and we set out to track it.”

“Archlich, huh?” Discord pulled at his beard. Maybe it is the cause for the weird magic in the area. Though, liches weren’t typically that powerful. “Maybe I can help! And also, it would get me to meet The Lion! I need to talk to him!”

“I’m sure Lord Gilad would meet you anytime, Lord of Chaos.” The old griffon added.

“Great! So… Uh… Do you always hunt for undead monsters with your daughter?” Discord’s eyebrow rose inquisitively.

“I’m not scared of some old dead thing!” She frowned and pouted.

The old griffon shrugged. “We were not going to fight it. We were tasked with tracking the creature. And we are on our way back. We’ll take you to Brokenhorn if you so desire.”

“Yes. That would be nice. I take you didn’t find it?”

“We didn’t.” The griffon shook his head. “These things typically don’t move around much, but this one is wandering quite a lot. Maybe it’s not exactly an archlich but something that isn’t undead. We’ll know when we find it. But for now, we’ll take you to the town, if that is acceptable.”

“That would be great!” Discord grinned at the griffons. At least things were going in the right direction, even if not really in the way he expected.

***

The prolonged breakfast went well after Chrysalis had apologized to them and Luna didn’t seem to have taken her comment with any weight. They actually talked frivolously without a hint of the weight of the situation they found themselves in with the whole mess that Cadance and Twilight were creating, or the one Chrysalis had conjured up with her Paraetorians.

Celestia knew very well that Luna and Chrysalis would find a good cornerstone for a friendship with each other. She just didn’t expect the two to already have connected to the point they would fight and them make up right back up. She wondered if either realized that. She knew that Luna’s patience and their previous conversations about how Chrysalis would behave must have been helpful, but the current crisis brought all of them together faster than she expected.

Or rather current crises… She thought with her ears pulled back for a second.

If only Twilight and Cadance were with them. She sighed, looking at nothing in particular while the two mares next to her talked about something related to changelings and mint-flavored pastries.

She was happy the two struck out a nice conversation while they enjoyed their breakfast, but she felt somewhat left by the wayside and wished Chocolate Velvet was there. Whatever kept him and Thorax from the breakfast for so long, anyways?

She didn’t exactly worry, but she had the feeling that they were up to something, and maybe she was a bit on edge with the current situation, but she’d prefer if they didn’t do anything they might regret later.

Almost as if on cue one of the service doors opened slightly and a big brown alicorn pony sneaked in. Maybe sneaked wasn’t the best word to describe him tiphoofing his way towards the stage where a group of musician ponies played something in the background, while hiding behind a large fan of colorful feathers some filly in the Bordello probably used for her dancing presentations.

It wasn’t even big enough to hide him!

Chrysalis and Luna ceased their conversation with the first wondering aloud. “What is he doing?”

“I think he wants to ask for a song.” Luna stared.

“But why is he trying to hide with the brightest and most attention-grabbing accessory he could find?” The queen asked again.

“He’s being silly.” Celestia rested her jaw on her hoof with her knee on the table, watching with mild amusement and a soft smile while the big brown alicorn wriggled by the wall towards his goal.

He spoke as inconspicuously as someone in his position could to one of the musicians, a short aqua-marine crystal pony mare with a bright pink mane that played a guitar and listened curiously. They had a hushed and short conversation, and then he wriggled all the way back to the same door he had entered from.

“They are going to do something stupid, aren’t they?” The queen frowned as though she was already tired of their antics that hadn’t even started yet.

“Be patient, Chrysalis.” Celestia smiled at the queen and she relented a bit. “Whatever they are planning, it is certainly meant as a heartfelt gesture.”

“You must be very easy to please, Celestia.” Chrysalis spat back. “In fact, I think that you are.”

“I know them, Chrysalis. They wouldn’t do something to hurt us, and if it happened, it would certainly be unintentional.”

The queen became thoughtful. It seemed that her simple reasoning gave her something to think about and had potentially saved them some embarrassment in the following moments. Luna simply stared at the door with her ears perked up at attention.

It didn’t take long before Chocolate Velvet appeared at the main door, all spruced up with a tight dark-blue outfit and a bordeaux tie, like a gentlestallion. His mane and tail were impeccable, and he wore the two-piece golden horn band she had ordered for him. He even had the attention to brush his coat and shine it properly. He didn’t wear the mane fishnet that she liked, though.

Regardless, he trotted up to their table with a huge smile and cleared his throat. She had to contain a giggle.

“My ladies, but especially Queen Chrysalis… Me and King Thorax have decided that something special was in order to celebrate!”

“I will skewer him with a fork if he shames me.” Chrysalis threatened half-heartedly.

Chocolate stopped for a second and stared at her. Once again Celestia felt the urge to contain her giggling before he spoke again, resuming his excitement. “I can guarantee you that you are going to be flattered by a special song from my original world. A song that has delivered joy to many broken hearts and united couples in eternal love without count!”

He then turned with his smile to the ensemble of musician ponies, cueing them to start a cheery melody for a few seconds and rushed to the door while a pair of crystal pony maids of the Bordello opened the double main doors and Thorax jumped inside flaring his wings and smiling while he wore a black coat with a stiped white and black shirt underneath.

Chocolate Velvet was quite proud. It was the best possible impersonation of a certain singer he could think of.

They stood side to side and danced stepping in rhythm with the song, swaying from one side to the other doing their best performance of the song Thorax’s new knight-prince-friend had taught him.

He was even glad Chocolate joined him. They had little time to rehearse but the more Chocolate had told him about the song, the more he was convinced of its magical powers to woo the mares. And best of all, it seemed to be working! Chrysalis couldn’t keep a small smile from replacing her perpetual frown while she listened to him sing along and dance with his alicorn friend to the simple, yet cheery melody and lyrics that spoke of their mutual understanding of the rules of love, and promised commitment and endless love and comprehension.

Next to her Celestia softly swayed from one side to the other, listening with a cute enamored smile, but Luna held a passive expression on the brink of bursting with laugher while Chocolate shamelessly dragged Thorax into singing to them and simultaneously introduced Equestria to the song his people used to prank each other.

Well, she liked the song too, which was a good thing because it was certain to be stuck in her head for days to come.

***

The walk through the small town let Twilight think in silence for a while and with each step a tense uneasiness grew in the back of her mind. She hadn’t liked at all Miss Gerdie’s reaction to learning that this Grigor guy might’ve been real and for some reason that unnerved Twilight more than learning the things Chrysalis had told her. Maybe they just seemed more real now?

A fleeting exchange of stares with Cadance told her that her sister-in-law definitively felt the same and that made Twilight even more nervous. There had to be something really bad in this whole affair for this nice old griffon lady to feel so upset at the idea that Emperor Grigor was real.

Like… Come on. Even if The Lion is dabbling in bad things related to him, he’s been dead for millennia.

Meanwhile Rainbow Dash flew overhead with a way too serious expression, looking every which way. Twilight knew that her pegasus instincts would alert her to anything out of the ordinary, and at least an ambush or anything of the sort would be very unlikely.

Well, it was already unlikely in the place they were, but anyways. This tension was getting to her head.

It was a brisk and silent walk through the small town to a secluded lodge by the fringe of the town, near the closest corn fields. Rustic wood walls, fixed glass windows and a single chimney in a thatch roof which clear color contrasted with the dark water-besmirched wood. It was old and looked like it hadn’t received much in the sense of maintenance in the outside, but it looked sturdy enough. They took little time to enter and Rainbow Dash quickly locked the door behind them. It seemed everypony had been infected by the griffon’s insecurity and the pegasus remained by the door, looking out the window. At least she was taking the bodyguard thing seriously.

Inside the lodge seemed to be in a much better state, with a nice and comfy siting room. The floor and walls gave a rustic atmosphere with its dark-gray wood planks and the thatch roof above. It had a simple dining table, a sofa, a chair, an empty stand and a couple of doors. A single window let in the day light and a fireplace by the chair was clean and flanked by a neatly stack of firewood. The floor had a simple brown rug, but they didn’t take long admiring the interior design of the small house.

It wasn’t a very ‘pony’ little house, but it was usable by a group of ponies and griffon looking to have a conversation in secrecy. It was probably used by whoever would keep watch over the fields by night. Or something… It made sense in Twilight’s head.

Miss Gerdie drew their attention sitting at the table when she produced a pair of briefcases from under the furniture, one large and the other not so much. She laid the things on the table and as soon as all had settled, she opened one and the other, then she turned both to them.

Twilight’s eyes almost bulged out of her head so wide she opened them while Cadance let out a very soft but impressed ‘wow’. Sunburst adjusted his glasses, staring with his jaw hanging and Miss Goodread’s blinked several times before she believed what she was seeing. Rainbow Dash stared from afar and failed to see what was so impressive.

“Well…” The griffon lady grinned proudly, forgetting the graveness of the situation. “I’m glad you appreciate it!”

The smaller one contained a letter, similar to Emperor Grigor’s letter, also preserved in crystal and apparently of the same material. The other case however, held a large rectangular and dark gray stone tablet with rounded edges and rustic wedge-shaped drawings of griffons, buildings and mountains framed by similar symbols in sequence, like writing all around its edges. The deep grooves made for shapes that survived time even if the tablet’s face seemed to be slowly smoothing itself out. Under the sunlight the material shone softly, and it allowed for clear identification of its markings, despite the damage time had caused.

A pony like Maud Pie might have been able to correctly identify the substance, but to the princesses and Sunburst it seemed to be a slab of diorite.

The thing exuded magic too. A strange magic, different from the harmonious pony magic or the pungent changeling magic the princesses and pegasus felt from the old scroll in the Changeling Rock. It was aggressive and it intimidated them for an instant before they remembered they were staring at a lifeless block of stone. It brought images of the sprawling deserts of eastern Griffonia. Twilight could practically taste the dry sand.

“These belong to the personal collection of the curator for the Grand Museum of Griffon History in Thunderpeak. I only managed to acquire them because I dropped a few names, explained the situation, and he is also my dear dad.” Gerdie’s grin grew even bigger. “The letter was directed at Emperor Grigor, but a certain detail has caused us to identify it as fictional, or simply false. The stone tablet is a fragment supposedly recovered from a lost city of great importance in the myth of Emperor Grigor.”

“This should be preserved with time magic! It can’t be in somepony’s private collection!” Twilight squawked a bit too loudly, gawking over the tablet. Not that she didn’t care for the letter, but that tablet was outstandingly special! “It belongs in a museum!”

Cadance agreed wholeheartedly, but before she could voice her opinion both princesses realized that these artifacts could never have been put in a museum. They were not supposed to exist. Not any more than their letter or the story Chrysalis had told them. She instead stared back at the griffon with her hooves on the table. “How did these reach your father? Our letter I found inside a vault for dangerous magical items!”

“Our family has a very peculiar tradition, Princess.” Showing them the things and talking about them seemed to make the griffon calmer. Even proud. “My great-great-grandparents claimed that we are the descendants of the Imperial Loremasters.”

“Oooh. Fancy title.” Sunburst grinned too.

“How come your family isn’t cool like that, Twilight?” Rainbow joked with a giggle, aggravating the princess and Cadance rolled her eyes with a smile and a dismissive huff that caused Twilight to giggle too.

“At least you both know your own family.”

“Indeed, it is fancy.” The griffon granted. “And if the whole story of Emperor Grigor is truer than we presently believe, I am inclined to credit them because if these are real, then they truly are something amazing! Now, do you happen to know something of griffons in pony lands at the time?”

“Yes!” Twilight and Cadance jumped excitedly.

The second let the first proceed. “Our letter from the emperor to King Sombra mentioned that a griffon army had been dispatched to Equestria because he thought that the sun going out of control was an act of war on the part of Equestria!”

She rubbed her chin for a second. “Under the command of one Blacktallon! Odd… Now that I think of it, it is not a griffon name.”

Cadance nodded silently and the griffon stared at them for an instant with a grin. “That is because his name was actually ‘Gorham Blacktallon’. It is very typical, even today, for griffons to take epithets like that, as in Chancelor Gail Silkfeathers or Lord Gilad Ironfeathers. Most importantly, the name checks out with the letter that I have.”

She raised a clawed finger professorially. “Even more important! We believed the letter to be nonhistorical because of the lack of evidence of a griffon invasion in Equestria’s mainland. After all, no griffon kingdom of the time would have the numbers to launch an overseas invasion. But, considering Emperor Grigor did exist and did form his empire…”

The two princesses gasped, and the griffon went on, delighted at their reaction. “You see, what I have here is a letter written by Gorham Blacktallon to Emperor Grigor during the occupation of Everfree, and it mentions Celestia.”

The two gasped again. Only louder.

***

When they were done with their song and dance both stallions bowed to their audience, particularly to their mares. The restaurant applauded excitedly, patrons, workers and the musicians too, yet in a dignified way and the three mares clapped their hooves together with happy grins.

When the two finally sat next to them, Celestia held Velvet’s hooves and her eyes sparkled with childish glee. “I loved this! You should have sung it to us sooner!”

He put a hoof on his puffed-up chest. “I wanted to save it for a special moment. I knew you would prefer to share it with our friends rather than selfishly keep it for ourselves. I figured Thorax could use the help.”

“More important than our marriage?” She grinned mischievously but he didn’t let that hamper him.

“Ah, our marriage was more special.”

“Don’t push your luck, Casanova…” Luna grinned mischievously at him too. “Not to mention that if I remember correctly, you were too speechless to sing in our honeymoon.”

“Well, I am just glad you both liked it!” He declared with more of his typical excitement.

On the other side of the table Chrysalis and Thorax held their hooves together and she stared at him with big dreamy eyes that almost scared them. Thorax, at least seemed to take it seriously with the way she talked. “Do you mean it? Everything?”

He stared back at her with the most serious and honest-to-heart expression the ponies could imagine in a changeling face, holding her hooves between his like he was afraid she might slip away. “Yes! I do!”

Celestia giggled looking back at Chocolate and her sister. “It worked! Great job, Velvet!”

While he chuckled rather childishly and rubbed the back of his neck, and Luna hoofed at his shoulder with a grin, one of the crystal pony maids approached their side of the table with a concerned expression, not stopping until she was close to the sun princess and spoke reservedly. Ponies never seemed to do this when the news were good.

“Princess. I am terribly sorry to disturb your highnesses, but Lieutenant Crucible Wings requests to see you immediately. Says it is urgent!”

“I will speak to him.” She told the mare and then turned to her sister and consort. “You stay here with those two.”

“Don’t worry, Celestia…” The queen looked back and rolled her eyes. “I am not going to jump on Thorax in the middle of the restaurant.”

The conversation resumed after Celestia giggled and left the restaurant to talk with her lieutenant and Luna scooted over closer to Chocolate with a smile full of ulterior motives and they talked for a while, leaving the queen and king to themselves. It didn’t take long, though and the crystal pony mare returned looking for the other princess and their consort.

Chrysalis and Thorax didn’t care, but the two retreated outside to the corridor where Celestia stood next to Crucible Wings and she didn’t look very happy. A couple of ponies came walking down the corridor, but once they saw the princesses and that their conversations seemed to be serious, they turned back.

Celestia spoke in a normal, but restrained voice for the place they were in. “A group of griffons assaulted Baltimare’s freight teleporter and hijacked the facility to teleport in an airship from an unlicensed teleporter. They injured the staff and left with their airship soon after Flying Snake left with his team and Ponyville’s militia.”

Luna choked on her words. Her mouth moved a few times before she managed to form a coherent sentence. “This is outrageous! Baltimare! This can’t be a coincidence! They are obviously trying to get involved in Twilight and Cadance’s quest! This alone could cost The Lion his appointment as a Majesty. They are interfering with… Oh my goodness. Should anyone even know enough to get involved?”

“It seems secrets grow harder to keep by the day in Equestria…” The older Sister kept calm despite Luna’s outburst. Then she frowned her ‘I’m deathly worried frown’ “Luna, I fear The Lion may be behind this.”

Chocolate Velvet frowned as the seriousness of the situation became obvious. “There was no way that you going to Ponyville, and that whole racket would remain secret for long, Celestia. But why do you suspect the lion?”

“Yes. It seems it was too much to ask.” She nodded, but his words gave her pause. “I have no evidence The Lion is involved. But I suspect he is. Especially with The Lion’s situation as the future king and things that Twilight and Cadance are bound to learn if they are not stopped. Especially with things he may already know, if his claim about his magic is real. Griffons probably ran to tell him as soon as their pony friends noticed something seemed odd. Ponyville’s situation distracted us. Now Twilight and Cadance are on the run and I don’t know how much he knows, but any amount is too much in the present situation.”

“The airship…” Crucible spoke. “The Locals said it was nothing like anything they’d ever seen. Entirely closed hull, fully metallic and heavily armored. Certainly not a pony design.”

“Yes… Thank you, Crucible.” Celestia nodded. “That helps… Not many nations are capable of building airships on their own and they typically use pony-built airships or convert seafaring vessels. Griffonia could build it, but not in secret, and not with the damage the schism has done to its economy. It doesn’t sound like the sort of airship that cargo haulage companies would acquire either.”

“We have an airship closely chasing Princess Twilight’s as we speak.” Crucible added. “A Royal Guard frigate from the Number 2 Canterlotian Garrison. Still a way from the ambush location near Baltimare. Most important, the griffon airship didn’t chase our mercenary friend. It left in an interception course towards Princess Twilight’s airship, and it’s flying fast. I suppose that adds to your highness’ concerns.”

Celestia sighed. “I hope I am wrong, though.”

“Where exactly is Twilight’s airship?” Luna asked.

“It’s flying around the region of Haybale, trying to lose the pursuing ship without much luck for hours.”

Hearing that, Celestia frowned and shook her head, then staring at them with her ears pulled back. “No. That doesn’t sound right. Twilight’s airship is much faster than any Royal Guard frigate and if she wanted to escape, she would simply fly away, or they would be boarded already. She is in the city, not the airship and they are wasting their time chasing a decoy they can’t seem to board already!”

“Who is the buffoon commanding the frigate?” Luna’s voice and pulled back ears betrayed her irritation.

The Sisters were getting angry. Someone was going to regret it soon and Chocolate decided it was best to remain quiet for now.

“It is one…” Crucible struggled with his memory for a while. “Tango. Frigate Captain Wild Tango.”

“I don’t recognize the name.” Celestia stared at Luna inquisitively, now with her ears perked up.

“You don’t know him because he is an idiot.” Luna looked like she had just eaten something spoiled. “He is one of those jerks that joined the Guard because they thought it would make them more attractive to the mares. He is in a never-ending power trip where he thinks that his position makes him the next King Sombra… And that mares find that attractive.”

Celestia took note of Luna’s fuming glare and flared wings. “Have you recently met him in a dream, or something?”

“I wish it had been a dream.” Luna fumed some more. “A couple of years ago, in the Grand Galloping Gala he approached me and assumed that a mare of my standing would appreciate unsolicited touching and dirty-talking! That is why he is commanding a frigate from a garrison in the middle of nowhere! He is lucky he is not there merely to clean the latrines! He must have managed to save some of his reputation after I came short of having him expelled from the Guard.”

To say that Luna was angry was an understatement as far as Chocolate had come to know The Sisters. “Do you want me to punch him?”

“Please do!” She raised her muzzle with a deep offended scowl. “It would greatly please me!”

Try as she might, given the seriousness of the situation, Celestia just couldn’t keep from giggling before she recovered control of her herself and Luna returned to a calmer temper.

“We must deal with these griffons!” The blue one concluded. “We should depart immediately, Celestia.”

“No.” The other shook her head. “We’re trying to bridge a gap between us. We can’t get officially involved with whatever they are trying to do. Especially if Twilight and Cadance eventually manage to show the public some of the things they are looking for.”

Luna’s eyebrow rose. “I do believe that deploying an airship through violent hijacking of a teleporter facility could be considered an act of war…”

“I don’t know what is going on in Gilad’s head, Luna… But if we are not careful with our response, we risk escalation.” Celestia’s head shook softly. “He doesn’t know we just sent Discord to talk to him and if we act too brashly, he’ll assume that Discord is a decoy and part of an aggressive reaction to his own action. Not to mention the problems we are facing with the money laundering involving Ponyville’s militia, Chrysalis’ children and Twilight and Cadance on the loose. The timing couldn’t have been worse.”

Luna’s hoof rubbed her chin and she stared thoughtfully. “Hum… I suppose that is why you are ruling Equestria and I am not… Fine. What is your plan, then?”

In a display of something that wasn’t a very common sight, Celestia sighed and her ears fell to the sides of her head when she looked at Chocolate Velvet. She didn’t have to say a word. He knew what she was going to ask and memories of Ponyville flooded his head.

He didn’t have to say a word either. He didn’t even need to know if she knew about the letter and he could see the apprehension in her posture. The concerned eyes. The slightly sagging wings. The hanging ears. He knew what she was going to ask, and he knew she feared asking it.

Maybe it was a silly thing, but she knew it was important to him. Well, he knew what was more important to him. “What do you need me to do, Celestia?”

She took a step towards him lifting her wings just a bit, still with that look in her eyes. “We need to talk. Alone. There are a few secrets you must be made privy to for this to work.”

“So, uh…” Crucible was a little confused and nodded to the door. “I should go?”

“For now, yes.” Luna joined them, following after Celestia’s lead, even if she didn’t entirely know where it went. “Tell Chrysalis and Thorax that we will rejoin them soon.”

“We must act quickly this time.” Celestia told the armor-clad pony. “While Chocolate is away on his mission, Luna and I will gain him some time ‘investigating’ the situation in Baltimare. Chrysalis is to remain here with Thorax and her Praetorians. Ask her nicely, she is in a good mood. It is also of the utmost importance that Discord’s mission isn’t disturbed, therefore The Lion must think that Chocolate Velvet will be going to Haybale seeking to apprehend Twilight and Cadance and that we still haven’t reacted to his airship.”

Celestia thought for a second, frowning softly. “Relay to all Royal Guard outposts that the griffon airship is not to be disturbed for now unless they pose a threat.”

Luna nodded her agreement and, finally Celestia took a second before she spoke again to the pegasus. “There are some complicated things we must do and talk about. Give us a couple of hours and then look for us in our quarters. You will go with us to Baltimare after Chocolate has departed.”

There was only one thing one could answer when Celestia spoke to you that way. “Yes, your highness.”

The Past Set in Parchment and Stone

Discord never knew that he could fly so fast. Obviously, he could in retrospect, but the thing was that he rarely had to actually fly anywhere until his ability to teleport was cut short. Not to mention that his magic, in short terms cheated its way around the typical rules that applied to spells used by most creatures. It really shouldn’t have surprised him so much that he could keep up.

In all honesty he was relieved he could keep up with them because he wouldn’t be able to bear the shame of the great ‘Lord of Chaos’ being forced to walk and then forcing his griffon company to walk too.

The two males flew fast and a fair bit above the treetops and to his sides. The little one rode on her brother’s back and seemed to enjoy it quite a lot, holding on to his clothing and their father now carried the bunnies they hunted. Discord would have liked to help, but he had the feeling that they wouldn’t accept it, anyway.

It was a bit of a journey, though hardly a boring one. The mountains not only made for diverse and beautiful scenery, but it was different from the sprawling plains of Equestria Heartland. The endless snow didn’t seem so overbearing after the blizzard had cleared, and he could see the area from above. Beyond the sea of white, the snow gave way to dark soil and green grass, crisscrossed by fast and shallow streams of clear water, all framed by the seemingly ubiquitous mountains in the distance, under the overcast sky whose clouds the persistent sun managed to pierce here and there.

It was a different beauty from the typical verdant and bountiful pony lands, and even of the Crystal Empire and Yakyakstan, but it was a beauty of its own and it certainly was also bountiful on its own way, else Discord couldn’t imagine how the griffons would be able to thrive. And so close to the Frozen North, without the Crystal Heart’s magic to protect them. These griffons had said it: monsters came south from it. He had to wonder why is it that they would prefer to live alone, under these conditions.

He would have a lot of time to figure this out as the travel to Brokenhorn ought to take a while and he’d have a lot of thinking time since these griffons didn’t seem particularly chatty while they flew. And then he missed his friends… Ponies had no problem chatting while they traveled, but the conclusion he had reached about these griffons is that they were like that because they lived a difficult and dangerous life. They were rugged. It made sense.

***

The Royal Guard air frigate under the command of Frigate Captain Wild Tango resolutely kept its chase after the Princess’ airship in the sky above and around the uncultivated lands near the small town of Haybale. Insistently on a repetitive dance, just barely lining for a shot, being outmaneuvered, left behind and led on a chase only to come just short of hitting them with the fifth consecutive shot of their grappling ballistae.

It came to the point Royal Guards onboard began questioning the sanity of their captain. He still stood on his hind legs, holding on to the rope tied to the main mast while the ship turned, in another futile attempt to outmaneuver the princess’ airship.

Just. A little. More!

“Keep her steady! We’ll catch’em yet!” His maniacal grin didn’t do wonders to their mood either.

One of his pegasus crewponies, particularly his Second in Command, a light gray and light blue big specimen of a pegasus walked to him with a less than professional expression of sheer frustration and firm steps despite the slight banking while the airship maneuvered. “Captain, we’ve been chasing them for hours.”

“Yes! We are Royal Guards! We shall succeed!”

Pure silent anger flashed on the pegasus’ gray eyes. His stoic voice let no indication of such a thing, though. “Captain… If the princesses were on the airship, they wouldn’t keep flying around as though they wanted us to chase then and not look for the princesses in the town.”

“What are you saying?” Wild Tango stared at him with big surprised eyes. “That they are in the city and not in the airship?”
“Yes!” The pegasus guard nodded with a hopeful grin.

“That’s good thinking commander! But that is what they want you to think! In all naval combat… Aerial combat… In all aerial naval combat, one must keep several steps ahead of the opponent!” He tapped his helmeted head twice. “Pay attention and you’ll soon have your own sloop to command!”

Before the pony could respond a golden flash drew all attentions to the mast of the ship. It was Prince-Consort Chocolate Velvet wearing his golden Royal Guard barding complete with his commanding rank insignia on the chest, Equestria’s Sun and Moon combined. His brown mane turned to a long decorative crest thanks to his helmet and his tail bundled in a similar fashion. On his back he carried a longsword and, on his chest the standard issue wheellock pistol of the guard.

“Turn this ship around, captain! The princesses are on the town of Haybale!” He cried, pointing towards the stern with his wings flared in urgency.

The pegasus sighed instead. “You see the problem with this country? Our leadership is blind to the most obvious of swindles.”

“Wow… Luna wasn’t joking.” The prince blinked twice.

The captain though grinned widely. “Her highness spoke of me?”

“Yes! She personally requested that I delivered a message directly to you.” His armored hoof forcefully connected with the captain’s muzzle and that was the last thing the pegasus saw.

The guard standing next to them looked at his unconscious superior, and then at the alicorn. “Oh no… Our captain… I suppose your highness is the commanding officer of the vessel now.”

“You’re acting captain now.” He pointed at the guard and nopony complained, so Chocolate Velvet made a spinning gesture with his hoof. “Get the helm to turn us around. The princesses are in Haybale. I need to talk to you guys too, the situation is a lot more complicated than it seems. Please, summon the crew once the course is fixed.”

***

Back in the cottage by the corn fields Cadance talked to their new griffon acquaintance while Twilight frowned at the crystal-encased letter. “I feel like we should have brought the letter I found… Only just so you could have a look at it. But Shining Armor was driving me crazy with his worrying and we did agree that we could be attacked eventually.”

The old griffon lady simply nodded sympathetically. “It seems like a dangerous situation, Princess. It is best that you took all the precautions you could afford.”

Twilight grunted her frustration, causing the others to turn to her. “This is odd. It’s remarkably similar, but also distinct from the one you found, Cadance.”

Her sister-in-law paid attention while Twilight hoofed curiously at the crystal casing, pointing at the writing and frowned some more, and her ears pulled back. “I’m almost sure it’s in the same language family, but it’s not close enough that I can read any of it, save for a few words… The writing certainly looks similar, though.”

“Well, if you can’t read it, I probably couldn’t either.” Cadance shrugged. “Miss Gerdie?”

“I assume that you are talking about the older version of the usually spoken Griffonese. Not that it is… Usually spoken. You understand. Well, this detail does speak of legitimacy, but that is from the standpoint of our traditional history.” She shrugged too. “I guess it makes sense since Queen Chrysalis corroborated it’s version of facts. It would seem that Grigor and his Empire used different languages between themselves and with foreign dignitaries.”

“So, does that mean we’re on the right track?” Twilight sounded hopeful.

“Oh! Definitively!” The griffon chirped.

“Why though?” Twilight frowned again. “I mean… I have heard of ‘battle languages’ that were used by warring factions that shared a common mother language, but that didn’t seem to be the case.”

“I have a suspicion. It’s because they would deem this language of theirs some sort of secret.” Cadance said. “Miss Gerdie, is this the same language they speak in Snow Mountains?”

“Indeed, it is, princess.” Gerdie nodded with a hint of respect in her voice. “This, on this letter is what we have called High Griffonese… Or rather, has been called since that time if one is to believe the Loremasters in Snow Mountains. It is the language spoken in Snow Mountains Hold too, and this is one of the reasons we thought the letter was likely a forgery, since it mentions fictional individuals and it is a contemporary language, albeit a reclusive and poorly studied one. Not to mention that the only ones who believe this story might be true live there. Then they could have magically aged the paper. A scholar might identify it as a forgery on this alone, but not an uninitiated.”

“I don’t get it!” Twilight frowned again and held the edge of the table with her hooves. “How can this language be spoken somewhere today and not alert Princess Celestia that something is wrong? I understand that nopony would know the relevance, but she should.”

“She doesn’t know…” She mused uncertainly by herself after a few seconds. “Or at least not with enough certainty.”

“Even if she knows, she may not be able to do anything about it.” Cadance looked around at the others. “She may not know enough, or maybe she thinks that it’s not relevant. Who knows? She’s probably lying about this too.”

Meanwhile Sunburst and Twilight’s librarian, Miss Goodread returned from the kitchen bringing a few snacks. Grilled corn, corn salad, some sweet made with corn and cheese wrapped in corn leaves Twilight didn’t know the name of, corn cookies. Corn juice. And corndogs for the griffon! It all seemed very tasty! Except the corndogs, obviously, but for some reason Twilight didn’t really understand, Cadance looked like she wanted to die. What was wrong with her? She’s been acting so weird since they arrived and now that.

Both of them refocused on the conversation, however.

“They do speak Common Equestrian, though.” Cadance came short of gagging. From the memories from her visit, or from the food that they were just served. Twilight wasn’t sure. “They spoke to me.”

“Wait. You’ve been there? I thought that no outsiders were allowed.”

“A traveling merchant came to the Crystal Empire to do business and he was scared by what he saw there. He told to me that those griffons didn’t follow livestock regulations. Since I was curious, I decided to go to Griffindell, their capital and see what it was all about. But I may be exaggerating a little when I say that I’ve been there. Let’s say that their eating habits didn’t agree with my stomach of a pregnant mare… I didn’t even get to see The Lion, just a rude lieutenant and I couldn’t get past the entrance to the city where they have the pigsties, cow fencings and a butchery. It all smelled so awfully of blood.” Cadance put out her tongue. “They won’t like it, but if you insist and remind them that you are indeed a Princess, they’ll let you in since they can’t stop you anyways. The point is that I couldn’t confirm anything so it never made it into a real investigation.”

“I suppose it was around the time Princess Celestia decided that they should be given their space since tensions were getting a bit high.” Twilight concluded. “Regulations about these things never came out right and the whole thing is a big gray zone. That must be why they get away with it.”

“Well, they will speak Common Equestrian if they receive a visitor that can’t speak their High Griffonese, or the common version. They are… Finicky, though.” The griffon sighed.

“You know a lot about them, don’t ya?” Rainbow squinted at her.

“I was going to become a Loremaster. But dad got a better paying job and we moved out. Their tales fascinated me though, and I just kept poking around. After all, I’m one of the few griffons outside that can speak their language. They hope I’ll return… But there is also hope that they’ll wise up, you know…”

“This is strange.” Miss Goodread adjusted her glasses. “Most languages change over time and this whole thing happened thousands of years ago. And there is this bizarre notion that they refuse to teach this thing to others.”

“They are protecting it.” Sunburst offered a hoof. “It is the language The Lion speaks his spells with! And that is why they protect it and only teach it to their own.”

“How do you know?” Cadance looked at him, as did the others.

“Some time ago I met a griffoness from Snow Mountains.” Before continuing he blushed, and his eyes turned downward. What followed was an awkward silence with ponies and griffon staring at him.

“Oh my…” Cadance gasped teasingly. “Does Starlight know that?”

“What? No! I was dating her before I reconnected with Starlight!” He shrieked. “Not to mention she’s dating Trixie now, not me!”

“Dating? Gotta tell us the rest now!” Rainbow teased with her smug grin.

“Fine!” He grunted and blushed even deeper. “I was working at a crystal mining company, in the Magical Properties department and I met this nice griffon girl in the dinner in front of our offices and we dated a few times. She was so cute and timid, barely speaking everyone’s language. Well, she needed some special crystals for her project, and I managed to get her some, but then she vanished.”

“Did you get laid, at least?” Rainbow asked and Twilight yelled at her.

“It sounds as though she used you, Sunburst.” Cadance concluded. “I’m sorry. I hate it when this sort of thing happens to nice ponies such as yourself.”

“Yeah.” He frowned. “Well, all that was just to mention that she once said that their language was important, and it was meant only for griffons because it had magical powers or something. I was interested, but never got her to explain further.”

“You know, you’re not very lucky.” Rainbow told him. “I mean, the griffon chick only wanted you because of some crystals and when you found Starlight Glimmer again, she decided to date Trixie.”

“Thanks, Rainbow Dash. I noticed! And by the way, Starlight and I were just friends!”

“Yeah. It’s called the Friendzone.”

“Why don’t you go back to looking out the window?” Twilight growled at her.

“Gee. Fine. I’m just saying.”

“Do you remember her name?” Twilight turned back to Sunburst while the pegasus left the table.

“Gal.” He said simply. “I think it was a nickname, but I’m not sure. All she really ever told me was that she needed these crystals and how important this language of theirs was when I found her writing a letter and asked about it.”

“So… This language of theirs is special. For sure.” Cadance concluded with curiosity. “I guess it makes sense and confirms what Chrysalis told us.”

“Can you read the letter, Miss Gerdie?” She finally asked the griffon.

“Yes, I can Princess. I’ll read it to you.” She took it from the briefcase and carefully laid it on the table, breathing in and taking some time to get her on-the-fly translation correct as well as adjusting her reading glasses.

She finally cleared her throat.

‘Glory to Your Imperial Majesty, Grigor The First of His Name and Holy Emperor of Griffonia under the Harpy’s Blessings;

I send this letter with the intention of informing Your Majesty of the arrival of your army to the lands previously held by the Equestrian Republic. We have suffered minimal losses due to disease or weather and your strong have once again proven to be of finer stock.

We have met no resistance on our way other than the great distance we have covered. What we have found however is disheartening. The great capital is no more. It lies in ruins no fit to shelter more than wild animals. The mighty Mage’s Guild is reduced to a pitying of recruits of lesser importance from the noble families which run the city of Everfree and the Archmage is a decrepit old unicorn with a whitening beard longer than his gumption and one of the worse attires I have ever laid my eyes upon.

The population is as passive as cattle waiting for instructions and I cannot imagine we should have any trouble dealing with them. This lot will surely benefit from your enlightened rule. Perhaps sometime soon they might even be prepared to receive one or two of the Harpy’s Loremasters.

More importantly, we have been received with lowered heads and submissive stares from the ruling families and they seem to understand their new situation. For some reason I cannot comprehend they seem comfortable with it. Additionally, there seems to be a disagreement between the Archmage and the city’s rulers. I will inquire further into the details as the opportunity presents itself as I feel this plays a part in their acceptance.

Head among them is Magnus Brightmane, patriarch of the Brightmane family followed by his daughter and now Queen of Everfree, Sunshine Brightmane, and her two brothers, thus named Maximus and Quake. As it so happened by the time of our arrival, the young unicorn mare had just been appointed sovereign queen of the city under strange circumstances.

The second family of importance would be the Bluebloods and I will eat my cape if I have before met such an unscrupulous and untrustworthy lot in my life. Patriarch Bullion Blueblood and his daughter, Platinum Blueblood seem to have the Brightmanes as very close allies in keeping the city under their hooves as masters of the law enforcement forces while the former hold the city’s coffers. They too cooperate with our forces.

The daughter had taken responsibility in explaining the situation regarding the heavens as the Archmage hesitated, but, as Your Majesty can attest to, the heavens have been put under control again. It just so happened that the situation seemed to have fixed itself in a most convenient and unorthodox fashion soon after our arrival.

I cannot grasp the details of this unfathomable pony devilry to save my life, but it seems that at the brink of complete failure of whatever magic that governs the heavens one with competence to sustain it has manifested. Such as though The Lord of Chaos himself makes fun of us it happens to be the elder daughter of a lowly baker that has taken control over the sky, the sun and the moon. A freakish abomination of a malnourished and disheveled, overly tall pony with a horned head and a pair of wings on her back.

The ponies seem to revere the young mare however, and the Archmage insisted that she ought to be elevated to Queen of Everfree and de jure Queen of Equestria, ordained to unify it, despite the actual queen. The relevance and validity of such claim remains to be verified and as per my most cautious judgement it is best that Sunshine Brightmane remains the Queen of Everfree under Your Grace for now.

I shall explain.

The winged unicorn child, so called Sol-Estia by the populace, and Sunny Days by her close acquaintances (I cannot be inconvenienced to understand) is uneducated, but of perspicacious mind and has assured me that no longer will the sun ravage the land with a great level of certainty. I do not like her. The Archmage seeks to educate her along with her young sister and I feel that she is dangerous. She hides something and seems to understand things that I, a grown and educated noble do not. Was she not pivotal to the maintenance of the magic of the heavens I would have this one executed before the end of the day. It bears mentioning, however that the child wants nothing to do with being crowned queen.

Regardless, the Archmage has secured for the sisters, both said to be responsible for the heavens, the title of Priestesses to protect them from the city’s leadership, according to some old belief. However, the ignorant masses seem intent on calling them Princesses. At the mere recollection I feel the urge to pluck my head feathers. I cannot stand the stench of grass these equines exude, and I have not been in this place for a week and already urge to burn it to the ground along with this inane nonsense that seems to sprout out of every corner in this cursed city.

There are a couple of families in direct vassalage to the Brightmanes and Bluebloods, but they are hardly worthy of mention with the exception of House Flameheart. Under Matriarch Cinnamon Flameheart, they are the survivors of the Fourth Battlehorn Legion of the Republic. They do not appear battle-ready, save for an irrisory force that can hardly protect their own mansion, but I have scarce information to report on them for the moment other than that their Matriarch seems to harbor an unquenchable hatred for her lieges and an unbreakable loyalty for the Archmage and for his new students.

I did not expect to see a pony, even a battle-hardened veteran to be able to harbor and keep under control such wrath. I respect her. And I also I shall explore the situation to the best interests of Your Majesty as I learn more of the “Princesses” and the Battlehorn survivors.

Thus, I conclude my report. I shall remain and defend Your interests in this cursed land of equines. May I serve your Majesty to the fullest of my abilities under the Harpy’s blessings.

Forever Your Loyal Servant,

Captain General Gorham Blacktallon’

The ponies stared at each other while the griffoness rose her eyes from the letter. There was a lot to unpack in that letter but Twilight’s mind was stuck on the ridiculous absurdity that ponies might still call them princesses on the present time simply because the less educated ponies of the past may have not understood the difference between ‘Priestess’ and ‘Princess’.

“What… The… What?” She blurted in a half-daze.

“I honestly expected worse.” The other princess casually and not at all impressed munched on a grilled corn cob. “Some murders or weird secrets.”

“Well, this corroborates that the griffons sent an army to Equestria.” Goodread offered.

“Hum… What’s a priestess?” Sunburst asked.

“The chosen representative of a deity in the realm of the mortals.” Gerdie lifted a finger. “It’s a concept you’re likely to run across if you study certain legends. Such as some diamond dog legends about the Mother and this story of Emperor Grigor. Did you notice that the General mentioned ‘The Harpy’?”

“Yes!” Cadance’s ears perked as much as the others paid attention. “Who was The Harpy?”

“The Harpy was believed to be the mother of all griffons. Literally.” She gestured with both paws to emphasize. “And it seems that she had seven favorite ‘sons’, the Griffon Patriarchs, one of which was Emperor Grigor, to whom the Lion is descendant. Supposedly. Outside of Snow Mountains everyone just thinks this is some made up thing so that he has some sort of legitimacy.”

“Didn’t Chrysalis say that they were the first griffons?” Rainbow blinked.

“It’s a small detail.” Twilight waved it away with a hoof. “It is possible that she didn’t know, or that the legend changed over time.”

“I believe the most important pieces of information here are that it seems that Luna and Celestia’s arrival did fix the Sun, and this account also reinforces that they didn’t rule from the start.” Twilight pointed at the letter with a happy grin. “We’re making some progress. But the problem remains we still don’t know why the princess did what she did. Unfortunately, this letter didn’t say anything about why the Sun started going bad. Just that Princess Celestia seems to have fixed it.”

Gerdie thumped her fingers together timidly. “I’m sorry. It seems that this letter didn’t help that much at all. Unfortunately, General Gorhan didn’t inquire into the details. I believe, though, that you should find that sort of information back with The Lion, as this is all that I have. Maybe a travel straight to Snow Mountains is in order?”

Cadance shook her head. “Discord was adamant we should talk to a pony called Naminé in Manehattan. Before we went to Griffonia.”

“That may be a waste of time, Princess.” Gerdie worried. “You could lose your opportunity if Princess Celestia silences him, in order to hinder your investigation.”

Twilight didn’t answer right away, pondering at the suggestion. It was instead Cadance who spoke. “Miss Gerdie, would you happen to have any record about Mother Farfalla or about Night-Made-Flesh?”

“Mother Farfalla? I suppose you mean the original changeling queen? There is a mention of her in one of the stories where she is called Queen Farfalla. According to it she tried marrying one of her daughters to Emperor Grigor. But also that she might have been doing the same with other powerful leaders.”

Cadance frowned. “It has just occurred to me that Chrysalis must have erased everything there was to know about Mother Farfalla as soon as she became the queen and the only reason we have the legend of Mother Farfalla is because pony oral tradition kept it alive.”

“Seems to me that it would be wise to visit Snow Mountains as the Lion must have information that you are seeking. Even if from the griffons’ point of view. It might provide some good insight, if you manage to reach the Lion before Princess Celestia realizes that she should.” Gerdie insisted.

“Well, I agree with you, miss Gerdie. But Discord was adamant we must see an important pony in Manehattan first. Not to mention that my airship simply can’t cross the ocean without resupplying, and we figured Manehattan is the best place. Not that it is going to be easy.”

The old griffon lady hummed and joined her paws. “Have you considering asking The Lion for political protection against The Princess?”

Cadance’s mouth opened but no words came out. Then she closed it with her ears folded down and opened it again, but still no words sounded.

“We could do that…” Twilight stared at the table. “Yes, we could… But I don’t know if we could come back from it… I mean…”

“Princess Celestia would disown us…” Cadance blinked a few times. Twilight wasn’t so sure, but their relationship would certainly suffer a damaging rupture.

“With all due respect, Princess…” Gerdie went on with a low voice. “You are both adults and also Princesses of Equestria. Else, I don’t think you would have had the courage to start this investigation. Furthermore, why does Princess Celestia get a pass at lying and hunting you?”

“That is a good question…” Rainbow simply stared with big dumb eyes at the two. Back on the table.

“She is phenomenally powerful.” Twilight said. “The whole time we were betting that we can get away with a stern talk and one or two punishments. We’re assuming that she’s not ill intended and that she had a good reason to do all that she did. Including lying to us.”

“If that is the case, then why aren’t you willing to ask for help? She should understand.”

“But that would be going too far, wouldn’t it?” Goodread rubbed her hooves uncomfortably. “I mean… Princess Celestia would certainly be cross with this.”

“But still…” Gerdie still went on. “She is not against him becoming the king of the griffons. I really don’t see why it would be so bad.”

Twilight wasn’t so sure. Something about him scared her and it scared Princess Celestia, so it really scared her. Not to mention that Discord told them not to go to the griffons before talking to Naminé. At the top of it all, the notion of betraying Princess Celestia like that was something she had never entertained. She owed everything she was to Princess Celestia. Cadance would certainly think the same. Perhaps even more considering she was actually adopted by Princess Celestia.

“We will keep the possibility in our minds, Miss Gerdie.” Cadance said, actually. “I do feel like she could afford to be more accountable to the things that she’s done when all she’s ever taught me would be against it.”

Oh-oh…

Twilight coughed and smiled sheepishly at the two. “Well, we can’t stop now, can we? I guess we’ll see where our needs take us. What else can you tell us about this Harpy, Miss Gerdie? Sounds like she was important to Emperor Grigor and his General.”

“That is precisely what this stone tablet is about, Princess. It is actually a portion of a song that was engraved in the walls of a temple, in a supposedly destroyed city. It has a fascinating tale around its origin.”

“How come the griffons have these things and we don’t?” Cadance seemed to have slipped into quite a bad mood.

Twilight softened her expression and spoke softly. “Well… If Emperor Grigor realized that things were not going too well for him, he might have taken precautions. And that is why such things escaped Princess Celestia’s and King Grover’s purge.”

Cadance sighed. “I’m sorry, Miss Gerdie. Please continue.”

Gerdie brought the briefcase closer to her and showed it to her audience as she talked. “Supposedly, Emperor Grigor built a city for the Harpy, and she lived in this temple where this very stone tablet supposedly came from. There griffons would worship her. They would sing for her, about the great warriors and leaders of her people. It is ghastly, but they also sacrificed prisoners, slaves and valuable animals in her name.”

“Why?” Sunburst gasped at the barbarity.

“Because she was ‘The Harpy’. Mother of all griffons, who taught them their language, and then taught Emperor Grigor how to cast magic with it. As long as the Harpy was pleased, she would remain there and bless the griffons with this power.” She pointed at the stone. “But this portion of the song speaks of when Emperor Grigor failed at culling the weak from his ‘pride’ and they were allowed to sap the strength of his empire. We don’t have the whole song, but it seems that a class of nobles within the Empire wasn’t happy with Grigor and secretly sought help from the outside to dethrone him.”

“Can you imagine a world where ponies would go to… Temples. And there they would sing, dance. They would make offerings to the princesses expecting… I don’t know… Gifts? Maybe preference. It’s not like Princess Celestia or Luna would give us or any pony any sort of preference.”

“Cadance!” Twilight didn’t want to scream, but what she had heard shocked her. “What are you talking about?! Princess Celestia adopted you! She trained you! She made you what you are today! Just as she did for me. And not because we did some creepy weird thing that she liked. But because she expected us to help her make the lives of other ponies the best possible! We are very fortunate ponies! Some would call us privileged.”

Cadance frowned in a way that Twilight didn’t like at all and spoke a little too loud. “Excuse me? You were a unicorn born in Canterlot! Princess Celestia literally took you into her care because she thought that you have a very powerful latent magic. And I suppose she was right! Because you breezed through being admitted into one of the most difficult teaching institutions in the world. Not only that, but you became her personal student. Her protégé. Then she literally sent you on your path to become a princess with all your friends to help you! Creatures all over Equestria adore you just as much as they adore her and her sister! Don’t you ever call me ‘privileged’ again!”

“But you are a princess too!” She shouted again, more out of surprise than anger.

“How dare you! I don’t even know where I was born, or who my parents are or if I even have family alive! I slept with cold and sometimes our matron sent us to bed early because we didn’t have food! When I reversed that witch’s spell, I didn’t even understand what was going on! I was a pegasus!” Her voice broke and she hit the table with a hoof. “Suddenly I was a freaky alicorn and the other foals were scared of me! It was a small village, nothing like Canterlot, filled with libraries and educated unicorns! They thought that I was the witch!”

“Cadance… Please…” Twilight showed her hooves defensively. “Stop! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Didn’t Princess Celestia raise you afterwards, Princess?” Miss Gerdie asked and Cadance nodded softly with her ears folded down.

“Yes… I can’t say that it was bad, or that I wasn’t loved. But she didn’t let me do the same things I saw the other rich foals doing… Now I know that they were wrong… But… I don’t know what I’m trying to say anymore… But it would be nice if ponies would come to me and say that they love this or that pony and asked my help. And did something nice for me…”

Twilight’s eyebrow raised. “Are you saying that you’d like ponies to come to you and buy another’s love from you for a gift?”

“Well, when you put it like that…” Cadance frowned and pulled her ears back. “Maybe… You help ponies with friendship problems, don’t you? I know it’s different, but it’s my special talent, isn’t it? If I wanted, I could make you fall in love with Maude’s pet rock!”

And she could make her fall in love with a rag doll, but Twilight thought it would be better to let that go.

“Well, you rule the Crystal Empire.” she smiled friendly instead. “Don’t you? I don’t.”

Oh boy… Did that backfire with Cadance’s angry stare. “I don’t really rule anything, Twilight. It’s more like I administrate it for her. Ponies only come to me when they have problems. And you don’t rule anything because you don’t want. I’m sure that if you laid on Mayor Mare Ponyville would turn into another empire.”

The way she stared made Twilight imagine she left a lot unsaid. What the hay was she supposed to say? It was one of those occasions when a pony simply wanted to be angry. Fortunately Cadance let go too.

Twilight simply sighed.

“If this Harpy was so important and influential, then King Grover might have wanted to rid the collective griffon memory of her.” Twilight taped her chin with a hoof, back in at the mater they should have been discussing. “And Princess Celestia might have been wanting to help him if she knew of how dangerous this Harpy, or her teachings were. Or, maybe if there was something in Equestria that she felt the need to hide. The whole story with the griffons might have been nothing more than a simple excuse to do whatever she wanted on her side.”

“Such as her not being appointed ruler immediately after her ‘arrival’?” Rainbow air quoted sarcastically. “Or that we ponies have some loose screws in our heads?”

“Yes.” Twilight agreed. “Or hiding that there was a bigger problem with the sun than our History indicates. The whole griffon invasion would also ruin the lie. Let’s call it what it is.”

She then landed her head on the table with a loud sigh of frustration. “We still don’t know why she did it. By what Discord told us, this is the actually important thing that we must learn.”

“Again, I must insist that your best chance of figuring this out is visiting the Snow Mountains and talking to The Lion. He, considering the circumstances, has the best chances of having this sort of information you are looking for. Lord Discord may have been trying to protect The Sister and their lie.”

“So, guys…” Rainbow began again. “What if you end up putting Prince Blueblood in a position that he can challenge Princess Celetia for the throne?”

“I’m not so sure this could happen, Rainbow.” Twilight shrugged. “To be honest, I’m more worried about the griffons that the Lion seems to be garnering to his side and his disposition towards everypony. If we go on this direction, we will end in a situation where we prove that Celestia and Luna changed our History and, at the same time validate that The Lion has some legitimacy to his claims. Whatever they are… I can’t say that I know that he is using these legends to bring griffons to his side. But regardless, whatever he is doing is irrelevant because Princess Celestia already declared that he can be king of the griffons.”

She sighed. “What worries me is that if the Princess decided to hide this whole affair, and so did the griffons… It can’t a good thing to use and garner support.”

“What is with these old ponies and griffons making stuff up?” Rainbow groaned and huffed. “I mean… If it was Princess Luna that turned that pony into Mother Farfalla, then why make up this whole silly stuff with this talk of goddess and that fancy appearance. What even is a goddess? Was this Harpy a goddess? Are Luna and Celestia goddesses? This is annoying! Twilight could be a goddess for all I know, and it probably wouldn’t change anything!”

“Well, there is clearly something we’re not seeing in this whole affair, Rainbow.” Twilight said.

She had barely mentioned her name and glasses broke. Before they even knew what was happening, there was a bright flash, and something exploded so close to Twilight she could swear it was right next to her head.

Whatever it was, the magical wards in her barding protected her from most of it and she regained her bearings in time to see the door crashing in with a large armored pony literally coming through it.

Chocolate Velvet. Damn it, Rainbow was supposed to be looking out the window!

Cadance acted much faster than she did, and her horn shot out a burst of bright magical missiles straight at him. They never hit him though, and dissipated on his barding’s magical warding shield.

He opened his wings and several pellets flew from them exploding with so much smoke Twilight suddenly could barely see what happened. She was sure a gold armored pony crashed through a window and that Rainbow Dash turned the table on its side. There was so much of a mess that Twilight barely understood the bangs she heard were shots being fired. There was also screaming. A lot of screaming.

“Get out of here Twilight!” Cadance shouted at her right before she jumped over the table. “Get them out of here, Rainbow Dash!”

Twilight shrieked back at Cadance. What was she doing? “Get back here! We’ll exit through the back!”

She never seemed to have heard her though and she attacked Chocolate Velvet with the tip of her bladed crystal bow straight at his shield spell and then slammed her body against him. That was stupid! She is much lighter than he is! Their armor’s clanged, and rather than falling over with her (duh…), he grabbed her and spun around outside with her, outside of Twilight’s view.

It was when Rainbow shoved her towards the corridor in the back. “Move it, Twilight! Cadance can take care of herself!”

One of the Royal Guards, coming out of nowhere, jumped on top of Sunburst and held him into the floor. More shots rang and she heard Miss Gerdie screaming something about the artifacts. Miss Goodread, under a chair gestured frantically at her. “Run Princess! They won’t hurt us, but you must escape!”

That, and another incisive push from Rainbow convinced her. She turned but a couple of earth pony guards blocked the way and were coming at them. She reacted more than anything and teleported past them. The two stopped and turned at her, only for Rainbow Dash to smack one of them headfirst into a corner in the wall.

Twilight quickly summoned her staff and push-magicked the other backwards to crash on the table and split it on half. She was sure he would be fine, with his Royal Guard barding and all, but spent an instant looking for the others in the smoke. Her magical barding protected her from it and even granted her a level of visual clarity in the dense smoke, but the others would be completely lost and disoriented.

Then Rainbow pushed her again. “Come on Twilight!”

She gave up and flew with Rainbow, both crashing against the rear door in an explosion of splinters. Outside a pair of Royal Guards waited for them. A pegasus and a unicorn, both of which shot their pistols at them. Had Twilight not been with Rainbow, she would certainly have the agility to dodge away, but in trying to keep with Twilight the magical bullet hit her. Twilight never saw where, but it was enough to disturb her control over her flight and Rainbow went face first in the green corn plantation.

Twilight flew overhead but spun to see where her friend had fallen. “Rainbow!”

One of the guards, the pegasus flew at her too fast for her to see anything while she was looking for Rainbow and tackled her. She didn’t have time to even look at the pegasus that tried to spin with her and throw her flight off to spiral out of control to the ground. That is what she deduced was the intent, but Twilight’s wings were mightier, and she spun with the guard instead and threw him off. He didn’t spiral to the ground though. He was a good flier and hovered a few hooves away from her.

A white and light green pegasus that looked like one of the older veterans. He didn’t say anything and simply stared at her. She found it weird as he had no weapon with him. He probably left his pistol by the cottage after discharging it, but he didn’t have any other weapon with him, such as a stun baton, for example. She didn’t feel like drawing her own weapons and something felt off. Maybe it was the excitement of the situation.

“Are you just gonna stare intently at me?” She tried not to sound confused or intimidated. “Just because you work for Princess Celestia, it doesn’t mean I’m going to give up or something.”

“I’m going to let you go. Just this once because you are who you are.” He told her. “If we catch you again there won’t be any quarter.”

Her initial reaction was to question him. Ask him why, exactly. But she saw Rainbow Dash flying up from between the green corn stalks and Cadance coming up from behind the small house they were in. Not to mention her airship coming in from over the small town.

“Fine…” She said finally. “Just. Just don’t hurt our friends! Alright?”

“Wouldn’t ever, Princess.” He touched his chest over his barding.

Rainbow flew past her, flying backwards turned to them, staring at the two until Twilight rejoined her and Cadance was catching up. The Royal Guard pegasus allowed himself to lose altitude and withdrew.

“You okay, Twilight?”

“Yes! What about you?”

“I’m cool. That guy wasn’t really trying that hard.”

“He let you go too?”

Rainbow’s eyebrow rose. “I don’t know about that. All I know is that I left him behind”

“Curious…”

Cadance flew past them towards the slowing airship. “Come on Twilight! Rainbow! We have to go!”

The two picked up their pace and lined up with Cadance. Twilight yelled past the wind. “Did Chocolate Velvet let you escape?”

“No!” Cadance coughed out. “He… I kicked his flank.”

When they finally landed on the airship the others surrounded them and Shining Armor immediately held Twilight and started inspecting her like she was a fragile work of art. “You guys okay?”

“Yes Shining! Quit fussing!” She bated his hooves away. “We have to go back and help the others!”

“No! We have to leave! Now!” Cadance tip-tapped on the floor nervously. “Princess Celestia is coming!”

The airship’s Captain looked at Twilight, however.

“Fine. I think they’ll be okay… Get us out of here, Captain. Straight to Manehattan, please.” She pointed onward urgently. “Cadance, we’ve got to talk.”

***

The citizens of Hay Bale were simple folk, so when the ponies in the unmistakable golden armor of the Princess’ Royal Guard arrived in their golden airship they stopped everything and obeyed every command as though it had come from the Princess herself.

The big brown alicorn they had seen in the newspapers added to that sense of urgency.

They didn’t question as it wasn’t within the pony mindset to do so when they were ordered by those who had sworn to protect them that they must all hide inside The Barn and wait until they were cleared to leave. At most, a few mothers took some time fetching their foals before obeying.

Doors and windows were shut and locked. The only light came from a small set of candles or from gaps in the walls and ceiling. They heard its arrival though. It sounded like a roaring monster riding on a thunderstorm. The Barn was a sturdy building, but it rattled with whatever monstrosity was outside. Dust fell from the wood beams and small pebbles rolled around in the floor.

Most importantly, whatever magic it emanated was so strong the earth ponies could feel it as though it vibrated in their bones.

The light that filtered in darkened and the sound changed to a low rumble, like a resting beast stood right above them, breathing coarsely and filling the air with petrichor in an unsettling combination of pleasant odors and scary sounds.

“Don’t worry, milady. You are safe and it will be over soon.” One of the Royal Guards reassured a small filly with her parents next to him.

***

A large black griffon landed near the cottage by the corn field. The place looked like it had been raided by a small army. The air smelled of powder and windows were broken. The door was just barely shut. Next to him landed six of his master’s soldiers: sturdy griffons wearing the black cuirass of Griffindell. They wore black capes and black and golden embroidered helmets. Most importantly. They were armed with the modern semi-automatic rifles that were sure to soon put the fear of griffons back into these grass-eaters.

He carried his own rifle on his back, together with his heavy spear with a lock of blue pony mane. He wore his own cuirass, forged larger than the ones the other griffons wore. His clear white head didn’t hold a helmet, though, only his green eyes, focused on the small building.

He expected there would be some fighting once they arrived, and that disappointed him somewhat but didn’t stop him from advancing and his soldiers followed suit to his sides.

He pushed the flimsy door open and it collapsed from its hinges. Looking inside he was greeted to a view of a turned table folded in half, a few chairs and a brown alicorn sitting in the middle of the room. The male alicorn they had heard about.

“I am sorry.” The alicorn grinned petulantly. “But your princesses are in another cottage.”

It was the most punchable grin he had seen in a while.

“You are outnumbered.” The big griffon snarled.

“Yeah, I had a joke or two to throw in here, but I guess this is a tough crowd. Are we done with the formalities? Really, I’d rather we got this done because I’m dying to meet your boss and explain to him all the ways he fucked up.”

He didn’t know if the alicorn meant to be funny, but he didn’t find it so, particularly when he didn’t find his quarry and would have to return with the alicorn instead of the two princesses his master sent him to fetch. He also shifted his head at the realization that this alicorn spoke a word that wasn’t very common for ponies to utter. “Take him.”

Two of his soldiers rushed at the alicorn, who didn’t resist, and hit him with the butt of their firearms. He collapsed on his back, and bled out of his muzzle, but infuriatingly didn’t lose conscience.

“You know, you just had to ask.” He grunted after his comment when one of the soldiers rifle-butted him again, this time in his stomach.

“Shut it, pony.” He growled while he and his partner grabbed on his legs and dragged him along the floor.

***

Pony officials in charge of large cities and small villages always paid attention to whatever the nobles of Canterlot were doing. As the years passed, they noticed Princess Celestia’s tendency to show up a certain amount of time after ‘important events’. Not the typical city goings… No, they were supposed to deal with those and then report it up the hierarchical chain. But as soon as an unknown griffon airship turned up from nowhere via the teleporter and a group of griffons attacked the teleporter’s crew, certain ponies from Baltimare knew that ‘The Mare’ would show up soon.

The Princess, on her side, too noticed that the city officials picked up on her methods. But in the past years, she noticed something even more peculiar that made itself evident again when she teleported with a pair of her Royal Guards into the reception of the Baltimare House of Mercy. It had been decorated with golden ribbons and a banner that read “Welcome Princess Celest”. For some reason that escaped her, cities had started receiving her with banners that blatantly and seemingly intentionally missed the two last letters of her name.

It mystified and amused her to no end and since it had started on Ponyville, she suspected Twilight might have had something to do with it, but she preferred to simply let ponies do as they wanted rather than make a scene about something so trivial.

Still, it was incredibly amusing to see the Baltimare’s mayor, the Lord Protector for the city and the Lord Surgeon smiling at her under the banner and in front of a sizeable three-layered cake. They even had time to procure little sweets and potato salad canapes.

Either she should start appearing in cities sooner after big events, or she should start bringing something too. Well, at least her guards would have something to eat while they waited.

“Gentleponies, I greatly appreciate it, but this is not necessary.” She looked around the table and at the present ponies sheepishly staring back at her as though they are guilty of what happened. It was kind of creepy, to be honest.

The mayor, a light gray earth pony with a large and bushy darker mustache coughed into his hoof. “Princess your presence is always a pleasant one and we could not afford to have you among us and not dispense such pleasantries towards your Highness!”

She smiled pleasantly at him. Though, of that was the case, he might invite her to a nice meeting every once in a while, when there isn’t something going wrong or when he didn’t need support for something. But he did a good enough job that quirk was tolerable.

Fortunately, the Lord Protector coughed in the most indiscreet way possible. “Princess, we followed instructions from the Royal Guard and let the airship be. They left the city with nothing more than the problems they caused on arrival.”

Next the lord Surgeon spoke. “Two ponies were injured, Princess. Given the exceptional situation the mayor asked the doctors to keep us informed and the director for the Baltimare House of Mercy decided that she would keep an eye on the situation personally. One of the ponies is an Intern at EQMagical and her horn was broken. She’s supposed to recover in a few months but is being kept sedated. The director is with her right now.”

The princess waited for him to go on and the Lord Protector spoke instead. “The other injured pony is the Director for the teleporter… Miss Top Brass. According to her the griffons were simply intent on teleporting in their airship and left as soon as it had arrived.”

“Is it possible that I speak to her?”

“Absolutely, Princess.” The Lord Surgeon nodded. “She was admitted for observation and already received a visit from her husband and foal.”

“The population is scared, Princess.” The mayor spoke again. “They never expected anything like that when the teleporters were first built!”

“The teleporters aren’t to blame, Mister Key. And neither are your city’s administration or security. Much less are EQMagical or its employees.” She held a sigh. Politicians… “Those griffons are. And as such, I would like to speak to the witness. Despite your welcoming atmosphere with this reception I would prefer not to dally. This is important.”

The mayor nodded again. “Absolutely Princess! Whatever you prefer!”

“Follow me, please, Princess.” The Protector motioned with a hoof. “My ponies have their rooms isolated.”

She nodded and then turned to her escort. “Wait for me here.”

They both nodded at her and she followed the three ponies into one of the corridors that connected to the reception and the whole place seemed deserted. She hoped the city’s officials didn’t disrupt the hospital’s service just because of her visit. She didn’t even announce she would be arriving soon, and they made this whole fuss about it. At the same time, the population wasn’t part of it. That meant they were scared. Someone was going to pay for that mess.

Nonetheless, she followed them through the corridors and doors. The Lord Surgeon was the one that seemed to know the way around the building.

That hospital was an old institution, about as old as the city itself and it grew with time. In fact, it seemed that each time Celestia visited one such place for whatever reason they seemed to grow bigger. It seemed to be a response to the city growing wider and taller as time passed on

It was nice to see because she typically saw this in the form of numbers and figures in reports, but as time passed, she realized that her presence had a tendency of disrupting services more than anything else, as evidenced.

Regardless, this time she needed to be present and the Baltimare Local Militia had isolated the area of the hospital to all but interested and professional ponies, so there wasn’t too much of a commotion, especially since it seemed that the hospital had closed the whole wing by itself. Of course, she had hoped to see the injured ponies and reassure them they would be fine, but there was an executive officer for EQMagical in the corridor. She assumed she was because the unicorn mare with dark yellow coat and reddish-brown mane, curled up and all shiny, wore one of those ‘suits’ the ponies who worked with money seemed so fond of.

At least she knew they had reached the right place.

They were in a not too long corridor that the militiaponies had isolated for the special patients. It had a few sittings and some ornaments in the form of plants and some framed pictures of the city’s skyline, but nothing out ordinary.

“Princess Celestia!” The mare stood and walked briskly towards the princess just as soon as she had seen the princess arrive, in a way she managed to make the militiaponies and officials uncomfortable. Celestia wondered if the mare even realized she had done that. “Do you have any idea of how much money we lost because of this whole affair?”

Every now and then Celestia missed the times when these ponies would have been more cunning. In the past they would coerce the poor injured ponies that work for them into guilting her into paying for all the money they didn’t make and pretend that it was money they actually had lost. Instead of having a representative sitting on the hallway waiting impatiently for her.

She partially blamed herself for making the ponies more civilized, though. It was annoying, but better that way. A least she was direct.

“I suppose you are going to tell me anyway.” She said, stopping on her way with the smaller mare before her. The militiaponies each side of the corridor simply stared at each other and at their superior who kept patiently waiting for the whole show to be over.

The mare blinked at her and didn’t quite know what to say, seemingly caught completely off guard as though for some reason she expected the princess to be falling over her hooves apologizing. As thought, it was her fault. Yes, somepony in headquarters thought that it happened close enough to her request to plausibly blame her. Celestia had seen this before and every time they seemed to think that they were the first ones to come up with this brilliant plan. Again, she blamed herself.

This pony at least seemed confused enough to have legitimately believed that they were entitled to a compensation from the Royal Treasury.

Infuriatingly enough, if they were humbler and more friendly, she would have obliged. It wasn’t their fault after all.

“I don’t believe I know your name?” The princess smiled at the pony, who perked her ears and stumbled a little with the words.

“I’m Cash Flow, Princess. I am the local CEO for EQMagical in the city.” She shuffled her hooves a little. “We are concerned about the present situation. It has caused us to lose quite a significant sum in Bits.”

“I am sure it has, Miss Flow.” Celestia walked around her, towards the first of the isolated rooms. “First of all, I would like to ensure your superiors that your employees, I am told by reliable ponies, are being well-treated. Additionally, I have already authorized payment of the sum related to the transfer of Mister Snake’s airship, and also the amounts related to the fees associated with the changes in the schedule.”

The unicorn followed her. “I am… Well. Sure you did, Princess… But…”

“Your superiors wouldn’t presume to imply that I should be held responsible for the damage caused by those griffons, would they?”

“Well… I have been asked to… Hum… Nevermind, your highness.” Her ears flopped.

Celestia simply nodded at her. If her little ponies had learned, then these big companies could learn it too: trying to manipulate their princesses would inevitably end poorly.

The princess excused herself with a nod and proceeded into one of the rooms where a couple of unicorn professionals cared for the young unicorn mare the princess recognized from the report as Amber Flower, the EQMagical intern that was most injured in the situation.

She stopped next to the bed, paying little mind to the nice room, carefully looking over the unicorn that was laying on her side and covered to her neck with the bedsheets. Her mane was a mess, but it looked like somepony had cleaned what blood must’ve clung to it. Celestia had seem broken horns before and knew what a mess those could be. Regardless, what remained of Miss Flower’s horn hid under a large ointment-soggy dressing. She was sleeping soundly though, despite how painful her injure must be.

“How is she?” Celestia finally turned to and asked one of the unicorns now standing next to her. The Lord Surgeon remained by the door and the others took the hint, leaving her alone.

The doctor, a tan female looked at her patient and then at the princess. “Her horn should grow back in a year or two. She just won’t be doing a lot of magic until then. In a week or so she should have recovered from the worst of it. She did have to go through surgery, but nothing our specialist isn’t used too. We’ll keep her sedated, though. At least for the first week. I suppose your highness wanted to talk to her?”

“Not if it can’t be helped.” Celestia shook her head slightly. “I rather she slept if it would be too much for her to wake up. What about the others?”

“Two of them were unharmed. They were released from the hospital and left with the city’s militia. Another pony checked in with little more than bruises and was admitted for observation.”

“I believe that would be Miss Top Brass?” She asked and the medical pony nodded. “I believe I will talk to her now. If you will excuse me. Please take good care of Miss Flower.”

She replied to their bows with a curt nod and left for the next room where she found the mare she had mentioned. Sat on the bed and looking out the window, she seemed perfectly fine and ready to leave for home if not for some overly careful medical pony. Well, the Princess supposed it was for the better since she had hit her head and been in a rather dangerous situation.

“Excuse me?” She called from the door, rapping on it with a hoof. “Miss Top Brass?”

She started a little and then gasped at the sight of the princess. “May I come inside?”

“Yes! Please! I mean… Uh…” She fussed with the bedsheets for a while before giving up and simply stared at the princess, now standing next to her. “Can I help you, Princess?”

Celestia smiled at her. “First I would like to know if you need anything.”

“No.” The smaller mare shook her head, somewhat conscious of her position. “I’ve been treated wonderfully.”

“Good. I would then like to know what you can tell me about your assailants. I understand that the Lord Protector commander of the city’s militia already talked to you?”

Top Brass simply nodded, and the Princess went on. “I would like to hear from you what happened. If you are comfortable with that.”

“The teleporter seemed to be malfunctioning after Mister Flying Snake’s airship had been teleported, so I went up the control tower to see what was happening. Our unicorns were having trouble with the magical controls and then one of the griffons came inside and threatened us with a firearm.”

Her eyes shifted down at the memory, but she looked back at the princess and resumed her account. “Next came other three griffons and one of them seemed to be in charge. One of them had a device she used to control the teleporter after she…”

The mare fiddled with her bedsheets a little more. “I don’t really understand how it works, but she pushed Amber Flower’s head against the terminal so hard… She bled all over the floor… And, uh… They managed to activate the control panel. I’m sorry Princess. I’m not very comfortable talking about this.”

“Don’t worry, Miss Brass. I understand. She will be fine in a while and I would appreciate if you could tell me more. Did the griffons say anything?”

“One of them… The one that was in charge made a speech about how… I’m not sure what the meant, but it was something about us taking things for granted. I think. Like we couldn’t see when our lives were in danger anymore. He was scary.” She shook her head a little. “It was the only time they spoke Common Equestrian. All the time the spoke to each other in some language I don’t know. He sounded so… Serious and angry. The one that used the device on the teleporter controls. I think she enjoyed hurting Amber.”

“Can you describe these griffons to me?”

“Their leader had purple fur… I don’t think I’ve seen a lot of griffons with that color. And his head was mustard colored. She was yellow. I think… She wore a white coat. But her head was all white. She looked beautiful, but so scary.”

“Do you remember anything else?” The pony shook her head timidly and the Princess nodded and smiled at her. “Very good. Now please don’t concern yourself with these things. The Royal Guard is going to take care of the situation and those griffons will be dealt with. The mayor should be making an announcement regarding the event and I want you to know that I will personally ensure that all involved are dealt with as demanded by the law or protected as such.”

The mare nodded thoughtfully at her and the Princess was pleased that she seemed to understand what was implied.

“With your excuse.” She nodded and left the room, meeting the other ponies outside who walked with her until the very end of the corridor, a dead end with bare walls and a simple potted flowering bush for witnesses.

“We have converging descriptions of the griffons from all the witnesses, princess.” The Lord Protector began as though he could read her thoughts. “Their leader was a purple and mustard male griffon of medium build. The female which interfered with the magical terminal was yellow and white, wearing a white coat. One of them stayed by the door and was of large build, dark-gray and white with green eyes. The last one was rather skinny, brown-furred with a darker head. All of them spoke with an unknown accent the witnesses described as ‘sing-song-y’ as was the foreign language they spoke on between themselves. Our linguist suspects it might be High Griffonese by the descriptions.”

“It most certainly is.” She frowned softly, not communicating her thoughts further.

“The yellow one mentioned she went to Bay County University and graduated there. That she was a researcher and that Your Highness had expelled her.” He rose and eyebrow at her while the Princess’ frown turned to a blank expression. And then a smile.

“I see.”

Miss Cash Flow cleared her throat in that obnoxious way ponies did when they wanted attention. “EQMagical would like to prosecute these griffons, Princess. The Lord Protector has asked of us to wait until you had been informed of the details of the situation and still hadn’t identified them for us because it seems to be something out of the ordinary. Our lawyer team is prepared to visit those responsible and present them with a settling accord first, though. Regardless of what legal action the Crown will take against them.”

“I would prefer if your company let me deal with this situation. It is more delicate than a few Bits you didn’t earn from the hours of the teleporter being out of operation and this might be a matter of national security. I can assure you that they will be held accountable for the damage they caused and will restitute your losses.”

The mare gasped. “Princess! Are you protecting them? Who are they? Some important griffons?”

Celestia blinked at her a couple of times. The nerve on this little mare. “By all means, Miss Cash Flow. If your superiors are sure that your legal team can intimidate Lord Gilad Ironfeathers, otherwise known as The Lion, into a deal outside the Royal Court, by all means it would spare me a few headaches and hours of boring speeches in the Hall of Friendship. Because the griffon that led the attack is Grigory, his son.”

She took a step back at the mention of the epitaph. “But… But… They must be held accountable!”

“And they will. As will your company be given fair compensation. If you let me do my work. Maybe your executive officers could take a day off once in a while and relax a bit?”

“Princess!” She wished that panicking ponies would speak more softly rather than louder, but the mayor bawled further. “We just suffered an attack from a foreign power! This was an act of war!”

Fortunately, the mare was too busy calculating the effects of that on her salary and the Lord Surgeon seemed more mature. Or at least trusted her, like the Lord Protector.

“No, that wasn’t an attack, and neither was it an act of war or from a foreign power.” Her now serious tone at least seemed to freeze the pony into listening rather than panicking and drew the other’s attention. “What happened was that a young and impulsive griffon, propelled by their proud ideology dragged his friends and some resources he might have been yet too immature to be responsible for into a situation that all of them might have avoided had they been wiser.”

“And that is why you will calm the population and assure them of their safety, while EQMagical will patiently wait until the investigations are done and the Royal Guard has dealt with the situation and the Princess has peacefully cleared this unfortunate situation with the future King of the Griffons.” They blinked at them. “Understand?”

The mayor and the mare nodded at her with huge eyes.

“Wonderful.” She smiled. “Run along now. There are things you must care for.”

Without much thought they scampered off past the local guards securing the corridor and left the princess with the Lords Protector and Surgeon. She turned to the latter, who spoke calmly. “All their injuries will be covered by the Public Health System, majesty. The whole thing’s gone through already.”

She nodded silently and the pony then bowed at her and left, leaving her alone with the Lord Protector.

“What a mess, princess.” He sighed when they were alone. “I have a couple of militiaponies riling up the others about asking questions in the griffon neighborhoods. And I thought that the ‘Dragon Incident’ in Manehattan was bad… And some of the nobility is making noise about this to the mayor and other city officials. This could turn ugly if more griffons are involved in attacks, especially with their recruiters going around in griffon neighborhoods and talking about The Lion.”

“They want a culprit they can reach. That is not acceptable. Remind them that those griffons, even the ones that attacked the teleporter are still my subjects and that Griffonia, with all its holds is still part of Equestria under my rule. And that includes even Lord Gilad, who is likely to become the King of the Griffons and that Equestria supports him and his promise of dutiful and honored rule after all the accusations of corruption Chancellor Silkfeather has suffered. Please, help the mayor keep the city under control and its population safe, Lord Protector. The griffons are my problem.”

“Absolutely, Princess. I’ll make sure my stallions and mares reassure the population that things are under control. Do you need me to do anything else? Because of the whole situation with Princesses Twilight Sparkle and Cadance?”

“Are you implying that the attack is related?”

“Neither of us are stupid, Princess.” He grinned. “For example, this yellow griffoness seemed important. So, I took a gander. She is on a watchlist and she is to be rejected a job at all universities and magical research institutions in Equestria. Princess Celestia is not spooked very easily like that.”

She mimicked his grin, appreciating a perspicacious pony that wanted to help. “Well, you would be right. But you should also know that I am dealing with this and all the assistance that I require from you and your militia is that you make sure your airships are prepared to intercept Princess Twilight’s airship if the ambush by the Royal Guard causes them to divert their course into your range. Additionally, under no circumstances any militia under your jurisdiction should engage with those griffons. You do not want to see your militiaponies dealing with those griffons, which is something that those griffons too understand, and that is why they left the city without additional drama.”

His lips turned into a smug grin. “Don’t worry, Princess. I know when something is above my pay.”

She rolled her eyes turning to leave him with his ponies in the corridor. If only a pair of princesses understood that.

Back in the reception hall, after getting herself lost a couple of times, she was met with the mayor glaring at her two Royal Guards and a few missing canapes and pieces of the cake. Also present was Luna and Lieutenant Crucible Wings, the former of them halfway into eating one of the canapes.

“Hello sister.” The blue alicorn greeted. “Everything is going as it should.”

But then the two mares stared at the mayor who huffed and pouted. “Fine. I’ll be in the City Hall if you don’t need me. Excuse me.”

After he stormed off, Luna spoke again. “Crucible went to Manehattan and spoke with the Lord Protector.”

“He was not happy.” The pony in armor shrugged. “It sounds like this Naminé is trouble. And also slippery like an oily-eel. He said she has been quiet and not creating her usual trouble and because of that they left her alone.”

“It is just one pony. One unicorn nowhere near as powerful to be on the Unicorn Watchlist. Why would they have trouble with her?” Luna finished her canape and asked him while Celestia sat in front of them.

“She has amassed a following. A sort of cult and they protect her like she is their… Well… Leader.”

“Oh, great. Another Starlight Glimmer. At least she’s not on the watchlist.” Luna grunted. “Why don’t we have her and her cult under ‘preemptive arrest’? That's what they call it, right?”

“Because that is a violation of civil rights, Luna.” Her sister glared at her. “Talking with Twilight and Cadance would not be a crime, even in the present circumstances.”

“You could call it conspiracy, Princess.” Her guard shrugged and Luna glared back at her.

“If I remember correctly, ‘civil rights’ weren’t exactly a problem when you decided that Lord Magnus should eat a bowl of glass.”

“Your memory fails you, Luna.” She spat right back and Crucible had trouble deciding which glared the hardest at the other. “Civil Rights hadn’t been invented yet and I am glad you were too young to understand or remember any of that.”

She frowned at Luna. “Of all the things that happened that is what you remember?”

“Well, I also remember that you had the hots for Cherry.” Luna rolled her eyes and huffed. “Fine. I’d hope that the militia of a large city such as Manehattan would be able to keep her under control.”

“That is not the problem, Luna. The problem is that as Discord let slip, Chrysalis had decided to help them. She certainly has sent her agents to facilitate their meeting or is going to as soon as she feels she can get away with it.”

The worst part of it was that Luna couldn’t convince herself that Celestia was wrong. She grunted again. “What do we do now?”

“We can’t have the city militia looking for changelings right now.” Celestia turned to Crucible. “Please, visit the Lord Protector again and explain that changeling infiltrators are to be ignored and that he must focus on capturing Twilight and Cadance if they make it to Manehattan. If things go the right way, we’ll have been much sooner than that. In the meanwhile, don’t even think about Naminé.”

“Why don’t you make Chrysalis call them back?” Luna asked and Celestia simply stared at her with a flat expression. “Right… She’ll deny it until the day she dies… I feel like we should do something about her, though.”

“And we shall. That is why she is going to help us and stay with us until this whole mess is resolved. Chrysalis does want to know ‘The Truth’. She thinks it will validate her hurt ego. But she is not ready to understand it yet, and you must be careful she doesn’t twist her words around in your mind. Don’t forget that Chrysalis is dangerous. “

“There is another very important issue.” Celestia went on. “The airship that teleported. The Lion’s son is likely commanding it. And he has an interesting friend.”

“Wonderful…” Luna sighed. “But not really surprising.”

“Crucible, you must contact all the local militias and order them, on my authority to not engage with these griffons under any circumstance. At the same time, also inform all Royal Guard garrisons that Grigory is likely to be accompanied by a yellow and white, young griffoness named Galensa. They are authorized to apprehend and restrain her with any measure necessary upon sight. Her friends are likely to defend her and tell them to be aware of that. She will be surrounded by professional soldiers from Griffindell, if Grigory is with her.”

“Yes Princess.” Was all he said. “It’s a shame Captain Armor isn’t around.”

“What is so scary about her, Celestia?”

“Galensa was a genius student from Snow Mountains that graduated with excellent grades at Bay County. She was offered a job in thaumatoengineering research and she excelled in her work. Then I found out she was creating a magical weapon capable of destroying half Canterlot County.” Luna gasped and covered her mouth with a hoof in a way Celestia wasn’t entirely sure she was making fun of her worry or legitimately scared like she was at the time. “Some two years ago I had her expelled and ensured she wouldn’t get a job anywhere near a place that could enable her to continue her research and made sure somepony kept an eye on her.”

“But she returned to Snow Mountains and my informant lost her. I didn’t worry too much because the chance of her continuing her research there was miniscule and I hadn’t heard about her until now.”

Luna saw Celestia’s eyes changed. She was worried. Not in the funny way she was when Chrysalis showed up in Canterlot and started talking about their joint project or about a dead griffon emperor. Celestia was ‘we all could die horribly’-worried. “Do you think that The Lion is funding her research?”

Then Luna gasped again. “If they are after Twilight and Cadance… They could be after the Elements of Harmony. I don’t think so, but can they be used to power such a weapon?”

Celestia shook her head. “They are a physical focus of Harmony itself, Luna. They can’t be used for wanton destruction. But Twilight and Cadance are likely to be accumulating information and it seems that The Lion, or at least Grigory is interested in what they have found.”

“Princess…” Crucible called. “Twilight’s airship had to change course to go to Haybale. It is on the way to Manehattan, but not on a direct course.”

“Correct.” She agreed, then looked back at Luna. “Twilight likely has friends that are helping her, and they found something of interest there. Or they were drawn there.”

Luna nodded back at her. “And at the same time, Grigory knew to look for them in there… Which is why his airship went straight there and didn’t follow Flying Snake’s… And you’ve put Chocolate Velvet in their way!”

“He will be fine, Luna. He will protect Cadance and Twilight. And even if they hurt him… I trust in his ability and loyalty.” The younger sister nodded at Celestia’s words. “I don’t think The Lion has the resources, to make a functional weapon, Luna. I don’t even think that he would have the desire to do so. We need more information. Crucible, order a search in all the records for the other griffons that appeared with her and Grigory in the teleporter facility. I need to know everything there is to know about them.”

“Aye, Princess.”

“In the meanwhile, Luna, go back to the Bordello and ask Chrysalis to join us in the Break of Dawn with all the soldiers she can spare from The Rock. Preferably with Thorax too.”

Luna simply nodded.

“Look for me. I’ll be waiting onboard and in position when you arrive, and we will try to intercept the griffon airship before they contact Twilight. This is turning into a mess and we have to fix this soon. I need to know how much The Lion knows of Emperor Grigor and interviewing Grigory and his friends might be ideal. Then we’ll have to escort them back to Griffindel. We may not be able to participate in the ambush near Baltimare.”

“Princess, I don’t like the fact that everything seems to be happening at the same time and in the same general area.” Crucible added. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to stop them from coming into contact with Twilight and Cadance.”

Something clicked inside Celestia’s head. “Isn’t it peculiar that there was an issue with money being diverted from Ponyville’s militia and then everything started happening? Cadance found the letter… This airship appeared. Galensa resurfaced. Twilight and Cadance were drawn to a small town out of the way…”

“Chrysalis made her super-soldiers…” Luna reminded her. “Although, she’s likely been messing with those from much earlier… Still. Do you think that they are trying to distract us?”

“No…” Celestia mused quietly. “Discord might have wanted to distract us because he wanted Twilight and Cadance to find Naminé, but it’s different. Someone ensured Cadance would find the letter and knew that she would find Twilight to investigate it. Incidentally, we discovered the problems with Ponyville’s militia. They didn’t intend for Discord and Chrysalis to get involved. That was because Twilight and Cadance sought her instead of seeking The Lion right away.”

“Inadvertently, Twilight and Cadance threw a wrench in their plans and everything got complicated. So, they’re scrambling to fix the problem before we figure out what they are doing.” Luna nodded. “Do you think that they caused the problem with the militia too? Somehow?”

“No. It’s easier to assume that they exploited an existing situation.” Celestia nodded. “Whoever it was, understands what those ponies were going through and exploited the situation because they were that much more vulnerable. Very, very few creatures in the world could have understood that. Not only that, but they had the resources to probe for that sort of thing.”

Luna frowned and nodded in agreement. Then she looked at her sister with pained eyes. “Discord?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think that he would… I just don’t know yet. Right now I need to deal with the funding issue. I think they were siphoning money for something. Luna, do you think you can deal with the griffons and with Twilight?”

“I think that I can. You’re going to Canterlot?”

“I must ensure that those responsible don’t vanish. Or worse. I have some questions that need answers.”

“Celestia…” Luna ears fell a little. “What about Chrysalis’ children? Her Praetorians?”

“I’m afraid they’ll have to wait.” She shook her head softly. “They are safe with Chrysalis.”

“Didn’t you just say that she is dangerous?” Luna frowned.

“She is. But not to them. Chrysalis is confused, but she is compelled to love them and to nourish and protect them. They are safe with her.”

“How do you know? I mean… She killed them. Several times, as ridiculous as this sounds. She’s done horrible things to them.” Luna pouted a little. “You sound like those times when you know something and won’t tell me about it!”

“And she suffered through it. It was not meant to be, and she hurt herself as much as she hurt them. I know this, Luna. And you know it too. You’re simply not paying attention. We share that imperative. Which is also the same reason Twilight and Cadance are doing what they are.”

“Huh…” The other looked down thoughtfully.

“Yeah… This is too deep for me.” Crucible deadpanned at them. “With all due respect, I have orders to follow.”

***

The griffons had decided that they’d walk the final stretch of their journey and Discord didn’t complain. Apparently, it was forbidden to fly near the cities, or something like that. It was a nice walk anyways. Out of the snow and the short grass was nice on his feet. It was cold though. And wet. But that didn’t bother him. The griffons had stopped to replenish their water supply, canteens. One for each and they took the cold water from a fast and crystalline stream. The young male even gave him to drink before replenishing the thing.

“It comes down from the mountains.” The young male pointed at the tall snow-covered peaks. “Griffons love the mountains! They provide everything. Food. Water. Shelter. And roosting.”

The image on Discord’s head was a bunch of griffons piled up on a tree that was toppling over from the weight.

“They even protect us from the monsters.” He went on with a gesture. “They diverge them elsewhere, particularly the undead creatures since they are rather stupid.”

“Bah!” We don’t need any help from the mountains!” The small cub cried disdainfully. “We kill all the monsters!”

“We can’t kill all of them.” The male retorted and rolled his eyes.

“Yes, we can, you dope!”

“We won’t be killing any monsters if we don’t make it to Brokenhorn.” The father told them, and it was all it took for them to focus and resume their walk.

Soon they were climbing a soft incline covered in patches of grass on the dark soil. The ubiquitous clouds closed most of the sky, but Discord could imagine it wouldn’t be too long before Celestia set the sun and Luna rose her moon. He was curious about how the griffons viewed that daily cycle since they didn’t seem to like ponies.

His thoughts were interrupted when the cute griffon child flew and hovered before him. “Why do so many monsters come from the Frozen North? Especially undead monsters! They’re the worst! They cast frost spells all over the grain fields, and they make it really cold, which doesn’t really bother me, but they moan and growl in such a weird way! What is up with them? Don’t they just know to die already?”

Discord actually knew the answer! “Well, not all of them are really undead.”

For an instant, he wasn’t really sure he was supposed to talk about that with a young child, but if her father took her to track a lich, it should be fine.

“Truly undead creatures have a functioning soul trapped and corrupted in them, and that is what makes them so powerful. Like the archlich. But there are also other kinds of false undead monsters that are nothing more than the physical remains of a creature that was reanimated by foreign magic looking for a host! Typically, evil magic.”

“It’s usually their intelligence that gives it away, you see. Truly undead monsters are dumb! Except for especial ones. Like liches. They are truly evil creatures that turned themselves into undead monsters to stop the process of aging and become immortal, but in doing that they corrupt their own magic and most of them become mindless, even if rather smart for these kinds of monsters.” He stopped for a second. “Uh, did you understand that?”

“Uh-hu!” She nodded excitedly. “But why do they come from the North? There are plenty of dead things in the South too!”

“Well, that is because of the Windigos!” He gestured like he was telling a spooky story. “Their magic damages the magic in everything. They make good creatures bad. They mess with the very magic of the world and that is why they cause the everlasting winter! It’s like that part of the world is not working right.”

“Oooh! That makes sense!” The small griffon nodded enthusiastically. “I guess it took some courage for the ponies to summon up this kind of cursed magic just to hurt us!”

Whoa! Wait! What? “Come again?”

“They summoned the Windigos to destroy our lands because they couldn’t keep us from taking theirs too.” She explained calmly. “It’s what they call ‘starched land strategy’!”

“It’s ‘scorched land’, dumbass.” Her brother growled.

“Whatever.” She waved away the correction. “When you destroy the very land that you can’t keep your enemy from taking and you hate them so much that you don’t want them to have it either. Filling it with an unlivable winter that creates monsters is pretty much that.”

“Whoa! Hold on!” He put out his hands. “It’s not like that! The ponies didn’t do it to hurt the griffons! Those things hurt them a lot too!”

“The Harpy says they did!” She retorted with some confusion. “She said they hated us and that the pegasuses wanted the sky for themselves! The earth ponies turned the tress and the earth against us, and the unicorns made the animals rebel! Can you believe this? What kind of animal doesn’t want to be hunted by a fierce griffon?”

The little one suddenly delivered a lot of information, didn’t she? “Is that so? Hum. Where can I find this Harpy?”

“The Lion will show her to you, Lord of Chaos.” The father said in his stoic tone. “We are mere students in the path that he mastered. Like a true Patriarch for the True Griffons, her Chosen.”

Well, that didn’t sound worrying at all. Or creepy. Worrying and creepy. Maybe that was enough to run back to Celestia and tell her of this Harpy, but he had to remember he was there to make friends first. Hum… Should he have an opportunity, perhaps.

“Hum. That sounds interesting.”

“I am sorry, Lord of Chaos.” The father said. “The cub spoke out of place. We are not allowed to discuss the Harpy with outsiders, for our safety.”

“I understand.” He did his best to sound understanding rather than disappointed. “I really do. You live under threat to your way of life because… Let’s say the rest of the world doesn’t agree with you. I’m not here to judge, you know. I’m here because you guys made me feel like I’m important to you. Celestia said I should cultivate that.”

“We may not agree with the pony Princesses. And some of us hate them. But even in our deepest moments of wrath we recognize and respect honesty. And in that she has never failed with us. Even in our darkest songs of grievance we recognize that she has never lied or used dirty subterfuge with us.”

“Well, that is actually a promising start!” He grinned at the griffon and he almost, kinda… Sort of grinned too. Discord could see that smiling wasn’t his forte.

Then he turned to the two younglings. Brother and sister staring at each other like an old feud was about to blow up. “So, I hope you’re not in trouble for speaking to me about the Harpy.”

“Nah!” She waved her little paw about and then put it over her chest while she recited. “Lady Gwendolen says that cubs are supposed to do silly things. Chaos is in our nature and it is futile to suppress it.”

“Meanwhile the ‘young toms’, now able to grasp that rules exist are supposed to exercise their restraint and comprehend that rules must be understood before they can be safely broken.” The older brother growled in the same cadence.

“Is that so?” He winked at her. “Can you tell me about Lady Gwendolen?”

“She is the greatest! And coolest! And most awesome griffon EVER!” She screamed all the excitement Discord imagined could fit inside her body.

“She is the most beautiful griffoness in existence…” Her brother sighed at the same time, all dreamy eyes and silly smile.

“Eww…” The small griffon followed.

“I’ve been told that she is some sort of leader?”

“Lady Gwendolen is more than that.” The father spoke again. “She is Lord Gilad’s mate and as such she ensures that all their subjects are properly educated and behave in a manner befitting our race.”

“She stays in Griffindell, right? I suppose I should pay her a visit after I met The Lion.”

“He will likely take you to see her. There… Brokenhorn.”

From the top of the hill they could see the city past an open field covered in a few plantations. Small stone and wooden houses dotted the fields amid the tapestry of flimsy green plants clinging to life, barely surviving the cold. Behind a weird crooked rock rose several hundred hooves above. It was dotted with holes and some of them showed light coming from inside. The top looked sharp and jagged, actually as though it was a broken horn. Several houses of different sizes and shapes circled the rocky formation and it all was surrounded with a black stone wall with some tall towers and a large gatehouse. At least from where Discord could see.

The whole thing radiated magic too. It didn’t sing, or whisper to him this time. It was like the natural magic of the world. It simply sat where it was and made things happen. The whole wall was covered in strengthening magic. Maybe it was the material they chose to build the walls with? It seemed filled with purpose, like the pony enchanted weapons that he knew. Maybe the griffons knew a way of enchanting the things they created. Even without horns to focus magic. They had wings and stood on clouds like the pegasus, after all and Discord’s seen Rainbow Dash do some impressive things with their natural magic.

They walked at a brisker pace now that they were so close to the city and things seemed livelier. A few griffons that watched over the fields stopped in their tracks and stared. A merchant, or something of the sort stopped on the beaten path to the gates between the fields and stared still with his cart filled with ‘stuff’ hitched to his shoulders.

City guards congregated on the walls to watch them approach the city, all wearing a silvery cuirass and armed with those guns. One of them ordered the others to do something and soon the gates started slowly opening outwards.

They were bigger than he had noticed from afar. Heavy, noisy black metal gates. And past them the gatehouse was a simply stone structure. Past it the beaten path continued, and a lot of griffons gathered there. Of all ages and sizes. Wearing different clothes or none at all. They were on the sides of street, in front of the houses because in the middle of the street was one single male griffon.

Sweet Celestia on a pogo stick, did that griffon look formidable.

He was big and mean. He exuded power with his serious stare. All blackish-brown under a combination of black armor and a heavy fur coat. Discord didn’t know what sort of fur that was, but it was black, thick and heavy. Above it, the griffon’s head as a pristine white with brown eyes and he wore a small and discreet golden diadem with a single ruby. He really didn’t need more to project an aura of majesty.

Then he bowed before him. It almost scared Discord. The gesture spread like a wave in all directions among the congregated griffons. Discord didn’t even began imagining how to react to this. Should he bow too? Should he wait? Still, the others rose when The Lion stood again. His wings flared open and threw his fur cloak in between them and he spoke with a deep bass.

“Witness, Brokenhorn! The Lord of Chaos comes to the Snow Mountains. Celebrate, Children of the Harpy! History writes itself before your eyes at the edge of a new age.”

Around Discord the griffons jumped, cried, whooped and some of them even sang. Some of them stood and pumped fists into the air or jumped with a flap of wings and made pirouettes. The small cub that accompanied him and her brother celebrated as well as their father, even if he seemed a lot more restrained.

The excitement died down after a while once their lord returned to his regal poise. An old griffon approached, but he still seemed physically fit and wore a golden chain around his neck, along with a plain silver diadem that went well with his gray fur and cyan head. Calm yellow eyes hovered over Discord until he lowered them and bowed slightly, next to Gilad.

Then the tracker griffon approached, and his two cubs remained respectfully a body’s length behind him. “My Jarl. My liege. We searched for the creature, but it eluded us. It moves quite a lot for a lich and we couldn’t even find tracks to follow.”

“No matter, friend.” The silvery griffon held his shoulder with a paw and spoke hoarsely with a smile. “You’ve brought us something far more important.”

“Quite.” Gilad added with his much more impressive voice. “The foul monster can wait for all I care. Tonight, we will feast. No goat, or cow. We will eat roasted caribou fresh out of the woods.”

Their audience celebrated again, and Discord noticed he hadn’t yet spoken a word. It made him conscious, as though it might look like he didn’t care enough for their reception.

“Thank you, Lord Gilad. I am very honored at your reception.” He grinned sheepishly. “Even if I’m not entirely sure I deserve it. It is a bit overwhelming.”

The big griffon nodded. And then he smiled in a way that Discord never thought would be possible in such a stern and powerful creature. “You will understand. She will show it to you.”

Yeah… Creepy.

The Quadrupedal Mind

A feast was organized impromptu, and Discord tried not to make petty comparisons, but he had a hard time remembering when did the ponies stop an entire city to celebrate the fact that he was simply there. Griffons that lived in the wilderness close to the city came to the festivity, and not only the farmers, but hunters that lived hours away. Travelers leaving to visit another city or to return home decided to stay and join the feast and celebrate.

The same beaten path outside the gates continued well into the city and branched out into other streets in between the stone and wood buildings. Houses and stores, most of them. The path ended on an open area before ‘The Horn’ and in the back of such area was a sort of audience place with a few tall ceremonial seats. One for the Jarl, another for The Lion, and one for Discord in the center, and then other seats for other griffons. Before them was a large curved table. Its wings half-embraced an open area imagined was used for audiences and the such, and further was a crackling fire in the middle of half-a dozen caribou carcasses roasting at the stakes, skinned, and cleaned within a couple of hours after they started preparing the feast.

He could see why the ponies and these northerner griffons would be cross. He couldn’t imagine them condoning this whole affair surrounding six dead hooved creatures. He was aware of how much of a controversy that thing was among these groups, and even with the more pony-friendly griffons to the south, but he felt it would be out of his place to denounce it or condemn it. If he had learned anything, it was that there was a time for everything.

Well, he didn’t eat meat nor traditional pony food. He usually ate the plates and napkins. If anything, it put him in a neutral position to mediate. Celestia had it right once again.

There was a lot of discussion and that was one of the reasons the griffons in the north were so pissed with the ponies. At the same time, there was no outright prohibition on game hunting simply because fish was an important source of food and of income in Mount Aris and almost every single coastal city of every race. Ponies kept carnivorous pets and zoos would need to feed their animals too.

Eventually Celestia brought down the hammer and made hunting and fishing regulated activities. The slaughtering of any creature capable of higher reasoning was forbidden and farm animals were protected. In fact, wild animals were protected too, including these caribou the griffons roasted in his honor. They were capable of rational thought, just not ‘as much’ as the ponies… That was a tough topic to explain. Other hooved animals typically were smart enough to talk, but most of them had a more primitive intelligence.

They behaved different and that made the argument complicated. These creatures would live in the wild and distance themselves from cities and villages. They wouldn’t accumulate wealth or educate themselves. They were content with simply being themselves and existing in their place. To some, this meant that they were put there to serve as prey. What is worse, these creatures accepted that fate. Their defenders would never understand why. Not that they wouldn’t fight for their lives, far from it, but they wouldn’t look for help from those that would protect them. It a simple predator and prey relationship.

There was something important about that Discord seemed to have forgotten.

That whole mess was one of the reasons the two Griffon Wars happened if Discord’s endeavor into pony history could be trusted with all that mess of changed history.

He was just happy it wasn’t his job to figure that one out. He also didn’t really understand why it happened. His mind drifted back to his conversation with Twilight, Cadance and their friends and he wondered if had something to do with the Animus Imperative. Were they really just put in their places to serve as a source of food to others?

From the point of view of the grass that would certainly make sense.

Thinking too much had a tendency of ruining the thinker and the situation he found himself in precluded such thoughts.

The music was the best. Drums, flutes, lutes and some instruments he didn’t know the name of. All he knew was that the music was different than what he traditionally heard in present day pony parties. Though he also remembered a time when ponies partied very much in the same way. Just like these griffons they would dance, play instruments and eat until they couldn’t anymore. Parties in the present had a tendency of becoming social affairs. The ones he had in mind from the past were sheer manifestations of pure joy, in the open instead of big halls. With improvised music. Rustic food.

Celestia had once told him that ponies had civilized themselves too much and it was boring. He supposed he had finally understood what she meant. She was also a bit drunk and whining about some date she had, or something. It was a boring conversation anyway.

The air was cold, but the giant bonfire and the partying griffons generated enough heat that one could completely forget they were surrounded by one of the coldest areas in the known world. Most of the light was provided by the fire too, with a few torches, since Luna’s Moon was hidden behind the clouds.

And even if he didn’t find the big game meat appetizing, he did enjoy the roasted potatoes, tomatoes, and the fish. He held a stick in his hand with the pieces of fish, tomato, potato, and chunks of bell peppers, like any of them would and they appreciated that he liked their food. They just didn’t expect that she would eat the sticks too.

Not that any griffon complained though. They just stared curiously, and the sticks tasted good anyways.

He refrained from drinking the mugs, though. He figured they’d be too expensive, and that mead stuff was almost as good as the wine from the Royal Reserve. He could drink that stuff all night.

At his side the old Jarl of Brokenhorn picked at the leg bones of a rabbit with his beak, not really paying it much attention to it, which he directed at the dancing griffons next to the table.

“How did your lordship end up here? I had figured that the ponies would do everything in their power to keep you from actually meeting us.”

“Funny thing. Celestia asked me to come when I told her you guys liked me.”

The griffon chuckled. “Now I am nervous.”

Lord Gilad on his other side spoke with his deep voice after leaving his mug on the table. “Never mind him, Lord of Chaos. Some old griffons have difficulty understanding that the biggest problem we face are not the ponies or even the Princesses. It is other griffons.”

The older griffon bah’d at him with a dismissive wave and threw the bone at the fire. “You didn’t have to stand in formation with unicorns shooting magical fire at you.”

“Ignore me, Lordship.” The Jarl continued. “Old griffons become bitter and pesky.”

“Indeed, the problem seems to be griffons.” Discord pulled at his beard, watching curiously while the griffons brought wood planks and prepared some sort of stage in front of the fire. “Whatever happened to that... Army I saved from being slaughtered by Lord… Graham, I believe was his name?”

“They are prisoners in an encampment right next to Stormedge. I’ll be damned if I’ve ever before seen such a pathetic lot of soldiers in my life.” The old Jarl answered throwing a small cherry tomato down his beak. “They are being well-treated if that is what your lordship wishes to know.”

Discord nodded to him, satisfied with the information, but Gilad spoke again. “Those are not the ones who concern me either.”

“Who are they, then?”

“The ones that are too cowardly to pick up a weapon and fight for what they believe.” He frowned while he stared at the fire and the stage being assembled with two big logs. “History has a penchant for rhyming. And I do believe that your lordship knows history, as does Princess Celestia.”

That confused Discord. He thumped his fingers on his mug nervously. “I don’t understand. Princess Celestia is perfectly fine with you becoming King of the Griffons.”

“She is.” He lowered his voice. “Until I actually am and suddenly griffons are crying for her help. As I said, history rhymes. It’s like a song that loves repeating its refrains with the most dramatic of choirs.”

“History isn’t my forte. But I understand. I can tell you that Celestia has sent me to meet you guys because she believes in building a bridge.”

“I can respect that.” The griffon smiled earnestly again. “If there is one thing that I can’t say about her is that she is likely deal in underhanded ways with us.”

“I am sure she appreciates that trust.”

The Jarl raised his hand in the most petulant way Discord had ever seen, and his eyes remained fixed on the impromptu stage. “Ah… These talks are best left to another time.”

Both of them agreed with the old griffon and by that time the stage was complete. It had a pair of pillars holding a long swath of red linen among them, shinning a bit with the giant fire behind it and above the flat surface of wood planks. To Discord that didn’t really understand their traditions it seemed like something especial was about to happen.

“Is that Gwineth?” Gilad asked the Jarl, staring with him at a particularly beautiful griffon lady calmly walking toward the stage.

“She is.” The old griffon wouldn’t take his eyes off of her.

“She looks stunning.”

A very young steely-blue furred griffoness with a silvery head and blue eyes with cyan ‘eye shadow’. It called Discord’s attention that she was the only griffon in that entire affair that seemed. Different. He struggled finding the word he was looking for, but ‘sophisticated’ seemed appropriate. Maybe she had come recently from one of the more pony friendly cities?

She carried a longsword on her back, made with darkened steel and it seemed to be charged with magic. The only thing on Discord’s mind was what was she going to do with that sword, but the males in the crowd and in his company seemed hypnotized by the young female for completely different reasons to the point it began feeling creepy. It seemed that these griffons could be very creepy.

Regardless, she seemed proud of all the attention she was getting, and Discord’s curiosity only grew. “Who is she?”

“Gwineth is a matter of pride for Brokenhorn.” The Jarl said. “Not only is she known as one of the most beautiful of our race, but she is also a pureblooded descendant of Emperor Grigor. Is your Lordship familiar?”

“I’ve heard of him. Yes. I know that his legacy is very important to your hold.”

“Given her heritage and attributes, she was chosen by Lady Gwendolen, trained and educated with several skills that make her special among our kind.”

The way this griffon talked about her made Discord ever more worried about that creepy tone of his. Regardless, he had to admit that she was quite beautiful, as far as Discord was able to discern the traits of beauty in a griffon, and at least The Lion wasn’t so overtly creepy about it.

“And what would those skills be?”

“She is the product of Gwendolen’s love of our older traditions.” Gilad explained. “She called Gwineth a Swordmaiden.”

“Though I am not so sure about the maiden part.” The Jarl laughed at his own joke and Discord’s ‘creep-o-meter’ might have exploded if it was turned on. Gilad didn’t seem to like the joke either.

Meanwhile Gwineth talked to an older, tan and white griffoness holding some sort of musical instrument and lord Gilad talked to Discord again. “She spent a few years of her life in Griffindell, studying with our Loremasters, and with my mate, Gwendolen. Your Lordship will have to meet her and will leave just as soon as the lich is dealt with.”

Discord simply nodded. He had assumed that The Lion would want to talk to him but would also want to do so when the party was done, and also with his mate present. He didn’t believe Chrysalis’ and had a hunch that she was actually very important to the griffons. More so than a ‘pretty face’ he had mated. These griffons certainly didn’t.

The Lion seemed a lot friendlier than he was led to believe though. Curious.

He had distracted himself and wasn’t paying attention, but it was then the older griffoness with the instrument started playing by the side of the stage. It produced a haunting sound that reminded him of a rustic violin. A combination of raspy metal sounds and the wind. In a way, it seemed appropriate to the region and the gruff griffons that lived there. Another two griffons joined with simple wood and leather, but dramatic drums.

The younger Gwineth stood on her hindlegs in the middle of stage, holding the sword point down to the wood in front of her. Her head lowered and closed eyes, she seemed to focus her mind, and to Discord’s special eyes, she bled magic into the air and her weapon seemed to syphon it into characters etched into the blade. Runic magic, how appropriate.

It exuded blue magical fire and scorched the wood where the tip of the blade touched it. When her owner spun and swirled it around herself it cut and burned the wood several times, sending blazing splinters into the air. What is more, the sword whistled through the routine of sweeping arc and spinning flourishes, leaving a faint trail of blue magical light in the air.

Now Discord wasn’t a specialist in the martial arts, and he had never even come close to using a sword, but he saw she didn’t simply spin the blade in her paws, though. She held it purposely and every movement seemed like a proper cut with the weapon, even the flourishes she performed seemed controlled with precision to come within a hair’s length of cutting herself apart with a dangerous magical weapon.

Of course, with the way the old griffon and the others in the audience stared at her and the sweat shinning the flame’s light in her fur and muscles underneath, it was pretty obvious that he and the griffons around them were seeing different things. Not that he couldn’t appreciate her beauty and graceful, even sensual movements, but Discord was used to seeing deeper.

He didn’t judge them either. He understood it was a part of their beings and ponies did similar things. He still remember when ponies build entire cults to love that turned out to be… Well… The Bordello of Candy on steroids.

The ‘thing’ was that he knew how taxing it was for such quadrupedal creatures to stand in such a fashion, much more with such control and balance. No wonder she was a beautiful creature, even against the bright flames her silhouette betrayed powerful muscles to keep such a weapon under control and with such precision.

She wasn’t a dancer, but a fighter and she wasn’t performing for some creepy old griffon, she was showing off not only her physical fitness, but her magical prowess and pure skill. Someone knew very well what they were doing.

He was no investigator either, but perhaps a conversation with this Gwineth was in order.

***

It was said that in modern times Equestria didn’t sleep. And to a certain degree that was correct. Ponies said that it greatly pleased the Princess of the Night that ponies had learned to appreciate her night in modern times and she even visited nightly dance houses and all sorts of nocturnal entertainment in Canterlot when her nightmare hunting allowed it of her.

But Silent Wind, nicknamed ‘Whoosh’ by her co-workers, colleagues and clients belonged to a special kind of pony that appreciated the night a long time before the modern times. When ponies invented the brothels, inns and taverns her kind was there already. But while some specialized in providing company, her kind specialized in relieving costumers of prized possessions.

But as the skilled professional she was she ventured on into a more lucrative venue of work for a pony with streetwise in a city like Canterlot. She figured that rich ponies, for some stupid reason she couldn’t grasp always wanted to be richer, no matter how much money they already had. And some wanted that so much that they would break the law, and when they broke the law, they would find themselves in trouble. That was where Whoosh’s skills were needed. And the price, of course, was on par with her costumers.

She had her eyes on a job for the Crown about assisting in retrieving a certain couple of princesses at odds with the Royal House, and that job was good since the Royal House always paid and those pampered ponies were likely to be an easy target. Besides, she had heard that Flying Snake was on it too. Even if she’d need special preparations for that job, all she would have to do was show up, pull her weight and split the pay. Sweet as mango.

But when none other than the county’s Lord Protector’s secretary contacted her, she knew that it could be the job of her life. She took it without thinking much. Even if dealing with canterlotian nobility was a pain in the flank most of the times.

She crossed her legs, under her dark-gray cloak with the hood down letting her pretty batpony head with her golden eyes show and leaned against the door’s frame watching the old unicorn freaking out and desperately looking for ‘stuff’ in his office. It was a nice place, his home office in his mansion. She didn’t know what he had done, but she doubted he would ever show his face in the County Militia Administration ever again. It was funny in a way because he was the sort of pony that would’ve give her trouble for her typical job.

It was amusing to see ponies freaking out anyways. The old pony was sand yellow with a once reddish mane turning grey. He was probably a strapping local militia at one time (or just a pampered noble that got a job because of his name). He still had quite a lot of muscles on his large frame, for a unicorn. Not that she herself was much bigger as a bat-pony, but whatever.

He ran to the other side of the office and pulled open several drawers, then squealed in panic and pulled down the curtain to the window. Then slammed each of the drawers, one at a time until he found what he was looking for. A cigar case. It was a pretty one to be sure, gold embroidery and all. Ironically the cover was an image of Princess Celestia raising the sun.

“Sir!” His young secretary by the desk sounded on the brink of panic too. “I think you should take things of real importance only.”

Poor young thing. One of those young pegasus that got infatuated with some rich, high and mighty city official that was gonna fix all the problems in the world and when she noticed that he is about as crooked as all the criminals he was gonna put in the dungeon she was already too loyal to turn on him.

Silent wished she believed those crazy ponies that said Princess Celestia sent bad ponies to Tartarus because then she could imagine this jerk would have a nice place in there right next to Cerberus’ pissing post.

Regardless of Whoosh’s feelings, the old pony stared at the object he held and left it on the table. “Yes. Yes, you are right. Oh, my goodness! It wasn’t supposed to come to this! It was supposed to be simply a side project! And it was not like anypony would ever notice the missing money!”

Whoosh cleared her throat. “Whoah! Chief, mind your words. They say the walls have ears.”

She couldn’t hold a diminutive smirk. In Canterlot the walls had sophisticated divination spells, rather than popular sayings.

The unicorn did shut up, but he kept looking for something in his desk. The secretary sat on her haunches and held her own hooves. “Sir… We really should be worrying about things you should need on your travel, since our bags are already on the airship.”

“But I need it!” He almost screamed in panic throwing papers and office supplies all over the room until he finally found it: a pretty heart shaped locket. Silent Wind couldn’t believe it. “My wives would kill me if I left it behind!”

He even opened it to show it to her. A nice heart shaped photograph of one of those tall and pretty saddle arabian mares next to a tall and elegant unicorn mare. “Well, you found it. Cool. Are you ready then?”

“Yes! I am terribly sorry, Madam Silent Wind. But this is most important. My wives are on vacation, as you suggested, but I simply could not leave this behind. It is from our second marriage you know. I have to get one with our daughters, but… Well... Time.”

“Yes, yes.” She waved her hoof at him. “Get this thing somewhere safe cause we’re not coming back for it if you lose it.”

Then the door to the office opened and one of her helpers, an earth pony’s head slipped in, covered in a black balaclava and a cloak over his seemingly orange body. “All set, boss.”

“Cool!” The bat pony grinned. “Let’s review the cover story.”

The unicorn nodded. “Yes! My family was set to go on vacation to Las Pegasus, and that is why my wives and daughters left. But I had to stay behind to prepare a report on Ponyville’s situation to Lord Blueblood that was to be sent to him tomorrow. Thus, I left this night to meet my family in Las Pegasus using my private yacht!”

“Yes!” Silent Wind nodded at him and then at his secretary.

“Oh! I was supposed to accompany Lord Stalwart Star to the docks and go home. Then, by the morning I would take his report to Lord Blueblood in Canterlot Palace! But when I arrived in the morning the mansion was gone. So, I ran to the Militia!”

The bat pony nodded again and then stared at her earth pony accomplice who grinned under his mask like it was Nightmare Night. “Unfortunately, a fire broke out during the night and, lo and behold, the report turned to ash! Along with all the records. Unfortunately.”

“Excellent everypony!” She grinned too.

“Are we ready to leave, then?” Lord Stalwart pointed anxiously at the door, but Silent Wind calmed him with a hoof and professional demeanor.

“Almost. You were looking for that thing… You can afford a few minutes for your own safety. One of my partners needs to check back in. He’s making sure that we can reach the airdock and that the militia isn’t in the way. If I understood it correctly, we may already be too late and there is one heck of a Justiciar zeroing in on you. But we gotta try, right?”

“I am most certainly not paying you if we are caught!”

“Dude…” She grinned. “If we’re caught the that Justiciar is going to rip you a new one large enough to pass Princess Celestia’s new airship through it. Paying me will be the least of your worries.”

“You know, you’re not really helping.” His secretary gave her a cute angry look.

“Ah, chill. She’s not going to catch us. I got a reputation to keep. Besides, remember my ponies tipped her off in the wrong way. She thinks you’re leaving by train.”

“Oh! Yes!” He grinned a little calmer. “You sent Miss Rainy to book a ticket in my name! I asked for first class, for the sake of credibility. By the way, Rainy, did you deliver the letters?”

“Yes sir!” She chirped and Silent Wind grimaced.

“Wait! What letters?!” The batpony had a mini-heart attack just then.

“Oh… Uh…” The unicorn coughed. “Nothing important. I simply saw myself forced to inform a few friends of my departure.”

Great… Just great. Silent Wind started regretting taking that job.

Then the door to the outside opened and closed. Another earth pony in a balaclava and cloak stopped next to the first, this one green. “Way’s ready to go, boss! Goldies are on their way though. We gotta go now!”

“Oh no! The Royal Guard?!” Whoosh could’ve sworn that Lord Stalwart almost turned white.

“What did you expect?” The first earth pony chuckled at his reaction. “Bro, you sole from the crown, didn’t ya?”

“Alright, enough chatter. Let’s go.” Too late to jump off the boat now. “The back door as we do, everypony keep quiet and don’t let stuff jingle. Keep low and keep your muzzles shut. If the Guards find us, don’t panic. They may not be the ones looking for us. Just let me talk.”

The group followed her trough the mansion devoid of its servantry straight through the kitchen to the pantry to the back door that opened to the large open area for receiving household supplies in the back yard, before the tennis yard and the pool. The ponies rushed past everything, following the thestral’s lead until a place in the living fence where there was a hidden hole one of the earth ponies held open for them. The first to pass was Whoosh, followed by her charge and the secretary, followed by the others to the neighbors’ yard.

A pair of unicorns stared at them. The male, white and blue with a monocle over his right eye was a career politician and he held an unlit cigar in his mouth while he held a lighter in his telekinesis. Next to him, his wife a female rosé and blonde unicorn froze mid-bite on a sandwich while another unicorn male, green and greener, worked a griddle where he seemed to be making another sandwich next to yet another unicorn, his wife who was yellow and pink of mane. Both lawyers. All of four of them very influential and important ponies in the Canterlot social and political environment.

Just his luck.

While the ‘professional’ ponies ignored them, Lord Stalwart gave them his best ‘definitively not panicking’ smile and saluted with a hoof, never stopping on his way and unable to keep a nervous chuckle from bubbling up. “Evening, Master Gourd. Ah. Wonderful evening for an outdoor snack. Don’t mind us. We’re just… Uh… Playing a game. You know… Live Action Role Playing. Later!”

Going past another hole in the living fence they reached the streets and Lord Stalwart swiped at the sweat on his forehead. “Goodness, I am never going to recover from this.”

His secretary patted his shoulder. “I am so glad you are with me, Miss Rainy. I simply do not know what I would do without you.”

“Nah, it’ll be alright.” Silent Wind looked one way and another. The way seemed clear. “It’s cool. We’ll mosey to the other side and then down the street. Left in the balcony park and into the sewers. Then we go straight to the exit of Windyrow Street. Go around the building and into the service area, straight to your airship’s hangar. It should be ready to go with the crew waiting.”

“Come on, uncle.” One of the earth ponies pushed him lightly. “You’re making a scene and we’re not getting paid till you gone in that airship.”

“I’ll scout on ahead.” Silent Wind told them. “Keep’em moving boys.”

She rushed ahead, and the others made the ‘clients’ move. The street was empty and mostly silent and dark. It was a rich area and the lamps were kept lit, but either way nopony was there to bother them. At least they made it to the corner where Whoosh waited for them and looked past the corner.

“Horseapples… The balcony is full. We need a distraction. Slick, you’re on it!”

“Yes ma’am!” One of the earth ponies, with a little too much excitement removed his cloak and his balaclava revealing an orange earth pony with a blonde mane he adjusted with a swipe of his head. Determined orange eyes set forward. Stalwart wished he had had that level of enthusiasm in his recruits in his early years as Lord Protector of Canterlot. “See you guys latter!”

With that he galloped towards the balcony. It was one of the leisure areas in the capital were ponies would sit in a plaza with food carts (refined gourmet, not to mention vogueish food carts were all the rage in Canterlot, if one wasn’t in the mood for one of its many restaurants) and some street performers (well dressed, prim and proper as must everything be in Canterlot). Most of the ponies in the plaza though were rich residents of the neighborhood, some of which Stalwart recognized and he cringed a little knowing that they would recognize him too.

But to his surprise Miss Wind’s pony stopped galloping just short of drawing attentions to himself and took a deep breath. His shoulders slumped, his ears fell, and he held his head low while approaching the plaza from that point onward. He drew the attention of some ponies, mostly the rich unicorns of the area, but they kept to their glasses and food, talking to each other, casually watching the sad pony approaching.

Then he bumped into one of the richest looking unicorn mares and caused her to spill her wine all over her pretty dress. She gasped with the greatest degree of indignation, as one usually did in Canterlot.

“Sir! What manner of-” She began, but the pony Slick interrupted her with the most hurtful of whines.

“No! It is not worth it ma’am! There is nothing you can do!”

“What?” She took a step back, more than confused and other curious ponies around the area congregated around them.

“It is not worth it ma’am!” He wailed again holding hooves to his eyes. “She’s left me and there is nothing more for me in this cruel, cruel world!”

“What? You cannot mean! Sir! Wait a minute!” One of the rich stallions, one of those nice and upstanding ones wearing an aqua polo shirt standing around seemed legitimately worried while the other ponies simply seemed distressed. He held Slick’s shoulders. “Whatever has happened, there is no logic in-”

“No!” He freed himself with a dramatic flourish. “It is over! She was everything!”

Before he could do the next step in his routine, the ‘I’m gonna jump run’, the same unicorn held his mane with his magic. “Sir, please try and calm down. This is most unnecessary and unbecoming.”

One of the mares, a yellow and lime unicorn with a frilly dress approached, holding a tall glass in her telekinesis and giggling friendly. “Indeed. We will keep you company, and you will tell us what happened. I will pay you a dinner! How about that?”

From the corner of the street Whoosh showed her little fangs in a large grin. That never failed! Most of them might be self-absorbed plotholes, but as soon as they realized that things were bad, they would wise up and earnestly try to help. In their own way, but still. Understanding how ponies and their heads worked was the most important part of her job sometimes.

She simply gestured to her companions the way while ponies in the plaza laughed and kept their attention on the ‘sad’ earth pony and the unicorns convincing him to share a meal. Nopony noticed they slipped by close to the back walls of the mansion and russhed into the street as though nothing had happened.

Fortunately, their guide knew where she was going because Lord Stalwart had no idea they were supposed to enter the small and unassuming door by the large wall in the mountain side. It was a decorated archway flanking a simple metal door with a padlock which proved to be no match to Silent Wind’s lockpicking skills.

He simply stared in awe while she grabbed her kit from under her cloak, dealt with the thing and carefully replaced it to safety. He figured he really ought to invest in quality magical locks for his mansion. If he ever managed to have one in Canterlot, that was.

Past the door, they went down a flight of stone stairs and the smell soon became unpleasant to say the least.

“Eeew.” His secretary took a leg to her muzzle. “What’s this smell?”

“The Canterlot sewers… Ma’am…” The remaining earth pony replied with all the sarcasm the situation required.

“Well, excuse me, sir. I typically do not wallow in the sewers. Canterlot’s or otherwise!”

Ah, Miss Rainy. Don’t ever change… At least she gave her employer a reason to smile in this whole awful situation.

Not much further down the stairs they reached the main. At least it had two passageways by the sides and little bridges every now and then. But most important, there were little rubber boots Whoosh’s associates had stashed for them. Stalwart took a second to shiver at the absolute horror that would be stepping in something nasty in there with his bare hooves.

“Come on.” Silent Wind encouraged them. “Soon the worst will be behind, and you’ll be in your fancy airship.”

Oh yes. That would make it all worth it. It was simply a shame that Miss Rainy couldn’t go with him, though. He could use her company in the travel.

Regardless, fortunately the travel through the sewers was a long, tortuous, dark, damp, smelly and wholly unpleasant; but it fortunately was also uneventful. None of the monsters said to dwell in the sewer showed themselves.

Exiting was the same as entering, but fortunately Miss Wind had thought ahead before their departure and the door was open for them. That was why it was worth it to pay extra for good professionals. He couldn’t imagine the agony that retracing their steps through the sewers would be.

Coming out the sewer access they were in another of the typical Canterlot streets in the rich area, with public illumination and fortunately without witnesses and mostly closed stores.

They could already see the illuminated front of the private airdocks ahead of them, with its big and welcoming glass behind golden stylish bars doors closed. And two local militiaponies walking in front of them. The group stopped before they would be too close.

“It should be fine.” Whoosh quietly assured her client. “It’s just a patrol. They’ll be leaving. They don’t know what we’re doing.”

Some time passed with the ponies making themselves the least visible possible in the illuminated street, hiding the best that was possible behind a bench. But the guards didn’t move for ages until, finally, one of the two unicorns in leather barding elbowed the other.

“Hey. I gotta take a leak. Be right back.”

“Cool.”

He left without much hurry and his partner stayed relaxed, sitting in front of the glass doors, casually looking around. Silent Wind’s patience started to drain as much as her client’s anxiety grew.

Then the guard coughed and snorted before he started ‘singing’. “Pam pa ram pam pam pa ram...”

“Oh, hay no!” The thestral cursed under her breath and promptly started walking towards the guard so nonchalantly Stalwart thought that everything was lost.

“Ma’am.” The guard stared distractingly at her, at first, but them frowned. “Strange outfit out in the streets, ma’am.”

She simply drew a black truncheon and hit him over the head with that. “No! Bad pony!”

“Ow! What?” He tried protecting his head, but she was relentless. “Let me guess, somepony stole your sweet roll? Ow!”

“Stop! Don’t ever do that again!” She raged.

“You know, I used to be an adventurer…” She screeched before he could go on, hitting him as fast as she could and finally knocked unconscious. The other ponies approached the very miffed looking Miss Silent Wind while she stashed her weapon under her cape.

“Was that really necessary?” Miss Rainy glowered at the bat pony.

“Let’s go! That was too much of a racket for my tastes!” Was all she said.

They obeyed the angry batpony and fortunately the other guard never returned until they found the service entrance. It was a large metal gate closed with a large padlock and a chain, but she had as little trouble opening it as she had done before.

They were close now, and soon it would be over.

They quickly traversed the large patio behind the docks with the large cargo doors and Whoosh pointed at one of them. “There. Number six! We made it!”

She had a huge smile on her face, opening up the door when the magical lights came on. There was some fanfare, two Royal Guards threw up confetti. The beautiful white and blue airship was tethered to its dock with magical chains sealed by the Royal Guard and the crew was nowhere to be seen. Worse, there was a smug looking Justiciar unicorn sitting in between Princess Celestia and the freaking Changeling Queen. The princess applauded happily, and the queen blew a party horn.

Not to mention a whole selection of Royal Guards and black carapace changelings around the hangar with expressions that ranged from professionally stoical and smug grins.

“What the actual fudge?” The batpony blinked her unbelieving golden eyes.

“You are under arrest, Lord Stalwart Star…” Said Golden Rule with an even smugger grin. “For attempting to evade the Royal Guard and under severe suspicion of stealing resources from the Crown, obscuring administrative impropriety, conspiracy, blackmailing, prevarication and all the vain horseapples you stupid motherbuckers do when you think you are untouchable.”

He didn’t answer. Instead he had resigned to his fate with dignity. At least he had tried. With some luck, his associates would take the necessary precautions and this mess would blow even more out of proportion. All he wanted was some more money.

“What… What is Queen Chrysalis doing here?” Silent Wind was still more confused than worried while the others were still confused or in denial.

“She is here to commemorate the first successful operation by the first changeling Justiciar!” Celestia chimed infuriatingly happily.

Then green magic flame enveloped the secretary and she turned to a cheerful aqua and cyan changeling wearing the red robe and golden chain of the Justiciars and tap-dancing madly while spinning and squealing. “I did it!”

“Oh, for crying out loud!” The batpony facehoofed while the Lord Protector seemed to have accepted his fate with numb surrender.

“We arrested Miss Rainy Sky with the letters you sent her to deliver to your partners, Lord Stalwart Star.” Celestia said calmly. “She tried to protect your honor as far as she could. Please don’t be angry at her. And I am afraid that you have forfeited your freedom as well as your position though.”

“With all due respect, Princess. I don’t want your pity.” He hardened his stare, but hers remained as calm and patient as always. He meant to say more, but words failed him.

“You don’t have to explain yourself, Lord Star.” She did pity him regardless. “I know of countless reasons ponies do what you and your cohorts attempted. None of them try for the right reason, and it is something that is beyond your ability to help yourself. Still, I don’t take it personally.”

Silent Wind didn’t like the way she spoke as though she knew more than she let on, but it was not like she felt asking questions right there. She sighed and resigned to being arrested. It happened every now and then. But her partner earth pony stepped back and pulled a pistol from his cloak.

“Screw this.” He said and promptly pointed his gun at the old unicorn. “You talk too much, Celestia.”

Everyone froze. The queen changed from happy to a deathly stare and the princess looked sad. He didn’t like making an old lady sad but screw her and her millennia of sitting her flank in the throne. Whoosh screamed and jumped back. The two Justiciars hardened their stares. He actually had to see it, or he couldn’t have figured out one of those new cutesy healed changelings looking angry. Well, the black changelings and guards didn’t like it either that he had just pulled a gun out and tensed up, staring seriously at him. Good.

“Nopony do anything or uncle’s getting shot in the head.” The unicorn actually looked angry now. “Any horns start glowing and I pull the lever. Don’t dare me, I’ll do it!”

“Schlick!” Silent Wind screeched. “What the hay?!”

Right on cue, his pals came into view. Six earth ponies promptly standing with their muskets on hooves by the cargo door and two pegasi came flying in the airdock’s outer door, also carrying guns. Others came from the administrative area offices, unicorns and earth ponies, also armed with pistols and surrounded the group while that dumbass Celestia asked nopony to do anything.

“No no no no! This is dumb! Really, really dumb! Put that down, Schlick!” Silent Wind barely screamed. “It’s just a botched job! Nopony needs to die for this!”

“Sorry, Whoosh. This thing is huge, like a pile of manure the size of Mount Canterlot huge, and you got screwed big time. Should’ve picked up the princesses job.”

“My little ponies, how do you think that this is going to end?” Seriously, her sad voice was pissing him off. “I beg you to surrender these weapons and turn yourselves in to the Madam Justiciar and I can guarantee your safety. You’ll be hurt unnecessarily.”

“Shut the hay up, princess.” Screw that annoying way of hers of talking to them like they were foals. “Some ponies with a lot of power are really tired of staring at your dumb face. What is going to happen…”

“Shut up, you moron.” Lord Stalwart told him, but he approached Lord Stalwart and pushed the point of the gun on the side of his head.

“Is that I’m going to prance my way out of here with the old fart and my guys are coming with me all the way to bay three where our airship is waiting to leave with us. Nice and easy, and nopony gets hurt.”

Not a second later Chrysalis took a step forward looking like she was ready to murder someone and her horn flared up with green changeling magic like she was about to conjure up a storm. “I’m not Celestia for you to fuck around with, peasant.”

Before he had even processed what she said he screamed when his leg holding the pistol shone in green and every kind of pain possible shot through it just as her magic pulled it up at an angle it should not be put on. His pistol flew somewhere, and shots banged in all directions.

Silent Wind squealed and dropped to the floor covering her face with her legs. Lord Stalwart did the same, sans squealing, and not only the changeling Justiciar jumped on top of him, but a golden magical shield manifested around him.

The two closest Royal Guards jumped at Celestia and drew their own pistols, shooting at the earth ponies by the door while the others rushed for cover. Two of them dropped, hit by the stunning magic crystal balls.

Inside the hangar it was a mess. Royal Guards and changelings jumped at the ‘criminal scum’ with magical subduing batons and spells as soon as the weapons were spent. Turned out their armor, natural or otherwise, did protect them. The changeling Justiciar clung to Lord Stalwart like she was a possessive cat staring evilly at anyone that approached the shield, and her colleague used her horn to shoot magic at the fighting ponies and encasing them in small golden cages while she herself protected herself with a magical shield.

In the middle of the chaos Princess Celestia turned one way and another. “Everypony, please calm down. This really isn’t necessary!”

Iron ball shots bounced off Chrysalis’s carapace and mildly inconvenienced her other than simply pissing her off. Wondering who in all of creation would be brain-dead enough to shoot those noisy and irritating ‘guns’ at her she turned to the two pegasi hovering by the skydoor ready to drop their weapons and fly away.

Out of several spells that would outright kill, maim or disintegrate them, she was going to rip their wings off and shove them down their mouths for their impudence, but Celestia was looking and she was in enough trouble as it was. Instead she groaned in the middle of the fight and slammed the two together. Then she threw them on the hangar’s floor. She was afraid that if she did anything other, she might end up killing them because they could drop from the mountain. Hopefully, her soldiers would remember to preferably not kill or maim anyone.

The fight turned to a next level of chaos with shouting and more shooting when more weapons were drawn until things began solving themselves with Royal Guards and changelings subduing the others. Silent Wind sighed to herself, tied up with that weird changeling goop. All she wanted was an easy retirement.

The remaining earth ponies by the cargo door realized that indeed things didn’t go the way they thought they would, even if some guards and changeling were injured, and bolted. With her blood pumping and instincts rearing, Chrysalis shot forward, but she stopped when Celestia called her. For some reason the mare stared up with her horn alight. “Don’t bother. The Local Militia will find them. Kindly ensure that Miss Golden Rule takes these ponies into custody and that nopony else is injured.”

Then she jumped up and flew through a small skylight, closing her wings through it.

“Celestia?” Her eyebrow rose with confusion.

***

Grufnor had stood the whole day hiding under the blue blanket, the same color the ceiling was. That wasn’t a problem, as he was used to standing still, quiet as a predator should be. He had his new bolt action rifle, comfortably snuggled under him, he had eaten enough, and he had taken care of his physiological needs. The only thing that bothered him was the cursed heat in the pony lands.

But he remained quiet and calm. His mind slipped into a meditative state between awareness and sleep but roused when he heard movement and talking inside the hangar. The small skylight allowed him ample vision within the building, and he could see the golden armored guards talking to the airship’s crew. Making arrests and their unicorns magically tethering the airship to its dock.

Things wouldn’t go the way the old corrupt unicorn had imagined. He cared little for where things had gone awry, all that mattered was that the unicorn preferably left Canterlot and then reached safety in Snow Mountains, or that he was dead and couldn’t talk more than his life was worth.

Should the ponies he hired fail, his trusty rifle would ensure that he wouldn’t talk. Always have alternatives… Part of his training.

His internal clock said it would soon be night, if the infernal princesses kept to their routine and soon would be time to act. So, he laid still, hidden under the blanket and watched over the hangar for the time.

Hours later, after the Princess and the Queen had arrived and prepared the small meeting the Lord Protector arrived with his escort. Grufnor remained quiet until tensions rose and then he readied his weapon, loading it and shouldering the stock.

As he had anticipated, as soon as violence began the Justiciars protected his target. The queen dealt with some of their enemies, the whole fight was an ugly brawl and in the middle of it all Celestia kept trying to talk to them like an imbecile. After the earth ponies by the door ran, the Justiciar dropped her shield and the old unicorn was exposed. So predictable.

He stared down the sight and lined his shot at the base of the horn. It was a pathetically short range and from above. A cub could have made it with minimal training.

But when he pulled the trigger, it clicked, and nothing happened. He frowned and looked at his weapon. Pulled back the bolt to see the chamber empty and the bullet floating in front of his face, encased in golden light.

He cursed under his breath and looked back down. The changeling queen talked to Celestia and the cursed white alicorn stared directly at him.

He cursed aloud this time. “Damnation!”

He slung his gun behind his back and threw the blanket jumping up and flapping his wings, immediately flying towards his previously stablished escape route, the nearest building, one of the many towers in Canterlot. He grinned to himself for an instant. Not very likely that the changeling whore and her mosquito wings could chase him, much less cake-hole extraordinaire.

He spun mid-flight, drawing his revolver from under his coat and just as soon as he saw movement out the skylight, he shot at it. Didn’t stop to look though. He made a sharp turn at the tower and propelled himself to an L turn behind it. Then he looked at what he had shot at, expecting to see a bleeding white thing collapsed on the blue floor. Instead golden lightning blinded him with a thunderous clap that broke every single window in the vicinity. The tower exploded with brick and mortar shrapnel and threw him off balance in his flight.

Next thing he knew, he crashed against something hard that buckled on impact. Ponies screamed and scrambled out of his way and he jumped with a flap of his wings next to hold at the paving stone with his claws. Flared wings ready to jump at his opponent.

To his left a closed store with scared ponies in front of its windows. To his right the outside tables of the restaurant he just crashed into, more scared ponies staring at him from the broken window and behind it.

Before he thought of looking up, he heard her. “Up here, hairball.”

She hovered above the semi destroyed tower and blew a raspberry at him. Curse that insufferable devil. And not a moment too late, Royal Guards started arriving and closing off the street while the pegasi circled above.

He didn’t think twice. He jumped, grabbed the closest pony, a yellow unicorn with short red mane. The others cried and distanced themselves, but the guards remained calm. He pointed his revolver at the pony’s head. “Let me go or you’re losing this one.”

“Joke is on you, griffon.” She yelled from up there. “I don’t actually like this one! He writes horrible slander pieces about me in his newspaper, cheats on his wife and thinks nopony knows he has a life-size plushie of one of Twilight’s friends.”

Before he could react, the pony could decide if he was scared or angry and the others remembered they were in danger after giggling, she spoke again. “Let him go and I can guarantee you will not be injured. None of this is necessary and will only end with you hurt.”

He shook his head, more angry than intimidated. “That is not how this works, Princess! Call off your guards and beat it or this is going to get too ugly for your ponies.”

She actually changed her expression and he knew he had struck a nerve. He knew she was bluffing. Then she spoke again. “Well, since you’re so tough, why don’t you fight me instead of hiding behind scared ponies and I will show you how I killed thousands of your ancestors and put a scar so deep in your racial memory that your ilk thinks eating sugar is a sin.”

A trained and experienced, loyal killer such as him should be above insults and not fall for such petty trickery. But there were moments when unleashing one’s fury was warranted, and that was one such moment. His face burned, and the surrounding ponies gasped at whatever expression he made. He pointed his weapon at the princess, but before he pulled the trigger one of the unicorns pulled his paw and the bullet hit nothing but the ceiling. Ponies cried and he threw the unicorn at the approaching earth pony guards and pushed past the pegasi coming from above in one mighty flap of his wings. He thought one of the unicorn guards tried to hit him with a stun spell, but he was so furious he barely felt it and the only thing he saw right them was the white alicorn that he wanted to rip apart into a flurry of blood and feathers.

He recognized anger in her stare, but he wasn’t afraid of it and in a way, it was good to see that she could feel such a thing. He reached for her neck with his left paw with the right one ready to rip into her flesh, but her horn shone like the day itself and he could swear he collided a stone wall. A searing hot one. He didn’t even feel the pain until he realized he had been flung across the ceilings. He flared his wings and stopped to a hover, his wings burned with pain and when he reached for his other handgun, his paw was gone.

He didn’t really understand what had happened, but movement drew his attention and he looked forward again to see the alicorn flying towards him and arching above. Then her horn shone again.

***

Fancypants and his wife enjoyed a nice dinner in an exciting but exclusive restaurant a friend of his had just opened. Actually, it was one of those quaint food carts with tables surrounding it that popped up everywhere in Canterlot, but that worked wonders. He had claimed one of the leisure areas close to the edge, but not quite a balcony with their uncomfortable winds. It was well illuminated, and a few artists performed nearby with happy music. A few ponies occupied nearby tables, minding their own food and conversations. Such a pleasurable night to be out with his lovely wife.

Then the night turned into day in a flash, his horn itched like it was on fire, something exploded nearby, and something fell of the sky right into his friend’s food cart, which in turn exploded too and showered vegetables, sauces, all sorts of toppings and crepe dough everywhere. Ponies hid under the tables or ran as far as they could while still being able to curiously stare from afar at what might have happened.

Fancypants hugged his wife under the table and wouldn’t leave her side for all the anything in the world.

A griffon almost rose from the mess but tumbled and rolled on his side. His dark brown fur was covered in red tomato sauce and it spread all over the floor. Yes, that was what it was and nopony could tell Fancypants otherwise. The griffon kept one of his paws close to his body and had trouble breathing. He tried to stand but his hindlegs seemed to have no strength. He collapsed and coughed painfully.

“Sweet Celestia!” Fancypants’ friend squealed, closest to the griffon and reaching to help.

“Back!” The griffon barked and caused ponies to scream and cower where they were. He had probably swallowed a large quantity of tomato sauce because he coughed a lot of it, and it spilt from his beak. He barely seemed able to breath and it was agonizing to watch.

Then Princess Celestia arrived, landing softly in the paving stone and the first thing she did was look around the place, then she focused on the griffon again. “You had ample opportunity to surrender and spare yourself and others of this whole ordeal. Now look at your beautiful body… It is broken and struggling to keep alive.”

That moment was when Fancypants realized that there was one thing that griffons could do that ponies couldn’t, and it was giving another ‘the finger’. To make such a rude gesture to Princess Celestia though!

She didn’t seem to take offense, however. At least she spoke calmly. “So much for the big scary predator. You think yourselves so powerful, but you are so fragile. And look at this thing.”

She held his riffle in her telekinetic magic and examined it messing around with its action like it was a toy. “First you used your claws, then sticks. Sticks made of bronze, and then of iron. Sticks made of steel. Sticks that shoot. What will be next? Weapons capable of massive damage and killing hundreds in the shortest time possible? These things have no place in modern Equestria and I am quite done with your muskets and whatnot that you managed to infect my ponies with. And you still miss the point of your whole existence for some silly ideology that you don’t need.”

“Will you just shut your mouth and kill me already?” It surprised the pony and the griffon that he didn’t breathe with any difficulty anymore. He even tried standing but couldn’t. Didn’t seem to be in pain anymore, but certainly looked confused. “What are you…?”

His left paw touched his chest and there was a place in his clothes that was charred around a sizeable hole. But his body seemed fine. The griffon started to panic but couldn’t move anymore.

“Did you think that you would expire? That your friends would think of you and sing of what a great martyr you were? That one that fought the… What are they calling me these days? Something silly like the Dawnbringer?” She grinned at him, walking closer. “No, you are not going to expire. We will extirpate the poison they put on your heart. You will go back to being a nice griffon and when you will think back to this night you will regret all the silly decisions that took you to their side. You will mate to another nice griffon and you will teach your cubs of the mistakes you have made so that they would never fall in the same traps you did. Because, like it or not, you are a part of us.”

The Princess must have been very angry with that griffon, and considering his demeanor and weapons, Fancypants could imagine why. But then she did something he didn’t expect. She talked to him again, but in that language, he had heard about the griffons in the far north speaking to themselves. She loomed over him and approached him even more, speaking slowly and she grinned in her typical mischievous way, but the griffon seemed mortified. She must have said something about their hunting… Thing.

Some moments later the Royal Guard pegasi started arriving. None of them seemed to be her lieutenant, but one female of white coat and red and white mane approached her with very annoyed blue eyes. “Princess, you would make our job much easier if you would let us deal with the griffon terrorists. Thank you.”

“I am sorry, corporal. But I was afraid his target might have been gravely injured if I hadn’t intervened. Has Miss Golden Rule taken the other to the Guard’s quarters?”

“Yes, princess.”

“Kindly take this griffon to the palace’s clinic and ask that he is taken care of. He shouldn’t need to be restrained. And ask that Miss Grenda prepare him a nice griffon meal. He is probably hungry, and some nice food will do him well. I should talk to these ponies and assure them that everything is under control.”

***

Cadance woke suddenly. She was literally standing in the middle of a nice and peaceful grassy field with colorful flowers here and there. Simply standing there, under a clear blue sky with the nice sun above giving her some nice warm feelings. Simply standing there, as though existence simply started at that precise moment and there was nothing before it. Still, she felt anxious, her heart pounded and there was this strange ephemeral fear that vanished as soon as she tried focusing on it.

“Huh…” She scratched her head. “This is weird.”

She looked around and saw nothing more than the calming flowery field covering the uneven ground. Finally, she saw her. The friendly blue alicorn laying over her legs on a rock that seemed out of place in the scenario and like she put it there herself.

“Hello Cadance.” She smiled.

“Luna. Oh. I’m dreaming.” Realization came as suddenly as the weird sensation that something wasn’t quite right returned. She felt like she needed to remember something important but whatever it was, it had evanesced from her mind like steam in a hot bath “What happened? I feel weird.”

“A nightmare.” The other spoke calmly.

“But… I’m just standing here.” She argued. “I don’t remember anything.”

“I made this place. It doesn’t really exist. I needed a ‘when’ and ‘where’ to situate your mind since I shut down the entire mental state you found yourself in previously, and then erased the recollection of the nightmare from your mind. Your autonomous nervous system just needs some time to return to baseline and you should feel perfectly fine soon. You should be able to remember things from before you went to sleep and this weird sensation you’re getting right now is how your mind perceives the break in continuity.”

“This is one of the weirdest things anypony has ever told me.” She blurted out with a weirded-out expression. At the same time, she was sure she was forgetting something incredibly important. “Can’t you tell me what the nightmare was about?”

“Well, telling you about it right after erasing it from recollection would be counterproductive, wouldn’t it?” Luna smirked.

“Is this normal? I mean, I didn’t even realize I was dreaming. I just… Happened here. Can you do this? Just hijack my mind and do whatever you want with me? I mean… I only know this is a dream because you told me!”

Luna grinned mischievously. “Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?”

“What was that supposed to mean?” She whined at the blue alicorn. “Actually, I do, by the way, but right now I feel like I’m still having a nightmare and it’s about you, torturing me with your dream powers!”

Luna giggled and spoke excitedly. “I’m sorry, Cadance. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a quote from a really interesting story Chocolate Velvet told me! I’ll leave you and your mind should pick up again from a safer state than you were before.”

“Wait! I need to talk to you!” Cadance put out a hoof.

Luna’s ears fell. “I am sorry Cadance. Chocolate Velvet told me you called for parley. And I wanted to talk to you too. I wanted to apologize… Legitimately. But I can’t… I’m extraordinarily busy this night.”

“Oh…” Cadance sighed and her ears fell too.

“But I will meet you again in your dreams in the next opportunity. I promise.” She winked and then vanished, evanescing in a sparkling shower of stars.

Cadance hummed to herself and looked around. Something didn’t seem to be right: she was still there, and alone. She didn’t even feel sleepy or something. Actually, everything seemed to have stopped. The subtle breeze didn’t move the small plants anymore. The smells were gone.

“Odd. Maybe Luna really is having a lot of trouble tonight…”

She hoofed at the ground and waited patiently. The sound was weird and the feeling of digging in the ground was numb. Distant. She heard something, an undefined sound and her chest stung.

“Ow! Something definitively isn’t right.” She told herself, looking around and seeing only the endless field of grass and flowers. Her hoof massaged her chest, but the pain didn’t go away. Distant and muffled, undefined sounds floated around her.

They made a mockery of my Gift.

“Huh… Weird. What a strange idea.” Then, just as suddenly the world darkened around her.

***

A pony whispered in the dark and Cadance couldn’t see where they were. The voice was distant and muffled, as though they tried to speak through a door. She smelled burnt meat though. It almost made her heave and she covered her mouth with a hoof.

“What? Ow!” On top of it all, her chest hurt as though a nasty bug had stung her and she rubbed it. “What was that? Hello?”

***

Cadance woke suddenly. She was not in her bed, but in a strange cave made of soft pink light and she stood on a small platform made of white light that separated her from a water-like liquid underneath her, all pink. Like liquid pink light.

“Hum… Luna?” She moved her ears around and heard only a soft chiming and soft clinking when she fidgeted in place and her hooves reconnected with the ‘ground’.

More pressing though was the fact she saw a large pink crystal structure in front of her, several hooves away. A crystal mountain where a crystal staircase spiraled around until it reached a multitowered palace at the top. Everything made of the same light pink crystal.

“So, I guess this is a real dream? Should I explore a bit? Luna?”

She heard no answer. Only the soft sloshing of whatever it was underneath her.

She tested the floor with her hooves, and she could step outside of her little light platform. Her hoofsteps clinked while she walked, and she stared up at the palace. That place, for some reason she couldn’t fully understand felt like it was important. She figured she should be mindful of this place where she had found herself and decided against flying. Again, not entirely sure why, but she shouldn’t fly.

This is sacrosanct ground.

So, she didn’t. She drew closer with each step and there was a strange foreboding sensation that permeated every step, but she felt compelled to move forward. She felt like she was coming home from a long journey.

By the time she reached the first degree, she didn’t know how long she had remained in there already, but for some reason it felt like an eternity had passed and with each step she took up the stairs she was compelled to take the next. Each step easier than the last until she was at the balcony the stairs led up to.

The floor had a beautiful embroidered design etched into the crystal and from every angle it led up to the massive doors. Double doors in opaque white crystal dominated by a stained-glass mosaic of her cutie mark.

“Where am I?” She knew the answer in a strange way as though she should know the answer, but it only came to her after searching for it.

I am home.

“But I live in the Crystal Empire…”

This is my Home.

She stared down, confused for a second, before looking up the doors again. “Should I go in?”

This is my Home. I should go wherever I want in here.

The doors opened to her when the mosaic of her cutie mark vanished. They chimed, as though they were magical, pure magic by nature. Beyond them she saw a long corridor, that opened in a room on the other side.

Something called her. Not with words, but she was compelled to enter.

She galloped inside but stopped just as soon as she entered the corridor. Her chest stung and she stopped taking her hoof to her chest with a pained squeak. “What sort of dream is this? Maybe I shouldn’t be here and… And…”

I should be here. This is my Home.

She took a few deep breaths and tried walking again. This time her chest felt like it had ben punctured with a knife or something. She had never been actually hurt so, but it sure felt like it. She cried and collapsed on her side. Confused, she stared at her hooves and for an instant she thought she saw blood, but darkness enveloped her.

***

Darkness all around her, Cadance could hear a pony whispering.

“What? Where are you? Hello?”

Magical explosions, laughing ponies. Crying ponies. Spells hurtled everywhere. She couldn’t see anything but bright blurs, like fires beyond a fog. Clashing of metal and its clinking against stone. The smell of burning wood blew over her, hot and dry.

“They will destroy the Farmland Gate!” Somepony cried in near panic. “They will let in the Lost Herd and they will swarm the city much sooner than we expected!”

Stop! You are hurting them!

“Help!” Somepony she couldn’t see pleaded behind the dark with a distant and fading voice.

Then she cried and doubled over at the sharp pain in her chest. Like something had just teared a piece of her out. She cried again. It hurt so much.

***

Cadance woke suddenly. She still found herself in the same corridor she was before with the memories of her strange vision and the pain in her chest. Her cheeks were wet and her eyes stung.

She cringed and held her hoof to her chest, over her heart, but saw no blood when she looked. “Ow… What is happening? Luna?”

She heard no answer. Was she trapped inside a bizarre nightmare not even Luna could get her out of? Fear began creeping into her voice and her throat tightened. “Luna, help me!”

I must know. My fractured mind depends on this and the Queen of Nightly Visions will not give me assistance. The veil must be lifted as hurtful and harmful as it may be. I must know.

Her attention was drawn further down the corridor. It opened in a room and there was something in the middle. She heard a crystal crackling and echoing in the corridor and her ears homed in on it.

“The Tree of Harmony?” She craned her head and immediately started walking towards it, forgetting her fear and tears.

Her attention was immediately directed to the top of the tree where the branches formed a crown holding a beautifully crafted and large jewel made to the likeness of her cutie mark.

Maybe it was her curiosity, but her pain was gone, and that thing commanded all her attention. It looked beautiful. The Crystal Heart looked so real, a true multifaceted heart shaped crystal, just like the real thing and its golden frame seemed to be the purest gold in existence. The object ensorcelled her and she found herself unable to avert her eyes for several minutes.

Crystal crackled.

She took a step back. It certainly looked like the Tree of Harmony, but it wasn’t. She could see the differences more clearly now. It was more like a branch of the Tree that sprouted from the crystal floor inside a neat and pretty small fence, as though that must be protected. Though it looked more like a six-armed scale, each of its arms holding a heavy lapidated gem. Beautiful, livid colors and mirror-like shine; they hung from the branches each at a different height.

Crystal crackled again and the purple gem raised with a sprinkle of crystal dust from its branch. They all shifted as the branches cracked and reformed like a living thing. The orange one lowered. And so, did the magenta one. The red rose furthest of them all, but so did the blue and the pink. The branches shifted too and the branch from the Tree of Harmony bent ever so slightly to one side.

“That is important. Isn’t it?” She wondered softly and frowned just so. There was something she needed to remember. It was important too and had something to do with that… Thing. Whatever it was.

She turned to look at the rest of the room, drawn by soft light. Four doors occupied the room, and in their midst a stairwell led downwards. It was closed with a magical force field and she wondered what was down there, but her eyes were drawn to the first door to her left and behind her. It was tall, etched from the crystal wall with white magical lights. It was dominated by the image of Celestia’s sun, shining in gold.

She frowned and shifted her head, looking to the next one to the right, towards the back of the room. It was the same but sealed with Luna’s moon, all silver and black highlights.

She walked around the branches of the Tree of Harmony and stared down the stairwell to see nothing but a sinuous dark stairwell. Something worried her about it, but it was locked with a door-shaped magic field, blue with Luna’s magic and sealed with her Cutie Mark.

The next door was no surprise and it showed her Crystal Heart etched on it. A quick glance showed the final door, adorned with Twilight’s twin six-pointed star surrounded by five more.

She was drawn to the third door. She would say that she didn’t know the reason, but it was obvious before it even became known to her.

The Throne of Love. Before they could recognize they were even alive they must be made to reproduce, increase their numbers, and perpetuate their species or they will not be in sufficient numbers. It is a beautiful and romantic word for the base instinct and sexual desire that drives communion. It lacks context by itself and only within the whole is Harmony possible at all and that it should even be called ‘Love’.

As such it cannot be removed from the whole or put under restraint else the rest lose their places within their own frames of reference. Love is no more, and no less important than the rest of Creation.

The door opened as soon as her magic reached for it. The etched image lit up with her pink magic and the doors gave way effortlessly. The sound of muffled heartbeat came from all walls, floor and ceiling in tempo with a pink-reddish light that pulsated in the dimly lit room.

It illuminated with clear light as soon as she stepped in as tough it welcomed her. It was a simple square room with plain walls, floor and ceiling, nothing but a simple yet ornate and beautiful crystal altar in the back, as though it organically grew from the floor in front of a large, red and golden heart-shaped throne. The heart still beat around the room and pinkish light still flooded the room each time it did while she walked to inspect the table.

It lies neglected after ages of shunning, but it still functions as the day I created it and it compels them to seek for those who will complement them in Harmony.

“This place needs something. Some pretty things here and there. It’s too plain.” She mumbled to herself walking towards the table and the throne.

An exquisitely crafted pony figurine sat in the middle. Shining Armor, on his fours and proudly wearing his Captain of the Guard barding. She smiled, circling the table and finally taking her seat on the heart shaped throne.

Shining Armor. First and final love, as it should be. There could be no other, as ordained by Harmony itself. Left to its own designs the Throne of Love will fail in its fundamental task as it has become submitted to the whims of societal conventions and will attempt in vain to fulfill its imperative, lying to itself after each failure until it has shriveled and turned into a blasphemous abomination suffused with thorns and poison.

I must watch them torture themselves with passions that will be forever unfulfilled and are changed for another and another amid the sharp edged shards of broken hearts until the pain is too much to bear and they learn to ignore it. Dulled memories of bright passions, one after the other subdued until the day they die at the end of an irrational parade of broken dreams. It is dangerous, for hatred is also the province of Love.

She looked around for a second. “Hum… I should see the other doors. Luna seems to be having a lot of trouble tonight.”

She left the room and the Throne of Love closed its doors after she had left. She looked around again, seeing the other doors and the ‘tree’ in the middle.

“This is so weird. What are these doors supposed to be?”

She focused on the first door. The one where Celestia’s sun shone all golden inside the light markings on the doors. “Is this supposed to be Princess Celestia’s cutie mark?”

The Throne of life. It is forbidden.

“Of course, I can’t go in.” She grunted.

Then she looked at the door right by its side. The one marked with Luna’s moon.

The Throne of the Mind. It is forbidden.

Cadance grunted loudly and to herself. “What about Twilight’s?”

She walked over to the fourth door and looked up to the symbol of the stars. “Why are these things even here? Why are they here? What does this mean?”

The Throne of Friendship. It is also forbidden.

She sat angrily on the crystal floor. “I guess I’m supposed to simply sit my flank here and wait for Luna to deal with this stupid dream!”

Cadance frowned a little and looked back at Luna’s door. For a while, she simply stared, while her mind was occupied with thoughts about what could those doors mean. She knew that her magic could force ponies to fall in love with each other. Of course, she never meant to use it like that, but she could if she wanted. In essence, she had a doorway that would open to ponies’ heart for her.

Is that what it meant? And that is why she could enter the Throne of Love but not the others?

Forbidden does not mean it is inaccessible.

“Hay! If this is my Home, I should be able to go wherever I want!” She stood and walked over to Luna’s door and stared angrily at it. Then she noticed it was open. Just barely.

Her magic didn’t interact with it, however. But instead of letting that deter her, Cadance simply pulled the edge with her hoof. It was deceptively heavy, and she had to stand on her hind legs and pull with all her strength.

She managed though. Pulled at it until the heavy door budged and opened just enough for her to pass. She grinned triumphantly, but then restrained herself.

I should be aware that not all in existence is meant to be seen, by mortal eyes or otherwise.

“Should I go in? It’s forbidden. What if I see something that hurts me?” Her ears fell. “Discord said that there were things that could hurt us if we saw.”

The veil must be lifted. I must have answers and be made free to fulfill my Destiny.

She steeled herself with a brave expression and walked inside.

She expected another empty and plain square room. Instead she found a spacious and luxurious sitting room with a silver and blue sofa and some reading chairs. She spied the room with large eyes after blinking twice.

The wall on the right was covered in a long and clear mirror adorned with acid-imprinted images of the moon and stars at the top. The ceiling was cushioned with blue velvet and the corners accented in silver and black metal. The floor was crystal, but it had a blue hue to it and the light which pulsed in the Throne of Love was now white and traveled in pulses under the floor.

It was mesmerizing and beautiful.

But beyond the sitting area something beeped loudly and insistently. She also heard Princess Luna, very angrily growling at something.

She sat on a blue cushioned chair behind a series of magical images, not at all unlike the ones Cadance remembered from the entrance to Chrysalis’ Spawning Pool. There were others that reminded her of the magical control panels for the teleporters spread along the walls in the back too. A magical alarm, the sort that would alert against somepony messing with a magical lock was what beeped, or at least something very similar.

“Ow!” Luna’s horn sparked and she recoiled. “Stop that! I’m trying to help you stupid… Brain!”

Cadance simply stared unable to believe what she was seeing.

“For the love of Equestria! Stop this or I’m gonna have to fry you!” She frantically tapped with her hooves at one of the magical images with her hooves and grimaced with sweat on her face.

“What the…”

Was that really just a dream?

This is no dream. It is a violation of the sanctity of my mind.

Luna squealed when another magical image started flashing red and a magical siren blared. She stared at it with a frown. “Huh? ‘Sudo’ what?”

“Luna!” Cadance called from the door and she finally looked up to see her on the door and coming inside, going around the furniture. Luna herself didn’t seem to believe what she was seeing.

“No! No no no! This is not good! You can’t be in here!” She jumped over the magical images but Cadance thought fast. She simply grabbed a hoof with her telekinetic magic and pulled on it. Luna cried and stumbled on the furniture to crash to the floor in panic. “Cadance! Stop! You’ll hurt yourself!”

Simply walking around, while Luna fumbled about in the furniture, Cadance reached the chair Luna previously occupied. It was surrounded in magical images, indeed much like the ones the changeling doctor monitored in the entrance to Chrysalis Spawning Pool.

It had images that Cadance couldn’t comprehend. It had symbols Cadance had never seen. It had text that looked more like the small letters and symbols the griffons used on their letters rather than the pony glyphs. It looked like a form of magical notation that moved on the images, incredibly long and complex magic.

Colored graphs moved up and down. Numbers soared and turned red. Her confusion only grew and her heart beat faster and faster, kicking at her chest. The air seemed insufficient. Her mind immediately returned to Chrysalis’ laboratory. To her conversation with Luna and Chrysalis in the Bordello of Candy.

“Luna! What is this?” She looked up just in time for the other to hold her in her hooves and stare right at her, but she batted Luna away.

“Cadance! Calm down! Please! It is not what you think it is!”

“Did you… Make me like you made Chocolate Velvet?!” She stepped back, barely controlling her rage. Or fear. She wasn’t sure which anymore and everything seemed the same.

“Why is there a…” She searched for a word in vain and her stressed mind came up with the best it could. “A control panel inside my head?! What are you doing?!”

Cadance’s horn flared up with magic and she opened her wings, ready to throw herself at Luna that backed a few steps. “Start explaining things, Luna! Now!”

“For the love of all that is sacred! Stop and take a breath! This is not what you think it is! I swear! Think for a second! This is a nightmare! A particularly nasty one! You’re imagining things Discord told you and trying to make sense of this place with what you know!”

Deceiver!

“Liar!” She cried and her magic surged, hitting Luna squarely in the chest with a powerful magic beam that caused her to reel and fall on her back with a wail. In an instant Cadance regretted what she’d done and jumped forward, reaching for her after letting her horn fizzle out. “Luna! I’m sorry! Please! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to hit you!”

“I’m sorry Aunt Luna! Please forgive me! I’m just so… Scared!” She helped Luna stand and Luna sighed.

“Alright. Fine. We called this the Palace of the Self. It is a magical construct that exists inside a virtual space within the minds of every sentient being in Equestria. It’s where what we are coalesces into a being, from soul, mind and body. Where we ‘are’. And what you see is not exactly what it is. This is a mental image that allows our minds to understand some very complex and abstract concepts. When I enter your dreams my magic connects with this place from the outside and that allows me to sense what you are really feeling and why. That way I can actually help, because contrary to common beliefs, simply talking to a pony in a nightmare won’t help. The mind is in a fractioned estate and under attack from a psychic monster. So, when you see me chasing away the problem my magic already joined your mind together, I understood the problem and expelled the Nightmare. Then I can talk to you and calm you down. Help you resolve the problem from within the narrative of your dream. It is much less intrusive that way.”

Cadance was even more confused and a creeping headache in the middle of all that noise didn’t help. “But, why are you here then? Why am I here?!”

“Coming here requires more energy, concentration and it is very intrusive, including to myself. I don’t like violating ponies’ and their privacy like this, but when things aren’t working the way they should, it’s the only way. From here I can see deeper. I can see the way your brain is functioning I can open your mind for me to examine and understand why you are doing and feeling what you are. I can see subconscious processes, your train of thoughts. And I can see that the reason you’re going through this is because of the things Discord has told you. The things you’ve been seeing with Twilight. It’s stirring parts of your mind that should he dormant.”

She pointed at a magical image with a pony’s head cut open with colorful ‘clouds’ all over it. It meant nothing to Cadance.

“No pony was ever meant to visit this place other than me, and I can’t even begin to formulate a theory explaining how you are here. Maybe some part of my magic that got imprinted in your mind or something of the sort. All I know is that this is bad, like… Really bad and your mind is breaking down.”

“Stop talking like I am machine! What are you doing to me?”

“You are a machine, Cadance.” Luna frowned. “All of us are. Machines made of living tissues and magic. We are made of systems and systems have rules and rules can be learned and explored. I couldn’t do my job if that wasn’t so! I was given the key to ponies’ mind or else I couldn’t do my job! Doesn’t that make sense?”

“Who did?”

“Whatever created us, Cadance! I don’t know. Harmony! I don’t even know why it is like this… Why this place even exists… It’s probably a leftover of our creation. I just changed it over time, so that it would make things easier for me to do my job. Like I said, this isn’t real… It is a mental representation of a magical construct. And this is not a control panel of some sort! This is a way for me to understand the workings of your mind and help you. I can’t order you around with this like you were thinking.”

“Why does it have doors with our cutie marks inside?” Cadance frowned and immediately bawled. She lost all her strength, her legs folded and her eyes teared again when the pain in her chest returned fiercer than before. She smelled burnt flesh and heard ghostly cries again. Her vision darkened and the only thing in her mind was that overwhelming pain. Luna seemed desperate though, torn between going to Cadance or to her seat.

***

Cadance saw a pony knelt in front of her. It was a young earth pony mare with radishes for cutie mark on her off-pink coat and with a light green mane she cut short. She said something, but Cadance couldn’t make out what it was. She heard a roaring inferno burning amid screams of panicked ponies and maniacal laughter. The small village behind the pony glowed with flames so bright they made her eyes ache and stung her nostrils.

She wanted to warn the pony and do something about it, but she couldn’t. She tried screaming, but her mouth wouldn’t move either.

***

Cadance woke suddenly. Luna, sat on her chair, looked at her and screamed her name as soon as she woke up, jumping at her.

“Cadance! Listen to me!” She heard Luna cry. She seemed deathly worried about something, but her voice was distant. The room was on fire. Cadance could smell burnt flesh and a mad cackling that she was sure wouldn’t ever leave her alone for eternity.

The little houses were on fire. Ponies ran everywhere. Ash blew in the wind. A stone pillar collapsed. An oat field aflame beyond the building’s entrance lit the night into day. The sky was gone, replaced by a meaningless mad combination of senseless colors. A pony that was important to her lied lifeless near her. Her dress, one of the wondrous offerings she had received was torn and stained in red. The crystal walls of Luna’s Throne of the Mind were on fire. There was smoke everywhere and she could hear distant cries of ponies begging for help. None of it made any sense and it made her even more anxious.

“Cadance!!” Luna called her again, but she found herself unable to simply keep a straight life of thought. Luna made her look at her eyes, though. “Your mind is looping around a series of recollections of a very traumatic experience and the fails-safes aren’t working anymore! You were not supposed to see this place. It’s causing your limbic system to force memories that are banished from the conscious mind right into it! It’s fragmenting your Self. You’re becoming psychotic and I don’t know what will be coming out the other side when you go back to normal if this doesn’t stop soon!”

Cadance coughed at the smoke and tried to focus on Luna’s voice. For some reason she didn’t understand, not that she did anything at all at that moment, she was very angry at Luna. “Please! For all that is sacred! Let me help! Let go of these memories!”

You did this to me! You violated my mind, filed my horn and cut my wings! You defiled my Gift!

“You hurt me!” Cadance roared and pushed her. Coughed with a fierce scowl. “You entered my mind, restrained my power and my freedom! You ruined my Special Talent!”

“No!” Luna cried and held her shoulders. “You are confused! Please, let me help!”

You wallow in lies. The Ancient Pact is no more, and your supremacy is forfeit! I will witness what you have hidden whatever the costs!

Luna’s tears meant little to the pink alicorn in the middle of the foul smoke and terrible flicker of the flames. “You lied to me! I don’t trust you and you are not my superior anymore! I want to see it, no matter what it costs me!”

The pain returned. Cadance held her chest with a hoof and cried, and coughed, and wailed collapsing to the floor. Above her Luna stared with her mouth agape. Her own breathing too fast and painful. She looked at the magical images and at Cadance. Again, at one and then another.

Finally, Luna closed her eyes and trembled. Her horn lit up with her blue magic and reached for her seat.

Suddenly the pain was gone. The smoke and the fire were gone. The cries. The laugher. All gone. Cadance supported her weight on her foreleg knees and looked around. Everything seemed perfectly normal, from the room to the magical images. At least as normal as Cadance could figure out since they were just doing their thing and not flashing, and no sirens sounded. Luna was nowhere to be seen and her heart slowed down now.

“Luna?” She stood slowly.

She has left my mind.

“I hurt Auntie Luna! She was trying to help me! I had never struck another pony like that! What is happening to me?”

I acted out of place and I made an immature filly out of myself. I must seek her forgiveness, but regardless, I must witness what she has hidden.

She looked at the door and walked slowly. Outside, everything around the ‘tree’ was exactly as it was before. She could swear that the gems had shifted places again though. But the most important thing was that the archway with the stairs leading downwards was unlocked. Luna’s magic was simply gone.

She stared down the stairwell. It was dark and it still filled her with a foreboding feeling that she was making a mistake. “What was it that they said about staring into the abyss?”

It was funny that the place she found herself in, somehow, was inside of her mind, because it was so silent and peaceful, yet each step she took down those stairs more and more metaphorical alarms sounded in her head that she was doing something dangerous and forbidden.

She wondered for a brief instant if that was how Twilight felt going into the Queen’s Spawning Pool… And what a mess that unleashed.

***

Author's Note

The original idea for Cadance’s mental breakdown inside her head had a bunch of Cadances (or Lunas) wearing maid uniforms and panicking while trying to help Luna get things under control. But the idea of small versions of oneself didn’t fit with the model of the Palace to me because the whole thing is supposed to be like a single 'magical computer running the pony mind’, not a control room.

Another idea was that Luna would have created them specifically for helping in that situation but, the idea of Luna making several life-like beings that would live for a few minutes and cease to exist didn’t really agree with me either. One thing I’m trying not to do is banalize certain concepts, such as the importance of the sun, Luna’s job with dreams, the damage Cadance’s magic could cause and the meaning of the Elements of Harmony. Casually creating Meeseeks-style life is not something Luna would do.

I thought of bringing the Tantabus into the scene to help her, but its place is when dreams are working normally. In this chapter things are way out of the normal and I didn’t want too much of a humorous scene, given the content of Cadance’s memories. Another reason to avoid the previous ideas.

That is why I removed the comedy tag. People have told me that the story isn’t ‘comedy’ enough for it. The story won’t change from what I intended though. The first chapter was meant to be full of silly references and jokes. I wanted to invoke a feeling of innocence that was meant to go away as Twilight and Cadance found out more about the past, especially now that the big revelations are coming. But I will still use references such as the big one in this chapter and in the next, which are supposed to be at least a little funny without getting in the way of the plot, which is something I always felt the cartoon tried to do.

There was also the idea of the Mane Six symbolizing the Elements and making her mind work a la Inside Out, but it wouldn’t work with the lore about the creation of the ponies for reasons still to show up. There is a vague idea for a short story about Luna trying to upgrade the Throne of the Mind though. Either idea could go.

So, I’d like to ask: was removing the comedy tag a good idea or should I have left it?

Singularity

Exquisite works of art lined both crystal walls at the bottom of the crystal stairway. Cadance stopped at the first and it was a painting of herself snuggling up with Shining Armor and holding a very sleepy Flurry Heart, who in turn held her new Princess Luna plushie with a ful scenery, depth, and lighting. But what she first thought were paintings made by some absurdly talented master actually moved and when she focused on them, they became as clear as though she was there and invoked a strange feeling of presence.

Shining Armor moved softly next to her pressing his body against hers and the small weight of the baby on her chest gave way when she breathed in. The more she focused on the image the more real it became. She could feel the warmth of their bodies, the smell of baby powder and of Shining Armor’s mane. An overbearing happiness. Rainbow Dash snoring in the corner, Rarity quietly chatting with Applejack and Twilight’s horn chiming along with the sounds of her feather pen scratching the paper. The ship’s magical engines humming in her ears and the ever-present magical murmur they caused in her magical senses.

The near all-powerful magic that emanated from the night sky like the twinkling of the stars. Comforting the sleeping ponies like a blanket over their bodies, protecting them from the cold of the sunless sky. It became so common that she barely noticed it under normal circumstances.

Overwhelmed, she backed away and everything was gone. She was back in the crystal corridor staring at the barely moving painting.

That was a memory. Whatever Luna was hiding and was causing her that pain must be in there!

Then she looked at the paintings down the corridor and took a few steps deeper. She saw herself talking to Chocolate Velvet, both wearing their barding next to the small wood cottage by the corn field. On the other side was the surprising moment when the glass broke in the cottage by the corn field. She actually saw the stun magic grenade fly in.

She smiled to herself. Great reflexes! You go girl!

Then her smile vanished with her ears perked up and she walked further down the corridor. If those where her most recent memories, or perhaps the ones that were important to her.

She passed paintings of she and Twilight jumping from her airship.

Their attempt at feeding Flurry Heart.

She picked up the pace and she soon found her conversation with Luna and Chrysalis. A small ember of hope grew by the moment in her chest.

She galloped down the crystal corridor to a frantic beating of her hooves clinking in the magical floor. Saw herself greeting Twilight in the entrance of her palace.

Faster. Faster. Paintings whizzed past her and the wind whistled in her ears.

Twilight’s crowning ceremony and then her marriage to Shining Armor.

Her younger self, talking to a filly Twilight, having lots and lots of fun making paintings of their favorite foods in pieces of paper. Her mother and father served them homemade cookies and it was one of the best moments of her history with Twilight’s family.

Yes! Family! She ran even faster until her legs burned, her lungs ached. Her eyes hurt, and tears wet her cheeks under a storm of emotions stirring in her chest. Fear and anticipation in each heartbeat. Her heart thundered in her ears as she flew past the small pink alicorn before the pristine white of the great Celestia.

The Witch Prismia was no more, defeated by a young and clueless pegasus that just wanted her to stop hurting others.

A cold bed in the dark. So cold and alone.

An empty plate on a rustic table. Her matron would yell at them it was their fault they didn’t work hard enough.

The wooden doors of the orphanage framed by stone walls. So scary and filled with unknowns.

And then impenetrable blackness.

“No!” She practically threw herself at the ‘painting’, stomping her hooves on the wall. Her sore throat croaked out the word as painful as the vision itself. Not simply a ‘nothing’. But a place where something should be, replaced with the lack of it. An empty frame showing black, sealed with Luna’s Moon in blue wax and a silver ribbon. She pulled back her ears and pulled at the thing with her magic.

“Come on!” Her ears fell and her wings sagged, eventually she gave up pulling at the seal with her magic and her head hung low. “Please! Luna! Please! Why?”

It was necessary.

She slowly lifted her head and then rubbed her eyes. “I am older now. Shouldn’t I be allowed to know?”

I cannot. I should not. It is dangerous. I will hurt myself.

She frowned. “Maybe there was a good reason, but I want to see! I want to remember. I should have the option.”

I am unique among ponies. I am special, destined for a different plane of existence and my reality is broken for I am not where I was supposed to be. That is why I must understand the past that the Mistress of Dreams hid from me. It is the key to my stolen Gift and also my past.

“Wait a minute.” She mused and stared down the corridor. Several of her early memories were locked away. It only caused her to frown more. Confusion and curiosity replaced her sorrow. How young was she? How many early impactful memories should she have had? She was taken into the orphanage so young. It was literally the first thing she remembered.

She walked over to the next painting. An entire city burned around Discord, laughing with his arms up. A strange sky where deranged and disjointed colors replaced the blue. Distant sounds became cries of pain and sorrow. Insane laughter. A voice called her for help and emotions suddenly rushed into her head. Rage. It was so perfect and so beautiful, but someone had destroyed it all. Her wrath called for murder, and her whole body tensed up. But then there was sorrow. So deep and intense she let out a small cry and was left in a confusing whirlwind of conflicting emotions.

She controlled herself and stepped away from the painting. It returned to the image of Discord above the burning city. That was the Capital of Equestria. The one Chrysalis had told them of when Discord almost destroyed the world.

Towards the end of the corridor there were many more paintings, but she saw something she hadn’t noticed earlier. A large pink statue of an alicorn in the dead end. She frowned and walked towards it. It looked alive, and not only that, it looked like a fiery creature of pure magic, disembodied. Free magic given life. It was a female with her belly exposed because of the way she sat, with her wings flared open in full display, and a sharp, long horn. She had her forelegs stretched out, offering a bright red flaming heart and she looked forward at it, or something that would be next to her, right above the heart.

The heart itself pulsated with pink energy and indeed sounded like a beating heart.

Dum-thump.

Dum-thump.

“What is this?” She stared into its eyes and the statue stared back at her. They were somehow made of fiery passion.

Dum-thump.

I am Love.

***

It was raining. But it didn’t seem like a normal rain, it was a raging magical storm that rumbled above like a furious monster and it rained magic-infused water. Storm magic so powerful that it froze before it touched the ground and exploded into little magical sparks. The wind howled incessantly and caused the already magically freezing rain to pelt the rock and light the whole ground with uncontrolled, wild magic.

As far as the eye could see it was nothing more than dead rocks, storm, unforgiving wind, and sand beyond it. It was as incompatible with life as a square fitting on a circle. But hooves struck the stone despite all the odds.

Forty-two ponies challenged the storm and braved the dead land. Five males surrounded the group and thirty-five females walked in between carrying or dragging large burdens supported on triangle shaped dollies made of sticks and woven plants. They led scared animals with them, pulling them with their leashes and carried others in small stick cages. Some of them were heavy with foals and one of them helped a wounded male earth pony walk. Fourteen unicorns, fourteen pegasi and fourteen earth ponies walked together wearing tightly woven plant fiber cloaks and under their hoods their eyes shone with fierce resolve. They fought the wind that flapped their protection against their bodies like it was nothing. It wouldn’t deter them, neither would the hard, sharp rock or the magical rain.

They were strong, they were smart and there would always be enough of them, but they were also bonded in an ancient pact, that compelled them to protect each other, to help their wounded and assist whenever one of them needed help. That included their world. They would bring it to heel and they would tame chaos.

They didn’t know where they were going, but they knew that they must go! They didn’t understand why, but they had left the giant trees of their beautiful home behind. It was important that they did, and one hoof after the other, one breath after the other, their old hearth was left behind several suns ago.

Other groups left their home behind too. There was something sad about it, but they didn’t remember what it was. Something urged them to leave with an unbearable desire to go forth and see what was out there beyond the giant trees. It was terribly important, so they obeyed.

And forward they marched, against rock, storm and wind, blindly following the one in the front. She was a dark-pink unicorn under her cloak and a bit of her mane showed a beautiful dark sapphire color. They didn’t know her name and she didn’t know theirs. They all knew each other by their cutie marks, and hers showed an arrow made of stars. So, they followed her: she knew where to go.

They walked for days past the storm and into the desert with no end in sight. They shared what they had amongst themselves and their animals, but when it was over, they had to stop and their pegasi gathered more clouds and urged them to rain a refreshing and soft shower. They replenished their stocks and ate from the newly born grass the earth ponies just dug out of the ground. It was normal for them… Earth ponies just did that. Unicorns knew things, pegasi made it rain and the earth ponies made the plants grow. That was just how it was supposed to be. Period.

But they eventually moved on. They were still too close and the one who knew the way kept them walking for even more suns. When she stopped, they stopped. Then she would look one way and another, change direction and keep going. Stop again and look at the stars, and then keep going and they followed her.

When scary things attacked whey protected the youngest, the newborn foals and their mothers. They would form lines and face the monsters with magic blasts, hooves and bites if they must. But not the stallions. They would END the scary things trying to hurt their friends and it usually resulted in one or more of them getting hurt. They would stop for days, resist whatever the world threw at them, but they would not leave one of theirs behind.

They were smart. They made shelter and they urged the land to feed them. They were also curious, and they explored and found things they liked, like colorful stones and shinny crystals. They realized that they could crack and shape the stone and with it they could cut things more easily. It was easier to repair their dollies then. They taught each other and made their new tools better. They found they could paint things new colors with some rocks and made everything prettier.

Then, they moved on again. They weren’t there yet.

Until one moon, after countless suns, ‘arrowbutt’ stopped and smiled. They had arrived. Another female unicorn next to her, soft blue and white stared at her. And then at the land before them. It was a barren wasteland with a puddle the most enthusiastic could’ve called a lake if they tried hard enough. There was a small mount with a cave too, but it wasn’t very nice.

She looked back at their guide as though she had misunderstood. Then she stared at the place again, and back at their guide, a bit angrily, as though to ask if she was sure.

She was. The sun rose and it was still a not very nice place, but they knew that everything the Sun and Moon touched belonged to them. So, they grinned confidently and set to work.

They undone their heavy burdens and took their supplies inside the cave, along with all the important things they had brought from the place they had left. But the first thing they did was prepare a place in the center and surround it with their wool beds. In the middle they put wood, twigs, kindling in the form of wool from their sheep. Somepony put some rocks around it and they thought it was clever.

It was ready. An old unicorn with a dark yellow coat and red and orange mane, a small flame for cutie mark, brought a small container. A hollow horn from a ram with an open cover made of leaves that prevented water from getting in, and from it she dropped bright little embers into their new fireplace. It caught fire, small and then it grew until it became large enough to burn the wood and warm them.

They all celebrated. That was home now.

These ponies needed to communicate better and started making neighing sounds and hoof gestures which allowed the unicorns to better coordinate their efforts. The pegasi started gathering clouds and the earth ponies started digging the ground. They built shelters for their animals and when the day was done, they all hid inside the cave again.

The suns passed and the land became alive. Little animals came. Little birds sang. They were happy. They were doing what they were supposed to, and the land responded. Life expanded in all directions and in every way possible. Eventually they even changed that place’s name from ‘Disgraced Hole Forgotten by Harmony’ and ‘Our Guide Sucks’ to ‘Moon Mirror’ because the moon reflected off their lake.

They explored their land and found more and more exciting things. A gorgeous waterfall, more shinny things they liked. New fruits were born, and they were delicious. Flowers they could make dye from and make things prettier. Beautiful places to lay in the grass, little bunnies that needed help digging their homes. Bees that produced honey and stung the incautious but could feed them with delicious honey. Beautiful colorful birds and wondrous magical creatures.

And strangers. Ponies they didn’t know arrived one sun, but they recognized something inside that made it click into place. They were friends too, and they had brought from their home feathers from different birds than the ones they knew. So, they offered the shiny stones they had found.

Others brought them things called seashells and they spoke of an endless lake. Others spoke of big yak that lived way, way, waaaaay over the mountains and others told them of the dragons and their lakes of fire. Striped ponies that lived in the desert that didn’t change, but became alive anyway, and their potions; big and brave griffons and their sharpened sticks they used to protect their homes from the monsters. Somepony thought those were good ideas and they made some too. They made it a lot easier to chase away the scary things trying to hurt them and to heal their friends, and they were so grateful they told the other ponies to take their dyes, made from the flowers to the griffons and zebras so that they could dye their beds too.

Every sun was full of things to do and to see.

Then, one moon they settled to sleep, but one young unicorn mare, all yellow with a shinny mane, and a cute flower for cutie mark couldn’t sleep. The fire showed her the brownish red wall of their cave and she didn’t like it. It wasn’t very pretty, and she wanted it to change, so she rummaged around her things, fussing with her straw-woven baskets until she found some of the pretty stones she had found. It didn’t smell very nice, but it was pretty. She held it in her magic and started painting the wall. It surprised her when she realized that it looked like ‘a thing’. She wondered if she could draw shapes and she could. She tried drawing the mountain, but the color was all wrong. So, she decided she should cover it with something else and drew the Sun over it. She put small wavy lines and it looked like it shone.

She liked it. It was important. It dictated the rhythm of life with her Sister, which was also important, so she looked for a white chalky stone and drew the Moon too. She nodded and them she drew herself with the yellow stone. It didn’t really look her, but it was close enough and she giggled.

Then she looked for other things to draw and rummaged inside another straw basket, the one her bed neighbor usually used. In there she found a straw doll of a pony. The color of the straw matched, but there was something curious. Somepony had stuck a pair of leaves to the doll’s back and a small stick to its forehead.

Confused, she stared at it for a while. There was something about the doll that made her feel sad, but she didn’t know why. She had forgotten something that was important. She didn’t like that feeling and it started hurting her, so she drew it on the wall. It didn’t really look much like a pony, but it was close enough. She liked it, but it wasn’t perfect yet. She drew pegasi and unicorns too. Something was missing and if frustrated her. She started drawing more ponies like herself, becoming more and more aggravated.

The other ponies noticed that something bothered their friend. She was frantically drawing on the wall, panting and whining. She seemed distressed and that seemed very important to her, so they joined. They grabbed stones and the more artistically oriented unicorns even grabbed the dyes they used to make their wool beds pretty. They started drawing too. Little bushes, things that resembled little bunnies, squirrels and birds, big trees, a little lake, and some clouds. More ponies and flowers.

Their drawings weren’t anywhere near realistic, but they were close enough. There were giant brown and green trees that surrounded everything, embracing a lake and grassy fields full of little animals and ponies surrounding four figures that looked like ponies. Close enough. And they had pairs of wings and horns. One shone like the sun and the other like the moon. The third was pink and had a big heart, and the fourth was white, with six pretty stones around her neck.

The ponies stared at their drawing and it seemed to have satisfied their friend. What is more, they remembered it too. But it also made them sad because they were left alone. But at least now they wouldn’t forget anymore.

Then Cadance realized that her thoughts had been quiet that whole time.

***

She was transported. Luna’s words rang at the back of her head. ‘The train of thoughts’ was a good term. One memory that pulled another. It was similar to teleporting, actually.

She saw a pony knelt in front of her. It was a very young earth pony mare with radishes for cutie mark on her off-pink coat and with a light green mane she cut short. She was not particularly cute, her colors didn’t help a lot and she certainly didn’t possess a ravishing beauty either, but she had livid and bright rosé eyes that caught her fancy.

At the same time Cadance noticed she couldn’t move, and for some bizarre reason she couldn’t grasp that didn’t scare her as much as it should. She also noticed a strange lack of sensations. No touch, no smells. Nothing. But all that seemed unimportant and normal.

Some of her thoughts seemed like they weren’t spontaneous to herself, but she attributed that to this vision, dream, memory… Whatever it was being so introspective. She decided that much of what she felt was what she felt at the time it occurred in reality. Or whoever she was supposed to be felt. It was confusing and she decided not to think too much and accept it.

The really important thing was that she could hear whispers. Too many to count. And yet she could hear any one of them at any given time. It should be disturbing to Cadance’s usually quiet and organized mind, but it was comforting. Like everything was the way it was supposed to be. She felt a bond, a connection. A sense of belonging.

Behind the pony in front of her was an area of beaten ground surrounded by little homes, little more than domes of weaved grass and bamboo structures placed over holes in the ground with a stair entrance. It was the middle of the day, and a large bonfire was being prepared nearby to the sound of ponies merrily working and already celebrating. It was a small settlement.

Her mind was fuzzy, and she had trouble focusing on certain things as though she couldn’t recall them, and she was forced to focus on something else. Cadance wasn’t sure why, but the strange little village had a very calming and reassuring effect on her. It seemed something so familiar, despite never having lived or seem anything remotely similar.

Regardless, she wouldn’t know how the pony called herself. She recognized something in that pony that was unique to her. Truly unique, unlike a name that was something that one could share with another.

The little pony laid over her bent legs on the grass, as was customary and stared up with beautiful eyes, full of hope and dreams. All of them were expected to do that, and as was also customary, she brought a gift. It was a… Who in the entirety of Creation offered a bunch of radishes as sacrifice?

Well, she supposed it was a valid sacrifice since it was part of her family’s produce and those things were the best ones her family had produced. That was her offer, anyways, and she seemed proud of it. It was also food and would keep her faithful fed.

They were wrapped like a bouquet in a nice and clean cattail weave wrap. And they were all clean, they were sizeable… And she was sure they would be tasty… If radishes were tasty. Most important of all, the pony’s heart gleamed with the earnest desire to please her. She wouldn’t dare doubt this little pony’s heart. It had somepony’s heart that was special to it and it begged for her permission.

Well, it was decided. Her offering was enough and as such, Cadance waited gleefully for her request.

The pony clapped her hooves together and smiled radiantly before speaking with her timid voice. “Hello. I am… Um. Crunchy Salad. I hope Your Lady of the Heart is pleased with my gift! I know it isn’t much, but these were the best of our harvest. Hum… As you know… I’m of mating age and mama made me the most beautiful of dresses. But I’m not really pretty enough that my special somepony will even notice me. If it is alright with you, I would really like it if he noticed me and went with me to Your Lady’s Festival.”

Cadance couldn’t speak, but she wanted to help the hopeful little pony.

“His name is Astral Wind, Miss Storm Wind’s second son. I thank you in advance, Lady.” She said, quickly got up and moved away.

While Cadance wouldn’t know him by his name, her little heart whispered to her in the middle of all the others, as clear as the day who was Astral Wind. Well, that was all fine and good if she wanted to be in love with that pony, but she couldn’t connect the name to the pony!

Why did they always do this?! Why do they expect her to know all their names?! She needed help or else she couldn’t find that Astral Wind!

In mere seconds another pony came to her. This time it was a lavishly gorgeous pony. A unicorn with a soft yellow coat and voluminous and wild golden mane to go with her honey eyes. She wore a very rustic white dress and smiled at Cadance, then retrieved the offering with her telekinetic magic.

Excellent. One of the ponies that always came when she called. Not only that, but this one was special. She was her favorite pony!

For some reason Cadance couldn’t remember that pony was incredibly important to her but trying to remember was giving her a headache that was ruining the nice moment. So, she let go and instead focused on that mare while she examined the radishes, shrugged and stashed them away from Cadance’s eyes.

“Daffodil!” Another mare, an overly excited older unicorn pony with light orange coat and graying-out yellow mane approached. She showed a strange cutie mark that she had never seen before, but somehow, she knew what it was. A bone needle. Used for sewing simple clothes and making some tools. How did Cadance suddenly know what a bone needle was, she had no idea, but at the moment the thought seemed more like a distraction than an important point of contention with her present situation.

The mare approached and stared at Cadance for a second, smiling cheerfully before returning her eyes to the taller and younger mare. “Thank you so much for coming to our village! You can`t can’t imagine the happiness that you brought us! We’d like to pay you, somehow for your trouble since we know you’re so busy in Heart-Hearth.”

“Oh, no, Madam Elder! It is no trouble at all! I merely must go where the Lady of the Heart commands me!” Her beautiful voice sang more than spoke and she made a flamboyant and exaggerated sweep with her hoof.

Daffodil! Cadance needed Daffodil to look for the colt, Astral Wind, son of Storm Wind or else little Salad’s love will go unrequited!

“I must say, your village is very adorable and pleasant! But the Lady of the Heart has work for me. A young filly and a young colt live here, and the Lady would see them together. He answers by the name of Astral Wind, son of Storm Wind.”

“Oh, my goodness!” The old mare tip tapped in place. “Would you perform the tying of the knot ceremony for our new couple?”

“Oh, absolutely yes! If that is what the Lady wishes of me.” Daffodil smiled warmly. “Where may I find the colt? I know the filly would still be around the meeting area, I believe I talked to her, and I must say Astral Wind will be delighted at the mate the Lady has chosen for him!”

“I will gladly introduce your ladyship to him! His family lives by the field, right this way!”

It was confusing at first, but Cadance somehow jumped into the beautiful pony and… Rode along? It was the best analogy she could come up with to explain to herself what had just happened and she simply started feeling like a normal pony again but she could still hear the whispers in her head and another voice that she could only imagine were Daffodil’s thoughts and her certainty of doing Her bidding. She simply accepted it while the beautiful mare walked next to the ‘elder’. She liked ridding along.

She felt the grass on her hooves, the rough cotton fabric on her coat and Daffodil’s other senses, as well as her magical senses that told her of all the beautiful and plentiful life all around. It was a bit chilly and would certainly be cooler once the Moon replaced her Sister in the sky, but the bonfire would make it perfect for ponies to cuddle and celebrate her Gift.

The walk was short through the central square, though calling it that might’ve been an exaggeration. It was more of a meeting area with an empty space for such. Grass weaved blankets held all the food the ponies brought to celebrate the Lady of the Heart. Whispers in her head spoke of all the excitement, the break from routine and the promise of a fun afternoon, after all the work was done.

Some ponies of all three tribes prepared very rustic musical instruments next to the working ponies. Flutes, drums, oboes, and rattles, all made off wood, pony hair, seeds, or seashells, and one or two things made of bone or animal leather.

A small oven made of a hole on the ground covered in stones, leaves and sand released a delicious smell of some sort of cooked fruits. Maybe figs, some berries and apples. The smell watered Daffodil’s and Cadance’s mouth.

Some ponies already danced to the sound of the musicians. Pairs had formed and orbited each other, shamelessly moving in rhythm with the music, not remotely caring if it was beautiful or harmonious. It was a simply an expression of pure joy. They had painted traditional drawings over their bodies with plant and mineral dyes. Cadance appreciated their ‘tattoos’ even if most of them had no concept of what colors went together. They all seemed so happy and spontaneous.

Either way ponies congregated and danced, ate copious amounts of food and just frolicked together, waving and celebrating Daffodil’s passage while they also prepared the bonfire to be lit when it would be time.

Her chest warmed imagining the festivity once the work was done and all could join the celebration.

Past a couple of little hut-houses they stopped by the last one before the field. It wasn’t really a large one by Cadance’s standards, but it should provide enough radishes for however few ponies lived in the small village. They also seemed to plant oats, corn and had several animals with them. A few ponies worked the field with rustic tools made of stone and ropes.

The houses themselves seemed to have a cap at the tip, like a second ceiling that confused Cadance for a while but the thought eluded her for a while when they stopped by the entrance, closed with a meager cattail weave curtain and the Elder literally neighed. Okay… That was awkward, but it worked. A yellow and lime pegasus peeked his head out from behind the curtain. Upon seeing the visitors, he gasped and rushed back inside. Knocked something over and squealed about it, then something else seemed to tumble over. Then he finally walked outside with what seemed to Cadance as his best ‘mare’s stallion’ smile and brushed mane.

“How can I help the faithful of the Lady of the Heart?” He said while he whispered all sorts of cute and lewd thoughts to Cadance’s mind.

“By calling your son, Astral Wind instead of bothering the Lady’s servant.” The elder grinned all prankish.

“Oh… He’s inside. Just came back from cloud duty.” Cadance giggled at how much his levels of excitement plummeted, though she didn’t appreciate the older mare making fun of him for having expectations. She saw nothing wrong with a healthy male pony being attracted to such a beautiful pony as Daffodil. Regardless, he went on. “Do you want me to bring him?”

“That is not necessary.” Daffodil rose a hoof before the elder could say anything and came very close to sharing her thoughts with the Elder but didn’t. “If it is not any trouble, would you have me at your hearth?”

Oh… Okay then. Cadance giggled to herself again. It seemed that politician ponies never changed. Whenever in the past these events had occurred or in present time, when ponies still fought for her time and attention. Her money and influence, more likely since ponies of the present had no interest in her ultimate gift for them.

She didn’t let the thought sadden her while the pegasus stallion pulled open the curtain for her to enter and smiled radiantly at her while Daffodil bowed her head respectfully.

Inside the air was more at a pleasant temperature and it was little more than a hole in the ground. A neat and well-cared for hole in the ground though, hardly more than what a pony needed to protect themselves from the rain or the cold. Speaking of the cold, it had a small hearth with a fire surrounded by river stones. The smoke drained outside through a gap in the ceiling, protected from above. Oh! That was how it worked! The wind outside pulled the air from inside and took the smoke with it while the hot air circled around!

Their ingenuity still amazed her in all the ways their perspicacious minds worked around every problem daily life presented them. It almost made Cadance jealous of that Gift, but as smart as they were, they still needed her help to figure out the matters of the Heart.

Other than the cleverly built hearth, the floor was covered in roughly sewn and weaved blankets. A hole in the ground, covered with a heavy piece of wood was their pantry and the walls were decorated with pretty and colorful beading. They didn’t make those heartfelt paintings of her in the cave walls anymore, but they were better that way.

There a few beds made of heavy and dyed wool spread around the small house and some ponies were drawn to Daffodil’s expressive presence. An adult unicorn with cyan coat and blue mane was teaching a younger mare of similar colors how to make the pretty beading they hanged on the wall. Two young foals bothered another adult mare trying to cut a piece of leather with a knife made of a sharp and shiny polished rock with a bone handle. Another pegasus, soft green with pale blue, green and yellow mane that went well with his blue eyes. Wavy soft colorful lines in his flank, fidgeting around with a hoe made of stone and bone tied with leather straps, but he stopped when he noticed the mare at the entrance.

Cadance recognized him immediately and Daffodil smiled broadly at the sight.

The stallion that received them rose his hoof. “Daffodil, servant of the Lady of the Heart has something important to tell us!”

Daffodil left the entrance steps and approached the young pony smiling. “Be happy, Astral Wind! The Lady of the Heart has granted her Greatest Gift to you!”

“Wow… Uh…” He blushed a little and scratched his mane. “That’s awesome, I guess. I mean… Who are they? Do I have to do anything?”

Cadance squee’d inside. Yay! A happy couple forever!

“Oh, you will know when you see her!” Her hoof touched his chest and she showed him a giant smile. “Just follow your heart! It hears the Lady, even if your head doesn’t. And when you find her, I will teach you all that the Lady has to teach to young couples burning with passion!”

“Jeez, Astral. You’re so clueless the Lady had to send one of her servants all the way out here for you to figure this out!” One of the pegasus fillies chided him. “I hope she spares me from a dumb flank like you.”

Well, if there was one thing that never changed it would be siblings. Cadance giggled to herself once more. When the oldest unicorn suddenly opened wide her eyes. “Goodness! Where are our manners?”

Her telekinetic magic brought to them a small basket of woven straw filled to the top and a little more with the little honey colored fruits. They smelled amazing to Cadance and Daffodil liked her lips, but when she took one into her mouth and bit into it, core and all, the little fruit exploded with delicious sweetness and a bit of caramel. If Cadance was in control of that body, it would probably have toppled over and demanded to be fed a train load of the thing.

“Hmmm! Hmm hmm hmm!” Daffodil happily munched on the fruit. “It’s delicious!”

The unicorn matriarch of the family smiled radiantly that their dates were appreciated. “We traded them in from a tall-pony explorer travelling our lands. They loved the radishes our ponies produce!”

Daffodil was ready to pick another, but what she said held her. “Oh. They are from a distant land.”

The other unicorn shook her head and smiled. “It is no problem. If you like it so much It is our gift to the Lady of The Heart! For your visit! Will you stay with us? You will need a place to sleep on your stay!”

***

Suddenly Cadance felt like she didn’t have a body again. And seemed to be sitting inside a large marble structure, at the top of a few steps. It was pretty pink marble and heavy wood and metal doors were closed and one of the marble pillars had fallen. The wind howled furiously outside and ponies wearing pretty white dresses also wore heavy winter capes and ran everywhere frantically gathering things with help from other ponies. From papers to trinkets and some food.

A gorgeous pony, all yellow with a golden mane showed her face before her, looking all concerned and worried.

Our dearest Daffodil.

She looked a bit different, though. Younger and a bit different. It was difficult to understand. She was Daffodil, but seemed like another pony that looked a lot like her.

“We cannot leave the goddess!” She squealed half-panicked at the other ponies. “What will those monsters do to Her?”

She remembered. The Windigos were upon them and their temple in that island in the Northern Neighean Sea had to be abandoned. It was a shame. She adored the love poems directed at mares one of her priestesses wrote there.

Oh well… Sucks… But why were they so concerned? They shouldn’t even be there! They should have left already!

One pegasus approached and he was a beautiful looking soldier with a black armor over his stormy grey coat and lightning blue mane turned crest while a gray unicorn wearing a blue winter cape picked things up with her magic. “I don’t know if we can do anything about it, priestess…”

He sounded so sorrowfull. What was wrong with those ponies? It was an important building, but the temple could be rebuilt when it would be acceptable. The had to leave!

Then he turned to the unicorn in the back. “This is all because you stupid unicorns!”

“Excuse-me?” She barked back while Daffodil simply stared at Cadance like she was about to cry.

Unbelievable!

Fly thy foals! The Windigos cometh and ye cannot hold them! The shrine is insignificant, it is in thy Hearts We reside! Ye must survive! Heed the Gift of Friendship then, save yourselves!

That shook Daffodill and she became even more scared. “What was I thinking?! Forget everything! We have to go! Now!”

And that was what they did. They left anything that wasn’t important and left out the door. The whispers in her head, all scared and frantic, were also determined. The others had commanded them to leave too. The temples would be left empty, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they survived. It would be their most important test yet.

Soon it became dark, but she could their whispers. They had escaped. Everything would be fine, and they would take her with them wherever they went. They would wake her when it was time, so she closed her eyes and allowed herself into slumber. Windigos be damned, their race would survive. She knew it.

***

Cadance woke with the sensation that she was placed somewhere. She saw that she was at the flat top of a mount. She could see another where ponies were building something grandiose. Beyond was a lovely oat field. Then a pony with a large smile came in front of her and sat. It was her Daffodil. Some years older than she was the last time she had seen her, but the years only added to her beauty. Behind her a few pegasi and earth ponies smiling proudly.

“We found a nice place for you!” She showed the scenery with a sweep of her hoof. “We called it Equestria!”

Ye have survived! Your proud race remembered the Ancient Pact and the Fire of Friendship burneth anew! We are overjoyed!

Everything was perfect again. All she had to do was wait for her new home to be ready!

***

Things changed suddenly and Cadance saw that Discord staring critically at her. She was now inside a building with large columns covered in gold and the soft pink marble of the floor had marvelous golden inlays. Several rose petals scattered around the floor and running water could be heard. After a long hall a large open door showed a field covered in oats. Some ponies milled about, dressed in all sorts of dresses and togas. Some of them seemed to bring gifts in the form of bouquets of yellow flowers they left wherever it seemed appropriated.

She felt strange again, as though she didn’t have a body, but the worse was the silence. The multitude of whispers seemed a lot calmer now. What changed? She missed them!

Discord’s presence commanded her attention though, and his was on Cadance, too. He scratched his chin and frowned. Then he clicked a claw on her muzzle.

How inconvenient.

“Could you please not?” Somepony said from her side and he grimaced with a guilty smile and took a few steps back while a big and strong earth pony stallion with black coat and curly jet mane deposited some daffodils by Cadance's hooves. He wore a wonderful white toga with a heart shaped brooch.

My… What a nice-looking stud!

“Sorry. She just looks so pretty.”

“Of course, she does. She's Amore.” The pony seemed almost offended and the whispers she heard from him made that clear.

“Well, please don’t touch the goddess. She finds it bothersome.”

“It’s a statue.”

“Yessssss…” His condescending smile filled with teeth made Cadance giggle. “It is an idol. Touching it is like touching Amore Herself.”

“That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“And since when must things make sense for you?” The pony stared blankly, and Discord crossed his arms, finally rolling his eyes.

“Huh… Fine. Sorry, sorry.” He grinned apologetically and the pony left, after smiling happily at him having understood. Then Discord turned his attention back to Cadance.

“This is so freaky…”

“What is?” Star Swirl, with his hat and cape walked into her view and next to Discord, still staring at Cadance. Star Swirl looked at her too, and he seemed rather a strapping young stallion. “What?”

“She speaks and these ponies… Like… They obey. But she doesn’t really think. She just… I don’t even know how to explain.”

“Who?” Star Swirl’s brow raised. “The statue?”

“I mean… You’re not even supposed to know about them. You were supposed to have forgotten them once you migrated from the Green Harbor! This is all kinds of messed up.”

“What are you talking about, Discord?” Star Swirl looked as confused as Cadance was disturbed at the fact that she knew who that pony was, but she couldn’t hear his whispers.

“Just look at her.” Discord insisted.

“What about it?” Star Swirl did stare at Cadance. “I do not see anything wrong with it. It is how all statues of Amore are made.”

She thought it a bit curious the way these ponies talked. But couldn’t put her hoof on it.

Another pony came into view, this time a beautiful youngling, barely an adult, covered in grayish cyan coat and with a beautiful gold and bronze mane. He wore a leather barding and carried a shield with him. He simply stared distrusting at Cadance and spoke with a reserved tone, covering his mouth. “They say they even carve her lady bits under her tail…”

Leave! You disturb the proceedings and use my temple for blasphemous idling! Why won’t you heed my voice? Begone!

Discord smirked and blushed at the comment while Star Swirl sighed. “Focus more on your studies, and less on statues of mares, Rockhoof…”

A wrath Cadance rarely usually felt stirred in her chest and she wished she could blast the three of them out of existence with her magic. Why didn’t they listen to her?!

A pony in the background, a pretty lilac coated and raven-maned unicorn wearing a pristine white dress and golden addresses talked to a pair of pegasi and received a bundle of daffodils from them.

Wait! Where was Daffodil? Intellectually, Cadance understood too much time must have passed and Daffodil simply passed away. But she still felt like Daffodil was somehow missing.

Regardless, the mare looked at the three near Cadance and frowned while coming to them. But her eyes softened. She whispered to Cadance’s mind that she remembered to be nice to the guests. And she spoke calmly to them.

“Master Swirl. Master Discord. And… Whoever you are. Would you kindly take your conversation outside the Basilica? They disturb the goddess.”

“You see?!” Discord pointed at the pony. “They did it again! It’s like she thinks inside their heads or something! I’m pretty sure your minds weren’t supposed to work like that!”

“Well… You know how the mares are, Master Discord.” Rockhoof made a spinning gesture with his hoof next to his head while the mare waited with mild anger.

Star Swirl hummed and narrowed his eyes at the mare next to them and she blinked, a little disturbed. “Do you hear voices that should not be present, milady?”

“Yes!” Her straight-faced reply made Cadance chuckle. “I am indeed hearing three of them right now!”

“This is not a matter for jokes, priestess.” The gray pony admonished. “We are concerned for your humors.”

“My humors shall summon the temple Battlehorns if you three are not more respectful towards the goddess.” She kept her straight face.

“Alright, alright. There is no need for threats milady.” Star Swirl offered a hoof in apology. “It is the case that Master Discord is concerned. You see, we have limitations to our minds and perceptions that he does not have.”

Discord put on himself a kind of hat that wouldn’t be invented for another couple of thousand years. “Indeed, my fair lady.”

“Why are you still here?”

“Well, I actually have a question.” Discord raised a finger.

The mare stared at him inhaling profoundly before exhaling and smiling pleasantly despite all the thoughts of murder and maiming she shared with Cadance. “Yes? How can a servant of Amore help you, Master Discord?”

“You say that you don’t hear voices, but you speak to her… To Amore. And that she answers… Explain? I mean, I’m all about Chaos and I’m lost.”

“The goddess speaks to us through our hearts, if a pony will merely listen to her. She is, the Lady of the Heart.”

“I don’t hear anything…” Rockhoof moved his ears around and made a confused expression.

Maddening. This is maddening! Explain to them, Lilac. For the love of Harmony!

Her priestess summoned all her patience at that moment and put forward her friendliest smile. “Young master, you cannot listen to the Lady with your ears. You must learn to quiet your mind and choose to listen to her within your heart. If you manage, which I sadly doubt, the Lady of the Heart will be so happy with you she would give you all the mares and stallions you would ever want. She will teach you what they like and how to treat them, and they will flock to such a strapping lad as yourself.”

“That sounds very…” Star Swirl struggled for a second with his choice of words holding his chin in a hoof. “Disturbing. So, you actually believe you have a small pony inside your heart that speaks to you? I mean, I’ve heard of a pony speaking inside one’s head, but…”

The priestess rubbed her forehead with a hoof. “This is why you males don’t get laid as much as you want. You are so unbelievably clueless! Why don’t you go bother the Children of the Sun?! Sol-Estia finds it cute to see her ponies being so stupid!”

“Wait! I have another question!” Discord waved at her.

“Will you leave if I answer?”

“Hum. I’m gonna say yes.” He crossed his arms. “You know, you are not very friendly. I mean… In the Forum they are all friendly and like to listen to each other and discuss their problems, right? In the Sol Invictus they go and on about law and rulership and the military campaigns. In the Speculum Lunares they have those wild and crazy… Dare I say ‘chaotic’ debates about all sorts of philosophical mumbo-jumbo. What do you actually do here?”

“We worship the Lady of the Heart. Just as the others celebrate the Gifts given to us by our gods. Sol-Estia, The Mother gave us Life. Luccenoturna, The Sister gave us Intelligence. Amicizia, the Friend gave us Friendship. We worship Amore at the Cor Basilica, and thus, we celebrate Amore’s Gift of Love.”

“Yeah…” Discord groaned and blushed. “The image in my head is way above this story’s age rating.”

“Well, Master Discord, that is because you are an idiot.” Lilac spat back while Rockhoof chuckled with red cheeks and Star Swirl was more interested in his inner thoughts holding his chin and frowning. His thoughts, however, were infuriatingly beyond Cadance’s reach.

ENOUGH!

“I have to ask you to leave.” Lilac spoke again.

Oh well, Cadance wanted them to talk more, but she was getting irritated at them. She felt like something important had happened or was about to happen, but she couldn’t remember. And she wanted to see Daffodil again!

Another pony joined them. Though calling her a pony might have been improper. She was huge. Cadance had never seen such a huge unicorn in her life. She was as big as Princess Celestia, wearing an impressive heavy armor with plates shaped like leaves of a tree, all green and golden with a helmet that protected most of her head leaving space for a long and elegant horn and turned her red mane into an exuberant decorative crest.

She had that same expression that Cadance had seen in some Royal Guards that actually went to fight with the Princess in the Second Griffon War, and her armor let her beautiful chestnut coat show. Her tail bundled neatly thanks to the armor’s magic. She wondered if the magic was the same as the one in the Royal Guard barding. It was possible.

The way the three grimaced and took a step back when she arrived even managed to make Cadance laugh in the middle of her confusing thoughts and emotions. She brought with her a powerful magical aura that rivaled Cadance’s own.

“You three are hogging the statue of the Lady. Do you not know how to behave in sacred ground?” She barely kept from yelling at them. Cadance then noticed she brought with her an exuberant bouquet of daffodils. “Do you need assistance, Pontifex Lilac?”

“No, Matriarch Flameheart. The three were just leaving.”

“Wait!” Star Swirl gasped at her and pointed a hoof. “Is that an offering to Amore?”

“Yes.” She said mater-of-factly. “If only the Lady would help my special somepony stop being so dense…”

He thought for several seconds. “But you are the matriarch of one of the most powerful houses in the Republic and Legate to one of the most successful Battlehorn Legions! Who would be stupid enough to not accept your affections?”

If she couldn’t hear the big mare’s whispering thoughts Cadance might have worried she might’ve murdered him right there. Instead she simply stared at him for a few moments before speaking again. “I do not know, Star Swirl. Maybe he is scared of big mares or maybe he has his muzzle so deep inside his hindquarters all he can think of are his studies and that stupid Mage’s Guild and cannot notice that I love him or even that a strategic marriage would behoof him and his accursed guild!”

“Sounds like an idiot!” Star Swirl frowned and mused.

The big pony growled and shoved the flowers into Cadance’s chest.

Neigh! I forbid. His heart is thorny and icy to My touch and would turn yours to ashen badlands. Best you remain My faithful. Better days shall yet come for you, dear Cinnamon.

“You’re the dumbest smart pony I know, Star Swirl.” Discord growled at him.

Wait a second! Cadance was so enthralled in that conversation and in her mixed thoughts that she didn’t even notice it for a while. That was Cinnamon Flameheart from the griffon’s letter! Whatever happened when the letter said the Sisters had arrived was probably very close! What happened?

As though it answered to her question her mind transported her again, but this time much harsher and dramatically.

Immediately something was terribly wrong. She had stopped hearing most of the whispers inside her head, but now what remained of them cried and begged for help.

Cadance herself cried at the shock. The floor before her was stained with blood and one of her faithful laid dead before her. Her beautiful white dress ripped and stained crimson.

No! What happened? Outside the oat field was aflame and she could hear distant cries and sounds of fighting. Combat spells being cast left and right shook the ground. The blue sky was an inscrutable mess of disjointed mad colors. Magic itself drained from all around her, alarmingly fast, as though somepony had opened the drain on a pool.

The world was dying.

She jumped out and flew, and though pillars and walls meant nothing to her, she felt like flying through water. Magic was sick and the wind itself seemed to cackle, mocking her.

Outside of her Cor Basilica, the pink marble edification that it was mostly intact, but its grounds were littered with unmoving bodies and charred patches of stone told of powerful combat spells that had been cast. She gasped and shook her head. Soldiers, ponies of different colors and tribes, but most of them were sickly looking, with all their color drained from their coats. Dirty and malnourished.

She didn’t want to stare too long at it, but turning the other side, the forest which covered the mounts burned and nowhere seemed safe for whatever little animals or ponies that lived there.

Sol-Estia’s magnificent palace was in ruins and her gigantic golden statue of the alicorn goddess holding an orb and a scepter lied broken and crumbled in the riverbed bellow. Luccenotturna’s beautiful blue palace was charred and the flames from within licked out the windows.

The city itself was in flames and even though her memory of it was flimsy at best, it could barely be imagined as the bustling metropolis it was. The fields that surrounded it all glowed like a macabre aura crowning it.

Ponies laughed though. It was an insane laughter that echoed in the… Day? Night? It simply froze her spine.

She could see them. An endless wave of mad ponies throwing themselves over each other around and into the flaming oat fields, through and around the little houses where the farmers once lived. It was horrifying! Those nice and beautiful ponies had turned into insane monstrosities.

On the other side of the field ponies rushed inside the city’s tall walls and then the gates closed. The gate closest to the fields seemed to hold when the wave of insanity outside threw itself at it, and dozens upon dozens of ponies rushed up staircases behind the walls and fought to protect it. She was too far to see but she could see arrows flying along some elemental spells and other projectiles shooting downwards or eventually shooting at flying pegasi and other creatures that tried to pass the walls. They didn’t fly very well and Candance wondered if whatever it was that Discord had done to them damaged their ability to fly.

The sight concerned her, but if the gate held, they might stand a chance. The walls and the gate itself seemed to be filled to the brim with protective spells that would reinforce it.

That was not the griffons’ arrival nor Princess Celestia fixing the sun. This was earlier… When Discord tried to end the world.

Looking down to the streets she saw that some of those insane ponies had managed to invade the city. But she also saw that the streets had been blocked and that giant ponies that looked like Cinnamon held their advance. Small organized units cast powerful spells and cleared the streets wave after wave of chortling mad ponies threw improvised weapons or charged at them.

They held magical shields and cast spells, thundering through the streets and countering the insane babbling. Spell after spell they didn’t seem to tire and behind their lines others of their own, all sharing the very same armor and variations of the same chestnut coat and red mane beat down doors.

They dragged panicking ponies outside and ushered them away towards the mountains behind the city. Other ponies wearing a lighter armor, mostly earth ponies and pegasi, but still of the same colors organized the panicking and fleeing ponies into groups and escorted them to safety. It was an organized and measured retreat of the panic-prone pony population from the city of the likes Cadance couldn’t imagine happening without an organized force of disciplined soldiers making it happen. Ponies just panicked too easily.

Past the city itself its walls protected a valley and connected to a mountain beyond. It had been turned into a fortress. They carved it out of the solid rock and enchanted it with so much magic that it gleamed like a magical beacon shooting up into in the dark of mad colors in the sky, defiantly challenging it. Giant banners hung from its walls in multilayered defensive sectors, showing flaming hearts and purple stars. Cadance imagined those were the banners of those battlehorns that defended the city. The flaming heart was easy to deduce.

The waves of fleeing ponies, and other creatures met in the wider streets the chestnut soldiers had secured for them and they panicked amid magical explosions and crumbling buildings, but they ran in the right direction, towards the giant fortress.

Other parts of the city had already been overwhelmed and those mad creatures poured out of the houses but those soldiers had organized well their defensive lines and they allowed those monsters to funnel into areas where more of them could fight effectively and while they did others joined in casting a powerful spell that exploded the entire block. It was powerful magic, cast by feel of them.

A powerful wave of magical aftereffect and noise wafted over her and directed her attention to the walls that protected the valley, on the west side. A rolling prairie extended beyond the walls and the chain of smaller mountains until it met soft hills. The walls had a triple line of those giant unicorn battlehorns, all in shades of pink and purple with dark manes their armor turned to crests. Several lines of them held the area in front of the walls where what seemed like refugees ran inside in panic and flooded into the valley before the fortress.

The battlehorns held the incoming wave in a solid formation. Their big leaf-shaped shields alit with magic held like a solid wall and curved swords that could split a pony in half stabbed at those creatures. Laughing and screaming the mad ponies crashed against the combined wall of shields and magical barriers again and again, but it didn’t waver. They were barely organized, the sort of thing those trained soldiers were proficient at fighting against.

The situation seemed desperate but seeing them fight almost made Cadance imagine they could win after all.

Above the wall horns charged with magic and the entire thing seemed like it was ablaze until it released in a wave of magical energy. The entire prairie exploded with magical energy. It was a high-energy but simple non-elemental spell of energy transfer washing over in a sequence of resonant magical blasts destroyed everything in its path.

Cadance once saw all the broadside cannons of one of their old warships from the Second Griffon War firing. It was a scary sound, to say the least. One that reverberated inside her lungs and she imagined that was the most terrifying sound she’d ever hear. It paled in comparison to the combined magic of those unicorns.

In a moment of peace, magical flares shot up from the wall and illuminated the prairie and hills and they moved in the soft light. The sight horrified Cadance and she took her hooves to her mouth with a small cry. The hills didn’t move, they crawled with insane creatures ravenously running towards the city. They were too many to count and there was a dragon surrounded by other flying creatures coming at the city.

Just as soon the battlehorns were done repelling the initial attack another wave approached amid psychotic cries and laughter. The unicorns atop the wall bombarded the prairie with magic again, but were forced to start shooting magical missiles, small packets of energy at pegasi that flew over the wave to attack the line of soldiers below.

It was too much. Every instinct in her, inculcated from all the lessons in military strategy told her that the city was lost and that they needed to evacuate it and flee outside, not into the fortress, as mighty as it seemed. But she realized that they didn’t have anywhere to go, that was the last stand. A creeping fear threated to overwhelm her. There was no way they could ever survive. She wanted to do something. Anything to help, but all she could really do was cause ponies to fall in love and they didn’t even listen to her anymore. She begged something, anything to help them, but nothing answered.

Then she heard a magical beacon someone had cast. It rose above the city and showed a flaming heart. A pegasus flew from a rich mansion in the western area of the city and towards a tall bridge where a group of ponies in light barding fought against a continuous stream of Discord’s mad ponies. Too much happened at the same time for her to keep up, but pegasi flew everywhere and it seemed like an order to retreat but the movement drew her attention and she saw several of the chestnut soldiers leaving the mansion. They jumped over the low hedge and galloped full sprint down the street. Was that Matriarch Cinnamon Flameheart?

Cadance rushed to follow her, flapping wings against the weird magic and galloping in the air as tough that might help but managed to catch up to the matriarch and her soldiers. It struck her as curious that they were all similar colors and it also occurred to her that Flameheart was a surname. It was probably thousands of years since they stopped using those in Equestrian history. Probably something related to bloodlines. That was the pony the griffon mentioned in his letter, but this was Discord’s defeat and not the arrival of the griffon army. That would still take some years. Something didn’t seem right. If Celestia and Luna were supposed to have defeated Discord… But they can’t have been born yet. As was becoming usual, something didn’t add up. There was yet another piece of the puzzle to find.

The ponies she followed kept on racing through the streets and one of the younger spoke to their leader. “Mother, what is our plan?”

“The Farmland Gate cannot fall. If it does, The Lost will overwhelm the City Guard and the First Legion by the West Wall. But if there is one pony inside this city that cannot be allowed to die it is the Archmage. We have to keep the gate at all costs until they have withdrawn their forces and the Archmage and his students have reached safety in the Citadel! We have to hope that Lieutenant Pansy can reach him in time. The tall Bridge is not that far.”

Other of Cinnamon's Battlehorns joined, peeking out from the secondary streets and uniting with the group in their mad gallop down the street. Several groups of them joined and one of the big mares approached Cinnamon. “Matriarch, the Second and Fourth Auxilia Alae and Equitata volunteered to hold the line in the city and evacuate the civilians from the south districts. It is a mess families and merchants from the market managed to reach the Forum and the priests barricaded the temple. They are all being moved to the Citadel right now.”

She shook her head with her ears down. “I don’t understand what happened. There is not a single Brightmane in sight.”

Cinnamon frowned, but it wasn’t a frown of worry, as Cadance might’ve expected. It was pure contained wrath. “The Brightmanes left their estate and took all their possessions. They never gave the order to evacuate, much less deployed their house’s soldiers. They went straight to safety in the Citadel and sabotaged the Farmland Gate.”

Her soldier seemed incredulous. “What would they gain from leaving harmless civilians and temple priests to the mercy of The Lost?”

“They knew we would come to assist.” Cinnamon said. “I, however, do not think they expected the First Legion to still hold the West Wall. Still, had they managed to destroy the gate unknown, the Lost would swarm this entire side of the city and likely would overrun the First Legion trying to get the refugees inside.”

Her daughter grimaced fiercely. “They seek to murder us!”

“That is why the Archmage must be kept safe. The Founding Council cannot be trusted, and I would not be surprised if they arranged to murder the Senate. The Archmage will be the only thing standing in their way after this night.”

They galloped in silence through the main street where neat stone and wood houses flanked it on both sides, but they were empty now. Potted plants that once decorated then were turned on their sides and broken. Abandoned carts in the middle of the street still full of produce and the air was hot and full of smoke, but at least there seemed to be no forgotten or abandoned ponies in that section of the city.

Then a loud blast rocked the ground and toppled one of the statues of pretty mares holding vases in the plaza ahead. Ponies screamed and poured into the plaza coming from the left while pegasi scattered everywhere. Some skipped and fell being trampled by others in their panicked dash. All ponies wearing leather barding. At least one or two stopped to help or took the way towards the fortress, but the majority spread in every which way.

“No! Go south, to the Citadel!” Cinnamon cried. “Cardamom, stay here and send these idiots towards the Citadel!”

“Ma’am!” Her daughter halted, skipping a little in the stone road while the others rushed past her following Cinnamon to the plaza where they turned left in the middle of the panicking and confused ponies, entering the street that led directly to the gate Cadance had seen before.

Ponies were still fighting from the top of the wall, shooting magic or arrows downward to the other side or at the pegasi that tried approaching from the air. The gate had a large diagonal crack on its left door and threatened to buckle under the assault from outside. The insane laughter had become a bizarre cacophony of terror and every time the gate creaked more and more ponies that were behind it panicked and ran towards the plaza.

Cadance flew above and screamed when half the gate finally collapsed and a mass of insane creatures that once were ponies poured in like a wave on top of whatever was in the way. Whatever semblance of formation broke, and ponies stampeded away while she could see a few of them that cowered and turned before her eyes. She didn’t understand the process of how it happened, but it was like a second wave claiming those too paralyzed with fear to run.

They poured in so fast the access to the top of the walls and towers were overran and the ponies at the top couldn’t escape and started panicking too, still under attack from the flying Lost. Pegasi that managed to fly were dragged down when one or another of the Lost latched onto them.

Cadace instincts kicked her mind into action and she wanted to help, but there wasn’t much that she could other than make ponies fall in love or scream and go unheard.

Then she saw Cinnamon and her battlehorns coming from the plaza, in the middle of the fleeing ponies, dodging, and jumping their way towards the gate while every other pony in there was trying to flee from it.

“Destroy them!” Cinnamon roared and their horns started glowing and shooting magical missiles at the Lost while they telekinetically grabbed their swords and shields from their backs.

Cinnamon however reared on her hindlegs, with all the weight of her armor and her horn released a fiery wave of magic that disintegrated the insane creatures and then her soldiers rushed past her, stabbing and kicking the Lost that had managed to grab a hold of the fleeing ponies. Following that they quickly formed a wall of alit magical leaf shaped shields and blocked the entrance while others hunted down and killed the scattered Lost or carved a path to the ponies in the top of the wall and shot magic at the flyers.

Others still replaced the gate on its hinges and used their magic to repair and reinforce it.

One of the fleeing ponies, a panting cyan and pink earth pony wearing leather barding, no weapon, stopped by Cinnamon and grabbed her one of her legs. “Thank you, Matriarch! Thank you so much!”

“Go to the Citadel! And find your courage, guard.” She told the pony softly. “Find your sisters and brothers. Equestria still stands until the last of us exhales for the last time and it is our duty to defend her.”

“Ma’am.” She stood and then rushed away to the plaza while Cadance saw Cinnamon looking at her like a concerned mother.

Some of her battlehorns worked to reinforce the gate and others had climbed the stairs to the top of the wall and shot magic at the flyers. That worried Cadance. If the walls were not defended properly there was nothing stopping one third of the Lost from simply flying into the city. This place, even if the gate held now, would be overwhelmed soon. The city was lost, she supposed that two thirds of them still would need to walk in.

Then her actual daughter came from the plaza. “Everypony is on their way. A pegasus from the First came to deliver the message that Grimoire has ordered all her battlehorns to the Citadel’s walls. No news of Master Swirl yet.”

Cadance gasped. Yes, that was right. Star Swirl was the Archmage!

The lost were back to banging against the gate and cackle outside. Cinnamon looked at the gates shinning with magical amber light, chains and more magic where it had broken. Her soldiers atop the wall seemed to have the situation under control.

“We will keep this place secure for as long as we can until we are sure that Star Swirl has made it to the Citadel.”

“Mother, nopony knows we are here. They will not send a messenger to warn us.” Cadance didn’t think she seemed afraid, merely worried.

“Then we will stay here until we die! Discord’s madness will claim me before I or one of my daughters fall to cowardice in the line of duty!”

Before the other could reply a group of battlehorns from another family teleported in. All in shades of green under their green and golden leaf plated barding. One of them took the front. “Matriarch Flameheart!”

“Who are you? Mintleaf?”

“Yes ma’am!” She straightened. “Aqua Mintleaf. The Twelveth Legion, First Cohort, First Centurion.”

“I thought your legion was destroyed in Neighpolis.” Cinnamon’s daughter spoke.

“We are what remained of the Mintleafs.” She shook her head. “But that is not important! You must retreat to the Citadel immediately!”

“No.” Cinnamon shook her head. “We must hold this gate until Master Swirl has reached the Citadel. His survival is all that matters.”

“I was with him at the Tall Bridge. He is already on his way with a whole detachment of city guards. You must survive too, Matriarch. Whatever happens this night he will need faithful allies and you will need all the Flamehearts that can survive.” Her stare darkened for a moment. “The real enemy lies within, Matriarch. And I fear the Bluebloods might attempt against his life if he is by his own.”

Cinnamon frowned and nodded softly before Aqua went on. “We will guard this gate. There is not much that we can do by ourselves. You are more important and must go. Now.”

Cinnamon nodded again, more certain this time. “Thank you, Aqua Mintleaf.”

“Praise your Loyalty, Battlehorn. And think of home.” They kicked their armors together right above their hooves with a clank. “Your Matriarch will be proud of you when you find her on the other side.”

Then she turned towards the plaza. “Flamehearts!”

The chestnut soldiers folowed their matriarch after mimicking her gesture with the others and Mintleafs replaced them in defending the wall. Cadance watched as a procession of green colored ponies took positions known full well that they wouldn’t survive more than a few hours, all so that Cinnamon could find her way back to safety. Trying to buy just a little more time so that their battlehorn sisters from other families could drag a couple more scared ponies to safety. So that Star Swirl and Cinnamon could make it to whatever safety the Citadel could provide in the middle of this madness.

And perhaps the worst of it all was that Discord was so far gone that he couldn’t see this gallant sacrifice. Cadance wanted to cry but her form didn’t seem capable of it even if her throat squeezed.

The stories of these ponies deserved to be told so that modern ponies understood what they stood on. All of them. From those ponies that challenged the magical storm and settled the land to these ponies that sacrificed themselves so that Equestria might survive.

She couldn’t stay with Aqua and her sisters, though. She must go to the Citadel and find Star Swirl, so she took flight in the sticky and awkward magic that surrounded and tried picking up speed above the city.

Undefended, city walls wouldn’t hold these nightmarish creatures and now that one of the ways in would open as soon as Aqua and the other fell they would swarm the city much faster so she flew as fast as she could to the fortress.

Down in the streets Cinnamon called to her soldiers and those who could galloped to join her in the main street. Others weren’t so lucky, dragged down by the Lost or staying behind, trying to help somepony left behind. It was a madness as though Cadance had never seen. It was unfair and cruel. It was an abuse. Discord knew too well what he was doing. Even if the Farmland Gate held, it would only delay the inevitable.

To make it worse, she still heard cries for help in her head, powerless to assist and tried to ignore them the best she could until she reached the fortress.

It was beautiful and majestic, especially with all the magic it exuded in the form of countless defensive spells woven into its walls, but she didn’t feel like examining them. She was exhausted of the whole emotional journey.

She simply passed over her walls looking for Star Swirl. If he really used that hat of his, it shouldn’t be too hard. She wanted to, at least make sure he had made it. And he did, and the first thing she saw was indeed his hat.

He sat in the middle of the innermost courtyard, looking tired, among an agglomerated mass of ponies, citizens that had made it. Each one of those could’ve been a battlehorn that didn’t make it because they were trying to stop the Lost and save those helpless ponies. How many of them died or turned to corrupted monsters?

An earth pony offered him something to drink and he smiled back at the pony and accepted his drink. A group of city guards gravitated towards him like he was their source of safety.

Cadance studied Star Swirl closer upon landing. He looked a bit older, but he still seemed strong and handsome. He was tired though. It was a shame he couldn’t hear her. In a brief moment of calm and collectedness, Cadance wanted to tell him that somehow everything would end up fine. She wanted to tell him of how beautiful and happy Equestria was in her time. That they made it, somehow.

Then somepony called him and he looked up in time for a very young and frantic blue earth pony with a tall red mane-do and a green dress to assault him with a hug.

“Meadowbrook!” He smiled as though the life had returned to him and then hugged her again. “I swear to everything that is good… You made it! Where are the others?”

Cadance smiled. She knew who Meadowbrook was. One of the great heroes of the past, of course. She was glad she wasn’t made up or something.

“They made it too! They are doing what they can to help around the fortress. Are you hurt?”

“No, friend. But thank you.”

Then another pony approached them. “Oh, thank goodness you are unharmed, Master Star Swirl!”

Cadance first giggled at that very young Meadowbrook hiding behind Star Swirl, but them stared to see a white and silver unicorn wearing a blue silver hemmed cape and a silver and amethyst crown. She was gorgeous and elegant. A bit haughty, very Rarity-like in Cadance’s eyes. She certainly talked and walked with the same expressive mannerisms and sophistication. But certainly not the same calm ‘superiority’. This one was a bit of a bitch.

“Not unharmed, Lady Platinum… But I wager I will survive.”

That was Princess Platinum? Cadance blinked a few times.

He stood to meet her with a respectful bow of his head. Next to her came two other unicorns. First a big unicorn, not like the battlehorns, but normal-size large. He had an exuberant golden mane and medium beard that made Cadance think of gold, and those green eyes of his were enchanting. Very handsome, but he didn’t strike her as a very nice pony. He wore a beautiful white armor and a cape that didn’t seem to have seen a smidgeon of combat recently.

“I am glad you have survived, friend.” He spoke without an ounce of sincerity. It made Cadance cringe a little.

“Indeed, Magnus.” Star Swirl hardened his stare. “Say… How fares your family? I have not seen a single Blueblood or Brightmane soldier helping defend the streets today.”

That was Magnus Brightmane, the regent of Everfree in the griffon’s letter. She imagined his foals mentioned in the letter weren’t born yet.

“They were, of course, assisting with the evacuation of our esteemed senators, Master Swirl.” The third pony spoke as he approached them, closer to Platinum and next to Magnus. Cadance had never seen such an old and decrepit white unicorn wearing so much jewelry. It’s like they had become part of him or something! His mane looked well cared for, in a graying shade of blue.

“Unfortunately, they were ambushed by the Lost and none survived.” He concluded sitting with an insincere sorrowful sigh and a shrug.

Cadance couldn’t believe what she saw. Chrysalis had told them that they had betrayed Equestria, but… What did they expect to gain? The world was literally ending! And they were so callous about it. So… Unrepentant, like they didn’t even see they were causing more trouble than there already was. Was that a calculated risk to them?

Star Swirl though seemed like he had some things to tell them but chose not to. He seemed tired and Cadance pitied him. Again, she wanted to tell him that everything would be fine. That they made it. She didn’t know how. Maybe they’ll hold on long enough. Maybe Discord will give up. She knew that Celestia and Luna were supposed to have defeated him with the Elements of Harmony but she didn’t see how that would be possible at the time.

Thinking of the Sisters caused her to think back to ponies worshiping them and how that whole affair felt. What were the others doing? She assumed that they were around too. Somehow? She had to remind herself that she was dreaming. Or experiencing a vision of an old memory. Was the… Lady. Amore. Was she going around doing what she was? Will something happen that will cause the Sisters to… She didn’t know… Appear?

No more time for introspection. Cinnamon arrived.

“You!” She roared from behind Cadance who turned with the scare, but the huge unicorn walked through her and grabbed Magnus Brightmane by his armor. “What have you done?”

Her armor was stained with blood and she seemed tired, if furious.

“The Matriarch will forgive me.” He said calmly. “I do not know of what you speak.”

“You treacherous dog! I have been to the Brightmane estate and there is not a single scratch on the walls and not one of your treasures left behind. You were supposed to lead the evacuation of the Senate and the whole south-west areas and bring them here! Because of you my battlehorns were forced into the city to draw out the civilians that never knew to run! And I also have witnesses that you had the Farmland Gate sabotaged! I hope the Goddesses too witness your vile backstabbing, and I swear I will see you suffer for this!”

“The Goddesses are dead!” He freed himself of her grasp and Cadance felt slighted. “Look around you! If we survive, we will need whatever riches we can muster to rebuild!”

“I would be more careful, matriarch.” By the way she spoke Cadance wondered if Platinum almost spilled all her venom by mistake while she hoofed at Magnus’ armor, as if dusting it. “You see… Somepony needs to rule the land, and it typically is the one with more money and more brawn. Or at least more brains.”

She sat and made a gesture with a hoof. “It seems to me that your ladyship is at a disadvantage.”

“Not if I execute all of you spiteful devils for treason right now!” Her horn lit up and Cadance, considering what she’d seen those ponies doing closed her eyes, but instead of a splatter of blown up pony, she heard Star Swirl’s voice.

“Cinnamon.” She held her magic. Ponies around them seemed scared. Terrified. Even Meadowbrook, hiding behind Star Swirl. “This is not the time. They need us to be together. They need leadership right now, not justice. And when this comes to a conclusion, I may need ponies I can trust.”

And then somepony called from the top of the walls. “The Lost have reached the valley! They come!”

There was a wave of panicked cries, but Star Swirl adjusted his hat and summoned his gleaming sword to his magical grasp. “At least we can believe that their soldiers will join the defense of the Citadel. If that is not too much to ask.”

“Why, of course, Master Star Swirl.” Magnus answered, all magnanimous. “Our armed ponies are at your beck and call.”

Then the old gray unicorn turned to Meadowbrook. “Find the others. We will need industrious and good ponies when this is all over. Be safe. Survive.”

“But… Star Swirl… You need to survive too. Who will care for the sun and moon if you fall?” She asked innocently.

He frowned, lost in thought for a second. “Damnit girl. One world-ending problem at a time. Mad God today. Sun tomorrow.”

Cadance gasped. Did Star Swirl know that things would go wrong with the sun? How? Meadowbrook didn’t know whatever it was that he knew. He looked so strong though. How maddening it must have been for him to know that even if they somehow managed to survive all of this, they would still have to deal with another problem. Maybe just as ghastly and seemingly unsolvable.

The walls seemed gigantic from the ground and they had a few ponies on top of them, though Cadance figured the majority of the combatants would be in the first wall. The large doors remained open after they passed and Cinnamon and those few city guards followed Star Swirl past the gates of each section of the fortress and Cadance followed along. Each section more filled than the last with scared ponies, yaks, griffons, kirin, hippogriff and even a few dragons.

Families grouped together, naked ponies or well-dressed ones with dirt all over their fancy togas and dresses along with creatures of all races. This city really was the center of the world, like Chrysalis had said.

Some groups of them held weapons and stood together. Some manner of old sword, rusty spear, some family heirloom armor or anything that could be used to fight. Star Swirl never called them though, they simply followed. Fathers, mothers, sons or daughters, old and young they left their families in the middle of tears and inconsolable crying behind each gateway.

That was not how ponies were supposed to be! Couldn’t Discord see all the suffering he was causing? Why didn’t he see that they still found the strength to resist, to protect the others? How much of that was simply survival, though? Maybe they weren’t as selfless as Cadance imagined if ponies like Magnus existed and maybe that was the problem?

She had resigned to simply watch and hope it would all be over soon. That they didn’t suffer too much because she knew that better days would come, and they didn’t deserve that pain.

Before the staircase to the first line of defense Star Swirl found two young unicorns waiting for him. One scrawny grey male with blue mane cut short wearing a simple cape and the other a slightly older white and blue unicorn wearing a light metal blue armor that had a cluster of grapes in its chest. Definitively a Blueblood, Cadance decided.

The old mage smiled again. “Clover. Stygian.”

Both were worried, the one Cadance recognized as Clover the Clever and also a Blueblood spoke first. “We are here for you, Master.”

“Tell us what you need.”

Star Swirl took one long look at Stygian before he spoke gesturing over the creatures that had followed him. “Take these creatures. Rally all the non-combatants and take them to the vault. It is the safest and deepest place in the Citadel. And defend it. They must survive. You must survive. Whatever way this ends Equestria will need good ponies that understand Harmony.”

Clover grabbed a medallion from inside his barding and hoofed it over to Stygian. It was a silver medallion with amethysts forming a cluster of grapes. “Lord Brightmane stashed all his gold in there and Blueblood guards are watching it. Show this to them and they will obey you.”

The other simply took the medallion and nodded, then left before he said anything.

Star Swirl resumed his walk and didn’t ask, but Clover followed him, as did Cinnamon. Along the way, up the wide stairs meant for troops to quickly go up and down he found two more ponies waiting for him. Both earth ponies wearing rich togas. One a light purple male and the other a happy looking sand colored female with green mane.

“I guess this is it, huh?” Said the light purple one.

“Aw, this is not so bad.” The other added with an awkward smile. “I mean… We are still alive, right?”

“I am glad you have come.” The Mage told then while they followed him up. “I would like to imagine that the old friendships still count.”

“They always did, Star.” Purple lowered his head. “Things got out of hoof. But we always tried our best.”

When they finally reached the top of the walls the first thing Cadance, next to them, saw was as a stout line of pegasi in black and gold armor, armed with long spears in front of the giant purple shaded unicorns that looked kind of weird in their green and gold armor. They looked so powerful and invincible, but their formation wasn’t so sharp as before.

Two pegasi came from the middle of their formation. A dark grey with white mane, big and imposing, and the other a yellow, less impressive male with flame-y mane, the same one Cadance had seen earlier, flying toward the bridge to talk to Star Swirl. The first saluted boastfully with a wing and chest thrust forward. “House Stormcloud, at your service, Master Swirl!”

“For whatever good we can do… We are not in our best shape.” He admitted, but still confident.

“Well, I am happy you are here Hurricane.” Star Swirl smiled again, then the other who Cadance supposed was Pansy peeked out from behind his superior.

“Matriarch Sparkle is waiting for you, Master Swirl. Down the line.”

Sparkle… Of course, Cadance groaned to herself.

Independent of her feelings, the two pegasi joined Star Swirl and they walked forward between the pegasi and unicorns until they found the first Flameheart battlehorn, the one that had called Cinnamon ‘mother’ earlier. And next to her was a very old battlehorn all purple standing proudly in her armor. Really, she looked more like a big and old Twilight without wings to Cadance and it was kind of freaking her out in the middle of all that insane dream.

But also, next to her was the blue caped white unicorn that was Platinum. Star Swirl sat next to her and the magical flares in the sky allowed them to see the whole valley swarming with mad ponies and other creatures, laughing and guffawing like they mocked them, but sitting still, like they waited for something.

“Well, at least somepony is having fun…” Clover frowned at the sound.

“I do not believe they are having much fun, cousin.” Platinum said.

“Star Swirl?” ‘Big Twilight’ said suddenly.

“Yes, Grimoire?”

“Why is she here?” She nodded at the white unicorn while staring forward.

“I do not know. Why do you not ask her yourself?”

Platinum groaned and huffed uncomfortably. “I am still a competent spellcaster. Independent of anything.”

“I did not ask…” ‘Big Twilight’ Grimoire said drily and rose an eyebrow.

Still… Cadance recognized several ponies with Blueblood armor marked with their grapes right next to them, armed with spears and swords. It seemed like she had brought what she could.

“Thank you for being here, Platinum.” Star Swirl said, again with a smile.

“Well, do not presume I am here because I like any of you. I simply... Well, I must be here. I can help. It is my duty. You know…”

Star Swirl smiled a little more warmly. “I understand, Platinum. You do not have to say a thing.”

“So…” Sandy earth pony female began while she stared down at the sea of madness with her ears dropped. “What? Do we summon the Fire of Friendship, or something?”

“I do not think that we can, Smart Cookie. Not anymore.” The other replied miserably with his ears folded down.

“Right… Our superweapon ‘I win’ lever is fractus. This is actually a military operation… Who is in command?” Grimoire stared at them. “The whole Senate is gone, and you ponies are the Founder’s Council.”

“What do you mean who is in command?” Hurricane looked at her with a frown. “You are Legate of the First Legion!”

“Haha… That is rich. I told you dumb flanks that Discord was bad news! But did any one listen to the crazy old mare? Noooooo. Let us have fun! Just a few more pranks… It is not that bad… Suddenly it is ‘Oh no! The world is going to end’! Well, I told you so! Dragons? Sure. Griffons? We can deal with them. Yak berserkers? Fine. But insane ponies that keep laughing and coming at you if you put them on fire, neigh! That is too much! The Sparkles are done saving your flanks.”

Cinnamon giggled. “Put Star Swirl in charge. He is the one that befriended the Mad God.”

It was so weird seeing her giggle. Cadance supposed that Star Swirl brought the best out of ponies. Like certain ponies she knew.

“So, how do we win this, Star Swirl?” Puddinghead asked him.

“We cannot.” He said it as simply and flatly as was possible and it hit Cadance like a kick to the stomach. “We must hold on. Endure for as long as we can and hope that if this comes to an end with ponies still alive, they have a decent chance at surviving.”

Cinnamon pulled back her ears and frowned. “Well, I take that back! Let us come up with a better strategy.”

“We failed… Did we not?” The big and confident pegasus let his wings sag down and his ears too. “We should have the power to stop this, but we lost it.”

Platinum, next to Star Swirl, sniffed and then sobbed. “It was not supposed to be like this!”

He held her close with a leg over her shoulders and she closed her eyes, hiding her eyes with a hoof and sobbing quietly. It broke Cadance’s heart. When would one find another being so despicable and reproachable and then have such sympathy for them in such a short amount of time? It seemed as though the weight of whatever happened finally hit her and it was too much.

“What can we do against our own kind turned against us in the most vile and corrupted way possible?” She heard Star Swirl whisper more to himself than anyone else. “Because of something we did not understand, and we cannot fix?”

He frowned and Cadance wished she could hear his thoughts other than the incessant cries in her head. Finally, he rubbed Platinum’s mane softly. “There is no failure until it ends, general. And we are not done yet.”

The others stared at him. Their heads were low, and the color had finally drained from their coats, but their ears perked up at his words. He took a step forward to the edge of the wall, supporting his weight with a hoof on the battlements and his horn shone.

“Discord!” His magically enhanced voice echoed in the valley below and Cadance stared with her mouth hanging, it was one of those moments time seemed to stop.

He appeared. A floating stage with spotlights and one smug draconequus wearing a smoking, bowing, and tipping his hat. “Bonsoir, mes amis! Tonight, we have… The End of the World! And you have the privileged seats! Enjoy.”

Then he became angry. “You’ve earned it.”

“What are you doing, Discord? We used to be friends!”

“We were… Weren’t we?” He became sad for an instant. “You guys had a good thing going. You formed an empire in some fifty years. It’s a shame.”

“Give us another chance, then.”

“Oh no!” Discord laughed. “This is your second chance! You should not have survived the Windigos! You failed. Like F-. Bombed!”

Cadance imagined they didn’t understand those words from him, but Star Swirl shook his head and spoke plainly. “You have won then. We cannot defeat you and wish to discuss the terms of our surrender.”

What? Cadance’s thoughts were mimicked in all of their faces, including the soldiers and the mad ponies below in the valley. But most of all in Discord’s that soon turned to his mocking laughter.

“What are you doing?” Platinum barked at him.

“Star, I’m the crazy one. Not you.” Grimoire gawked at him.

Cinnamon didn’t say anything, she simply looked at his friend and waited, as did Cadance, but Star Swirl remained stoic.

“Oh, this is rich!” Discord laughed again, wiping a tear from his eye. “You want to discuss surrender. How amusing!”

“Give us another chance!” Star Swirl pleaded. “We do not understand what we did wrong!”

“Oooh! You do! Oh, yes, you do!” He turned angry again. “You are broken! You don’t deserve this world! It was made for better creatures than you are!”

“Says who?”

“I do!” He started pointing his finger at ponies next to Star Swirl. “Vain, petty and Selfish! Coward! Murderer! Corrupt! Traitor! The list goes on and gets creepier and creepier. But most important of all…”

Finally, he narrowed his eyes. “Liar.”

He opened his arms. “You’ve caused so much Chaos because of your greed that you’ve summoned me! You’ve poisoned Harmony with your corrupted magic! I told you! You are on overtime! The Windigos ought to have ended it all. That is why we are doing this. Once you all are gone, we can try again!”

“What about you?” His hoof shot at Discord who gasped. “Does any of this madness look like Harmony to you?”

Yes! Star Swirl is right! Cadance nodded enthusiastically and held her hooves next to her and his words put a fire under the ponies next to him. Angry hooves clopped on the stone and shouts accused Discord of hypocrisy.

“I am fixing the problem that you ponies created!” He shouted, angry and gesturing like a foal about to have a temper tantrum.

“No! you are not!” Star Swirl cried again. “Your method lacks kindness! It lacks generosity! It destroys rather than correct! These ponies have repented of their mistakes and you fail to see this! You are wrong! You are not an agent of Harmony to punish us or repair the world! You are an insane monster with too high an opinion of yourself!”

“You can’t judge me!” Discord’s slighted face would’ve made Cadance laugh in any other situation. “That is not how this works!”

“I will not deny that we have made mistakes. I will not deny that perhaps we deserve to be destroyed. But our accusation is too harsh, and we cannot defend against it! You demand virtue of us yet offers none back simply because you have the power to force your decision! And I will tell you more: we are better than you are, and we may not be perfect or strong enough to defeat you, but you are a tyrant worth rebelling against and I will fight you until I cannot fight anymore!”

The entire fortress reacted with pure furor. Shields clanked on the stone and hooves too. The whole valley reverberated with a hurrah worthy of the best epics Cadance has ever read. It managed to make her spirit soar and grin excitedly. Cadance didn’t fully understand the problem. She didn’t know what those ponies had done, but she knew that, clear as Celestia’s day that they regretted it, that Discord was wrong, and that Star Swirl was right!

“Fine! It’s not like you can change any of what is about to happen anyway!” Discord snapped his fingers and pointed at the fortress. “Destroy them! Everything back to the beginning!”

He vanished with triumphant laughter, but Discord’s Lost resumed their inane cackling and literally started throwing themselves against the wall. Cadance didn’t need much reassuring that it wouldn’t work, but they climbed over each other and it wouldn’t be too long before they flooded the fortress’ walls. They were tall but not that much.

“Congratulations, master.” Clover stared sarcastically at him. “You have successfully enraged the Mad God.”

Cinnamon facehoofed and groaned. “Please tell me you have a plan, Star Swirl.”

“Discord wants to return everything to the beginning. I have no idea how that works or how it even is possible, and he may be insane, but he is intelligent. There is a reason he has turned our folk into these things: he is forcing us to kill them or be killed, or worse, corrupted. By that logic, whatever event he wants to trigger will do so if enough ponies die.”

“I am following!” Grimoire said expectantly. “What else?”

“How do we stop him?” Cinnamon’s eyebrow rose.

“As I said, we cannot stop this. I hope that somepony was listening.” He said seriously. “I hope that Lady of the Heart of yours is real.”

Wait! She was! She was right there! She landed close to him and waved frantically. How could she help?! She urged and begged, but he wouldn’t hear her.

At the same time Cinnamon was furious. “What? You are a believer now?”

“No!” He said. “I do not believe in faith, gods and charms or popular willy-nilly beliefs. I am not even entirely sure I believe in Harmony as an intelligent force, but I believe in Magic! I have studied it my whole life and I know there are very powerful beings such as the Windigos and Discord that we managed to bring into our world because we did something that interfered with the normal workings of Magic.”

“I do not understand how it works… I have not a clue if this will work. But if there is something out there, or in here that wants to help us, it better figure out how to with the utmost urgency or they are going to run out of ponies alarmingly fast!”

Cadance sighed. Easier said than done had never been so true. Come on! She was right there!

Platinum grabbed and shook him. “But what are we supposed to do?!”

He pointed down the wall. “Protect this fortress! It must hold for as long as it can!”

“But if we kill them, we will help Discord!” She insisted.

“The gates will not resist forever!” He pointed down again. “If they get in, they will corrupt the others inside and he will win all the same. There is not a lot that we can do other than defend ourselves. The important thing is that we manage to keep those ponies inside safe! For as long as we can… Until something happens! I know! It is a desperate shot in the dark, but it is all we have!”

“Very well, Sparkles!” Grimoire barked. “You heard the crazy wizard. Yadda, yadda… Epic Discourse number thirty-four, variation B for siege defenses. You know the drill. Kindly kill those things.”

Another of the Sparkle Battlehorns, a lighter shade of purple looked down the wall. “Conserve your stamina. I do not think they will be downing the gate anytime soon and they are countless.”

Cadance watched with no small measure of awe while the disciplined unicorns charged their horns with magic in unison and unleashed whatever the name of that spell was over the valley where the Lost congregated before the fortress and bombarded it with magical explosions like they had done before from the outer walls of the city. And then again. And again. Each time shaking the ground with their magic just for the Lost to fill the valley with even more of them.

And then something started to seem odd. Hurricane seemed to have thought that too, as he spoke with Star Swirl almost the same as Cadance was thinking. “Something is not right, Star Swirl.”

“Yes…” The old unicorn agreed thoughtfully.

“He has attacked other cities and forts with dragons and there were sightings of Ursa Majors.”

Cadance nodded. She was sure she saw a dragon.

“I do not like this.” The pegasus concluded.

Cadance sat by the battlements and rested her hooves on then, looking around apprehensively, moving her ears from side to side. Something really didn’t seem right. It was a strange feeling that she never experienced before.

Then it happened, just as though Discord had snapped his fingers the walls lost their gleam and what followed were cries from both sides on top of the walls of ponies surprised that they can’t focus magic in their horns. Next to her Star Swirl experimented and his own horn did little more than a few sparks.

“Well, this is concerning.” He said. He could still hold his sword with his telekinesis. “Is he somehow disrupting our magic?’

Grimoire growled at her second in command. Cadance didn’t know the title, but it was a pony that got things done. “I do not know what he is doing, but he is pissing me off! Get our velites to redeploy to the top of the wall and draw swords! We shall protect them.”

“You heard the mare! Move it!” Cinnamon told her own and ponies started moving around the top of the wall, going down and up the stairs while she turned to Platinum. “Get your ponies to the accesses to the inner walls. If we need to retreat, they must keep a clear path for us!”

“What she said! Get to it!” The white unicorn yelled at her house’s soldiers behind the battlehorns and grabbed a sword out of one of them, following behind.

Hurricane’s pegasi took flight with him and Pansy, spears at the ready at the right moment when Lost pegasi started making their way towards the top of the wall. It was a swarm of insanity coming over the wall like a tsunami. A few archers fired from behind, from the next defensive wall, but they weren’t very effective in the dark, despite the torches on the battlements. For the moment, defending the top of the wall fell over the pegasi and their spears.

Ponies ran everywhere reorganizing their defenses and Cadance took a moment to pay attention to the magic around her. She could barely feel it. She gasped that Star Swirl was right that it was what Discord wanted, but he was not disrupting their magic, magic itself was fading. Discord might have been crazy, but he was right that killing them is going to cause the whole system to… Fail. It made sense, by what she’d seen… Ponies brought their magic to the world and controlled it. She supposed that something was supposed to happen then and maybe restart the whole process of creation? The whole idea of killing all the ponies… All the creatures to start over was gruesome, but it made some sense. She had to remember that Discord wasn’t acting normal. He was… Sick was the best word she could come up.

But how did she fit into it all? Amore, The Lady of the Heart. The Throne of Love? Those other doors?

Suddenly something pulled at her and she gasped. The cries in her head suddenly returned to the forefront of her mind and simply focusing on her thoughts was near impossible and with a splitting headache worse than those of her days bearing Flurry Heart. She took her hooves to her head and it didn’t help much because she couldn’t even feel her touch on herself.

“Ow…” She whined to herself and returned her eyes to the battlements at the top of the wall. The Lost literally climbed on top of each other to reach the top of the wall. Star Swirl spun his sword at one of them and it fell by the wayside, soon to be replaced with another. His staff laid on the floor, uselessly by his side. Ponies with the Sparkle and Flameheart armors threw javelins at the still coming pegasi and even some griffons among the Lost. The battlehorns from both lineages cut at them with their swords but they started to tire. Their armor had lost nearly all its magic and to make things worse the mad creatures threw themselves at the swords and pulled them away. Their weakened magic couldn’t keep up and they started seeing themselves overwhelmed.

“Discord stop!” Cadance cried, still holding her head.

To her surprise, he appeared again, in the sky, overlooking the whole scene. “Don’t worry your pretty little head.”

Did he… Talk to her? She looked up to him with her ears down. “Soon this will all be over, and they won’t even remember a thing. Creation will begin anew, and you will have another chance.”

Something pulled down at her again and it was like magic itself was trying to rip her apart. She screamed this time and had to rebalance her weight on her hooves. Around her battlehorns and the Lost battled an unfair fight where the unicorns were outnumbered and overwhelmed. Sounds seemed distant and cries echoed around her, but inside her head they screamed in panic and despair.

“What are you doing?” Discord was shocked and scared at something. “Stop! You are not supposed to do this!”

Cadance growled, filled with anger at him, next to her. He looked directly at her, terrified.

Star Swirl fought an insane unicorn that tried to stab him with his bare horn. Tired, the old master swung to the side and cut at the Lost unicorn and it dropped to the side. Another flung itself at him and impaled itself on his sword. Star Swirl screamed and backed away, but his sword was gone from his weakened magical grasp.

An insane pegasus fell on top of him, laughing and screaming, eyes wide and sickly yellow, grabbing at Star Swirl and the Archmage couldn’t free himself, screaming and trying to hold on to his hooves. His hat fell from his head.

Cadance never saw where she came from, but Cinnamon collided with the pegasus with the force of a speeding train and send it flying past the battlements. She spun her sword and cut two of them trying to reach for her.

“Stand up Star Swirl!” Cinnamon cried, spinning to cut at a mad griffon that flew claws first at Star Swirl.

Something pulled Cadance down, as though she had suddenly become too heavy for herself to hold. It just hurt and made her whine again. She couldn’t even hear herself thinking.

“Curses.” Star Swirl grunted and grabbed his sword again. Each swiped at another Lost that seemed to be coming from everywhere. Cadance cried and tried to warn them, but her voice never reached them. One of the earth ponies in armor and with the javelins, consumed with Discord’s madness threw his weapon at the pair. The point went straight above the gorget of Cinnamon’s armor and pierced her flesh. She reared and fell on her side and Star Swirl screamed her name. She touched him and smiled softly, but life stole from her eyes and he cried at her again.

Help us.

Something pulled at Cadance a fourth time. Like someone had tied weights to her wings, neck and legs, and they pulled her down with an infinite weight. She was sure something had ripped her apart and around her the air sounded as a ferocious river, like falling down a waterfall. But its roaring sound was drowned by thousands upon thousands of desperate cries for help. She didn’t know where she fell from, she was standing on the tone, but she somehow fell and collided with the floor.

Suddenly Cadance had her body again. She could feel the stone of the top of the wall. The air was cold, and air smelled of sickness and blood. Her legs fought gravity when she tried to stand but was to weak. She opened her eyes and saw blurrily, but Star Swirl gawked at her. The other ponies around stared at her and backed away slowly. Even Discord’s mad ponies stared with shock and backed away from her.

She saw Discord floating in the air with the same shocked disbelief. “This was not… It was not supposed to happen!”

Then he frowned. “Fine. I’ll just have to send you back to the Pool of Souls too.”

“Stop! You are hurting them!” Someone cried and Discord turned. Something attacked him and he defended himself. Cadance didn’t see what exactly happened with her eyes still focusing, but she saw blood and a white body fell from his grasp. Six colored gems fell from his hands and plinked to the ground bellow, all the way down from the top of the wall, next to a lifeless white body.

Rage burned in every vein of her body and her eyes stung. Her teeth pressed and her body tensed violently. Everything was so beautiful and so perfect, but he destroyed it. She screamed all her anger and launched herself at him. Her magic would’ve torn him to pieces, but her horn failed her. She attacked him with hooves and teeth instead.

But he held her. “Soon it will all be over. You don’t have to remember any this. I’m sorry too. It was not how I planned.”

A sharp pain stung her chest and she cried. Her strength failed and she fell again, but this time the wind rushed past her ears as darkness embraced her.

***

Cadance woke suddenly with a scream and sitting on her improvised bed in the dark of Twilight’s airship’s private cabin. Everypony around her screamed at the scare and she desperately touched her chest while the lights came on.

Shining Armor hugged her and tried to calm her down while Twilight tumbled over Rainbow Dash and Applejack trying to reach her. “Cadance! It’s alright! You’re safe! Cadance!”

Miss Calcite held the crying Flurry Heart and tried to calm her down while still staring full of worry at Cadance. Worried pegasi crewponies appeared at the door with sabers and pistols.

“Princess Cadance! For goodness sake! Are you hurt?” Rarity stood next to Twilight, who also hugged her. She finally started to reorient herself.

“Cadance, love.” Shining looked at her. “Are you alright? Tell us. Do you need anything?”

She closed her eyes and tried to get her breathing under control. She still heard the rushing sound of the wind around her and held her head with her hooves, but the sound vanished slowly.

“Cadie. What happened?” Shining Armor looked like he was ready to freak out when he let go and stared at her. “Are you hurt?”

She dropped to the bed again and covered her eyes with a whine. “I just found out there is a magical palace inside my head with doors with our cutie marks, Luna has magical images that show her how my mind is working, I witnessed thousands of years of pony history, found out ponies worshiped me and it ended with Star Swirl defending a fortress against Discord’s zomponies with the biggest ponies I have ever seen, and it ended with Discord killing me!”

“I need a fucking drink and I am going to murder somepony if I don’t get it!”

Goddess

Discord woke with an echoing laughter in his head. It was strange as Luna was usually on point to rid him of that particular nightmare. Maybe something happened and she was too busy. He had slept in one of the guest rooms of the Jarl’s mansion and it was a nice rustic place with stone walls and heavy glasses and curtains on the windows. He couldn’t say that he appreciated the fur beds, but he had to admit they had their charm, as did the fireplace.

Apparently, the griffons didn’t have the means or chose not to use the temperature regulation spells the ponies used. It made for a much less comfortable bedroom, but he supposed it fit with them and their gruffer selves and the novelty could hold for a while.

He couldn’t say he didn’t like it. The stone floors, the sturdy looking buildings with that ancient feel, but he missed the pony masonry. Too many memories, he supposed.

He sat on his bed with his head bent at an angle and righted it with a crack.

“You know, I happen to be very proficient in all sorts of massages for that.” A female voice said next to him and he looked to see the steel-blue and silver griffoness his hosts had called Gwineth laying on her side right next to him, like a big cat staring at him.

No. He had not drunk that much last night.

“What are you doing here?”

She grinned all prankish at him, making gestures with her paws. “Well, I said that griffonesses were better than mares, so we made a bet and then…”

“At least you have a sense of humor.” He groaned. “What are you really doing here?”

“The Lion said he was going out to hunt for the archlich and asked me to invite you. But you were sleeping, and I just stayed here staring creepily at you.”

“Is that something that young ones do nowadays?”

She grinned even more self-congratulatory. “Only when we like you.”

He rubbed a hand on his head against a small headache when the laughter returned to annoy him. “I’ll meet you guys outside, just as soon as I get rid of this headache.”

She, however, stared at the window with none of her previous grinning. “Did you hear that?”

He paid attention. It wasn’t in his head. “Great…”

First, he tried teleporting. When that failed, he grunted again and followed her outside. The air was chilly and wet, not to mention unpleasant and indeed he was hearing laughter and it was the not good kind he had come to know, but it was the kind he had caused so long ago and that seemed to have returned to haunt him in his dream and then in his waking time.

They went straight to the gatehouse where what seemed like the entire guard complement of the city had gathered next to the old Jarl and to Lord Ironfeathers. They made way and the two of them reached the top of the gatehouse with the griffon girl throwing herself at the battlements while Discord placed himself next to it, close to Gilad.

The sun was barely above the horizon and its beams caused a phantasmagoric light and shadows show against the deep fog to the sound of that unnerving laughter.

“That is no lich.” The Lion said in his deep voice, straining his eyes against the fog and the sunrays that penetrated it. “I have no notion what that thing is.”

Discord couldn’t believe his senses. It had to be some sort of sick joke! A ghost from the past that he had left behind that had come back to haunt him. It indeed wasn’t a lich or any matter of traditional undead monster, but one he had created himself with the intention of upending creation and starting it all over.

He felt her damaged and sick magic much sooner than he actually saw her when the fog started to clear away like the curtains at a theater dedicated to shaming him. Her diseased magic literally reversed the spells that enchanted her armor and the leaf-shaped plates seemed discolored, brittle and ready to fall apart on its own. Her shield and sword were as gone as the color of her coat and mane, and she moved in the most bizarre way, staggering her way towards the gate, and laughing like an insane yellow-eyed hyena. It was simply impossible to identify what her original colors were and somehow that seemed to make the whole thing even worse.

“What the fuck is that thing?!” Gwineth cried next to them. The less incautious could call it a frost zompony, but it was clearly not undead. It merely had the appearance of sickness, not of death and rot.

“There are many frost undead griffons and ponies in the area because of the ancient battlefields and the Windigo magic…” The Jarl said carefully. “But this thing doesn’t look like an undead creature. No wonder it moved around so much.”

“She is a disharmonized pony from centuries upon centuries ago.” Discord explained. But not simply a normal pony. A loyal soldier his magic had turned into a monster to tear away at the sanity of those survivors that did everything to protect their future from his insanity. “She is a battlehorn. A corrupted battlehorn.”

Her kind had fought battles against him in close proximity to the Frozen North in the early days of the end of the world and she was likely from one of the first they had sent. The only explanation he could come up with was that her twisted magic somehow kept her alive and then his presence drew her to that place. Just the amount of time this creature survived was unsettling.

He could undo the damage he caused with a snap of his fingers, but they seemed glued to the cold stone. In another time it would be like a switch to flick and the creature would collapse, free of its mortal coil and whatever damaged magic it retained would follow its natural course and return to its original purity.

It wasn’t so simple in the present. He should have the obligation to free her, since he was the cause of her affliction. But it wasn’t so easy anymore. It would be a mercy, and he didn’t entirely understand the feeling that prevented him from doing it, but he felt like a coward.

The Lion stared discreetly at him, but he still didn’t find the courage to rid that pony of what he had done. Then the Lion jumped off the wall, softened his fall with his wings and started walking towards the battlehorn. Her laughter turned to a high-pitched wailing cackle amalgamated with a dry coughing that was simply unnerving.

“Raise, Snow Mountains. Ancient home of the Children of the Harpy.” He said calmly, but he also projected his voice. What drew Discord’s attention though was that the surrounding magic changed around him. “A foreign invader taints the land with corrupted magic. Heed my blood that its lame magic is undone.”

He had never met Emperor Grigor or any of his descendants and this was completely new to him, but magic swirled around him and flowed into him rather flowing out from the inside like when ponies cast spells, but the end result was the same: it coalesced into a magical effect when a threshold was overcome, and that effect was a magical disruption aura that surrounded him.

The battlehorn silenced and stared with what could only have been a remnant of confusion she could summon from whatever part of her mind still functioned properly enough, and then her horn lit up with magic and conjured a lightning bolt, which was proper counterspell magic, but her own magic didn’t function correctly enough for her to overwhelm his protection . A lightning did strike from her horn with a clap and it made the air smell of thunder.

In her prime a proper spell would’ve summoned lightning from the sky and would’ve turned the black dirty ground to glass and made him into a barbecue, but his spell protected him from any damage. Then the battlehorn summoned a magical version of her typical curved sword and charged with more wheezing laughter.

It wasn’t particularly smart, since he was protected by an anti-spell aura, and the idea that she somehow managed to recognize his protection and cast a proper spell, but at the same time was completely ineffective and then changed to the wrong tactic just made him think of the damage he and time had done to her mind. His fingers squeezed against the cold stone as though they had a life of their own.

He kept watching as the battlehorn charged towards the griffon, who sat and picked his weapon from his back: a long-shafted battle axe. Not particularly fancy, but it had a heavy head and its black metal was adorned with silver inlay of what seemed like runes. Silver being one of the magical conducting metals, it made sense. It soaked in the magic surrounding it and its inlay shone in white light.

“Primal ice from the mountains strike down this monster!” He didn’t have much time, but he seemed to have said enough. Icy claws rose from the ground, like an eagle closing its talons on prey and punctured the brittle armor just before the battlehorn was at striking range. Almost at the same time Gilad stood on his hindlegs and swung his axe upwards.

Discord turned his head, but there were no more cries of pain or insane laughter. The griffons cheered around him and applauded.

“Well, the ‘archlich’ is dealt with.” Gwineth said while Discord saw Gilad returning.

“Area’s monsters should be quieter now.” The Jarl nodded and hummed, then turned to one of his city’s guards. “Open the gate. Don’t make the Lion fly up the battlements.”

They followed the guard, still to the sound of cheering griffons and they met Gilad. “We should leave for Griffindell. Get everything ready for travel, Gwineth.”

She simply nodded and turned to go towards the Horn. Meanwhile the Jarl stayed with them. “Will you at least allow the populace to see you off?”

“A small affair. It is important that I escort the Lord of Chaos to Griffinsky without much delay.”

“Fair enough. If you excuse me, then.” He left Discord alone with Gilad and they said nothing for a while.

“Thank you.”

***

Cadance did get her drink. At first Applejack offered her some apple cider she had brought, but the way the princess stared at her convinced that offering it might not have been a good idea. Instead one of Twilight’s crewponies offered Cadance a shot of marula liquor from the Zebra lands. She gratefully accepted the bottle.

Fortunately, it wasn’t too early when she woke up and she’d been able to take a second to appreciate the sunrise. Celestia had just raised it and she remembered to appreciate that warm feeling that ponies took for granted and that made them forget the insanely powerful magic that thing radiated. Yes, she was pissed, but she still appreciated it.

She sat at a cute round table the crewponies brought from the underdeck, wearing sunglasses and a helpful pegasus crewpony massaged her shoulders. Ah… Relaxation for once. Then she took another shot of that fruity, caramel-ish drink and inhaled calmly with a smile.

In front of her Flurry Heart sat on the table and stared intensely at her.

“You are judging me, aren’t you?” She asked the baby staring at her through the sunglasses.

“u bether be dam shuwe i am!” Flurry shot back at her.

“Well, stop that! You can live with a few meals of formula and mashed apples.” She served herself another shot from the bottle and held it in her magic. “Mommy’s been through some really rough times.”

“oh, boowoo! Mommy ish been thwough some weawwy wough times…” Her baby mocked her waving her head from one side to the other and then started counting by clopping her little hoof on the table. “u took me to fwom wome, took me to scawy changewing nest, ponynapped me to go on Twiwight’s aiwship, went away fow a wong time, jumped off the aiwship with auntie Twiwight, and now you scawed me with scawy scweaming!”

“Hey! You said you were fine in Chrysalis’ nursery.”

“Yow awe my mothew! Yow have to take cawe of me! Not othew way awound!”

“I do! Would you rather I left you home with Miss Calcite to drink that formula you hate every day?”

“I wanna be with gwanny Cewestia! She gives the bestest toys evew!”

“Well, Princess Celestia isn’t your granny. She’s your auntie, because she adopted me as her niece instead of her daughter. Do you think that made me happy? And, you know what else? She’s lied to mommy! She hid a lot of important things about mommy. You should be angry with her, not with me. With her and with Princess Luna! They are both big evil baddies that don’t want mommy to be too important! Do you really think they’ll be any better to you?”

Twilight and Shining Armor stared from a safe distance next to their friends. From the door to the private room while the baby raised her little hooves and made some baby noises they didn’t understand.

“Oh, do you now?” Cadance spoke back to her. “You bet she will! She’ll stick you to some cold end of the world city and the newspapers will say that ‘conveniently, a city just materialized out of nowhere to get the Princess’ niece a public paying job’. Yeah… Right. Ponies used to give me gifts so that I would grant them Love. And here is more! I bet my hoof Princess Celestia has no idea how to take proper care of a baby! Pfff… Who cares she can raise the sun and rule all of Equestria! I bet she’s never changed a diaper in her life! But, oh! I bet that if you were Twilight, you would’ve been given the whooooole world to rule! But do you know what I can do? Mommy can give you all the stallions and mares you will ever want when you are old enough to understand why mommy and daddy make noises at night. Nopony else can do that for you!”

“This is scaring me!” Shining Armor stared at the two having their conversation.

His sister grimaced and looked at Starlight Glimmer. “Please say this is normal…”

“It looks like some sort of bizarre coping mechanism.” She said with a hoof on her chin and narrow eyes.

“She’s plumb crazy, is what this looks like.” Applejack interjected.

“You should talk to her, Twilight.” Rarity said from behind. “She seems to have discovered some important things in that dream of hers that seem to be bothering her.”

“I think Cadance needs some distance, Rarity. She’s really not very friendly right now.”

“She is talking to a baby! About forcing ponies to be in love with her.” Applejack reminded them. “Princess Cadance doesn’t need some distance. She needs a straight jacket.”

“Actually, I’m a little scared too!”

“Take Shining Armor! He’s married to her.” Rarity retorted anxiously. “We have to do something! This doesn’t look healthy at all!”

By then Cadance and the baby hugged each other over the table and had started crying. Rarity winced and gestured for the two to do something.

“Alright! Fine! I’ll go talk to her.” He finally started walking and Twilight followed closely up to the table.

He cleared his throat, looking at the pair hugging and crying in Twilight’s airship, in the middle of this whole mess they found themselves in. For a second, he wondered where it all had gone wrong. But he was stuck loving his career, his sister, his wife and daughter, all of which seemed to be somewhat crazy in that exact moment.

“So, uh…. You girls understanding each other?” He grinned as friendly as he could, given the situation.

Cadance sniffed and raised her head. “Yes. Flurry Heart is right. I need to mare up and talk to you guys about the dream. It wasn’t so bad.”

“I’m glad she made you see the light.” Twilight laughed awkwardly. “You sure you don’t need to sleep for a bit? Or eat anything?”

The other sighed. “No. It’s important stuff. You better get something to write and gather the others.”

Meanwhile Flurry Heart sucked on her little hoof.

***

Celestia sat at her throne, but not the one in the Hall of Friendship. That place was closed for the day, fortunately, as the griffon senators had more important things to do rather than bore her and the rest of Equestria with another speech about how great or evil was the Lion.

That morning she occupied her throne in her wing of Canterlot Palace. A little more modest, even if it sat at the top of a few steps, it was meant for her to receive her subjects and help them deal with their day to day problems, and thus make them feel welcomed, not project her power, something, something she didn’t care about. Her throne room had the nice stained glass mosaics and it was little more than a long room with her throne in the end with the white and red curtains hiding the wall behind.

To her left, by the steps was Miss Raven Inkwell with her book, taking notes of the meeting and in front of her was Madam Justiciar Golden Rule talking to her nephew Blueblood who sat in front of her throne and before the Justiciar.

“My goodness auntie.” He scratched at his mane in a most unbecoming way for him that indicated he really was nervous. “I simply don’t know what to say!”

“To think that Lord Stalwart Star would be implicated with something of that sort is appalling! I feel somewhat morally…” He stopped for a second and coughed. “But not legally… Responsible for this whole situation! To think that your highness was forced into such an awful situation and saw yourself forced to intervene! I feel awful!”

“It is important to remember that your name wasn’t mentioned in the letters or in Lord Star’s interrogation. Much less by the ponies involved in the attempt to whisk him away.” Golden Rule said.

“I merely called you here because I thought that I should inform you personally.” Celestia added. “Your administration will be notified by the Royal Court and you will need to replace some of your officials, at least temporarily, as they cannot be involved in the investigation and actively occupy their positions.”

“Absolutely. There is no place for the sort of thing that Lord Star was involved within our midst!” He raised his muzzle in the most aggrieved way imaginable. “Rest assured that I will personally lead an internal investigation on these affairs. This sort of sedition should be unthinkable in our fair world, much less in the royal city of Canterlot!”

“Then, if we are understood, that would be all, nephew.” Celestia told him and he responded with a deep but courteous bow, then left. Golden Rule waited for a few seconds after he had left before she talked to the princess.

“Huh… We did call him to see how he would react…” Golden Rule looked over her own notes. “Did you think he seemed a little too solicitous?”

Celestia shook her head slowly. “It’s his flamboyant way of doing everything. I didn’t think that he would be involved. It would be too obvious of a scapegoat, and it is glaring that the presence of the griffon assassin is a sign that the money went to fund the Lion’s new airships and weapons. Not somewhere within Canterlot County Administration.”

“We are dealing with someone that really knows what they are doing, aren’t we?” Golden looked up at her. “Not just some moronic overly rich plothole that wants to be richer.”

“We’ve been watching all the movement of resources along the northern regions of Griffonia so closely, but we haven’t seen anything. I imagine that if the Lion is to blame, he has a very resourceful agent infiltrated in the Griffonian administration…” Celestia tapped her chin with a hoof. “Very discreetly start an investigation on the movement of resources within Griffonia. Use your talent for unearthing the unusual and keep to your most trusted team. Anything going into Snow Mountains is likely to be going undercover through conventional means, but it is also possible that clandestine lines could take resources from Mount Aris or Saddle Arabia.”

The unicorn covered her eyes with a leg and grunted. “Ugh. This is going to be a pain!”

Celestia smiled. “Still, I trust your ability, Golden Rule.”

“This is strange, though. By the way that…” She took a quick look at her notes. “Schlick talked, I was sure there be would ponies that wanted you ousted and that is why they would help the Lion. Number one candidate with you and Luna gone would be the Archduke. Or Princess Cadance.”

“We’re dealing with someone very resourceful and crafty, Golden Rule.” Celestia agreed. “It’s likely that they wouldn’t involve him until all the risk was removed and taking the throne would be too easy and tempting for him to resist. And then control him like a puppet.”

The Justiciar rose an eyebrow. “Are you aware that this could be Cadance’s doing? Or even Twilight’s or Luna’s doing? Heck. It could be the Prince-Consort.”

“I am aware.” Celestia nodded again. “But I doubt it.”

Golden Rule simply hummed to herself, and sensing the meeting with the justiciar was over, Miss Inkwell looked up the next meeting in her records, but Golden Rule wasn’t done yet.

“Princess, may I ask you something?”

“Absolutely.”

“I went to the Changeling Rock and spoke to the Queen’s Librarian… Princesses Twilight and Cadance seem to have found something peculiar about our astronomical records. The changeling told me that they were investigating irregularities with our historical records. Something seemed to have distressed Princess Twilight and that is why she went to have a conversation with Queen Chrysalis. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to reach her, but in Ponyville the militiaponies told me that the princesses had something of a disagreement with you...” She rose one of her pink eyebrows. “Is there something you would like to tell me? Because even if they are plotting against you… That doesn’t mean that they aren’t right in something.”

“Yes. I do want to tell you something.” She glared from her throne. “Please don’t distract yourself from your investigation.”

“Hmmmmm….” Golden Rule thought that Celestia always looked too cute when she glowered like that, but she frowned and stared at the princess with marked intensity.

“Well then, might there be anything you wish to tell me, Madam Justiciar?”

Raven’s jaw dropped a little while looked at one and another as though they were two duelists in one of those Appleloosan theather pieces.

“Hmmmmm…. Nope!” She grinned extra happy. “I’m good! I’ll see you later, Princess!”

She simply turned and pranced out the door, humming a little song.

“You know, you are supposed to wait for me to dismiss you.” The princess pouted. “Who would be next, Miss Inkwell?”

“Princess Luna wants to see you.”

“Luna?” That surprised her. “She should be in the Bordello taking care of Chrysalis. And she’s not supposed to queue to see me! Goodness, please send her in, Solar!”

The guard by the door called to Luna and she came inside. Celestia frowned. “Luna, you’re not supposed to wait in line to talk to me!”

“I know! I was trying to figure out the best way to tell you this… So, I took the extra time, but I still don’t know how to make this sound good. Therefore, I am simply going to say it!” She inhaled deeply. “Cadance found a way into the Palace of the Self and started freaking out so I had to unlock some of her memories, or her brain would turn to jelly!”

“Oh, no! What memories?! Is Cadance well?! Are you hurt?”

Raven recoiled a bit with a raised hoof, surprised. She expected the princess to be angry, given how apprehensive Luna seemed to be, but instead she looked worried sick. On one hoof it was nice that she had that level of trust on her, not to asking her to leave. Not that Raven understood it at all… But seeing the princesses acting like that was never a good thing.

“I don’t know for sure! Luna rubbed the bridge of her muzzle with a hoof. “I didn’t have a chance of seeing what damage it has caused yet! I need her to go to sleep, but I think she is reasonably healthy because I left Tantabus and she hasn’t told me of any problems yet!”

“I’m terribly sorry, sister!” Luna went on. “I did everything I could, but Cadance was relentless and I was scared. I was worried she’d hurt herself in the process and I wouldn’t be able to help. Nothing like that has ever happened before!”

“Calm down, Luna. It’s not your fault. “Celestia sighed and put a hoof on her forehead. “I can’t believe this! Now, of all times! How did it happen?”

“I caught her in a nightmare and dealt with it, but it kept repeating and that was when I saw it! I cleared everything away, but she was fixated on that memory that was causing her a lot of grief, and then I tried finding the problem, but it turned out that she’s been seeing those things about Emperor Grigor with Twilight and that messed the whole thing up because a of conversation about the Harpy made her recall memories from that time! You know! Before Discord!”

“The Harpy?!” Celestia almost screamed. “No! This is awful! Who even told her about the Harpy?”

“Yes… It’s… It’s a mess. You better talk to Sunburst and Twilight’s librarian that are waiting to see you. You’ll understand… They are involved.”

“Luna, I destroyed the Harpy. I destroyed everything there was about her. It is simply not possible that she is even known anymore.”

“Well, you’ll be surprised. And probably angry.” Luna said plainly. “Just talk to them.”

“We’ll deal with this. Cadance is more important.” Celestia sighed again, eyes turned downward and with her ears flopped on the sides of her head. “So, it’s began. We feared that would happen. It’s not that bad. We can deal with that too. It is just a shame it had to happen in this way, before we were better prepared. What about Chrysalis?”

“I had to leave her to come here. But she knows the plan… She’ll be waiting for us in the Break of Dawn come the right time. I told her where she’ll be, and she should find it.”

“Good. I want to finish this as soon as we can so we can leave. Now would be an excellent time to get Twilight and Cadance under control. With some luck we can intercept the griffon airship and then deal with them without they ever coming in contact.”

“So, I guess I’ll wait for you and we can go together to Chrysalis or to the Break of Dawn? I mean, she could try something naughty. We do know that she was originally intending to help Discord help Twilight and Cadance reach Manehattan.”

“Sounds good!” Celestia smiled and then tapped on the side seat of the throne with a hoof and Luna took her place there.

“Very well…” Raven adjusted her glasses. “Next on the list would be Corporal Spear with Mister Sunburst and Misses Gerdie and Goodread, along with evidence confiscated in Haybale.

“Yes. Please let them in.” Celestia told the guard by the door and he gestured for them to enter the room.

She was glad none of them seemed to have caused problems since they weren’t wearing any sort of restrictive measures or were accompanied by additional guards. Only the one guard, Long Spear that brought a cart with a stone tablet and a letter encased in protective crystal, as Chocolate’s letter had mentioned.

Why in Tartarus did parents give names such as Long Spear to a newborn male foal was beyond her. Maybe her mind has been a little dirtier since she and Luna started dating their consort… She shook the thoughts out of her head when they stopped by the steps.

“Princess, these are Mister Sunburst, Miss Goodread and Miss Gerdie.” Spear said. “They were with princesses Twilight Sparkle and Cadance when we stormed their meeting place in Haybale. Also, as planned, Prince Chocolate Velvet was taken prisoner by the griffons.”

The white and blue earth pony in armor pointed at the cart. “They had these artifacts with them. Miss Gerdie insisted they were invaluable so we were as careful as we could afford with them. They do seem to be quite old.”

“Wait!” Sunburst blurted out. “The Prince was captured by griffons?”

“Yes.” Celestia said coldly. “So that they wouldn’t take you or the princesses. You didn’t know, but Twilight’s airship was being tracked by a griffon warship that teleported into Baltimare.”

Given the tone of her response, he decided to shut his mouth while she stepped down from her throne and walked to the cart to pick up the letter in her telekinetic magic, then proceeded to reading it. Luna bent a little to the side to see it too, but she was too far.

“Does it jog your memory, Princess?” Gerdie gave her the most complacent of grins she’s ever seen in a griffon’s beak. If she didn’t strike the princess as one of the good griffons she might have thought that Miss Gerdie would be the kind for which she harbored… Intense disappointment.

“This is a forgery.” She said plainly, not taking her eyes off the letter yet.

“My feathers it is.” The grin vanished from the small griffon’s face and Sunburst and Goodread started worrying. Luna just hid her muzzle and tried not to laugh. “The information on the letter Princess Cadance found corroborates this. It confirms that a griffon army invaded Equestria. Something the princesses are adamant you hid from our historical records. That Equestria was under the rulership of the Brightmane family, associated with the Bluebloods, both families from that time, and you and your sister were not made rulers when you arrived… From Tartarus knows where. And that the Sun was doing weird things. It speaks of Emperor Grigor and of an entity called the Harpy. All of that never mentioned in griffon History or equestrian History.”

She sat and crossed her eagle forelegs. “Why don’t you start from there, Princess? Tell us where you are from and then move on to what you are hiding.”

Luna simply stared while Celestia still looked at the letter. She knew that her elder sister was probably reminiscing on something painful, but she had to suppress a laugh at the old little griffon lady’s nerve at talking like that to Celestia. Not that Celestia might be angry or do something, Luna knew better, but most creatures in the world would never talk to her like that.

“Excuse-me, Miss Gerdie. I wasn’t aware that I was being interrogated by the highest authority there is in our world. Where are my manners?” The griffoness blinked a few times when she remembered who she was talking to. Celestia though was fed up with that whole mess. She looked up to the ceiling and sighed, letting the letter go on the cart. It was all so tiresome. And Raven knew that when Princess Celestia looked tired things were bad. Luna was a bit surprised, though, and raised an eyebrow at the scene.

“The only problem we face today, Miss Gerdie is also an ancient one. It is that the world is full of creatures that are incapable of being satisfied with what they have. Instead of living happy lives in a perfect world that caters to their every need, they must seek more than they need and in such they make it impossible for others to do just that.” She looked back at the griffon and the two ponies next to the guard. “You could live in a perfect world where you would have a job that fulfilled you and then access to nourishment, health and entertainment, but some creatures have always wanted more. They didn’t trust the others, so they must have enough to sustain then when the inevitable betrayal would come. They didn’t trust the others to do their part, so they wanted those that did to do more so that they wouldn’t be left without theirs.”

“I have lived for millennia and I still don’t understand why we are like that. Maybe the problem is free will. Or that we are all inherently cowards. Or both. Or even further, it is possible that it was intended to be this way. I did everything in my power to change that, but I failed. I meant it to be a perfect world, but alas, my intentions didn’t matter to the greater plan.”

“What are you talking about, Princess?” Sunburst paid attention, even if the princess seemed to be rambling. She moved on, however.

“It was selfishness that brought the Windigos to our world. It grew into discontentment and distrust that broke the trust among the Three Tribes and that made them stop working in harmony. Then the griffons didn’t trust the ponies anymore because they had brought the everlasting winter to their lands. Then the yak didn’t trust this ‘weird pony magic’. The dragons stopped trusting the ponies and so did the Kirin and the hippogriff. And so on until Discord came too. We don’t seem to ever learn that lesson.”

“But worse, nopony… Nobody wanted to go back to the way things were. Because that trust was irreparably broken. And that gave space for the likes of Emperor Grigor, who insisted that the griffons ought to retain their own kingdom and that was fine, but he also believed that it was their mandate to subjugate all the races of the world, and as such, they thought that they didn’t need to heed the laws of other nations. Do you know why they thought like that?”

Gerdie shook her head slowly.

“Because the Harpy told him. The more even-headed griffons were horrified with the ideas that seemed to grow out of Grigor’s relationship with the Harpy.” She pointed at the stone tablet and her voice rose just a tiny bit. “I thought that I ordered the entire temple destroyed, but it seems that some griffon wanted to have more than he needed! I hope they got a good money from this piece, or at least that they were happy with themselves.”

Sunburst and Goodread kept their mouths shut because the Princess seemed to be upset, and that was an understatement. But Luna seemed worried and Gerdie got a little more than angry.

“How can you say this?! They loved the Harpy. Didn’t you think that the griffons would want to have their own version of what the ponies have in you? Even if she was mean and gave the Emperor bad ideas. What if this was a memento? Something to remember her by? It is not possible that all of them agreed with these ideas but doesn’t mean that they didn’t like her either. At least I can say that she let the griffons rule themselves!”

Luna grimaced at her seat and frantically gestured at Miss Gerdie to shut her beak. Fortunately, the Celestia’s near infinite patience was still going strong.

“You are very naïve, Miss gerdie. You were born in a world that permitted that you would believe such things about a creature such as Grigor. And I suppose you could compare me with the Harpy… Even if for reasons you don’t know. But I have never commanded my ponies to hunt and take away the freedom of other creatures, treat them like animals while laughing and saying that their blood was too sweet.” Gerdie gasped and Celestia went on. “Or did you think that your Grigor and his friends saw difference between buffalos, deer, caribou or ponies and yaks? They were all hooved beasts to them. Inferior beasts made to be subjugated and torn apart for food. When anyone questioned their behavior, they were called inferior and weak, ostracized from society. Why else did you think that your ancestors wanted to forget everything about him and the Harpy?”

“But.” Gerdie restrained herself. “They built a giant temple to her…”

“It was a giant waste of a building made of black stone and iron, with songs engraved on the walls about all the greatness of your race, all around the shrine with the stone table in front of white and black curtains where a priestess of the harpy would carve out the heart of the sacrifice and leave it there for her in a golden plate. Hardly anything worthy of being remembered by a civilized society.” She returned to her throne. “But if you must hear it, when I went there and opened the curtains, there was nothing inside. It was an empty room with nothing more than dust. She was nothing more than disgusting ideas and an excuse to accept them. And if I had found something inside, at the time, I wouldn’t have hesitated a heartbeat before destroying her.”

“King Grover knew that his time was limited, and he made me promise I would never let the griffons fall that far again. And it took me centuries before I managed to rebuild Equestria because of that very same way of thinking. It hurt me and my sister in ways you cannot understand. The same evil, from the same root. Selfishness.”

Celestia’s voice shifted a little. “I don’t claim to be perfect, Miss Gerdie, but I know what is best for your kind and it lies as far away from the Harpy as possible. I have nightmares enough thinking that the Lion is dabbling into that already, perhaps not understanding all that she represented and I have, more than once, woke up, shaking in sweat at the thought that we might have another war where griffons turned to violent and insensitive monsters that would delight in reaping the lives of those who were once their friends to cut them in pieces and serve them in their feasts.”

“And that is all you need to know about the Harpy and Grigor. Because the Harpy does not exist and Grigor has been dead for millennia.” Celestia scowled a little. “Now, I want you to tell me why is it that the Lion has sent you to draw Twilight and Cadance to Haybale and gave you these things to show them. Is it because he seeks legitimacy to his rule in the myth of the Harpy? How much does he know of the Harpy? What exactly does he intend with Twilight and Cadance?”

“Princess, he didn’t send me.” She retreated a step, confused at the accusation.

Sunburst raised a concerned hoof. “We found Miss Gerdie reading about King Sombra in the Crystal Empire. The palace’s library.”

Celestia frowned. “It is too much coincidence that a griffon airship under his son’s command hijacked a teleporter in Baltimare and then set course to Haybale instead of chasing an airship tasked with apprehending the princesses that he wants to reach. Why did you go to the Crystal Empire at the precise time to find Twilight’s friends that knew she looked for information about Emperor Grigor, something you shouldn’t even know about to begin with?”

“I know about Emperor Grigor because my family is from Snow Mountains… I was going to be a Loremaster! But we moved out when my father got a job at Thunderpeak, as curator of the Grand Museum of Griffon History. He suggested to me that I went to the Crystal Empire. He knew I was looking for information regarding the Emperor and mentioned the letter the princesses found.”

“I feel like we should pay him a visit, sister.” Luna Said seriously. “I don’t think that he could have heard about it by licit means in such short time. Chrysalis told nopony and after this I am more than inclined to believe that the letter that Cadance found came from him.”

“Princess. Please. My father is just an old curator for the museum!” Gerdie was on the verge of tears with the idea that she may have put her father in danger. “He is very old!”

“Miss Gerdie, I guarantee that we will not harm your father in any way.” Celestia spoke softly again. “But we must question him. Kindly cooperate with the Royal Guard, along with your companions and do not try to leave Canterlot. Corporal Spear will accommodate you on a hotel.”

“Yes, princess. Absolutely.” She joined her paws together and nodded with the two ponies.

Then Celestia turned to Luna. “Did you ever manage to look into Chrysalis’s children?”

“The Praetorians?” Luna’s ears perked up. “Well, no. They’re too scared of me yet.”

“I see. Since you are here, please go to the museum at Thunderpeak and talk to the curator. See if our suspicions are founded. I should go to the Bordello since I don’t want to leave Chrysalis unsupervised for too long. I doubt she’s given up in getting in our way as Discord’s asked her, and as much as she can say that she is not interested, I know that is not true and she will try to gain any advantages she can with this situation. It is also about time I met ‘her children’.”

“Don’t worry Miss Gerdie! I’ll make sure that your father is not hurt in any way!” Luna proclaimed triumphantly and then frowned a little. “While investigating the museum… But the point is that he will not be harmed!”

Celestia giggled. “Get moving Luna. We don’t want to lose the opportunity.”

***

Seven big and bored changelings laid about in one of the many and luxurious rooms in the Bordello of Candy. They were on the bed. On the couch. One of them was strewn head down and legs up on the reading chair. One laid on a rustic looking wool rug, like a giant dog on his side and another laid belly up on the desk.

Suddenly the one on the table raised his head. “Oy. I think they forgot about us!”

Noling answered, and noling seemed to care, so he simply let his head hang from the side of the table again. Then he wiggled his legs about. “I know! Let’s play a game! I spy, with my little eye…”

He quickly scanned the room and found a pretty ball made with red satin and gold on the mantlepiece. “Something that begins with a B!”

“It’s a bloody idiot that needs to shut the hell up!” The big female growled from the bed.

He grumbled and let his head hang again. “Why are you always so mean?”

“Because I have to live with you morons! Mother is probably furious because you fuckwads ruined our defense in the siege!”

“It was all because Luna’s thestrals didn’t take the fight seriously!” Another complained. “We could’ve won if they had taken it seriously!”

After that there was some silence again. Until another spoke, the one laying on his side. “My hoof is tingling again.”

“Yeah, thanks for the update, mate. Warn us again when it falls off already.”

A little bit more of silence until the one upside down on the chair covered her face with her hooves and whined. “She’s probably gonna recycle us!”

Then someone fiddled with the lock on the door. “AAH! It’s the Reclaimer!”

Myrmirex, the Queen’s secretary opened the door and stared inside. “I wish… Bossy, the Queen wants these morons ready for combat. Your weapons are in the armory and your lieutenants are already gathering the others. Cadance’s ponies will help. Get everyling assembled in the yard and we will teleport in one hour.”

The big female on the bed turned on her belly and saluted with a hoof (while laying on her belly in the bed). “Understood! Right then! Get moving!”

They obeyed without a peep and she followed them out the door.

On the other side of the mirror Chrysalis sat next to Celestia and she realized that she had somehow failed to come up with a flattering way of presenting her ‘children’ to Celestia so that she wouldn’t be too angry and in the end she might as well have not even bothered. The truth is that there was never a way of doing that without it looking bad.

She had told Celestia all that she could about them, how they came to be and all the bad things that she shouldn’t have done. It was a bit painful to go through it all again after she had done so with Luna, but she supposed that she owed that to them. At the moment, she looked at Celestia and she simply stared at them through the mirror in silence and it was creeping the hell out of Chrysalis. She felt like a foal whose mother had just found out she had done something terribly dumb and wrong, and her mind was quickly browsing through all the punishments she would inflict upon herself if she was in Celestia’s place.

Celestia, meanwhile, had two things in her mind. First, the fact that Cadance had put a room with a two way mirror in her Bordello of Candy that was frequently visited by some of the richest members of nobility of the world and that it was meant to be used by said members of nobility. Willingly. And she had thought that she, wrapping up her tail and wearing a sexy saddle and jewelry was too lascivious. Apparently, that was too normal those days.

Regardless…

“What is this ‘Reclaimer’, Chrysalis?” Celestia asked turning to her.

“Beats me!” The Queen shook her head. “She’s had this fixed idea that I’m going to recycle them for some time now. Whatever that means. And she’s come up with this ‘Reclaimer’ Cerberus knows from where! Luna thinks it’s some object she’s associated with their cycle of dying and taking over another body that’s taken a monstrous proportion inside her head.”

“Luna has taught me that this is the sort of thing that happens when ponies have nightmares that go unattended. Maybe she can help with this when we finally have some time.”

“Before that you shouldn’t take them with us.” Celestia added. “But I suppose that if you left them behind that would only distress them further. They also didn’t realize that the fight was a mock battle?”

“No, they did. What they didn’t realize was that they were supposed to lose.” She sighed. “If I tell them the simplest of commands, they turn it into some epic quest for my honor. Most of the time they are quite competent too.”

“Have you told them that?” Celestia asked.

“What?”

“That you think that are dedicated and that they are competent at their job.”

Chrysalis simply blinked as though Celestia had told her an impossibility and the princess stared blankly at her for a few seconds. “Have you ever told them that you at least appreciate their efforts and that you won’t recycle them? Whatever they mean by the word, it won’t happen. Have you told them that?”

Chrysalis’ eyes shifted to the side. She babbled something incomprehensible. “It is possible that I could, maybe, have been more explicit in that.”

Celestia beamed, despite her cynical way. “I can guarantee you that the others are afraid too, even if they don’t say it. And if you expressed more openly to them that you love them, that you don’t plan on ‘recycling’ them. That would make them calmer and more confident. More stable. And that would make Luna’s job easier.”

“It can’t be that simple!” Chrysalis’s wings flared open and buzzed.

“But it is!” The alicorn grinned again, more playful. “You don’t have to believe me! You can try it yourself! In a lot of ways, they are like foals, Chrysalis. And foals respond wonderfully to positive feedback!”

“Can you… Can you help me?” Her ears folded down and her crown flattened a bit. It was one of the cutest things Celestia had ever seen associated with the changeling queen. “I’m not very good in that sort of thing.”

“It would be my pleasure!” Celestia put a hoof on her chest and proclaimed all cheerfulness. “But it has to be something genuine and reasonable.”

Then she put her hoof on Chrysalis’ chest. “That comes from here.”

“You’re losing me, Celestia.”

“I’ll tell you what to tell them when it is time.” She matched Chrysalis blank expression. “Let’s get ready to teleport. Luna will be joining us soon.”

***

Chocolate Velvet felt a strange and rather comical combination of humiliation and anger. They put an inhibitor ring on his horn and then actually tied him with ropes and carried him like he was a box or something. Seriously, the things he did for his princesses. Even the ones that weren’t ‘his’.

Then he was sure the airship was hiding inside a cloud with a high degree of certainty because they flew through one and soon after they threw him on a hard, metallic floor full of ‘metallic sounds’ and smells everywhere. To be honest, if he didn’t know what he was doing he would be very scared. Instead, he is giddy at the thought of how much these griffons are screwing up. He’d gladly take a few bumps to the head and be dropped a couple of times for that.

Since he was blindfolded, he didn’t get to see much of the griffon airship and all he could really gather was that it was big, noisy, radiated weird magic, smelled of wet cat and metal, and finally was full of jerks. The big griffon that was in command walked him somewhere and shoved him inside a cubicle he assumed was a jail cell, by the sound it made when he locked it.

The griffon said nothing, so he simply stood there, waiting. Until he was fed up and pulled out the blindfold to see that he was indeed in a small cell with a mattress for bed and a bucket. On the other side were the bars with a door. A simple lock and beyond it was what seemed to him as a medical room. It had a single bed, cabinets and tables with all sorts of ‘medical stuff’. Or a torture room. That wouldn’t surprise him. It had no windows, and a single door on each side of the room. All metallic, with exposed girders except for a few panels that likely protected wiring and pipes. So different from the typical pony designs. Or they didn’t have the time to finish the whole thing, which was also possible. It had the same kind of magical lights the ponies used, and he didn’t like the way the whole structure vibrated. With the weird magical radiation, it made him think that the magical engines didn’t quite work right.

In a way, the whole thing made him think of a submarine.

He stood there for hours until another griffon came in on of the doors. “Greetings your highness!”

A light gray and white griffon of slim build and icy blue eyes. Someone locked the door from the outside with a wheel and he stopped before the bars with a superior smile. “Pleased to meet you. My name is Garvie and I am Master Grigory’s friend and personal physician. I am here to ensure that you are not too injured if you don’t mind.”

“Hi, Garvie. I’m Chocolate Velvet and I am here to tell your friend all the ways he fucked up.” He replied with a huge smile. “Could you call him, please?”

The griffon laughed a bit. “I’m afraid it won’t be possible. Grigory is not available at the moment. But do you need anything?”

“Yes. A ratatouille with extra garlic and a bottle of Solar Sangreal. A white chocolate petit gateau with lemon filling for dessert, please. Ah… Garlic bread for appetizer if it is not too much to ask.”

“I’ll ask someone to bring you a bunch of hay if they’re not too busy.” He said plainly. “And you don’t look too hurt. So, I guess I’ll see you later.”

The griffon left and Chocolate Velvet was alone in the room. It was stupid, but he still had fun pissing off the griffon. That done, he decided to relax, but instead of laying in the mattress, he sat in the deep wall and rested his back on it and let his mind relax.

No dreams, no Luna visiting. Nothing but oblivion.

He woke up when the door grated. He put his front hooves on the floor and stared while two griffons entered. A yellow female, curiously wearing some sort of lab coat and a purple and mustard male he recognized as probably being Grigory. After them came the big griffon that commanded those soldiers back in Haybale, and also Garvie.

“Garv, where is my ratatouille? I’m giving you guys a really bad review.”

They stopped in front of his cell and the doctor griffon spoke. “He has a bit of a sense of humor. I am just not sure if it is good or bad.”

“Greetings Prince Chocolate Velvet. My friend disappointed me by bringing you instead of the princesses I asked him to bring.” Grigory said. “Kindly explain that to me.”

“Nice meeting you Grigory.” Chocolate told him as casual as was possible. “Yeah. Sorry to disappoint you, but Princess Celestia would really appreciate it if you didn’t bother Princesses Twilight Sparkle and Cadance.”

“I wasn’t aware that the princesses owed such deference to Celestia as to the point that they could not talk to me without her permission.”

“Well, you kind of worried the Princess when you hijacked a teleporter facility and teleported a warship through it…” He said casually. “I mean, does your dad know you took his airship out?”

“Let me test the magic disruptor on him, Grigory.” His yellow and white girl friend snarled, but he rose his paw and silenced her.

“My intention was inviting the Princesses to tour an important archaeological site that might be relevant to their research. But you have provided me with a better opportunity: I am willing to wager that Princess Twilight Sparkle wouldn’t hesitate before trading herself in for my present prisoner. This way it should be easier to ensure she reaches her intended destination.”

“Twilight isn’t stupid.”

“No! She is noble and selfless. And that is precisely why she should agree to the exchange.” The griffon explained calmly. “I am, of course, not going to bore you with the details of the reasons, but I can assure you that the Princess will not be harmed.”

“I’m gonna be a nice guy and tell you that you’re digging your own grave. I don’t care how much you think that things are going your way, there is going to be a lot of rain in your parade if you don’t wise up. And most important, this is going to splash on your father and on his future crown.”

“Did Celestia send you here just to tell me that?” The young griffon wasn’t amused.

“No.” Chocolate answered earnestly. “She sent me here to protect Twilight and Cadance from your dumbass mucking up the scene for everyone. That piece of advice was on me.”

“With all due respect, your highness. I don’t remember asking your advice. Soon we will be in position to intercept Twilight’s airship and I trust in my friends and in my soldiers. After we have succeeded, you will likely be in jail with your princesses, if not worse, when the Hall of Friendship hears of all she’s done. We should see you again when I have the princess.”

He turned with his friends and left. Chocolate was bored. At least he tried saving this griffon the shame. What an idiot.

***

Gabriel was an old griffon by most standards and it showed in his whitening gray head and darker coat, but his life of spartan restraint has earned him a healthy body and mind in his old years while most of his contemporary were feeble-minded and lame bodied. The way he saw it there wouldn’t be much his servitude would be good for if he was incapable of serving. And he did serve for a good long time watching over what remained of their history. The last in a long line of servants dedicated from keeping their past alive against the Matriarch.

He had hoped he could pass on the mantle to his daughter, and he had already began preparing her, but it seemed he had suddenly run out of time. He was prepared for such an event, but he had hoped for an actual ceremony with his brothers and sisters under Her eyes.

Well, life was hardly perfect.

From his office’s window in the second floor he could see the Princess of the Night entering the museum grounds with his two assistants, the young Mister Gund and Miss Geanna chasing her and whining at her like two infants instead of actually doing something effective. Incompetent morons. If only they had warned him instead of pleading with her, they could have bought him some usable time.

She walked the gray stone floor like she owned the place, with her wings in display, trailed by two of her guards while two stayed at the outer gate.

“We are closed to visitors!” The blue and white Gund complained from her left.

“Princess! This is private property!” Geanna mewled on by her right. “You can’t simply walk into it uninvited!”

“Funny thing about that!” Luna said without stopping and sounding all happy. “I used to think that too but turns out that I can! Not to mention that I had never been to a griffon museum!”

Taking on the short steps to the main entrance of the building, she disappeared under the balcony and Gabriel turned to his large desk. He opened the first drawer and retrieved his revolver from it. Of typical griffon make it was a spartan thing with barely an adornment and five high caliber rounds already in its cylinder.

Five high caliber, rune-engraved, magic disrupting bullets meant to kill a goddess.

He opened the cylinder and checked the gun was indeed loaded but he didn’t take long and hid it under his left wing, walking towards the door on the right wall of his office. He opened it and walked inside a dark room with several antique artifacts, mostly pieces of scrolls and paper documents about those artifacts. Important pieces of their past and his observations on them, one of the many places where his brethren hid what pieces of their past they managed to hide from the Matriarch. But the most important was the center piece of his collection: a giant statue made of black onyx sitting on the middle of the room and staring down at the entrance. A giant griffoness with her wings stretched upwards and laying on her stomach.

He hid behind one of the wood and glass stands with his back to it, weapon raised. He literally put a thousands of years old scroll with an important song from his ancestors in danger, but it would be worth it. Ending one of the princesses under the stare of old statue of the goddess was priceless compared to an old song that could be sung again. With his name to it and how he defeated the Princess of the Night.

With no windows and only one entrance, it would put her the perfect place and the darkness was better on his hunter’s eyes. He left the door open; she should be drawn to it. And he waited. The perfect ambush, as efficient as an apex predator.

Not long after, she put her head inside through the door, ears perked up and big curious eyes. “Hello?”

“Come on! I’m just here to talk! Do we really have to do this?” She walked in, looking annoyed. “You know I can sense you radiating magic from behind that stand, don’t you?”

He did his best but couldn’t keep from grumbling and cursing to himself before holding tighter the gun, turning the corner, pointing it at her and pulling the trigger. No hesitation, as sure an aim as ever.

She ‘eeped’ and her magical shield manifested itself upon impact. So much for ‘magical disruption to kill a goddess’. For feather’s sake. Still, she yelled at him. “What is wrong with you griffons and these things?! You could hurt somepony with that!”

Well, that is the point… He shot at her twice more before she could react again, but wherever those magical wards came from they resisted the magical disruption ammunition. He dashed behind another stand. Then he heard musket fire from outside. Apparently those two idiots grew a brain, called their support and his brethren didn’t take lightly to the princess and her goons waltzing into property belonging to one of them.

Her ears turned as she heard it too, and her stare hardened. “Fine. Have it your way. I promised your daughter I wouldn’t hurt you, but if one of my guards is injured, I will make you regret it sorely.”

He turned the corner on the other side to get a better shot, and aimed at her, but she wasn’t at the door anymore.

“Damn it all.” He muttered under his breath while his eyes scanned the dark environment. Every corner and nook clear to his dark-seeing eyes, but he couldn’t find her anywhere. He didn’t see her teleporting. He didn’t hear the characteristic sound of disturbed air that followed. Suddenly, he had not even noticed, but his breathing became faster and his foreleg trembled.

His eyes scanned the environment and found no clue to where she might be.

He turned again and she came out of nowhere wielding a polearm in her telekinetic magic and its butt end hit his revolver holding paw with the force of a sledgehammer. A sharp pain flared, and he lost his grip with a scream, and then collapsed to the floor. A dagger impaled his other paw into the wood floor and he screamed again. It was over so fast he barely realized it until he was completely powerless under her stare.

“Why did you have to be like that?” She whined with her ears pulled back looking so hurt one might think she was the one with the crushed and the impaled paws. “Why can’t you just be nice and live in peace in the nice world that you have all around you? Celestia is right! Creatures like you guys are the problem!”

He reached for the knife with his other paw, but he couldn’t get it to move through the pain and screamed again. More gunfire sounded outside, both the distinctive sounds of muskets and of their newer firearms. Some screaming and the princess stared disapprovingly at him.

Then she spoke with a few more shades of angry. “The audacity. We gave you a near perfect world to live in and you must act like this. You didn’t live in that time; you don’t know the pain that your ancestors caused. Well, you should know I have killed more honorable and skilled cubs in the time of Emperor Grigor. And your daughter is lucky she won’t be seeing to your funeral now that times have changed. Your kind shouldn’t push your luck, however. I have a shorter temper than my sister.”

“I will be right back.” She rose her eyes from him to the door as more gunfire sounded. “Take some time to think about what your choices. You’ll need some good explanations to give your daughter because you have implicated her on conspiracy and treason because of an antiquated ideology. You’ve ruined her career and ended your life a criminal and traitor.”

Her hooves clopped on the wood floor and he found himself looking up to the massive onyx statue of the griffoness staring down, condemning him. He grunted and tried moving again. His impaled paw hurt and so did the other, but none hurt him more than his shattered ego or the stone cold stare of the griffoness in the statue down at him.

***

Mass teleportations were fun. They remined Chrysalis, and everyone around her, of just how special she was as one of the very few creatures alive that could perform such a feat. Especially when Celestia was simply going along and let her do the whole thing.

Standing on the cloud, surrounded by her Praetorians and her black-carapace soldiers and staring the white alicorn, the queen tried to understand when did Celestia’s approval become so important to her.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Obviously, she failed.

“What?” Celestia grinned all mischievous at her. “Do you need me to say you did a good job?”

Fortunately, she managed not to exteriorize the knee-jerk insults she thought at Celestia. Instead she coughed and spoke in the most disinterested way she could manage. “I suppose this is the place?”

They stood on a fairly large cloud overlooking a cluster of smaller ones where a formation of airships with golden hulls kept in between them, not exactly as though they were hiding. They were being discreet, trying not to draw too much attention. For a bunch of airships with golden hulls. Chrysalis couldn’t be bothered to understand the individual classes of warships or even their application. She knew she should though, as one of the Majesties.

“Yes, this is the place. Come.” Celestia opened her wings and jumped off the cloud, beating them to fly and Chrysalis followed with her changelings coming close behind. Hopefully they wouldn’t spook any of the Royal Guards aboard those airships and get themselves shot or something.

She followed Celestia to the one airship that differed from the others. For starters it was all white with golden accents and ‘her sun’ on the main sails. At least this one, unlike Twilight’s had guns. Three underdecks lined with guns in addition to the guns in the main deck. She didn’t bother counting them. It was an oversized monstrosity with too much power and that one couldn’t keep their eyes from it, much like her owner.

Three large masts and long swept-back wings and a vertical tail, both upwards and downwards, but unlike Twilight’s airship this one’s magical engines were protected inside its armored hull, in the aft. It wasn’t alone either: at least six smaller flying warships and another large one that seemed unarmed. Also of note was a fast-looking golden airship that reminded Chrysalis of Twilight’s, but somewhat larger and armed.

She decided it was best to keep her questions, and insecurities for later, after her changelings integrated with Celestia’s royal Guards and the two rulers were in more discreet company. Thorax and Pharynx came along from the Crystal Empire, but for some weird reason she couldn’t fathom her husband had decided he would stay with Pharynx and with the soldiers.

It didn’t take long for her changelings to get sorted. The Break of Dawn’s Chief Steward quickly assigned them to positions and tutoring among the present ships, so fast Chrysalis was sure they had everything prepared beforehand. It must be so good to deal with professional soldiers.

Soon she found herself by the ship’s bow, next to Celestia and under a neatly placed canopy with large white cushions where they laid on their legs. Between them a small table with a golden plate holding some Saddle Arabian sweets. Small cubes made with starch and minty liquor and sprinkled with sugar. For drinking, water. Bit not simply ‘water’. It was cold water with lemon slices and some sugar inside a crystal jar enchanted to keep the drink cold.

The queen pulled her ears back at the sight of Celestia biting at one of the small cube sweets. And she had thought that she squandered the Swarm’s resources. Of course, Celestia actually had the resources to do that, but she would still judge.

“So, is this a warship or a flying palace?” Chrysalis examined one of the sweets while at the same time she watched Bossy, next to them, looking over the bow with a spyglass as though she knew what she was doing in the middle of all those clouds.

“It is a bit of both. It’s a diplomatic tool.”

“Like the airship the Lion’s kid brought through the teleporter?” Chrysalis paused for a second, realizing she didn’t fully understand Celestia’s strategy. “You put your precious toy in their way. It’s like you sacrificed him to get Twilight and Cadance safe. Doesn’t sound like the sort of thing you’d do.”

“I don’t know what they are thinking with that thing Chrysalis. All I know is that he doesn’t seem to know what he is doing with it. Furthermore, I have certainly not sacrificed Chocolate Velvet. I am confident in his ability to deal with the situation and I am sure he understands the importance of keeping Twilight and Cadance safe.”

“I don’t understand how you can be so sure that everything is going to be fine in this situation. What is keeping them from hurting Chocolate Velvet? Or killing all your ponies here?”

“There is a chance that they may hurt Chocolate Velvet, yes. But I doubt that they will. Grigory understands that there would be grave consequences for him and for his father if it came to that. That much I know he understands. But I have to admit that his strategy of moving that warship of theirs deep into our territory baffles me. A faster airship would’ve been much more useful.”

“I imagine he is betting on overpowering any resistance.” Chrysalis offered. “Or something.”

Celestia shook her head. “I Don’t doubt your ability to rule and lead the Changeling Swarm, but you’re lacking in military strategy, Chrysalis.”

“Well, I suppose you would know…” The queen rubbed her chin pensively.

“Look around. Look at the Break of Dawn. What do you see?”

“An alicorn jerk that can’t seem to keep a conversation without trying to teach something…”

Celestia giggled. “I suppose I do indulge a little. Anyways, what I mean is that a lone vessel, as powerful as it may be is still limited. Like the old saying: he’s big, but he ain’t two.”

“Did you say ‘ain’t’.”

The other rolled her eyes. “What I mean is that a large vessel may carry many, many guns and soldiers, but it is still only one. It can be outmaneuvered and are typically slower and that much harder to control. But, most importantly, it consumes resources. And that is why we have supply ships. Soldiers need food. Guns need ammunition and powder. And those are the most basic things. And this is a warship. It doesn’t have a lot of room for ‘stuff’. It needs an armory, accommodations, accommodating the magical systems, mana batteries, etcetera. The point is that the ship not only cannot last on its own for too long, but it also cannot keep on a fight for too long and will eventually need repairs. But you can imagine that it can’t hold the tools and spare parts it will need in a practical quantity. Bottom line, it is isolated. We will hunt the griffon’s airship and force them to surrender, if they manage to escape the initial confrontation.”

“Don’t you think that The Lion’s son would know that?” Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. “As far as I know, he could have been teaching the kid these sorts of things since the day Gwendolen squeezed him out.”

“He is adopted.” Celestia explained. “It is one of the reasons I have come to accept that the Lion is fit to rule the griffons.”

“How come?”

“He adamantly defends their various cultural traits, but most griffons from Snow Mountains would never adopt and raise another’s cub.”

“Doesn’t that make him a hypocrite?”

“It depends. It makes him a sensible creature that understands the needs of the deprived comes before petty ideology.” Celestia shrugged. “You should rest a bit. It will take us a while before we are in position.”

She concluded by magically summoning a piece of parchment, ink and a feather and proceeded into writing a letter. Chrysalis quickly became bored but didn’t want to distract Bossy as she seemed to be convinced that starring around with that spyglass (wherever in Tartarus she had found that thing) was extremely important.

She took a moment to be thankful Celestia didn’t inconvenience herself with their names as did Luna. Then she discreetly stared at the white alicorn laying over her legs in the large pillow, concentrated in writing that letter, whoever it was for. She also became a little too conscious of how beautiful she was.

Such a far cry from the dirty and malnourished pegasus that barely scraped a living in the streets of Everfree. When did that happen and what was wrong with her? Celestia was becoming like a mother figure to her and the first thing in her head, after being anxious for whatever punishment she could dish out, is thinking that she is hot. Well, she is and that is just a fact. And so is Chrysalis. And also bored at that moment.

She smiled lecherously at Celestia. “Say… Ever since I captured you in Canterlot, at Cadance’s marriage, there’s something I’ve been wanting to do with you.”

“Excuse me?” The other gave her the typical amused smile. “I don’t know what aggravates me more. The revisionist history or the indecent proposal.”

Chrysalis proudly put her hoof on her chest. “I ruled Canterlot for five whole minutes and you can’t take that away from me! But that is not important. What is important is that we are past the point of crying ‘indecent proposal’.”

Celestia giggled. “I suppose you’re right. You have a very pungent personality that endears itself to me. I am not really in the mood though, Chrysalis. Sorry. I’m a bit concerned for Chocolate Velvet and the present situation does require some focus and preparation.”

The queen hummed and grinned in her condescending way. “I understand. There will be other opportunities and you’re not getting out of this that easily.”

Celestia giggled again and then Chrysalis quieted herself, laid on the pillow that was put there for her. Seconds later she was bored and ‘distracted’ again. Celestia still minded the letter.

“Excuse me.” Crucible Wings approached them from behind and Chrysalis stared at the guard with a few paper folders in his mouth. “I have the files you requested.”

He offered Celestia the folders in his mouth. “Chancelor Neighsay is going to relapse if he hears of this…”

Celestia opened the first folder and Chrysalis approached to look at it too while the Royal Guard waited stoically. The princess then hummed with a significant level of amusement.

The first paper in the file was a white paper with a photograph of the yellow griffoness called Galensa, with a short description of her and her history.

“Who’s that?” Chrysalis asked over her shoulder.

“Galensa. Griffoness from Snow Mountains that graduated as a thaumatoengineer in Bay County University and started a research for a powerful magical weapon. I stopped her.”

“Should’ve killed her.”

“If I did, I would have robbed her of her chance of realizing how wrong she was and starting anew.”

“That’s horseapples.” Chrysalis said calmly. “She’s never going to be good.”

Since she missed Celestia’s accusing glare at her or the irony of what she had just said, the princess moved on to the next file, and that one she didn’t know.

“Gracielle.” She read aloud, looking at the photography of a beautiful white griffoness with a particularly short face adorned with caramel accents, wings and head-feathers complemented with golden eyes. It reminded Chrysalis of an owl. “Wonderbolt candidate, number one sharpshooter for the last twenty-eight classes, several prizes. Left for Snow Mountains two years ago, never joined the Wonderbolts.”

She looked at the next file, a short griffon with a cocky smile, brown fur and darker head with long feathers and gray eyes. “Gewehr. Blacksmith accredited by Manehattan Ironworks. Visited several forges and smithies studying modern firearm forging techniques all over Equestria. Returned to Snow Mountains two years ago. Credited by peers for the invention of the bolt mechanism.”

The next…

“Name: Gray…” What followed was a powerful looking with a dark gray, almost black body with a white head that not only wore one of Griffindell’s black cuirasses but carried a spear with some sort of blue adornment. Celestia’s amusement only grew. “Has been spotted contacting several known crime lords in several griffon cities, the Crystal Empire and even Canterlot. Disappeared two years ago.”

Finally, there was a light gray and white griffon of slim build and icy blue eyes. “Garvie… Graduated in Medicine in Canterlot University. Toured as Royal Guard physician and earned several prizes. Left the guard and professional practice two years ago.”

“This is new…” She chuckled. “Two of them were seem with Galensa and Grigory in the Baltimare teleporter. The other two were seen by witnesses after the airship teleported.”

“Congratulations, Celestia.” Chrysalis chuckled. “You are educating your own enemies! That is why that whole friendship crap never seemed right to me.”

“Your assessment is mean spirited and also plain incorrect, Chrysalis.” Celestia replied in the most petulant and unfazed way Chrysalis could have expected. “The problem isn’t that we are educating our friends, as you say. The problem is that we are dealing with a crafty and resourceful individual that seems capable of turning our greatest advantages against us. I have just finished a meeting that showed a very similar facet of our enemy.”

“Oh… I suppose they are not as clever as they think they are?”

“Well, they are quite clever. They have sown political disarray and found a way to split the Princesses right in the middle. They are drawing griffons to the Lion’s side and I wouldn’t be surprised they have plans to deal with Twilight and Cadance once they made contact. Maybe split us even further. They also managed to acquire highly-skilled and loyal agents. I’m impressed and it might be correct to say that we are already at war...”

“You’re liking this, aren’t you?” Chrysalis grinned at her.

Celestia smiled smugly and rubbed her chin with a hoof, looking at the files before her. “It has been quite so time since I have ever had to fight someone that managed to strike so deeply and so covertly to the point I didn’t even know that they had struck until it was too late. Unfortunately for them, Grigory’s impulsive maneuver has unveiled too much.”

“Wait a second. I beat you once!”

“Your mother asked me not to hurt you before she ran from Equestria Heartland. Letting you win at Canterlot and allowing Cadance’s love magic to defeat you was the way I found to let you approach us again and them be put in a situation that would force you to capitulate. You resisted longer than I anticipated, though.”

“What?! You mean you didn’t banish us?”

“You see, Chrysalis… The more you poke at the past, the more you find things you didn’t want to find. Why would I banish her from Equestria? She was Luna’s lover and also my friend.”

“Is there more about my past that you have withheld that I should know of?”

“No.” She said bluntly.

Chrysalis simply stared at her while her ears pulled back and growled. “What about the Lion’s little squirt?”

“We have very little on Grigory.” Celestia sighed. “He lived his whole life in Snow Mountains and all we know of him is that he was adopted from the streets of Griffonstone by The Lion and also that some foal protection agents found it weird that he never called Lady Gwendolen ‘mommy’ or the sorts of things foals… Cubs do. However, we know that Lady Gwendolen educated him herself and was very frustrated by that fact. Well, Lord Gilad too, but in the conversations they had with him growing up, he kept a respectful distance to Lord Gilad, even if he did recognize him as a paternal figure, albeit a distant one and a sort of goal to achieve. Lady Gwendolen, though was closer to him even though she was a harsh mistress.”

“Sounds like a happy little family of psychopaths to me…” Chrysalis concluded. “And with friends like these… With access to military vessels…”

Then she laughed sarcastically. “And I was worried with the Lion, not his son. What is the kid’s actual story then? Is he some sort of bastard son that Gwendolen felt the obligation to raise because she is such a good girl? So, any secrets about them too?”

“Hardly. As far as we know Lady Gwendolen may love the kid a little too much.”

“Oh?”

“There are a few obscure accounts of Gwendolen protecting him a little too much.”

“You are evading the question, Celestia.”

“It is something gruesome, Chrysalis. I don’t feel like describing it to you. It suffices to say that she may have done something horrible to cubs that hurt Grigory while he was younger. It’s very nebulous and I don’t know the details or even if the story is real. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it.”

“This is bothering me though. Why did the Lion adopt Grigory? As far as I know the griffons in that part think that it makes them less male, or something.”

Celestia shrugged. “Maybe he is not as bad as you think? I am strongly convinced that he is not that bad, just dabbling with dangerous things. And the fact that he adopted a street cub makes me think that he has a better heart than most will give him credit.”

The queen hummed. “Yes… I suppose we will see. I’m looking forward to meeting ‘The Cub’ now. Is that why you’ve brought me?”

“Partially.” Celestia admitted. “I also don’t want to leave you alone, unsupervised for too long. I also want to see what your Praetorians can do. Finally, I want them to feel appreciated and useful and this is a good opportunity for that.”

“Well then…” The queen grinned again. “We’ll have them give you a show.”

“You are actually proud of them, aren’t you?” Celestia smiled softly.

“Excuse-me, Princess.” Crucible called her again and drew Chrysalis’ attention too, but this time he walked in front of them accompanied by another pegasus in golden armor. Chrysalis assumed he was as crewmember of the airship.

“The Main Event is ready to part with the fleet, Princess.”

“Excellent!” Celestia grinned. “Wish them good luck on their mission.”

“Main Event?” Chrysalis grumbled. “What a stupid name for a warship.”

“Trust me, it’s very appropriate.”

***

A small breakfast was like the feast last night, if quicker and less pompous, without the music and Gwineth’s presentation. There was plentiful food and drinks, as much as a lot of griffons to cheer at the affair, but Lord Gilad didn’t indulge as much as he did during the night and Gwineth barely ate at all. It made Discord think that the travel ahead wouldn’t be an easy one, even on them who lived in that place.

They left Brokenhorn without much fanfare other than the presence of the city’s guards and the Jarl to send them off. And the ever-present overcast sky. The Lion wore his armor and carried a light pack and axe on his back while Gwineth wore a white and black cloak with an even lighter pack on her back along with her sword.

And as Discord expected, they walked for a fair bit before taking flight and he followed them.

They seemed to go further north and deeper into the mountains, and with a few minutes of silent flight, he drew closer to the big griffon and the younger female simply watched from behind but seemed to pay more attention to the scenery.

“Other than my thanks, I think that your display of magic was rather impressive. I had never seen that sort of magic.”

“Is that so?” The griffon answered, looking back at him. “I would have assumed that living in the same time as Emperor Grigor your lordship would have been witness to much more powerful griffon magic. I cannot imagine that I could hold a candle to the Emperor himself.”

“Well, I’ve never personally met him.” Discord shrugged. “He was past my time.”

“I see. Still I can assure you that my control of magic may be impressive, but I still have a lot to learn.”

Discord then decided to take a few chances. “I may be saying something stupid… But are you aware that no one is supposed to know about Emperor Grigor? That this griffon magic is supposed to be a secret and that griffons outside your territory just don’t know of those things, and wouldn’t believe it?”

He felt a bit dumb asking that, but he felt it was a better idea to start the conversation with a plain field.

Regardless, the Lion seemed to have understood his intention, and why it was a good idea to have that conversation away from the crowds. “I am aware, yes. In fact, that is what draws many griffons to my hold. We believe that Princess Celestia has associated with King Grover and both have erased his history from our records. We have direct descendants of his within our midst, including myself and we see this as a violation of the Alicorn Concordat.”

Whatever in Tartarus was the Alicorn Concordat, Discord mumbled.

“The Princess Meddling Accord!” Gwineth flew ‘backstroke’ past them.

“Ah. That.” Discord pulled at his beard. “I see. Hum… Celestia and Grover did that, alright. But Celestia’s motivation had little to do with the griffons. It was a problem with the ponies that caused her to do that deal with Grover… Though I think that she considered him quite right in his intentions to rid the griffons of that particular past.”

“I understand.” The Lion said calmly. “But I don’t care for what Grover may or may not have thought. The Princess must understand that we want our true past to be recognized as such as much as we want our customs to be accepted. If it cannot be so, then I am afraid there is no place for us in the Confederacy. We are not afraid of negotiation, however. I understand that I may be asking a lot, but she is also asking much from us.”

“Well, I believe that we still have a good common ground from which we can talk, equal to equal.” That was important in friendship, right? “Princess Celestia is very reasonable, and also are the councilors she finds in the other princesses.”

“Well, that is one of the reasons we still have not gone to war.” The big griffon smiled at him. Discord hoped that was his attempt at a joke.

***

Superior

They traveled rather fast and Discord was happy he could keep up the pace because of the weird magic in the region. Or rather, with the magical disturbance in the region. Witnessing the Lion perform his own magic and Gwineth’s sword dance, also having had some time to reflect on the things he saw, he decided he should probably pay more attention to that voice in the wind.

Easier said than done. He couldn’t make out the meaning of the words even if he could speak and understand their language with his magical translator. That was likely due to the fact he was ‘listening’ to the spell, not to the uttering of the words themselves. He did notice that its power fluctuated and that it was weaker at the present, near to high noon. It made him wonder how much of the overcast sky was related to the spell and how it related to the magic the sun itself radiated.

Another funny thing he noticed is that the same magic that seemed to slow his advance before seemed to hasten theirs. It was a difficult thing to explain, so subtle it was. He wasn’t even sure if it was about space, time, or even their perception of the travel. Whoever cast that spell was actively watching them and adjusting it. It was almost enough to make his hairs stand, especially because of the way it was eerily easy to forget that they were being watched.

An innocent conversation with his travelling companions might shine some light into the subject, but he had decided he would wait until he was alone with either to start such conversation. Learning more about them would be fine too. He was curious and information was always good anyways.

Such an opportunity presented itself soon when Lord Gilad called a rest for lunch. They landed by a small grouping of trees on a soft mound that provided some surveyance to the surrounding area, a featureless snowfield flanked by wooded areas and following a path in between the mountains and the small forests. The sky, eternally overcast.

“I should find us something to eat in these woods.” Gilad said, and stared intently at the female. “Behave yourself, Gwineth.”

She smiled devilishly an held her face with childish glee. “I’ll be a proper Snow Mountains maiden!”

He didn’t like the way she mocked whatever concern Gilad had, but turned and flew to the nearby woods, as though it didn’t really bother him and soon disappearing between the trees. Turning to her, Discord found she had taken off her coat and was splayed like a big cat on her back, with her wings open over the snow, and not an ounce of modesty, wiggling like one of those wiggly worm gelatin candies.

Though he had to admit that the snow would certainly be refreshing after the exertions of hours of flying at the pace they kept. When she was done, she jumped upright, stood on her four legs, and shook her body and wings.

“So, we might be here a while.” She piped. “Wanna talk about something?”

“Yes.” He said curiously. “Can you hear the voice in the wind?”

She gave him an amused smile and her wings flared. “So, you can hear Her? Hum… I suppose that you should.”

“Hear who?”

“And I guess that not even you know everything.”

“Ah…” He gave her a knowing grin. “It’s the harpy.”

“Yes. The Harpy, silly.” Her amused smile grew. “Most griffons can’t hear. Only on special occasions.”

“What is the Harpy?” He put his hands on his hips. “I don’t remember anything about her. Him. Whatever.”

“Hum… So, you really don’t know everything…” She said curiously, but her tone disguised an attempt at avoiding the conversation that he found particularly amusing. “I am not sure I know myself.”

He chuckled then. “Well, I think you are interesting too. Tell me about you!”

She flapped her eyes at him, playfully. “Oh, you think so?”

But then she shifted to a less enthusiastic manner. “Eh… I was born in Thunderpeak. Lived with my parents until I was nine when they just up and left. Then I lived with my big brother until I met Lady Gwendolen and she made me see that I was wasting my life on that loser and in that dump we lived in.”

“Tough beginnings then?” He crossed his arms and stared curiously.

“We didn’t have money for jackshit and it seemed like every single griffon in the area was actively looking for was ways to screw us. In more than one way…”

That sounded weird. “How does that happen? I thought that there was some sort of monthly allowance from the government.”

“Yeah. It is great when your big brother isn’t blowing it all on alcohol and drugs. And then refused to get some actual sort of help even when the social agents knocked on our door on an almost daily basis. And I was too dumb… Had some sort of misplaced loyalty. You know… Family.”

He didn’t actually ‘know’. That sort of attachment was new to him, but he thought that he understood enough to try and not say something stupid. He didn’t want to offend her or something.

She shrugged. “The Children of the Harpy thrive in adversity, and I guess I am a good example. It made me what I am today and I really don’t feel like I lost a lot when I left that place. I just didn’t see it at the time because I was stuck in the mediocrity of those lesser griffons. Heck… I don’t even miss my brother or my parents.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to discuss the Harpy with outsiders.” Either she was easy to lead in a conversation or he was… Either way, it was working.

“Those are simp laws.” She waved a paw at the notion with an expression that would be more well-placed on someone that had just eaten something spoiled. “I am special. I was supposed to be the next Queen of the Griffons with Grigory after Lord Gilad and Lady Gwendolen, but he likes Gallensa, so he mated her first. Ugh… I’m so much more fun and experienced!”

“Well, since you’re being chatty, can you explain the way you use the word ‘queen’? I’ve talked to another griffon who used it in another context.”

“We also use queen in a similar context the ponies use ‘mare’. Except a ‘queen’ is supposed to be an attractive female of reproductive age, not just any adult female.” She gesticulated with a paw, explaining, but stopped for a second. “And also ‘queen’ as the female ruler.”

“Creepy.” Discord grunted. “Rarity told me they use the same terms for cat breeding.”

“Well, I’m a ‘queen’, so it’s fine by me!” She gave him a ‘non-simp’ grin and then shrugged. “The Harpy called us that. Millenia ago. We’ll probably do worse with the ponies once we’ve put them in the pastures with the cows.”

“Ha ha. Funny sense of humor you have, don’t you? Whatever happened to your brother?”

“Got killed in a jail. He worked in a factory and made some wrong friendships. It was actually great that he died, and Lady Gwendolen took me in. I was seventeen at the time and she is very generous to those whom she likes.”

“So, I suppose Lady Gwendolen brought you here? What else?”

“She’s brought me to Snow Mountains and taught me about my lineage. I’ve been moving from town to town, learning stuff about my kind and about the great plans the Harpy has for me, with her help. Really, she’s been like a real mother to me.”

Interesting, the way she spoke many things, barely giving off any information at all. “But I thought that your enchanted prince was taken.”

She shrugged again. “The ‘only mate once in a lifetime’ is another simp rule… Not all rules apply to everyone and Gallensa is going to find out that this one doesn’t apply to Grigory. It’s gonna be alright, though. Gal is a going to be a good girl and share with the others. Mostly me.”

“I see. What about him? Is he going to like being ‘shared’?”

“If there is one thing I’ve learned about male griffons, especially the ones in high places, is that getting used to nice company is easy.” Her mocking smile started to disturb him. “And that is why she is going to put up with it. She doesn’t have a choice, and she can be replaced. She’s not that special.”

Ponies didn’t care about this sort of thing, usually. Obviously, they didn’t like being cheated on, but it was about the betrayal of trust, and ‘agreements’ were commonplace. His mind jumped back to Celestia, Luna, Chrysalis, Thorax and Chocolate Velvet. And countless other examples, even among his friends and the huge ‘parties’ that happened in the Bordello of Candy. Ponies were fine as long as everypony was in agreement and nopony got hurt in the process. But griffons seemed to have a custom that they would only have a partner their entire life. Maybe they were being hypocritical because they wanted to feel like they were special over something, but inside they simply wanted to have as much fun as the ponies. He didn’t know for sure and had never thought about it. Maybe the whole thing was simply an artificial difference to create the ‘us versus them’ mentality. Or even further, maybe this rule existed just so it could be broken by the ‘special ones’.

Ponies did usually put a limit in offspring, unless there was some special condition, as Discord had heard with Shining Armor and Chrissy. But that was Cadance involved and she was weird too. Regardless of that comparison, the whole thing seemed ‘off’ with the whole tradition thing he thought the griffons had going. At closer scrutiny, it all seemed very self-serving towards something he hadn’t discovered yet.

But what really worried Discord was that this Gwineth seemed to have a perverse delight in ruining it for Grigory and that Gallensa he didn’t know. Maybe there was something between them that Discord didn’t know, besides Grigory's position. Or maybe the problem, again, was this ‘Harpy’.

The more he heard about her, here and there, the more he felt like he needed to make it to this city, Griffindell, and meet Lady Gwendolen because it sounded like she knew what was going on with the Harpy.

Still, his attention returned to the griffoness that stared curiously at him. “You know, you had struck me as the independent type.”

“I am independent. But doesn’t mean that I won’t let the males drool all over me, get me things because they find me attractive. They better treat me like I’m damn special because I am. Besides, dating the chosen one has some perks. I got screwed too much in life already. You know that utopia thing ponies say? It’s bullshit. If you’re born the wrong way, in the wrong place you’re screwed. I got my privileges now and I’m gonna use them.”

“How very self-serving.” Discord teased her playfully. “Princess Twilight would not only say that your privilege is meant to help those that are less privileged, but also that all creatures are special. How about using those privileges to help others that are in a bad spot as you were before?”

She laughed. “Screw them. I suffered before I became what I am, and I had to work hard. Princess Twilight is an idiot and a hypocrite, because if there is one that is special, it is her and those alicorn princesses she lives with.”

She chuckled, completely amused. “Please… The only reason the ponies have it easy is because Princess Celestia happens to be nice and subscribes to the idea. If you want to have it good in here, you must make your superiors happy and be competent. I can assure you that Lady Gwendolen would’ve dropped me right back in the Thunderpeak slums had I failed to live up to her expectations.”

Before he could ask anything else, she turned the conversation on him.

“What about you, though? Why did you create the Lost Herd? I mean, can’t you just snap your fingers and get stuff done?”

It occurred to him that if he mentioned his perceived corruption of the ponies, he would eventually end up validating their argument that the Windigos could indeed be blamed on the ponies. They could, but not in the way she would assume, like the little griffon girl on the way to Brokenhorn. That was the whole point of sending Twilight and Cadance to Naminé… Hard facts, detached from the context were the way to doom in that whole mess.

Wait… What if Lady Gwendolen was teaching griffons wrong things intentionally? Or, more likely, she was herself wrong. Before he answered to Gwineth a new sense of purpose dawned on him. He ought to teach them the right thing! Whatever went wrong in Gwineth's life might have been avoided if Lady Gwendolen… He struggled with his thoughts for a while. If she ‘understood’ things like Celestia does. Stuff like she teaches in her school.

But that was a conversation to be had with Lady Gwendolen.

“It’s not really how magic works. Not even my magic.” He said. “And I was sick. I was wrong, and I’ve made a mistake. Everything would’ve been perfect had I not created that mess.”

“It is what allowed Emperor Grigor to unite the Griffon Warlords. For us, it was great. It culled the weak off the pride, and that is exactly what we need today. The south is full if degenerate disgraces that hide under Celestia’s wings like they forgot that she goes against almost everything the Harpy teaches!”

Oh well… Not like talking to her right then would help a lot. He needed to talk to that Gwendolen.

“I guess that is a valid point. But I just thought of something. Did Lady Gwendolen teach you this magic of yours? Or is it your sword that is magical?” That should get her to shift her attention.

“Hah!” She blurted out petulantly. “I can guarantee you that this sword wouldn’t do much in the paws of any lesser griffon. I was told that in the right paws it can pierce anything.”

“I am not terribly knowledgeable in magic swords, but I’m pretty sure that it is a tall order for even the best one of them.”

“Well, yeah. But when the weaponsmiths say such things, they mean it within the reasonable. At least, that is what the blacksmith in Griffindell told me when I said what you just told me. Do you want to know what he told me then?”

“What?”

“That in Grigor's time, a Swordmaiden with this thing could kill an alicorn princess.” She grinned mischievously. “It is funny. Most of our blacksmiths are trying so hard to come up with more and more powerful guns. For our soldiers and for our airships. When our greatest power is within ourselves. And that is what Lady Gwendolen taught me. As anyone with some understanding of such things will tell you, swords, spears, bows… These older weapons are simply better for working with magic. So, you see, a gun is a simp weapon. And this sword…”

She grabbed the thing from the ground, where she had left it with her coat and cradled it in her forelegs like it was a cub. “The sword maker told me that this is a weapon meant for special griffons. It can direct magic into offensive spells. It could even sever your bound to the land of the mortals. It can kill an alicorn princess.”

“Of course, Lady Gwendolen laughed and told us that no weapon could ever injure the Lord of Chaos. Sure enough, I took her side in the discussion. But I made a bet with him that if his sword could pierce the Lord of Chaos’ coat, I would pay him trice his original payment.”

“Ah-ha.” He nodded with a condescending grin, what a cute attempt at manipulation. She was compelling, but nothing close to a Queen Chrysalis. “I’d imagine Lady Gwendolen didn’t take nicely to you making bets with her money?”

“Actually, she liked the idea. Because she likes me acting by myself. After all, she is sponsoring me to be something special.”

“So, I suppose you expect me to let you prick me with that thing…” He wasn’t amused.

“I did answer your questions, didn’t I?” She said all innocence. “Come on, I’m not going to hurt you.”

Enough games…

“Well, I am sorry to disappoint you, but a simple needle can ‘pierce the Lord of Chaos’ coat’.” She blinked all surprise at him. “Yes… They drew my blood in Canterlot University, for ‘science’. You should know that Princess Luna is afraid of needles too. So, I don’t think that you need a magical sword to actually hurt a Princess. Or even me. It’s more the magic that one would envelop themselves in… And we would have a hard time testing that safely, wouldn’t we?”

She frowned and pouted her frustration. “Lame.”

And then she laid on the snow and didn’t talk to him anymore, which was good because he feared he would burst out laughing if she made him talk. Silly ‘kitten’. He didn’t know what that was about, but it certainly wasn’t about any bet.

Hopefully it wouldn’t take too long for Lord Gilad to arrive after that.

***

The small private room in the Magic of Friendship became an inscrutable mess of notes, diagrams and piles of books, notebooks and scattered writing feathers everywhere and also a few cups of apple juice here and there.

Meanwhile Starlight Glimmer insistently looked for something in one of the books in the airship’s small assortment of textbooks. Despite knowing that she could use her help figuring things out and organizing her notes, she seemed to be hunting for something important, so Twilight let her be. She had already learned the lesson that letting her friends do their thing often produced great results.

“Wow… That is… Uh… A lot.” Twilight scratched her head looking at her notes though. Actually, one of her many bunches of notes.

“Sorry, Twilight.” Cadance’s ears sagged from her head. “It was a lot.”

Flurry hoofed affectionately at her from her seat with Shinning Armor, next to Cadance.

“Are we sure all that was for real?” Pinkie spoke cautiously, next to Applejack who still wasn’t convinced of the Princess’ mental soundness. “I mean… Crystal palace inside your head. Caveponies, magical storm… Being a statue… All this talk of goddesses… Uh… How do I put it?”

“Yes, Pinkie.” Cadance was too tired to be angry at the pony and knew that she didn’t mean ill with her words. Cadance had come to know her enough to know that she was worried about her. “I know it all sounds crazy, but that was what I saw.”

“Well, for one, several parts of Cadance’s vision coincide perfectly with what we’ve been told and build upon those events. So, there is no reason to think that the palace wasn’t real. And Princess Luna seemed worried, but what Cadance told us. That also indicates those visions were true.”

“Actually, it makes a lot of sense if you think about it.” Twilight nodded. “I mean, if this Palace of the Self does exist and Princess Luna’s magic allows her to access it, then it would make sense that something going wrong with the spell could give Cadance access to it, especially if she is already supposed to access one part of it. Something I find even more interesting is that Cadance’s description of the branch of the Tree of Harmony makes a lot of sense, calling back to what Discord told us.”

“What about you, Twilight?” Pinkie looked at her. “Cadance saw your cutie mark there too!”

“I have nothing, Pinkie.” She shook her head and then looked back at Cadance. “It is possible that it’s not our cutie marks on the doors, but the symbols from the doors in our cutie marks. I wish I could go there and see it. Could, perhaps, replicate Luna’s magic, Cadie?”

“I don’t think that I can. It seemed like it was a complete freak accident.” Cadance sighed. “I would like to go back there too. If only to see if I could find out more about it.”

She would also like to do some renewing in the Throne of Love, but she felt it was better to keep that tidbit to herself. It felt like an old house she’s had for ages but never live in. It simply called to her.

Twilight sighed too and shrugged. “Maybe with some time we could find a way to access it… Maybe when this whole thing blows over, Princess Luna can help us… Or something. I don’t know.”

“I don’t know if we will be coming back from this, Twilight.” Cadance still had her ears down and she somehow seemed even more tired than before.

Twilight stared at her for a second before speaking. Nobody needed her words to see that she was worried. “You’re just tired, Cadance. I know it looks awful, but I do believe that our friendship can reunite us from any quarrel. At least with the Princesses Celestia and Luna I know… If they have been fooling us, then I wouldn’t want to reunite anyways. But the important things is that the reason Celestia and Luna are intent on capturing us is that there is something that lies beyond the facts that can be told, and that thing is what scares them. Something they must hide for our own sake? I still believe that Princess Celestia had a very good reason to do what she did.”

“That sounds like an excuse, Twilight.” Applejack told her, but Twilight simply shook her head again.

“No. Remember how Chrysalis told us about how Star Swirl was looking for the Goddesses Reborn? By itself, this piece of information has a completely different meaning from Cadance’s vision. By his conversation with the priestess, the Children of the Sun were ponies that already believed in the Goddess. Of course, they would call Princesses Celestia and Luna gods… Whatever that actually means. But they were made to believe something that Star Swirl didn’t believe at all.”

“So?” Rainbow asked.

“So…” Twilight insisted. “The two points of view paint completely different versions of Star Swirl. And the one in Cadance’s vision came with a context that was lost. That is why we must find Naminé. If Discord is right, she can give us these memories, rather than relayed facts that lack context and emotional impact.”

“Twilight is absolutely correct.” Rarity interjected with a hoof on the table. “She can help us reach information that nopony else can. I also believe that we need a more careful examination of what Princess Cadance has told us… It sounds like a solid foundation from which to question Naminé when we do find her. Does your Highness think that you can go over it all with us princess, Princess? That is… I don’t know if we could just go to This Naminé and ask her what is it that the Princess hid.”

“Absolutely, Lady Rarity.” Cadance smiled warmly, but Twilight noticed that something seemed off. She didn’t know if the others noticed it too, but Cadance didn’t seem quite like herself for some reason. Maybe she was only tired?

“Cadie, do you need to rest for a little bit?” Shinning caressed her back very softly. Twilight nodded at that… He had noticed it too.

“No. I need to figure out what all of that meant. And I need to figure out what happened to Daffodil.”

“Hum… She passed away?” Twilight rose an eyebrow at that, despite thinking it was a good start. “I mean, your vision likely covered thousands of years. It was weird enough that you simply knew things, such as what was the Throne of Love or who that Daffodil was.”

“No…” Cadance frowned a little. “She returned… As a different pony, but I recognized her every time by her soul. Or something.

Twilight's eyebrow rose some more as she checked her notes. “Except you only saw her twice. Once as the original Daffodil, and then again as the priestess when the Windigos arrived and after.”

“Yes. But I knew she was missing when I saw the new temple in the Capital. Besides, I know she was present all the time before that!”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw her many times before the Windigos. All the way from the caves while the ponies transitioned from the Stone Age into the Three Tribes. She was never too far away from me… I witnessed her aging, passing away and then reappearing to enroll as my priestess and becoming their leader every time. I mean, they didn’t always call themselves priestesses and priests, but that was the idea. After all, that is what they started calling themselves. Not only that, but I also remember that she was the one that listened to me the most and carried my will to all the ponies with the most excellence.”

The ponies around the table exchanged confused and worried stares for a while and Cadance wondered if she had said something wrong. “What?”

“That wasn’t in the story you told us, Princess.” Applejack was the one to tell her. “At least not in that way!”

“It wasn’t?” Cadance blinked twice at that.

“Hum…” Pinkie smiled sheepishly. “Maybe you really should take a nap? Just a small, itsy-bitsy little nap?”

Cadance saddened. “You don’t believe me.”

“I do believe you, Cadance…” Twilight told her, but she seemed as worried as the others, even more, as did Shining Armor. “We all do. We’re just worried. You’re not well. You clearly need some rest.”

There was a bit of relieved atmosphere as Cadance seemed to accept that, despite remaining.

“Maybe she can remember things now?” Rainbow offered. “I mean… Things changed inside her head, right?”

“I suppose that is it, Lady Rainbow Dash.” Cadance nodded with a frown and Twilight blinked at what she said. Who called Rainbow ‘Lady Rainbow Dash’? She supposed it was a proper treatment, giver her title, but is sounded so weird coming from Cadance! Regardless, the pink alicorn went on. “Sounds like I’m recalling things from a very distant past. I just hope I’m not imagining things. It is all so fuzzy.”

“To be completely honest, this whole ball of yarn sounds like the recipe to go crazier than a soup sandwich.” Applejack said. At least she sounded concerned, and Cadance had to admit that she was right. “I think you need help, Princess… From somepony that actually knows what they’re talking about.”

Celestia-damned Applejack always being right, Rarity grumbled. “Well, while I have to agree that it may not be healthy to break into one’s own mind like that, I have to say that this whole story is intriguing, and that bottling it up might end up doing more damage than not.”

“I don’t really think that this is going to hurt me. I mean, remembering would be good, right?” Cadance frowned.

Twilight frowned too, but in a different way. “You’re talking about those events as tough you were a part of them, and not something you’ve witnessed. I mean, when you were talking about the fight in the Capital, I imagined it was simply because you felt emotionally attached to the story you were seeing unfold, but right now you just spoke as though you were there the whole time. I feel like those memories aren’t yours.”

Cadance blinked a few times again. “You’re right… I did do that.”

“You ponies see?” Applejack said. “This ain’t healthy.”

“I think that the issue here is the line where Cadance and this ‘Amore’ or ‘Lady of the Heart’ start and end.” Twilight put her hoof in her leg. “I’m a bit worried. Where do you think this line is?”

“I don’t think that it exists, Twilight.” Cadance shook her head softly. “I think that I, Cadance, and the Lady of the Heart are the same.”

“That sounds dangerous and incorrect.” Twilight spoke softly. “Think with me… If Naminé is a pony with a special magic that allows her to see memories that belong to the soul, that means we’re likely not supposed to casually see memories from past lives. Those being past ponies with whom we share a soul, the piece of magic that animates our bodies. Logically, it seems like what makes us an individual is a conjunction of soul and our own experiences, which are separated from the ones of those past ponies. Each pony begins and ends at the moment the soul and body are joined and then when they separate. It is a logical conclusion.”

“The problem is that this is anecdotal… I never saw a published study on that, and all we know is folk lore. I suppose Naminé could tell us. Ugh…” Not to mention the pony with the cutie mark that was on the door to the ‘Throne of Life’… But… Ugh… Best to not even mention that.

Twilight sat back at her chair and shifted her head thoughtfully. “It would make sense with the way Discord thought ponies worked in the past. He never realized that killing them ended that individual. And why he thought they were somehow broken and the whole thing needed to be restarted. I suppose that we were really important, if it is also true that we were the ones that made the magic work. Huh…”

“Isn’t that line between one pony and another arbitrary, though?” Cadance argued back. “Because I can recall those memories.”

“You can because things got broken, somehow.”

“Yes.” Rarity rose a hoof. “But memories do seem to get imprinted on the soul, and not only that, but they clearly bled into the pony that Cadance is now. Princess Luna locked those memories away, if the imagery Princes Cadance described was correct. She should recall those memories naturally. It seems.”

“Huh…” Twilight stared blankly for a while. “You’re right. That is odd. I’m pretty sure that ponies don’t normally do, and it is a bit of a stretch to imagine Princess Luna locks away memories for all ponies.”

“Maybe we are different.” Twilight grimaced. “It would explain this whole mess with this dream-vision.”

“You sound concerned over this, Twilight.” Rarity spoke again.

“I’m not special, Rarity. I’m just a pony as anypony else.”

“Horseapples you’re not special.” Rainbow glared. “You’re special. In a good way. But you are.”

“Then all of us are, Rainbow.” Twilight spat back. “All of us have something that is unique and important. And I don’t mean us, I mean every single being that is alive in our world. So, Princess Celestia can raise the sun… Well, do you guys remember Party Favor? She can’t do what he can with those balloons. And I may be good at magic, but I can’t bake a cake to save my life, but Pinkie can. Remember what Discord told us: Harmony gives us things to do. To Princess Celestia it gave the sun. To me, magic. To Pinkie, baking.”

“Well…” Rainbow struggled with the words. “You’re more special!”

“Thanks, Rainbow… I guess. It’s just that… Going by Cadance’s first vision… Well, ponies as a race were meant to ‘start’ the world. Or something like that. I can’t think of anything more special than that!”

Then Starlight Glimmer coughed and drew their attention when she raised her eyes from the book she was reading. “Speaking of starting… Princess Cadance, what was it that Discord said about the ponies and the statues in your dream?”

She hummed, squinted and strained her thoughts for a bit. “That I… I mean, the goddess thought, and they obeyed. Or something like that. But it was not like she did… He was confused about it. Then he said they weren’t supposed to remember the goddess.”

Starlight thought for a second, with her hoof in her chin, but then her eyes shot open and her expression changed completely. “Oh, wow. Hum… Wow!”

Twilight grinned. “Talk to us, Glim!”

“Okay… Uh… This is a wild guess. Based on a theory that has been rejected. But… If what Princess Cadance told us represents the truth, it would make so much sense that it is just crazy how real this could be.”

Nopony, or dragon, said anything and they just stared at her. Even Flurry Heart did, and also the pegasus crewponies trying to listen in from the outside and thought that nopony noticed. “So… Some decades ago, a pony archeologist called Jungle Jaynest published a paper about her findings when comparing old texts from griffon and pony cultures. Fictional stories, mostly in scrolls and some wall and vase paintings.”

The others followed.

“She noticed a strange difference between those: while griffons seemed to talk about things characters did and things that happened to them, they also spoke of what these characters felt in relation to those events. But the older pony ones seemed to only speak of things that ponies did and things that happened to them, never about what the characters felt about those events. Only in more recent works did ponies start creating stories in the same way.”

“Her work was rejected, though. It lacked evidence and seemed circumstantial. Contrary to present evidence.” Starlight concluded.

While most of the present simply stared at her as though they expected her to say something else, not understanding the point, Twilight’s jaw hanged from her mouth and she gasped. “Are you saying she found that ponies of the past lacked the capacity for introspection? That is just not possible! If that was the case, ponies wouldn’t be able to function properly… They would be incapable of understanding their own needs. Things such as… ‘I ate because I was hungry. Or even understand what other ponies felt in relation to things’. They wouldn’t be able to function because they would need an external indication of things that happened to them!”

“That is what they told her. That it was likely a stylistic choice. But…” Starlight’s ears fell a little. “Princess Luna said that the Palace of the Self was a left-over of our creation. A place where a Goddess of Love literally told ponies who to be in love with. Which was exactly what Cadance saw happening in her vision.”

Ponies still weren’t sure what those two were talking about, but Twilight’s eyes grew even bigger and her jaw dropped even lower. “Oh my gosh! The Lady of the Heart was a voice in their heads telling them who to love! Was that Luccenoturna doing the same but telling ponies how to build things. What to feel about things? OH MY GOSH! Ponies didn’t think for themselves? The goddesses thought for them?”

“Daffodil said, in my vision, that she must go where I commanded her. And I have found one or two tales that referred to Princess Celestia as a goddess. But… There is also the tale of Mother Farfalla, that mentions a very weird version of Luna.”

“Well, colloquially, it seems rather trivial to call the Princess a goddess.” Rarity said. “She single-hoofedly moves the sun. Something that took several unicorns in the past, not to mention that it seemed to damage their magic. If this whole story is even true.”

“Hum… This seems a bit silly…” Pinkie complained while envisioning Princess Luna following a pony and pointing at things and saying their names.

“It seems silly because our minds work in a different way, independent. And most importantly, from the outside, you couldn’t realize that was the case. Unless they told you that the goddess commanded them to do something.” Twilight explained. “Maybe they weren’t fully dependent, but the goddesses helped, somehow.”

“I don’t think that they literally heard their voices, Twilight.” Starlight frowned next. “By the way Cadance described it, it seemed as though it was something deeper than that. More like they literally thought for us. Or with us. Like… They were walking us through the process of becoming sentient. Holding our hooves while we learned how to think for ourselves.”

Twilight nodded at Starlight’s opinion. “I wonder… What Amore perceived as ponies not listening to her anymore might have been ponies becoming independent.”

“Shouldn’t the goddess have expected that, then? Instead of freaking out ponies stopped listening to her?” Shining asked.

“It is possible that she didn’t understand what was happening. She may not have realized that she was teaching ponies how to love and that they wouldn’t need her guidance anymore.” Twilight explained and nodded to herself. “And then, the Palace of the Self and the Throne of Love is what remained of whatever magical mechanism that allowed her to do that.”

“It seemed that herself became more complex as the time past and ponies themselves became more complex. Until she became independent from them, and thus she could fly around near the end of the vision. All of that could’ve been because she became more complex as their belief in her became more complex as their own way of thinking became more complex and introspective!” Cadance gasped. “I mean, the goddess already was more independent than they were… I think. But she became more, as they became more.”

“Uh… Does that make any sense?” Twilight asked the others.

“I’m legitimately starting to think you two drank some spoiled apple juice!” Applejack grimaced. “But I think that it does!”

“Now that I think about it…” Cadance mused with a distant stare for a second. “That does sound right. Thinking back to it, I don’t think that I actually talked to them until they actually built a temple. It was weird that I was stuck inside the statues though. Did they change their way of seeing the goddess? While in the past they may not have realized that it was a different entity than they were, but as they learned and became more complex, the goddess shifted to an outside entity.”

“Maybe you weren’t in the statues.” Starlight spoke again. “Er… The Goddess wasn’t. She was inside their heads, but their belief that she was in the statues made her act like that. That is called a fetish… Not that fetish, Rainbow! An inanimate object that is worshiped for its perceived magical powers, often thought to be inhabited by a spirit. It is a bit awkward with that definition but seems to be the case in the vision. And given how everything goes back to magic…”

There was a bit of silence until Pinkie spoke again, with some doubt and not looking very sure of what she was saying. “This is crazy! Did the ponies create the alicorns? What about the four alicorns that the first ponies drew in the caves? Didn’t Discord say that they were supposed to have forgotten them?”

“Yes… Those definitively were different entities, outside their minds.” Twilight frowned. “They seemed to be older than the ponies.”

“Maybe ‘created’ is the wrong word.” Fluttershy concluded. “Maybe, ponies summoned them in the end. It would make sense with the end of Princess Cadance's vision. Maybe they existed, in some way we don’t understand and created the ponies, and then ponies brought them to the world, like they did with the Windigos and Discord. Gradually, because they didn’t forget them.”

Rainbow then huffed and her chest got all puffed up when her ears pulled back. “How could those jerks have done what they did? That Blueblood plothole conspired to murder the senators! Who does that? In that situation!”

Cadance frowned. “They maneuvered everything so that Cinnamon’s soldiers would be forced to go out and expose themselves. It’s vile.”

“Well, talk about something being wrong with the unicorns…” Rarity frowned. “As Discord said.”

“I hope those guys died in a very painful way!” Rainbow concluded.

“We need a second conversation with Discord! He clearly withheld information. I too want to know more about the events that followed, especially with the griffon letters in context.” Twilight grumbled and then shuddered. “Do you guys think that alicorns today are those four… I don’t know what to call them… Primordial beings that created the ponies?”

“Well, darling… I mean…” Rarity stared with some annoyance at Twilight. “There were four of them, they had wings and horns. One was related to the sun, the other to the moon. There was one related to love and the other… Well, I can’t claim she was related to friendship, but she had a necklace or something with six shinny stones. When it came to the point the ponies had built temples to them one was about statecraft, the other was about… Philosophy? The third was, unsurprisingly, love and the fourth had a place where ponies and other races would gather to discuss their issues.”

“There are just too many coincidences.” Rarity concluded, unimpressed.

“But I keep thinking back to what Discord told us.” Twilight complained. “That whatever is wrong with Princess Celestia’s soul is related to this whole thing, and also that we should be aware of preconceptions and first impressions. That everything has a meaning within its context. Every time we say that we know things, I feel like we’re jumping to conclusions. Dangerous conclusions.”

Twilight felt like her words had the desired impact because the others made silence again, until Rainbow spoke. “Whatever happened to ‘big Twilight’?”

Twilight looked at her notes. “Matriarch Grimoire Sparkle. Legate of the First Battlehorn Legion, apparently. I suppose she died in the fight with the Lost Herd before whatever happened.”

Pinkie giggled obnoxiously. “She jinxed her entire bloodline.”

Twilight simply shrugged though. “I think it is possible that I am her descendant. Or of one of her relatives. I don’t know. It’s not impossible since it seems as though bloodlines were important to them. What about Cinnamon Flameheart, though? By what Cadance told us, she died. But she was alive in the griffon’s letter.”

“Maybe they healed her.” Fluttershy said. “There are many powerful healing potions today and I don’t think that they would be impossible at that time. Especially with how important and powerful that pony seemed to be.”

“I believe it is more pressing to understand what happened at the end.” Rarity said. “The ponies seemed to have summoned the alicorns. But Discord killed them? And… they were reborn in the Alicorn Tetrarchy of today.”

“Rarity, nopony calls us that.” Twilight whined at her. “We’re simply ‘The Princesses’.”

“Oh, come now, Twilight.” Rarity grinned at her. “Just as everypony simply calls the Alicorn Concordat as ‘The Princess Meddling Accord’. It is the same difference. The important thing is that you could be the very same alicorn that had the six jewels, same as Cadance could be Amore, which for some reason is even in her full name. And also, as Celestia and Luna are the alicorns of the sun and the moon. Or that you are somehow connected to those.”

“Yeah, Twilight. Your cutie mark is in one of the doors Cadance saw.” Spike said. “We’re just not sure what it means.”

“What do you think, Princess?” Applejack touched Cadance’s leg. “I’d figure you have better insight than all of us.”

“Didn’t you say that I’m crazy?” Cadance frowned at her, easily slipping back into the conversation.

To what Applejack shrugged. “Twilight might be crazier than you as far I’m concerned. I mean, I know her enough to know and it is a distinct possibility that I am the only sane pony in here anyways.”

That did get a chuckle out of Cadance. “I don’t know, Applejack. I’m a bit confused. I did feel like it was me in that vision, but I also know that it is likely because of my point of view. Maybe I am the goddess… Maybe I just have her memories because something weird happened. I don’t even know for sure when my life started. I mean… I think I was alive for much longer than I thought if the memories that Luna had locked were an indication. Though, it is possible that those were all of them, not those of this lifetime. I don’t know! I’m confused because I’m sure Discord killed me… Or Amore. And that memory was just a normal one. I mean… I can’t even assume that it is a ‘normal memory”! I don’t really know anything!”

She continued. “I think it is so weird that they locked those memories from us. That they wouldn’t let us have access to the Palace of the Self when I suppose we are as important as they are. Why did they do that? I mean…”

She became frantic, and her voice pained. “Did they put me in the orphanage? Because… I feel as though they tried to contain me when Princess Celestia literally put you, Twilight, in a collision course with your destiny!”

“I understand.” Twilight told her and got her sanctimonious face on, meaning to go further, but Fluttershy stopped her.

“Princess… You are judging Princess Celestia too harshly. Maybe she was as lost as you are today. She might have been trying to do her best! And the best she managed ended with you among us.”

Cadance felt like a child throwing a temper tantrum. Fluttershy was right, and Twilight took the word again. “But what happened to you may not have been her doing. At least not entirely. Luna wasn’t even present when you were born.”

Cadance gasped. “You’re right! Somehow the timeline doesn’t fit! She was Nightmare Moon, banished to the moon when I was born! But… That was Princess Luna’s magic!”

“We need more information.” Twilight said, and then pleaded her. “Don’t judge them too harshly like I know you’ve been doing.”

“Yes… You’re right.”

“But what do you feel, Cadance?” Twilight asked. “About the vision?”

Cadance’s head hung for a second, then she looked back at them. “I think that I was the pony… Or whatever the Goddess was. Or the Lady of the Heart was. I know things that I shouldn’t know and that may be a consequence of my memories waking up again. Or maybe her memories are just being thrust in between my own? I don’t know. But I feel as though she and I are the same pony. Entity. Thing. I don’t know about being a goddess. All I know is that I can tell pony hearts who to love and that I’m a freak with wings and a horn. Is this a bad thing? Being that entity?”

Twilight frowned at that. “Maybe we’re trying to create an artificial distinction where there isn’t one. Ponies don’t usually use the word ‘goddess’, but I’ve heard yaks and diamond dogs, and even dragons calling Princess Celestia that. It is possible that it is a scary word that has no intrinsic meaning other than what we give it.”

“Isn’t that so for all words?” Starlight shrugged. “They are just labels for ideas we want to communicate. The context is important. Supposedly, a goddess would be somepony with the power to do something that others can’t. Something outstanding. Maybe something that isn’t thought possible within the laws of the natural world? But magic makes everything possible. Maybe a god has a special kind of magic? This is a definition. It’s a description of something we don’t know enough about yet. I suppose we are, again, stuck without more information and that Naminé is, again, our next stop.”

Twilight frowned and rubbed her chin. “It once bothered me that ponies never called Princess Celestia as ‘queen’, which she is in everything but title. When I asked her about it, she said it didn’t matter, it was just a word.”

“Discord did tell us that we could live our whole lives without this particular truth, and it wouldn’t make a difference…”

“No!” Cadance shouted. “I must know what happened to Daffodil! I know that something awful happened and I don’t know what real difference is it going to make if I know the truth, but she was important to me!”

They made silence after what Cadance said. She figured she could’ve been less emphatic. Maybe she was a little too tired and having some trouble dealing with her emotions.

“Hey…” Shining Armor called their attention. “Does anypony else think it is weird that the griffons were different? I mean… I may be jumping to conclusions, but I would like to know why is it that their mind developed in a different way.”

“We don’t know that they did. They may have developed earlier.” Twilight said but frowned at herself. “Though that is not likely. The ponies were the ones that seemed to have brought the world to habitable state. To this day, we are the ones that deal with most stuff relating to nature.”

Twilight wrote something on her notebook. “I wish we had more context on the griffons. We can’t really know without more information.”

“That defines our journey thus far, darling.” The elegant pony stared with some annoyance, but then she grinned. “I for one, though, am very excited! We have discovered some particularly exciting things. I am fascinated to find out my friend is a dead goddess that was reborn!”

“Rarity, please…” Twilight growled at her.

“What?” She whined. “Didn’t we just agree that there is no problem with the word itself?”

“I am not this…” She looked at her notes. “Amicizia. I simply share a piece of magic that used to be hers!”

“It’s a soul, darling. Not simply any piece of magic such as the magic that animates twigs and sticks to make a timberwolf. It is the magical essence of life.”

“Actually…” She glared at Rarity. “IT could be exactly the same kind of magic. It is magic that animates a body. You’re romanticizing.”

“You say it like it is normal…” Spike held his chuckling.

“It is normal!” Twilight yelled. “It is what happens when a pony dies and then another pony is born. Or concepted. Or whatever, I don’t really know.”

“Once again…” Rarity grinned. “We need more information.”

Twilight looked like she wanted to say something to that, but instead she looked at her notes, another batch of her notes and frowned.

“Maybe this Harpy created the griffons.” Applejack said in the meanwhile. “And she wanted them to be more independent, for some godly reason. I mean, griffons are tad aggressive sometimes, but they are definitively more independent than ponies.”

Twilight nodded. “That could be right. Hum… The Harpy. Sounds like she was important to the griffons. Where is she right now? I mean… Supposing she created the griffons, why isn’t she ruling the griffons the same way Princess Celestia is ruling the ponies?”

“Especially if the ponies somehow summoned the alicorns, right?” Starlight agreed. “Though I feel like we are assuming that Princess Celestia rules the ponies because of that.”

Instants later Twilight gasped. “Princess Celestia is ruling the griffons… Who are exactly the race with which we had at least two wars. Princess Celestia went to a war with Emperor Grigor, who followed the Harpy. The two Griffon Wars were documented and were about hunting rights and secession. The war we didn’t know happened is the one that involved the Harpy. The two Griffon wars also happened later. Did… Did Princess Celestia kill the Harpy? I mean, she killed Emperor Grigor.”

“Well, the griffons wanted to be rid of Grigor.” Applejack said. “It is within the reasonable that they also would want to be rid of this Harpy.”

“Right. So, assume that Princess Celestia killed the Harpy in the same period she killed Emperor Grigor... No, that is not right. That is not the reason she destroyed our historical records. It was because the ponies did or had something bad about them.”

“Maybe the Harpy in unrelated.” Shining said. “And is something that related to Grigor and that the griffons wanted to be rid of. By what you told us, she was pretty bad. Maybe she is unrelated to the reason Princess Celestia did what she did. This is quite common during investigation… We find circumstantial things. I mean… The Princess helped the griffons and the griffons helped her get rid of information about whatever the problem Discord mentioned.”

“Yes. That does make sense!”

She didn’t even need to think for long and agreed with Shining Armor. She meant to go on further, but a pegasus called from the outside. “Airship hoay, astern high! It’s the goldies!”

“All hooves on deck!” The Captain answered right away. “All hooves on deck, we got business!”

Twilight and friends rushed outside, including Cadance that didn’t seem to be any tired anymore and joined the rush of pegasi running everyway. In the ship’s aft, they joined the Captain and some of the crewponies, watching as a golden-hulled airship followed them from some distance.

“Ponyapples… They’re gaining on us.” The captain offered Twilight the spyglass, but Rainbow Dash took it.

“Awe-some! It’s the Main Event, the new Wonderbolt airship!” Then she lowered the spyglass and stared off in the distance. “Crap. We’re screwed.”

Twilight took back the spyglass from her. It was indeed a Royal Guard airship. With a fast-looking golden hull that reminded her of her own airship, and fully furled sails, which meant it had all its magical engines at full-power, coming straight at them. It flew the Royal House’s flag, which was a white background with shield with both Luna’s and Celestia’s cutie marks adorned with a long horn and a pair of wings. And also, a phoenix. Because why not? She couldn’t really see that it was gaining on them, but she trusted her captain’s pegasus eyes more than she trusted her own. Not to mention his experience.

She could also see that the thing had guns, something hers didn’t.

“What do we do, Captain?” She asked the pegasus.

“We’ll lose’em on the clouds, lass.” He pointed a hoof at a cluster of clouds she hadn’t seen before, being inside. “They’ll give us enough cover for a change o’ course to throw them off. Preferably under Luna’s Moon. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to fight.”

“They look a bit far off, though.” Pinkie looked at the clouds too.

“Suit up, girls…” Twilight said while the captain ordered his pegasi to recover the Magic of Friendship’s sails and she ship picked up speed with the roar of her magical engines. “We’re not getting away too easily this time. At least we should have some time to prepare.”

***

Discord woke up with his own snoring. He was laying in the snow and Lord Gilad was next to him, looking over to the distance. He was seated to the trunk of one of the trees and stared at the griffon, who seemed unconcerned next to the remains of the fire where they roasted the rabbit Gilad caught. He didn’t see Gwineth, though.

“I didn’t expect to actually sleep.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Where’s Gwineth?”

“I do not know. She decided to go do whatever.”

“Just like that?”

The griffon shrugged calmly. “It is one of the points of living in Snow Mountains. One is free to do whatever they might wish as long as it does not disturb others.”

Apparently, she didn’t deal very well with the frustration that her little attempt at manipulation didn’t work. Or maybe she just wanted some space to herself. Curious, but it didn’t matter.

“I don’t mind her company.” Gilad said. “But I do prefer to travel without her. She has an irritating tendency of acting as though her charms are irresistible to any of either gender and that her presence is a gift in itself.”

Discord chuckled. It was a good description of her. He stretched his arms and yawned. “Is it too long until Griffindell?”

“If you can keep up, we should arrive by the morning.” He stared at Discord, who felt a bit of a challenge behind those words. It did rile him up a bit.

“I’m used to teleporting around, but I supposed I could give it a try.” He grinned and listened to the voice in the wind. “I am looking forward to meeting your mate. Gwineth made me think that she must be a very interesting individual.”

“She has been said to be interesting, indeed. I did choose her to be my mate, after all.” He said, gathering his sparse belongings and jumping up to fly again and Discord followed.

***

Celestia and Luna did their ritual of changing the day for the night without any fanfare, as Chrysalis imagined they usually did. Luna wasn’t even present, and Celestia didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. It was simply a spell she cast with that long horn of hers. The queen wondered for a second if Celestia actually understood the importance of that gesture to the rest of the world or if it was simply a chore to her.

There seemed to be so much going on inside that head of hers that Chrysalis wondered how she found patience to worry about petty crap like what they were doing…

She had procured two more spyglasses and made Chrysalis stand to one side of the ship’s bow looking at the distance next to Bossy, while Celestia herself stood on the other side doing the same. All the while, the ship’s actual lookout was doing his job of looking out.

Just why did she put her to that? Staring through a spyglass was menial work! If only she had found something and could claim to have ‘won’…

Finally, Celestia let out a frustrated whine. “Nothing.”

Chrysalis and Bossy stared at her. “The griffon airship should be here.”

“Oh my… Outmaneuvered?” Chrysalis did her best to make her sarcasm sound playful. Celestia did seem to be frustrated and worried.

“It seems so. This is odd. I’ve been told it is a quite large airship.” She sounded more confused than frustrated. “It shouldn’t have moved so fast, even with modern magical engines.”

Then Celestia frowned and looked away. Her horn shined and she started waving it around. She was probably feeling around for magical energies, but Chrysalis doubted that she could ever feel anything with the airships radiating so much magic around them.

“Princess.” A griffon in a flashy red uniform approached them. She had a tricorn hat in her head. No way! She knew those stupid hats were common enough some time ago, but had fallen out of fashion, yet for some ungodly reason commanding officers in the navies liked using them.

“No way!” Chrysalis said. “Your admiral is a griffon?”

The griffon in question was an old cyan and gray female griffon with small round glasses, wearing a full uniform, complete with one of those annoying and noisy pistols and a rapier. Also, a snappy, petulant way of speaking. “Does that bother your majesty?”

“Yes. You are a griffon.” Chrysalis said. “And griffons are the problem right now. I feel like you’re an infiltrated agent.”

“Hah. The day when a changeling accused another of being a spy has finally arrived. And accused an honorable griffon too. One that is exceedingly good in command.” The griffon snaped back. “As her majesty would’ve attested to had she picked a side, rather than spending the entirety of the Second Griffon War hiding inside her home.”

“How dare you?!” Chrysalis hoof found her chest. “That stupid war had nothing to do with the Swarm!”

“Chrysalis, meet Fleet Admiral Gloria.” Celestia grinned at the two exchanging barbs. “Admiral Gloria, Queen Chrysalis.”

The griffon completely ignored the queen after that, though. “Our scouts found nothing, Princess. It is as though the griffon airship evaporated. They might have known we were coming or changed their course to intercept Princess Twilight’s airship at a specific location. They moved exceptionally fast though… I can’t say I understand. Most of all in such clear skies.”

“A team of unicorns, well-trained, could teleport an airship.” Celestia mused more to herself. “But I don’t think that Grigory has access to such a team as the only ones I know are in the Royal Guard.”

The griffoness shrugged. “They might have figured out a way for the airship itself to teleport short distances.”

Celestia’s eyes squinted and she nodded grimly. “That is a possibility.”

There was a soft bang and silver flash above the airship and they looked up to see Luna flapping her wings and letting herself fall to the deck next to them. And she looked quite angry.

“They shot at me, Celestia!” Chrysalis almost laughed at the way Luna was so angry she almost sounded like she was accusing Celestia of setting it up or something.

“Are you hurt, Luna?” Celestia hid well her amusement.

“No! But you’re not going to like what I found.” Luna huffed. “The museum had a hidden room, after the curator’s office, with all sorts of artifacts related to you-know-what. It also had a giant statue of you-know-who.”

“Is it in ‘you-know-where’?” Chrysalis chuckled. “Open for visitation ‘you-know-when’?”

“I can just leave, if you want...” Admiral Gloria rolled her eyes. “I don’t really care. I simply came to report we didn’t find anything, and I have a lot of work to do other than listening to stuff I have nothing to do with.”

“I’m sorry, admiral. It is really nothing I think you need to concern yourself with. Please do mind your duties to the armada.” Celestia said with her typical smile and the admiral left with a curt bow.

“I know she said she didn’t care, but that was the nicest way I’ve ever heard to tell someone to go mind their own business…” Chrysalis said with a small amount of admiration.

“Well, I didn’t mean it like that.” Celestia said blankly. “You can speak now, Luna.”

“The griffons had a giant statue of the Harpy!” Luna blurted out with big eyes. “A big onyx statue, complete with that creepy stance and big evil, judging eyes! It was new too! No way it was carved on Grigor’s time!”

“I cannot believe this!” Celestia struck the floor angrily, but she did look around to see if anyone was listening. “How many times do I need to kill that thing?”

“Well, it shouldn’t surprise us by now…” Luna grumbled.

“I don’t like what I just heard! You said that thing didn’t exist at the end of the war. That there was nothing inside the temple!” Chrysalis’ shouted and Bossy cowered away a few steps. “And do you remember when I told you, thousands of years ago that you should have killed all of them? This is why!”

“Chrysalis, please calm down. Had I killed ‘all of them’ at that time, we would already be at war because the Lion wouldn’t have reason to trust that I wouldn’t do so again.” Celestia asked calmly. “It’s not something that we can’t deal with. Please continue, Luna.”

“When I arrived, they tried to dissuade me from entering, but I did anyways. They didn’t like that at all. The curator shot at me with enchanted bullets and his cronies attacked my guards. There was a bit of a scuffle, and two of them were injured.”

“Your guards or the griffons?” Celestia rose an eyebrow.

“My guards!” Luna ranted on. “The curator, his assistants and a few griffons that arrived to protect the place were all arrested, mostly unharmed.”

Celestia frowned at that and Chrysalis spoke. “Did you just say that other griffons that had nothing to do with the situation went inside to help them protect the place? I’d bet my crown that they are all in this together, but I don’t think that I have to. And I also don’t have to tell you two how bad this is! They are clearly infiltrated in the griffon cities!”

“Indeed.” Celestia agreed. “Good job in leading the apprehension of these bad griffons, Luna. “Did you speak to the curator, though? Did you manage to get him to talk without injuring him? Why does he have a statue of the Harpy?”

“No…” The night princess shuffled her hooves and let her ears fall. “I broke his paw and then stabbed the other to the floor.”

“Damn, Luna!” Chrysalis laughed. “I wish I was there to see that!”

“We need to talk about your definition of ‘mostly unharmed’, Luna.” Celestia glared at her.

“He shot at me!” Luna tap-danced nervously. “What was I supposed to do? I didn’t know if that thing could actually hurt me!”

“Calm down, Luna. You did nothing wrong.” Celestia held her shoulders with her wings. “And I would certainly side with you rather than a griffon shooting at my sister in any situation. I hope he understands in how much trouble that put him in.”

“The local militia arrived and did assist us in arresting those griffons, but that also prevented me from speaking with the curator without raising suspicions.” She went on. “He’s been teleported to Griffonstone, but I left Night Gaunt to watch over him. The others are under the Thunderpeak militia’s custody, and also have my night guards ensuring that no infiltrated griffon can interfere.”

“Excellent job, Luna. As soon as we have dealt with Twilight and Cadance we will take some time to talk to the curator” Celestia smiled. “What of the museum?”

“It is full of artifacts from that time….”

Celestia sighed. “It seems I could’ve done a better job at getting rid of those things.”

“Probably not your fault. The griffons must have slipped because you were thorough.” Luna said. “It is closed now. I also left my guards to ensure that the militia does its job of keeping it out of bounds to anypony. But…”

Then Luna’s ears fell… “Chrysalis, can you please leave us?”

To be completely honest, Chrysalis did expect that they would ask her to leave eventually, given all the secrets those two seemed to be juggling, so that didn’t surprise her at all. What did surprise her was Celestia’s answer to that.

“No. She should stay.” At least Chrysalis could say that Luna was surprised too. “You should know, Chrysalis, that Luna had trouble dealing with Cadance’s nightmares last night. Cadance likely has remembered a few things that we had tried to hide from her. If you care about her, you need to help us help her deal with those memories.”

“Let me guess… Cadance is gonna go Nightmare Moon on us, isn’t she?” Chrysalis frowned, not liking at all the way Celestia spoke. And she supposed that she did care for Cadance. And Shining Armor. And their kid. Mostly their kid. “And on top of that, he Cult of the Harpy is back, isn’t it? Sometimes I wonder if you two aren’t more trouble than you are worth.”

“No.” Celestia shook her head again. “We learned from our past and I hope we should be able to guide her through it. But it is enough that I have decided to end this whole game and rein in Cadance and Twilight. What worries me is that the Harpy indeed seems to have resurfaced and if she did, her followers are going to use that to turn Cadance and Twilight against me and my sister. We seem to be under attack already.”

“Who or what is the Harpy, Celestia?” Chrysalis kept a natural expression, but her voice raised steadily with her growing scowl. “Back then you said she didn’t exist, that it was all in the griffon's heads. That those insane maniacs that Grigor claimed were her chosen were actually his concubines and that you found nothing in the temple. For fuck's sake Celestia. Tell me that thing isn't real because I don’t want to fight another Swordmaiden ever again in my life!”

“I plan on having a conversation with Twilight, Cadance, Prince Grigory and their friends and I want you to share it with us once we have them all under our care. It will help us understand more about this resurgence of the Harpy as I suspect the Lion is using her to garner support among the griffons. I will explain more at that time. For now, all you need to know is that the Harpy doesn’t exist. The griffons believed in her and used her to justify their subjugation of other races and the superiority of their own race. You know. You were there, even if you kept your distance until the end. King Grover asked me to rid their history of the Harpy forever, along with Grigor and his empire, but it served as an excuse to do the same in the Equestria of the time.”

“Is this griffon stuff related to what is happening to Cadance now? What about this mess of changed history?”

“Not directly. The Harpy as a part of the reason the griffons wanted their history erased. And what is happening to Cadance is not the reason I lied about our past. But it is related.”

“Cut that out, Celestia.” Chrysalis slapped her with a hoof and while Celestia seemed to not have believed Luna dropped to the floor and laughed. “You’re not a good liar. The ponies just trust you because they’re dumbasses. If you want my help, you need to be straight with me. I’m doing my best because I trust in you, so you better trust me! Especially after that conversation when we found Chocolate Velvet near Ponyville! Especially if those crazy griffons are coming back.”

“Yes…” Celestia took a few seconds before she recovered herself, rubbing her cheek. “Yes, you are.”

“The Ancient Pact.” Celestia finally admitted. “The reason I wanted to erase history relates to the Ancient Pact. Only indirectly does it relate to the rest.”

“Ancient Pact… How ominous. Let me take another guess… Did you do something you are ashamed of, or something that broke this pact? Whatever it is?” Chrysalis stared at her curiously. “Or was there something even worse… Something that your ponies had done that caused you to try and wash the whole mess away?”

“You already know, don’t you?” Luna wasn’t as surprised as she thought she’d be.

“I had my suspicions and I did my thinking lately. I am somewhat surprised that the ponies of the present haven’t figured this out yet… I guess it’s their propensity to trust you two way too much.” Chrysalis frowned. “Why is it so bad? It doesn’t seem to be.”

“Because it’s not what they did. It’s the reason they did it. And it is not because it is shameful and repugnant… They breached the Ancient Pact and if the truth is known, it will open a wound that I managed to close. It is what summoned the Windigos, and then Discord, and it will summon the Black Sun. Even if the ponies of the present don’t understand the Ancient Pact, it was etched into our souls.”

“The Black Sun…” Chrysalis mused quietly and then nodded. “I certainly don’t want that again. Was that what Discord was trying to do with the Lost Herd? Summon the Black Sun?”

Celestia nodded. “He didn’t fully understand it, but he knew that something was wrong and that it was so bad that there was no other way around other than start it all over. That is what the Black Sun does… It stores information and returns time to the moment of creation, so that Harmony can try again, knowing what went wrong.”

“But it didn’t start over… Because of what you did?”

“The Windigos were supposed to have triggered the Black Sun, but the ponies managed to postpone it for a while through the Fire of Friendship, which is what it was supposed to do in the first place. It is a part of a magical system that is meant to make ponies cooperate and keep the world functioning as it is supposed to, but it is vulnerable because it is dependent on free-will. Which is the very thing that has the capacity to enable ponies to break it.”

“It is possible that the Wendigos would’ve happened either way and we would have to figure out a way to deal with them.” Luna added. “Ponies were forced to be nice.”

“How stupid. I always hated free-will.”

Luna wasn’t amused and Celestia rolled her eyes. “Anyways… I restored the Ancient Pact, covering their mistake with a lie and that ended the process of the Black Sun, but if the truth comes out, ponies will realize what happened and it will be forfeit. So, I took advantage of my deal with King Grover and hid the whole thing so that my lie would never be found. I don’t think that the griffons knew in the past or today, but if their side of the story is made known, then ponies will ask what I hid on our side of the deal I made with King Grover. They will figure it out eventually and the whole problem will start over.”

“How do you fix a dying world lying about something?” Chrysalis looked like she was going to have a giant headache trying to figure that out. “And how in Tartarus could simply the truth becoming known ruin everything up again?”

Luna still didn’t seem amused. “This is likely the most bizarre situation we’ve ever dealt with.”

“Do you know what this thing is about?” Chrysalis turned to Luna, who shook her head ‘no’ and that made Chrysalis chuckle. “Then it’s easy. We kill Celestia and bury the truth with her.”

Luna did her best, but she just let her giggling escape and Celestia’s lips made a smirk. “I’m glad you two can find humor in the situation. The problem, Chrysalis, is that the breach of the Ancient Pact begat distrust and the Pact cannot sustain itself without that trust. If the other creatures and ponies themselves cannot trust the ponies to do their part and not abuse their privilege as wardens of the world, then it will fail. As it almost did in the past.”

“That actually makes a lot of sense.” The queen nodded. “It is something so flimsy, so mundane and wavering as trust.”

“It is a beautiful system…” Celestia added. “Star Swirl thought at one time that it was meant to be fragile and elegant, like friendship itself. He imagined that we, as a civilization came to landmarks where we were tested. And he may have been right. We may just not deserve to go on.”

“Or…” Chrysalis stared hard at Celestia. “The thing actually worked, and ponies of the present have matured enough to understand that whole mess is done with and nothing needs to change today because of that. That things happened in the past because they did something wrong, and there was no other way and that your lie saved their flanks, so everything is fine now. Therefore, nobody needs to freak over ponies being bad in the past. It is what Discord believes. What Twilight has convinced him of. And why he decided to help them. How does that sound? Would that work?”

“Yes, that would work. But, are you willing to bet everything on that?” Celestia countered. “Are you prepared to bet your existence on that? Knowing Canterlotian nobility as you do?”

“You should be.” Chrysalis shoved a hoof on her chest. “You’re the one always going on and on about how everyone deserves another chance.”

Luna seemed convinced. Too much for Celestia’s taste.

“Maybe you are right, Chrysalis.” Celestia admitted despite becoming rather angry, staring at one and the other. “But I am scared. I loathe my part in it, and I don’t want to see the world end, consumed by a corrupted light-eating sun that devours everything when it is supposed to provide life. I am afraid we can’t afford to play games with this. This is not the Crystal Empire or Nightmare Moon returning after a thousand years. And there is another problem. Even if things changed as you say, if the Cult of the Harpy really is back, they’ll do everything in their power to undermine us and might use this whole mess just because they see it as an advantage. The myth of the Harpy has the power to destroy everything on top of this mess simply because it will completely upend any common sense the griffons have!”

“You are scared.” Chrysalis waved a hoof dismissively. “Fine. Fine. This is the ‘real deal’. I get it. Fine… That thing was scary anyways. I’ll play along. What exactly do you need me to do?”

“Promise me you will not help Twilight and Cadance get away and reach Naminé. And Remember our conversation earlier. We are dealing with a very resourceful enemy, Chrysalis. They will use Cadance’s situation against us, thus I also need for you to help us make Cadance understand the danger of what she is meddling with.”

“Fine. Cross my heart, hope to fly…” She did so as she spoke. “I’m not sticking a cupcake in my eye. I guess, for now I’ll stick to my changelings until it is time to act and wait for the right opportunity when you’re having your talk with the kids. Do you want me to tell them anything in particular?”

Celestia’s ears fell and so did her eyes. “Do you remember Shatterhoof Valley?”

“No!” Luna cried and stepped between the two. It was a bit funny since she was shorter than both, but her impetus made up for that. “Nuh-uh! No! We are most certainly not doing this! I will not allow you to desecrate your image like that, Celestia.”

“This is not about me, Luna.”

“She’s right, Celestia. I don’t understand it either. I thought that ponies going naughty was the problem to begin with. But even then, what happened in Shatterhoof Valley was a product of that time, and even then, a speck of dust in the sea of all the good that you did for Equestria. Not to mention that given the circumstances, not only that was forgivable, but those bastards had it coming. Finally, you overcame that and changed for the better. You learned… In fact, you got too nice to the point you wanted to protect the griffons from the others after the war with Grigor. Fuck! You’re making me sound like yourself! You stopped that wave of insanity that was the Griffon Scourge, and then you rid the world of Grigor and his ilk! You both stopped King Sombra., and you reigned in all the little bastard assholes unicorns that thought themselves the owners of the world! I’m with Luna and I will not turn your image into the monster you think you were!”

Celestia wished the situation warranted a better mood from her, since Chrysalis had never left herself so open for some teasing. She shook her head low instead.

“My image will survive, Chrysalis. I have done much good in the world, enough that if my darkest moments come to light… I trust I will be judged fairly. They will, however, show the dangers of being a god among the mortals, and why I relinquished this view the ponies had of me. What good I did, I did in the worst way possible. I need you to show Twilight and Cadance what happens when one of us styles herself a goddess. For them to understand the danger of the Harpy and of old cult of the Alicorns. The danger of the ponies thinking themselves better than the other races because Harmony made us to maintain the world. They need to see that there is a dark side to that! We are the wardens of the world, not its owners. And we serve Harmony, not our whims.”

Chrysalis mocked her with a smirk, but it changed to a serious frown. “What is this about, Celestia? Do you want Twilight to look at you and forgive you of your sins? Or do you feel naughty? I’m sure we can arrange something to ‘punish’ you with Chocolate Velvet and his white knight complex.”

“Don’t mock this, Chrysalis. Please.”

“This is the last thing we need, Celestia!” Luna joined Chrysalis. “The Lion is going to use anything that you might have done against you to gain political leverage. And with this conversation of the Harpy coming back… If they manage to oust you, we will be at his mercy.”

“They can’t Luna. They won’t. And this is how we defeat the Harpy. We show how imperfect we are, so that her perfection becomes as false as she is.”

“Your mistakes fixed the world, you insufferable…” Luna grunted. “Get over yourself, Celestia! Guide her with a good example. Of all the good things that you did! The bad is very well hidden in the past too! Oh…”

“They will think that I hid our past because of the worship ponies gave to the Goddesses, and because of what that allowed me to do. They need to see that what I did had nothing to do with the ponies worshipping us! I don’t know what is going through Cadance’s mind right now, but it is not something good.”

Luna didn’t accept it but tapped the floor angrily, looking one way and the other, searching for a counterargument, but Chrysalis accepted Celestia’s line of reasoning. Deep inside, she didn’t want to see Cadance or Twilight hurt… She didn’t want to see Celestia and Luna hurt anymore.

“But that! You! Argh! Fine!” Luna kicked the floor a bit too harshly. “But we will tell them of my part in that too. I caused Shatterhoof Valley more than you did!”

“That is fair, Luna,”

“Fine then. What do I do now?” Chrysalis asked.

“Actually, I have a job for you as soon as the battle with the griffon airship starts. You should meet with your commanders. I need to fly away for a while and find a way to track the griffon airship. Stay with her, Luna. Try to connect with her Praetorians, for the moment.”

***

There was a thunderstorm outside. Heavy rain pelted the window and the retiring sun completely lost its sway over the day. Only the lightning shone every now and then.

It was strange, though. Ponies… Pegasi didn’t usually add lightning to a storm unless there was some hermeneutical need for it only they understood. And even then, it was rare. Lightning and thunder scared the ponies. The artificial magical lighting worked though and that allowed the hospital staff to keep doing their work as the pony masonry protected them from the cold rain, but it was funny how some would still flinch at the flashes or the roar from the clouds and then grin uncomfortably.

And the pegasi claimed they owned the clouds and the lightning. It was enough to make an old griffon, educated in the true past of his race, laugh a biter laugh that most didn’t understand.

Deep inside, deeper than all the memories of their lives, all the intrinsic needs and wishes, they still remembered the primal fear that haunted their ancestors.

He remembered it too, deep inside, when their ancestors used to fly from the mountains to the verdant prairies to hunt. The Mother of Storms called them out from their caves to rejoice and sing with the thunder while the ponies cowered one against the other in the grass.

It was pointless. They would run, and they would cry. Panic in all directions or follow one that claimed to be strongest only to find that whoever it was couldn’t protect them from the sharp claws that flashed like the lightning, and when his kind flew from the mountains, there would be blood spilled on the grass.

Gabriel woke suddenly, but calmly when the thunder rattled the window of his room. Memories came back to him of being taken to Griffonstone because there was a surgeon there that could save his paws. That is, more than healing potions could. Griffon paws were delicate and complex things, and even the best zebra potion often failed to restore them to full functionality. Therefore, a skilled surgeon was necessary.

He frowned to himself. If only those idiots had the sense to take him to Snow Mountains, to the ancestor home of his race, then its magic would heal him more properly than any pony-trained griffon doctor could. If the doctor was even a griffon.

He was reclined on a bed next to the window and there was small pot with a simple white flower on it. His paws were bandaged, and he didn’t feel a thing. In fact, his head was distant, and everything felt dull. Sons of a mule, they drugged him. They were so scared of pain they couldn’t even entertain the notion that another would endure it rather than cloud his wits with poison.

“Meek, weak-minded degenerates…” He complained to himself in his most contained voice.

Someone next to him cleared their throat and he could already image a dumb-eyed pony staring at him. When he lifted his eyes, he saw he was right. It was a rosy-colored earth-pony mare with a little nurse hat, the cutesy stuff those grasseaters loved. Her mane was bunched up with a net and for some reason that made him even angrier. Her dove-y light green eyes seemed concerned, though.

“Good evening, Master Gabriel.” She said all concerned and caring. “Are you feeling well?”

“No.” He tried to sound angry but apparently his voice didn’t work very well because of whatever they had given him. “I feel like you’ve drugged me.”

“It’s mostly the anesthetic spells and one or two medications for the nausea and the pain.” She explained helpfully. “They should wear off in not too long. The important thing is that your paws should be fine in a few months. Doctor Scalpel will come see you before dinner. What would you like?”

“Roasted elk.” He said more to aggravate her. He didn’t feel like eating anything, but suddenly he remembered very important things. “I need to see my daughter. She is in Haybale.”

“I’ll see about your daughter, sir. But I don’t think that you should eat anything too strong for now. If it is alright, I’ll ask for some grilled tuna and potatoes… It is our kitchen’s traditional griffon dish!”

“Whatever.” He grumbled again.

“Hum… I’m aware you are in trouble with the law, involving the Thunderpeak local militia and Princess Luna. But for now, you should rest and not worry about a thing. While you are in our care, they can’t disturb you.”

Did that grass-breath just pity him? He didn’t need his paws to tear into her heart!

But his body refused to let him stand. He simply sighed and let himself rest on the bed while the pony stared and blinked at him. Such defeat at the end of his years. He still could see the statue’s stare down at him.

Then the pony grinned and chirped all happy. “I’ll be right back!”

At least she left him alone.

He meant to remain awake and alert, staring at the door once it closed, but his body refused and fell into slumber.

He woke when someone spoke to him and started fussing about something around his bed, but he couldn’t focus and lost consciousness until he finally woke again, and could see a gorgeous young griffoness with a pristine tan fur and white-magenta feathers. Fiery golden eyes that showed she didn’t like at all her present task of cleaning his wounded left paw.

“Almost done, grandpa.” She said with a feminine raspy voice.

His eyes focused on her and he lost his breath. Every hair in her body a pureblooded Child of the Harpy. Even if her color was uncommon in the Snow Mountains, she had the poise and the same fiery heart. Not a drop of pony blood in her.

“And stop staring like that. It’s freaking creepy.”

He did shift his eyes, if only because of how much that sounded as a veiled threat. After a while, he looked at her again, focused on his paws.

“Do you hear the Storm?” He asked her casually.

“Yeah…” She answered mindlessly while working to remove the dressing from the other wound. “It’s raining buckets outside.”

A shame… Not the correct answer. He had figured there was a chance of fifty-fifty in Griffonstone that she was one of them and that the Harpy would send someone like her to look after him. Alas, the Harpy may have indeed abandoned him for his failure. He sighed again.

“So, ponies tell me you’re under arrest and not to talk too much with you.” She told him, pulling the dressage around his paw. “What did an old dude like you do? Blew a raspberry at someone?”

“You are going to talk to me despite being told not to?”

She shrugged. “I wouldn’t be stuck with community service if I was good at following pony rules, now would I?”

She certainly had the heart, he laughed and grinned. “I shot Princess Luna.”

She stopped and stared at him, then she laughed heartily. “Dude! For real?”

“With a five-chambered griffon-made high-caliber revolver. Enchanted bullets too, straight from the Stormvalley Armory. Didn’t work as I imagined, though.” Telling her that made him smile and she laughed at it but still stared at his paws.

“Did she do this to you?”

He hummed and nodded. “Crushed my gun paw with a swing of a polearm and stabbed the other to the floor with a dagger.”

“Damn.” She grimaced. “I guess I would be pissed too if someone shot at me.”

“What about you?” He turned the conversation on her. “Why are you here? Somehow I don’t think you are enjoying what you’re doing.”

“Ugh… I punched a jerk that tried to steal two Bits from me and ended up breaking his beak. It was a damn minor and the judge said I had to do community service or spend time in jail, and no fucking way I would be spending time in a damn jail. I was down for cloud duty with the pegasi, but that was taken, so I ended up taking care of patients in the hospital.” She held her face with sheer frustration. “Even had to attend to a class about how to do this crap.”

“It is such a pony thing to punish others for defending what is theirs.” He frowned. “If it is worth anything to you, know that I would have done the same.”

“Yeah. Thanks grandpa. It’s not that bad. Most ponies are annoying, whining all the time that their everything is hurting, but it is easy enough. You at least sound like you’re cool.” She shrugged. “And, at least I get to sell some scones in the morning before my shift. Couldn’t do that if I was in jail.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m stuck here the whole afternoon. I tried leaving the stand unattended, but they took the scones and didn’t leave the money, just a note telling me I’m a sucker. Of course.” She growled and raised her closed paws like she was about to break something out of anger. “The problem is that griffons are jerks!”

The naivety, another pony thing. Instead of talking, he let her pour it out. “I mean… I did those things just as a hobby, but the damn Chancellor had all the southern holds drop the basic income because of the war effort, and now I barely make it month to month with the scones. I just hope I can last until the damn ponies in Canterlot get off their lazy flanks and fix this mess. There shouldn’t even be a war effort, but the damn princess must be too busy with some pony crap to notice that her feathering subjects aren’t getting their rights! I pay taxes every time I buy scone ingredients!

“I pay damn taxes every time I pay for anything! I probably pay taxes when I pay taxes!” She roared. “And now, on top of it all, the damn mayor decided that all commerce needs to stop by nightfall because something, something war, something.”

Poor youngling. Lost in the politics she doesn’t understand enough to take a stance. And that was no way for a Child of the Harpy to live, Gabriel shook his head at her words while she composed herself with a deep grunt. That poor kitty needed some guidance from real griffons.

“Your problem is not that griffons are ‘jerks’ either, kitty. Your problem is that you are living with the wrong griffons.”

She deadpanned at him. “Did you just call me kitty?”

“I mean no offense. What is your name, then?”

“Gilda.” She growled unfriendly at him.

“Your problem, Gilda, is that your race has been living under subjugation from an old enemy for so long you don’t even remember that you are a prisoner anymore or even what it feels like to be free.”

“Yeah, sorry. I’m not interested in your griffon pride spiel. I got more important things that I need to take care just to stay out of trouble.” She showed him the most disinterested expression a griffon could ever make. “I know this stuff, and it’s wrong. I have pony friends, dude. It’s not the ponies, it’s some weirdos that want to feel special about themselves.”

“Listen to yourself, Gilda.” He wasn’t impressed. “You have no means of self-support other than what money the government pays you. This is a pony thing. They are the ones that implemented the universal basic income, but now that things aren’t going the way they wanted, they took it away. The Princess, quite literally, pays griffons to behave.”

“This is not right!” She contained her agitation. “It’s the Griffon Chancellor that messed things up. He’s the one that ordered the territories to stop it and retained the money for the war effort.”

“But this is part of the problem: The Chancellor doesn’t rule for us. He rules for Celestia. And do you see why he did it?” She frowned and her eyes showed confusion. “Because he is doing Celestia’s bidding. They want the one that is fit to rule the griffons, for the griffons, gone.”

“The Chancellor needs the money to pay for his soldiers?”

He laughed. “No, kitty. He needs you. Your brothers and sisters. He did it so that the griffons that embraced Celestia’s ideals will starve until they join his army. You’ll notice that everything Celestia has done to us will work perfectly as long as you are compliant. As long as you violate your true nature and remain docile.”

“My true nature?”

“Have you ever seen a griffon using their claws to do a job the ponies have given them?”

She didn’t answer. Instead her eyes found the floor and her proud stance deflated. His words took root and the Child of the Harpy stirred inside its cage. It was a beautiful thing to see, when they opened their eyes for the first time and saw the Matriarch of the Great Herd for the oppressor she was.

Now, to spread her wings and watch her soar.

His eyes narrowed and he spoke in a low voice. “There is a city, far in the north. Where griffon lands meet the Frozen North. Holy Griffindel, in the Valley of Griffons. Most ancient of griffon cities, it was built before the Windigos were unleashed upon us, and she housed the mightiest Lords of the Sky, before the pegasi, before the sun and the moon.”

She listened quietly. “It is the birthplace of our race, full of history. Full of pride. It is a journey every griffon should make at least once. Beware though… Most that go do not return because they find their true selves, staring at her black gates where the Conqueror fell before the Dawnbringer.”

“Who is the Conqueror?” She frowned at him. “What is with talking like that?”

“You’ll learn in time. In there resides your future king. Lord Gilad Ironfeathers.”

“The Lion?”

“And his mate. The most important griffon to ever exist. Lady Gwendolen. The most beautiful, the wisest. Listen and open your heart to her. It will change your life forever.”

She shook her head. “That is the most inhospitable place in the world. How am I supposed to go there when I can barely pay my bills?”

“If you want change, you must change. Ask yourself… Are you happy with your life? Life-changing decisions are difficult and require much. You may have to throw yourself at an abyss and believe that there is one who will hold you. I have done the same. And She caught me in my darkest hour.”

She didn’t answer, but he knew that stare.

“Meet my daughter, Gerdie, in Haybale. She may have left already, but you were made to thrive in the adversity. When you do find her tell her that I sent you. She will ask you my name, and it is Gabriel. She will then ask you if you can hear the storm. You must answer, exactly, ‘I can hear Her cry’.”

Gilda nodded, but still seemed uncertain. The seed was there, though.

That moment a thestral pony, one of Luna's guards wearing their blue silver armor walked into the room holding a sandwich in his mouth, which he dropped, so surprised he was. “Hey, this guy is under arrest. You're not supposed to be talking to him!”

Gilda just stared at the bat-pony. “Sorry, girl. You gotta go if your job is done.”

Gabriel smiled to himself. He saw the change in her posture at the pony giving her orders. Yes. This one was set on her path.

“I’m going.” She said and gathered the small tray with what remained of the cleaning supplies. She squinted her eyes at the pony on her way out.

Finally, the thestral closed the door and glared at Gabriel. “What the hay is wrong with you guys and following orders?”

He grinned. Tired from the medication, but still grinned at the fanged pony. “Our Mother never taught us to serve the meek.”

The pony didn’t seem impressed. “Yeah. Sure… My mother taught me to be nice. I’ll be outside. Just call if you need anything.”

“Just… Don’t make any trouble, alright?” The thestral finished, walking out the door. “Let’s make this easy on both of us and don’t make me lose my vacation next week. Then I won’t bother you.”

***

Nightfall didn’t distract Twilight, her friends or her airship’s crew. Since the moment they first saw the golden airship pursuing them they have prepared for the inevitable fight. At least Cadance got some rest, finally, during the day.

She had hoped that sleep would somehow allow her access to the Palace of the Self, but it didn’t. There wasn’t much to do about that, so after donning her barding and making sure Flurry Heart was fine with Miss Calcite, she felt ready to join the others.

Walking outside to the deck she saw the pegasus crewponies dutifully working on their positions, caring for the airship and keeping watch in the night sky. The moon provided good illumination and there were few clouds in the sky other than the cluster they headed towards.

Shining Armor also wore his purple and golden barding and carried his sword and shield on his back. He didn’t see her, but she smiled at him. Such a great image of what a knight should be. He talked sternly to the Captain, who seemed very focused, just like Rainbow Dash and Applejack next to them. All wearing their barding and the Element of Harmony jewels. Cadance just couldn’t wait to see Applejack using that war hammer on her back! But for the time, it seemed like it would be best to leave them to whatever they were discussing.

Twilight’s guards looked over her from afar while she was with one of the pegasus by the stern of the ship. Cadance walked there, nodding at her guards on her way. For some reason it frustrated her that she knew Twilight preferred boys, but all her guards were female. Not only that, but she huffed to herself that they should have bowed at her.

Well… She only had two of them. And wasn’t even properly stern with them… What could she have expected?

She stopped and blinked. What the hay was she thinking? They’re about to go into a battle!

She pressed her step towards the back to reach Twilight and the pegasus. Squinting a little next to Twilight, she looked for the pursuing airship. It seemed somewhat closer. She wasn’t that good at judging great distances though. The pegasus crewpony next to them was a deep blue in his coat with a pair of crossed rapiers for cutie mark and had a strapping short-cut red-brown mane to go with his brown eyes. The best was the red bandana, though. He had the spyglass and he didn’t look happy, grumbling under his breath.

“Buckin’ goldies don’t give up.” He blinked twice, staring at Twilight and at Cadance. “Er. Sorry Princess.”

Cadance rose an eyebrow and the smaller one only giggled. “Don’t worry. I don’t mind ponies swearing next to me.”

The robes on her barding flapped a little in the wind, with her mane while she watched the other airship, now with the spyglass. Somehow, she seemed even prettier in the night and the pegasus seemed to agree because he coughed into his hoof after staring at her for a while. Actually, Cadance could swear she heard him begging for Twilight’s attention. “Princess, shouldn’t ye be inside?”

He seemed genuinely worried, but Twiilght lowered the thing with a determined stare. “We’ll fight them too. Rainbow said that is the new Wonderbolt airship… We’re gonna need all hooves on deck and you guys need to keep the airship flying at her best.”

Twilight then blinked and grinned, a little ashamed. “Uh… I’ve only ever read about airship combat. What is going to happen?”

“They’ll shoot ballistas at us, m’lady. Large harpoons with reinforced ropes strapped to their hull. Then they’ll reverse their engines and slow us down. Finally, they’ll attack with pegasi and shoot at us from their ship and put’em side ‘a side and jump aboard with all their ponies. Try ‘n take control o’ the airship. If we piss’em off ‘nough they’ll fire broadside at us to damage and ground us.”

Other than refraining an impulse to correct the pony that the correct term was ‘ballistae’, Cadance simply watched the two interact.

“That sounds dangerous.” Twilight sounded so worried it was cute.

The pegasus stuffed his chest though. Twilight didn’t see it, but Cadance giggled quietly. “Airshippin’ life be dangerous, princess.”

“I’ll bet!” Twilight chirped. “Did you guys really fight the Royal Guard before?”

“Aye. Off the Coast of Sharp Edges.” He flared his wings, all excited, but Rainbow Dash, with Shning, Applejack and the Captain called Twilight to see something off the starboard railing.

“We have to talk about that sometime later!” Twilight grinned. “Sounds like a great story!”

And with that she went to Rainbow Dash. Remaining for a second Cadance saw the poor pegasus deflate and let his wings sag before he realized she was watching and pretended to go back to watching the Wonderbolt airship. Cadance grinned like Discord would be proud.

“I’ve read countless tales of Royal Guards and soldiers having affairs with Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. It feels like the time is ripe for a new one about the youngest princess and one of her airship ex-pirate crewponies.”

He coughed and tried to not look so ashamed of himself. “Please don’t tell the Princess? I don’t want her kicking me off he airship or something.”

“Heh… I wish my Royal Guards would be more excited with me than they are with Shining Armor.” She mumbled, but then she grinned at him. “Would you like a date with Princess Twilight? A real date?”

“I don’t know…” He recoiled and his ears dropped. “It sounds inappropriate.”

She lowered and approached him, uncomfortably close, with an even more uncomfortable grin. “Silly pony. I would be the one that says what is inappropriate in these regards. Or have you ever heard anypony telling Princess Celestia that the sun is raising to early or too late?”

His eyes shifted from one side to the other and he mumbled something until Cadance frowned. “Ponies of the present are so boring. I bet that in the earlier centuries of Princess Celestia’s rule anypony would jump at the golden opportunity that I offered you.”

Then Twilight called her from the railings, waving a hoof at her. “Cadance! Come over here to see this!”

“Think about that. Mister Dangerous Airshippin’ Life.”

Satisfied, Cadance sauntered over to Twilight and the others without a glance backwards. They stared at something in the dark of the night that just flashed white. “Is that a storm?”

“Thunderstorm.” The Captain said. “Nasty one.”

“Hum… Which city has jurisdiction on this area?” Twilight looked back at the others.

“I looked at the map and it would still be Haybale.” Shining said. “A bit too far and not a pegasus in sight.”

“That thing ain’t normal!” Applejack squinted at it. “It looks all weird. Not at all with the ones we get over the farm.”

“It’s because it’s not normal.” Rainbow said. “It’s too dense and I don’t see why they needed one here. Maybe over the fields, but this is too far and there is no way the weather team would let it drift that far. I also don’t know why it has that much lightning.”

“Is it going to be a problem?” Cadance asked.

“It can shut down our magical engines.” Twilight said but looked at the Captain for confirmation and he nodded. “Maybe we can use it to our advantage?”

The Captain shook his head. “Neigh. There be no way a professional crew ‘d get trapped in one of these monsters.”

“Oh… Did they make it them?” Twilight looked at Rainbow.

“Nah. A storm that dense and that big… You’d need Cloudsdale close by.”

“Let’s just steer clear of that thing, then.” Twilight concluded. “What about the cluster of clouds?”

“We’ll reach’ em right in time for dawn. With luck and some clever maneuvering, we can throw off our pursuers ‘till their scouts find us again. Might buy us some time to get’way.”

Shining nodded with a hoof on his chin. Frowned a little. “Captain keep a pair of eyes on that thing. I don’t like it.”

“Aye.”

Planning to Fail

It was difficult knowing for sure, considering how long they remained completely closed within the airship and the artificial lighting messed with him. It was so different from the typical ‘pony stuff’ he had grown used to in the last months. Of course, being stuck inside a cell didn’t help either, but he had a rough idea that it was before morning and too soon to be up, even for one used to waking up with Celestia every day.

However, as he supposed the airship prepared for combat, their boss decided to move him to another cell. Maybe one closer to wherever they would drag him out to make the exchange Grigory planned with Twilight. He just hoped that the Princess wouldn’t be so stupid.

Nah. Who was he kidding? Twilight being stupid? It would be easier for her to turn his plan on his head. It simply upset him that they took away his armor.

For the moment he simply followed the griffon in black and golden armor around the narrow and dimly lit corridors. At least the weird magic that thing’s engines radiated didn’t bother him with the inhibitor hornring on.

“Watch your step, pony.” The griffon tried to sound intimidating, but he was a bit too young and came of more as childish with his not yet fully developed voice. “I don’t want to be responsible if you break a leg or something. I hope you get used to wearing the hornring though. You and your princesses will be using them all the time once we get them removed from the throne.”

He concluded with a chuckle before he went on. “Though it will probably be worse when we put you in the pens, like the cows.”

Chocolate simply uh-hu’d mindlessly as the guy prattled on and they entered the gun deck through a crew access door. It was a rather spacious room that spanned the entirety of the gun deck and the whole width of the airship. Large cannons lined both sides behind armored shutters to the outside.

It was barely lit for reasons that escaped the alicorn and it smelled of griffon because those damned confused birds who thought they were flying cats exuded a characteristic aroma that in the past hours started to profoundly aggravate him! Or maybe Celestia’s dislike of the griffons finally started ingraining itself on him and they simply smelled different from the ponies.

But since he was there he decided he should pay attention and try and learn something rather than indulging in righteous fury at the mission being more annoying than it warranted.

Indeed, the gun deck was lined with cannons. Not the typical muzzle loaders the entire world used, but the griffons had come up with breech-loading design to arm their big airship. The whole thing seemed like a bizarre combination between a flying submarine and an ironclad of sorts. Griffons carted around cloth cylinders he supposed were full of gunpowder and also shaped shells. If not for magic, they would be decades ahead of the ponies and their crystal ball ammunition for naval guns.

Anyways, they brought both materials from the deck below and stored it all in the center of the gun deck where there were adequate shelves and niches.

Another thing that drew his attention, more than the rest was that an officer and a soldier caused a scene, discussing in the middle of the organized chaos. They didn’t notice that the griffons tending to the guns and ammunition discreetly paid attention to their tempestuous exchange and the dumbass escorting Velvet didn’t notice his slowing gait to listen in.

It was difficult to see the details in the dim light, but one was definitively a grunt, with the typical black and gold armor of Griffindell and the other wore an elaborate, dark steel and silver armor with a blue and white cape. The first’s shrill voice sounded weird and his armor clashed with his bright green coat and tan feathers. The other was less aggressive on the eyes, with shades of metallic gray and a graver voice.

Green one was frustrated and seemed to have called the other ‘Gon’. Then he went on what sounded like a long-winded and frustrated explanation of something. Chocolate wondered if he was a staff sergeant or something of the sort trying to explain something to a superior officer who refused to see common sense.

Taking the word, the officer spoke worryingly and looked around at the soldiers but failed to see the big brown alicorn listening in the middle of the mess. Then said something else, but his voice denoted sorrow.

The first seemed to angrily accuse the officer of something and that hurt him. He defended himself with quite a few words. Chocolate was sure he heard the name ‘Grinolf’, also something that sounded like ‘Grigory’ and ‘Wonderbolts’ as he tried to explain or justify something. He concluded mentioning the Wonderbolts again and seemed to plead.

The other was frustrated though. He sat and gesticulated widely and angrily. Chocolate was sure he heard the name Griffindell, but their pronunciation was weird. As tough the real name wasn’t Griffindell as he knew it, but the word was close enough when ponies spoke, and it stuck for the outsiders.

The officer was shocked at what his subordinate said, and his feathers almost jumped out of his head on a surprised reply where Lady Gwendolen’s name appeared. Then he made soothing gestures and said something else.

Green one answered furiously and pushed the officer’s chest. Chocolate hadn’t ever seen ponies do that to an officer and that would get them expelled from the Royal Guard, save for intervention from the Princesses. He couldn’t imagine a griffon officer would be more lenient if they weren’t friends, or something.

The officer though shook his head and said something in his defense, to which the first pointed a finger and accused him of something, and that finally got the officer angry.

He pointed a finger himself and unleashed a long tirade where he mentioned Lady Gwendolen’s name again, then the Wonderbolts and Grigory too. Then he made an angry gesture with words that ended the conversation.

He raised his voice more than he intended, but the soldiers all around pretended not to have heard anything. Yet both looked at Chocolate Velvet this time, and both seemed to become flustered about it, but the green one Chocolate supposed was Grinolf looked more ashamed than anything else.

It took his escort little time to figure out Chocolate Velvet had left him talking alone though. “Hey, pony! What do you think you’re doing?”

He poked at Chocolate’s chest with his musket. “I’ll bet you’ve never seen anything like the gun deck on the Skoll, but this isn’t a sightseeing trip. Get moving.”

And so, he did. But kept what he saw on the back of his mind. At the least, it would be something to tell Celestia and Luna. It was such a shame he didn’t understand their language. It was the changeling language he studied, but maybe he should branch out.

***

Twilight and her friends slept through the rest of the night and waking up right before dawn she worried because the crew of the Magic of Friendship hadn’t. She hoped that the shifts they had implemented were effective. But then again, she knew little about ‘airshipping life’ and that was the reason she hired a professional crew. Also, she couldn’t say that she was that well rested: sleeping with her barding on was hardly the most comfortable thing she’d ever done. But she managed to rebuild her energies for the coming battle. Fortunately, taking a gander at her friends as they too woke up, they seemed to have rested. A quick breakfast was perfect.

Going outside, greeted by the sun as in an ominous foreshadowing, her airship’s crew seemed to be just fine. Maybe she worried too much.

The Captain met her right outside the door to the private room. “Morning lass! Ship’s ready to rumble! She’s got no guns, she’s got no armor, but she’s got one dedicated crew! We even built a protection ‘round the wheel!”

She giggled at his surprising enthusiasm. “Great! At least they won’t be able to say we didn’t try our best!”

Taking a second to look around the deck, she located the clouds they were supposed to reach just before dawn. It had come and they still hadn’t reached the clouds. “Huh. How is our plan going?”

Not exactly as it should, apparently, but close enough, she supposed. The point was to use the clouds to block their vision in the lower visibility and maybe throw them off course, but the clouds seemed to have drifted. The thunderstorm was still there, though. She could swear that thing followed them. Though it also made sense that it would drift in the same direction as the clouds.

He shrugged and pointed at the clouds with a wing. “Not much we can do, lass. Either it works an’ earns us some extra time, maybe let us escape, or it doesn’t, an’ we have to fight’em… I’d rather we had reached’em already, but it can’t be helped now.”

“I see…” She nodded pensively. “I’ll make sure the girls and Shinny are ready to fight.”

“I asked some of the lads to bring up our gun racks… We got some loaded muskets, enchanted crystal balls, o’ course, an’ some stun batons. I asked’em not to use swords an’ the lads be concerned they’ll be too easy a target. But I’d imagine they’d be more effective than with real weapons. I figured that now we’ll be fighting real soldiers things could get hairy if we don’t reign’em in.” He said plainly. “I’m afraid we’re short on options an’ all we can do is deal with them as best as we can, but I’d rather we not provoke the Wonderbolts by injuring’em.”

“I suppose.” She sighed. “What can we do to help? I am sure that the girls and Shinny can hold our ground, but this is my first fight in an airship ever.”

“Just make sure they don’t grab ya, lass. They be Wonderbolts. They’ll board us an’ force us to hoof-to-hoof. It’s gonna get hairy. Ye got a horn. Use it however you can an’ leave the shooting an’ maneuvering t’us. Till then, I’ll be at the helm. Should get yourself tied to the main mast, lass. Fighting in these airships be like a storm at sea. She’ll throw ya ‘round, unless they force us to’stop. I rather avoid that.”

She nodded and he walked off, replaced by one of the pegasus crewponies with a rope for her. It was the one she talked to last night. The one that was going to tell her about their life as pirates before working for her. “’Scuse me, princess. I’ll tie this thing for ya.”

Cadance approached them while she sat and the pegasus passed the rope around her chest and shoulders like a harness. Cadance didn’t seem to like the rope very much, and she stared in a weird way that Twilight didn’t fully understand. She was so weird after that dream of hers, but Twilight did understand when she voiced her complaint. “Is this really necessary? I should be able to fly, and we’ll end up tangled in one another.”

“Better than getting yer wings caught in the wind an’ getting dragged out the airship when she maneuvers, princess.” He explained while he worked. “We’ll be turning an’ banking in speed to evade‘em. You’d have to catch up to the ship if the wind tosses you out, then you’re easy picking for’em Wonderbolts.”

Cadance examined her own improvised rope harness. “I guess so, then… But… How don’t you get tangled?”

“Ya gotta be mindful of yer place in the airship, princess. Shouldn’t be a problem though, cause the ship is gonna be flying fast an’ we won’t be fighting, unless they catch us. If they do, they’ll have us hooked an’ their ship is gonna stop ours. Then we’ll cut the ropes and fight. Till then, best keep to yer place.”

Cadance blinked. “But their ship isn’t that much faster.”

The pegasus shook his head. “Engines that go faster aren’t necessarily stronger Princess. Those’ll usually be slower, but more powerful. An’ any ship that’s got ballistas nowadays ought ta have a separate engine just to pull with those things. Assuming that’s the Wonderbolt’s strategy. It’s what the Guards do. An’ Wonderbolts be Guards.”

Cadance frowned and made a funny face. “Guess we should run, then. So, fighting in an airship is like being in a storm at sea, without the fighting.”

“Aye.” He nodded.

“Sounds like we either shouldn’t be fighting, or we shouldn’t be flying.” Twilight giggled.

“Pretty much, Princess. ’Scuse me… I got stuff to do.”

He nodded a small reverence and turned to leave while Twilight lightly tested the rope with her hooves, but she noticed that Cadance snapped her head toward the pegasus walking away with her ears perked up.

“Did he just say something?” She asked, confused.

Having heard nothing and distracted by the curious knots the pony had used, Twilight simply stared calmly at her. “Hmm?”

Cadance frowned. “Never mind. I think I’m just on edge.”

Finally, she smiled at Twilight after he had distanced himself and she was sure he was out of earshot. “You’re very popular with your airship’s crewponies, aren’t’ you?”

“I guess I’m good at making friends.” She chuckled and Cadance gave her a sarcastic laugh.

“I wish that my guards would be excited about me, like yours are or Luna’s and Celestia’s, but I swear they are more excited about Captain Armor than about me.” She tried not to show it, but Twilight saw her drooping ears. Then she waved a hoof with a sigh. “I suppose I ask too much of them. I used to think that we were the reason they joined the Guards. You know… Protecting the Princesses. Doing their bidding.”

Twilight turned to her and stared at her to get her full attention. “I’m a bit worried about you, Cadance. You’ve been talking in a way that makes me think you’re not happy, you know, being who you are.”

She recoiled a bit, raising a hoof at the recollections of her past discussions with Cadance. “Not that I think that you are necessarily wrong… I mean, with the things we’ve found there may be some space for adjustments… But…”

“Don’t worry, Twilight. It’s okay. I just feel a bit lost. I can’t help feeling like there is something that was stolen from me. And at the center of it all are Celestia and Luna. And this secret of theirs. About us. Why don’t you feel the same?”

She did. It’s just that… “I get the feeling that this idea of goddesses is a wrong interpretation. We keep talking about this thing about our creation and of being gods as though we understood it. Discord told us to be aware of these impressions. If I started acting like I own ponies and their ‘friendship’ or something… I fear I would become like Discord did in your dream vision. Throughout my life Princess Celestia taught me that my being a powerful unicorn didn’t put me in a position of being served, but it put me in a position of serving others. Because I could do things they couldn’t, I should do it for them, and they would repay by doing for me things that I can’t. Not like we would owe each other, but rather… We’d enjoy helping each other and revel at being able to help. Am I making sense?”

Cadance listened quietly to her so Twilight pushed further. “It was the lesson I got from the story of Nightmare Moon. Princess Luna acted as though she owned the night and that ponies owed her something for it and for protecting their dreams. It almost cost her everything.”

Cadance nodded at that, but she didn’t seem too convinced. Maybe it was a good idea to stop for a while, sort out their thoughts and talk about what they felt before going on. Maybe without the others. The timing couldn’t be worse, though, with the Wonderbolts hunting them. Perhaps it would be a good idea to get caught and let Princesses Celestia and Luna do some explaining. That whole thing seemed to be getting out of control.

The problem was… Could she even trust them?

So, she changed the subject with a soft murmur and thankfully Cadance didn’t oppose. “We need a shield. Think you can envelop the airship in a shield?”

“Easy.” Cadance shrugged. “But they’ll shoot cannons on us, won’t they? I guess I can hold for some time, but I’m not sure for how long. Won’t the shield slow the airship down, though?”

“You would have to shape it correctly. Hardly an issue for you.” Twilight shrugged too, but Cadance had other thoughts.

“Maybe we should go on the offensive.”

“Just… Attack them?” Twilight blinked at her.

“We’re not good at airship combat, Twi. But I bet that you and I could rip their ship apart if we tried.”

Twilight had to agree with her. If they wanted, they could. It might take a while, but they would be able to defeat whatever spells enchanted their hull and rip it apart. The problem was doing that while they were shooting at them and at their friends. And there was also the problem that it was possible, and likely, that their ship had unicorns in its crew compliment. They had to have at least one unicorn onboard to work the magical systems. It just seemed like a bad idea all around, but it was best not to say it like that. “We have to be careful not to hurt them, though.”

“They’re pegasi… They can just keep flying.” Cadance didn’t seem very worried, or simply didn’t think the same as Twilight. “I mean, if their airship wasn’t so fast and we could simply escape… But in this situation, I think we should attack first. You and I.”

“We should have discussed this with the others first.” Twilight shook her head and let her ears fall. “If we do things we haven’t planned for, we’ll end up messing the whole thing for our friends.”

The other seemed convinced. “Alright. But if things start to go wrong, that is a possibility.”

Twilight nodded in agreement and not a second later one of the pegasi, one standing in the bow, watching the clouds they were moving into screamed and drew their attention.

“There’s an airship in the clouds! It’s an ambush! Captain! It’s an ambush!” He pointed frantically at the clouds, and everything happened too fast. Twilight barely saw a large airship with a metallic hull peeking out of the largest cloud and the Captain yelled for everypony to hold on. Then her airship banked violently, and her engines sounded like angry monsters while she barely kept her balance, jumped and grabbed the railing with a panicked flurry of pony legs.

It was a sharp turn towards the left that avoided the collision. They came so close Twilight could see the rivets holding the metallic plates and the rust on their edges. She heard her friends screaming and for a second, she feared one of the wingless ones would drop overboard with how much the ship banked and vibrated. But fortunately, they had all tied themselves to the main mast as the crewmembers had told them and they also managed to hold on to whatever was close.

Shining held on to his rope slinging it around his leg and kept on his hooves despite it being tied like a harness around his shoulders. His horn shone and a curved white magical shield with his cutie mark manifested itself next to the airship right on time to glance off a ballista bolt the shot from one such weapon on the pursuing ship’s bow. It seemed it could be swiveled in a turning table or something. Interesting, but fortunately they missed thanks to her brother.

“Good job Shinny!” She grinned and turned to see his angry and pained grimace.

“Those things are enchanted with armor piercing magic! They’ll melt through the hull if they hit us!”

“Let’s not get hit then!” The Captain shouted, turning the wheel like a roulette and caused the ship to bank even further, turning and turning to the left. Twilight managed to hold onto the railing of the right side and was sure that her weight and momentum would’ve hurt, but her barding’s padding protected her. To her distress, she saw that the other ship not only could turn much faster, but also had cut the rope and let the bolt that failed to connect fall, which could only mean they were preparing to fire again. And it had two baslistae on its bow. She tried thinking of something to do, but nothing came to her head that wasn’t holding on.

And that the diamond dog crew seemed very well adapted to the task with their bulky frames and opposing thumbs. Wait… Diamond dogs in an airship? What the hay?

Then the Captain shouted again. “Other side, Captain Armor!”

That was when she heard thunder.

That was her first thought. That she had just thunder, but the thunderstorm was too far. Then explosions ripped across Shining’s shield in the air and she screamed at the scare with her friends. Magical energy rippled through and she finally realized that the wonderbolt airship had turned their broadside to them and left a trail of smoke. Worse, not only the magical wave gave her a headache, but her ship’s magical engines made a weird noise that Twilight could only compare to coughing. Or sputtering.

“They actually shot cannons at us!” Cadance shrieked next to her, holding on to the railing next to Twilight.

“Get a hold of yourselves!” Shining shouted at them with his ears pulled down and a weary expression. “This is gonna get hairy! They’re firing magic disruption balls at us!”

“They’re trying to shut off our engines!” The Captain screamed over the airship’s howling engines and the wind messing with her mane and her robes. “We gotta lose them now!”

“That’s a thing?” Cadance gasped at her. Twilight supposed it made sense since Princess Celestia would never allow them to fire real ammunitions at them.

Then the engines ‘coughed’ again. Twilight actually felt it and knew exactly what happened. The Wonderbolt airship had a team of unicorns that was trying to interfere with their engines too! She didn’t even know it was possible, but if lightning could do it, then she supposed trained unicorns could too. So, on top of firing rounds at them that would shut off their engines and give them a headache, they were casting spells on her airship. They really didn’t want them to escape!

“They know exactly what they are doing! It all happened too fast. They must have a whole strategy planned out.” She took a second to appreciate just how stupid her comment was. “Well… They are professionals.”

The airship finally leveled out, putting the strange rusted metal airship astern, but Twilight also realized that the golden hulled Wonderbolt airship followed them on their turn and kept facing it with their broadside.

“We gotta do something!” Cadance called, finally on her four hooves again.

“We gotta escape is what we gotta do!” Shinning shouted back. “We only fight if they manage to stop us!”

“Can’t you all shoot magic at them or something?” Applejack called back at Twilight, from the other side of the deck, holding to the railing with a leg and holding her hat with the other hoof.

Twilight blinked. Yes… They could! “Starlight! Help us! Try to hit the wonderbolt airship on their engines!”

“I’ll try!” She shouted back and galloped as fast as she dared in the uncertain floor and over the ropes towards the railing, soon followed by Twilight and Cadance.

Shining though looked to one side to see the metallic, somewhat rusted airship and then at the other. “We gotta do something about that other ship!”

Twilight looked back at him. “The Wonderbolts are going to keep chasing us!”

Then she turned her attention back to the wonderbolt ship. It was far away. Too far for them to hit anything with magic and still cause some damage. Both Cadance and Starlight proved this fact when they shot magical beams and missiles at the airship and neither managed to hit or simply didn’t have enough power to damage the magical components at a distance, after all, a military airship ought to have its magical engines protected.

Something hers didn’t. The more she thought about the situation, the worst is seemed to get.

“At least we tried…” Cadance frowned next to her.

“Could’ve bought an airship with guns, couldn’t you, Twi?” Rainbow leered at her from her other side.

“Actually, those are regulated. And way more expensive.” She shot back. “So, no. I couldn’t have bought an airship with guns!”

“You are a princess!” Rainbow insisted. “Possibly a goddess.”

“Not now, Rainbow!” Twilight pulled her ears back to match her friend’s.

“They’re firing again!” A crewpony shouted over their arguing and Shining’s shield manifested again with white light and his cutie mark, rippling with magical energy where the ball shots dispersed their magical effect into, but they still screamed at the noise and magical energy those things radiated.

He put a hoof on the side of his head once they were safe and he lowered his shield. “Damn…”

Suddenly the ship shook with a crunching noise. “What happened? Oh no!”

She looked back and sure enough, the metal airship that popped out of the clouds managed to hit their stern with both of their ballistae. Instants later the ropes tensed, and the airship rocked so hard it threw Twilight and the others around the deck. She was glad they had taken the time tie themselves to the main mast.

“Ooow…” She and Cadance whined with their backs to the railing.

If that wasn’t enough, she could hear her airship’s engines struggling and the coarse noise of the other airship’s engines fighting against it.

“They’ve caught us!” The Captain yelled from the wheel. “Somepony do something ‘bout those ropes or we ain’t going nowhere and their unicorns aren’t gonna keep failing to turn off our engines forever! And they’re bound to hit us eventually. Situation ain’t good in multiple ways!”

Shining Armor galloped past her, Twilight jumped to follow him, and Cadance wasn’t too far behind, both trying not to trip in all the ropes in the deck, when they reached the aft railing of her airship and could see both heavy and girthy ropes connected to the heavier airship. The bolts seemed to have fully penetrated her ship’s hull and lodged themselves in the underdeck.

“We gotta cut these ropes or get those things out!” She cried with her legs on the railing. Then she grimaced at the next thought. “I hope they didn’t hurt anypony or damage any important component.”

Worse, the ropes shone with a pink light that indicated they were enchanted. Twilight couldn’t properly analyze the spell from that far away, but she doubted getting rid of those would be easy. Then she turned her attention to the airship that trapped them.

“What is that thing?”

“It’s a converted griffon whaling ship.” Shining told her. “They’re pulling us to them!”

She noticed it too. It made sense if it used to be a whaling ship. She just didn’t want to think too long about whaling ships though. Instead, she stared at the thing, trying to figure out something about it. Find anything to exploit, but despite being rusted out in some places, her hull seemed solid and the ballistae on her bow seemed sturdy, metal-reinforced wood. She couldn’t even see where the ropes were fixated. That was when she saw a pony she thought she might never, ever see again. A grape colored obese earth pony with a brown mane put held on to the railing with his legs, glowering fiercely at her wearing some sort of backpack over his leather barding.

“We’ll get you now!” She blinked a couple of times at the sight. At least his coat did seem a lot healthier than before… “You’re not getting away this time!”

“Hum… Do you know him?” Cadance asked on her side.

“It’s a long story… Let’s just say that he doesn’t like me very much.”

Then some of his ponies showed up on the railing. With muskets. She and Cadance screamed but fortunately Cadance thought fast and summoned a bubble shield around them. Their barding might protect them, but better safe than sorry.

“Shoot back!” Shinning yelled at them, while Starlight Glimmer dived to hide behind Twilight and Cadance.

He also shot magical missiles at the ponies, but with the ship swaying one way and the other with the Captain trying to escape, more than that, the other ship’s railing had been reinforced with metal sheets. And to make things even worse, their ship was slightly above theirs. They really couldn’t be on a worse position and he kept hitting nothing but metal, and by the time her own crewponies started shooting back, Shining had already been hit a few times and only remained standing because the magic in his barding protected him.

The problem remained though, that they couldn’t hit any of their attackers.

“This is not working! We have to get ourselves free before the other ship comes in!” Her brother shouted and Twilight convinced herself they should’ve prepared better rather than keep talking about things they don’t really understand. “Twilight! Cadance! Get down there and see if you can get us free!”

Finally, Shining Armor put his shield spell on her airship’s railings and created some level of survivability for their ponies to fight back, and her ship’s crewponies gathered there to shoot their muskets other than awkwardly hiding by the stairs to the raised deck above her quarters or the protection they put around the wheel.

It didn’t surprise Twilght to see her brother taking command, but it was funny seeing Applejack and Rainbow Dash also taking command of the crew. She had never figured it out, but Rainbow actually had training on how to shoot their lever-trigger muskets. She really needed to stop underestimating Rainbow Dash.

And Applejack was Applejack. The practical farmpony that got things done.

“Come on, girls!” No time to think about that, though. Twilight cut the rope she was tied with and rushed towards the stairs down the main deck.

Cadance and Starlight mimicked and followed, fortunately avoiding the shots from the attacking airship, but the first growled loudly next to Twilight as they made their way. “We should be on the offensive! They just can’t hold their own against us!”

“We’re only two, Cadance!” Twilight shouted back over the sound of muskets and the magical engines. They passed two crewponies still using the elevated roof of the private room as cover and rushed towards the stairs to the underdeck. “They’ll overwhelm us!”

“We’ll be overwhelmed when Princesses Celestia and Luna show up! If we do something now, we’ll have a chance at escaping!”

“We’re not invincible, Cadance!” Twilight stared at her for a second before going down the stairs. Fortunately, Cadance came with, right behind Starlight Glimmer. “We won against Ponyville’s militia, but they didn’t have the Wonderbolts helping them, and neither were we on a flying airship!”

“I wasn’t there!” Cadance insisted, but Twilight ignored her.

And on her way down, she almost fell face first on the crystalized metal wall when the airship maneuvered. Once down she could immediately see the magical systems of her airship past the pantry, including the giant, pink crystal shinning blocks that were the mana batteries on either side. On the back wall the harpoon bolts pierced the hull and their four bladed broadheads secured them in place. Their unicorn crewmember, the one responsible for the magical systems used his telekinetic magic to try and dislodge the things but didn’t have a lot of luck. Looking closely the head blades were retractable and expanded well beyond the point where they pierced the hull. It seemed simply impossible to remove them without cutting them apart or around them. And they were, of course, enchanted.

“Princess!” He was a white and blue unicorn with a small cluster of stars for cutie mark and a short mohawk mane. “This thing is stuck for good!”

“Yikes!” Starlight looked at the star-shaped points. “Almost hit one of the mana batteries.”

“Can’t we cut these things out?” Twilight immediately analyzed the enchantments and didn’t waste a lot of time on it. She saw it would take a long time to dispel one of those, much more both of them! Breaking would be just as hard as they were also enchanted with all sorts of protective spells.

“These things have got to have come from the Royal Armory!” Cadance complained. “I doubt we can cut or break these in practical time, Twilight! Maybe we can cut the hull around it?”

“It is also magically reinforced, Cadance!” Twilght grimaced. “Maybe if we knew the right spells.”

“Then we’re out of options, Twilight.”

She grimaced and agreed, then she frowned because her patience was limited too. “Alright. Looks like you got your wish.”

“Let’s kick their rumps.” The other princess grinned wildly at her and turned to rush outside leaving Twilight to see her robes flowing behind her. While she followed Cadance back up, she could feel a creeping headache encroaching and Starlight was right behind her.

Almost reaching the top of the stairs she remembered they were shooting muskets with stunning magical ammunition and even if her barding would protect her, it was just stupid to rush outside like Cadance had just done.

“Cadance! Get back here!” She really felt that headache while Starlight screeched to a halt next to her and she wished she had the slightest idea of what was going on inside Cadance’s head. “Cadance!”

But she simply jumped the last two steps and hopped on the deck, beating her wings and spinning while drawing her magical bow from her back. She focused her magic through it for a second and let several fast-flying pink magical missiles that dented the metallic hull of the other airship. At least she caused the ponies and a griffon to hide behind the railing for a while and a few seemed to have pierced through and may have hit the others on the other side. But she just exposed herself!

“Riveting…” Twilight grumbled. No strategy, no preparation, just dumb impulse.

As soon as they felt safe, they went back to shoot a whole volley at her, but Cadance had already prepared herself and Twilight had to admit that the way Cadance snaked around and dodged mid-flight was rather impressive, even if she seemed to have been hit a few times.

She dove behind the airship next, though and Twilight saw a big white and gray griffon in leather armor jump off their ship, followed by two pegasi, and flew to meet her under Twilight’s ship. Cadance would have to take care of herself though because Twilight had some actually thought out and strategic spellcasting to do.

Similarly, she flew up and summoned her staff, focusing her magic through it. Her horn and the staff released six purple magic missiles, but instead of hitting the hull, hers exploded right above the railing where ponies and diamond dogs hid to reload their muskets and covered the entire front of the deck with sticky bubblegum. It was one of her favorite combat spells because it was effective, and it was a variation of a spell she had used to good effect before with those ponies.

Hopefully it would jam the firing mechanisms in their weapons, confuse and delay them a little and at least they would be forced to change their guns, and it seemed to have worked. It gave her some time to think and for her ponies to regroup.

While they angrily tried to free their weapons and rid themselves of the bubblegum Twilight turned her attention to the Wonderbolt’s ship. It still maneuvered to keep her airship under its guns’ aim, and it worried her that they hadn’t moved in to board them yet.

Suddenly her ship’s engines ‘choked’, for lack of a better word and it simply stopped under the whaling ship’s pull. She sighed and pulled her ears back. The Captain simply shrugged at her from the wheel. Fortunately, Starlight still was hunkered by the stairs to the underdeck.

“I’ll see if I can do something about it!” She yelled before she turned to go back down the stairs and Twilight took a moment to see that she was rather vulnerable and grimaced at the fact that it was sheer luck that she managed to keep flying above the airship like that. It seemed like a really dumb thing to do when everypony had firearms.

Her friends fought along the crewponies and Rainbow thankfully hadn’t done anything too rash. It was rather funny the way Rarity angrily carried a musket in her magic as though her anger might make it more powerful. At least Twilight had given then a moment or two to breathe.

Then a griffon on the whaling ship drew her attention, as he walked behind the ponies and diamond dogs trying to clean their muskets. “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”

Not only his boastful, puffed up chest and haughty gait amused Twilight, but also the reactions from the ponies and diamond dogs with the collective ‘not this again’ expression. It was a small yellow furred griffon, with black spots and a white head. He wore a belt holding a pair of griffon golden adorned revolvers and many bullets.

“What do you say, Princess?” He smiled all smug at her, while drawing and spinning his revolver on his trigger finger. “Shall we dance?”

“Nice gun, I’ll give you that. But the engraving gives you no tactical advantage whatsoever.” She smirked at him and he growled.

“I keep hearing that…”

Then she tried telekinetically grabbing his revolver from his paw and he almost lost it, with big surprised eyes while she still grinned at him.

“Whoa! Hey!” He did not like that. “I’ll show you!”

He aimed his gun at her, but Twilight acted just as quickly, anticipating him. She dropped to the deck and covered herself with her wings and a shield spell. She underestimated the effect of the stunning bullets and while she was fine after he unloaded the gun on her, the spell the bullets caused her head to feel empty. It was simply hard to connect her thoughts.

She shook her head and looked just in time to see that the griffon had jumped at her and came down with his claws first. She screamed and drew her sword out of the air to protect herself, despite her magical shield. His claws rasped on her shield and it collapsed. She was sure he would’ve reached her if her sword wasn’t in the way.

Her head was still fuzzy, and she didn’t quite know how to react next when he used his revolver to bat away at her sword and reached with his other forelimb. What saved her was Rainbow Dash, tackling the griffon away and into the floor but he distanced himself with a beat of his wings.

Next thing she knew, Cadance was back in the airship, on her back against the floor with the big griffon on top of her while she kept him away with her legs and he tried jabbing her with a crystal stun baton. She looked furious and the two pegasi just arrived seconds later.

The whole thing was not going as planned at all!

Or wouldn’t be going had they actually planned at all!

“Twi! You okay?!” Rainbow asked, still glaring at the smaller griffon, who casually reloaded his revolver and twitched it closed. She just realized she stood there doing nothing!

“Yes. Thank you.” She shook her head again and the griffon curiously holstered his weapon, which caused her to hold her next attack. It was funny when griffons used that stance, standing on their hindlegs. Their forelimbs and fingers made it a lot more practical and she remembered reading that the act of pointing was just more natural to them. Maybe that was why they were the ones that invented guns. His posture seemed that much more balanced, not to mention that griffons seem to have it easier balancing themselves with the way theirs muscle mass seemed to be distributed. Not that it would be easy, but…

What was she doing studying the griffon’s form in the middle of a fight?

“This…” He pointed a finger at her and she lowered her stance to a fighting one. “Is not going to end the way you think it is. Surrender before it gets ugly and someone gets injured for real.”

Then his finger pointed behind her and she turned to see that the Wonderbolt airship was maneuvering to approach them side by side. Fast. Her ponies still fought, though. Thanks to Shining Armor’s shield spell on the railings. Musket fire was near constant and fortunately they were too busy shooting at each other to bother with her and Rainbow Dash.

Applejack sat with her back to the railing. “This really ain’t gonna end well for us, Twilight! We gotta do something in a hurry!”

As she spoke more of the enchanted musket balls exploded against the shield spell, and it seemed to hold, but Shining Armor wasn’t fighting anymore. He just hid next to the door to the private quarters and focused on his spell with Twilight’s two guards next to him, armed with muskets and their halberds. He got the brunt of the impact and the stunning effect that ammunition would have and he just wouldn’t be able to hold much longer.

“Last chance, Princess.” The nimble griffon insisted.

A pink flash showed Cadance was done playing with the bigger griffon and he yelped, flying past them and drawing the smaller griffon’s attention. Twilight took the opportunity to cast her personal subduing spell at him. The small magical missile hit, and he screamed his surprise when he found himself enveloped in a ball of bubblegum.

It was rather amusing to see the griffon glowering at her as though she had cheated or something, or at her superior grin.

She found the other griffon with his back to the foremast, and Cadance ran at him with the bladed edge of her bow which dented into the mast with a sickening crunch after the griffon ducked and then punched Cadance in the muzzle.

“Dude! Did you just punch my wife?” Shining yeleld at him from his hiding place and the griffon stopped for a second looking at Shining Armor and then Cadance rubbing her muzzle, and then back at Shining Armor.

“She almost killed me!” He gestured at Cadance’s bow still stuck to the mast.

Instants later she thrust her horn on his chest with a shock spell that sent him sliding on the crystalized metal deck all the way to the magically enhanced railing.

“Uh… My bad…” Shining added.

Meanwhile Cadance angrily pulled and swung her enchanted bow at the female pegasus that jumped out of the way and the other kept his distance, both rearing to attack her with those stunning magical rods. She was about to join Cadance when she heard the unmistakable raspy laughing of the Wonderbolt commander and turned to see her flying above them with several of her colleagues wearing a streamlined version of the Royal Guard armor that Twilight had never seen. It seemed lighter despite the additional armor and… Weapons attached to forelegs and their sides.

“You’re going down, Rainbow Crash!” She laughed while she and her wingponies zoomed above and threw something that Twilight didn’t quite see at the distance.

Shining rose his shield spell again and covered most of the ship with it. Little balls exploded one by one on his shield. It lasted for a few seconds more before Shining collapsed to the floor.

“Captain Armor!” White Leaf dropped her musket and yelled at him, shaking him in her hooves as Twilight and Cadance rushed to them. The later called his name and the others gave her space. Just to be sure, Twilight took one last look around. Rainbow had come with them and both griffons were still out. The two pegasi rushed forward when Shining collapsed and Cadance was distracted, but they didn’t seem confident enough to attack when Twilight’s crewponies came to help with their own stunning rods.

The worst part of it was that Shining’s spell on the railings collapsed and that caught her friends and crewponies unaware. They started dropping too fast for her to follow, hit by the musket fire from the whaling ship. Thank goodness those were stunning bullets.

Then Cadance growled angrily while her shorn charged up with power and unleashed a wave of magical energy that coalesced into a bubble shield enveloping the airship.

Things immediately calmed down as the Wonderbolts outside couldn’t get in and the shield stopped the musket balls from reaching them.

“This is bad!” Rainbow shrieked next to them. “The engines are out, and we’re stuck in here! Cadance can’t keep this up forever!”

As though answering to her, the obese pony on the converted whaler ship pointed a hoof at them. “Keep shooting! They can’t hold forever!”

And adding to that, Spitfire signaled to their airship while hovering above them. Twilight didn’t need to understand their signal language to know she was ordering the ship to go back to pummeling them.

Her friends seemed to be fine, though, staring at her, grouped together while the pegasi carried their stunned crewmates to the underdeck and Starlight stared at her from the stair downwards.

“Can’t do anything, Twilight.” She shook her head, all defeat. “Our unicorn says the ship engines are out for at least three hours until he’s cleaned them of the magic disruption.”

“Can we help?” Cadance asked, sitting on the floor and holding Shining Armor who snored, peacefully and softly.

“I don’t think that you can, Princess! This thing is complicated, and he is the only one that knows how to purge the magical systems without damaging the imprinted spells.”

“I should have studied about it at some time…” Twilight grumbled to herself.

“Well, we’ll hold our ground!” Rainbow shouted, all determined and hoofing at the floor. “They may beat us, but it won’t be without a fight.”

Just as soon as she closed her mouth the cannons in the Wonderbolt airship sounded again. Much closer. Twilight didn’t have a clue if the distance influenced the effectiveness of the magical disruption enchantment in their ammunition, but Cadance yelped with the impact on her shield, and glared at the airship.

“That hurt! It wasn’t as bad when King Sombra tried to enter my shield!”

“They’re using magic disruption. It’s a wide-spectrum form of counterspell rather than trying to overwhelm your magic.” Twilight walked to her. “It’s how you’re supposed to do it, actually. King Sombra was the one that didn’t know what he was doing.”

Rarity frowned. “Is it not illegal to shoot at sentient beings with magical disruption ammunition?”

“They’re not shooting at us!” Twilight explained. “They’re shooting the airship with shells that explode before impact. It you shoot a magical bullet of that sort at a creature… We don’t know what happens, but it can’t be good. The thing is that the exploding shells release the spell in a wide area, and it messes with your magical senses. The intention is to overwhelm your magical senses so much that you shut off… Or something like that. It’s the same with the ship’s engines. Like casting a stunning spell to disrupt the imprinted magic that makes them work.”

“Thanks Twilight…” Pinkie walked closer too. “We really, really, really needed to know all that. Now, how do we deal with it?”

“Well, the thing is that we can’t.” She glowered at the pink pony. “That is why it is a good strategy: they force us to attack because it’s going to drain our defenses, but we can’t attack.”

“Maybe it is a good time to surrender.” The small griffon casually reminded her from his bubblegum prison and the bigger griffon, tied next to him stared blankly at the horizon. The two pegasi that had followed him were also tied next to them and the colt seemed dejected, while the mare seemed passively angry.

“We ain’t talking to you all.” Applejack pulled the rope, finishing to tie up the male pegasus. “Are we seriously just gonna stand here and hope Princess Cadance can hold the shield for long enough?”

“We may not have a choice, AJ.” Twilight insisted.

“I’ll go see if I can help our unicorn crewpony anyway.” Starlight said and turned to go back down. “You better stay here and keep things under control.”

Twilight nodded and looked around. Things seemed to be under control inside Cadance’s shield: her crewponies took their unconscious mates to the safety of the underdeck and now hurried to defensive positions, her friends surrounded her, Cadance kept the shield up and sat on the floor with Shining Armor sleeping peacefully in her hooves. Outside the shield the ponies and diamond dogs in the whaling ship kept shooting at them, certainly trying to wither down the shield which unfortunately didn’t break the ropes.

She grimaced. She ought to be thankful the ropes didn’t disrupt the shield in any noticeable way.

Spitfire retreated back to the Wonderbolt airship, which was closer, but simply kept in its place, and shot volley after volley of enchanted ammunition at them.

It was just an awkward situation. “Uh… Does anypony have any ideas?”

“Did we really go to the Changeling Rock, and then ran all the way from Ponyville to Baltimare just to get stuck inside a shield?” Spike lashed out with open arms. “Come on! You guys gotta do something!”

“Don’t you worry, Spikey.” Rarity waved a hoof at him, unworried. “We have been in worse situations and found a way out.”

“Why don’t we ransom them out for our freedom?” Cadance nodded at their prisoners. “It was something that was done liberally in the past.”

“Because we’re not in the past anymore?” Twilight raised an eyebrow at her. What was she thinking? That Princess Celestia was going to pay gold or something for her griffon… Who were they?

She approached the group. The big griffon definitively looked like some sort of ex-military with that ugly scar of his. Most likely, a veteran from the Second Griffon War. The other griffon was smaller and younger, with a completely different coat pattern and Twilight didn’t think they were father and son. Probably simple partners in profession. The two pegasi were another story. They didn’t seem like Royal Guards either. Maybe they were from the Ponyville Militia since she saw Lord Grape Donut in the airship. The mare’s muzzle looked a bit awkward. “What happened to you?”

“What do you think, genius?” She barked. “Your stupid friend broke my muzzle! They gave me a healing potion and sent me to catch you!”

“Hey!” Rainbow approached them. “First of all, calling Twilight a genius is an actual fact. And second, you asked for it!”

“Who are you guys?” Twilight insisted.

The big griffon answered. “We’re mercenaries, Princess. Bounty hunters most of the time. These two pegasi are with Ponyville’s town militia. Princess Celestia hired us to help train the militia and part of it is apprehending you and your cohorts. So, could you please? I’m not even getting paid for this, but to train them.”

“He’s the one that tried to arrest me in my house.” Rainbow chuckled.

“Really cool trick you did with the ice, Rainbow Dash.” The griffon complimented her. “Griffons can’t do that.”

Rainbow took a moment to bask in her ego and Twilight nodded at the information, then the griffon spoke again. “Flying Snake, Princess. That one is Ocelot.”

“I don’t know you.” She put a hoof on her chin, staring at the griffon and he wasn’t exactly worried.

“You only know royal sponsored knights, Princess. They aren’t real mercenaries. They want fame and recognition more than money since the Crown sponsors them.”

“Mercenaries you say?” Rarity approached with what Twilight supposed was a seductive grin. “What if we pay you extra to leave us alone? Maybe even distract the Wonderbolts for us? Hum?”

“It doesn’t really work like that ma’am.” The smaller griffon deadpanned. “We have a reputation to keep.”

“They’re mercenaries, Lady Rarity, but we are with the Ponyville militia.” The pegasus colt said proudly and the mare huffed. “We are loyal to Princess Celestia.”

“Shouldn’t you guys be loyal to Twilight?” Spike grunted. “I mean… You live in Ponyville. And she lives there…”

“It’s not like that Spike. Princess Celestia’s, authority kinda trumps mine. Actually, I’m only the fourth Princess of Equestria. Ponies usually don’t care about that, but it’s apparently kind of important when we’re fighting against each other.”

The Wonderbolt airship fired its guns at them again and Cadance’s shield held, as did she, if she did groan angrily again and stared at the ship as though she could murder it.

“Are you gonna be okay, Cadance?” Twilight worried Cadance’s recent experience might impact on her ability to keep focus. She might end up hurting herself, but regardless, Cadance nodded at her.

“Not exactly what I intended to do, but this is what we got.”

“Will you guys just give up? This whole mess is your fault!” The pegasus mare lashed out. “And you’re screwed. You can’t just hold this thing forever.”

“Actually, it’s all Celestia’s and Luna’s fault.” Cadance glared at her.

“Whatever.” The pegasus rolled her eyes. “It’s ‘you’ princesses. I just want this mess done with so that I can go home, get my muzzle fixed, sue the Royal House, buy a mansion in Cloudsdale and never see these losers or you alicorn jerks ever again!”

Twilight’s ears flopped and her cheeks seemed so hot. “It that what ponies think?”

“No, it’s not, Princess!” The mare was going to say something else, but the colt cut her off. “I mean, we think you’re wrong, but it’s not like that. She’s just callous.”

Then he turned to her. “Come on, Candy! How can you say that? Things are finally looking up to us!”

“Just shut up, Flight Worthy! It’s not looking up for us! We still live in the same dump of a little town where nopony gives a Bit about us and we’re still stuck fighting a fight we can’t win because some jerk princess that doesn’t give a damn about us can’t sit her flank in her throne and not create trouble!”

Twilight’s eyes pointed to the deck and she hoofed mindlessly at it. “It’s not my job to worry about you guys. I’m sorry. I never knew that my being there was such a stress for you. Nopony ever complained about anything to me… I would’ve helped if I knew there was a problem!”

Twilight felt too awful to say anything else and Applejack came to her. “Stop defending yourself, sugar cube. That pony there is just angry.”

“Do you want to know what the problem with you is, Miss Crush?” The griffon, of all the present spoke. “You think that everyone is wrong so that you don’t have to see that you are wrong. If you want things to get better, you have to change too. You are not good at your work, certainly not better than the others, but your Lord Protector at least is trying his best. All of them are. That is why I am helping. That is why Princess Celestia gave you guys another chance. You are surrounded with good ponies but you can’t see past your petty bullshit.”

It helped hearing that, but Twilight almost gasped when Cadance approached the tied-up mare and her ears fell at the stare she received from the Princess.

“You should be quiet.” Cadance stared down the little pegasus. “You don’t understand what you’re talking about. But even more because you are offending me and my friends while you are not in a position to be rude. And your griffon friend is right.”

The other airship fired its cannons again and Cadance winced when the magical balls exploded against her shield, but she held it, giving the belligerent mare a final stare before returning to Twilight and friends.

“She’s right, though…” Applejack spoke first. “I reckon Princess Cadance, as powerful as she is, just plain can’t hold the shield up forever.”

“Yeah…” Rainbow agreed. “We gotta do something!”

“Even if the crewponies manage to restart the engines, we’re still stuck to the whaling ship and the Wonderbolts won’t let us leave!” Fluttershy didn’t strike Twilight as very confident in their ability to deal with the present situation. “What are we going to do?”

“I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do!” Twilight tried her best at sounding brave, it was the least she should do for her friends. “We are not going to give up! We’ve come too far and the more we learn, the more we need to learn. There is just no stopping now!”

“We like your enthusiasm, Princess…” White Leaf told her, all worried and most of the others agreed. “But I don’t think that we are in a good position.”

She seemed to mean to speak more, but the Wonderbolt airship fired again and distracted them. Though it seemed too soon, and it sounded different too.

“That sounded different.” She turned to the railing and the golden-hulled airship didn’t seem to have fired just yet.

“That was thunder!” Rainbow followed her more closely than the others, also looking past the railing.

“I could swear that storm is following us…” Rarity mused as they stared at the storm they had seen last night.

“Against the wind!” Rainbow confirmed.

Past the Wonderbolt’s airship the dark clouds definitively had moved to place the former in between them. Then something poked out of the storm. Long black polished metal hull, the airship had a flat top with what looked like a large entrance in the rounded-flat top and above it a series of windows. Its hull widened in the rear in two short and fat wings that seemed to house the thing’s magical engines. It had a pair of white and black wings painted on top of it, following its hull and a jet black ‘beack’ that made for a wicked battering ram. As it shed the storm, like a snake shedding its skin, its hull attracted lightning that run on it and released on the ground bellow with its engines roaring louder still, like an angry storm when they spun up to give it speed.

And it was big!

“What is that thing?” Rarity gasped.

“That is a Ragnarok class warship, Lady Rarity.” The older griffon obliged. “That one in particular is the Skoll. It seems that The Lion wants to chat. You really should be worrying about leaving. As fast as you can.”

“On the contrary.” Cadance grinned. “I think we might want to indulge.”

“What do we do, lass?” The Captain stared at the flying monstrosity and then at Twilight.

“Not much we can do; stuck the way we are.” She shrugged, even if she had been thinking that things are going a bit too far. “I suppose we’ll see what happens for now. Maybe the griffons will help us.”

“I don’t think you’re giving the situation the seriousness it warrants, Princess.” The griffon complained. “Those are the bad guys that want a war to separate Griffonia from the Equestrian Confederacy. And in case you haven’t noticed, they have a monster of a warship coming straight for you!”

“That is not what they want, though…” Rainbow approached.

“For feather’s sake!” Snake cried. “You don’t know what you are dealing with! They are nuts! Princess Celestia thinks that The Lion wants to be friends, but these griffons are biggest nutcases in this world and that is not a good thing as you might think!”

“It sounds as though you know something…” Twilight mused. “Why don’t you tell us?”

“It’s complicated!” The griffon told her, but rather than pressing further, Twilight’s ears perked up when she noticed that Wonderbolt airship had stopped firing at them.

It started maneuvering to deal with the much larger and heavier griffon airship, but it was already on a position of disadvantage because it seemed that nopony had been paying much attention to the clouds that day!

In their defense, nopony expected an airship to come out of a storm.

While a magical beacon shot up from the Wonderbolt airship, the side on Skoll’s armor opened and cannons started firing. The former was a much nimbler airship and, despite the bad start, was already on a position it could fire its cannons from the port side at the griffon warship. They fired at each other at the same time and while the shots exploded on the warship’s hull its own shots exploded on a golden shield that manifested around the other airship upon impact.

Twilight really didn’t expect to see anything like that today and this griffon airship completely changed everything. She needed some time to think.

***

Bored out of his mind, Chocolate Velvet still sat at the deep end of his new cell. He could feel the airship vibrating when its engines spun up and hear the cannons firing. He sighed. Not knowing exactly what was going on sucked and he at least hoped that Celestia would pluck him out of there before scuttling that smelly airship.

He almost startled when the door on the corridor outside his new cell opened and a griffon came inside. It was the green griffon from before.

He grinned internally… Well, well, well… What do you know?

“Do you have the authority to accept a deserter for asylum?” He seemed so serious and wasted no time, going straight to business with his whistling accent.

“Yes…” The alicorn’s eyebrow raised. “I do. And Celestia is bound to listen to me, anyways.”

“Excellent. I’ll help you out of the warship and you put up a good word with the Mare for me.”

“Sounds like a deal.” He grinned, though the griffon didn’t.

Regardless, he did open the cell with no delay using the keys he produced from under his wing. Chocolate walked up and lowered his head, looking up at the hornring. The griffon took a second to understand, but he reached with his paw and effortlessly slid it off.

“Thanks.” Chocolate offered him a hoof and the griffon hesitated for a second. Bumped it with a closed fist, but seemed like he was going to puke. Curious, but something for another time.

“There. Let’s go. It’s a contained chaos, but the crew is bound to notice an alicorn roaming free. I assume you can melt faces off with your magic?”

“I would be more comfortable with a weapon.” The griffon was ready and handed him a griffon-made revolver from under his wing. Plain black metal, six bullets, none of which felt non-lethal to his magical senses. “I guess not killing is not an option.”

The griffon simply gave him a blank expression. “Shoot them where it hurts, not where it kills.”

His medically trained mind objected, but he didn’t think the griffon would care as he was about to open the door after peeking from it.

“So, do you actually have a plan?”

“Yes. Fly to the Princess’ airship and say you accepted my defection.”

“Well, at least it is a simple plan…” Chocolate grumbled.

“Simple works best of all. Especially because plans are bound to fail anyway. Let’s go. I told the idiots guarding this door that I needed additional soldiers to take on the Wonderbolts and they fell for it like milking cubs.”

“I get the feeling there’s a story behind this…”

“No.” He turned and stared sarcastically. “I simply woke up this morning feeling like it would be fun to betray my race.”

“What about your friend?” Maybe he was a bit uncertain about the griffon and his motivation, but he felt like probing it just a little.

The griffon stopped for a second and stared blankly at the door. “I suppose we’re not quite as friendly as we once were. Let’s say that your pony friendship magic doesn’t quite work when your kind thinks of you as inferior.”

Chocolate decided it would be better to save his questions for later, the griffon finally opened the door to an unguarded corridor, and they left.

***

“Are we gonna do something or not?” Rainbow fidgeted next to Twilight.

They still watched as the two flying ships maneuvered circling around, up and down, with the lighter and nimbler airship leading the dance and staying ahead of the big warship’s firing arc most of the time. It seemed that the griffons managed to mount heavy cannons in a way that they could be swiveled and that gave it an advantage that allowed to take potshots at the Wonderbolt airship a lot more frequently that Twilight was comfortable with, even if they never managed to fire their full broadside at them. Every shot exploded violently though.

Another thing she noticed is that the griffon airship seemed to be a bit more advanced than she’d expect. She was used to seeing pony ‘technology’ as the most advanced. That was why they invented the modern airships, the modern spells that allowed for all sorts of industrial applications. It worried her that nothing in that airship seemed particularly ‘pony’ to her. From the way she was built, all closed-up, to the weird magic her engines radiated and the way her cannons sounded different. In fact, that thing didn’t look at all as one of the more usual converted airships she’d expect warships to be.

Not to mention that even if her own airship wasn’t built from scratch it followed that same philosophy of the naval vessels. The griffon airship followed a completely different idea.

“I don’t like this. They’re firing real ammunition at the Wonderbolts, aren’t they?” She turned the Captain.

“They sure are, lass. Never seen anything like it either. They’re firing explosive ammunition like I’ve never saw; faster than any crew I’ve ever met. Also, that thing doesn’t like to turn, but it’s got so much armor everywhere that it can just sit still and take punishment. Reminds me of the mares o’ war they used in the war, but that thing is a lot scarier. An’ can fly.”

“Twilight?” Rainbow insisted.

“I don’t know if we can do anything, Rainbow.” Applejack answered for her since Twilight still had her worried stare over the griffon airship. She had heard Rainbow, but the situation seemed to have gotten a bit out of hoof. Or a lot. Could she be responsible for any injuries those Wonderbolts suffered? Not directly, of course. And not like she feared legal repercussions, but she didn’t want anypony being hurt because of her.

“Are we safe in here?” Fluttershy sounded worried too.

“Well, we are under Cadance’s shield, sugar cube. It is a bit like it was in the Crystal Empire… But I suppose we ought to do something soon… I’m just not sure what.”

“Why don’t we try to talk to the ponies and the diamond dogs in that ship?” Pinkie pointed at the griffon whaling ship. “Now that the griffon ship showed up, they might be willing to talk!”

“They’re way more loyal than that.” The big griffon chuckled. “If anything, they want to get this job done quicker. And if I were you, surrender would be preferable to ending on those griffons’ claws.”

“Who are they?” Twilight asked.

“It’s either The Lion or his kid. And neither are exactly friendly to your kind, Princess.”

“How do you know so much about that airship? And you keep saying that they are bad. Princess Celestia said that him becoming king of the griffons is fine.”

“I don’t work only for you ponies.” The mercenary said. “About two years ago, I was hired to find out what the northerners were doing with the iron they plucked out of the mountains. During that mission I happened upon a changeling spy from a team that Chrysalis had sent to figure out what was going on in the north and he shared some information his team had found. They built that monster in a secret shipyard under a crazy bitch called Gallensa. We told the changelings who that was since they wanted to extract the location of the shipyard from her and sabotage the place. We were going to help, but they followed her trail to Griffindel, and after that we never heard from them again.”

“The changelings probably left you and went back to the Changeling Rock.” Twilight mused. “Not to mention that even with Celestia’s support the Griffonian Standing Army might side with the Chancellor. They may have to fight a civil war. They are preparing for it.”

“We found their heads outside of Griffindell!” The griffon shook his head. “This is not a game, Princess! You ponies don’t understand what is going on! Those griffons have a weird personality cult around the Lion and his mate and some weird ideal about the purity of their blood! I don’t know what their ultimate goal is, but they don’t need a monster like that to take a city like Griffonstone! Wake up!”

His words caused ponies to gasp and Twilight reeled back a step. “Maybe… Maybe they want to use it as a deterrent! To ensure that no one will resist The Lion being crowned king.”

“How come I’ve never been involved in this?” Twilight jumped, startled with Cadance’s anger. “They have probably been buying raw materials for magical components from the Crystal Empire for years and this is the first I’ve heard of this!”

“Cadie, calm down. Please.” Shining was awake, and approached her, but didn’t look too well, despite his attempt at calming her. “I understand why you’re angry, but now is not the time.”

Cadance cried his name and hugged him while he smiled a bit groggily and petted the back of her neck with a hoof.

“Are you okay, Shining?” Twilight asked him in the meanwhile.

“Yeah… Their magical disruption shots put me down for a while, but I’m fine.” Then his ears perked up. “Whoa! What is that thing?”

“A griffon warship…” Twilight pointed. “It came out of that storm.”

“Oh boy… they’re fighting the Wonderbolts?”

“Hey, Captain Armor?” The older, bigger griffon called with a smirk. “Will you convince your dear sister and you lovely wife that thing is trouble, and we should be trying to leave?”

Shining didn’t look very excited at the angry stare he got from Cadance and Twilight stared at him, but inquisitively. “Yeah… I’m inclined to agree.”

“Princesses, when you left Ponyville, Princess Celestia hired me and my team to train the militia. We ended up coming after you and Princess Celestia had my airship teleported in on Baltimare. Well, a few hours later I got a message from her saying that griffons had hijacked the facility and teleported in that monstrosity. And it went after you. We teamed up with the Wonderbolts to ambush you guys here because we wanted to catch you before that airship and Princess Celestia had a fleet searching for it, but they seem to have missed it. Princess Celestia had also sent Prince Chocolate Velvet to flush you out before the griffons arrived at Haybale.”

“Oh… Yeah…” Cadance stared at the floor and rubbed her legs together. “I should have mentioned that…”

“You think?!” Twilight squeaked. “That was what happened in Haybale?”

“Chocolate let me go in Haybale… I thought it wasn’t important or that we should try to contact the griffons, especially because Celestia didn’t want us to come into contact with them and I figured at the time they could have information about the Harpy and the Alicorns.” She said sheepishly, and Twilight was about to tell her how much she screwed up and she didn’t understand why she had done that, but Fluttershy spoke sooner.

“Guys! Look!” Fluttershy’s wings flared as she pointed at the griffon airship and it took Twilight an instant or two before she realized what she was seeing. Flying creatures, most likely griffons, ran from under the raised part on the aft and took flight. Countless black dots. All the while their airship was hit repeatedly by the Wonderbolt airship.

“That looks dangerous with the airships shooting and moving around.” Pinkie said, and it was quite obvious, thus nopony else said anything. Instead they simply watched powerless to do anything as the griffons swarmed the gold hulled airship and it seemed as though there was a fierce exchange of musket fire as the smoke that was already forming up because of the cannons firing started becoming like a mist. Then Twilight and her friends gasped as black dots started falling from the sky.

“Calm… Calm down girls.” Her stomach felt like a cold pit at the sight, but Twilight knew that they ought to be using non-lethal ammunition too. “They’re using stunning bullets and their instincts will force their wings open to soften the fall… At worse they’ll be a bit hurt…”

Then a voice called from the whaling ship. A white female griffon with yellow head pointed at the skirmish in the distance. “Snake! That is messed up! They won’t be ignoring us for long!”

“I know!” The big griffon tied down on her airship nodded to her and friends. “Get these stupid ponies to understand we gotta go!”

“No.” Cadance frowned. “I want to talk to them. Twilight?”

She let a gasp escape at the sound of her name. She hadn’t even noticed until it hurt, but she bit her lip, looking at Cadance and then at the big griffon. Then she looked at Cadance again and her friends. What was she supposed to do? Ideally, they should escape, but that didn’t seem likely with the Magic of Friendship stuck to the heavy whaling ship. Not to mention that if the Wonderbolt airship fired off a magical beacon, they expected reinforcements. Princess Celestia was bound to show up at any time. And what Mister Snake had said resonated from the back of her mind.

“They don’t want to talk, dumbass!” The white griffon lady shouted from the other ship. “They hijacked a teleporter to bring a warship! For feather’s sake!”

Rarity approached Twilight, still wearing her stylish gambeson, and with her sword drawn. “These griffons are with The Lion. They must have information about Emperor Grigor. Maybe even about what caused Princess Celestia to decide for changing our historical records. They may even have more information about the griffon invasion to Equestria, about what happened to Star Swirl and the others and how did the Princesses come to rule Equestria. This is flirting with danger, but it is quite exciting, and we have been doing that for quite some time now. It could get us some answers.”

“They may have something that will force Princess Celestia and Luna to open up about all that!” Cadance insisted.

“Twilight…” Applejack seemed serious. “Cadance and that ‘Snake’ griffon told us that Princess Celestia sent Chocolate Velvet to spook us from Haybale, where you met a griffon with stuff that interested you. Then this here warship showed up and they came after us. They must have known we’d be in Haybale. They used Miss Goodread and Sunburst to set this up, for crying out loud!”

“Applejack is right!” Shining grimaced. “I told you guys it was a trap!”

“Because they wanted to meet us!” Cadance hoofed angrily at the floor. “It doesn’t mean they mean us harm!”

Then Twilight realized something that worried her even more. “What if they have Chocolate Velvet?”

“Oh, crud.” Applejack pulled her hat to her face and grumbled some more. “He can take care of himself! If anything, he put himself in danger so that you all insane ponies don’t get hurt!”

Someone knocked on the shield and they looked up to see a rather big griffon wearing an intricately adorned armor with gray fur adornments and a greatsword on his back. Purple coat and mustard head with golden eyes full of superior glee, he hovered just outside of it. He was also surrounded with mean looking griffons in black and golden armor carrying the griffon revolver muskets and other weapons. He was also accompanied by other more distinctive griffons, but the one that really drew Twilight’s attention was the yellow and white one with a light, form-fitting armor of golden plates and several crystals attached to it. She waved wiggling her fingers, and Twilight really didn’t like her grin one bit.

“Well met, your highnesses.” He smirked and spoke with an accent. “I would have presented myself more formally, but the present situation is rather unorthodox, and I believe better presentations can wait. I am Grigory, Heir to the Lion, and this beautiful griffoness here is my mate, Lady Gallensa. May we perhaps be of assistance?”

“Uhhhhhhhh….” Was all that Twilight managed to say as her ears gradually fell to the sides of her head. “Yes… Greetings? Uh…”

“Can you get us rid of that thing?” Cadance pointed at the whaling ship, where the ponies and diamond dogs stopped firing, and the griffon lady looked ready to murder somepony with the way she stared at them.

“Yes.” The griffon replied casually, then directed his attention at their griffon prisoner. “Greetings, Master Flying Snake.”

“Go fuck yourself.” The other said with the same murderous stare, but Grigory ignored that.

“I believe it would benefit all of us if you told your associates to release the Princess’ airship. You see, the Skoll’s cannons cannot be loaded with magical disruption shells and it would make for a poor first impression with the Princesses if I ordered those ponies and diamond dogs killed.”

“I have a better idea, you brat!” Spitfire showed up with an escort of some twelve pegasi with the same armor she wore, also carrying weapons. “How about we sit our asses here, until Princess Celestia shows up with the rest of the fleet and then you can go home with whatever is left of your dad’s airship once she’s done whooping your ass! I mean, I would do it myself, but I don’t want the political mess and it is the Princess job to keep you noble plotholes in line anyways!”

Of course, griffons pointed guns at pegasi that did the same and neither side seemed particularly intimidated while Twilight regretted more and more past events that led to that point.

“Captain, with all due respect, I believe you will find that the Skoll is quite formidable and more than prepared to hold its own against any of your antiquated converted airships.”

“How about we throw a party?” All of them stared at Pinkie Pie, who grinned widely. “A Let’s Not Kill Each Other Party?”

After a short silence, attentions returned to the impasse.

“Anyway… It’s your funeral, chicken-head.” Spitfire turned to leave, but then she faced Twilight and Cadance. “This is all your fault. Just so you know, this is all your fault!”

Fortunately, instead of shooting each other right there, Spitfire retreated towards her airship. Twilight could still see them fighting in the distance and it seemed bad. She had to keep reminding herself that they weren’t actually injuring each other too much. At least the airships stopped firing at each other, and that was something good, she figured.

“Regardless, I believe it is a better idea for you both to come aboard the Skoll. I intend on escorting you to an ancient site that would be related to your research.”

“I would rather go there on my own airship if that would be possible.” Twilight did her best not to show but she didn’t like that idea and hopefully Cadance wouldn’t do anything stupid. She didn’t fully trust that griffon and while the ‘bait’ was very good, she feared that Mister Snake’s argument was too good to ignore. Not to mention that if she left her friends behind, they would be at the Princesses’ mercy and she couldn’t fully trust them either. What a situation to be in… Not to mention, Naminé. Discord was adamant they must see her. “I would rather stay with my friends. The situation with Mister Snake’s airship notwithstanding for the moment.”

Before Grigory could answer an intense itch enveloped Twilight’s horn. So much that she simply couldn’t hold the impulse to scratch it with a hoof. “Ooow! What is this?!”

A quick glance around let her see that the other horned ponies felt the same and the pegasi shuffled their wings as though they suffered from a similar predicament and so did the griffons. In fact, it got so bad that Twilight’s entire body seemed to itch.

“Oh no!” Her eyes shot wide open as soon as she understood what was happening.

A deep boom followed, and the ensuing shockwave cleared away the clouds. It pushed the griffons away, but they controlled their flight soon enough. What really worried twilight now was that the area to their right, or starboard as The Captain would insist, where there once was empty space was occupied by an entire fleet of airships with golden hulls, except for one monstrosity of a white airship with golden ornaments and the sun on her sails that could only be Celestia’s.

Cadance’s right eye trembled just a bit and she squeaked like a terrified bathtub duckie. “Did she just teleport the entire fleet?!”

Before freaking out Twilight turned to the griffon prince. “I hope you have a plan because mine was running away as fast as I could!”

He seemed unconcerned. “Not to worry. I have a prisoner I intended to use for something else, but I should be able to use him to force Princess Celestia to capitulate.”

“I imagine you wanted to use Chocolate Velvet to force me onboard your ship…” Twilight gave him an unfriendly stare, but he met it casually.

“The thought never crossed my mind, Princess.”

Then Twilight counted exactly half a second when they looked up at the sound of frantically flapping wings and saw the brown alicorn flying overhead accompanied by a green griffon in armor. Going straight to the newly arrived airship fleet.

There was another moment of silence until one of Grigory’s companions, a white owl-looking griffoness with caramel markings spoke with a raspy voice and a level of astonishment. “Wow. That plan crumbled on multiple levels and faster than Gewehr’s pickup lines.”

Despite the seriousness of the situation Cadance giggled at that and Twilight figured she would like to meet that Gewehr guy.

“First time for you guys?” Rainbow actually looked bored. “Twilight could probably write a book about all the times we planned for something and it all went south.”

Another griffon said something that Twilight didn’t understand. The big one, almost black fur under his black and gold armor and with a white head told him watching the pair flying towards the fleet.

“We have to get out of here!” Twilight shrieked. “Now!”

“Things have changed.” Grigory was not too worried. “I will order the Skoll to open fire. Get your friends out of the way if you want them to live, mercenary.”

Grigory was going to say something, but Celestia’s amplified voice interrupted him. “Good morning, Master Grigory! Would you mind not hurting my ponies, please?”

The griffon sighed and muttered something under his breath while one of the crewponies brought her a spyglass and she could see the princess on the big ship holding a megaphone with her telekinetic magic and waving with a wing, next to Luna and Chrysalis. “Also, if you surrender, I promise I will not tell your father that you took out his secret airship that should not exist!”

Grigory’s mate told him something, but unfortunately Twilight didn’t understand, because she looked and sounded angry at him despite his calm response.

Then Luna poked at her sister and said something. Celestia nodded and spoke again. “I also promise I will help you pay for all the money EQMagical wants to charge your family for the illegal use of the teleporter, damages and lost revenue! Including all the charges of conspiracy and treason! Oh! And damages to the young mare your girlfriend hurt. Was there anything else Luna?”

She turned to Luna and the three of them started discussing over something. Chrysalis wings buzzed and she stomped the floor while Luna made some gestures with a hoof, but Celestia shook her head and said something. It seemed like they would be entertained for some time.

Again, there was silence around Twilight.

“Seriously, dude?” Rainbow screeched and the two griffons on the deck started laughing.

Twilight worried though. That griffon didn’t look happy at all. He scowled and grabbed his big friend by the gorget of his armor to speak angrily in that language she didn’t understand. It did sound like the common Griffonese, which was exotic in itself but she could understand enough. This language of theirs sounded very different and at the same time similar. She exchanged a glance with Cadance and she shrugged.

“Grigory, you’re acting like a damn child!” The mercenary Snake called him. “Admit you’ve made a mistake and earn some of Lord Gilad's honor for yourself by actually acting like an adult!”

“Silence, mercenary. Lest I remind you degenerate traitor to your race of all the ways I can hurt you!” He roared back and Twilight worried even more that not only they seemed to be in a bad spot, but the big scary griffon was starting to lose his composure. Mister Snake, though, fell silent but didn’t seem very happy.

To make things worse his big friend told Grigory something in their language, but he only shoved him and yelled at him, pointing at Princess Celestia’s airship. That was no way to talk to one's friend and never a good sign. The big griffon made a series of complex signs with his paws at the airship and Twilight imagined they would be watching from there with a spyglass or something. Then Grigory ordered the others around and they followed him around Cadance’s shield.

“What’s you all’s story with that griffon?” Applejack asked the two stuck on her airship’s deck, but Mister Snake wasn’t on a very agreeable mood.

“Not willing to share stories right now, farmpony.”

“Sheesh… Salty griffon.” Pinkie complained. “What do we do now, Twilight?”

Twilight turned to the Capitan. “We run. Full-speed as soon as we’re free and our engines are running again.”

He nodded and rushed back to his position controlling the helm while Twilight turned to her friends. “Be ready to defend the airship again.”

She took a second to look at them acknowledging her direction and they seemed fine. Cadance seemed a bit tired, but she was holding the shield and she was sure that she would be fine for some time yet. The others weren’t as tired as they were during the fight in Ponyville so they should hold for a while. The problem was that if Grigory couldn’t hold back Princess Celestia’s airship they’d be several times out of their league.

For the moment she’d focus on watching Grigory’s griffons taking care of the Mister Snake’s airship. They flew underneath it, far from the reach of their guns and then jumped onboard from the sides. It seemed like an effective tactic, even if the big griffon lady onboard the ship had everypony and the diamond dogs retreat underdeck rather than defend the airship.

“I swear, if they hurt my mate, I’m going to lean all I can on Princess Celestia to get you to pay.” The big griffon told her, but Cadance answered before Twilight could.

“Well, there was nothing stopping you guys from giving up.”

The griffons with Grigory chased them as three of them entered the small hut-like house where the wheel was located, and they dragged out a diamond dog they threw to the floor and Twilight couldn’t see anymore. Meanwhile the remaining ones grabbed axes from the ship’s own supply of tools and started hacking at the support structures for the ballistae and whatever held the ropes secured.

“I’m sorry, Mister Snake.” Twilight turned to him but made sure to keep a serious expression. “Our mission is important.”

He didn’t answer, but his expression did soften up a bit. Twilight couldn’t really read what his thoughts might be, but the pegasus mare was livid.

“I hope you get your crowns taken away, and then that you get arrested! Although I bet that Princess Celestia would still protect you two!”

Finally, the griffon airship, the Skoll, opened fire against Princess Celestia’s. They heard the resonant boom of cannons firing and Twilight could swear she heard the shots whizzing by, but they collided with a magical shield rather than the airship itself.

“How come these airships have magical shields and yours don’t Twilight?” Rarity turned to her after watching the fireworks of the shots exploding midair.

“Hum… There wasn’t a box named ‘magical shields’ in the form when I bought mine?”

The large white and gold airship fired back with a thundering roar of its own and a series of magical flares shot up. The fleet started maneuvering with the increasing noise of magical engines spinning up. Twilight realized she was in the middle of what likely was the first real airship battle in history. Also, her first time seeing warships firing for effect. A single salvo of those would likely reduce her airship to a collection of crystalized metal splinters and main her friends. That would be enough, but beyond that, each one of those airships was filled with creatures.

She was scared.

“We have to get out of here!” She blurted. “We’ll get caught in the crossfire!”

“Engines be down, princess.” The Captain sounded almost bored from the wheel. “We ain’t goin’ nowhere. Much less stuck like we be.”

“Twilight, let me see the spyglass.” Shining beckoned with a hoof and she gave it to him. Stood close and looked in the same direction he did, at Princess Celestia’s airship. “The Break of Dawn isn’t firing with all her cannons. Lower gun decks are closed.”

He gave it back to her and she used it too. Indeed, the little windows where the cannons were supposed to be sticking out were closed. Not only that, but unlike she would have imagined the gun decks weren’t removed. The ship has had additional armor added and the gunports were an example and the ship fired, but only with the main deck worth of guns.

Other ships fired under Twilight’s and it was a cacophony of thundering guns and another when they hit the larger griffon ship with disturbing metallic noises along with the explosions at impact. The smell of spent gunpower was quick to arrive but the noises of firing guns and exploding ammo didn’t subdue. There were ships of several shapes and sizes. She recognized most of them by the number of decks and sails as their individual classes, and she could even understand their function. A large and long ship with no weapons drew her attention, but she felt it wasn’t important, as it stayed further away.

“Why aren’t they using all their guns?” She returned to the subject of Celestia’s airship and lowered the spyglass, looking up at her brother.

“They could be protecting the lower decks, but their target would be one for full broadside. The only reason I can think why they aren’t using all cannons is that Princess Celestia isn’t showing all her cards…”

Twilight hummed. “I remember you telling us these griffons developed new weapons… It would be silly to imagine Princess Celestia wouldn’t be doing the same… I suppose that I simply don’t know everything that is going on.”

Curses… More and more that whole quest of theirs started to feel misguided.

“What does that mean for us now?” Fluttershy asked while the others simply stared.

“Nothing right now. We still have to escape.” She shook her head.

Then the Skoll fired its cannons again. She seemed to have less cannons, but they seemed to reload faster. How, Twilight had no idea, but the salvo hit a ship that had maneuvered under the larger ship. The explosions skirted her magical shields, but it seemed as tough one or two shells got through and exploded in the golden crystalized metal hull. It literally tore pieces of armor out. Another salvo literally tore the airship in half and sent pieces of crystalized metal in all directions. Twilight and the others screamed and ran to the railing in time to see the two disjointed halves collapsing from the sky while golden armored pegasi jumped out and flew away from the were they used to be connected or jumped off the broken deck.

The Skoll remained under constant bombardment though. Twilight could see places where its armor had deformed, but it didn’t seem to be serious.

“Is this how naval combat used to be?” Rarity whined. Twilight could imagine Rarity would have a romanticized idea of naval combat and the sight would have disturbed her. Just as it did Twilight and she understood that cannons firing was only fun when Pinkie was involved.

“Nay.” One of the crewponies said. “You’d usually shoot the other ship fulla holes and the water would take’er down. Or ya’d jump onboard and take’er over. This thing the griffons made is a monster.”

Twilight put her hoof on the railing and looked over her shoulder at the Wonderbolt airship. It seemed to not fire at the Skoll anymore, but there was enough smoke in the air that she thought that they were still fighting onboard and that the griffons managed to land on it.

Looking back at the large white and gold ship, Twilight saw more magical flares shooting up in patterns of colors and it was difficult to gather it all at once. Ships maneuvered faster than she expected, and all the smoke stung the eyes as much as breathing itched her nostrils and inside. The griffon airship didn’t turn so well and started taking shots from all directions. Twilight grimaced and wondered if Grigory hadn’t overestimated what a single airship, large as it might be could do on its own.

Then one of her crewponies, the one that stayed at the top of the mast cried at them. “Look lively! We got flyers hoay! Starboard low an’ they look like business!”

That time Twilight looked in the right direction and a… Squadron? Yeah, she’d call them squadron. A squadron of big black changelings flew towards them from below, rose above her airship…

“For Queen and Swarm!” One of those weird tall changelings in barding screamed, and then they splatted against Cadance’s shield.

They literally threw themselves at Cadance’s shield. Again. And again. Quite a few times more.

“Hum… What are they doing?” Pinkie grimaced.

“I think they’re trying to break the shield…” Twilight mused a little worried. “Be careful. It could be some weird strategy to catch us off-guard.”

Then she heard Chrysalis voice from Celestia’s airship. “What are you doing, Bossy, you idiot?”

The tall changeling that seemed to be in charge looked at the airship and shouted back. “I’m supposed to learn strategy from past battles! Tis the Canterlot Siege Strategy!”

“I can’t hear you from here, you retard! Use your magic at her shield before I go there and…” It sounded as though she had more to say but somepony took the megaphone from her.

The big changeling shrugged and pointed a hoof at Twilight’s ship. “Hit’em with magic for all you’re worth!”

Her soldiers wasted no time in hovering around the shield, buzzing their wings and shooting magical beams of green changeling magic at it. Twilight let her jaw hang and looked at Cadance. Her ears were flat on the sides of her head and she didn’t look very happy, but she barely winced. The griffons on Mister Snake’s airship were busy fighting off the wonderbolts and Twilight hadn’t even seen them arrive!

“Captain, now would be a great time for our engines to restart!” She shrieked at the pegasus at the helm, but he simply hung his weight at the wheel, looking bored.

“Not me call, lass.”

Twilight huffed and walked past her friends watching the shield for any failing and went down the stairs where she saw Starlight Glimmer looking over the unicorn carefully casting a spell over an open panel on the crystalized metal wall. Inside were golden wires and some pink shining crystals.

“Well?” She cried.

“It’s a mess!” Starlight cried back showing her frazzled mane when she turned.

“It’s a slow process, princess.” The unicorn turned at her too.

“Well, get it done or it won’t matter because things aren’t going well. And you come back up. We may need your help to fight the changelings!”

Both nodded and her friend followed her up just in time to see that the two griffons had set themselves free and the big one, Snake, jumped at Cadance and surprised her. She cried, but it was too late. He tackled Cadance and she screamed. Holding her down with his weight he hit the tip of her horn with a finger and her shield collapsed with her shriek.

“Have at’em!” She heard the changeling commander yelling along with their buzzing wings. She turned in time to deflect a magical beam and jumped to the side with a flap of her wings. She didn’t see where her sword ended up when the griffon attacked her and her mind was slow, but it returned to her when she summoned it and she screamed, pushing at the changeling with a quick swipe of her sword that caused it to dodge back, landing on his hindlegs.

Just then she realized she was angry!

“Alright! You want a fight; you will have one!” She cried and her horn shone fiercely along with the jewels in her Element of Harmony before releasing a beam of purple light with a crack and the changeling screamed crashing through the crystalized metal railing of her airship. He fell backwards and Twilight turned with a growl when a magical bullet snapped against her barding.

The small, black spotted griffon shot again at her with his revolver and she would never forget the panicked stare in his face when she actually batted the shot away with a wing and then summoned her staff, shoving it towards him, channeling the magic from her horn and wrapping his gun around his paw.

She didn’t really care if he screamed from pain or the scare. What mattered was that he jumped back and fell on his back. She jumped with a flap of her wings and her front hooves came down squarely on his chest. She wasn’t very heavy, but when the pommel of her sword hit his jaw, it sounded like it was.

“Get them under control already!” The changeling commander screamed, drawing her double sword from her side and lunging to the deck. With another look around, Twilight saw Rainbow grappling with one of the changelings, but she moved way too fast for the large and heavy creature to hit her with her hooves and instead got kicked several times on her face. Applejack threw one at the wall of the private room and kicked the air out of the changeling. Pinkie dragged Fluttershy inside and Twilight’s head dodged down right in time when a changeling tried hitting her with the flat of her double-bladed weapon. One simple spell encased the changeling in a bubblegum prison.

She screeched at Twilight and proceeded to bitting the thing. What the… Creatures had never done that! “Stop that!”

All the changeling managed was to get her mouth stuck and Twilight rolled her eyes.

The Skoll shot its cannons at another airship, on her other side since it was almost surrounded by then and much like the other ship, its port side exploded and pieces of it flew everywhere as it started capsizing on its side and her crew abandoned her.

“Oh gosh, this ain’t good, Twilight.” Applejack looked like she was going to be sick and Twilight understood. Nothing she could do, though.

“Just fight the changelings, AJ!” She yelled.

She saw Shining Armor and her personal guards fighting next to the Captain at the wheel and her crewponies shot muskets at the Wonderbolts as they had already returned. Spitfire shouted orders. Why the heck wasn’t she defending her own airship?

Another changeling came at Twilight with his sword and she batted away his one-two strikes with her own, stepping back before dodging under a third swing and hitting the changeling’s underside with her magically charged horn with enough force to cause it to lose its weapon and collapse on his side with a long grunt.

She saw the large griffon that was mister Flying Snake clawing at Cadance to have his paw batted away with the dull side of her bladed bow so hard she was sure something broke. Then she stood and kicked at his face with her hooves, and not satisfied, she jumped up, enveloping him on her telekinetic spell and shoved him into the floor with her magic and her own momentum.

It almost scared Twilight how much force she used, but the big and grizzled griffon seemed like he would be fine. He actually rolled to the side when Cadance came hooves down on him and dented the floor.

“Cadance! Hold back just a notch? Are you trying to kill that griffon?!”

“YES!” The other alicorn galloped past her after the griffon that retreated with a flap of his wings.

She knew Cadance didn’t really meant it, and she was going to nag at her some more, but a pair of wonderbolts shot Twilight with something. They seemed to have multi-barreled firearms strapped to the forelegs of their armor, like a series of pistols to fire in sequence. Two or so shots connected before she formed a magical shield in front of her. Further impacts hurt less, but still annoyed her. They tried flying away but she hit one of them with a salvo of magical missiles from her horn and he barreled out of control until she lost sight of them.

Her eyes fell on Skoll again just as it fired again, but rather than its cannons on the sides, it shot a pair of what looked like magical missiles from the front edge of its wings. They turned in wide arc and trained on the large white and gold ship. They flew fast leaving behind a trail of lightning in the sky and collided with the magical shield, exploding violently in a show of sparks and lightning bolts, but failed to damage the actual ship beyond some of the armor that flew off her side.

A changeling screeched and drew her attention to herself before she shot a magical beam at Twilight that she effortlessly deflected away after catching it in her horn. Then she held one of the changeling’s hooves in her magic and caused her to trip and spin out of control under the railing and out of the airship, trying to grasp at the edge like she had forgotten she had wings or something.

Rainbow landed next to her scraping her hooves on the floor, dodging a tall changeling with a long staff with green crystal point that sparkled with magic. Twilight smacked the changeling in the face with the flat side of her sword and put him out of the fight.

“This isn’t going very well!” The pegasus yelled over all the noise, putting herself in a fighting stance on Twilight’s side, but towards the other side. “Wonderbolts are kicking our butts with the changelings pestering us!”

Twilight hadn’t noticed, but it was a proper strategy… Changeling weirdoes in large numbers distracting them with the elite wonderbolts doing the real damage.

“We should be running away, not fighting!” Twilight growled and promptly batted away with her sword a prod from one of the changelings with spears. Then she followed with a cut and broke the changeling’s weapon, but he flew away. “They’re tiring us!”

The griffon airship fired again and overwhelmed another airship’s magical shields. Tore it asunder with a loud crack and boom.

“I don’t like these griffons blowing up our ships either!” Rainbow did not sound happy. “They’re not holding back and there’s no way everypony is surviving, Twilight!”

“I know, but there isn’t anything I can do about it!” Twilight’s blood boiled. It was the fight and what Rainbow had just said, but she couldn’t do anything about it!

Smaller warships had maneuvered closer to the griffon warship and trails of light shot from certain points in its hull and they seemed to pick apart the crystalized metal in those airships, but it didn’t seem to be too serious and their own cannons shot at the opening in the larger airship’s armor. Several pink explosions followed and despite the easy targets, the Skoll’s cannons didn’t shoot back.

“I think they got their cannoneers, Twilight.” Rainbow mused. “They’ll turn their attention to us if they put that thing under control.”

Twilight deadpanned to herself at Rainbow’s brilliant tactical advice and in the meanwhile other ships approached the Wonderbolt’s. Pegasi in golden barding flew in as the smaller ships also fired their cannons at Skoll. Pieces of its armor flew off the raised part of its hull and there was an explosion, a real one, inside as cannons fired against the closed doors.

The constant barrage was causing real damage to the griffons’ monster. Large plates of armor flew off when something exploded where the right wing connected to the main hull and her engines started sparking on that side.

Then Twilight heard a griffon screeching angrily in the language she didn’t understand. She and Rainbow looked over to the whaling ship on the other side to see Grigory’s girlfriend, or whatever she was, making angry gestures at the griffon ship. Then she looked and sounded like she complained to Grigory who was next to her fighting off two wonderbolts with his longsword.

Then they started shouting at each other and the ponies stopped to stare until she actually lunged at him, flailing her claws, in his face and pointed at the airship, screeching some more before pointing at it again. Twilight and Rainbow gasped and the two Wonderbolts flew away as fast as they could.

“Well, that is no Gabby…” Twilight said plainly.

“I wish I could understand what they’re saying! Oh! Gotta go!” The other chuckled and then flew away towards the aft.

No changeling threatened Twilight for the moment, so she stared at the whaling ship again. Grigory’s big friend stayed with his ‘mate’ while Grigory jumped up and made a series of signs to the airship. Then he landed close to her in a wing beat. She jumped away with a squeal.

“Any snipers in your team, princess?”

“Snipper?” What? “As in somepony that cuts manes? Rarity is good with that.”

“Never mind.” He wasn’t impressed and simply hovered a few hooves above the floor flashing a few more ‘paw signs’ at their airship.

Twilight watched curiously until something flew off the airship into the sky above and a set of small parachutes opened, holding a long black box.

“Kindly grab that for me, please. Before the others notice.”

She looked up at the thing again and charged her horn. The thing disappeared and reappeared on her airship’s floor. Then she kept watching while Grigory quickly removed a harness from it. It looked like a gun case to Twilight.

“Is that a weapon?”

“No Princess…” He grinned widely. “This is an exquisite tool for an exceptional artist.”

He blew a two-toned whistle, looking up and threw the whole case up. “Elle!”

His white and caramel friend zoomed by and grabbed the case, soon letting go of it and staying with the long firearm that was inside, circling around. Then she snuggled with it and kicked her hindleg.

“She really likes that thing, doesn’t she?”

Suddenly his smile vanished. “Gracielle sleeps with the damn thing and its inventor…”

“Quirky much?” Twilight smirked and he answered with a mirk of his own.

“I suppose we have a bit of a gun culture among some griffons. They do help us survive, after all. Nothing too extreme compared to your ‘magic culture’.”

“Friendship culture, you mean?” Twilight raised an eyebrow while he flashed yet a couple more signs to his white friend and she nodded before flying away. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her to find their leaders and take them out of the battle.”

“Sheesh. Last time I tried something like a sign language with my friends it ended up with a sign that Rainbow would use to make fun of me behind my back.”

“You should discipline them better.” He just said it so casually Twilight though she had understood him wrong, but he didn’t wait to hear her and flew away.

Her wings flared. “Wait! What do you mean ‘take them out’?!”

“Don’t worry, Princess!” He smirked from above. “I’d trust her to shoot an apple on my head from over a thousand cubits!”

“What is a cubit?!” She stomped the floor. “Grigory!”

She meant to go after him, but two wonderbolts that just arrived had other ideas. The first attacked her head on with a magical stunning prod attached to his armor’s foreleg as he landed in front of her. The other circled around while she batted the weapon away with the butt end of her staff and she swung her sword on his other leg just as he raised it to strike. The metal in his armor bent and he screamed, falling on his side.

Then she cried with the shock at her back, and it made her head spin, but she kicked with both hindlegs and hit something she supposed was the other wonderbolt. How did she let him hit her like that?

She teleported, reappearing a little distance away facing the opposite direction rather than turning on her hooves, just in time to see the surprised pegasus in golden armor confused at having hit nothing but air with second strike. And then her sword hit his armored head and it would be the last thing he’d see for a while.

It came as a surprise when a surge of magical energy hit Twilight and she gasped. It came from one of the airships next to Celestia’s. No idea what that was, but when Skoll finally fired its cannons again her shots exploded everywhere but on their target.

Twilight stared curiously. It was a sort of repulsion field magic. Did one of the ships have a team of unicorns that cast that spell?

Another salvo on another target met the same fate. And then another. Next the airship fired its strange magical missiles, but they flew past their target, one in each direction and exploded harmlessly.

“Wow…” She whispered. It seemed that Royal Guard Thaumatoengineers had been really busy while she wasn’t looking. She doubted the griffons expected that.

Then she grimaced to herself when she remembered she was on the same side as the griffons and not the Royal Guards.

The Skoll started turning while her engines seemed to speed up even more, banking to the left and she closed her gun decks. Trails of smoke flew from her sides and exploded into clouds of white smoke with lightning that drew them to the airship. Twilight noticed that griffons fighting in the Wonderbolt airship took off and flew towards it, but it didn’t look like they’d make it, and they just stopped. The constant cacophony of shooting cannons didn’t diminish either.

In the middle of all that, she heard Grigory yelling furiously, hovering above the whaling ship again and making paw gestures with his fingers. Then she was sure he swore when he didn’t get the answer he was hopping for. He and his friends shouted at each other.

“They just left their friends behind!” Twilight gasped.

It took several minutes, and nopony bothered Twilight, probably because they were watching it too, but the airships that arrived with Princess Celestia’s pursued the griffon airship, as did the Wonderbolt’s and they kept firing leaving trails of smoke that persisted for some time in the slow winds.

She gasped at a bright flash when the entire right wing of the Skoll exploded and sent burning pieces everywhere, like small fiery balls falling over the grass field below. Seconds later the bang reached their ears and scared Twilight out of her trance.

Then three things happened. The Skoll started losing altitude and letting off a significant plume of black smoke, gaining more and more speed towards the ground; Celestia’s ponies cheered on the airships and in the fight around her; and Grigory’s girlfriend held her face and shrieked on the whaling ship, watching their airship going down.

“Oh no!” She looked frantically around to see the fight still going strong in her airship, despite that, but the griffons just lost all their wind and closest to her was Rainbow Dash, surrounded by downed Wonderbolts while she grappled with one of them and got hit with a stun prod that sprung from the vambrace of another one of them from behind. Her friend screamed and lost balance on her hindlegs.

“Rainbow!” She screamed and pushed forward with a flap of wings. Both wonderbolts turned to face her. One of them still on his hindlegs, ready to use his weapon again, but her sword cut it in half and her body slammed the pony against the wall of the private room. She wasn’t very heavy, but the pegasus was lighter still. The other attacked her with a similar weapon, but she anticipated it and her staff batted his leg away for her to hit him with a magical blast that sent him spinning on the floor.

“Rainbow?!” She cried again, but her friend was out cold in the floor despite her pushing at her.

No time to reanimate her. A changeling cried and came at her with her horn shining in green magic, making a magical long bladed spear she swung at Twilight. It hit Twilight shoulder and glanced off to her head and the magical shock, more than the concussion stunned her.

Reflexively she retreated a hop and scowled at the changeling, shooting magical missiles at her hooves. The changeling skipped with a scream and that dispelled her weapon. Then she slammed on the wall, legs flailing on the air right next to Twilight with a pained and sorrowful “Ooow…”

Twilight tapped her on the forehead with the flat of her sword and she shrieked more from the scare than any damage her weapon might have done, then she jumped over the changeling.

She saw Applejack grappling with a wonderbolt, standing on her hindlegs with a rope she used to deflect this stun prod and then tied him like he was a hog. Another came at her and she got her war hammer which she shoved on the pegasus face and caused him to fall backwards. Instead of following with the hammer down on him, she jumped over him, hopping on his belly and rushing towards Rarity who found herself shoved against the floor with a ring on her horn and her enchanted sword on her side with an armored wonderbolt on top of her, holding her with a hoof until Applejack hit him like a speeding train.

Twilight meant to go help, but she was forced to defend herself from a pegasus Royal Guard in full combat barding with a closed helmet and heavier plates attacking her with his armored foredleg. She batted the attack with her sword and dodged the second spinning on her hindlegs, leaving her robes trailing behind her and brought her sword down on his leg as he overextended in another strike.

“Oow!” He screamed from inside his helmet and she stopped back on her four hooves. “Geez, Twilight! I’m trying to talk to you!”

“Flash Sentry?!” She shrieked.

“Uh…” His eyes shifted inside the helmet. “Hi babe. Princess Celestia asked me to tell you to stop… So… Uh…”

She scowled and the guard of her sword came down on his face with a clang.

With him out, she looked around to see Cadance still fighting the griffon. They both looked furious and he had cuts on his face with blood on his fur and feathers. She kicked at his face, but he held her leg and his claws almost swiped at her face. They glanced off a magical protection spell she seemed to have cast on her because her barding’s was gone already. Then she charged her horn and they heard a loud bang that scared both of them. Even more when the griffon collapsed with a cry.

“I didn’t do anything!” Cadance shrieked. And then again when they saw the hole in his leather armor and the sprinkled red on the floor.

“Damnit!” He grunted and Cadance charged her horn with magic again.

“Don’t move! I’m going to cast a healing spell!” She squealed and Twilight was sure she was more scared than the griffon, who just chuckled at her. “Fluttershy!!”

“Don’t worry Princess… I’ve been shot more times than I can count in my paws.”

Fluttershy didn’t come, and while she fussed with her magic over the griffon Twilight frowned and looked around the sky, expecting to see a certain white griffon female, but couldn’t find her. Maybe she was judging too fast. They were in the middle of a fight.

Then she heard Shining Armor screaming. The halberd he had been using fell from the top of the private room and he fell on his back right after it with the pieces of the railing. Spitfire jumped after him, but he kicked her hard with his hindlegs against the private room doors and she slammed on her back against it.

Not that it stopped her. She pushed against the door to lunge at him.

“Hey! Canner-bolt!” A raspy and cruel laugh distracted her and Twilight, followed by a loud shot that rang much higher than she was used to.

Spitfire fell on her back with a scream and Twilight took some time before she understood what had happened. She finally found the white griffoness sat on the lower yard of the main mast, like a stupid bird perched on it with a devious grin, looking up from the scope on her weapon.

“Give me that!” Twilight yelled at her and teleported to hover in front of her, grabbing the gun with her magic and pulling while beating her wings for leverage. The griffon didn’t let go though, even if she almost lost her balance.

“Hey! Quit it!”

“Let go!” Twilight insisted. “This thing is dangerous!”

“It’s a gun, grassbreath! Of course it’s dangerous!”

“Your airship was downed! You’re just hurting others needlessly! We have to get my airship working instead!” She still pulled at the gun and griffon screeched holding on to it.

The screaming match stopped when Applejack called Twilight from below. Collapsed on the bow, next to Rarity with a hornring, laying on her side and looking disheveled and also Spike with his arms tied behind him with his tail and wings. Their weapons nowhere to be seen and two Royal Guards in full barding watching over them.

Twilight wailed and let go, diving the distance and reaching them sword-first. The first deflected her sword with his barding on his foreleg, as she expected, then she spun her sword with a flourish in her magical grasp aiming at his armored head. But she was tired. She was too slow, and the other guard tackled her by the waist, and dropped her with his weight.

She teleported a few hooves away and hit his head with her sword before he even realized what had happened. The other stood on his hindlegs with a halberd and prepared for her attack. Then Twilight felt a presence behind her and spun cutting with her sword.

It struck an exquisitely adorned magical armor made of pure solidified golden light and white embellishments over a tall white foreleg. Her sword flew away from her grasp at the forceful magical feedback and the flash scared her. And both caused her to sit on her haunches and shake her head only to finally see Princess Celestia grinning at her.

She panicked. “Cadance! Starlight! Help!!”

In her panic she teleported away, but rather than that, she found she had reappeared roughly in the same place. Inside a cute golden bird cage with a soft purple cushion.

“Oh, come on!” She whined to herself.

Celestia was about to say something when Twilight saw the glint in the scope above the griffon’s weapon. It was a mere instant and the same bang from before ringed followed by Twilight’s terrorized screaming even louder while covering her eyes with her wings and hooves.

And then shrieking again.

“She’s fine, Twilight…” Spike mumbled with the irked sigh of a drake that’s had enough of that day.

She opened her eyes to see Celestia giggling. “Thank you for the concern though.”

Her golden magical aura picked up a squished lead bullet on the floor and then she turned, looking up to see the white griffoness hugging the weapon and mumbling something as insecurely as a mother determined to prove the innocence of her little baby after being caught doing wrong.

“She called for help… I just… Hum…” Her fingers strummed nervously along the gun’s elegant caramel wood frame and her eyes shifted until she grinned and frowned at the same time. “I mean… I knew it wouldn’t hurt you.”

She giggled nervously.

“You cannot be trusted with that toy, young lady. I will take it from here.” Her horn flared up and golden light yanked the weapon from the griffon. She yapped reaching futilely and almost losing her balance on the yard.

After that the Princess removed all the ammunition from that thing, which was a process Twilight didn’t really understand, but even if it couldn’t be that complicated, she thought it was curious that Celestia did. It struck Twilight that it was similar, but certainly different from a musket since the bullets she saw on the floor were nothing like the ammunition they used.

“Now then, may we consider this altercation resolved?” The Princess looked around at fighters on both sides that stopped on their tracks when she showed up. “Thank you kindly.”

Then she turned to Twilight, who just realized she merely sat there, stupidly looking up at the tall princess from inside her cage. Of course, she did though, because Twilight had never seen her like that!

Her mane shone brightly like the sun’s corona such that it hurt her eyes staring directly at her. Her body was covered in the magical armor made of golden light with white beautifying lines and the few golden pieces of her traditional regalia. Her wings, she carried open, shone with the same light and had bladed protections and she also wore a large golden crown that framed her head like a helmet that let her horn out and made a crown of six bladed spikes behind her head that made her look like the sun, especially with her mane shining like that. She even had a translucent cape of golden light.

“Hello, Twilight! I have finally caught up with you.”

“Hum… Hi…” She tried grinning, but her voice broke a little too much. There was simply nothing she could do but stare away when her eyes burned, as the princess herded her with her wings to sit next to her friends and the spell that formed that armor was so complex it made Twilight’s head hurt just trying to figure out the formulae for the layers of protection.

She had never done that in their sparring sessions! Twilight felt cheated!

“Kindly take care of her.” The princess told the guards, turning to the others.

“Cadance! Shining!” She whispered to herself, looking for them. Chrysalis’ changelings had shoved Cadance to the floor and held her before the queen. Shining and two of her pegasus sat before Luna, wearing a similar magical armor as Celestia’s, but all white and silvery, with an arch above her head rather than the spikes.

Fluttershy was with Spitfire by the doors to the private room. The wondebolt seemed to be in pain, but Fluttershy wrapped her wing closed. She didn’t see the others, but Royal Guards brought Starlight, the unicorn crewpony and Pinkie.

“Sorry, Twilight.” Starlight sighed when they put her to sit next to her.

Ponies just gave up next to Celestia and Luna. Surrendered to the Royal Guards and Wonderbolts that accompanied them, but the griffons were still fighting, flying around the airship and on Mister Snake’s rusty airship. But they seemed in a bad shape all around. She found Grigory’s girlfriend cornered on the airship’s bow, worryingly quiet and with quite a lot of blood on her feathers while he fought fiercely with his longsword and his big griffon friend used a heavy spear to fight off the changelings with their double-bladed weapons.

Celestia seemed more worried with ensuring nopony was too injured on Twilight’s airship and dispelled the bubblegum ball, freeing the changeling inside.

Grigory looked around and he didn’t seem to like what he saw. He told his big friend something and flew up. His girlfriend cried his name which sounded much more melodic in their language, properly pronounced.

“Dity Harpiyi!” He cried above the airships, lunging up his sword.

“Whoa!” Twilight’s spine felt like she had just been hit with a lightning spell. There was powerful magic at work and it twirled around in the air like a hurricane had met a thunderstorm to the point it caused the physical wind to blow around them.

Celestia looked up at the griffon with giant surprised eyes and Luna’s jaw dropped. The present griffons stared up, about as surprised as she was. Maybe they didn’t expect Grigory would try to cast a spell, a la his father as a last-ditch effort, a desperate attempt to snatch victory from defeat?

She also had never seen Chrysalis so scared in her life. “Stop him!”

The queen cried and pointed at the griffon completely forgetting Cadance. “Stop him now!”

Chrysalis’ changelings scrambled to attack. His big friend stayed with the female griffon and her jaw hanged, staring up with giant eyes as though life returned to her. The others that were too disheartened by the loss of their invincible airship stood as they could to witness.

His sword hovered in the air in front of him and shone with the luminescence of lightning. His clawed fists clenched as though he channeled some emotion with all his might and his eyes shone with the same light.

Thunder sounded around them and it stirred a strange fear in Twilight, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the griffon and could swear his claws crackled with lightning. His voice echoed and he pronounced every syllable with the intensity of a storm to end the world.

“Aya Harpiya, matha beir, imperatrytse desh pochuymiy krahah!”

It sounded like an eagle screaming and it echoed with cracking thunder. Magical energies, more powerful than the magical radiation from the airships’ engines tensed and stretched reality, but nothing happened. Like a spell that failed, but rather than exploding from somepony’s horn, its magical energies dissipated harmlessly. It sure felt like a spell though. A powerful spell that failed to connect, or something. It was difficult to understand. Different. Even more alien than the bizarre changeling magic she felt in Chrysalis’ Spawning Pool.

Thus, when the magical effects ceased gravity got a hold of him again and the griffon screamed and grasped at the air, flailing, trying to grasp his sword and flapping his wings to keep from falling. His girlfriend shrieked his name again and everypony was too stunned to react.

Princess Celestia teleported next to him. She secured his paw in her hoof and grabbed his sword with her telekinetic magic. Then she teleported back to Twilight’s airship and carefully let him rest on his back, with the sword right next to him.

He just laid there, staring at the sky. Twilight wasn’t sure what he felt. Shock? Disbelief? Disappointment?

“Harpiya dekesh pochyah, Greigorei… Sekesei ya.” She told him softly. She didn’t hesitate or stumble upon the words.

His eyes changed ever so slightly. His stare hardened and he frowned. Celestia seemed so sad too. And everything had stopped, but Celestia finally looked away from him and turned to the others that kept staring like they watched a theater piece. It was a combination of shock and disbelief. The griffons definitively expected something and it disappointed.

Then Celestia used that voice she used when she wanted things done already. “What are you doing standing around? There is much work to be done! Find the injured on the ground and on the airship’s remains! Take them to the hospital airship with the utmost urgency!”

Twilight recognized Crucible Wings inside the heavier armor, staring at her, and then at the griffon on the floor. Stunned until the Princess raised her voice. “Now!”

They resumed their tasks immediately and the Princess walked off to meet Chrysalis that didn’t seem happy, but Celestia took her somewhere else. They flew and headed towards her airship.

Twilight wrapped her hooves at the bars of her cage and looked at the griffon. He had several cuts, nothing serious and they didn’t seem to bother him. He was big and strong, with large and sharp claws that ‘normal’ griffons didn’t typically have. He did have a very distinctive… ‘Griffon-like’ face but Twilight couldn’t see what made it look so. Rugged? No, he was young. Maybe ‘feral’ would be a better word.

And he just laid there, but she didn’t dare speak to him. In her mind’s eye she pictured Emperor Grigor, maybe a giant griffon, a terrifying rugged monster screaming words charged with magic and bringing a terrible spell over his enemies. By the way things went… She didn’t what he was trying to do, but it wouldn’t have been pretty.

A strange dread she had never felt before crept from the back of her mind, and at the same time it kindled her curiosity. She hoped she would have the opportunity to talk to that fascinating griffon.

In the end, Cadance was right, but they never really stood a chance against Celestia, did they? Perhaps if whatever Grigory wanted to do had worked they would. It spooked Chrysalis, after all.

But she didn’t dare speak to him. She didn’t dare breathe too loud next to him.

***

Even if he had to wake up way too early, it gave him a giddy feeling, racing the big griffon across the sky under the stormy clouds. A small stream bellow brought fertility to a black soil below and the ubiquitous mountains wrapped up the picture with their mighty elegance. Discord started seeing why they liked the mountains so much. The cold wind was a bit uncomfortable to him though, used to the warm pony lands and comfortable homes during winter.

Geez… Winters must be downright cruel in that place.

Discord liked Lord Gilad a lot more than he expected and that was probably a good thing. He was meant to build a bridge, after all. Despite the silly situation with that Gwineth, things had been going wonderful on his mission. He met interesting griffons, a cute child (or cub as they called them), learned a few things that would help and actually became a bridge to build a friendship with The Lion. Flutthershy would be proud of him!

Halting to a stop in mid-flight, he listened to the voice in the wind. It was gone. For a second that intricately woven spell vanished, and the clouds above calmed themselves. The serene, but haughty and eerie voice changed to a furious cry of pure wrath. It chilled his blood and caused him to look around in surprise. Long and piercing, it echoed in the wind.

The Lion hovered next to Discord, beating his wings and waiting. Discord frowned. “Did you hear that?”

“I felt it.”

Then the voice resumed and the whole spell caused its effect all over again, from tempestuous clouds to magical wind.

“What happened?” He asked Gillad as though he might know. He had the impression that he would.

“We must hurry.” He did know, Discord figured, but chose not to disclose it just yet. He chose to trust the griffon. Add that Gilad seemed worried, Discord agreed.

“Let’s go then.”

Dines with Griffons

Grinolf found himself on a rectangular room with crystal walls, ceiling and floor. Matted crystal, rather than clear and transparent. The light seemed to come out of the crystal, but it didn’t disturb his eyes, so soft it was, despite getting the place sufficiently illuminated.

He sat on a simple stool in the middle of the room. It was a ridiculous thing, of clue crystal and cyan moons adorning it’s shaft, but it was a place to sit and he had other things on his mind at the moment.

He blinked twice and it was one of the weirdest feelings he’d ever experienced, as though existence began in that very moment. He could recall memories of his life and the fact that he was in a pony airship, but that particular moment seemed detached from everything, as though the story of his life had been somehow halted, and he was plucked from it and put in that place.

He felt like an infantile fool, but it took him more time than he’d be willing to admit until he noticed the pony princess in front of him. The blue one, wearing her royal garments.

“Hello, Grinolf.” She grinned a friendly pony grin while she held a thin slab of blue crystal in her freakish telekinetic magic. He had no idea what it was other than a thin and blue crystal slab and he had no idea what she was doing with it, but she looked at it about as much as she looked at him. Finally, she asked him a question. “You are not very comfortable, are you?”

No, he wasn’t. It wasn’t the cold, nor being stripped of his armor and weapons. It was the weird sensation that place gave him. He was going to ask her what that place was, but she spoke first. “This is a dream. You are safe here and nothing bad is going to happen to you. I just want to talk to you. Remember? You acquiesced to this session.”

He accepted it as the purest of truths and simply nodded at her. The princess smiled at him again, after looking satisfied with something she saw on her weird crystal slab. “You were born in Brokenhorn, correct?”

“Yes. Though my family initially came from Beachhome. It is a griffon and hippogriff mixed city.” He spoke as matter-of-factly as was possible, but he wasn’t sure why he just told her that. His training had prepared him only to answer direct questions, as directly as possible. Curiously though, the thought evaporated from his mind as quickly as it flashed, like a warning, but then he wasn’t even sure he even had thought about that. It was gone by the time he tried to think of it. What was he thinking about again?

He directed his attention back to the princess and she rose an eyebrow then seemed to focus on her strange crystal device. Following that, she simply nodded to herself before addressing him again.

“Why did you think it was important mentioning that your family is from there and that it is a griffon and hippogriff mixed city?”

What kind of question was that? “It is my heritage. It is important, isn’t it?”

The princess simply stared at him frowning with some confusion, but then she cleared her throat. “What was your duty in the griffon warship?”

“I was the Master-at-Arms.”

“Hum-hum. Can you please elaborate on your functions?”

“I was responsible for the Skoll’s Air Battalion detachment. It was my job to keep our combatants fit for combat and commanding boarding and occupation operations.”

“Was it an important position?”

“Yes. It was.” It was so unsettling. She knew those things, and yet she asked him. Was she testing him to see if he would tell her the truth? Was that some freakish alicorn magic at work?

“But you did something you weren’t supposed to.”

“I helped Prince-Consort Chocolate Velvet escape the airship as leverage for my request of asylum.” What was wrong with him? Who would tell her that he only helped her consort because he expected something from… What was he thinking again? It was difficult focusing on his own thoughts without her words to guide them.

“Why did you want to defect if your job was important? Were you unhappy with it?” She provided what he needed to focus, so he clung to it.

He wasn’t unhappy, though. He loved his job. The problem was… “I wasn’t unhappy. I loved my job. The problem was that I expected to earn recognition and to be accepted into the Court of the Harpy!”

He sighed. “I took too long to realize that they were lying... The bastards! Simple grunts can’t earn it! We just can’t! I had no other choice! I had to do something outstanding. Something that would prove I am better than they think! I just know that I am! But… Grigory wanted our Air Battalion to keep the Wonderbolts busy while he and his personal guard dealt with the pony princesses. That wouldn't be enough! It just wouldn’t cut it! I know that if they had allowed me to capture the princesses and take them to Lady Gwendolen, she would have allowed me into the Court of the Harpy!”

He wasn’t supposed to tell her any of that! He was not supposed to mention the Harpy to outsiders! What was that? He heard something; he was sure of it! There was definitively something on the other side of the crystal walls. He couldn’t see it, but he could hear claws clicking on the crystal floor. An angry breathing. The shuffling of feathers!

Why was it so hot in there? Why was it so hard to breathe?

The princess frowned curiously at her crystal slab, at him and then back again at that thing. He was sure he heard the growling… It was out there! Prowling around, looking for a way in, scrapping at the door! Couldn’t she hear it?

“Calm yourself, Grinolf. Remember you are completely safe.” She touched the crystal a few times with an adorned hoof. “There. Is this better?”

The princess seemed worried about something. Maybe she saw something in that crystal tablet of hers. But he got his breathing under control and reorganized his thoughts. There was something terrible he should remember, but the thoughts evanesced from his mind. Oh, yes. He was telling the princess why he chose to defect.

“I didn’t see any future for me, and I feared I would be killed or captured in the ensuing battle, then there would be no recovery for me. It might not even be worth returning home. Gonrur just wouldn’t understand because he was already in.” His eyes found the floor. His voice failed for a second and his eyes stung, but he felt perfectly fine in the next moment, so, he went on. “I am ashamed, but I betrayed our friendship. Even if he failed me… I shouldn’t have. It was not his fault, and I hope he won’t suffer repercussions for my actions.”

Luna frowned again and her eyes scanned whatever that crystal tablet showed her. “This seems to be important to you. Why couldn’t you make it into the Court of the Harpy while your friend could? What didn’t he understand?”

“He couldn’t understand it because it was so easy for him. No one has ever looked at him and showed disgust. He made it into the Court of the Harpy simply because his parents were pureblooded. I didn’t know at the time, though. We were simply two cubs growing up together, but his father is a pureblooded ranger from Brokenhorn and his mother a pureblooded Loremaster from Griffindel. Of course, he would be taken in as soon as he was ready. I was such a fool to think that there would be a place for me…”

Luna stared at her crystal thing and then back at him. Her frown changed from curiosity to confusion and pity. “But you are impure? How so?”

“I am too impure, and the Harpy has rejected me because there is too much pony blood in me. Lady Gwendolen has forbidden me from mating and producing offspring. That is why I must make an impression on her and convince her that my griffon blood is stronger.”

Luna stared at her crystal and something flashed red before her eyes. Not only that, but he heard the growling and the doors banged outside. He could hear it. The beast cried furiously outside, shrill and piercing as the doors banged, but they held against the onslaught. However he remained perfectly calm, watching the princess stare at her crystal tablet and waited for her next question. She seemed concerned, but soon enough she talked to him again.

“You seem to be under too much stress because of this subject. I’ll stop this now. Go back to sleep and forget this.”

His eyebrow raised at the princess’ request. But his eyes became heavy and he simply allowed himself to sleep.

***

Luna woke slowly to the aroma of chocolate with Celestia and Chrysalis staring at her with huge curious eyes.

“So?!” The queen urged her with a raised hoof.

“Is he well?” The other took a nervous step forward.

Luna rubbed her eyes and stretched her neck with a yawn from leaning on Chocolate Velvet, sitting next to her in the couch. “I’m worried. He seems convinced he is inferior because his ancestors were hippogriffs and ponies.”

“Ugh… ‘Ancestors’…” Chrysallis let a disgusted grunt out. “What is this about?”

Suddenly Luna frowned all worry while Chocolate petted her mane with a hoof. “His friend got the VIP pass for life because his parents were ‘pureblooded’ while he was denied a normal life because his weren’t. At least from his perspective. The point is that it seems to be a subject of intense stress for him.”

Luna stood and walked around sullenly. “It seems he’s been convinced that the Harpy has rejected him because there is too much ‘pony blood’ in him and they want purer griffons. Therefore, he is not allowed to mate and have cubs.”

“Is that reasonable?” Chocolate asked from the couch, frowning. “I mean… If the offspring of a griffon and a hippogriff would be griffon and they have common traits that are inheritable by both, I suppose that this idea would make sense. But this sounds to me that they just found something that might just be anecdotally evidenceable as a ‘pony trait’ that they can get from the hippogriffs. Sounds like a way of fabricating escape goats to me.”

“If a griffon and a hippogriff generate offspring there is a three to one chance that it is going to be a griffon cub, same chance for a hippogriff and a pony to generate a foal.” Celestia explained. “But I’ve never heard of something like that. I cannot imagine what sort of outward sign would point to a griffon being ‘spoiled’ with pony blood. It might be something magical in nature, however.”

“He mentioned Lady Gwendolen. I have no idea if she knows anything that we don’t, or even if she’s merely looking for ways to antagonize the hippogriffs and the ponies for the sake of their isolationism.”

Chocolate huffed. “Isolationists that want to take over the nation. Yeah, right.”

“Lady Gwendolen? Tell us more, Luna.” Celestia urged quite a bit more emphatically than Chrysalis. “I never thought that she would do something such as this!”

Luna shook her head slowly. “Unfortunately, I can’t. It caused him too much stress and I worried I would hurt him if I kept forcing him.”

“So?” Chrysalis asked. “What’s the worst that could have happened?”

“He could die with angina, a blood vessel could rupture in his brain, or somewhere else and that is never good. Any number of post-traumatic stress disorders he probably wouldn’t even know what from… Panic attacks or phobias.” Luna let her voice trail off.

“Is that how a pony gets a phobia of quesadillas?” Chocolate raised a hoof.

“I cannot confirm nor deny that.” Luna said and Celestia rolled her eyes.

“Really?” The changeling wasn’t moved nor bothered with the distraction. “It’s one griffon. We need to know what is going on, because The Lion’s kid was trying to cast a spell. Shouting words. Like they say that The Lion can, and our old friend could. Except Grigory is not actually The Lion’s kid. I need to know what is going on and I certainly do not care about one single griffon! Fry his head if you have to!”

“No! I don’t have to hurt him like that! I just need some time and do it another way.”

“Then do your dream voodoo with The Lion’s kid. I bet he knows what is going on.”

“What is wrong with you, Chrysalis?” Luna berated her. “Grinolf consented to the dream analysis.”

“Yes…” Chrysalis countered. “Because you and your sister leaned on him while he was asking for asylum.”

“He did say he was willing to accept any condition.” Celestia explained. “Luna’s method offered us with a certainty we couldn’t have otherwise. I doubt that these griffons would be above a false desertion to plant false information. And with this story of The Harpy, I believe we must be very careful. We need information right now, but Grinolf already provided us what he could. We must talk to Twilight, Cadance and Grigory now.”

“And that is precisely why I have arranged for Twilight and her friends to be admitted in the same area as Grigory and his.” She concluded with a grin.

“I don’t follow…” Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. “How is that anything more than asking for trouble?”

Princess Celestia grinned some more. “I know Twilight. If we leave her with the griffons, she is going to let her curiosity get the best of her. I’m hoping that the griffons will tell her things that she believes are important for her and that we may not know. Things I am sure she will end up revealing in our shared dinner.”

“Well, Cadance is certainly likely to ask questions…” Luna didn’t seem very excited, returning to the couch. “She’s not likely to be happy either. I hope this doesn’t backfire. Grinolf said he wanted to take Twilight and Cadance to Lady Gwendolen.”

“Odd…” Celestia frowned. “What would she want with them?”

“Certainly, nothing good for them. Especially when he implied she created something called the ‘Court of the Harpy’ and he is desperate to get in because that is where the cool griffons are.”

Celestia’s ears pulled back. “I don’t like this. Grigory made mistake after mistake and The Lion likely never authorized this whole mission.”

“How do you know?” Chrysalis inquired.

“He’s fought with his father several campaigns against monster hordes that threatened griffon cities to the south. He is a skilled tactician and would not have authorized the airship to enter combat and be lost. That thing cost too much, and we also had no idea it existed. It was revealed too soon and that is not the kind of asset one needs to fight a contained civil war. I don’t know what is going on, but I’m starting to think that Lady Gwendolen is not as nice as I thought she was. She’s likely using the myth of the Harpy to move griffons towards their agenda. I hope she’s only doing that to help her mate, but I want you to look into that Luna.”

Luna simply nodded but hearing that Chrysalis’s ears pulled back and she grimaced at Celestia. “I hate this. I keep hearing this cursed name of The Harpy and myths usually have too much of a sliver of truth for comfort. If you are lying that this Harpy doesn’t exist, I am going to murder you.”

Celestia rolled her eyes. “These idle threats aren’t funny, Chrysalis.”

“Fine. I won’t murder you. But I swear I will punch you.”

“She doesn’t exist.” The Princess sighed. “Not anymore. I destroyed her.”

“Wonderful.” Chocolate, sat on the couch, added sarcastically. “That is going to resonate marvelously with the griffon guests. Well, I got work to do. I’ll see you later.”

“What do you mean you destroyed her?”

“Please, Chrysalis.” Celestia put up a hoof, pleading. “I’ll broach the subject with Twilight and her friends. I want to gauge Grigory’s reaction and try to infer what is Lady Gwendolen trying to do with her myth. I need your support.”

“Fine.” The other relented begrudgingly.

***

Twilight woke in a clean white room. A square with an open door that led to a pony bathroom, a window that showed the blue sky, and a closed door. It didn’t have any smells and she could barely hear the sounds of activity on the other side of the closed door. She could feel magic at work though and immediately knew she was on an airship by the magical engines radiating magic. It was more interesting that the room had several spells of minor effect but that seemed designed to keep it clean and some effects she couldn’t identify because they weren’t active.

She laid on a bed and blinked at the featureless roof. Her head rested on a medium pillow. Not too soft, not too hard, just like the mattress. The sheets were rather soft and comfy.

Something was beeping and she saw there was an empty bag hanging from a tall holder next to her bed. It had the remains of a softly glowing pink liquid with a small tube that came down from it all the way to her foreleg, as she could attest when she rose her head from the pillow and followed it.

Oh, right. She was in the hospital airship. She was a bit too anxious… She didn’t exactly know how long she was unconscious, but the Royal Guard doctor decided that she was being a problem. Apparently not everypony was as patient as her friends because he sedated her. And she woke in the hospital airship.

That sounded reasonable, if mildly annoying, she decided with a frown.

Then the closed door opened, and Chocolate Velvet came through from the corridor outside. He wore a white doctor’s coat and brought a sort of amber crystal clipboard on his telekinetic magic with a stethoscope hanging from his neck for some reason. “Hi Twilight. How are you feeling?”

“I suppose I’m fine for somepony that just woke up in a hospital bed with something stuck to my leg.” She giggled. Probably would be freaking out by then if she didn’t know Chocolate Velvet. “What was that stuff? Can I take this out?”

“Let me help.” He reached with his magic while he talked to her. “Think of it as a ‘mana booster’. It’s meant to provide free magic for your body to heal up, like a souped-up healing potion. It makes you hungry because it kinda puts your body on overclock for a while. You probably don’t remember, but you were pretty banged up and you were so nervous… Well, stress piles up. The royal guard doctor decided you needed a break.”

“I see.” She murmured to herself, but she would probably have time to learn about that later and instead of focusing on that, she smiled at him. “So, you’re playing doctor now? Complete with entering the room as soon as the patient wakes up cliché?”

“Well, this thing let me know when you woke up.” He showed her the clipboard. Rather than an actual clipboard it was a slab of Crystal with room numbers and colored dots. He also pointed at the wall above her bed. “It will also inform the staff if there is anything wrong. This is an example of what we’re getting out of the changeling magical medical sciences.”

She hadn’t seen it yet, but it was one of those magical images with pictograms for a heart, a thermometer, and lungs followed by numbers.

“Need unicorn staff to use those, but we're getting there. Oh! We also drew some blood for some tests so that Celestia would finally leave us alone. She freaked out for a while until she finally understood that you were not injured.”

She was glad Celestia still worried about her but distracted with something else. “How many died in the battle.”

“Zero. Among ponies and griffons.” He shook his head and she got angry, and by the way he looked at her, she figured he knew she’d be angry.

“That is just not possible!” She rather he told her the unpleasant truth than try to make her feel better, or whatever he was trying to do. She was partially responsible! She had to know! “Tell me!”

“I’m telling you, Twilight. No one died. Some were severely injured, but they’re recovering. Don’t ask me how.” He shook his head. “Beats me.”

What? How? She saw that big griffon airship ripping the others apart. She remembered Rarity asking about how naval combat used to be. That is, that pegasus’ answer hadn’t been completely right because ships had to carry gunpowder, much like the modern airships, and if the storage was hit it could blow a chunk of the ship, but… The point was that there was no way ponies weren’t working in the areas where the explosions happened. Even with good, enchanted armor and all the luck in the world!

“Well, you don’t have to believe me. You’re a princess. You should be able to get to the archives and see them for yourself.”

She hummed at him. She could try. “Anyway… Did they hurt you?”

“The griffons? No. They just stuck me in a cell or another. I got to escape because a griffon guy decided that he was done with his bosses.”

That could be useful. Though he would certainly be under vigilance. “What was his name?”

“Grinolf.” He scratched his head with a hoof. “I think they may have some weird sort of discrimination going on up north. I mean, Luna talked to him and it didn’t sound good. I suppose that is a job for the friendship squad after this whole mess is done.”

She sat at her bed. It seemed that he was fine with her teasing from before and he wasn’t hurt, so she ought to worry about herself. “So… How in much trouble am I?”

“Luna told us that in the meantime something went really bad with Cadance and she had a sort of dream… They are worried about you two.”

Twilight grinned. “Cadance doesn’t see it like that. Since she saw some things Celestia and Luna didn’t want us to know, I figure that they would think that things went bad. Especially because she was acting a bit weird and she wants to figure things out.”

“And that is probably why you are all invited to dinner.” He produced a small piece of paper folded in half that he gave to her to read. A simple invitation to dinner and a note saying that she was free to go anywhere on the fleet, excluding the Magic of Friendship. She also had been assigned a room in the Break of Dawn, where they’ll have dinner.

That told Twilight two things: Celestia might be willing to have a conversation and with some luck, disclose some of that crazy stuff. And second, her airship was operational. Yet she held her grin inside because Chocolate Velvet sure liked her, but he was on Celestia’s and Luna’s side.

“So, I’m just free to walk around?” She looked at him, and then back at the letter. She might have missed something.

“Yes, according to Celestia, you are not prisoners. She just wants to keep you here so that you can have a conversation.”

She wasn’t sure how much of that she believed, but there was no doubt that playing along for the time was the better course of action, so she smiled at him. “Thanks. Can I leave the room or was there something else?”

“No. We’re done. You should see the others. They’re around this section. And I’ll see you at the dinner.”

Then he left and Twilight didn’t take long before leaving herself to enter a simple corridor with a the typical spartan decoration of hospitals. A plant here or there, some benches, a nice easy to clean floor and walls, typical magical lighting. It all seemed very ‘pony’, with hearts and pony pictograms everywhere. The corridor didn’t seem as wide as it should, but that was likely to the fact that it was actually an airship.

She could imagine all sorts of applications one such airship could have, starting with taking that new thing that was the changeling medical science to areas with less infrastructure than places such as Manehattan and Canterlot.

That was a good thing even if Twilight still thought that their deal with Chrysalis was a bit shady. She supposed that Princess Celestia bending the rules wasn’t new at all, but that whole stuff about griffons and goddesses and changed history seemed a bit too much. Maybe the diner would prove useful if she asked the right questions.

She let her thoughts trail off when she saw one of the griffons coming out of one of the doors. She was big, with a white head and magenta eyes. Bigger than she was and that was probably Gallensa, Grigory’s mate. She remembered seeing her pretty hurt during the fight.

“Hi!” She beamed at the griffon. “Nice meeting you! You must be Gallensa, right?”

The big griffon looked at her and didn’t even smile. Oh well… “Uh… You do speak Common Equestrian, right?”

She kept staring at Twilight without so much as a hint of a smile to the point Twilight thought she might have somehow offended the griffoness. Then Grigory came out of the room too.

“Speak Common Equestrian in their presence, Gallensa. Be courteous towards our hosts.” He said coldly, to which she said something in their own language. Never stopped staring at Twilight, though, and her ears moved about, trying to listen one word or another. “The Law of Hospitality includes that the guest must be courteous towards the host. Not to mention something that is expected of an adult.”

Gallensa stared at the ceiling and sighed in the most contemptuous way Twilight had ever seen. “Hi…”

Was there something wrong with her feathers in her neck? She had a bit of a scratch there. Actually, she had something of a pair of cuts in her neck, under her feathers! “Oh gosh! You’re hurt! Didn’t they take care of your wounds?”

“Yes, they did, Princess…” She didn’t sound very worried, instead she showed a level of annoyance Twilight really didn’t expect. Before she could inquire further though, Gallensa turned to Grigory. “I’ll see if there is anything edible in this place. Find me when the pony ceases to entertain you…”

Then she rubbed her beak together with his in a soft clicking sound and softly closed her eyes. It felt like she initially meant to be offensive towards Twilight, but the pony was too curious for that to cut in. She couldn’t remember ever seeing griffons showing affection like that. In fact, Twilight didn’t really know much about the griffons that actually were friendly towards her kind.

Finally, Gallensa left the two alone. “Greetings Princess Twilight Sparkle.”

“Greetings. Hum. Should I call you Prince?”

He shook his head. “‘Grigory’ will suffice, Princess.”

“Well then, call me simply ‘Twilight’!” She chuckled. “So, things didn’t really go as planned, did they?”

“They most certainly didn’t.” He smiled a little and gestured the way down the corridor. “No hard feelings for capturing your friend, I hope?”

“I hear Princess Celestia sent him to Haybale specifically to get us away from you.” She walked along with him down the corridor. There was some sort of sitting area ahead. Then she frowned. “Kind of curious that she let us walk freely and put us in close rooms.”

“Princess Celestia is known to us as a skilled strategist with a penchant for convoluted stratagems.”

“I can’t disagree…” She grunted, but then she looked up at his mustard-yellow face. “Do you hate her?”

“It is a complicated issue.” He kept staring forward as they walked.

Evasive much, huh? Fine. “Well, I know for a fact that she has no problems with your father becoming the King of the Griffons.”

“Still, it is a complicated issue.”

Not very forthcoming. Still fine. “You came looking for me and for Cadance. We have something that you want, or you want to give us something that you think might be beneficial to you if we had. Given the context of the whole situation, it most certainly is about the past that Princess Celestia helped King Grover erase. Well, I am interested in it too, and in the part of our own history that she erased. Discord has told us something and Cadance had a vision, but it us only about the pony part of it. Queen Chrysalis told us some things, and she didn’t paint a very good image of Emperor Grigor. But I want to know your point of view, and I also think that we can help each other.”

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he seemed to ponder on her words.

Then they crossed into the sitting area. It was a sort of living room with windows to the outside on one wall and passages to corridors on the others. Pictographic signs indicated the way to different places, such as bathroom, room numbers, a surgery center, emergency center and a cafeteria.

“Well, I’m hungry. And I think that the others would gather at the cafeteria.”

“Yes.” He agreed. “I would like to know what the name of the traitor was. I did not recognize him, but I has just occurred to me that you might be able to find him.”

“Chocolate Velvet told me that his name was Grinolf.” She immediately regretted telling him that, but it was too late.

“Grinolf…” The griffon stared at the floor for a second. “The name means nothing to me other than it is a typical name of the northern region. Odd. I did not expect someone born in the region to betray us.”

“I don’t believe it’s very likely, but I’ll try to reach him for you.” She assured him and they started on their way to the cafeteria.

“I appreciate it.” He thanked her mindlessly, clearly thinking of something else and she didn’t like it.

“Are you thinking of punishing him, or something if I find him for you?”

He kept a serious poise but relaxed a little. “No. I want to understand. I don’t know him, and it bothers me that he would betray us. If anything, I could try and fix whatever problem he had so that others don’t do the same. It is what my father would do.”

That sounded fair to Twilight, and in the meanwhile they arrived at the cafeteria. The corridor that led to it turned to a stair up and once at the top they were at the cafeteria. It was a lounge area surrounded by windows that made Twilight think of the restaurant on one of those large and luxurious cruise ships. The zeppelins where the very rich threw parties.

In the back were tables with food. One for salads and side dishes and another for cooked food. The rest of the space was occupied by tables and creatures already enjoying their breakfast and the central area was left open for passage. It smelled great as far as Twilight was concerned, but there were also several Royal Guards in their traditional golden barding watching over. She had almost forgotten that she was ‘not arrested’.

That was probably a good thing though, with lots of ponies and griffons that were fighting each other not a day ago in the same place. Even if things seemed calm.

Regardless, Twilight and Grigory reached the tables where a helpful white and blue earth pony with a tidy mane and blue suit greeted them. “Greetings Princess! Master Grigory! Can I offer you breakfast?”

“Please do!” She beamed happily at the pony while Grigory critically examined the tables.

“We have waffles with honey and strawberry or oats with yogurt. Additionally, blueberry muffins. For the griffons we also have muffins, but with fried eggs or sausage quiche! You can also help yourselves to a selection of fruits and nuts, cheeses, juices and milk and coffee, or chocolate! Free for all staff, patients and companions!”

“Great! I'll have the oats!” Twilight chirped.

“What is a quiche?” Grigory looked at the open pastry, not so sure. To Twilight it would’ve seemed tasty, with all the cheese, parsley and mashed potatoes. If not for the sausage bits poking out of the cheese. “Looks like a pie to me.”

Twilight hadn’t even seen her, but Pinkie Pie inhaled, seemingly out of nowhere. “A quiche is a savory open-faced pastry crust with a filling of custard with cheese, meat, seafood and/or vegetables. It can be served hot or cold and it is quite popular in Prance! Whereas a pie is a sweet or savory dish with a filling AND a crust. The sides of a pie dish, or pan, are typically sloped. It can have just a bottom, just a top, or both and a top crust! Which is traditionally made of flour, salt, cold water and lard. It’s supposed to be crisp and flaky! They are served straight from the dish in which they were baked!”

“Thank…” Grigory started but Pinkie took another deep breath.

“Which is different from a tart that is a sweet or savory dish with shallow sides and only a bottom crust. Their crusts are usually made from pastry dough. The goal is a firm, crumbly crust! They are baked in a pan with a removable bottom or in a pastry ring so that it can be unmolded before serving. Similar to a cake which is a form of sweet desert that is usually baked. They were modifications of breads, but now cover a wide variety of preparations that can be simple or elaborate and share features with other desserts such as meringues, custards and pies!”

“Miss Pie, thank…”

“On the other hoof! A flan is an open pastry or sponge cake containing a sweet or savory filling! A typical one is round with a shortcrust and coated with a sweet syrup!”

He waited for a few seconds and she didn’t say anything, simply stared at him and Twilight. “Thank you, Miss Pie.”

“You’re welcome!” She chirped like the happiest pony on the planet and pranced away carrying her tray with food on her back.

“Sorry…” Twilight grinned all sheepish to the griffon.

He retorted with a smirk. “Don’t ever call my friends quirky again.”

She giggled at that and he smiled, genuinely this time, while both scanned the other table for other things to eat. Toasts, sauces, caramelized grains, some greens and fruits, and then they followed the bouncing tray towards a table by the corner near the windows. And, judging by his reaction, much to Grigory’s surprise his friends sat at the table with Twilight’s friends. Each group on one side of the table, but still at the same table.

“I’m surprised.” He said. “I expected I’d have to drag each one of you here to sit with the ponies.”

“I figured that you’d want to talk.” His big dark-gray furred friend explained while he grabbed the water pitcher in the center of the table and poured it on his paws above an empty bowl and dried them off on the tablecloth. “I told them to sit with the ponies so that we could.”

Then he noticed the ponies staring at him. Twilight herself found her eyes drawn to his gesture.

“What?” He asked when he stopped after he noticed all the eyes on him.

“Hum. The water is for drinking, sir.” Rarity told him, all courtesy.

“Actually, you’re supposed to wash your paws even if you do use the forks.” Spike added. “You just don’t use the drinking water and the tablecloth…”

Twilight cleared her throat. “It’s not like he’s hurting anypony. If they are used to doing it like that, then they should.”

“There. I know common-sense when I see it.” The big griffon grabbed his slice of quiche in his paw. “How in the feather do you earth-ponies and pegasi hold forks?”

“Like this.” Applejack grabbed a spoon folding her heel over her pastern. “It’s not that difficult. A lot of ponies just eat straight from the plate too. Most creatures with them fingers think this is weird. Works just fine.”

“Really… I find it somewhat cumbersome. But I am a unicorn.” Rarity said while her telekinetic magic picked up her own spoon and Applejack didn’t bother while eating her oats.

Nopony made much out of that conversation and they started sampling from the food they had picked for themselves, but Twilight spent a few seconds watching ponies and griffons eating, wondering something that just became apparent. Unicorns didn’t really touch their food. She recalled Discord telling them that the problem were the unicorns and by what Cadance had told them about the Bluebloods and the Brightmanes, she really didn’t doubt it.

Something else distracted her though. “Where is Cadance?”

“We slept together with Flurry Heart.” Her brother told her, looking past her friends at the table. “But she woke early, nursed and played with her a little, and then she left. Flurry is with Miss Calcite now, but I don’t know where is Cadie.”

“I hope she’s okay. She was a bit strange yesterday.” She sat by the table, same as Grigory on the other side. “So… On to matters at hoof. I don’t expect that they wouldn’t, but did the royal guards treat you fairly?”

“Other than having my baby taken from me…” The all white and caramel ‘owl’ griffon grumbled with fidgeting with the small cherry tomatoes on her plate.

“Whaa? Wait a minute! Your baby?!” Rarity let her fork go and cling on the table.

“She means a weapon, Rarity.” Twilight scowled at the griffon.

“It’s one of a kind” The other defended herself slamming a closed fist on the table. “It was my baby and Princess Celestia hasn’t even answered to the last forty requests I made!”

“You have an unhealthy obsession with that thing.” Spike declared from his side of the table.

“It’s not funny.” Rainbow glared at the griffon next to Applejack. “That jerk could’ve killed Spitfire!”

“Feh…” She dismissed the complaint with a wave of her white paw. “If I wanted her dead, she’d be dead. I shot her where she’d stop fighting and wouldn’t die before she could get help.”

“These things don’t work like that.” Fluttershy glared too, even if she did speak softly. “You could’ve crippled her! What you did was very dangerous and irresponsible!”

“Honey, we were in the middle of a fight, and Spitfire is military. She knew the risks.”

“Excuse me?” Rarity stared with all her elegant anger; in the same way she softly laid her cup of coffee on the table. “You are the one complaining that you were disarmed upon capture and whining that your weapon is special…”

“Amusing as this is…” Grigor spoke sullenly, examining his slice of quiche in this paw. “I think we should be using our time in a more useful way.”

“Yes… I’ve been invited to a dinner with Princess Celestia and I really want to have some good questions to ask her.”

“You too?” Rainbow blinked at her.

Twilight wasn’t surprised. “Well, I suppose she would invite all of us.”

“We have been invited too.” Grigory added. “And this is exactly what I mean. I doubt that Celestia will be very forthcoming with me or my friends, but you… Especially if you ask her the right questions. I wonder, however, if it would be a good idea to discuss this so openly.”

“Right! I don’t think that the guards are worried about us right now.” Twilight chirped with a huge grin, nodding at the guards more interested in the others around the restaurant “I wish Cadance was here though, but I have the feeling she’s looking for something important. I also wish I had brought my notepad, pen and ink or a pencil.”

Spike then rose triumphantly with a foot on the table and the required items in hand. “I got you covered Twilight!”

“I need a pet too.” Grigory spoke to himself, stroking his beak. Twilight pretended she didn’t hear that.

***

Cadance casually walked around Princess Celestia’s airship, the Break of Dawn. Inconspicuously taking mental notes of every single detail, but she ran into problems the in the first minute she strolled about. There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in the main deck, but she didn’t expect there’d be something interesting anyways. Having overheard Twilight and Shining’s conversation during the fight she imagined that the juicy stuff would be hidden bellow.

“What do you mean I can’t go down.” She struck a hoof on the crystalized metal, but the royal guard didn’t care.

“Nopony but the crew are allowed underneath, Princess. Unless you have a good reason to go down there.” He said with that annoying stoic expression they always had, next to his friend that didn’t even say a word.

“I’m looking for my baby!” She lied as convincingly as she could and at least she got a reaction from them. They looked at each other and then both stared at her with less than amused raised eyebrows.

“Your highness… Did you just say that Princess Flurry Heart is down there?”

“Yes!” She grinned from ear to ear. “She’s been teleporting around all morning and our maid, Miss Calcite, is a crystal pony so, she couldn’t really control Flurry Heart. I’ve looked everywhere for her up here!”

The two stared at her and she kept grinning, blinked hopefully at them.

“Princess, with all due respect, if you weren’t married to Captain Armor and weren’t a Princess of Equestria, I would have you arrested for what you just did.”

The other simply nodded as though they were talking to an unruly child.

Cadance pouted and thought of trying something else, but she wasn’t in a very good mood to deal with this. So, she simply walked away with her pout. There were other accesses to the underdeck in the main one, but she figured that in her present situation trying to get in was pointless.

She tapped her hoof on the floor, looking around, searching for an alternative until her eyes were drawn to the officer’s quarters in the ship’s stern. Or rather, what would be it on a normal ship. Instead of the cramped, but comfy, quarters that Twilight’s Magic of Friendship had on her aft, the Break of Dawn had something that more closely resembled a luxurious palace in the form of an airship’s captain’s quarters. It had several floors above the main deck and probably others below. It most likely had an entrance to the lower gundecks. Hum…

Casually, she strutted about, as was expected from a princess of her caliber and certainly drew attention from the ponies working in the deck until she reached the door to the aftercastle. It looked like the entrance to a palace, indeed, including two royal guards by the doors.

“Greetings princess.” The one on the right said. “May we help you?”

“Can I come in? I need to talk to Princess Celestia.” She asked, all innocence, playing the repentant little filly. “I think that I owe her some explanations before we meet with the others.”

One stared at the other. “Absolutely, Princess. Do come inside.”

They opened the door for her, and she walked inside with a grin as soon as they were behind her. She found herself in a rather spacious hall for an airship, with a freaking twin curved staircase to the mezzanine and a huge double door. All in whites, goldens and magenta. A giant gold and crystal candelabra and luxurious doors to side rooms and her aunt’s cutie mark in a giant rug in the floor. It was a monument to Celestia’s ego!

Angry shouting distracted her and directed her attention to the top of the stairs where the rude pegasus mare from the previous day stomped down the stairs followed by her male pegasus friend.

“Candy! Wait!” He called for her with an outstretched foreleg, but she ignored him, and passing by Cadance she turned her face the other side with a petulant huff to storm out the door.

That little mare needed an attitude adjustment! But rather than going out after her, Cadance turned to her pegasus friend. She assumed it was her friend since he tolerated her and wanted her companionship, or something.

“Hum. Hello, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza.” He said, shuffling his hooves at the floor. “I hope you’re not hurt or anything from yesterday.”

“No, I’m fine! Flight Worthy, right?”

“Yes! Ah... Please forgive my friend, Candy Crush. She’s had a few bad days.” His ears drooped on his head and his eyes seemed so hurt.

But more important than that, Cadance heard something. She had been hearing it for the last days since her dream vision, but either she hadn’t paid attention to it or she thought he was mistaken, but she definitively heard it then. That little pony’s heart whispered to her. It felt like Flurry Heart crying for her, and she was compelled to listen now that she had heard it so clearly. She knew what that was.

She did her best no to show it, but she smiled inside. It was a cry of unrequited love that she heard, just like all those ages ago. It was like she removed a veil from her face that she never noticed was there until it was gone.

“You love her, don’t you?” She smiled, a little too conceited, less friendly than she wanted, judging by his reaction, but it was good enough. “There is no denying, I can see it as clear as Celestia’s day.”

He shuffled his hooves some more, trying to avoid her gaze. “I like her. A lot. But she’s been so mean.”

Cadance had seen mares doing that to drive away a suitor they were not interested in. Whatever happened to communication, though? She didn’t like it, and she didn’t feel like allowing that. But, for a prize as precious as unconditional love, her small request would be an insignificant price.

“She is callous, and her heart turned into a thorny monstrosity, unlike yours, so pure and innocent.” She smiled at him, who stared back with big, confused eyes. “She would benefit greatly from your love and I would bound your hearts until your lives are expended.”

“You’re talking funny, Princess…” He rose an eyebrow at her.

“Hush.” She touched his nose with a hoof. “I am in need of your assistance, however. You are to be trusted by Celestia’s royal guards, therefore I urge you to enter the lower decks of her airship and report to me what you should find.”

“But…”

She silenced him again. “No buts. This is the opportunity of your lifetime. You are with her on a luxurious airship. You will not have another opportunity, and this is as right as could ever be for it is my desire that you are together. However, I demand your assistance, on an exceptional situation.”

She didn’t leave him time to think, coming closer still, lowering her head to his. “You are a member of a local militia. A pony sworn to fight danger that others should not be exposed to. A gallant and brave offering to society, and I expect some courage from one who follows such a Destiny. The courage to seize opportunity when it presents to you.”

He frowned and she knew that her words bit deep. Then he showed her a brave expression, determined. “I’ll do what you’re asking princess! I’ll be discreet and I’ll see you when I have something to report.”

She sat on the floor and smiled agreeably at him, who bowed respectfully and left out the door she had come from. Cadance remained sat on the rug in the center of the hall and rubbed her chin with a hoof.

Perhaps it was not such a good idea to bargain up her Gift like that, but she was sure that the colt would produce some results and if not, she could always ‘reward’ his efforts. Whatever. Her Gift was hers to give to whoever she deemed worthy and that colt was anyways. She wasn’t hurting him or anything over such a simple thing.

Then the door to one of the side rooms opened and Chrysalis came through it, cocking her head and opening large eyes at the sight of her in the hall. Her weird secretary followed, and she managed to compose herself.

“What are you doing here?” The queen took a few steps closer to her. “I thought you were supposed to be on the hospital airship with the others plotting an escape or something.”

“I’m not talking to you! You lied to me!” She glowered at the queen. “What are you even doing here?”

“I’m helping Celestia get you two brats under control before you ruin it for everyone.” She scowled back at Cadance and poked her chest with a hoof. “I want the world to survive for a while longer now that I’m on the House of Majesty and the griffons are enough of a problem without you two messing it up worse.”

She glared at Cadance. “Kindly stop!”

“You wouldn’t stop if you were me!” The princess stomped the floor. “Why are you helping them? I mean, you and your mother may have been involved.”

“I was involved, genius.” Chrysalis snarled while her secretary remained stoically bored. “I met Celestia soon before they kicked the griffons out of Everfree. My mother wanted to marry one of my sisters to Celestia and wanted herself to marry Luna. I can guarantee you that I know what happened during that mess. Which is a good reason I’m still trying to decide if I want to help Discord help you or help Celestia stop you! But when you do stupid things like getting caught by a griffon mercenary and a bunch of local losers from Ponyville, the question becomes rather one-sided!”

“Wait!” Cadance blinked twice. “Mother Farfalla wanted to marry your sisters to Princess Celestia? And she wanted to marry Luna?!”

Chrysalis sighed. “Yes. It was common in that time, trying to marry your monstrous daughter to some powerful jerk too much of a plothole to attract a suitor themselves. It just wasn’t very normal to try and marry them to another female, and Celestia wasn’t even queen yet, so that may have influenced the outburst. I swear… I thought that the old Blueblood was going to die from a heart attack. But didn’t stop him from trying to arrange a marriage between me and the youngest Brightmane. But no way I was going to marry a fat earth pony.”

“But why?”

“Strategical marriage, dummy.” Despite her words, Chrysalis seemed to be uncharacteristically patient. “The Swarm, even at the highest of our numbers was always weak. Not to mention that my mother knew something about the Two Sisters and wanted in. Maybe she knew who they were. I don’t know. She was obsessed with something I don’t understand to this day. When that didn’t work out, she tried selling me out to Emperor Grigor. But you can imagine he wasn’t into the freakish changeling thing.”

“Would you have married him?” Cadance’s ears perked up like she was gossiping with a friend before she realized it herself.

“Sure. And then slitted his throat in the wedding night as soon as he was sleeping. Don’t look at me like that. It’s the best time to kill a husband you hate. Particularly in these arranged marriages.”

“Sounds like you’ve done this before.” Cadance squinted at her.

“Not the first jerk she tried marrying me off to. It’s also great for after you’ve convinced some dumbass he’s going to be the next king of the changelings because he is donating ‘his precious seed’… Males are dumb, Cadance.” The queen grunted. “At least I never destroyed an entire kingdom because of that crap. Things were a mess back them, Cadance.”

Cadance blinked again. “What do you mean?”

“Ever heard of the Four Princes of Shatterhoof Valley?”

“Yes!” Cadance beamed. “It’s a cute story about the three older princes that set out to find a loving wife for their younger brother, Prince Glitterhoof, when a minstrel from Equestria arrived and sang about Equestria! They traveled to Equestria and arranged for Princess Luna to date with the youngest and then they got married and got to live in Equestria happily ever after!”

Chrysalis stared at Cadance for a while until it became an uncomfortable silence. Then Chrysalis chuckled and laughed. Cadance deadpanned at her. “Not the real story, is it?”

“Well, let’s say that Prince Glitterhoof wasn’t the youngest and that it turned out he didn’t exactly live happily ever after.” Chrysalis gave her creepy smile and a book flashed into existence after her horn charged up with magic. She gave it to Cadance, who took it in her own telekinetic magic. “Don’t let Shining Armor catch you reading this. It will scar him for life. Especially the part about ‘Prince Glitterhoof’.”

Cadance blinked at her and then stared at the book. It was a simple, rather thin book with a green leather cover and golden letters that said ‘The Four Princes of Shatterhoof Valley’. Seemed safe enough. There seemed to be no magic on it other than the typical magical preservation spells and another to make it more resistant to manipulation. Somehow Cadance felt a bit uneasy about it. Probably because of Chrysalis. “What is it about?”

“It is about what happens when one's ego becomes larger than their worth. The greater the glory, the greater the fall and Celestia fell from very high.”

Cadance gasped. “Is this about Princess Celestia?”

“No, Cadance. It is about four princess that failed to understand times were changing and happened upon the worst pair of sisters they could have to try and bully them around. If you asked me, I wouldn’t shed a tear for the princes, their families, their friends and even their courtiers, but there is a limit to how much ‘justice' one can do without becoming part of the problem themselves.”

“I see…” Cadance frowned at the book. Better to read it with Twilight later.

“Anyways… I thought that you would benefit from learning from this story… Luna’s told me about your issues. Celestia is going to want to hear about that in the dinner.”

Oh, Cadance bet she would, and she hadn’t noticed, but she frowned at Chrysalis because Celestia would be hearing a lot in that dinner. That was probably why Chrysalis looked so concerned. It was kind of funny seeing Chrysalis trying to play mediator. Still, that didn’t change the fact that Cadance was angry and that was putting it lightly.

“They want to help. As do I. Don’t be late for dinner.” Chrysalis sighed and then went her way, also leaving through the door and Cadance was alone, staring at the book, wondering about the timing of their meeting. Princess Celestia used to be more cunning and subtle.

Cadance cringed at her own thoughts. Maybe the situation was just that bad and she was too stubborn to realize.

Anyways, better to find Twilight and get ready for the dinner.

***

“Wait… You mean you guys think we summoned the Windigos to attack you? Are you out of your minds?!” Pinkie Pie shrieked with her typical gaping mouth and giant eyes of surprise. “This is crazier than… Than… Hum… Applejack?”

“Crazier than a soup sandwich!” The farmpony agreed. “They almost destroyed us!”

Twilight nodded. “Not to mention that it contradicts Cadance’s vision more than the Hearthwarming tale.”

“Oh! The princess had a vision?!” Gallensa growled. “Goodness me… She had a vision! You ponies smoke stuff we use to scare the flies away!”

“Hum… Those don’t really scare the flies away.” Fluttershy said timidly. “They overwhelm their senses, and it is very uncomfortable to them.”

Gallensa just stared at her until Fluttershy went back to her food.

“Although…” Twilight spoke again, frowning and rubbing her chin. “The vision didn’t say anything that would outright contradict this version. It is possible that the unicorns caused the Windigos to arrive. Discord did say he felt something was wrong with them… Even if he figured all ponies were the problem. It is even possible that the unicorns did it, even if unintentionally, and that could be what Princess Celestia is trying to hide so much.”

“I feel like if one third of the ponies had a dirty secret it might cause some issues…” Starlight mused. “Maybe enough that it warranted hiding the whole story?”

“So… You agree with us?” Grigory’s skinny brown friend stared.

“No! All I’m saying is that your point of view could be correct from a certain perspective, and that it warrants closer examination. It is a good thing to ask Princess Celestia.” Twilight would like a quick answer, but in her experience, those were typically plain wrong. She just couldn’t get out of her head that Discord thought it was important that they met that Naminé. Such a weird name.

“Do you really think that she’ll outright admit to it?” Grigory’s white friend, Gracielle, didn’t seem very convinced. “Princess Celestia has been lying about that matter for centuries.”

She rubbed her mane with a hoof. “I know it’s not very reassuring, but I’m afraid we can’t just force her to acquiesce to us. The best we can do is try to get her to talk about all she wants and maybe something more. I think it’s good enough that she wants to talk.”

“You don’t really have a plan, do you?” Grigory sighed at her and held his face.

“Says the guy that stole dad’s airship and whose plan crumbled before his eyes.” She grinned back at him.

“That is not what happened.” He defended himself, borderline offended at her remark.

“It sure looked like it, though…” Rainbow chuckled from the other side of the table.

“Well, it is true that my plan didn’t work, but it is not as though I stole my father’s airship. Most important: how do we approach questioning Celestia, if she is not willing to tell us the whole truth?”

“I believe that a tactful approach would be advisable.” Rarity offered. “I doubt the Princess will feel much inclined to explain anything if we are not mindful of our manners. Over time, I have learned that Princess Celestia responds well to good manners.”

“What?” Grigory’s big friend mock-smiled at her. “No wiping paws in the tablecloth?”

“That would be preferable, sir.”

“Hum…” Twilight continued. “Why do you believe that we used the Windigos as weapons against you? You certainly know of the Hearthwarming Tale, but given the reclusive demeanor of your… Hum… Faction… Could you explain to us where your belief comes from?”

“No. We can’t.” Gallensa replied in such an aggressive manner she almost scared the ponies. “Our tales are not meant to be given to others. Your precious princess would antagonize and seek to destroy us more than she already does and if she knew of our actual history more than she already does, she could destroy us.”

Before Twilight could argue that she needed the information, Grigory put a paw on Gallensa’s shoulder. “Gallensa is correct, princess. Our lore and our culture must be protected for the sake of our safety. But the situation is extraordinary.”

Twilight imagined they wouldn’t like what they had just heard, but the other griffons said nothing and Grigory went on. “It is mentioned in the Cry of the Harpy. ‘Until they saw they could not bend us and brought the Eternal Winter to the North. My Children scattered and fled to the south in the wake of the pony nation’.”

“The Cry of the Harpy, huh?” Twilight mused. “What is it?”

“It is our History. A book containing a tale written by The Harpy herself about our story. From our creation to the present day and what Celestia has hidden from the world for the sake of the Traitor King, and for her own sake.”

“King Grover?” Twilight asked. “Was he the Traitor King? I mean, it would make sense. From your point of view.”

“I am surprised you are so accepting of the idea, princess.” Gallensa said, looking bored, holding her head and with an elbow on the table. “I suppose that having your big princess lying to you would have that effect.”

“Wait a pony bucking second!” Applejack suddenly tapped her hoof on the table. “I had assumed that this Harpy of yours was some old griffon of that time. Twilight did tell us that she was mentioned in a letter from some general way back when.”

“The Harpy is eternal, pony.” He said while his girlfriend seemed distressed over that and said something in their language. He remained calm and talked back to her, then returned his attention to the ponies.

“Is she alive now?” Pinkie closed an eye at him, all suspicious in her own ‘Pinkie way’.

“She is hiding, Miss Pie.” He looked calmly at the pony. “Your adored Princess Celestia would stop at nothing to murder her.”

Twilight rose an eyebrow. “I find that hard to believe.”

“You don’t have to.” He was serious and his eyes left no doubt in that regard. “Ask your princess about her and you will see that she is not as welcoming and friendly as you like to think.”

Good moment to keep her head cool. She nodded at him, but also grinned. “Well, I’m convinced that Princess Celestia had good reasons to do what she did, but it may be a good idea not to mention to her that you claimed The Harpy is alive. I am also willing to help. I assume that you would help me understand. Where did you want to take me and Cadance?”

“To Stormy Eyrie. It is the place where Emperor Grigor first met the Harpy.”

“Stormy Eyrie…” Spike noted the name down.

“Hum… If something happens and we are separated, we’ll try to go there after we see Naminé in Manehattan. Where is it?”

The griffons chuckled at that and Grigory more than the others. “You’ll die going there on your own. If you make it to the northern frontier, you will not make it past the Frozen North. If the malevolent climate from the Windigos doesn’t kill you, the undead monsters from the battlefields of the past will. And if you manage to make it to the mountain range, the climb or the storm will. But if you make it past them, somehow, the Harpy will not suffer your presence in the Stormy Eyrie. She’ll return you a finely cut set of pony parts to Celestia.”

The ponies stared with huge eyes, but Twilight just deadpanned. “Well, it’s pretty hard to help someone that is trying to kill me. And you wanted me to think that Princess Celestia is wrong? Wait… She lives in there? Somewhere in the Frozen North?”

“It is complicated, and I can’t explain to you anymore, unless I take you there. That is why I wanted to escort you into our territory. You are of no use to us if you are dead.”

“I take it that this Harpy doesn’t like ponies very much.” Applejack squinted at them. “Mind explaining?”

“You stole the world from us.” There was another gasp, but as it had become commonplace in that adventure Twilight didn’t find it funny.

“That is a weird way of putting it.” Twilight said, finally. “Was it because Princess Celestia killed the Emperor? We don’t really know much about what happened in that time because she hid all of it.”

Grigory shook his head and then grinned mysteriously. “Our grievances with your kind are much older than that, pony. They go as far as before the beginning of time.”

“That doesn’t make a lot of sense.” Twilight gave him a reproaching stare. “Things cannot happen before time. It’s nonsensical, not to mention absurd to imagine that you would have actual information about anything of the sort.”

“It is also in the Cry of the Harpy.” Grigory explained. And he was going to quote from it again, but Twilight interrupted.

“And you believe it just because of that? Something that makes no sense on its own?”

“Actually…” Spike rose a claw. “Didn’t Cadance tell us that Discord wanted things to return to the moment of creation?”

“There is clearly some powerful time magic involved, Twilight.” Starlight added. “Not to mention that the griffons could be using some sort of figurative language.”

Twilight hummed and Grigory simply stared, mildly angry. “Will you let me speak?”

The others grinned apologetically.

“Long before the Windigos, the ponies cast a powerful spell that summoned the Black Sun. We don’t know exactly what it did, but it was what allowed the ponies to rule the world and replace us.”

“Black Sun…” Twilight mused. “Is that the same thing Queen Chrysalis mentioned? That the sun exploded and became dark? I mean, I didn’t believe her at the time, but now you’re telling me that the northerner griffons have a similar tale about the sun becoming black… Probably different events, though. What exactly do you know about this?”

“Not much, unfortunately. But it is likely that Chrysalis told you about the Mad God and his attempt of returning the world to us. And I am talking of a time before that.” Grigory shook his head. “An event that the ponies used it to take over the world from us in the climax of a war between our kinds.”

“Whoa nelly! What the hay?!” Applejack shrieked

And Twilight cried. “What? What do you mean?”

Grigory shrugged. “Why else would he attempt to return time to the moment of creation? If not to return it’s fate to the original owner, The Harpy?”

“That is not what he said I Cadance's dream. She quoted him saying that Amore and the others would have a new chance.” Twilight frowned at him. “He didn’t even mention The Harpy.”

His big friend smirked at her. “In his place I wouldn’t either.”

“Alright.” Twilight frowned and groaned. “Regardless, Spike, make a list of subjects we need to ask Princess Celestia.”

“Guys, don’t look, but those two ponies are paying attention to everything you say.” Shining alerted them, as quietly as he could while still being heard. “Ten Bits say they’re royal guards listening in for the Princess.”

“Took us long enough to realize…” Grigory added with the same low voice. “I suppose we’ve talked enough.”

“What would you have us do, Grigory?” His big friend asked.

“Return to our rooms. And be quiet until dinner.” He told them calmly and they nodded.

“I wanna see if Spitfire is okay…” Rainbow told Starlight, then looked at Gracielle. “You know… Someone shot her with a real gun.”

“What? I was helping you guys! She was fighting Captain Armor! I mean… She was kicking his ass!” She paused for a second. “His flank. Whatever.”

“Enough.” Grigory put an end to the arguing and didn’t look like his mood was improving. “Go to your rooms. We will prepare for the dinner with Princess Celestia. And probably Princess Luna too. Be mindful of even your thoughts.”

They didn’t argue and left the table without another word, leaving the ponies and dragon by themselves, and when they were gone, they turned to Twilight.

“I don’t like this.” Applejack was the first to speak. “I don’t trust these griffons as far as I can throw them. I got the feeling that he wanted to downright ponynap you and Cadance. I feel like Princess Celestia and Luna, Chrysalis too, just saved us from them!”

“I can’t say that you are wrong, AJ…” Twilight nodded. “But they may be our best chance if Princess Celestia isn’t willing to talk openly to us.”

“I’m a little worried, Twi.” Her brother said rubbing the table’s edge with his hoof. “Cadance isn’t very well…”

She sighed. “Yes. I know Shining. But I’m hoping that Princess Luna or Celestia can somehow make things better for her in this dinner tonight.”

“Well, at least we know that she’s going to want to be there, if only because she wants to make them talk about her dream.” He shrugged. “I suppose that we want to know too, right?”

***

Twilight stayed at her designated room in the Break of Dawn, a rather large room considering it was on an airship. It had a princess-size bed, all the required furniture for a pony like Rarity to spruce up in addition to the furniture normal ponies would need from a bedroom, and much like the room in the hospital airship, it had its own bathroom.

It felt luxurious like the rooms in the Canterlot Palace, but smaller.

The closet had been stocked with stuff she might need and one of her dresses, the white, pink, and purple one for important meetings. She hoped that royal guards had gone to Ponyville and asked her servants for one of them or something of the sort, because otherwise that would be kind of creepy.

She spent most of the day preparing for the conversation and reading a book she found in the bedside table. It was about relationships. She wondered if hitting her boyfriend in the face during the fight had something to do with that. Probably not and the book was just some random thing somepony had left there.

The wait was a bit boring, and she was curious about the airships, but after her efforts to find the griffon traitor got her angry stared from the royal guards she decided that staying shut and out of trouble was the best way to deal with the situation for now. Cadance had been doing some snooping around on her own and Twilight was sure that if there was anything of notice, she would share when she had time. She only hoped her friends, or the griffons wouldn’t do anything too stupid, like that Gracielle trying to steal back her weapon. Fortunately, Grigory seemed to have her under control.

When the time for dinner loomed, she prepared accordingly, wore the dress and included her Element of Magic tiara, then left her room. Shining Armor and Cadance just arrived. He wore his gala Royal Guard uniform with a ceremonial rapier and she a white and pink dress. Cadance didn’t look very happy though.

“You look great, Twilight!” He grinned at her and Cadance nodded, despite her mood.

“Princess Celestia is treating this as though everything is fine.” The pink alicorn grumbled unfriendly. “She better cough-up some answers or we’re going to have problems this night!”

“Don’t worry, Cadance. I’m with you in this.” Twilight agreed, even if she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. “If she didn’t want to talk, we wouldn’t be having dinner. Let’s just try and enjoy it too, alright?”

“She’s probably going to lie her muzzle off to us, Twilight.”

Twilight frowned. Just a little. “Try not to go into the conversation looking for reasons to be angry, Cadance. We owe Princess Celestia and Luna a fair chance.”

The other seemed to have agreed, at least.

“We’ll deal with that however we can.” Twilight frowned some more and lowered her voice. “Just because we’ve been caught, it doesn’t mean that it is all over.”

Cadance nodded silently and Shinning rolled his eyes. “Can we go?

Both mares agreed, and so they did. The corridor took them to the entrance hall where Twilight’s friends gathered, appropriately dressed for dinner with royalty. Twilight thought it was silly. This dinner wouldn’t be a social affair or a celebration. It was an opportunity to be level with each other and make amends. The thought that Celestia might not even recognize that she needed to make amends struck her, but that was what she had at the moment. Hay… As far as Twilight knew, Princess Celestia might think that she and Cadance needed to make amends. They got caught, after all…

Well, she had been throwing around some cards Twilight didn’t recognize, but if she was indeed that nice Princess Celestia Twilight knew, she would be interested in making amends no matter who was wrong in that whole affair and in that everypony got off feeling better. And that there would be peace.

She supposed she would see.

Standing with her friends, she could see Grigory’s griffons too. They wore a black set of ceremonial armor with golden details, but Grigory and Gallensa also wore very discreet and elegant golden diadems.

The ‘prince’ approached Twilight and she talked to him “I wish we could’ve avoided this whole thing. I would rather we had gone to that place you wanted to take us. At least I wouldn’t be feeling like a little filly about to be scolded.”

Grigory smirked at her. “Trust me, Princess. I know how you feel. There are adults that fear a scolding from Lady Gwendolen and giffons joke that they are more afraid of her than of the Lion himself.”

“Lady Gwendolen is his mate, right?” She asked and he nodded. “I never bothered with her. Everypony is always talking about The Lion.”

He grinned a touch more conceited. “A good predator lies in the tall grass and waits, Princess. Won’t move a muscle out of order until their prey is already dead but doesn’t know it yet.”

Then he frowned. “That was what I believed, at least.”

Twilight frowned at his words. The others didn’t seem to have heard as he was very personal and reserved in that conversation, but his change in mood drew her attention. She thought back to him trying to cast a spell and failing. Maybe that had something to do.

But before she could inquire, Crucible Wings, wearing his standard Royal Guard armor, opened the double door under the stair to the mezzanine and spoke clearly, the same way he announced guests in her court.

“Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, Princess Twilight Sparkle. Master Grigory. And companions, Her Royal Highnesses, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna welcome you. Please, this way.”

Grigory smirked at Twilight again and gestured with his paw for her to go first, which she did, followed by her friends. Starlight Glimmer and Spike were there too, but not her guards, or Flurry Heart and the maid. Certainly not her airship’s crewponies.

Past the door they entered a ball room with windows, a balcony on the far end, a beautiful gold, silver and crystal candelabra and a large table prepared for dinner in the center. Celestia wore a pretty white and gold dress next to Luna, who wore a turquoise and silver one. In between them was Chocolate Velvet wearing his custom Royal Guard gala uniform with whites, blues, golden and silver, complete with that golden mane fishnet he often used. He even had a decorative rapier, much like Shining Armor. Not to mention that they also wore their royal diadems.

And then she saw Thorax wearing a weird green and black uniform with bright green highlights that were just weird, but that was probably some sort of cultural shock. She couldn’t imagine Chrysalis allowing him to look bad next to her, who wore a dress too, but it resembled a carapace of velvety black plates and also a golden diadem. Thorax wore, instead, a nice and delicate chain headdress on his horns.

She was about to greet their hosts when Grigory fired off furiously by her side. “I am not sharing a table with that vile creature.”

“You can sit on the floor if you want, Grigory.” Chrysalis replied without missing a beat and not even changing her disinterested expression.

He stared back at Celestia. “This is why things will not work, Celestia. For some reason, this monster that has brought nothing more than pain and suffering into the world, including to her own kind is allowed a saying in the matters of griffons!”

Twilight couldn’t decide which was better. Luna’s blank ‘bitch, you serious?’ expression or Celestia’s motherly, knowing smile as she talked. “By that logic I don’t think that you would be here either, Grigory.”

Chrysalis’ ears perked up and she stared at Celestia. “I don’t know wherever I should feel defended or attacked, Celestia.”

Celestia smirked at her. “Perhaps all of us should feel grateful we have the opportunity to sit together and talk?”

Luna giggled. “How about we sit for dinner and talk like friends trying not to kill each other? We ask that all leave their quarrels outside and instead share a nice dinner and conversation.”

Twilight felt as though Grigory wanted to say something more but didn’t. Instead directed himself and his friends to the table. There were small paper signs folded to stand in front of the seats. Cutie Marks for the ponies, the Swarm’s emblem for the changelings, and a symbol Twilight didn’t recognize as Griffonia’s emblem, but it looked like a diving eagle, so it must be for the griffons, including two that also showed a small crown, which obviously were meant for Grigory and Gallensa.

She also noticed the pitchers with water and the small towels for the griffons.

Celestia and Luna sat at the head of the table with Chocolate Velvet to their right and Chrysalis and Thorax on the other side. Twilight and ponies on one side, including dragon, and griffons on the other side. Twilight had once read about the ‘secret language’ behind formal dinners and she supposed she was seeing a pony that was fluent at it in action.

“Now…” Celestia spoke while the servants brought in the food and beverages. “I hope you found your accommodations satisfactory.”

“They’re nice.” Cadance said and Twilight agreed with a nod. Grigory did too, but Twilight decided it was out of politeness.

“There are several issues that I believe we must address, but, originally, I did not plan we would have griffon guests at our table. I believe that politeness would dictate our guests are allowed the first opportunity to talk.”

“Thank you, Princess.” Grigory and Twilight watched as a royal guard in uniform, rather than armor, put a covered plate for him. “But I think that the only reason we are here is because Princesses Twilight Sparkle and Mi Amore Cadenza would like to talk to you. After all, we merely wished to assist on their quest. But since you offer the opportunity, I would like to mention that it seems as though ponies consider themselves the owners of the world. And that is something I have a problem with.”

“That would be wrong. Ponies don’t think of themselves as the owners of the world and if they did, they would be wrong.” Celestia told him while the servant next to her took the domed covering of her plate away, revealing steamed vegetables on butter, grains and bean sprouts. “I know why you would say that, though. But you should be acutely aware that, as responsibility over the manipulation of weather and worldly matters, the legislations over game hunting are sanctioned by chosen representatives of all the peoples in the Confederacy. It is easy to misconstrue the facts as though ponies didn’t want you to hunt to your heart’s content because we would consider ourselves closer to your prey. And, for the sake of the legitimacy of the other subjects that should be brought up tonight, I will be utterly and brutally honest with you. If it were up to me, you would simply not be allowed, or given any leeway on meat. Not even fish or poultry, or even more exotic meats, such as snakes, eels or monsters.”

While Twilight and the other ponies were served the same as Princess Celestia’s, she noticed the griffons were given steamed and buttered vegetables, but also finely cut and fried fish fillets. She didn’t know what was that in Chrysalis’ and Thorax's plates, but it looked like somepony had cooked sponges for them. Was that some sort of fungus?!

Looking at Cadance, Twilight almost gasped at the sight of the usually composed princess devouring the steamed vegetables as though she hadn’t had a decent meal in days. Still, she paid attention to Princess Celestia.

“Your people, or rather, your faction among your people can hate me all you want, but the truth is that your fellow griffons themselves are aware of the issue of taking the life of intelligent creatures and would agree with me. In fact, I am constantly under attack from low-level tabloids all over the Confederacy for allowing your faction not only getting away with slaughterhouses and game hunting but also simply existing and testifying of your beliefs.”

The princess frowned and let her silverware on the table to stare at the griffon. “I have been told that I am too lenient on Snow Mountains Hold since the times of Emperor Grigor. In fact, I can recall then Princess Chrysalis yelling at me to ‘kill them all or they would be back’.”

While Chrysalis happily munched on whatever was that greenish-gray spongy thing, Thorax cleared his throat and grinned apologetically. “The Swarm is however happy to declare that whatever grievances we had with the griffons are a thing of the past!”

Chrysalis was too happy eating that thing to bother with her typical snark.

Grigory looked at the queen and at Thorax, listened to him (and to Chrysalis’ noisy chewing), but didn’t say anything.

Celestia went on. “Other than that. It is incredibly frustrating that your cohorts hold this idea that I am the evil which corrupts all griffons from the path of whatever glorious purity you think that the Harpy wanted you to follow. I violate my own morality to allow for you to murder almost childishly naïve creatures that just want to be left alone and I certainly do not encourage ponies to create offspring with griffons or hippogriff. They do that on their own, from both sides.”

“Unfortunately, our issues can’t be resolved with words, Princess.”

“I am aware, Grigory. Which is one of the reasons I have no objections towards The Lion becoming the king of the griffons and ruling Griffonia. I believe in small steps, as long as civility can be maintained. I expect that a more reasonable dialogue on these issues can resume once the griffons are satisfied with their new leader.”

“How civil is it that you lied to my people, and yours, that you helped the Traitor King erase all history about Emperor Grigor? Is that why you have lied to us?”

“One might consider that, since Grigor acted against the vast majority of griffons, he would be the traitor. But no, Grigor was a monster like no other, even when the griffon lands constantly changed paws in between petty kings, one after the other deciding that they knew what was best for the griffons, no matter how bloody their claws became to the point I have wondered if griffons themselves were the problem. But not only that, he allowed an insidious and dangerous evil such as the ideology associated with The Harpy to thrive on his rule because it was beneficial to him. The truth is that you are as you are today because of the belief in The Harpy. Somehow, it survived past the fall of Grigor's Empire and eluded my notice. He allowed her cult to turn you into animals, and Grover, much like the remaining sane population of griffons, was terrified that she would ever return. He wanted her forgotten and erased from your history and if Grigor had to go too, no one would shed a tear over a particularly brutal warlord. And yet her name is mentioned today. I would like to understand how that is so until the end of this dinner.”

“Princess… Since you brought up The Harpy, may I ask you a question?” Twilight thought it was a good thing Starlight was there because it was probably better to approach the whole issue from a tangent, as Starlight did.

“Yes, Starlight Glimmer?”

She put her hooves on the table and spoke carefully. “Princess Cadance’s dream-vision made us believe that ponies and griffons may have developed in a different way and it seemed as though ponies were indeed meant to… ‘Make the world work’, for in the lack of a better expression and we also were under the impression that their minds developed in dependence of the entities that created them and sent them from somewhere to do just that. Meanwhile, from her perspective, the griffons just happened to exist and also developed in a different way. Was it because of the Harpy?”

Twilight agreed. “Good question. The fact that ponies were created to make the world work is as good as any explanation about the reason why we exist, and our magic makes the world work. But this difference in how our minds developed distinctively from the minds of griffons seems strange. Are you familiar with the works of Dr. Jungle Jaynest? Starlight said she happened upon evidence of that and in the light of Cadance’s vision, it becomes rather important evidence.”

“Her work was regarded as biased and too opinionated. Not to mention plain fantastical.” Celestia closed her eyes for a while and nodded, more to herself than to the others. “However, this is a good starting point. Have you ever noticed how certain creatures, intelligent as they are, would rather not civilize themselves? Such as cows, which are completely dependent on us taking care of them? But also, dragons that refuse to organize further and build a civilization. Or wild animals you could have a simple philosophical conversation with, but will simply not settle areas? Or seek higher education or protection from civilization, where their rights would be held? Countless intelligent creatures that exist isolated or, even if they are gregarious and do form strong bonds, distance themselves from civilization?”

They listened to the princess, quiet and intently. “That is because they lack the insight to understand that. Simply because it wasn’t given to them. They didn’t need that to fulfill their role.”

“The reason ponies have the capacity to shed their magic into the world and bring order to its chaos is that magic cannot act on its own. Similarly, Harmony needed an agent with the power to decide on how to tame the world. Thus, called into existence one with the power to create other beings, as once the world began to exist, it needed to find its path into order, and such creatures would guide it. She was The Harpy. She made the griffons in her own image and gave them independence and free reign over the world, and they shaped it in their image. Harmony reacted, providing what they demanded, and while they ruled the world, Harmony populated the world with other creatures, that were given the task to grow, multiply, and taste different, I suppose. But those had needs of their own, and so the ponies were created.”

She turned to the griffons. “Does that sound right, Grigory?”

“Hold up! Wait a second…” Rainbow frowned and made a ‘time-out’ gesture with her hooves. “Did you just say that The Harpy made us for food?!”

“No.” Celestia explained. “Not the harpy, nor necessarily for food, but to fulfil the roles griffons demanded of the world, reflecting The Harpy’s idea of order. By the inherent magic of the world, shaped in the wake of The Harpy’s creation. It just so happened that in a world of predators, one needed prey. And prey needed their own food.”

“That does makes sense…” Grigory actually seemed surprised. “I just didn’t expect your highness to outright say it like that.”

“Geez…” Chocolate complained with a sour expression. “The Circle of Life doesn’t seem so fun when the main character isn’t the apex predator.”

“Indeed.” Celestia agreed and took a drink from a glass with wine and Twilight wondered what that Circle of Life was. She had an idea that it was something about predation, but the way he mentioned it was weird.

“But that makes no sense! At all!” Cadance complained, her food completely forgotten. “My vision had nothing of that!”

“Because Celestia is talking about events from before…” Grigory mused. “What you saw is after the ponies had taken over the world.”

“Please… We didn’t ‘take over the world’. Your Harpy failed at her job.” Celestia scorned what he had just said with a scowl and left her cup back on the table. “What happened is that The Harpy and her extremist ideals were incompatible with coexistence. You savages hunted and killed so much that you made life unsustainable. You quite literally broke your toy. Now, have you come across the subject of the Black Sun?”

It almost scared Twilight that the Princess outright called the griffons savages, but she held her reaction at bay and simply listened.

“It is mentioned in our tales as a spell you ponies cast to rob the world from us.” Grigory explained calmly. “Similarly, as to when you summoned the Windigos to wage war on us.”

Twilight nodded after clearing her throat and focused on the conversation itself. “Chrysalis mentioned it. And then Discord might have, in Cadance’s dream.”

Chrysalis remained quiet and listened.

Cadance nodded too while Twilight went on. “Discord said that things would return to the moment of creation. Taking what Chrysalis had told us, and what Grigory told us, I assume that he wanted to summon the Black Sun and that it somehow involved ponies being killed, hence, the way he acted. That would make sense if griffons hunting and killing too much prey caused it previously. Is that right?”

“The Black Sun…” Celestia’s fork fiddled with her vegetables, enveloped on her magical aura. “Is not a spell that can be cast. It is a natural process of magic that is triggered when existence cannot sustain itself further. If creatures brought magic into the world in the form of a soul, when they died, the magic they carried would leave the world. Now, if magic was dependent upon itself to work, magic in the world would cease to function properly and would cause Life, which is magic animating live structures, to cease to work too. Therefore, causing a cascade effect of magical failure of the world.”

Twilight nodded and looked at Cadance who nodded too.

“Now where would that magic go?” Celestia had her ‘teacher mode’ in full swing, with ‘that’ way of speaking and Twilight had to hide her giggling grin so that she wouldn’t see. Cadance elbowed at her with the same grin.

However, nobody answered, so Luna did. “It must follow the natural flow it always does. It returns to the Sun, which is the source of Life. In more than one way, as Celestia explained. Everything in Equestria is magical, so if plants need the sunlight to exist, then the magic which animates them also needs that magic that the Sun radiates. After all, for magic to do anything it must flow. Act. It is the ‘verb’ of Creation. At night, the magic flows from the world and is returned to the Sun, via the Moon. It is also when most creatures rest and the plants themselves rest from their job of making oxygen for us to breathe. It is in that time that souls make their journey back to the origin of Life. So that their souls will rest, and then begin Life anew.”

“Does that have anything to do with your dream powers and the nightmares?” Twilight frowned at Luna. “If nightmares are attacks from psychic monsters, I feel like there could be a connection, since you take care of the moon and of our dreams.”

“You are almost there, Twilight…” Celestia smiled. “The right question would be ‘what happens to a pony, or any other creature when they expire?’ And the answer is that their souls decouple from the living creature they used to animate. Then, they flow freely with the ‘river’ of magic. Vulnerable, drifting. A very special pony was then given the power to guide confused and exhausted souls to safety, protecting them from parasitic magical monsters that would feed on their magic and potentially stop them from reaching their resting place.”

Luna blushed. “That is an idyllic flourish… It's complicated and Celestia has no qualms in assuming that the Sun is part of her as much as the Moon is a part of me. We should reach that point soon. For now, know that the Moon is their guide as much as it syphons the energies from the world and keeps them flowing. By its nature, the Moon is associated with the processes of death and it tints the magic of the world so. Necromantic magic becomes powerful, and mind-attacking magic is included, such as the ones used by the Nightmares, as mind and necromancy focused magical creatures.”

“So…” Rainbow began. “If there are monsters in the night, why don’t we sleep during the day?”

“We need the sunlight. It causes our bodies to make hormones that help us focus. At night, we make hormones that help us be calm. That is an oversimplification, and the actual system is extraordinarily complex, but that is the gist of it. Ponies become depressed without sunlight.”

Luna frowned a little. “Well, biology is what it is and has its reasons. And magic… Well… Because of our cultural traits, this sounds disturbing, but as far as magic is concerned, Death is as much a part of Life as Life itself as waking time and sleeping time. It is a part of the process that channels magic to where it must go. But it does make for good Nightmare Night themes, and once again, it fulfils a purpose.”

“Huh…” Twilight touched her chin thoughtfully. “That would explain Discord’s views on death before he understood that each creature is unique.”

“Beings such as The Harpy, Discord, Amore….” Celestia said softly. “Instinctively recognized the souls more than the creatures they became. In this light, the Sun and the Moon are different facets of the same thing. The processes of becoming alive and dying, symbolized in the celestial bodies, conceptualizing a cycle, as dawn and nightfall. A cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Small wonder the ponies saw sun and moon as sisters and that manifested in us being bound as sisters once that magic was bound to us.”

The blue alicorn giggled. “Magic rhymes. It has phrases and choruses. It is like music. The point is that all that magic from creatures dying, returning to the Sun is what triggers the Black Sun. As though it is overwhelmed with too much magic, which was a state it used to be in before Life came to the world. It does weird things to it, and then it swallows everything, and when it is done, it creates everything again, as though so much magic cannot be contained and must be let out. The flow of energies creates magic as we know it. From the simple unicorn telekinesis, to the forces of creation and destruction on a cosmic scale.”

“It’s a freaking black hole…” Chocolate Velvet gasped and drew attentions to him. “Just magical. Even in my original world, where magic doesn’t exist, black holes were imagined connecting universes. They were told to have all sorts of bizarre effects because of the way they were theorized to affect spacetime. Some people even said that they connected time from the moment of their creation to the future because of extreme gravitational time dilation. Thus, some supermassive black-holes could literally be connected to the origin of the universe and its eventual end.”

“What exactly is a black-hole, Chocolate?” Celestia asked curiously.

“Well, the term was a misnomer. They aren’t holes, and they aren’t black. They are more like collapsed stars. A star is a collection of matter that is so massive that its gravity causes it to compress itself so much that it fuses matter, and the process releases energy. They exist in a balance where the energy they generate keeps them from collapsing completely, but as they use up matter, which becomes heavier, it also generates less energy per fusion, so, eventually, gravity ‘wins’ and they literally fall into themselves. If they are massive enough, they will become a black hole, containing ridiculous amounts of matter into an infinitely small point in space. They would be hard to detect, and their gravitational attraction would drag matter that comes too close into them, inescapably. So much gravity that not even light, supposedly the fastest thing allowed by the laws of physics could breach escape velocity. Thus, they are ‘holes’ in space that consume matter, and they are ‘black’ because their light can’t escape them.”

“Sounds like a cosmic monster!” Cadance gasped.

“Hum…” Celestia hummed to herself, thinking of something, but she didn’t say what it was. She didn’t seem too happy, though.

“I don’t know how, but I’m going to come up with a black hole costume for next Nightmare Night Ball!” Luna giggled all happy.

“You’re supposed to go as Nightmare Moon, Luna. You’ve created a monster, Velvet…” Celestia chuckled at him. “Anyways, the problem is that the Harpy was not aware of such processes. Or simply ignored them. She merely allowed her children to break the world, as it would fix itself anew anyways.”

Celestia cleaned her muzzle with a napkin after eating some of her vegetables while Luna spoke. “It never occurred to her and her dumb bird brain that she was supposed to take care of the world, not use it as her playground where her little ‘herselves’ hurt others as they pleased. Because even if magic simply does what it must without hard feelings, creatures don’t. And as you now know, some memories are so powerful they transcend existence.”

“Ponies were the preferred prey of the griffons. They were also not rational and lacked a sophisticated intellect to defend themselves. The problem was they were responsible, since that time, for taming the wild magic of the world. Thus, magic being tied to will, and Harmony being the orchestrator of Creation sought a solution to the problem. If the griffons, donned with free-will, would kill all the ponies, then they needed something that would protect them. And ponies, abandoned in a terrifying world where they existed only to suffer for the delight of others sought their protectors in the things that gave rhythm to their life, in more ways than their simple instinctive intelligence allowed for them to understand. The Sun and the Moon. The cycle of attraction and of birthing new foals. The bounds of unity among them, that kept the herd together. It was all their simple minds understood.”

“But it sufficed and manifested in the form of big and powerful ponies, to protect the herds.” The princess frowned. “But The Harpy didn’t take the hint. It escalated into a wild war where the griffons sought to subjugate their inferior prey, and that caused panicked, powerful and dangerous creatures, driven by fear and hatred to hunt and trample griffon nesting grounds in response to the griffons killing the ponies and it was awful all over!”

Luna sighed. “With a proper insight that we are talking about creatures capable of fear and anger, you can imagine it was awful, and that is putting it lightly.”

“That does sound awful!” Cadance whined.

“It sounds natural.” Grigory replied. “You ponies are just scared of everything.”

“Actually, a natural system should keep predators and prey in balance with each other. Even if irrational animals would fear each other, they wouldn’t escalate into a veritable war. Even with ponies caring for nature, prey moves away from areas where predation is too intense.” Fluttershy said. “This system is self-destructive and couldn’t be farther from natural. Even our version of natural. Why did the Harpy make it like that?”

“I don’t know. Prey was supposed to see it as a good thing, or something. As though being chosen to be brutally killed and eaten was a privilege. Their lot in life. Some creatures begged to disagree.” Celestia shrugged.

“What happened?” Twilight asked. She looked at her food, and it looked and smelled delicious, but the conversation was more interesting.

“Creation rebelled.” Luna said. “Until everything collapsed, and the Black Sun ended everything when the Harpy was finally destroyed. Creation began anew, but it was not her tasked with taming the Chaos. It was the creature that had killed her. Why her? Probably because Harmony saw it as the most logical. Remember that Harmony itself isn’t intelligent. It reacts.”

“Was that when the story I saw began?” Cadance asked. “With the ponies leaving somewhere to settle?”

“Can you tell us of the dream you had?” Celestia asked.

“Oh… It started with ponies traveling through a very hostile landscape until they found the place they were supposed to settle. Then one of them remembered four creatures that they had left behind, or something. They drew them on the wall… One was yellow, shinning like the sun and the other was white, like the moon. The third was pink with a heart on her chest and the other was white, with six stones on her neck. Or something like that. I think that they remembered because there was a doll, or something that they brought and that reminded them of those… Beings.”

“Now that I think of it, the images weren’t that precise, but it was the feeling that they carried. The ponies were so sad they had to leave them behind… There was also Amore going through a long time and witnessing The Lost Herd attack on the capital of the Republic.”

Celestia let out a small thoughtful hum, as though she remembered something from long ago. And, of course, her long ago was already unfathomably beyond Twilight’s league, even without that whole mess of goddesses and erased History.

“Not exactly, but it is close enough, Cadance.” Luna nodded. “The ponies you saw are the same ponies of today. The final product of a succession of trial and error. Understand that as much as they were irrational, so was their creator, at first. A scared creature that just wanted the griffons to stop hurting them, suddenly was given the reigns of Creation. She tried, but she didn’t understand the dangers of the world, and her I notion of a paradise for her little ponies to frolic, in her own interpretation of what the Harpy tried to do, just wasn’t to be. The real world was full of chaos and dangers. The first ones failed miserably. Much to her despair.”

“You see, the Black Sun is the process through which Harmony learns and can then deploy the adequate tools to self-correct in such an extreme situation. I imagine it is because souls bring information into the process of creation.” Celestia smiled. “Much as how it reacted to the griffons, it gave rise to another primordial being. One with the proper insight of how a rational mind ought to work. Together they were able to create the ponies once more. Rational creatures that would learn, understand, adapt and overcome the dangers of the world! And so forth until the ponies managed to overcome the challenges of settling the world and allowed other creatures to be born from it.”

Twilight held her gasp, but it was outrageous that Celestia simply stopped talking in that precise moment! She wanted to urge her to keep going, but the stupid griffons started talking!

“I take it things didn’t work as intended still.” Grigory said from his side of the table, rinsing his paws on the towel he was given. “After all, I see four alicorns. Four ‘goddesses’ that made the ponies. Is that correct?”

Grigory’s skinny friend, Gewehr just deadpanned at them. “So… The Harpy. And four alicorn goddesses. Did you just tell us that you need four ponies to do the job of one griffon?”

“There are five alicorns, though…” The white Gracielle showed five fingers. “What’s her name? Fluffy Heart?”

“Flurry Heart…” A bored Gallensa held her head with a paw and her elbow to the table. “Maybe she heralds the end of times.”

It almost amused Twilight that Cadance was so enthralled with her food, and Shining Armor so distracted by her that neither bothered with that comment.

“Make fun of this if you will.” Celestia glared at them like an angry teacher. “But bear in mind that it was a process, painstakingly putting together the pieces that allowed for you to exist. As they failed, for other reasons, other primordial beings manifested and corrected the problem.”

“Also remember that the Harpy does not exist anymore. That is the important fact, other than that certain creatures still exist in the same estate that Harmony originally created them in reaction to the griffons.”

“How come griffons still exist them?” The skinny Gewehr frowned. “If She doesn’t exist anymore?”

“I don’t know.” Celestia shrugged. “I suppose there is a part for your race to play in the grand scheme of things. Maybe you were not supposed to be here anymore but remained. Maybe The Harpy was supposed to create your kind and then leave. Maybe it’s some weird sort of magical imprint. I like to think that you have a purpose, because it seems that when things go the right way, that is how our world operates.”

“With all that said…” Luna spoke again. “The fundamental difference between ponies and griffons was that the Harpy made them independent and taught them to be selfish and take from the world. The Mother only wanted her ponies to be happy and spread their magic to the world, giving to it. And it is possible that this difference comes from the way our minds formed.”

Yes, that made sense until one remembered that whatever was the problem that caused that whole mess was with the ponies, not the griffons. Maybe the thing was that ponies were supposed to do something, not the griffons, and the fact that some ponies failed caused the problems, Bluebloods and Brightmanes from Cadance's dream seemed like a good example of how that could be right.

“What killed the Harpy?” Chrysalis finally broke the short silence following Luna's words. “Was it you, Celestia?”

“This is a complicated question, Chrysalis.” Luna said and frowned. “It seems as though everything in this subject is.”

“So, we are actually not those four beings the ponies were supposed to forget and then summoned when Discord tried summoning the Black Sun?” Cadance sounded disappointed.

“What you saw were Amore’s memories.” Luna explained softly. “The first strings of her consciousness as ponies literally made her from the memories they retained of their creation. I don’t know, but I suspect that she was never meant to be conscious of herself. Just a collection of magic that made Love work, continuing from their original creation in that place they migrated from. That is what would have happened, had the ponies forgotten them.”

“That is another difficult question, Cadance.” Celestia said, looking like she felt sorry for her. “And I am afraid there are no simple, easy answers. Only our opinions. Luna believes that a pony begins and ends with conception and death. The coupling of soul and body, which animates matter and generates our consciousness, is what makes a pony in her eyes. So, you, Amore, and the being which helped created the ponies are all three different individuals, if related entities, that happened to have shared a same soul due to their purpose.”

“Therefore.” Luna added. “I am the daughter of two bakers that lived in Everfree after Discord was defeated. I have an older sister and we happen to have within us the souls of some dead goddesses that allow us to do our jobs. And for some freakish accident caused by this strange magic, we have memories that belonged to these goddesses and share in their Animus Imperatives. We are, thus, compelled to carry on their jobs.”

“But that is something that she would think, considering that the mind is the province of her powers.” Celestia explained further. “My control over the Sun is a part of what I am and it is so only because this soul which animates my body and generates my being, is the same one as the primordial being that first attempted to create the ponies. And that before fought and destroyed the Harpy. That was born out of the ponies’ desperate plea for help, many existences ago. And then again, as the world ended around them because of Discord’s insane attempt of restarting creation. And I am also the daughter of the same bakers that begat my sister.”

“What happened then?” Twilight asked. “Did the ponies… Summon us? When Discord tried to summon the Black Sun and Star Swirl and the others fought the Lost Herd in the Citadel?”

“If you really think about it, the ponies both created and summoned us. Are we the same primordial beings? Yes? No? Are you the same pony you were right after you were born? The primordial beings themselves changed before that, as they had to leave the realm of the living on the penalty that their powerful magic might damage it. That fact alone may have allowed Amore to achieve a consciousness within the collective of pony minds, as she remained inside the ponies’ ‘collective mind’ while The Mother and The Sister retreated to their celestial orbs.” Celestia mused. “The ponies dragged us, or at least our souls, into this world and the end product of that process is what we are. It meant different things for each of us. For me and Luna it ruptured our souls and ripped us out of our places in the sky. Maybe the same can be said of you and Cadance, but since you were closer to the ponies, that may not have been as traumatic. That is, if you agree with me, and not Luna. If you agree with Luna, you are a normal pony that has simply been saddled with the memories of a dead goddess and the ‘gears’ within her soul.”

Then Luna took back the word and looked seriously at Cadance. “The important thing, is that you must come to terms with whatever it is that you believe that you are, because those are thoughts that, left to fester, will poison the mind and create a monster in itself that will threaten to swallow everything that you are. The truth is that there is no right answer. There is no higher authority that can tell us what we are and how we should deal with this. The best that we have are each other and their examples, to learn from their mistakes.”

“Am I wrong, then?” Cadance frowned at herself and her eyes shifted nervously. Her hooves rubbed the table and she had barely touched her food anymore, despite how excited she was with it earlier. “If I believe that I am the goddess. Amore, reborn. The Lady of the Heart… Is it wrong for me to feel as though something has been taken from me? Because ponies don’t ask me for Love anymore. Even if I see myself as a different entity… I feel as though my Gift is useless.”

“No. You are not.” Celestia shook her head and so did Luna. That answer surprised Twilight and she almost gasped. Fortunately, she made like the others and kept her mouth shut while Luna spoke. “It is the Animus Imperative that makes you feel like that. How could you ignore it? And by the way Celestia sees it, you are Amore.”

“Careful that this doesn’t twist into a bundle of self-justification.” Luna added. “As an artist with a hurt ego that nopony appreciated her Night and that disgraced herself into hurting all that she had sworn to protect. So twisted that she ignored that the peaceful beauty of the night was the very reason she had dreams to protect from the Nightmares. So depraved a monster that she shut away the one she loved the most, the only one who understood her; and then broke her own pact with Harmony and would eventually have caused the Black Sun to be summoned again out of her selfishness.”

Twilight listened to Luna and then looked at Cadance, who frowned a little and seemed satisfied with what she had heard. But she looked at Luna a little more intently. “But… If I can’t make ponies fall in love…”

Twilight had the impression that she wanted to say more but refrained herself. She too restrained her own words, even if she wanted to tell Cadance that she could still use that magic to help ponies with problems in their love life in a few ways, but her mind was actually a blank at how exactly even if she could just justify her authority as ‘The Princess of Love'. She could help couples going through divorce, but if they wanted to be free from each other, that would still be bad. Ponies that never found love, would still require another pony to love… Complicated. In the end of that train of thought Twilight simply admitted to herself that she didn’t know what to say.

Princess Celestia spoke softly, smiling at Cadance. “You are the only one that understands your gift enough to realize how it can be used. If I told you how to, I would be trespassing on hallowed ground.”

“That way of speaking doesn’t help!” Cadance whined.

“But that is what it is, Cadance.” Celestia shook her head softly. “I would not presume to tell a pony how to use their talents. Maybe you will figure out that, in the end, it would be better to force some ponies to fall in love in good will. They would be happy; their feelings would be genuine. But you might be violating their free-will. But then again, don’t we violate the free-will of creatures all the time because it is better for them? Some are arrested because they commit crimes. Foals are forced to go to school… I can tell you, with absolute certainty, however, that we will be here to help you however we can, whenever you need.”

“This didn’t help a lot.” Cadance whined again.

“It did.” Celestia insisted, seriously. “It just wasn’t what you wanted to hear. We explained to you that you can't rely on a higher authority to tell you what is right. Amore was meant to teach the ponies how to love, and once they conquered their independence, they had to figure it out for themselves with what she had taught them. As such, you are an adult. I taught you all I could, to the best of my abilities, and now you are a grown mare. You are prepared to make your decisions, much better than I was in my time. God, or mortal, morality is the same. You must figure it out on your own. I believe in you.”

Then she softened and smiled. “But remember that we will be here, just in case.”

Cadance looked down and Twilight had no idea of what went on inside her head. The others, even the griffons, made silence. Cadance smiled a little. “You know, you’re making it really hard for me to be angry at you.”

“Ah, don’t worry. I am certain I’ll fix that until the end of dinner.” The older princess giggled.

By then the food was already consumed and the royal guards brought the main course as they talked. Delicious-smelling pumpkin fricassee for the ponies and changelings and a large grilled fish for the griffons, seasoned with herbs. It was a little funny that Celestia trusted the Royal Guard to listen into all that just so that they could serve dinner, but she supposed that if there were ever ponies that Celestia could trust, those would be them. She had heard many, many stories growing up.

Something nagged at her mind, however. Actually, several things nagged at her mind, such as the fact that the griffons seemed too quiet; whatever happened after the dream ended; what happened to her ancestor; how did Matriarch Flameheart survive; where did she and Luna fit in the whole dream; what was that story about being summoned, dying, and then being born; and how did griffons know about The Harpy if she wasn’t supposed to exist anymore… But the most pressing of her concerns were about herself. “What about me?”

“As I said that event was certainly different for each of us.”

“No.” Twilight insisted. “I mean the fourth ‘primordial being’! What did they do? There was Life, Intelligence, Love and…? Friendship? Also, was Amicizia the first one that attacked Discord?”

“It looked like it.” Cadance said.

“Does it bother you that Discord murdered the two? Amore and Amicizia?” Luna asked and the two princesses exchanged a glance. By what she read on Cadance's expression, her answer would be ‘no’ too.

Also, she dodged her question!

“It doesn’t.” Twilight said, looking back to Luna, despite that. “Even if I felt like it was actually me, I don’t think that it would. He was sick, right? For lack of a better word. I don’t even think there is a proper parallel for what he suffered in a ‘normal' being. The situation was so extreme and his place in it so particular… Poor Discord. I’m actually a bit worried about him. He wasn’t very comfortable talking with us when we left Ponyville.”

“Discord is fine, Twilight.” Celestia assured her. “He is on Snow Mountains Hold trying to talk to The Lion. It seems that those griffons have some sort of interest in him. Some sort of reverence. Could the present griffons shine some light on that?”

“I wish I was there.” Gallensa said absentmindedly. “There is so much I could learn from him…”

Grigory didn’t seem to have heard her initially, but when she insisted, calling his name he looked at her, and answered after she repeated her question. His initial reaction was a frown and Twilight imagined he would tell the princess off, but he seemed more to be worried about something than annoyed at her question.

“We believe Discord is the origin of magic in the world.” He said bluntly. A little too blunt for Twiloght's tastes, but the Princess had called them savages. She wasn’t sure she believed him either. “We don’t believe this idea that ponies brought magic to the world. It’s nonsense and too self-serving.”

“So, you don’t believe a word that they said here?” Applejack deadpanned at him. “I thought that you had taken us seriously during the breakfast.”

“I do not care for the insignificant details such as being the daughters of some baker in some hole-”

“You know there is a letter written by a griffon general that served under Emperor Grigor that corroborates that story.” Twilight told him nonchalantly. “Right?”

“That is not what I’m trying to say.” He stared at her and then at Princess Celestia. “What about the Harpy? Why didn’t she… Come alive. Or whatever is it that you did?”

“Now that is funny…” Chocolate chuckled amused more to himself than to others, which was good since Twilight didn’t really understand what he said, and no creature seemed to have either. “I’d like to see Freud explain Goddess Envy…”

“I think you’re making this up because it agrees with Princess Cadance’s vision. Dream. Whatever.” He accused as calmly as a County lawyer. And Twilight begrudgingly had to agree. Luna had done that before and she certainly didn’t think Celestia wasn’t capable of such. “I don’t think that I have any reason to believe anything that you’re saying. As Princess Twilight Sparkle has attested to, there is a letter, and several pieces of evidence that point to the fact that you lied about important events in history, used your position to adulterate historical records, helped King Grover lie to his subjects, and denied my ancestors and present folk an important part of our culture.”

“You may not believe this, but I understand. It wasn’t a decision I made on my own, and neither did Grover. Star Swirl condemned me to the end of his life and, according to the letters I shared with King Grover, he suffered the same kind of condemnation from his peers.”

“But why? Shouldn’t that have been a good sign that you were doing something wrong?” Twilight looked at Cadance when she spoke and then at Celestia and Luna. The second didn’t seem too affected, but that had certainly hurt Celestia.

“You didn’t live at that time, Cadance. You didn’t see the things that happened. Diamond dogs were almost made extinct because they were used as slaves and then fought in the war to liberate their kin. I am sure that in Grigor’s court you would be seem as a delicacy. And I am not talking about what you are thinking.”

Cadance pouted. “Regardless, whatever Grover's or your intentions, you have erased from history ponies that deserved to have their stories heard.”

Twilight rose a hoof. “Not to mention that despite their ‘savagery’…”

She made air quotes to emphasize her annoyance at the way Celestia spoke earlier and it seems to have gotten through because the older princess looked at Twilight as though she didn’t like it at all. Regardless, Twilight went on.

“We, as a civilization, deserve to know about our true past. Even if to learn from it. No matter how gruesome and shameful. We must learn from the mistakes of our ancestors or we are bound to repeat the same mistakes. We must know what is it that that you have hidden, in its entirety and the reasons that led you to it. This is something that you have taught me.”

“It is not about deserving, Twilight.” Celestia nodded softly. “And you would be correct in any mundane situstion. But would you still think the same way had I told you that by knowing the truth you could trigger the process of the Black Sun?”

“Well, that would probably be bad.” Twilight admitted. Chocolate's description of a collapsed star in his original universe made her think back to that awful dream Luna rescued her from.

Gallensa wasn’t as impressed, though. “As far as I know, you could be lying about that. Not the Black Sun, but that if you reveal the truth, the process will begin. It sounds incredibly self-serving.”

“If I disclose this information, if it becomes public, then the Black Sun will be summoned. I had to hide certain events and facts, and everything surrounding them, and since the whole mess with Emperor Grigor would be better forgotten, I and Grover took on this vow to hide those events together.”

Twilight blinked her surprise at her and could see Cadance doing the same. “That means you erased our History because you feared the Black Sun being triggered again?”

Celestia nodded at her and Luna took on the word, leaving her spoon on the table. “You should be aware that this is quite serious. Not even I know exactly what happened.”

“This is rich…” Gallensa did her best to not sound bored. “How do you know she’s not lying, then? Maybe you were supposed to be the big leader of the whole world, and not her.”

“How foalish. I share an equal standing to my sister. Furthermore, in all my life, I have never witnessed Celestia trying to take undue advantage over anypony. Not for the sake of ‘the greater good’, much less for her own sake.” She explained calmly, but sighed and her eyes drifted, her ears hang from her head. “I understand that this may not mean much to you… But the worst years of my life were when I distrusted my sister.”

“Do you realize that you are implicated as much as much as Celestia is?” Grigory glared at her.

“I am aware, Grigory. But there isn’t much more than I can offer you other than my sincerity.” She looked hurt. “Even if you make little of it.”

“Princess Celestia...” Twilight didn’t intend to sound so whiny, needy, but it got the others to turn to her and Celestia did look like she was worried, so she’d take it. “Discord told us that he worried our quest would only bring us pain and sorrow. And that we didn’t need to know of such things.”

“He was correct.” Celestia told her, frowning a little and confused at her argument. Good. That was exactly the reaction Twilight wanted.

“But we convinced him that we were prepared to learn the truth. As a society. As a civilization, we have overcome much, and it is a good evidence that we can overcome whatever was the problem that made you decide you needed to lie to us. He agreed with us.”

Instead of agreeing with her, as she expected, Celestia looked at Twilight that way she looked at the younger Twilight years ago, frowning as though she couldn’t believe just how stupid she could be and at the same time pitying the dumb little foal that she was. “Do you realize you are telling me this as you sit by the table with a group of griffons that think that one of the biggest monsters that lived in our world was right and that murder is justified because they want their steak?”

“We are carnivores.” One of Grigory’s friend that had remained quiet the whole time finally spoke. Not the big, gruff one, but the medium sized with light gray colors and icy eyes. “We become sickly if we don’t eat it.”

“That is a blatant lie!” The Princess struck the table with her hooves and perked her ears. Boy, did that anger her! “You are omnivores. Many griffons spend their entire lives without ever tasting meat and most will only eat fish, eel, snake. And others, such as insects in the savannahs near Saddle Arabia. They are considered a delicacy.”

“There can’t be a place in existence where eating bugs is preferable to game meat.” Grigory growled.

“Actually, their protein is very much capable of replacing animal protein. You could even process it into hamburgers and such.” Chocolate rose a hoof. “You know… Hakuna Matata…”

“Actually…” Chrysalis interjected raising her own hoof. Her tone spoke more of her typical mocking jests than a serious issue though. “I consider eating insects very offensive.”

“Shut up, Chrysalis.” Celestia’s mood suddenly wasn’t very cheery, though. “Shut up, Velvet.”

But before the griffon could say anything further, Grigory spoke to him.

“Garvie, there is nothing that can be said in here that can solve this situation, one way or another. It is pointless to debate. And I have other issues that I wish to discuss with the Princess.” His words drew her attention, and he went on. “I want to understand why is it that you claim that the Harpy is dead when you and the others were killed by The Lord of Chaos in the events Princess Cadance saw, and yet you are here. And the not The Harpy.”

“I said no such thing. I said that ponies did something that drew our souls to the realm of the living. Discord killed us, yes. But Luna and I turned him to stone with the Elements of Harmony.”

Luna cleared her throat. “Sol-Estia and Luccenoturna did.”

The white one rolled her eyes. “Regardless, us, or they expired soon after. I don’t understand the details, but it was something about their powerful magic not being compatible with a body that could inhabit this world. They slept and passed away. Again, I don’t understand the details of the process, but being born the traditional way fixed whatever the problem was.”

“This story is a convoluted mess.” The purple griffon frowned at her. “How come you… Or whatever it was that died simply came back, but you expect us to believe that The Harpy could not have come back and partnered with Emperor Grigor? Why were you reborn in that time, but not her?”

“I don’t know.” She said all simplicity. “I don’t understand all that happened. I can tell you two things. The first is that I, or rather, the Mother didn’t envision a world where griffons would kill other creatures for food. Or where any creature would kill another for food at all. In fact, she wanted a world with no unnatural death at all. As far as I know, she wanted a world where ponies would care for its needs and other creatures would thrive on it. She never imagined diamond dogs or dragons, which didn’t exist in the time of The Harpy because she wouldn’t allow any other creatures to compete with her griffons.”

“The other is that I have looked for her and I have never found her. Grigor and his followers said she had abandoned him for failing her, or something like that.” The Princess frowned and looked down at her plate. “She was never in any temple, she never met me to fight. Even though I was constantly afraid that she would appear in one of those many battlefields and kill me, leaving Luna alone and ultimately ending the fight against Grigor’s empire, but she never did. It was like chasing a ghost that didn’t exist, despite griffons honestly telling me they had met her. And I am not talking about her followers. I mean Grover’s followers. They were afraid of her. They said she haunted their nightmares, which is curious, because Luna also never met her.”

She stared at the griffon prince. “I was afraid of her, Grigory. Memories of past lives kept forcing themselves to the forefront of my mind and I don’t know if I would have been able to face her had she appeared.”

“That led me conclude that she didn’t exist anymore. She really was destroyed, existences ago.” The Princess sighed. “As to why it was different with us, I would gamble a guess that it had something to do with manifesting with a physical body. The Harpy was a purely magical entity.”

“And in the end…” Celestia forked at her vegetables a little. “Your friends are keeping alive the memory and the ideology of a dead goddess that not even your people wanted to accept. It is dangerous because it infuses the minds of her followers with ideas of supremacy and dominance that are simply not needed and contrary to coexistence in the modern world. That is the reason I am worried about her cult.”

Her words influenced him. He became contemplative and his thoughts turned inward. His friends seemed incredulous, or dismissive, but Grigory certainly found something in her words and his own thoughts that gave him pause. More than he expected. Twilight would pay a hefty sum to know what he was thinking.

“What about the cult of the alicorn princesses?” He growled at her, and from Twilight’s perspective, Celestia didn’t like it at all.

“There is no cult of the alicorn princesses, Grigory!”

“You are either blind or willfully disingenuous!” He accused poignantly. “Ponies will move mountains and rivers to satisfy you. You belong to the race tasked with working nature. It makes you biased against my race that explores nature. And with this tale of defeating The Harpy, earning the reigns of the world, that becomes even more obvious. Not only that, you are immortal and there seems to be nothing capable of challenging your decisions. There should be no place in politics for a creature such as you. Not to mention that alicorn are deemed as special, wherever you like it or not.”

“I earned my place, you insufferable brat.” She spat back, just as sharply. “I earned the trust and love of creatures. And I also conquered this position, as the many battlefields filled with the skeletons of my enemies will attest to. If you cannot respect the former, you should respect the later, if only not to be called hypocrite!”

Luna cleared her throat in that obnoxious way one does when they want to draw attention. “How about we calm ourselves and breathe for a while?”

The table remained quiet for a second or two, including the clicking of tableware.

“I am sorry, Grigory.” The Princess finally spoke again, apologetically. “It is not the sort of thing that one likes to hear. Especially when your people believe that you are ordained to something special thanks to The Harpy. The truth is that you are still special and important. As important as all the creatures of the world. As unique as each of the races that make our world. You have purpose in your existence, just not the one you believe the Harpy had for you.”

“In that annoying ‘all creatures are special’ way that Princess Twilight teaches in her school? No, thank you. I rather be special because my claws can rip you to shreds if you anger me.” Gallensa's remark sounded so cruel and snide Twilight wondered if she ever even tried not being so edgy all the time. Such a jerk thing to say too, intentionally misconstruing what the saying means.

Princess Celestia's legendary patience managed a better reaction that Twilight’s. “No, Gallensa. Creatures accuse me of planning and plotting. Of extreme long-term plans. They forget that is my job. What I will discuss with you I have not disclosed to any other creature other than Luna. But I hope that it will give you some insight into what I mean.”

“It should be patently obvious that there are other worlds beyond our own. Chocolate Velvet is proof of that. As he has told you of the dead stars in his original universe, he has told me of other worlds beyond his own. Barren, lifeless worlds, wasted by an uncaring cosmos.” She put her hooves on the table and leaned into it dramatically. “Within your lifetimes I plan on having the whole of Equestria prepared to reach beyond the stars and start colonization of at least one of those, to prove the plausibility of the idea. Private interest will be drawn by the endless opportunities for profit. The greatest minds will too, as the infinite beckons to their curiosity. Challenges will present themselves and the ingenious will defy the impossible. As they always do.”

“But perhaps, more important to our present discussion, there will be many dangers, and that ought to draw the brave, the honored, the strong. We will meet numberless creatures and civilizations. Many who would pose a threat to us. They would beseech our riches and some would take them by force. Many names will be made and legends will be forged.”

She relaxed on her seat, thoughtful. “Despite my irritation with your beloved firearms, my mind immediately turned to the brave griffons that protect the North from the evil monsters begat by the Windigos. Lord Gilad, The Lion… Such a proud and powerful alias. It filled me with hope that I had found those that would throw themselves at the dangers that lay ahead. If not for honor, not for friendship, at least for the thrill and legends that would be born of it.”

Was she even talking seriously? Just the notion of the unknown and secrets spread all over their own and limited world made Twilight's curiosity tingle. The thought of what could be in other worlds. The idea of, one day not that far away, stepping in soil that didn’t belong to Equestria, maybe befriending a creature unknown until that time… It was overwhelming. As her mind grasped the ramifications of such feat, its true significance dawned on her and it wet her lips.

The others seemed as intrigued and lost in their own thoughts on the mater, including Grigory. Then Celestia spoke with a rather disdainful tone. “Of course, if the griffons would be found lacking, others would still suffice. Such as the Changeling Swarm and their ambitious foray into the sciences of Life. If only to satisfy their queen's ambition. As before, I would prefer noble intentions, but I will take results over nothing.”

Finally, it was Grigory’s big, dark furred friend that broke the silence. “This is likely the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Even if you had the capacity to move the entirety of the world to secure resources in that direction, it sounds like a pipe dream.”

“Do you know what else sounded like a pipe dream?” She spoke unfazed, with a reproaching stare. “Recruiting six heroes capable of wielding the most powerful magical artifacts known in our History to bring back my sister.”

“And this is why we can’t have nice things.” Celestia sighed. “Of course, it seems impossible to you. You cannot imagine other races joining together for a larger goal because you cannot imagine yourselves working so closely with other races. You don’t see the damage that the ideology of The Harpy has done to you. Even worse, your defecting soldier told Luna concerning things and led me to believe Lady Gwendolen may be using the myth of The Harpy to help your father gain leverage with the griffons, or perhaps for her own personal gain.”

“Watch your tongue when you speak of Lady Gwendolen, pony.” The big dark griffon, the military type Grigory had called Gray. “Even you.”

“I simply don’t want to see your people’s sense of honor twisted into blind obedience for one that would abuse you. And in such vile way. And damage the rest of the world through that. I have experience in the damage this sort of thing can cause to completely innocent creatures. I have seen it.”

His following silence surprised Twilight. Angry silence, but uttered not a word further. Then Grigory answered to Celestia. “I will not discuss my mother with you, Celestia. If you suspect her of wrongdoing, you are free to go to Griffindell and ask her yourself.”

“Did you just tell us all that only to get at this?” Cadance’s angry tone surprised Twilight out of her contemplative silence. “I don’t understand. How would they know who The Harpy is if she didn’t exist anymore?”

“I did not. I made plans.” Celestia said. “And I do not know.I am aware that it may be frustrating but there are things that I simply don’t understand any more than you do.”

Luna took the word, staring up from her plate. “It may be a similar phenomenon to what causes us to have memories of the past lives of our souls. Maybe griffons remembered The Harpy, similar as to how ponies remembered their creators. Maybe they weren’t supposed to either. Or maybe it was simply something that happened, unrelated to anything. The truth is that we don’t know.”

Luna shifted her head to the side, thoughtfully as she frowned. “Maybe it relates to the Black Sun almost being summoned again. Maybe it all relates to Discord’s magic. Maybe it relates to whatever Discord thought was wrong. The point is that it is most probable that they simply remembered The Harpy and her cult emerged from that remembrance. Maybe they didn’t truly remember, and it was due to some subconscious process… I could study that I had permission.”

“Quite right. She was unknown before that time.” Celestia agreed.

Grigory didn’t seem like he wanted to talk anymore. Twilight wondered what was it that Princess Celestia had said that troubled him so much. Not like she was going to ask in front of the others, but Cadance had other questions of her own after a few seconds of thoughtful silence.

“What happened to Daffodil?”

“Daffodil?” Luna didn’t seem to recognize the name, so she looked at Celestia who simply shook her head negatively. “Who was Daffodil?”

Cadance frowned. She didn’t like hearing that one bit. “I think she was a priestess, or something of the sort. I saw her a few times until one day she wasn’t there anymore. She was important to me… To Amore. To us.”

“We used to recognize ponies by their souls, Cadance.” Celestia explained. “Names meant little to us. She probably was a soul that connected intensely to Amore. It is impossible to know for sure.”

“You know, I think that this whole conversation is messing with your pony heads…” Garvie commented from his seat but they ignored him and Cadance hummed angrily to herself and frowned, pulling back her ears.

“Fine. You’re not gonna tell me. What about my parents? Why can’t I remember them?”

“Because you were too young to form memories?” Luna raised an eyebrow at her. “I know what you’re thinking, but I wasn’t even here when you were born!”

“My hoof!” Cadance didn’t seem very convinced, didn’t sound convinced at all and almost scared Princess Celestia with her outburst. “You locked my memories away!”

Luna growled and struck a hoof at the table. “This is why I hate this talk of goddesses. If this whole mess became public ponies would start blaming me every time they forgot their keys!”

“Cadance, please.” Celestia pleaded so sadly. “We never did anything with the intention of hurting you. Luna knows nothing of your biological parents, and neither do I. But why is this so important to you all of a sudden? Would you be worrying about that if not for the experience you had?”

Twilight remained quiet, as did the others and Cadance let her stare drift downwards with a sigh. “No. I don’t think that I would. I think I just feel like I lost something because I had that dream.”

“But that is because I didn’t know of anything.” Still, she pleaded too, with her eyes. “I still want to know. Let me see the memories that are locked away.”

“No.” Luna was adamant. “You are better off without those. Even I have memories that I have locked away myself.”

“Oh, come on!” Twilight raised her hooves. She was going to point out that it was hypocritical, but Celestia did say That Cadance could act as the goddess if she saw fit. In the end, Twilight was just glad Cadance didn't see that, because that could turn ugly in a hurry. Still… “That should be Cadance’s decision!”

“Well, no.” Celestia said plainly. “Because there are things related to that whole mess that you two insist on poking into.”

“Ugh!” She threw her head in frustration. “But you even called us here to talk!”

Celestia frowned. “I called you here to talk because I wanted to give you some sense of understanding. Some closure to this misguided adventure that ends with this meeting. Not because I was prepared to unveil everything to you. I expected you to have the maturity to understand that you lost. You have been captured after you’ve created much more trouble than this whole mess warranted. You, your friends, and also Grigory and his own. I will spend months getting all the damage you have caused under control and with Discord actually doing something helpful in Snow Mountains, I would rather you listened to your conscience and, at the least, let go of this whole mess.”

Twilight glared at her. At least Luna giggled at the way she looked at Celestia. “My conscience is telling me that you are wrong!”

And Cadance pouted. “Irrespective of everything that I believe about myself, there are bigger issues. Cinnamon Flameheart, all those soldiers… All the ponies that you buried in oblivion deserve to have their stories known. Ponies and creatures in the world today deserve to know what sort of real sacrifices earned them the present.”

“How dare you? You have no notion of what you speak of Cadenza! You think that you understand what you are talking about because you had a dream. You don’t know those ponies and you didn’t lose nights of sleep over this decision! Much less every sacrifice they made in my name so that you could live in peace. They believed in me! I should.. I… I…”

Seeing Celestia legitimately angry was a privilege that Twilight never realized she hadn’t actually been treated to until that very moment. It was so fast she didn’t have time to be scared, even if both she and Cadance knew that the older one could have afforded to keep her mouth shut. Fortunately, Celestia wasn’t known for holding petty anger. If anything, Twilight knew that Celestia understood Cadance meant no offense.

“This is exactly why I want to know the truth and show it to the world.” Twilight sighed, more frustrated than she wanted to show. “I understand that Cadance is hurt. But I also understand that whatever happened hurt you too. Maybe it will be for the better if every creature understood what happened. If not to show how dangerous The Harpy is, so that they can understand the sorts of sacrifices that brought us to where we are. Yours included. Ponies sing glories to you, but they don’t understand anything. The story they know isn’t the true one and I believe that you made much more than we are aware of. Not only you, but those creatures Cadance mentioned!”

“Have you two paid no attention?” Celestia’s ears folded back and Twilight knew that they were pushing it. But…

“I’m sorry, Princess… I do believe you believe you are right in hiding away what happened. Even if I don’t understand it.” Twilight shook her head, looking down at the table with the remains of their dinner. “But you are wrong. In the same way you told Cadance that you did your best to prepare her and that she must make her decision as an adult mare, much as ponies earned their independence and must deal with it, you must see that what our search for the past is the same. You have to trust ponies, and other creatures will know how to deal with the truth.”

Her words did hit their mark and Celestia’s ears fell with her softened expression. “I fear you are being used, Twilight. Someone explored the situation in Ponyville to launder money that seems to be going to Snow Mountains Hold, but I can’t prove it. And we only found out about it because of the present situation, and your meeting with Grigory was clearly orchestrated. I’m afraid even Cadance finding Grigor's letter might have been no accident. You were meant to go straight to Griffonia, but getting Chrysalis involved, you scrambled their plans. Then Grigory showed up…”

Candance blinked dumbly. And Twilight… Well… Fudge…

“Are you accusing us of something, Princess Celestia?” Grigory glared at them.

“Maybe I am, Grigory. Would you care to explain how you knew to look for Twilight in Haybale rather than set an interception course from Baltimare? Assuming you knew she would be going to Manehattan, since it was the most logical if she meant to cross the ocean to Griffonia?”

“Maybe our airships have modern means for tracking other airships from a distance?” He grinned petulantly at her.

“I don’t think that you would’ve happened into Chocolate Velvet there, if that was the case, Grigory.” The princess answered with a worried frown. “Perhaps you would rather explain how your people managed to exploit the unusual and specific situation in Ponyville to syphon money to your hold, that I am sure helped a lot in building that airship that is currently burning in the ground.”

“Another accusation. I hope your highness has proof of any of that or you would wound up sounding like you have biases against my people.” Twilight was almost amused at the wounded way he spoke. If she didn’t know better, she might even believe that he was offended at Celestia’s words. “I think this conversation is over.”

Twilight was simply stunned as he stood and left, soon followed by his friends. Then she gasped at what Grigory said next. “If you are not going to tell the truth, we simply don’t have anything to talk anymore.”

No! No! That was stupid! Twilight almost freaked out seeing the griffons walk out. She meant to tell him to stop, but Cadance touched her back. “Let him go, Twi… We can talk to him again later.”

“Oh…” Twilight turned to what remained of her plate and then to Celestia and Luna. Her friends. “What happens now?”

“I suppose you are the ones to tell us, Twilight.” Luna told her seriously. “Have we satisfied your curiosity? Convinced you that your quest is silly? That you ought to let go and enjoy the life that you have in peace instead of worrying about such matters?”

Twilight had an answer. And she was sure Princess Celestia wouldn’t like to hear it, which greatly discouraged her. Looking at Cadance, her expression made Twilight believe that she was with her, so she took a deep breath and faced Celestia and Luna again. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Princess. I understand your fears, but Discord believed that we are right, and that the world has to know. I believe that it will be healthier for us… For both of you.”

“Twilight is right.” Cadance added. “I don’t like being at odds with you, but this is too important to keep a secret. Even if you didn’t do anything wrong, hiding whatever happened from the rest of the world is still wrong.”

“I see… We can’t reach an agreement yet.” Celestia let her head hang. “It’s a shame.”

“So… Uh…” Twilight grabbed at the table while her friends stared at her and Cadance. “I guess… Uh…”

The princess looked back up to her. “I can’t afford to let you go free, Twilight. Cadance. You and your friends will have to stay with me until I have convinced you of the danger of what you are trying to do. If I do you will try to escape me again.”

“What?” Cadance frowned. “Are we grounded, or something?”

Celestia grinned while her guards in uniform served ice cream. “Why, yes. That is a good analogy.”

Twilight sighed. “Is there anything we can do that will convince you that you are wrong?”

That was a good question, Twilight decided since Celestia stopped for a few seconds before she answered. “I am sorry, Twilight. But I don’t know. You are not the problem. You, Cadance, Shining, your friends are clear-headed ponies. Very well-intentioned. Others will not be so understanding or forgiving.”

So frustrating.

“Do you seriously expect us to stay here?” Cadance growled. “I mean, we're adults!”

“I am sorry, Cadance.” Celestia smiled. “It won’t be so bad. We'll soon return to Canterlot, but I’ll be sure to make your stay as comfortable as possible. And it doesn’t mean that we can’t have fun!”

“Consider yourselves held captive.” Chrysalis smirked at them. “Pretend you are in one of those stupid books you like to read.”

For a brief second Twilight, after one glance at her expression, was glad she couldn’t read Cadance’s thoughts. Then the pink princess followed that with an angry stare at her aunts. “Do you know what? I’m done talking with you.”

After that she stood, but before she left Cadance grabbed her ice cream and stomped angrily towards the door. Shining Armor rushed after her. “Cadance! Wait!”

“She actually took it better than I thought she would.” Luna tasted her blue ice cream while Celestia watched helplessly with her ears pulled down.

“I think that I should be leaving too…” Twilight said. “Not that I’m angry, or anything… I just think that you are wrong. Is it over or can we still talk about this? Another time?”

“We can always talk, Twilight. Whenever you wish.” Celestia shook her head softly and smiled. “There won’t ever be a time when we can’t talk.”

That was something, at least. “I think I should go, then. I better talk to Cadance.”

“See you tomorrow at breakfast, then.” Celestia concluded while the others stood after Twiligth’s lead.

“Thank you very much for this meeting, Princess!” Rarity added. “It was exquisite and very enlightening!”

“You’re welcome, Rarity!” Celestia grinned. “I am glad you have enjoyed it!”

The other ponies thanked too and followed Twilight on her way out. It was Rainbow Dash that approached her, with Spike and Starlight Glimmer as soon as they were out of any royal guard’s earshot on their way out towards the main deck.

“What now, Twi?” Her tone changed from doubt to incredulity. “We’re not gonna give up, are we?”

She shook her head. “Not even close, Rainbow. I just need to figure out a good argument to give her.”

“I doubt the princess is ill intended.” Starlight agreed with her. “She is very likely to listen and capitulate if we come up with a good argument. The problem is that I think Princess Cadance could do something… Unwise in the meantime.”

Twilight grimaced at the though. “Yes… She’s not very well. I’ll talk to her before bed.”

“I’m more concerned that Grigory fellow will do something rash. Or just plain dumb!” Applejack added next to them. “He’s not a good guy. And neither are any of his friends.”

“You’re judging, Applejack.” Twilight looked back at her. “They are certainly not our friends, but we must change that by offering the first hoof. Also, I felt like something bothered Grigor. Something related to the Harpy. It could be important, and I’ll make sure to talk to him when I feel he is more agreeable. For now, we’ll just rest for a bit.”

The others nodded in agreement.

***

“How did the dinner go, Celestia?” Chrysalis had taken a liking to the mint ice cream she was served and Celestia did seem to be in a good mood, if a little worried. She wasn’t the easiest creature to read, the queen admitted to herself while she also noticed she gained more and more appreciation for the pony in the last few days. “And what happens now?”

“They didn’t talk very much… Though I believe we know enough, thanks to Grigory’s strange behavior and Luna’s conversation with Master Grinolf, to assume that Lady Gwendolen is up to no good.”

“What exactly have we learned, Celestia?” Chocolate asked next to The Sisters and Chrysalis simply paid attention for now.

“Grigory seems to have a rather extremist view. Different from his father, who would simply not plainly state that we are simply scared of everything and that what the Harpy was doing was acceptable.”

“That nonsense of exploring other worlds.” Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “What was that nonsense about?”

“Not nonsense at all, Chrysalis.” The white alicorn chirped.

“Not only that will happen eventually…” Luna added with a smile. “ But Celestia planted a seed on Grigory’s head. Now he has something look for beyond whatever plan he has on his head.”

Chrysalis squinted a little. “I see… But, now that the kids left us alone, how about you explain all that bullshit about The Harpy? You have been very dodgy about this subject Celestia. You were content with letting me think that she simply wasn’t real until you absolutely had to admit she used to exist. I am not happy.”

“Well, are you happier now that you know the truth than you were before?” Celestia spat back. “You don’t need to worry about her. She is dead.”

“You’re not listening, Celestia. Before she didn’t exist. Now she is dead… What will be next?”

The princess sighed. “I am sorry, Chrysalis… This whole secret is not an easy burden to carry. Much harder with ponies I care for so much prodding it. Please don’t think that I keep things from you because I lack trust in you… These things ought to stay out of everypony’s minds.”

“I don’t remember that life.” Luna said sheepishly. “I have blocked my own memories! It was a life of fear and hatred that has no place in this new world.”

“Well, I suppose that is what matters in this whole mess. It’s not like I care about some random pony Cadance thinks is important.”

Celestia frowned at her words. “I am worried though. Snow Mountains Hold cannot hope to fight the whole world which is what Grigory’s reasoning would cause. Lord Gilad understands this and is more interested in securing the throne. Grigory’s behavior speaks ill of the education he received from his parents. It doesn’t fall in line with Lord Gilad’s profile.”

“So, his mother spoiled him?” Chocolate offered.

“I believe this is not too distant from the truth…” Celestia mused. “Grigory trying to cast a spell also worries me. It didn’t work, but it almost did.”

“And he is not Gilad’s son.” Chrysalis completed her thought. “What does it mean?”

“All I know is that a petulant child tried casting a spell with the same words a dead emperor uttered when he realized that his power was no more. And I am certain that he knows that particular story.” Celestia frowned and mindlessly poked at her ice cream with her spoon. “It is interesting…”

She didn’t speak right away, and that gave Chrysalis the feeling that she was measuring her words before her spoke. Never a good sign.

“The Lion says that griffon magic comes from the blood that connects him to the Griffon Patriarchs and that allows him to cast spells. Yet, Grigory is not his biological son but expected his magic to work. And, again, it almost did, didn’t it?”

“That doesn’t mean much.” Chocolate said. “He could be related to the Patriarchs, even if not through The Lion.”

“True.” Celestia agreed with a few curt nods. “That would also give a good reason why a northerner griffon decided to adopt a fatherless cub, contrary to their customs. But that is not the interesting thing.”

Luna frowned after a second of silent thinking. “How is it that one’s blood loses its power because one has lost the favor of some ‘goddess’, or something?”

“Someone is lying?” Thorax blurted out with huge eyes.

Celestia grinned a little. “It seems that young Master Grigory has delivered a lot more than a secret airship. There is definitively something going on, and I think that it is worth investigating. I think I’ll personally escort Grigory and his friends home.”

“At least it is comforting that the kid couldn’t cast his spell.” Chrysalis relaxed a bit. “I am still worried. The fact that griffons may be lying about this magic nonsense and that The Lion can cast spells is worrying. Grigory called for The Harpy. Even if it didn’t work…”

“We don’t know for sure that Lord Gilad can cast spells, Chrysalis.” Celestia added. “That is one of the issues I intent on understanding.”

“Hopefully, Discord can shed some light on that.” Luna offered. Chrysalis thought it would be enough if he didn’t make things worse. Not that he was the problem lately, but Discord was Discord…

“I’ll order the fleet return to Canterlot.” Celestia said. “In the meanwhile, this could be a good time for Luna to look into your children, Chrysalis.”

She nodded positively, but wasn’t very excited with the idea.

***

After a short talk with her friends, Cadance and Shining Armor Twilight made it quickly to the room they had prepared for her on the Celestia’s airship. At the door she found Grigory, sitting in front of it. At first she didn’t know how to react since he hadn’t left the dinner with the best of moods, but surprisingly, he seemed calm and collected.

“How would you like to leave this place as soon as possible?” He asked so unworried about many things he should be worried about that she wondered if he was serious.

“I intended on talking to Princess Celestia and convince her that she doesn’t need to hide that whole story anymore.” Twilight sighed while her wings sagged from her sides. “Guess that didn’t work as well as I thought. Well, I’ll talk to her again in the morning.”

“You are much more naïve than the typical pony if you believe that will work.” He just stared deadpanning at her, which caused her to frown a little angry at his attitude. But he went on before she could answer. “We have a way to get you to Manehattan in a flash, if you are willing to flee from under Celestia’s wings and have a bit of our technology added to your airship.”

Enticing… “I’m listening.”

“No. You have to agree, and we’ll get things done. It is a secret I’m willing to unveil and I’ll not disclose it unless I have good reason to.”

“I can’t decide like that! I have to talk to my friends first!”

“Fine.” Grigory didn’t like to hear that, but it’s not like he could do anything about it either. He simply left.

She knew he really wanted Twilight and Cadance to get to his home. The more she thought about it, the more Discord’s warning rang in her head. And also Celestia’s… And Shinning Armor’s… And her own common good sense! Oh, ponyfeathers… What had she gotten herself into?

Ice Queen

It was late in the night. Or early in the morning… It didn’t really matter. The important thing was that everypony slept, most of all, Princess Celestia. Princess Luna was busy chasing nightmares, and the airship hospital worked on a reduced staff. Nopony bothered the princess from leaving the Break of Dawn to go there, it was a hospital after all. Plenty of reasons somepony might wish to visit a hospital in the late hours of the night. So, Twilight used her telekinesis to open the door as slowly and quietly as possible. Closed it like so and finally turned on the light.

An angry griffon stared at her from inches away.

She squeaked and flared her wings open taking a step back and bumping into the door before she recognized that it was indeed the griffon she needed talking to.

“Is there a particular reason we are meeting in a bathroom in the middle of the night, Princess?” Grigory ignored her outburst, preferring to remain angry at the location.

Ceramic floor, white ceiling. Bathroom stalls and mirrors above sinks. Citronella aroma. It was a bit silly, she had to admit, but there were good reasons why she had chosen that place!

She closed her wings and tried to recover her breath. “It’s the only place in the airship that isn’t being watched with some sort of divination spell or a hoofful of royal guards and changelings!

He just stared angrily at her, judging ‘her pony self’ and the ‘pony things’ that she did.

“Look! It’s the best we could get!” She half defended herself, half accused him. “Also, my friends are in. So, what is your great plan?”

“The Skoll used a technology, created by Gallensa, called the Stormdrive. It allowed the airship to teleport long distances between storm clouds by using the magical energy of thunderstorms and other things you wouldn’t understand. She hates the idea, but she believes that she can install it on your airship and allow you to escape to a stormcloud near or over Manehattan.”

“Sounds reasonable, if that thing will work…” Twilight nodded. “Since nopony expects that, an escape should be doable without too much of a hassle and should give us plenty of time before the Princess reacted. The problem is that we won’t have a storm cloud here.”

“We will emulate one. It will take a great amount of magical energy, but Gallensa also believes that your Elements of Harmony should suffice.”

“But… But… What if there isn’t a storm cloud?!” She squealed. “At our destination, I mean. It sounds like that thing could fling us miles off-course if it doesn’t obliterate us.”

“There will be. One of our cells in Manehattan will ensure of that.”

“You have cells operating in pony cities?!” She squealed again.

“Will you calm yourself, Princess?” He wasn’t amused. “I’m sure Princess Celestia has agents infiltrated on griffon cities. She doesn’t even need that. She rules the griffon cities.”

“Alright. Alright.” Twilight inhaled and exhaled calmly while Grigory waited patiently. “The only problem I can foresee is that my airship is going to shut down inside a storm cloud. But we should be able to deal with that without the others bothering us. But I’ll need my crew. Other than that, how do we get to the Stormdrive device? How do we get it installed?”

“We’ll make sure that you have your crew.” He spoke calmly. “I imagined your unicorns, including yourself could help Gallensa. She’s likely to not sleep with me for months, but she will obey. Meanwhile, my griffons will stage a rebellion to distract the Royal Guards and the princesses. Things are being organized right now.”

“I only have one unicorn in my crew, but there is me and Starlight Glimmer. Rarity certainly could help too. With your friend’s knowledge of the device, we should be able to make it work. Or at least, we have the best chances possible.” Twilight rubbed her chin with a foreleg. “Sounds good. But how can we get to the device?”

“That is being covered too.”

“Hey!” She pointed an angry hoof at him. “Be straight with me.”

“Fine. Master Flying Snake will recover it from the crashed airship or from the salvage area Celestia has ordered near it.”

That sounded fishy. “I don’t like this. Why would he help us?”

“Because he has good reasons do to as I say.” It started to grate on her nerves how he always seemed so certain of everything he said, but rarely gave good reasons she should be too.

“I like this even less!” She complained. “What is going on?”

“I don’t have to disclose everything to you, Princess. There may come to be a war between us.”

“Fine! But don’t kill anypony!” She frowned at him. “Can we agree on that?”

“I can guarantee I will do my best to prevent that.” Of course, he didn’t want to actually compromise. Ugh! But he went on because she must have showed her annoyance. “You cannot guarantee that my soldiers or even friends will not be injured by the royal guards, much less the damn changelings.”

“Yes, you’re right.” Her ears flopped and she sighed. “I guess that is the best I can ask for. When will it start?”

“When we are ready. I can’t tell you for sure. The royal guards and those damned changelings are watching us.”

“Hum. I’ll see what we can do about that.” Twilight nodded. “I’m sure the girls must have some ideas.”

“Good enough.” Grigory finally seemed to be at least a bit friendly. “I’ll do my best to give you some forewarning when we are ready to start. But don’t expect a lot. I’ll have to coordinate with Flying Snake and his is the most critical part of the plan. All the rest will have to adapt.”

“I understand.” She nodded at the door and walked towards it. “Well, I guess we are done here, then.”

“Are you sure you weren’t followed?” He asked from behind.

“This is a hospital, not an actual prison.” Twilight rolled her eyes. Yes, she was nervous, but not that much to think that she might have been followed as though it was some cloak and dagger novel. The important thing after their meeting was to remaining calm and not draw suspicions.

She opened the door and bumped into somepony.

It probably wasn’t somepony that had followed her or something, but it was likely just as bad. A nurse earth pony stared at her with huge, surprised gray eyes. A blue male with darker mane cut short and a nurse hat.

“Hum… Hi?” She stuttered. “Can I help you?”

Very smooth, Twilight… She mentally kicked herself.

Then the nurse frowned at her. “Princess, what were you doing in the males’ bathroom?”

“What?” She stared at the sign at the entrance and… It was, indeed, the males’ bathroom. “I… got confused in the dark!”

Not only the corridor was as bright as Celestia’s day, but he stared behind her to see Grigory and gasped. “Oh my gosh! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to intrude!”

“Wait! What? No! It’s not… It’s not like that!” Her wings flared and her plan of remaining calm went down the drain faster than the pony turned tail and ran away. “Wait! Oh, come on!”

Grigory walked to her side. “Well, there is your distraction. You’ll be the talk of the entire fleet by the morning.”

“Not funny!” She turned her hot face to glare at him. He wasn’t grinning or anything, but she knew he was making fun of her. At least she could hope that his friends would bother him about that too!

“Well, careful what you say because your princess will be curious, and we can’t let her catch wind of what we were actually doing.” She wanted to smack that serious expression out of his face, but instead simply grumbled to herself and walked away as fast as she could before somepony else happened upon them.

***

Discord saw it from afar, and despite traveling all night, he expected it would take longer to arrive. It did seem that the magical effect in the region that hastened their travel did return after it was disturbed last day. He still had no idea what that was about, but he supposed he wouldn’t take long to find out.

The mountain chain was monstrous and the central mountain imposing. He could see it from afar despite the storming winds and snow in the blizzard. He could clearly see the outline of the mountain flanked by a large chain of mountains it spearheaded like the fangs of the world itself. The four surrounding peaks, tall and thin, were weird, but that definitively identified it as the place. The lights all over the city helped and the entire mountain looked like it was alive, despite the time of day and allowed an easier glimpse of it from within the storm.

Suddenly they left the blizzard, and he could see the huge city that encompassed the mountain with its lights and the thin smoke that rose from the chimneys. If compared to giant cities, like Manehattan and Griffonstone, they dwarfed in comparison, and that was the city proper. Vast fields of whatever would grow in that biting cold surrounded the mountain with the occasional little house here or there. Gigantic black walls surrounded everything and connected the four flanking peaks at their base as though they were gigantic defensive towers and, at their top, he could see fortifications. That place was a fortress.

“How did you build this place?” He called Lord Gilad over the wind.

“We did not!” He shouted back. “It was built before the Windigos. My ancestors fled them from Stormy Eyrie, way up north, but the first of them stopped here. Griffons much more powerful than I am. They fortified the city and drew the line in this place. They didn’t allow the abominations from the Windigos to chase their brothers and sisters that continued down south and southeast.”

Discord was stumped. ‘They drew the line’ was something he had never ever heard of in relation to the Windigos. The ponies built the Crystal Empire, but that was an attempt at taking back some land and they had a legendary magical artifact with them. Apparently, Griffindell was also Grigor’s last stand. It must be insanely important to these griffons. Celestia did the right thing respecting that.

Inside the walls, where a few of the fields ought to be, he saw a large gathering of tents. More than he could count. He had no idea how many griffons would live in those, but that was an army. A large one. Many times worth the one the Chancellor managed to assemble. His gaze also found the top of the mountain, crowned with a large fortress with black walls and a gray mansion at the center. He supposed that was Gilad’s home and the fortress where ‘no alicorn ever set hoof’. Actually, a fortress within a fortress.

It also radiated magic. Like a giant and pulsating beacon of magical light that only his special eyes could see. There was talk of griffons peregrinating to the city… He could imagine all that magic had some effect on their minds, drawing them in. Maybe it was the recent encounter with the ‘archlich’ that turned out to be a ‘Discorded’ Battlehorn stranded in the Frozen North, but the magical defenses in that place made him think of the Citadel from many thousands of years ago. He didn’t know if magic which could breach that thing still existed in the present time. Certainly, Celestia and Luna could damage it, but he couldn’t imagine the Royal Guard unicorns even coming close from scratching that thing.

The mountain city itself was surrounded by the mountains on all sides and the only approach was the valley that opened, flanked by diminishing mountains and hills into a vast snowfield until it vanished under the blizzard they just came out of.

It was also cold. Unnaturally cold. Colder than anything Discord had ever experienced and certainly colder than the Crystal Empire. It must be the proximity with the Frozen North. He could feel the malice from the Windigos in that cold, like tendrils of malevolence trying to reach further. It made him shiver, as though the actual cold wasn’t enough. How did those griffons live in that place? Why did they live there? That city must really be important to them. Well, of course it was, being the ‘last stand’, but in the sense that they just didn’t want to let go.

Gilad let himself lose some altitude to fly low above the valley and Discord followed, aware of the ‘no flying around cities’ rule. He wondered for a second if that was another ‘simp rule’…

Regardless, he was distracted. There was something weird about that place in a similar way he thought Chaos was funky in the area where he saved that griffon army from being ambushed. It was different though. Not like a smell, but more like an inkling. A feeling that something wasn’t quite right in that place. Not something bad, but out of place.

He landed on the soft snow and a jagged rock sticking out of it called his attention like it beckoned to him. More like it radiated ancient magic so powerful it left an imprint of its existence on the rock. Then he saw another, and another. A line of rocky spears, such as lines of teeth in the mouth of some terrible monster, protruded from the snow. He noticed an old griffon lady wearing a blue cape close to the place he had landed on. Underneath she had silvery fur and a white head with a delicate iron chain as a collar. She just stared at him and didn’t say anything.

Finally, he touched the tip of the closest stone spear and flashes of images and sounds intruded on his mind. Screaming wind. Biting cold… Actual screaming. A battle cry under a stormy sky that echoed in the mountains. Too many diamond dogs to count charged as best as they could in the deep snow, wearing not very impressive armor and holding shields and spears forward. Brave and heedless of consequences. Or rather, fully conscious of them, but still moving forward.

His hand recoiled from the still sharp stone tip. The old griffon lady still stared at him and Gilad landed close to him. “What happened here?”

It was the old griffon female that answered with a croaky voice. “Three thousand diamond dogs, what remained of their Matriarch’s pack spearheaded in the first maneuver of the Battle of All Armies.”

“The Battle of All Armies?” He looked at Gilad, next to him.

Gilad stared at the old griffon female. “When the Loremasters speak, even the kings are supposed to shut their beaks.”

So, Discord figured he ought to pay attention as she went on. “The entrance to the valley was closed with countless frostmanes under the command of Her Imperial Highness Princess Giselle, daughter to Emperor Grigor and one of his best Swordmaidens. Two thousand minotaur warriors followed the diamond dogs for the attack was a feint to draw her out. Celestia herself would cast a mighty spell of sunfire to end the frostmanes and one of the Changeling Queens, Chrysalis herself, would seek her target, as she usually did, hiding in the shape of others and striking unknown to murder in the battlefield.”

“Chrysalis, huh?” Discord mused. “Never figured that she would put herself in danger for the sake of others.”

“She did not.” The old griffon explained. “As Celestia’s Battlehorns and Grover’s rebels won victories and more victories against Emperor Grigor in the saddle arabian deserts more races felt emboldened to rise up. The changelings were among the last to join. Though we suspect they were involved much sooner as our enemies seemed to know things they shouldn’t about the positioning of the Emperor’s forces and his movements.”

“In warfare, however, the changeling strategy was a cowardly one. They would infiltrate enemy camps and murder captains and lieutenants in their sleep. Until the Mother of Storms gave her chosen the power to see past their gimmicky magic and we started extracting their secrets. The Swordmaidens excelled at hunting and killing changelings within our camps and in the end, they resorted to stalking the battlefields where The Harpy’s Chosen couldn’t carefully examine their magic. They still had to fight, though, and Swordmaidens had become exceptionally skilled at putting them out of their misery. That day, Chrysalis would be the only one with the courage to fight Giselle.”

The griffon lady showed a small grin. “But that was one of many lessons The Conqueror would teach the High Queen of Equestria. Giselle revealed the five thousand diamond dog slaves from the city, tied to these very rocks and Celestia held her magic. The frostmanes slaughtered diamond dogs and minotaurs alike, despite Celestia joining the battle. The changeling did manage to slay Princess Giselle, however. Unfortunately. I would have liked to live in a world where I would not have to suffer that murderous, dishonorable, and vile sororicidal and matricidal monster forgiven and given a position where she can voice her opinions on my race. And now you comprehend where we stand. I suppose The Princess didn’t learn that lesson, after all: she still tries to save all of them. If she prefers changelings to griffons, we will not complain, but she ought to be prepared for the consequences of her choices.”

“Our senators submit too much to Celestia’s rule and our chosen leader does not lead for ourselves. That is why we must take things into our own paws, and why the Children of the Harpy cry that our nation must change. That is why The Lion will be made king of Griffonia. In reality, we need one that will challenge the Princess’ power and fight her for what we believe.”

She concluded with a polite nod to Lord Gilad. That sounded strange. That final touch. The Lion might be different and powerful, but he was not on Celestia’s level. In fact, Discord could picture Twilight or Cadance defeating him if it came to that. But those were thoughts better left unsaid.

In reality, Discord didn’t understand many things about the present world that might have had an origin in that time. Such as diamond dogs. It sounded grim, to put it lightly.

“Greetings, Gehenna.” Gilad said calmly and she bowed to them. “Your Lordship, this is Gehenna, one of our oldest Loremasters. Also, one of Gwendolen’s favorites, I believe.”

“You are too kind, my liege. You should know that Lady Gwendolen has returned from Stormy Eyrie shortly before your arrival and she is in a foul mood. I would advise against meeting her now, but I suppose my liege, and her mate, has privileges. Though, I am also sure that My Lady looks forward to seeing the Lord of Chaos.”

Discord wanted to know more about the battle. It sounded as though it was something important, certainly significant for Celestia. But he also had a job to do, and he would have time later. “Will you take me to her, Lord Gilad? I feel as though a conversation could answer many of the questions that I have.”

“Agreed.” The griffon nodded. “The best way to the mansion is into the city and up the Highway. It leads directly to Griffinsky’s gates.”

Discord nodded and walked with the griffon. Gehenna followed them, if from a small, respectful distance. The gates seemed close, but they were actually monstrous, and it took them a while to reach them. Gates that were already open to receive them, but Discord was distracted by the marks where magic pummeled the walls in that battle. There were depressions in the stony walls in places where spells had hit, and slash marks too. It was ancient, but it was powerful magic that also left an impression that his perceptions could capture. It was the kind of combat spells that just didn’t exist anymore. That died with the age of the Battlehorns.

Above the walls was an intricate mesh of something that looked like barbed wire, or something of that sort in between solid metallic poles that kept them firm. That too was enchanted, and he assumed it was a sort of defense against flying invaders. It made sense if they waged war on flying creatures. After all, griffons themselves could fly. That was also, probably, a good reason for the ‘no flying around cities rule’. Those things looked nasty, as in ‘rip your wings off nasty’. The flying equivalent of boiling oil, he supposed.

He silently sighed to himself. War was awful. It would so nice if creatures could just chill.

Such as his arrival at Brokenhorn, griffons gathered to receive him. Mostly soldiers in the city’s black and gold cuirass armor that were posted nearby and a few other curious that had some business by the city’s gates and walls. They gaped and pointed, speaking excitedly. Nothing formal, though. At least not more than a couple of soldiers accompanying a large griffon with tan body and white head wearing a black cape over the city’s armor who seemed to be in command. He and The Lion greeted each other silently, but he didn’t disturb further.

Meanwhile Discord paid attention to the scenery. It certainly looked like an army was stationed there and he supposed it was a good thing that Lord Gilad hadn’t deployed them to the south border of his holds. If anything, it showed that he really wasn't interested in a war. It was concerning that he was massing an army, though. Not to mention that those griffons, much like the ones involved in the ambush he avoided, would eat the griffonian army griffons alive. He didn’t even want to think of what would happen if a civil war happened and those griffons started fighting in the cities.

They walked past the tents and no one disturbed them. Those griffons seemed busy with some sort of military drills. The kind of stuff Discord wouldn’t understand anyway, but they shot muskets repeatedly and some of them participated in what seemed like fighting matches, complete with cheering and betting. Others simply stood guard and nodded respectfully.

The fields started past the tents. He didn’t know what they planted there since the plants hadn’t grown much yet, but those were some big fields with a few houses in between. He smiled at some griffon cubs having fun chasing away crows and the like. They also passed a griffon leading a wooly ox that pulled a cart full of hay bales. He looked tired, but he respectfully nodded at Lord Gilad and Discord, who nodded back out of politeness.

Past the fields they reached the city itself. A transition with cow pens, pigsties and sheep pens, tanneries and some artisan shops that worked the leather and the wool. At least the place was clean and the animals in the pens didn’t look sick or anything. To be honest, he couldn’t see if those creatures understood their situation. But he didn’t linger. He was used to the ponies and that place smelled of death to him, even if that wasn’t real.

The path they followed connected to a wide stone walkway flanked by stone and wooden houses. Stores with local artisanship in display: musical instruments, fine jewelry, clothing, cooking, and housing utensils… Everything griffons might need on their daily life. Blacksmiths with their forges bellowing black smoke and stacks of long tubes which would certainly become muskets, but also swords, axes and spear points. A few fixed cart wheels or made nails, hinges and metal tools. Wood workshops displayed bows and shafts for weapons. Also homes from which griffons came out to look at Lord Gillad and The Lord of Chaos walking up the stone path.

Nothing other than a few curious or happy griffons cheering at them happened and Discord kept quiet. Taking in the details. It was a griffon city. Nothing much more than that other than the field of camping soldiers where a plantation ought to be.

The higher and closer they got to the mansion, the larger and richer the houses flanking the walkway became. Large families stood outside to greet them but also didn’t disturb them. Not that different from the ponies they didn't like, rich griffons adorned themselves with gold and fine fabrics and their houses with noble woods and stones.

The gates to the fortress mimicked the ones that gave access to the city and were also open to them and the guards formed up on the inside, by the gates, to meet them. Soldiers looked young, but many seemed like veterans from the previous war and their armor was adorned with a red scarf that held a brooch of a pair of wings in white and black. An older griffon female with steely gray fur and a white head stood next to two griffons ladies who wore the same black dress and a fancy white lacy headdress she too wore.

“My lord.” She spoke apologetically. “I wanted to have the maids in formation to meet you, but Lady Gwendolen was angry the metalwork on the front doors weren’t very shiny, so she’s ordered it polished and all the windows cleaned, since she felt only that would be too easy.”

Talk about bad mood. He stared at Gilad and the big griffon let out a sigh. “She has a… Bit of a temper.”

Then he turned to the head maid. “Just get the windows and the metalworks reasonably clean. She’s lashing out and it’s nothing personal.”

Curious. Something had happened and that outburst from the last day surely had something to do with her ‘mood’. He would see.

The female nodded and one of the soldiers opened the door for them to enter. The atrium, or main hall, was a giant combination between a throne room, with a pair of tall and heavy chairs made of wood and adorned with all sorts of tapestry showing griffon motifs. There was also one of the maids cleaning a mess of broken glass and wine by the center of the room, next to a firepit that currently burned, and three carcasses of large animals roasted above it. They looked like large pigs, but Discord wasn’t sure. The room was nice and warm too, because of the fire and there were a few doors on the sides and two behind the thrones. He followed Gilad as he rushed past the one on the right.

It took them to a small corridor with a sword displayed on a case and another door on the stone walls took them to a nice atrium with some sitting furniture, a tall window to the outside and a large wooden door with black ornate metal hinges.

Discord could hear someone screaming and he was sure he heard glass breaking at some point. A maid, a young gray and white griffon girl wearing their uniform rushed out the door and closed it, quickly retreating past them.

Behind the doors something glass-like broke again, followed by a shrill cry and something heavy tumbled over followed by a ripping noise.

“Is this normal?” Discord stared at Gilad.

“Well, I did say she was on a bad mood.” The old griffoness said while Gilad knocked on the door.

He did not look amused. “It is not usual.”

The door opened to show a small and annoyed silvery and platinum griffon girl flying to reach the lock and landing to talk to them. Big, brown, expressive eyes. “Yes? Lady Gwendolen is a bit indisposed right now.”

Behind her, in the center of the room was a big, if slender and shapely griffon lady. White fur with black stripes on her hindlegs and blackening feathers on her head and neck, with a crest of black feathers behind, like a crown. She held her head with both black paws and mumbled something frantically to herself. Discord didn’t understand, and when she noticed them by the door, she literally cawed, gawking at them with surprise.

“Close the door, you little idiot!” She cried and flapped her wings frantically.

The girl did as she was told, contemptibly pushing the door closed and Discord worried a bit because he could swear he saw pieces of something that looked like gore in the floor, as well as red all over.

Gilad seemed even less amused than before and knocked again. Harder. “Cub, open this door.”

It didn’t take too long, and the cub did open the door, with the same annoyed expression she held before. Behind her the room was a nice meeting room with sofas, chairs, a red-stained rug that used to be some creature’s brown furry coat. A window let in the fresh air and it carried out of the room the smell of wine rather than blood. What Discord had originally thought of gore around the floor were wine-stained pieces of plushie filling, and pieces of a life-sized Celestia plushie doll ripped to pieces and spread all over the room. Its head was stuck to a decorative wooden wall with an axe through it.

It was a nice room, otherwise.

He looked down at the cub waiting by the door, who seemed a little bored despite all that was happening. “Lady Gwendolen is in the living room, Lord Gilad, Lord Discord.”

Funny… Discord thought that the name was only used by the other griffons and ponies. He turned his attention back at the griffon child. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Lady Gwendolen is a bit scary, and she makes me read big and boring books, but she’s mostly nice and lets me do anything I want. Uh… Provided I’m done with my studies.” She said and Discord nodded. Yes, the ‘chaos in their nature’. “She is also very intelligent. But it’s better not to make her angry.”

She seemed fine, so Discord simply followed Gilad in, taking time to stare at the plushie doll’s head on the wall. “Not a big fan of Princess Celestia, is she?”

The cub just shrugged, and Discord talked to her again, as she followed them. “What is your name?”

“I'm Sunny!” She blinked twice. “Actually, that’s my nickname. Mom and dad call me that. My real name is Gilberta.”

“And where are your parents?” He rose an eyebrow.

“They’re away. Doing stuff… They left me with Lady Gwendolen, and she’s supposed to teach me things.” The small griffon told him and shrugged. “Anyway, Lady Gwendolen will see you in the next room.”

He followed Gilad and the child followed them to the other room. It was another nice room, meant for the owners of the mansion to pass their time rather than meeting a guest. It had a large desk, several books on a bookshelf, a few hunting trophies and several decorative items that seemed made from bone, leather, and other leftovers of game. A neat fireplace smelled nicely with the burning aromatic wood and provided a comforting heat.

A large and beautifully crafted harp stood in a corner and there were also several places to sit and relax. The griffoness in question, Lady Gwendolen, sat on the stone floor before the desk, all regal poise.

She was the most beautiful griffoness he had ever seen. More so than Gwineth, who seemed young when this one seemed mature and her beauty held some type of physical power and majesty that seemed hard to quantify. He could only agree that the photograph he saw back in the Crystal Empire didn’t really do her justice. She looked big and powerful, like Gilad, but a white, slender, lioness with black stripes on her hindlegs, a collar of black feathers and a white face with sharp features adorned with blackening feathers behind her head, a crest of feathers that looked like a natural crown, and black wings that made it look like she constantly wore a cloak. An elegant jet-black beak and sharp features to complement her delicate gold and diamond diadem over her head, the symbol of her position as the matron of the castle. Her paws were black and had long talons of a hunter. She looked dangerous as she was beautiful, almost as much as her stormy gray eyes.

She had that… Stare. That way of looking at another like she could see into the depths of their soul that came with a very ‘Celestia-like’ aura to her that mystified him, exuding a natural majesty that commanded his attention, even when she discreetly kicked away a fluffy piece of plushie filling. But she lacked Celestia’s soft stare. Hers had a dangerous, predatorial quality.

“Greetings, Mad God.” Her voice had nothing of Celestia’s inviting softness, but carried with a haughty authority, even if she smiled. It cut even deep with that title. “I am glad you have finally come to us.”

“What happened, Gwendolen?” Gilad asked her, though, and drew her attention before Discord could reply. It was clear she wanted to talk to Discord, but Gilad seemed worried. He got the impression that Gilad feared that she had done something.

She inhaled petulantly and sighed. “Celestia’s caused us a bit of headache. That is all.”

“What. Happened?” He wasn’t amused nor dissuaded by her posture. Discord noted he didn’t mention what they had heard and perceived in their travel.

“The Skoll was destroyed.” She spoke again, still set in her haughty poise, talking about something being destroyed as though it was nothing too important. Trying to avoid his questioning.

“Impossible. There is no way the shipyard has been discovered, much less infiltrated. Who did it? Changelings? Traitors?” He looked like he couldn’t believe what he had just heard.

“She was not on her berth.” The female kept her haughty poise. “She was lost in battle.”

Oh boy… Gilad was not amused.

“The Skoll was moored to her berth in the shipyard’s dock less than a week ago when I went there with Gallensa to see her to completion.” His temper started to flare, and he rubbed his temples. “How was she destroyed in battle? She was supposed to be safely waiting deployment to the southern line if Gail created problems in the transition!”

She shrugged, completely calm and collected, with an infuriating little smile, while he stared hard at her. Discord couldn’t decide if he was angry or frustrated. Maybe both. “I will not ask again, Gwendolen! What happened?”

She inhaled deeply, more frustrated than anything, annoyed, holding the top of her beak with a paw. “Grigory took the Skoll to Baltimare through a teleporter. Gallensa found a way to use the airship’s Stormdrive to hijack a freight teleporter platform. He tried contacting Princesses Twilight and Cadance but…”

Her eyes shifted to the side. “Celestia found them. The Skoll ended up in a battle with a Royal Guard fleet and was destroyed.”

“Is Grigory hurt?” He asked seriously.

“No. Celestia has him captive, but, as far as I know, he is not injured.” She seemed relieved.

“Excellent. I want to kill him myself!” He roared and she squawked again and flared her wings, completely forgetting her composure. She was going to say something, reaching for him, but he beat her to it, staring hard at her. “Did you put him to this?”

“No! I did not!” She held her paws before her white fluffy chest. “I never told him anything, but he wanted to help! It is all because Celestia got in the way! Was it not for her, Grigory would have brought me the two princesses without an issue!”

Discord took note of the funny way she spoke, but obviously didn’t mention anything yet. They seemed to be having ‘a married moment’.

It was funny because The Lion massaged his temples. “Gwendolen, you just told me Grigory took a military vessel, a secret warship, no less, and hijacked a teleporter facility to reach Princesses Twilight and Cadance. A warship, flying around Celestia's backyard! How was that her fault?!”

He reached forward with his paws like he was going to wring her neck, or something, and she squeaked, before looking amused for a second, but he didn’t follow through. “All the while I’m trying to be diplomatic and reach the throne of Griffonia with her help, avoiding loss of life among our race! The only reason he would ever do that would be that you ordered him! You promised you would not try anything. That you would leave military matters to me!”

She gasped with a paw on her chest as though she had been slighted. “I did not break my word! I did not even tell him that I needed one of them, much less knew he would do something like that! Grigory deduced that on his own! For once, his brilliance is a problem! I would even prefer he had not!”

“His ‘brilliance’ cost us the most advanced warship in the world and exposed military secrets to the last creature in this world they should have been exposed to! And who knows what else?!” He rubbed his forehead and calmed a little. Just a little. “Where is he now, again?”

“Celestia has him prisoner with his friends and the two princesses. But this is not the problem!” She shook her head, looking frantically at him and holding his shoulders, like she finally let her composure collapse. “He will be furious I could not help him, and now I need to figure out how to fix this mess before he comes back! I cannot bear the thought that Grigory will doubt me!”

“What are you talking about?” He freed himself of her paws.

“He tried summoning a magical lightning storm! In front of all his companions and the crew! Our soldiers! It was embarrassing! But I could not help him, or I would reveal myself too soon! Celestia would find me!”

“Gwendolen.” He calmed himself and called her calmly while she babbled on. His expression read ‘what a mess’. “Calm yourself.”

So, that is what that was about last day. And it really was her, casting the spell. Interesting. And somehow Grigory needed her help to cast a spell. Hum…

But she didn’t shut up. “She will find me! And I am not ready to deal with her! And now Grigory will lose all his faith in me! He needed me and I failed! All because that filthy cake-eating equine was there! And now she will not take long before she will realize what is happening and she will find me, and she will kill me!”

“Gwendolen, you are prattling on as a moron.” He said and then nodded at Discord. “Get a hold of yourself and shut your beak.”

“Excuse me…” Discord raised a claw. “Should I leave and come back later?”

“No!” She almost scared him with her outburst when she lunged at him and came short of holding on to him. “You can help! You have the solution!”

“I do?” He took a step back and Gilad sighed to himself with a paw on his face.

“You have the key to their minds!” She smiled wildly at him and approached again. “Celestia changed everything, but you can open the locks to their minds and let me reclaim my Children! Just as when you turned the ponies into the Lost Herd. You can help me reach the souls of My Children and make them remember!”

“I don’t have an inkling of a clue of what you are talking about!” He stepped away from her again.

“Please! Do you not recall?” She pleaded, sitting on the floor and holding her paws together. “The Black Sun? All time connected in a single moment. All that ever was and would ever be in a single instant. You allowed my Children to glimpse their Mother from within their dreams of past lives. They clung to me in throes of a dying world. They brought me into the world of the living. Thanks to you!”

Okay. Time out. From what he could gather, Discord unwittingly allowed some ancient entity to return from the past because he tried to return existence to the moment of creation since he believed the ponies had messed up. He didn’t manage to summon the Black Sun, but enough damage was done that the process had begun, even if it didn’t reach completion. Probably something like the alicorns being summoned happened and this griffon lady got dragged by the mortal griffons in their despair.

Cool... That made sense. Just, who the heck was she?

“I don’t know who you are.” He told her calmly and apologetically. Worried too. “And I didn’t mean for you to be here. All I wanted was for the ponies to go back and for their creators to have another shot at making things right. But I was wrong, and what I did was wrong. I almost ruined everything. Not that I’m not glad you’re back… Whoever you are… But what you’re asking for… I can’t really give it to you. I don’t even know if that would be possible. Why would you want that to begin with?”

She changed her poise and smiled. Her eyes shone with amusement. “You do not recognize me.”

She spoke haughtily again, sitting on the floor and inflating her chest, raising her head. “You truly do not recognize me. How amusing.”

That might’ve sounded creepier than she intended, but the thought didn’t help Discord feel any less uneasy. And then her grin grew even larger. “I expected you to understand of such matters. How amusing, indeed. Although, I am much older than you are.”

Oh boy… That didn’t sound good at all. The thing is he really had no idea. He had some idea of what was it that she wanted. But wouldn’t give it to her even if he thought she had good intentions. He didn’t even know if what she wanted it could even be given like that! No one has ever asked anything like that of him. It would be even weirder than somepony asking Celestia to give them the sun!

He took a step back and put forward his paws. “Look… Ma'am… I'm not sure what is it that you believe, but I can assure you that things are fine, and nobody needs what you want.”

“Oh, but they are not.” She kept her arrogant, condescending grin. “And you may not have intended it, but magic makes everything possible. As you well know. Particularly, powerful magic such as the Black Sun. Ironic that it stems from Celestia's own magic, is it not? But then again, it is her job to make that thing in the sky work and nothing more. Ponies are the ones that came up with Equestria and all that madness.”

Her voice took a sharp, dangerous tone.

“They played for long enough. I am back. And I want My Children returned to me. My world returned to me.” She frowned at him. “It is the right order of the world as it is a mess now. But, as I said, I have returned, and I am ready to take my rightful place that Celestia has stolen from me.”

“Just… Hold on a second!” He put forward his paws again. “It’s not like that. Ponies are doing great and there is really no need for… Uh… Whatever you want to do.”

Certainly not replacing Celestia, or any of the alicorn princesses. Things were as great as they could be! Even Chrysalis was growing a conscience! It was great!

“Is that so?” She gave him a smug grin, condescendingly motherly. “I doubt it. Her own ponies are tired of her sitting on the throne of the world. It is poetic… They have sought us in secrecy to rebel. Much like Grigor’s unhappy followers, ages ago, brought her to My Children. And she, for the second time, stole them from me.”

“Look.” He started in the most cautious and least offensive way he could. “I don’t like where this is going. I came here to build a bridge, you know. Princess Celestia asked me to come here and understand you guys. See what your problem with her is and get things sorted. And here you are asking me something that most creatures wouldn’t even know to ask, much less have the ability to use. And you are accusing her of stealing your children… What is going on?”

“You are confused, and that is understandable. I am not like most creatures.” Having said that, she walked to the large window showing the mountain range under the fortress. Densely clouded and violent sky above. There, she stood on her hindlegs and opened her wings showing a black and white stripped pattern, putting out her paws. “Conflict drives everything. Existence itself is the stage for a never-ending battle of wills. This, she never understood and that is why she is incapable of sustaining the world as she wanted. Hunter and prey are the most basic and honest expressions of this. The hunt… It is the defining moment of life, when two creatures meet, and the winner takes everything. Her own ponies understand that, even if they see it in other ways… One wins, the other loses, and the prize is everything. Money. Prestige. The Crown. Existence itself.”

“However, in my absence, My Children have forgotten my Commandment and they have allowed themselves an immense serving of the fool-hardy ideas the ponies came up with once they found themselves unrestrained. My Children have forgotten the harsh mountain where I birthed the first of them and they seek lairs that are too comfortable. They eat and drink of the pony food. It rots their bodies, and the lack of discipline rots their minds. They have become feeble and weak and most would die of exposure if not for the comfortable cities the equines taught them to build.”

Discord’s eyes shot wide open. She was getting angrier the more she talked. Her gestures and mannerisms changed to the aggressive and the surrounding magic responded. The room grew cold and dark as the light from the window waned. Outside, suddenly the wind picked up and howled, flinging open another window, and a lightning flashed. A terrible thunder echoed in the mountains.

“They seek softer beds and warmer halls instead challenges and adventure. They accumulate wealth, coins in the image of the equine face of Celestia instead of the aquiline visage of conquerors of the past and have become corrupted by it. They want more and more of it and the comfort it brings and know not what to do with their wealth other than acquiring more and more like an uncontrolled cub that gorges on sweets until they cannot eat anymore!”

“They conform themselves to ideologies where resources must be shared and freely given to any regardless of their effort, their cost or their value. It created a mob of whiny adult-cubs that would rather seek another easy meal to gorge themselves or find comfort in the lies that they are worth it no matter how much of a failure they are.” She closed her black paws into fists and rose her voice. “They have forgotten the example of raw power and sharp mind of their old lords and ladies. The minds that shaped the world and earned respect and wealth. The might of a warlord that cannot be denied. The will of an emperor that cannot be resisted.”

“They loved me! They obeyed my Commandment… There was nothing that was not ours! They offered me sacrifices and danced for me in my temple! Immense celebrations to our greatness and they feasted on noble meat, wine, music, and lust! They understood my teachings. The balance of unwavering discipline and shameless surrender to the senses!” She put up her paws and almost cried. “Now My Furious Angels would rather befriend a mindless bovine than rule an empire! They lost their claws! They lost their mettle! They speak softly out of fear they should offend someone, and they cower from lust and carnal release out of fear of rejection!”

Finally, she calmed herself and the room didn’t seem so dark anymore. The fireplace had extinguished though, and Discord still had goosebumps over drop in the temperature. She turned to him again, sitting on the stone with closed her eyes for an instant, breathing deeply before flashing him her grey eyes. “No more. Mother has returned home.”

They stared at each other for a while as Discord processed what she had said. The small cub stood next to the Loremaster and both watched. Lord Gilad sat near the door, nervously staring at the white griffonness and at him.

Okay. First of all, The Lion’s mate was not what she had appeared. Second, she had Celestia’s mother complex, cranked up to eleven and turned into some creepy sort of religion. Third, she made Discord feel normal and that was never a good sign. Scratch that, she made King Sombra seem normal. She would probably spank him for not enslaving enough ponies or something. He didn’t know what was wrong with that griffon lady, but there was no way that was healthy!

Alright. Chill. Focus.

“You want to mind-control the griffons into accepting your way of life. Then force them into turning their nation into your ideal of what it should be.” He said, finally. Tried not to sound accusatory.

But she shook her head and scowled. “It is literally what Celestia has done. You merely do not notice it because you are immersed.”

“You have been a prisoner of Celestia’s ideology for so long you cannot feel your shackles anymore.” She angrily gestured a handcuff over her wrist. “But no. I want My Children to remember me. Celestia stole them from me. She lied about their history and about me. I was forced to hide not to be destroyed while Celestia did what she wanted with my world and My Children.”

She started screaming again. “She took it from mine and gave it to hers! The equines were never even supposed to have free-will. Their job was to care for the plant life. Her job was to care for the sun and her sister the moon. The world belonged to me and My Children and I want it back!”

She took a deep breath and calmed herself. “I wish for them to see her for what she is. Not only her, but all of them. The deceiving thieves that Celestia and her… Sisters? Her daughters? Whatever they are, I want My Children to know the truth.”

And then turn to your side and become you ideal ‘Furious Angels’, cause a war and bring nothing more than suffering to the world. It all made sense… Twilight and Cadance would eventually find their way to her and, not only she would, somehow, find the way into the souls of griffons, but she would use whatever it was that they would uncover about the reasons Celestia helped Grover hide everything and turn it against her. Then she would play the victim and show the world that Celestia lied. Only she would paint the truth with her intentions. She would blow the whole story and ruin King Grover’s legacy along with Celestia’s.

Good plan, but it went wrong somewhere. Probably because Twilight and Cadance went to Chrysalis instead of The Lion. Scary… It almost worked.

The real problem was another, though. Celestia could survive the slandering and would certainly find and rescue Twilight and Cadance with Luna, that dumbass boyfriend of theirs and the entire world, because that was what the griffon lady would get. Celestia would sic the entire military of the Equestrian Confederacy on her and his mate. Another war…

But, beyond that, the real problem was the Black Sun. The truth that must remain hidden, else it would be summoned. That part she didn’t even care about. All she cared about was her mad ravings of the perfect little griffons that adored her.

And that is without taking into consideration that she wanted to throw the griffons back her ideal little ‘Furious Angels’. Granted, some might enjoy huge celebrations of food and horny griffons, but that wasn’t the point! The rest of the world be damned to her and it was a good thing Celestia stole her children from her!

Yeah, Discord wasn’t the brightest bulb on the shed, but he was quite educated in that mater of taking over the world for the sake of some petty thing.

He stopped himself. He was too quick to judge. Maybe that was all she understood. Maybe there was a middle ground that could be reached.

Amazing… Without ever knowing what happened up there in the North, Celestia had the right idea of sending him there for his experience alone. He only needed to figure out how to deal with that. He needed time. Some allies. Preferably, reach Celestia.

“I can’t help you.” He said plainly.

Her scowl deepened and she spoke rather angrily, like it made no sense in her head. “Why would you side with the hoofed? You tried to destroy them. You saw they failed their task many times. The Alicorn Tetrarchy failed. They cheated their way past oblivion. You know well that they failed, and that the Windigos ought to have destroyed them. You said it yourself.”

He frowned. “I thought you taught your griffons that the ponies summoned the Windigos to destroy your lands in the north…”

“That is a matter of perspective.” She grinned. “It was so, and it stemmed from their greed that summoned the Windigos. The unicorns broke the Ancient Pact, their wickedness stabbed Amicizia through the heart and buried her gift of the Fire of Friendship in a hundred cubits of freezing snow. They wanted more. They had all they could need, but they wanted more. They wanted everything and even the minds of their fellow pegasi and earth ponies. They wanted our lands. They wanted the rare stones in the mountains and the gleaming gold. They wanted the Sun and Moon themselves so that they wouldn’t have to share!”

She knew! That was why she didn’t care for the truth of Celestia’s changed History. She knew the truth. And she didn’t care! For all Discord knew, she was prepared to gamble summoning it just so that she can have it her way! That had just got dangerous. More dangerous.

She grinned some more. “Ironic, is it not? What ponies did once they had free-will.”

“You know things, but you don’t understand them!” He clenched his fists. Not good. He didn’t control the conversation. He didn’t know enough about her and she knew more than he did. “I was wrong! They are inherently good. Things worked out in the end!”

“I think not.” She kept her superior grin to him. “They were never meant to be trusted with so much power, much less the gift of free-will. Which they now use to rebel against their matriarch. Again, isn’t that ironic?”

“Most ponies don’t! They are content doing what they are supposed to be doing.” He argued back. He could have worded it better, but he was losing his grip on the argument.

“Ponies were never meant to rule the world, Lord of Chaos. My Children were.” She insisted. “How soon before their greed, the same greed of the Unicorn Kings stains Generosity black again and they summon the Black Sun?”

She knew! She certainly knew! “Don’t you care? It would destroy everything that everyone, not only ponies worked so hard to achieve.”

“By then I will have returned to my rightful place. Everything will be the way it was supposed to be.” She scowled. “Either way, My Children will return to their rightful place where I always wanted them, and Celestia will go back to her place, as will the other alicorn princesses, and as will her ponies. Everything back to the way it was always meant to be. No ponies and their greed or their foolhardy ideas. No more Windigos. No more Black Sun.”

“You’re… What is the word Twilight uses?” He started, but then rubbed his chin and the griffon lady looked bored at him.

“Generalizing.” Little Sunny/Gilberta helped.

“Yes! Generalizing. Most ponies are perfectly fine and the ones that made things go awry realized they were wrong. Other ponies fixed everything and it’s all fine today. Celestia saw to it.”

“Two of the four princesses would beg to disagree.”

Damnit! Damnit! Her superior grin was starting to unnerve Discord and she knew she had control over the conversation. “How long before The Sisters, or simply Celestia herself falls on the same trap her younger sister fell a thousand years ago? One could say that Celestia has already slipped. But I do not care for the equines. All I want is the key to enter the heads of the griffons and remind them who I am. For their own sake… They need me. Enough damage has been made.”

Well, at least Discord knew where Gwineth had gotten her subtlety from… It was overly concerning, though, that this Lady Gwendolen seemed to have plans of her own that The Lion hadn’t disclosed to him. And more worryingly, Discord doubted Celestia knew of her aspirations.

A quick look at Lord Gilad told him The Lion seemed concerned. He didn’t know exactly what for, but at least Discord knew that he wasn’t happy about whatever happened with the airship they mentioned. He hoped he disagreed with her ideas.

His instinct was defending Celestia. She did slip, but she learned. Her friends dragged her back from it a long time before modern times. But ponies didn’t know. It was hidden too…

“What are you thinking of?” She asked, after some silence with his thoughts, and she frowned a little. Of course, she wouldn’t let him think. “You should see that my request is legitimate as Celestia stole My Children from me, if anything.”

“I don’t understand. Why do you say that Celestia stole the griffons from you?” He could understand, a little, since Celestia was effectively above the griffon leadership, but she didn’t intrude, and she let them rule themselves. There must be more to it. If what he knew of Emperor Grigor was true, she didn’t steal them. She saved them. Celestia never mentioned anyone else other than the Emperor. Maybe something before the Black Sun. She did say she was older than him.

He initially imagined she was some sort of noble from ‘that time’, or something of the sort. But the issue seemed to be something much older. Her claim just seemed excessively dramatic.

Of course, one could say that wanting to cover the world in chaos was rather dramatic too, so he didn’t feel like he could judge her. But he was there to understand. And he needed to understand what exactly her beef with Celestia was… Ha ha… Beef… Carnivore… He needed to get a grip!

“I do not blame you for not knowing, considering Celestia herself does not. I was forced to hide and would not dare show myself for she would stop at nothing from destroying me before I regained my full power.” She said sorrowfully.

He almost let show his frustration at his own lack of perspicacity. He did frown, and his voice did change to a worried tone. “That is why northerners don’t discuss The Harpy with outsiders. That is why Lady Gwendolen is their big guide.”

She frowned slightly and shifted a little. “Does that bother you?”

“Clever, I will give you that.” He pointed a finger at her. “Why all the secrecy? I doubt it simply is because you believe Celestia would try to kill you. That is simply not the way Celestia deals with problems. It actually is because you wish to take the world from her.”

“It is the way she will deal with me because she knows what I know. That I know she stole Creation from me. That she stole my Children from me and that she cannot stop me from claiming all that is mine by any other means other than murdering me again.”

Again, with that. Had he somehow allowed some bizarrely ancient entity he didn’t even know about to return from a past so distant that predated Creation? Did she and Celestia fight in the past, at some point. Perhaps way into the past, past the Black Sun?

“Unfortunately, I trust Celestia a heck lot more than I trust you.” He frowned, running out of arguments, and oh boy, she didn’t like that at all. “I think you need to talk to her. I'm not sure what is it that you want, but I doubt it is good. Everything is perfectly fine and I’m not helping you come this short of mind-controlling the griffons. Much less effectively destroy the world.”

She looked amused. “All you will cause by refusing to help is more pain. It is inevitable.”

“In fact, I’m going home right now!” He snapped his fingers and remembered he couldn’t teleport. Still, he tried again a few more times while she had that creepy smile at him. “Oh, for crying out loud!”

He turned to the door and opened it to see Gwineth on the other side, smiling like she’d won the world, balancing her sword downward on the floor and resting her paws on its pommel while standing on her hindlegs.

“I cannot afford to have you running back to Celestia and telling her things too soon.” Gwendolen told him simply, then turned to a threat. “It saddens me you would rather side with our equine enemies, but you are either giving me what I want, or you are not leaving this place. What is at stake is too important.”

Discord looked back at Gwendolen, and back at Gwineth. They seemed too confident. He tensed up and grimaced. Not exactly a fighter, but he knew how to use his magic to cause harm if needed.

“Enough.” Gilad intervened and Discord almost collapsed to the floor in relief. “Step away from the door, Gwineth. That is not the way to deal with this. This is not how we treat our guests.”

“Gilad?” Gwendolen gawked at him. Surprised? Angry? Perhaps a bit of both, despite keeping her voice under control. “What are you doing?”

“I am helping you.” He kept calm. “You are being irrational and treating a revered guest in the worst way possible. He is my guest and will not be threatened in my lands. You are scared and you do stupid things when you are scared. You are better than this. He is also your guest, and you taught our kind that guests are to be treated with all the respect, even if they are the enemy.”

She just stared for a second as though she couldn’t understand what he had said. “Have you forgotten who gave you everything that you have? Have you forgotten who I am? I have mated you, but I am above mortal laws, and I can leave you to fend for yourself and find another that will be wiser than challenging me.”

“And that worked wonderfully for you in the past, hasn’t it?” He held his ground.

It was rather amusing to see. She stepped back as though he had physically hit her, and her expression changed from amusement to rage to surprise and to sorrow. He would pay all the Bits in the world to know what went on her head in those seconds. But them she actually teared up and in a second turned to pure wrath. “Fine! Let him pass, Gwineth.”

The other griffon stepped back and grabbed her sword, looking not pleased at all, but obeyed and sat out of the way while Gwendolen mumbled to herself and turned her back to them, sitting and crossing her forelegs. He didn’t see it, but she sounded like she was ready to cry. “I am not lifting the spell! The pony lover can walk all the way to Elderwood for all I care! And you will regret this Gilad! I swear on every cubit of snow in the Frozen North that you will regret this!”

Discord hurried out the door and out the other room, not stopping for a while until he reached outside, by the doors of the mansion in the yard inside the inner walls of the fortress. He had expected a lot of things, but this was not among them. How was he supposed to deal with that?

Before he questioned himself further, he heard Gwendolen screaming again, and, after a while, The Lion walked out the doors too.

“I apologize.” He sat next to Discord. “I expected Gwendolen would be wiser, but the situation with Grigory affected her. She was frustrated you would not side with her, that is all. She is usually much more dignified. And mature. She is conniving and scheming, sometimes arrogant and malicious… But she is passionately in love with griffons and she wants the best for us. Even if she always gets to decide what is the best.”

“You weren’t entirely honest with me.” Discord tried not to sound offended, rather professional, or something, simply stating the fact.

“I apologize for that too, but you saw what happened. It could have been worse and I didn’t think that I could have explained.”

Discord agreed. “She is The Harpy, isn’t she? You hid her in a clever way.”

“I met her in Stormy Eyrie a couple of decades ago. My father and mother taught me the story of Emperor Grigor, his empire and the events of the past. After my father died fighting monsters that roamed towards the south I decided that something needed to be done. I traveled to her tower seeking enlightenment, seeking insight into our History and our future. Many griffons try this. It’s supposed to be a journey of self-discovery. I didn’t expect to find her there… Then again, I might as well be the first that she let in. She taught me what my ancestors had forgotten and then she taught me the griffon magic.” He shrugged. “I suppose it worked as self-discovery as I ended up knowing much more about me and my race than I expected.”

“She promised me the crown and a legacy. To fix the problems I saw in my race and our nation, I accepted it. She didn’t really ask for anything. She said I was worthy and that we would remake the griffon kind into its past glory.” He frowned. “In the beginning she was a tool to reach what I wanted, and once I had it, I would dispose of her and her dangerous ideas. But I saw her raise our cub and instill a pride into my countrygrifffons that we had lost. My brothers and sisters had been disheartened by the corruption in our government and by the blind eye the Equestrian Confederacy turned to it… More than that, I came to know her, underneath her unquenchable thirst for revenge and haughty superiority.”

He stopped short, uncertain of how to express himself further.

“You love her.” Discord could understand. He felt something similar. “What is she?”

“It doesn’t matter if it is the truth.” Gilad began carefully. “We believe it. She is our creator. The Mother of Storms of the legends. The Harpy that Grigor’s empire worshiped. Griffons that come here believe that and she becomes everything to them. More so to me.”

It probably also helps that griffons that come here are already disheartened and feel disenfranchised, as he put it, and then find their own ‘Celestia’ in Lady Gwendolen. Or rather, The Harpy. That sort of stuff was dangerous.

Discord simply nodded in understanding. There was no way of ripping her away from the griffons without causing more damage. He didn’t want to see another split in the griffons as one side would follow Gilad and the other Gwendolen. It was too late, and that was if they were lucky. But maybe she really didn’t understand that there was another way other than her bizarre notion of conflict. Discord himself took millennia and one yellow pegasus to understand that. Luna almost lost everything and Celestia took a deep dive into the darkest abyss before they understood.

Apparently, gods were stupid.

“I don’t know much about her, Gilad. I need to learn about who she is and why she makes the claims that she does. It would be better if I asked Celestia.”

Although Celestia probably has an awfully bad image of her if what Gwendolen said is remotely true. It’s possible that they fought in some distant past, way before timelines that Discord knew thanks to the Black Sun being involved. It sounded awful…

“I fear she and Celestia are on a collision course. It may be better for you to understand through knowing her. She may have lied to me. But I know that she is not completely wrong either. Even if she is not entirely… Nice… And some of her ideas cause a lot of suffering.”

“I don’t think that Celestia will be very agreeable.” The griffon went on. “Or even your lordship after I tell you of Gwendolen’s most extreme ideas.”

Gilad certainly seemed convinced they could make it work, just not happy about their odds.

“Well, I don’t think that I have the moral high ground to judge her a whole lot.” Discord grinned.

He also thought it was funny that Lord Gilad grinned a little too. “Well, might I invite your lordship to breakfast? I am famished from that trip. Gwendolen should be in a more reasonable mood soon, now that situation is revealed, and we reached a stalemate. She just needs some time.”

“Uh… Do you think you’re going to be in trouble or something? Is she gonna put you to sleep in the couch or something?”

Gilad smiled. “The tales say that Emperor Grigor was defeated because he lost the favor of The Harpy. She left him after he failed to kill the dissidents within his empire. He couldn’t cast spells anymore. I don’t think that she will be too harsh on me. She just needs to cool her head. I am more worried about how you mean to deal with this situation.”

“I’m going to put her and Celestia in the same room with a mediator.”

“I don’t want to be in that room…” Gilad grinned.

“Luckily for you, I know just the pony to help…” Discord smirked. Friendship Is Magic, after all.

***

Gilberta remained with the three adult griffonesses. At least the whole thing wasn’t boring, even if she was a bit sleepy at being up so early and also hungry. But it wasn’t like she could do anything about that. In the Pequod she could just ask the diamond dog cook and she’d slip her a snack. In Griffinsky the cook would rat her out to Lady Gwendolen and she’d get an earful at best.

“Well, that didn’t go very smoothly…” Lady Gehenna complained more to herself than anyone else while Gwineth looked bored by the door and Lady Gwendolen massaged her temples in the center of the room.

“Things rarely do when there are males involved.” The younger, bored, griffonness grumbled from the door. “Grigory messed everything up.”

“Grigory did nothing wrong, Gwineth. Celestia interfered.” Gwendolen stopped and stared at her with that same annoyed expression her mom would stare at Gilberta when she had said something dumb. “If that accursed grassbreath had not been involved, Grigory would have returned with the princesses by now.”

“Really? How about making away with that fucking expensive airship and then losing it? How about being captured?” She growled.

“Shut your beak, Gwineth.” Gwendolen threatened. “It was Celestia’s fault!”

Yeah… Shut your beak. Saying things like that usually got Gilberta in trouble and Gwineth better not push her luck. Not that she liked that creep-face, Gilberta just didn’t want things spilling over at her, because when Lady Gwendolen got angry… Well… Everyone had a bad day.

Gwineth rolled her eyes, and Gehenna seemed to judge her. Gilberta thought she was lucky Lady Gwendolen didn’t see it or pretended she didn’t. Still, the weird lady spoke again. “Maybe you should’ve gone with an empress rather than an emperor… I mean, Grigory wasn’t supposed to do anything other than remain here and follow on his studies until it was time. Maybe put a cub in Gallensa's belly already.”

Gilberta pouted. Seriously, what a creep.

“Shut your beak before you should say something you would regret, Gwineth.” The older one ragged her only to receive a petulant stare back.

“Well, the problem remains.” Gwineth shrugged. “What now?”

“I am not happy, but I must move forward the plan. I cannot afford to wait for Celestia to remain clueless until I have what I need from the brain-addled princesses. Grigory planed on exchanging Celestia's consort for a way out, but a traitor escaped with the prince-consort and that was when things fell apart. Gilad is correct, however and the loss of the Skoll was significant. He must reach the throne for the whole plan to work and Celestia has the power to ruin everything if we are not careful, because we will be forced to fight Chancellor Gail and the Griffonian Standing Army eventually. I would rather grassbreath not be involved. I need a viable excuse to escalate tensions and bring griffons to our side faster because Gilad will need them if Celestia and Luna do get involved, but I am not ready to use our assets in the capital yet. Furthermore, I do not believe Celestia can stop the princesses from reaching us. Especially Cadenza, if my divinations are correct. But escalating the situation until then will be dangerous. I should wait for the support of the majority of the population, at the least, before I reveal myself, but that might take too long. Especially because support outside of the griffon population would be ideal.”

She stared at the other two as though they might have the answer ready for her, and so she actually looked disappointed they didn’t. Gilberta didn’t feel any pressure to provide an answer and was just entertained to see Creepy-Blue-Gwineth with that worthless expression.

Eventually, Lady Gehenna spoke, though. “Maybe you can convince the two young princesses to support us. Or rather, support Gilad.”

Gwendolen nodded as though that was a good idea but said nothing.

Then, as though she had the answer to their woes, one of the mansion’s many maids, a cute and young little griffon girl, all gray and cyan entered the room in her maid uniform. “Milady, I’m sorry to interrupt, but a messenger just arrived with urgent news from Thunderpeak. He wanted to speak directly to your ladyship. May I bring him in?”

“Yes. I will see him.” The Lady told her, and she soon brought inside a very young and fit male, all greenish white and gray wearing a very light leather armor messengers typically wore. He smelled like her dad when he came back from a mission, all sweaty and dirty. But before speaking, he put a paw on his chest and nodded deeply to Lady Gwendolen and the present. Even Gilberta. It felt weird.

Then, he took little time to announce his message. “Lady Gwendolen, the museum in Thunderpeak was attacked. We lost the museum and our supporters who congregated there have been put under preventative arrest for conspiracy while investigations progress.”

Lady Gwendolen's reaction was inscrutable, but Gwineth smiled and chuckled. “Who in the feather attacks a freaking museum? Was it the front for the artifacts? It was, right?”

“All the artifacts are gone. It was Princess Luna!” The young messenger said. “She arrived with a squad of thestral Night Guards and simply barged in while they kept the doors! We don’t know the details but as soon as our local supporters arrived a firefight started, and they are all under arrest in Thunderpeak. While the museum's curator, Master Gabriel, was injured fighting Princess Luna and was sent to the hospital in Griffonstone!”

“Ah, man… I really liked that statue.” Gwineth whined. “We should get it back. Or better yet… We should return the princesses the favor. I don’t know… Put her precious orphanage on fire. I’m pretty sure there are no griffons there.”

“Master Gabriel is an old History professor! He was my tutor, and he is such an intelligent and caring member of his community! How dare that blueberry…” Gehenna probably had a string of sweet and blueberry related imprecations trained at the not present Princess’ honor, but she stopped short at the sight of Gwendolen's devilish grin. Oh boy…

“Good job timely delivering this message.” She smiled pleasantly at the young male. “Maid, will you kindly escort the young tom to the guest quarters to freshen up and enjoy our hospitality? For however long he wishes to stay.”

The maid grinned at Lady Gwendolen, and then at their visitor, excitedly flapping her wings. “Right away Ma’am! Please follow me!”

“There is more!” He cried. “Master Grufnor was taken to Shatteredrock for attempted murder, conspiracy, property damage, resisting arrest and lèse majesté.”

“Oh my. Lèse majesté!” Gwendolen laughed. “He will take over that place and find us some new recruits. I almost feel bad for Celestia. She knows not what a ‘bad griffon’ is.”

Then the messenger bowed and allowed the maid to lead him away. Gilberta saw Gwineth’s eyes lingered on the two as they retreated. She knew that Shatteredrock was a really, really, really bad place were the bad griffons got sent to. It was supposed to be some island she didn’t know where and didn’t want to find either.

Lady Gwendolen interrupted her thoughts and drew Gwineth’s attention. “Go to Thunderpeak. Free My Children, then rally them to Griffonstone and free Master Gabriel. Make them see that some legends are better believed. You should enjoy this as this situation would benefit from your personal touch. Master Gabriel was well-known by our griffons and the outrage will convince many to join us. Most important, I wish to see him, and his employees returned safely to Griffindell. Their service and sacrifice must be rewarded.”

“This is dumb!” Gwineth whined. “I should just go to Grigory and bring the two princesses.”

“What happens when a rogue Swordmaiden out of nowhere reveals The Harpy’s magic and then gets her hide tanned by Celestia, Luna and Queen Chrysalis?” Gehenna admonished her. “Don’t be stupid, Gwineth. It is not time yet and you are nowhere as powerful as the Swordmaidens of the past. Do not question The Harpy’s wisdom.”

“We’re taking too long to do anything!” She shot back angrily with the shrill crying that griffons in that place did when they were too angry. Then she pointed at Lady Gwendolen. “It will end up costing us everything! If you screw up, I’m going back to Thunderpeak and that is if I’m lucky because Celestia might as well just send me straight to Shatteredrock! I am not going to Shatteredrock!”

Lady Gwendolen didn’t look pleased and Gwineth rose her voice… It was usually a good sign that Gilberta should look for cover.

“And then you lost it with Discord like tha-”

She looked at Gwineth and didn’t see how it happened exactly; she didn’t really see any movement. All she saw was that Gwineth’s sword clanged on the floor and Lady Gwendolen, much bigger than Gwineth was next to her, staring her down from above, holding her head in her strong paws and black claws pressing at her skin.

“Sweet child… Did you forget? You should always do as I say.” She spoke all motherly, holding Gwineth’s stare to her, their beaks almost touching.

Gilberta started worrying. When she got creepy like that things could go bad really fast, and she was already miffed about what had happened with Discord and Lord Gilad. She quickly found a place under a corner table to hide.

“I’m sorry… Please…” Gwineth started, but Gwineth interrupted her, hissing gently.

“You spent your youth with your brother after your parents left you. You clung to your drug-addicted brother and he abused you. He prostituted you to his coworkers for a few coins with Celestia’s face. Time and again you convinced yourself that he loved you and that things would change. That you would make it through. One day I saved you from some thugs on the street. One of his friends that recognized you for the cheap harlot you were. Remember his words? He wanted seconds.”

“What would have happened if I wasn’t there? Still, you were taken to the town militia. Some unicorn social worker tried to help you.” Gwendolen laughed. “The same one that kept trying to help your brother.”

“But he picked you up from jail and took you home. You both cried like the directionless infants you were. He promised he’d find a job and that things would change. Then his incompetent and useless self got himself fired and gambled your money away. Then he turned to you and before you knew, you had another ugly, dirty peasant using you. You cried. Remember? You cried for me.”

“I took you from there. I taught you the secrets of our race. I gave you comfort and food. A home. Now, where is your gratitude? You have a place to stay whenever I send you. You have the best food. You can even have any male or female you may wish to fornicate with, and nobody will judge you: it is your privilege Swordmaiden of The Harpy. One of My chosen. You are special.”

She grinned wickedly and Gwineth whimpered and whined her name. “But do you know what is funny? You still do what I want you to do. You still are a dependent sycophant because you crave my acceptance. You will murder. You will whore yourself out for your next dose of my acceptance. You switched you brother for me.”

“Does hearing that hurt you? It is the truth, and you know it. You knew full well, you little idiot.” Her long obsidian claws pricked on Gwineth’s skin and she spoke in her condescending tone. “It is alright. I still love you… It is what you do. You, little mortals, you lie to yourselves until you have convinced yourselves that it is not futile. That you are special. That there is a good reason behind it all. That all the pain will be worth it.”

A sharp claw danced over Gwineth head as though Gwendolen drew something. “Inside your little brains there is this desperate desire to be something. To own something. To belong. Something that will motivate you to endure through everything and that makes you feel good when you perceive that something did work. It needs not even be real! It is just a little substance. It rewards you for doing what you are supposed to. It is the same thing that makes you feel good when you eat. When you copulate. When you talk to a friend. When you manage to impress a little cub with how ‘awesome’ you are. It is addictive and you cannot wait for another dose without even realizing it.”

She chuckled, caressing Gwineth’s jaw. “I made you like this. It makes you useful. It keeps you from despairing and stopping. It keeps you going in your little cycles until your fragile bodies have spent their lifetime and break. Had I not, you would be worthless. A waste of life.”

Then she smiled motherly, caressing the back of Gwineth’s head, keeping her close. “You are welcome, by the way. But perhaps the best of it all is that despite all I have just told you, your thoughts are not of despair and nihilism.”

Her claws touched the top of Gwineth’s head, playfully prickling her. “I can see the little pieces that make up your brain, informing their neighbors of what is happening. The strings of thought connecting in a conclusion. You ‘screwed up’. You want to cry, and you are sorry. But you are safe. Mother can hurt you, but she will keep you. You see, you cannot truly tolerate pain. You shove it to the back, dark corners of your fragile little minds so that it does not get in the way of your resolve. You must, after all, convince yourself that maybe… Just maybe I have told you all that because I expected you to see that your pathetic little self is safe with me. And all you have to do to shove away that terror that you would be alone without me is to keep doing what I want you to.”

“Oh, how special you are… Gorgeous Gwineth, so powerful and desired by all the males and females. You get to choose you pick off the top, do you not? All because The Mother of Storms chose you. What if I you wanted to be with me, but I said… ‘No’?”

Gwineth’s beak clicked and she closed her eyes before Gwendolen spoke again. “Would you realize that you have been doing the very same thing I have just described to you? But then, ‘Why is my adored Lady Gwendolen torturing me so? There must be a reason…’ Your idiot little brain asked.”

“Why, yes, idiot little brain. Little helpless Gwineth needs to understand that she loves me helplessly. That she needs me. That she is bound to me. It is how I made you so that you would have some use rather than gorging until your stomach burst and emptying your bowels for the rest of your life expectancy. I’ve given you so much, yet all that has been given can be taken. You can be replaced. So, do not question me, lest your usefulness might be spent. And if you cease to be useful…”

Her paws glided gracefully to her neck, pressed on it and Gwineth whined teary eyed while her own paws weakly held Gwendolen’s forelegs. The big white and black griffoness lifted her up and she trembled. Gilberta gasped and closed her eyes, covering them with her paws.

She heard Gwineth whimpering again and the smell of urine filled the room.

“Your little spark of life would be trivial to extinguish.” She whispered before letting go. Gilberta gasped when she looked again. At least Gwineth was still alive, even if she was left in a puddle in the floor, covering herself and trembling like a scared dog. “Now get out of my sight, get yourself cleaned as a civilized griffon, and do as I command, my dear Child.”

Finally, she caressed Gwineth’s head and smiled motherly. “Because this is for your own good… Do not forget.”

Gwineth didn’t respond or make a sound. She dragged herself out of the room as quickly and quietly as she could while grabbing her sword and Gilberta remained tucked in her corner under the table, making herself as small as she could. Gehenna stood next to Lady Gwendolen and watched impassively while Gwineth made her way out.

“I don’t like Gwineth.” She said.

Gee… Neither did Gilberta, but that was a bit too much!

“I am aware.” The white and black one turned to her. “You can see through her, wise and experienced as you are.”

Gilberta would have said she was a dumb McCreepyface, but she felt bad for her right now and the older griffon knew better words.

“She is disgustingly vulgar. Untrustworthy. Arrogant. Unreliable and disrespectful. It is a dangerous combination.” Gehenna didn’t really hold her words.

“Gwineth is a resourceful agent and a dunce that likes to fool herself.” Gwendolen spoke plainly. “Given a little warmness and acceptance, she fell over herself and became a faithful tool, ready to be sharpened and then used. And Gwineth is very sharp. She just needs to be reminded every now and then that she is a servant. All griffons need that every once in a while.”

“Will Grigory be able to control her once it is time?” Gehenna rose an eyebrow. “I can’t picture her rearing a cub.”

“Gwineth will do anything that earns her my acceptance. And then Grigory’s. She will even submit to Gallensa once she realized that she is Grigory’s actual mate. It is the duty of the Swordmaidens and she understands that well enough. She is happy enough to be special.”

After a second Gwendolen spoke again. “There is another Swordmaiden that should come to us. Maybe two. They will entertain Gwineth long enough that she will stay out of trouble.”

“There is another matter that we must discuss.” Gwendolen didn’t seem too pleased while she picked a small bell from the table and sounded it a few times. “I find it most unpleasant.”

“The Skoll and the traitor which interfered with Master Grigory’s plans.” Gehenna called her guess correctly, as Gwendolen frowned a little.

A maid promptly arrived and needed little time and no words from Gwendolen to notice the mess that needed cleaning, so she went for the needed supplies as Gehenna went on. “And I assume that the traitor was Grinolf.”

“I fear he will become even more of a liability. I warned him and he still proved to be a waste of talent and resources. He became a brilliant soldier only to betray us.” Then she stared disapproval into Gehenna. “All of this is your fault. You chose his sire poorly.”

“I am aware, Lady Gwendolen. Please, allow me to deal with this situation.”

“If he cannot be saved, you will end his life.” Gwendolen scowled while the maid returned and set to clean the wet floor. “This is his last chance, because you are his mother, not because he deserves, and if it is so much of a problem to him, I will have him neutered. At least then he will be able to focus on his duties.”

“I understand, Milady.”

“Go, then.” Gwendolen pointed a claw to the door. “Every second is a hazard we cannot afford to entertain. Deal with the situation with the utmost celerity and use the full scope of your abilities. And do not allow yourself to be captured.”

Gehenna bowed and left while Gwendolen remained watching the maid cleaning the floor. Gilberta, still on the corner she had claimed for herself, let her wings flare and stood. “Your evil! Didja know that?”

From under the table, but she did challenge Lady Gwendolen. The outburst drew both the maid’s and Gwendolen’s attention, but the first kept to her job while Gwendolen responded.

“’You are’ and ‘did you’.” She scowled. “Speak like a civilized griffon, not like one of the diamond dogs your parents keep on their airship.”

“Well, speaking right somehow makes you seem even more evil!” Gilberta yelled back. “And diamond dogs are plenty cool!”

“I am not evil, Gilberta.” Gwendolen defended herself. “I was educating her. Life becomes much easier once one understands their lot in it, like Gehenna’s ugly son. And Gwineth oft forgets her place. Such as diamond dogs. Their place is in the mines. Perhaps in the fields if they behave.”

“I’m not Gilberta! I’m Sunny!”

“You are in a bad mood, cub.” She spoke reassuringly and motherly offering her paw. “Come, we should get you something to eat.”

“I’m not hungry! I’m angry! Miss Gwineth didn’t deserve that.”

“I see… Are you questioning me, then?”

The small griffon blinked a couple of times and then giggled a little. “You know, I think I am a little hungry.”

Gwendolen smiled at her. “Very well, then.”

Sunny then took her paw and used it to climb onto her back and made herself comfortable as the adult walked out the room. Then she supported her forelegs on Gwendolen’s head. “Wait! You’re messing with my brain, aren’t you?!”

Gwendolen chuckled. “We are constantly doing that to one another. You do that since the day you are born. When you cry, it is supposed to communicate your distress to your parents and drive them to action. It can be quite stressful for them, the sound of a crying babe, and cubs catch on to that within weeks of being birthed. Experienced parents will learn to recognize the crying of a child that only wants attention and one that needs attention.”

She stopped for a second. “In fact, it is when everything is too quiet that one ought to worry.”

“Babies are evil too.”

“Evil does not mean anything and can mean anything you want it to mean. It is one of those words the ponies invented so that they could justify their rebellion. We are ‘evil’ because we eat things that are alive. We are evil because we don’t agree to their ideals of what society should be. We are evil because their princesses said so.”

“The point is ‘conflict’ in one way or another, and that understanding of how those things work is key in becoming a leader. What do griffons need? What can you give them? What can you demand of them? Therefore, we have a caste system. Nobility needs to understand complex matters that will only get in the way of the commoner, and the commoner deals with menial tasks that would distract the noble from their duties and don’t require their time.”

That actually made sense. “Can I learn that?”

“Of course, you can.”

“I mean… Mom and dad aren’t from here… And you’re angry at Miss Gehenna because she didn’t choose the father for her son right… Or something.”

“Don’t be silly. Your father is as pureblooded as a griffon can be. Even if your mother is not the best I have seen.” She looked up at the cub in her back. “Your only problem is that your parents raised you more like a pony than a decent griffon. We will fix that, however. That is why you are here.”

The cub deadpanned. “I thought I was here because you wanted dad to do what you wanted.”

“Your parents suffer from a lifetime of thinking that ponies are his friends.” Gwendolen didn’t miss a beat. “We will fix that too and you four will be a happy family again. A proper, happy, griffon family. Even if I am not sure what is the deal with that Ocelot.”

That sounded nice. Gilberta did think that Lady Gwendolen was scary sometimes, but her mom was too. Especially if Gilberta had done something wrong. So, that must be right. She supposed so.

They quickly passed through the main hall where something roasted above the fire. The smell drew Gilberta, but Lady Gwendolen didn’t stop there. She went through another corridor and reached the kitchen. It smelled deliciously of all sorts of salted and smoked meats and that was only the beginning. Whole pieces of dried, salted, and smoked meats hung from the ceiling as well as cheeses, garlic and some herbs. The cooks worked the ovens and grills preparing something while others cut pieces of meat and some herbs and other stuff on the countertops, and the mansion’s maids went every which way to help, but they all stopped as soon as they entered.

One of the older ones, a dark tan griffon lady with green highlights on her head and a ‘chef hat’ came to them and smiled. “Can we help, Lady Gwendolen?”

“The little one could use a snack before breakfast.” She put Gilberta on the closest counter and walked away to another to sample something one of the maids was cutting into filets.

“Hi, Gilberta!” The older maid smiled at her. “What would you like?”

“Can I have some cereals?” She knew it was probably futile, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

The maid grinned at her. “You know we don’t eat that pony trash here, sweetie.”

“She is probing her limits.” Gwendolen said, unworried, while she sampled what seemed like a raw slice of game meat.

“I know!” One of the other maids approached with a small chunk of dark pink smoked meat that had an amber coating to it. “Try this! Honey-baked ham! Not too much honey, just enough for the perfect taste!”

“Won’t Lady Gwendolen get angry at me for eating honey?”

“Honey is okay, sweetie. Just don’t eat a whole jar and you'll be healthy.” She stole a glance at the mentioned griffon. “And she won’t be angry.”

She held it in her paw and took a bite of it. The first thing she though was that it was ungodly unfair that she had spent eight whole years of her life without knowing the honey-baked ham. There was something about little piggies, something, something. More!

“Can I have some more?” She begged.

“Sure! I’ll get you some more!” The younger maid giggled.

Gilberta worried she’d end up eating too much honey. It was sweet and sweets were supposed to be bad. So, she looked at Lady Gwendolen and she stared at the other side of the kitchen, where was the door to the cold room and the pantry, and a griffon tried to make himself as small as he could, but his black and golden armor didn’t help a lot.

“Is the kitchen under threat of invasion? Or is it the maids that need protection?” She asked, walking over there, not incredibly happy, and the maids giggled quietly, but Gilberta didn’t understand why.

“Hum… Good morning, Lady Gwendolen.” He stood up, holding a bottle of something. “I came here to fetch a bottle of Crimson Bloodwine. We’re… Uh…”

She approached like a lioness ready to jump on a scared prey. “Yes? Explain why you were stealing a bottle of wine from my cellar.”

“Well…” He gulped and his armor started making noise at his shaking. “The boys in the gatehouse… We decided to make some bets playing a game of darts and the winner would get a bottle. They said it was okay to fetch one.”

It was a noticeably young griffon with shades of cyan and bright blue eyes that Gilberta thought were very pretty. He was still in trouble though… She bit another piece of the ham.

Then one of the maids came out of the pantry and squeaked at the sight of the big griffon. She was also very young and wore the maid’s uniform that went well with her brownish coat and highlights.

“Well, this keeps getting better. What are your names?” Gwendolen asked in that scary, dangerous, ‘I’m about to ruin your day’ tone that she used whenever Gilberta did something wrong.

The older maid, the green one, came over to Lady Gwendolen and spoke respectfully, trying to avoid her anger. “Milady, it’s alright. He is a Sky Sentry.”

“He is in the Court!” The younger maid cried and showed Lady Gwendolen a red scarf in her paw. “He forgot it in the pantry!”

“Oh.” Gwendolen immediately softened up. “You mean the inner gatehouse. You should have told me that, you silly tom. Please, forgive me. And Allow me…”

She took the scarf and placed it around his neck and over his shoulder to show the brooch with the black and white wings. “It looks ravishing on you. I remember you now, Gendar. You came for the Gathering Storm last year and decided to join our military. A Loremaster scouted you for the Court of the Harpy and your scores in training gave you a place in the Sky Sentry in less than a year. Impressive. Good job.”

“Um… Thanks, milady.” His clawed fingers drummed the glass bottle. “Should I return this?”

“No. It is alright. You are practically a member of our family. Enjoy your game.” She smiled.

“Thank you, Lady Gwendolen. I’ll be more careful in the future.” He bowed and left in a hurry.

After he was gone, she smiled in that creepy way she does. “Good catch, kitty.”

“I’m sorry Lady Gwendolen!” The young maid squeaked softly. “We didn’t mean to be a bother.”

“I do not care that you meet during your working shift, if you are not busy with anything important, but next time take him to one of the mansion’s guest rooms, or even the Sanctum, if you are feeling fancy.” She turned to the maid. “But I am going to skin someone next time I hear of my maids using the pantry for fooling around with their toms.”

The older maid hid her beak while she chuckled. “I’ll be sure to remind them of that, milady.”

She didn’t answer. Instead walked to the cub that was done eating.

“Adults are weird.” Gilberta declared.

“Sometimes I wonder if griffons do grow up at all.” Gwendolen agreed with her and offered her a paw to jump down from the counter, which she did and then followed the big griffon out of the kitchen. “We should wait for breakfast now. Gilad and Discord ought to join us. It will not do for a young lady to not participate in a meal with her hosts. I will see if I should ask the maids for more of the honeyed ham for you.”

They entered the main hall again and it was empty other than one of the maids and a cook tending to the roasting carcasses. Gilberta followed the adult on her way to the sitting area on the side of the hall. It had a few comfy chairs and sofas, as well as a nice fireplace and a few of the tall windows they had in the mansion. They showed the patio outside and the walls, but it was still nice because they let in the sunlight. Despite the cloudy sky.

Gilberta sat on the stone floor, close to the fireplace. It was nice. That place was so cold she got used to it and sitting by the fire was always a delight. Gwendolen laid on a chaise sofa with her elbows supporting her raised head and complained to no one in particular with a sigh, while stretching her neck. “I feel that so much unnecessary drama could be avoided if the Mad God had simply given me access to the souls of the other griffons. They are My Children. They miss me. They merely do not realize it.”

Gilberta giggled. She was usually angry or ordering others around. It was so rare to see Lady Gwendolen complaining.

Then she massaged her brows. “And Gilad will complain to no end about the airship. I need a drink…”

“I can fetch something for you in the kitchen!” Gilberta immediately stood and flared her wings. After all, the kitchen was also where the honey-baked ham was!

“No.” The adult returned a smug grin to her midway through massaging her brows. “You will wait for breakfast.”

Oh well… It was worth a try. She sat back down.

“Hopefully I can relax for a while. Would you like to hear a story?” She smiled.

“Oh! Story! Sure! What is it about?”

“It is about how Princess Celestia murdered the regent ruler of Everfree.” She grinned.

“I don’t think that is the sort of story you should tell a cub.” Gilberta raised an eyebrow.

“Quite the contrary. Especially to a cub that is used to live under her reign.” Gilberta wasn’t very convinced, but she stared up to see the headmaid approaching them from behind Lady Gwendolen.

“With all due respect, milady… I think that you need to have a new cub.” She spoke with a giggle. “Maybe adopt another from the streets and make a future ruler of them too!”

Gwendolen looked up and grinned playfully. “Maybe I should steal one from the commoners. They usually waste their time with dumb things.”

At least Gilberta thought that she as joking, but she couldn’t decide because something drew Lady Gwendolen’s attention, despite neither the headmaid nor Gilberta hearing anything. She grunted and stood on her four feet. “Tell the soldiers outside that members of the Court of The Harpy may have access to the mansion at all times.”

The griffon maid blinked and stared dumbly at Lady Gwendolen before she understood she had received an order and excused herself. Gilberta pouted at the realization that she was in a bad mood again. Stupid dumb griffons should let her rest a bit. Geez!

The headmaid accompanied a pair of pretty and young griffon ladies. Both were tan but one had green highlights and the other had yellow. Gilberta did gawk at them because they were really, really pretty, but one of them, the green one was kinda fat. She thought that the griffon in those parts didn’t like the fat ones.

The other, though, had a beautiful pattern of flowers painted up her forelegs, neck and her face. Like she wore her own coat with a beautiful piece of art for an accessory. She also wore a bracelet with the symbol of the black and white wings, while the first wore a tiara with the brooch on the side of her head.

Lady Gwendolen smiled though. “Gaia, you look gorgeous.”

The fatty one beamed and sat, lifting her forelegs to let Lady Gwendolen touch her belly. It was kinda rude… Lady griffons had their little bumps in there and nobody really liked it to show them like that. Much less when someone touched their belies like Lady Gwendolen did. But then again, saying no to Lady Gwendolen could be kinda dangerous.

“You look very healthy, Gaia. Good job.” Gwendolen beamed at her. It took Gilberta some time to understand that she wasn’t fat, she was going to be a mommy! Still, didn’t make touching her like that any less creepy.

“Thank you, Lady Gwendolen. I came here to ask you a question. It is an important one…”

Gwendolen nodded that she was paying attention, but the other giggled first. “I’m here just for moral support!”

The first, Gaia, finally spoke then. “I am here to ask for your blessings to mate with Gorey. I wish to leave the Order and mate with him, if your ladyship will allow it.”

Lady Gwendolen didn’t answer immediately, and Gilberta looked up at her. At first, she thought that she was sad, but she wasn’t. She was thinking about something and she stood there, pondering about whatever for a few seconds before she finally spoke.

“It saddens me to see one of my students. A future Loremaster abandon her training, but at the same time, I am overfilled with joy at a future family in our midst. I remember Gorey. He is the sire, correct?”

“Yes, milady!” The soon to be mother skipped a little jump.

“You do understand that you are forfeiting your place in the Order, and that you cannot ever return. Do you not?” She asked seriously.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m not happy about this, but Gorey lives in Brokenhorn. And I feel that we must live together. For the sake of our cub. I also like his family. They will teach me their trade. My family is prepared too. To see me go.”

“You have prepared. That is good, you being so young. You parents have prepared you well for this day.” She touched her forehead with her right paw. “If it is so that you wish, I do grant you my blessings and wish you a happy and prolific life in Brokenhorn. If either of you ever find yourselves lacking in anything remember that you are both members of the Court of The Harpy for life.”

“Thank you, Lady Gwendolen.” Gaia bowed all respectful.

“You may go, Gaia.” Gwendolen simply sat on the floor with the other while Gaia left. It was only when the soldiers closed the doors that they spoke again, starting with yellow one.

“A Loremaster is supposed to seduce a male, not the other way around.” She sounded frustrated.

“If she had priorities other than her training, then she was not cut out to be a Loremaster. It is better this way: not all are prepared for the sacrifices the Order requires of them.”

The other pouted but didn’t speak anymore. Gilberta had a question though. “Lady Gwendolen! Does the brooch say that you are a Loremaster?”

“No, Gilberta.” The younger griffoness answered. “The brooch says that you are in the Court of The Harpy.”

“What is the big deal with it, anyways?” Gilberta looked at one and the other. Lady Gwendolen answered.

“I created that to facilitate good griffons meeting each other. I cannot have good pure griffons mating with bad griffons. Some griffons cannot be allowed to mate at all. And I mean not only mating, but some griffons cannot be allowed to have offspring.”

“Such as Lady Gehenna’s son?” Gilberta frowned. “I remember you said that his supra… Super…”

“Supraorbital ridge.” She corrected and pointed at the other griffon. “Like you see in Gervina. It is the prominence above a griffon’s eyes. When a griffon has their ridges too shallow it is a sign that they are descendants from hippogriffs. It is a trait they inherit from the ponies and I cannot have a filthy-blooded pony-mixed-breed touching my beautiful Children, now, can I?”

Gilberta hummed. But before she could say anything, Lady Gwendolen went on. “Such a griffon can live the normal life, just as any other griffon. They merely must never breed. It is not too much to ask, a small sacrifice for the betterment of our race. If it bothers them, they can go live with the pony-lovers, or the hippogriff. I do not care.”

“Summing it up…” Gervina grinned at Gilberta. “Griffons who are members of the Court of the Harpy may only breed amongst themselves. They are the best of the best. There are also the mansion’s maids. They are in the Court too.”

“Hum…” Gilberta’s eyes shifted from one side to the other. “Shouldn’t they mate before they have cubs?”

“Only if they want to. We are prepared to give all the support a mother would need if she found herself alone.” Gwendolen explained. “We need good griffons right now, Gilberta.”

“But how do I know who are the Loremasters then?”

Gervina lowered herself to speak. “When we finish our training, we earn our chains and our capes. Like the ones Lady Gehenna uses.”

“But you can also identify them by their posture. The older ones have a certain majesty to them. You learn to identify it. They behave different because they are paying attention to their environment. To what griffons are doing and saying. They also do not speak unless they are sure that they should.”

Gilberta kept that on her mind while Gwendolen talked to Gervina. Loremasters seemed to be cool. They knew a lot of stuff and they were so respected. And they, somehow, knew which griffons were good enough to be in Court of The Harpy. Huh…

She pulled on Gwendolen’s feathers at the edge of her wing and interrupted. Her ‘cub privilege’. “Are they like the Swordmaidens?”

“You are curious today, are you not?” She smiled. “They share parts of their training, but would you call Gwineth wise?”

That sounded so cruel, especially with the way she treated her not long ago, but Gilberta couldn’t keep from holding her beak and giggling. Beyond that she quickly got bored watching the two adults talking about things that didn’t interest her.

Maybe she should try and meet some of the cubs that lived in Griffindell. Some of them often visited the mansion with their parents or something. They kinda intimidated her in the beginning, but they wouldn’t be dumb enough to hurt her since she lived with Lady Gwendolen and Lord Gilad. But for the time being, she just sat there on the floor, looking for things to entertain herself until something happened.

The doors opened again, and a pair of griffons walked in without any warning. Geez. They just won’t leave Lady Gwendolen alone. At least she didn’t seem so annoyed seeing them.

“Milady.” One of the griffons greeted her. A large and tough looking older griffon lady accompanied a much younger and scared male. She did greet Lady Gwendolen with a very respectful bow though and Gervina distanced herself a few paces.

Gilberta squinted and stared because she seemed important and had that… Posture and demeanor Lady Gwendolen had mentioned. All white with blue eyes and travelling gear in the form of an elegant cyan cloak with white feathers on the rim. She also wore a small and discreet diadem made of gold, little feathers like ears on her head, and had a sword on her back. She must be the Lady of some of the nearby cities or castles. Why did she bring that guy though?

He didn’t wear anything, and it really looked like that they stopped at a beauty parlor, or something (if that even existed there), because his feathers were perfectly preened, and his coat was brushed and lustered. It reminded her of all the fuzz her mom did when Gilberta went to school meetings and some ponies talked to her to see if she was being educated correctly, or something. Speaking of his coat, it was a vibrant tan, like bronze, and his head was white with golden-ish accents to go with his yellow eyes.

Gwendolen directed her full attention at the pair and stared at the male for a few seconds, rubbing her jaw, and smiled. “Greetings, Lady Geena. Welcome to Griffinsky. Who is this delightful young male you have brought me?”

“He came with the Griffonian army we intercepted near Frozenlake.” The other said respectfully.

“Is that so?” Gwendolen smiled a little more.

“Hum…” The male sat reflexively and covered himself with his wings to plead speaking the Common Equestrian. “I really don’t feel comfortable with this. I’m a prisoner of war and I would prefer to be returned to my unit, please. I don’t think that this is acceptable under the warfare conventions.”

“Hush, cub.” The big Geena admonished him calmly in his language. “Do not speak unless Lady Gwendolen asks you something.”

Gwendolen smiled at him and also spoke in the universal language. “What is your name?”

“I’m Geordi…” He stuttered a little but managed to answer.

Suddenly Gwendolen held his beak and stared at his face, pulling his beak around to examine every detail. He closed his eyes and started trembling a bit and Gilberta felt bad for him because he was so scared but going against Lady Gwendolen would only make it worse. She was a lot bigger than he was.

She also spoke while she examined him, but talked to Lady Geena, in High Griffonese. “Stop calling adults cubs, Geena. It makes me feel awkward when I lust after them.”

Finally, she let go of his beak and he reeled back a little, but the other held him. “What a wonderful specimen of the Haderani variant. Good job scouting this one out, Geena. He looks like an ‘A’.”

“C-can you please talk in Common Equestrian?” He whined but went unheard.

“What’s a haderani?” Gilberta felt confident enough that she wouldn’t be punished if she spoke.

Gwendolen stared at the griffon critically, even if he covered himself, and spoke calmly. “The Haderani are one of the lineages of griffons. They are the ones that left the north and settled in what is today Saddle Arabia. We called it the Hader. Today the lineages are mixed, and you cannot trivially identify them only by the color of their coats nor for the regions they hail from. It is a mess, but the trained eye can discern it. Unless they are so pure.”

“Put out you paw.” She ordered and put out hers as an example, turning her attention back at the male, and spoke the language he understood, but he didn’t comply, so she simply grabbed his foreleg and pulled it to expose his paw. Then she held his foreleg and punctured his skin with her claw. He cried and pulled back, but she held it for a second before letting go. While the other female held him, Gwendolen tasted his blood on her claw. Eww.

He seemed worried, but he didn’t really actually bleed more than a line of blood down his leg or anything.

“He is scaredy and lacks confidence.” Geena held him by the shoulders. “He can’t even talk to an unflattering female without stuttering.”

Gwendolen, instead of becoming angry as Gilberta imagined gave her creepy smile. “He is physically sound and biologically mature. All that can be fixed with proper tutoring.”

“What is your age?” She asked him. “Where were you born? What about your parents? Do you have any brothers? Or sisters?”

He shook his head, shaking more than the Pequod during a storm and he was beginning to annoy Gilberta. Gee… They weren’t hurting him or anything. But he managed to speak. “I’m not supposed to talk about such things, ma’am!”

“You are not a prisoner of war anymore.” Gwendolen softly caressed his jaw with her paws and almost scared him even more, but he relaxed a bit, curiously. She whispered softly and motherly. “You are a prodigal son come home to me. A lost Child of the Harpy that found your way back, from the sands of the desert, through the Pool of Souls under the stare of the Sun and found Holy Griffindell. Your ancestral home where you belong.”

He didn’t answer and pulled his face from her. He tried, at least. “All in due time, My Child. For now, you are a guest in The Lion’s home. And you will be treated as such as soon as you understand your new situation.”

Gilberta stared at her and the griffon, somewhat curious, a bit confused, but she heard the tip-tap of someone approaching. It was the headmistress in charge of assisting Lady Gwendolen with the mansion’s servantry. A pretty griffon lady, a little older than most of the maids, with steely gray fur under her dress.

“Lady Gwendolen, I’m sorry to disturb, but we heard nothing from your ladyship. Should we prepare breakfast? I hear things didn’t go as you intended…”

“Yes. Please do. Breakfast for me, Lord Gilad, Lady Geena, little Gilberta and the Lord of Chaos.” She let go of the poor male to look at the maid. “Will you join us, Geena?”

Sounded more like one of those questions you’re supposed to say ‘yes’ anyway, if Gilberta would be honest.

The other, of course, nodded ‘yes’ and the vigilant maid nodded positively too. But before she left, Gwendolen spoke to her again. “Please. Master Geordi will be our guest. Accommodate him on the tower. Ensure that he has food, water, and all the comforts we can provide.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She smiled at the male. “Will you follow me, Master Geordi?”

He just stared at her until Lady Gwendolen translated for him. “She will accommodate you in your new temporary quarters. Don’t do anything stupid and follow her. My maids are likely to murder you if you try to hurt one of them. They are trained to defend themselves. And I would hate to see you spoiled.”

He did. Followed the head maid past one of the side doors where she stopped and talked to another two of the maids. Meanwhile Gervina spoke to Lady Gwendolen. “I’ll be going. I’ll make sure that the other students are up for the day’s lecture.”

Gwendolen nodded positively and Gervina left while she and Geena sat at the table by the fire where the big animals still roasted. Lady Gwendolen on her throne and Geena on the nearest chair. One of the maids went to one of the roasting carcasses to cut the meat for serving.

Gilberta, too, hurried to the table. Her highchair next to Lady Gwendolen. Meat had become a guilty pleasure of hers for breakfast. She missed her cereal and waffles, but Lady Gwendolen certainly knew what she was doing. She knew ponies complained about meat and whatnot, but she was supposed do as the griffons up north anyways. It was easy to ignore whining ponies while the smell of… Boar? It was definitively boar that she smelled.

One of the maids served her a chalice (seriously, she loved that place sometimes) with pure grape juice. “There you go, sweetie!”

“Thanks!” She cheered and took the thing on her two paws to drink from while the maid served something that smelled of alcohol to the two adults along with bowls with dried fruits, some bread and, more important, a big fatty rib on the bone. She licked her beak and teared at the meat.

“What did you make of the army Chancellor Gail sent against us?” Gwendolen asked while watching Gilberta devour the wild boar rib.

“It’s pathetic, milady. If the Lord of Chaos had not shown up, I don’t know if I would have been able to keep Graham from slaughtering all of them.”

“Good thing that he did.” Geena added. “It would break my heart to know that one specimen such as our little Geordi might have been put down like a rabid diamond dog simply for being in the middle of that dirty rabble.”

Geena shook her head sadly. “It is disheartening. One of them became feverish and he cried for his mommy. I didn’t know wherever to cuddle or slap him. It is a small sample, and our Loremasters aren’t through them yet, but it looks grim. The rate of miscegenation is much higher than you had calculated. Celestia knew what she was doing… If we don’t broaden our standards we may be left with not enough griffons when this is over.”

“What’s miscegenation?” Gilberta put her rib on the plate, looking at the two adults.

“That is when different races mix together.” Geena explained.

“Do you believe that Lord Graham would be willing to have another cub or two?” Gwendolen drew Geena’s attention back to her.

“I wouldn’t have to ask for his attention, milady.” The other grinned mischievously. “Easiest thing in the world. He would not reject a new cub that surprised him.”

“Why is that bad?” Gilberta frowned confused, pulling at Gwendolen’s feathers. “Mixing races together?”

“For you to understand,” Lady Gwendolen started, all patience. Her mood had improved again. “You must understand the origins of your race.”

“You created us in the Stormy Eyrie!”

“That is a very simplified version. In reality, I did create the first griffons in the Stormy Eyrie. But I did not exist as you know me now. I was only inside the heads of My Children. It took the Mad God almost destroying the world for them to bring me to the realm of the mortals. The Windigos destroyed the Stormy Eyrie much earlier, and only my tower remained. The place where griffons worshipped me. It used to be a large city of clouds and mountain tops. There lived the Children of the Harpy.”

She scowled. “We will rebuild it tenfold its original glory.”

Gilberta was smart. Though she typically spoke High Griffonese with Lady Gwendolen and the others, she knew that ‘Children of the Harpy’ in Common Equestrian was a translation of ‘Ditty Harpiyi’, which were the words Lady Gwendolen used to name those griffons. It was different than the word ‘grifen’ that was the High Griffonese word for ‘griffon’ and ‘copi’ that was the word used to mention ‘child’. The thing that she understood was that Ditty Harpiyi was a specific name.

“The ponies attacked us with the Windigos and My Children were forced to flee. Only a few remained and they became the Astrani. The purest of the griffons, they are few today for they held the Windigos for generations and allowed their brothers and sisters to flee. Their descendants are the purest and most powerful, including Lord Gilad, Grigory, Gallensa and Gwineth.”

“The others left in a massive migration, but their pride wouldn’t allow them to flee too far and they started settling the lands as close to Stormy Eyrie as possible. A group of them defied the cold and settled in the border of the Frozen North, halting its advance and forming the first line of defense against the malice of the Windigos. They were called the Nartani and settled the northern lands of modern Griffonia, fortifying the ancient city of Griffindell and moving further to the south, founding cities such as Brokenhorn and Stormvalley. Like the Astrani, they specialized in fighting in the skies and were dubbed Lords of the Skies for the mountains were their territory and they never forgot their ancestral home.”

Gwendolen smiled. “You are almost one hundred percent Nartani, with some Astrani and Shadanni, and so is Geena, but with more Shaddani.”

“The others split after they left the Nartani, feeling safe that the Windigos would not reach them. The Shaddani went south and the Haderani traveled southeast, all the way to where is now the Saddle Arabian desert. They took time to settle and before they did, they became nomadic, raiding tall pony settlements for food and slaves until they discovered irrigation systems and other technologies that allowed them to domesticate cattle and other animals. They founded cities lost to the Mad God and the war Celestia waged on us. Then the Haderani scattered to the west and south, where the Shaddani had settled, and that is why they are also rare today.”

“They, the Shaddani, built cities such as Beachhome, Thunderpeak and Griffonstone.”

“Oh! Griffonstone! Was King Grover Shaddani?”

“No.” She smiled in that patient way that also meant she should shut her beak and pay attention. “The Shaddani were inherently ingenious and realized they could not fly past the great ocean, so they built ships that carried them over the waves. They settled Mount Aris and reached what is today the Equestrian Heartland, to the regions of Manehattan and Fillydelphia. There, they met the Equestrians and mingled with them, becoming the Saddani, which later gave rise to the hippogriffs.”

“And that is why we will retake the desert and Mount Aris. It belongs to us, more than anything.”

“You see, when a pony and a griffon mate…” She coughed and stopped for a second, taking a paw to her beak, like she tasted something bad, and then took a sip of her drink. “There was a three to four chance that the offspring would die before it was born as a monstrous, malformed creature, if it were not rejected by the mother’s body before she even knew she was pregnant. But there was a one to four chance that a hippogriff would be born. They were sickly and did not survive past one year, dying of lung and muscle diseases. But, as parents learned and healers became better, their chances of survival improved dramatically. Then, the more they bred in between themselves, the more viable they became.”

“I know we’re not supposed to like the hippogriffs…” Gilberta mused.

“Well, there is a reason we do not like them. The Saddani did not disappear. They mated with the Shaddani and with the hippogriffs too and when a griffon mates with a… Ugh, my feathers…” She took a larger gulp of her drink. “When they mate… With… A hippogriff… They have a three to one chance of generating a griffon, which would be Saddani. The problem is that the Saddani can easily mate with other griffons. Not only are they distant from the original Children, but they carry pony blood in their veins they got from their hippogriff parents. So, the intrusive pony traits are pronounced, therefore, if a Saddani mates with any other line, their cub will be less pure. And since you asked, the Traitor King, Grover, was Saddani.”

Her food completely forgotten, Gilberta wanted to know more, because she had questions! “What is so bad about the pony blood? Does it hurt us?”

“My feathers, milady.” Geena grinned at Gilberta. “She is ravenous for knowledge.”

Gwendolen smiled brightly and that was a great thing because it meant that Gilberta was doing good. “I wish she had been born in Griffindell!”

Then she turned back to Gilberta. “There are many complex things that you are not ready to understand, but I can tell you something: the Saddani carried traits they inherited from the ponies, through the hippogriff which cause the griffons to become more docile, and as though that was not enough, they were introduced to the greens and grains-rich food of the ponies. Before them, our race used to eat mostly animal proteins. Now griffons outside of Snow Mountains eat too much fat, sugars and grains from the processed foods ponies invented. Such as those cereals, and pizzas and cakes… Ugh… Makes me feel sick, just thinking about those things.”

Gilberta giggled at Lady Gwendolen’s disgust of those foods and Geena took over for her with a grin while the former took another sip of her drink. “You know… All the things cubs want to eat too much, and their mothers won’t let them.”

“Griffons are meant to gain their sustenance from proteins, which make up muscle. There is usable protein in vegetables and milk, eggs, but our digestive systems are specialized to meat, unlike the pony one. The Mother of Storms made us hunters and predators, not grazers. That is why griffons that live with ponies are weaker, less disciplined, meeker.” Geena added. “We can’t chew grains like the ponies, much less greens, but their processed food is easy to eat. And that is not even considering the things ponies teach them.”

“From that stems the political disagreement between both races. Not only the pony food is bad for griffons, but you were also made for conflicting ways of life.” Gwendolen concluded. “Griffons were supposed to be fierce, independent and brave. While ponies were supposed to be cowardly, interdependent and compliant. But there is another reason we do not like hippogriffs.”

Gwendolen spoke again. “The Saddani have lost their ability to summon our magic because of the pony magic that intrudes on them. Which is all too convenient.”

“Why?”

“Princess Celestia hates us, cub.” Geena explained. “Despite preaching peace and coexistence, she demands that we submit to her designs. She likes the descendants from the Saddani because they are easier to indoctrinate and control. She doesn’t care that we become frail and sickly with the pony diet anymore than she already doesn’t care that she has lied to our brothers and sisters about our past and our creation. Both are as convenient to her as how easy she can control the descendants from the Saddani. Her sister will stop at nothing to keep us from realizing our past through every dirty trick that her special magic will allow her.”

“Under the guise of friendship her newest Princess created a school specifically designed to indoctrinate the children of other races to their culture.” Gwendolen put her face on her paws. “I die every time I think of Gilad’s young brother sharing a pony meal with a yak moron or hippogriff royalty!”

“Lord Gilad has a brother?”

“His name is Galus and he lives in Griffonstone though today he spends most of his time with his hippogriff girlfriend, Silverstream, who is cousin to Princess Skystar. To make matters worse, Galus and Silverstream both attend to Princess Twilight Sparkle’s school and Skystar attends to Princess Celestia’s school. I hope that at least he is not… Touching those things!”

“You know, this is wrong! More griffons should know of this! This is important!” Gilberta gasped again. “Princess Celestia is making the griffons… Hum… Less griffon!”

“Remember when I told you that some griffons need to know some things, but not others?” Gwendolen explained and Gilberta paid full attention. “This is one of those things. This is knowledge that the Loremasters need to know. Most good griffons just listen to the Loremasters and benefit from that knowledge without knowing it. Most griffons don’t know anything about Astrani, Saddani. Or the little pieces from the pony brain that makes them more docile.”

“Oh!” Gilberta jumped on her chair. “You’re sharing a secret with me!”

Gwendolen smiled in that creepy way that she did every now and then. “There are many secrets in the world, cub. Secrets about griffons, about yourself. About me. About ponies and all the other races. Knowledge that I keep to my Loremasters for they are my tools with which to make My Children perfect again.”

“How do you make griffons better with the Loremasters?”

“Young Loremasters, after trained, are exceptionally knowledgeable in our History, our traditions and our laws, but also in their bodies. It is an exceedingly difficult training regimen, that has killed many griffons and involves potions and magic.” Gilberta kept listening

“What I am about to tell you is a secret. And you cannot share it with anyone. The only ones who know of these things are Loremasters.”

“Does that mean I’m going to be a Loremaster?” Gilberta beamed at the big griffoness.

Gwendolen smiled. “They have memories of past lives, and of other griffons in their bloodline. Therefore, they are always skilled fighters, speakers, leaders and the sort. But more important than that, they are capable of understanding subtle cues in the way others speak and behave to know if they are lying. If they are hiding something. That is because they have exceptionally well-trained senses and mental capabilities. Such control over their bodies, through their natural magic, that some of the best ones can use their voices to influence the thoughts of others and lead them, unknowingly towards their goals. The best among the best can use magic and influence the magic in their own soul and body.”

“I teach them everything there is to know about all the races of the world. I teach them about the minds and bodies of griffons, the workings of magic and the sciences of life for them to use to our benefit. They excel at exploring the weaknesses of other races and at leading our soldiers in that regard. Best of all… Secretly. So that their ways are not discovered and understood by our enemies. When their training is complete a Loremaster must combine the seductive wiles of a courtesan with the untouchable majesty of a virgin goddess so long as the powers of her youth endure. For when youth and beauty have been replaced by the years, she will find that has become a wellspring of cunning and resourcefulness.”

“They will help me lead our race towards perfection or work their way upwards the hierarchy of any association we deem beneficial to our cause, using body and mind to bend those of others. For the betterment of our race. Things that not even Lord Gilad knows because I do not share with him. Only with my Loremasters. For his own benefit. Some knowledge is too dangerous.”

“Don’t worry Lady Gwendolen! I won’t tell anyone!” Gilberta giggled right at the time the door opened to let in Lord Gilad and Discord.

“Sharing secrets with the cub, Gwendolen?” The big griffon raised an eyebrow at her.

“Girl things, love.” She said, all sugary affection. “I must apologize for my outburst earlier. I am a concerned mother.”

“Uh-huh…” Discord deadpanned and that caused Gilberta to giggle quietly.

“Please, take your seats. Breakfast will soon be served.” She gestured to the table.

“Oh. Greetings, Lady Geena. How fares Lord Graham?” Gilad made his way to his throne next to Gwendolen’s.

“He is fine, my liege. Sends his regards.” Geena bowed respectfully. “The southerner griffons are still under our custody and are being well-taken care of.”

Discord sat in front of Geena, on the other side of the table. “I am glad you are taking good care of them.”

“They are important, milord.” She spoke respectfully. “They are, after all, griffons too.”

Then the food started arriving and Gilberta stared at the adults talking. She used to think that it was so unfair that the ponies had the awesome Princess Celestia. And Princess Luna. And the other princesses too. They were all so pretty and wise and awesome. It was so unfair that the griffons didn’t have their princess too since King Grover died a long time ago and Chancellor Gail was an evil corrupt politician. Though she shouldn’t call him evil… Right? And then, when she first arrived and met Lord Gilad and Lady Gwendolen, she had thought that they were evil too because they had kept her away from her parents and forced them to do things.

But then she started seeing things differently. Initially, she thought that Lord Gilad was going to be a great king for the griffons, since he was so powerful and impressive. But she looked at Gwendolen as the maids placed the food on the table. She was just done talking to Lord Gilad and seeing her on her profile… She was so pretty, so big and powerful. So intelligent and… There was something about her that made her so awesome.

She reminded Gilberta of all the cool things ponies always talked about Princess Celestia. But Lady Gwendolen was a griffon like her. And she was even cooler.

“Lady Gwendolen… You are so awesome. Can you teach me to be more like you?”

She turned to Gilberta and smiled. “I already am, dear.”

Court Intrigue

Cadance stood next to the main mast of the Break of Dawn. That monstrosity was so big it had such large masts she could practically hide behind it, pink coat, huge alicorn wings, golden accessories, and all. But she simply stayed there, casually. Just an alicorn princess doing nothing important or suspicious right after sunrise and before breakfast. Simply admiring the sunrise over the hilly horizon of the inner Mareland County.

She knew the countess of Mareland. Really nice mare that kept making bad jokes about her county’s name and her gender. She was also only attracted to mares, and that also became a joke, of course. Really effective administrator though. Cadance liked her. She even hit on her once, while visiting the Crystal Empire. Whose name also became a joke, though less tasteful.

Anyways, the royal guards and crewponies stared at her but she just stayed there, doing nothing in particular. They all had ‘ship stuff’ to do and left her alone to do whatever she was not doing there.

The pegasus ponyvillian local mitiapony, Flight Worthy, relaxedly came up from the underdeck, using the stairs in the middle of the ship. The guards didn’t bother him with more than a polite nod to a brother in arms, and he walked around the main deck until he found the princess.

“I got it, princess.” He casually sat by the mast and yawned into his hoof. “They have some sort of directed magical energy weapons down there.”

“What?” That was new. Sounded cool too.

“Crewponies didn’t even mind me looking at the things. They looked like normal cannons, but they had all sorts of magical stuff in them and big pink crystals in the muzzle. They load them from behind with what look like mana batteries… Like the ones the airships use to power the magical induction engines.”

She knew something was fishy. Shining noticed that the underdecks had their gun ports closed during the battle and he even figured that Celestia was hiding something. She just expected it would be something different, like her ship wasn’t ready, or something. Well, she should have expected that Princess Celestia wouldn’t see the griffons develop new weapons and let the Royal Guard fall behind. That was a good thing.

What did bother her was that those crystals likely came from the mines in the Crystal Empire. They could come from the Canterlot Mines, but the Crystal Empire thaumatophylic crystals were better, while the ones in Canterlot were pretty things you would make jewels with. Good for money, but not magical components.

It mildly infuriated her that she knew nothing about that. What was wrong with Celestia and Luna? Why would they hide something like that from her? Oh… She had some ideas… It could be that if she knew that they were using the crystals for that sort of thing, she might put her hoof in the negotiations and take a healthy cut for her empire.

Or maybe they wanted her not to worry about things. She didn’t like it, but it seemed like there was a war on the horizon. Maybe The Sisters meant to fix this without worrying her and Twilight. It made her wonder for a second how many things had gone wrong, and she didn’t even know about it.

But what if things didn’t work the way they expected? She would have to do something about it. Well, maybe not, but she would certainly like to know that something was going on! Not knowing made her wonder how much more they had hidden from her since ‘that’ time. Looking back at her adventure with Twilight, it seemed that there more secrets in her life than things she actually knew.

“There is more, princess.” He went on. “It’s kinda obvious, but there is also a huge crystal that they said generates the shields, but the repulsion fields, the thing that deflected away the shots from the griffon airship, are generated by a specialized airship. They didn’t say which one, though. But I suppose that there are two ships that look strange. The hospital airship and the support ship. But they didn’t let me into the support ship. Said they only contain provisions. Though I did get an invitation to join the Royal Guard, if I was interested…”

Interesting, but useless… She didn’t know what she expected. It was so stupidly obvious in retrospect that there wouldn’t be much she could use. She supposed she was just bitter and wanted to catch her aunts doing something wrong, but unfortunately, that business with the crystals wasn’t enough, and even if it was, nopony would care.

“Would you join the Royal Guard?” She asked more out of curiosity rather than any actual importance the information might have.

He shook his head. “No, Princess… My heart is in Ponyville.”

She nodded in silence. She knew he was a good pony.

“Oh! They are also keeping the griffon deserter in the brig. You can access it from the rear castle.” He said with his eyes shifting every which way, watching for anypony too close nearby. “I didn’t see him, though. They’re keeping him locked so that the other griffons don’t hurt him or anything.”

Hum. That might be useful. He might know something. Why did he even betray the griffons, anyways?

She should go to the breakfast with Princess Celestia and Luna, though. But doubted they would disclose a whole lot more than they already did at dinner. Unless Twilight had some brilliant idea during the night, which she doubted because she went to deal with the griffon prince. Well, not really prince, but it was a detail and a matter of time.

Anyways, Flight Worthy did his job better than she expected. “Good job, Flight Worthy. I’ll get to deal with Candy Crush as soon as I have some spare time.”

“Thanks, Princess… I… I didn’t do anything wrong, did I? I mean… Accepting your help with her. Right?”

She scowled softly, even though he couldn’t see. What was so hard to understand about it? Love was Cadance’s deal. She got to decide. She even had the inclination to be nice and not do… Bad things with her Gift. Though it would necessarily be good if she decided, right? His hesitation was simply annoying, but she supposed that she should be patient because ponies simply weren’t used to the whole thing yet. “Nopony tells princess Celestia the sun is raising too early or too late.”

She turned around the mast to meet him, staring down at the deck and with his ears flopped down. She lifted his chin with her hoof. “Don’t worry. You are not doing anything wrong.”

His ears did perk back up again, even if he didn’t smile. “Thank you again, Princess. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go around telling others about this.”

“That is probably for the best for now. I have to go now. You should rest for a bit.” She gave his shoulder a soft punch with her hoof and went her way toward the aftercastle. The crewponies and the few royal guards around bowed but didn’t bother her. Apparently, she could go anywhere in the ‘common areas’.

Twilight should be getting ready for breakfast soon. She should join, so she hoofed it to the doors and stopped. She could swear someone was watching her, but when her head swiveled around, she saw nothing. Weird. It was the same kind of feeling that she had had when she was in the Crystal Empire. Hum…

She blinked at the guards by the door. “Did… Did you see something?”

They stared at her and the one on the right answered. “What do you mean, Princess?”

“I could swear somepony was watching me.” She frowned.

One stared at the other, both confused. “We didn’t see anything, Princess.”

“Huh. Weird. Well, I need to go in.”

They opened the door for her and when it closed, she looked around the empty entry hall. “Hum… I must be hungry or something.”

Then she trotted to the rightmost corridor on the second floor. It swept left, towards the airship’s aft with doors to the rooms. The one to her room, the rightmost one on the end was hers and Shining Armor’s. On her way, something bothered her, and she figured that she ought to hurry. She didn’t have the first clue of what it was, but something nagged on her mind. She pressed her step to reach forth with her magic and open the door. The first thing she saw was that yellow griffonness on her hindlegs and supporting her weight with a forepaw on Flurry Heart’s crib and curiously touching her chest with a talon.

“What the hay do you think you are doing?!” She flared her wings and her horn charged up with magic, ready to unleash every unit of hornpower she had on her at that griffon. At the same time Miss Calcite came out of the bathroom and squeaked at the scene.

Gallensa simply looked at her. “Relax, princess. I just want to talk to you.”

She didn’t relax, instead walked in griding her teeth so much it hurt. “Get away from that crib before I turn you into fried chicken!”

“Geez… Alright.” Gallensa sat on the floor and looked at the crib again. “I just had never seen a baby pony. Much less an alicorn. Looks so fragile.”

“You know…” Miss Calcite deadpanned. “Flurry could’ve killed you if she had woken and you startled her.”

Cadance stood next to the crib too. “You should’ve asked, instead of invading our room and standing over her creepily like that! I would’ve haven shown her to you!”

“Okay! Fine! I didn’t hurt her or anything.”

After looking at Flurry and ensuring that there was nothing wrong with her, who giggled and looked up back at Cadance, she turned to Gallensa again. “What did you want?”

“Is it true you can make ponies fall in love?” She asked trying not to seem too interested.

“Yes…” Cadance rose an eyebrow. “Yes, I can.”

“What about griffons?” Gallensa rose an eyebrow too.

“Yes! My magic should work!” Cadance grinned. “Tell me more so I can help!”

“I want to know if you can make someone hate another.” She avoided Cadance’s gaze for a second.

Cadance blinked a few times and pouted. “Hum. That is a weird request. I don’t know. I never even considered doing something like that.”

“Ah…” Gallensa stared at the floor.

“Is this about your coltfriend? Grigory?” Cadance lowered her head to look at her.

“Grigory isn’t my ‘coltfriend’.” She stood and frowned a bit too angrily. “He’s my mate. He is my… Husband. But there is this molly that keeps trying to get in between us.”

“What’s a molly?” Cadance’s ears perked up at her curiosity.

“It’s like a ‘bitch’… But you know… Felines…” She rubbed her paw on her crest and tried explaining what she was sure was an offensive word, as though it might deathly offend Cadance, and the princess thought it was one of the most adorable things she has ever seen an obviously evil griffon doing. Her crest feathers even bent a little. “What the hell am I doing? I’m mumbling like an idiot, asking for help from a pony princess.”

“It's okay, Gallensa.” She sat next to the griffon. She looked big and dangerous, but… How old was she, really? “Tell me about this… Molly.”

It took every ounce of self-restraint not to giggle.

“Her name is Gwineth and she’s a sort of sword fighter. She’s big and… Well… She’s older and… Experienced… And… And… Look… I’m just a nerd with anger issues! I have nightmares that she’s gonna steal Grigory from me, because she will if she has the chance!”

“I understand.” Cadance nodded. “What about Grigory? How does he feel about her?”

“He thinks she is vulgar and annoying.” The griffon rubbed her paws together nervously. “But… But you know how males are. She is very attractive and… So experienced.”

Why did Cadance feel like she was talking to an insecure teenager instead of a big and dangerous griffon? “Can’t you three come to an agreement? If she won’t leave you alone?”

“The only agreement I want to reach with her is one where I stab, stab, stab, stab and stab her with a dagger!” Cadance stared at her for a few seconds while she gestured angrily. Definitively teenager. Not that she could blame her… But definitively a teenager. “A poisoned dagger, preferably.”

“Okay…” Cadance grinned at the griffon’s angry stare. “How about we get all four of us together and we have a heart-to-heart conversation?”

“I can’t do that!” Gallensa cried. “Not only Gwineth is far away, but Grigory would never do that! I mean… You are a pony princess! Lady Gwendolen would be furious with me for talking to you about this. She might even nullify our mating.”

“Lady Gwendolen can do that?” Cadance felt an odd combination of slight at the fact that some griffon noble was getting in the way of her ‘heart business’ and of surprise that anyone could tell a couple that their union was invalid for whatever reason. Anyone that wasn’t herself, that was. Not that she would ever, but the point was that Love was her business.

Sounded like Cadance ought to have a conversation with that Lady Gwendolen. But the issue at hoof was Gallensa and her mate Grigory. She had to figure out a way to help. She felt like it was her obligation, even if they were griffons. The kind that didn’t like ponies… But Gallensa had come looking for help.

“Hum… How about this then: I’ll look for Grigory and see what I can do.” She wouldn’t make him hate another, even if she actually could do that, but the point was to calm Gallensa and get in touch with the griffon ‘prince’. “Does that sound good?”

“I supposed I couldn’t expect more.” Gallensa frowned. “Thank you, Princess. Please don’t mention this to anyone.”

“I won’t!” Cadance giggled and watched as Gallensa made her way to the door to encounter Shining Armor entering the room.

She glared at the confused pony and poked his chest with a talon. “I was never here, understand?”

He watched her leave and then looked at Cadance with a slightly more confused expression.

“Love woes…” She said, still all giggly. “I suppose I should open a clinic, or something!”

***

Discord sat in the main hall of Griffinsky mansion. In the side area with the fireplace and the sitting furniture. He sat on a sofa, rested his elbow on his knee and his jaw on his fist. Serious contemplative expression.

They had just finished breakfast and the Mother of Creeps left with the kid and the other griffon lady to do whatever. Lord Gilad had to go deal with something military related. That gave him some space and time to think in peace.

So, he couldn’t teleport because Lady Gwendolen knew some shifty magic that allowed her to mess with the magical properties of the whole Hold. Okay. She was supposedly old and there was some weird magical hierarchy thing going on. Also, she just knew ancient formulae, or something that he didn’t know how to mess up. Yet. The problem was also that she was substantially powerful.

However the heck her magic even worked. Griffons had magic, sure, as all things in Equestria. They could fly, walk on clouds, manipulate them and, as attested by the structures and magical weapons he saw them using, could infuse things with magic. Thought it might be something of a lost art.

He frowned and his mouth bent downwards. It was a shame Lady Gwendolen was such a creep. She could teach them this ancient art. Not only that speaking magic he witnessed, but how to effectively infuse such powerful magic into stuff.

Wait… She said their kid, Grigory couldn’t cast a spell without her help. What did that mean? Did Gilad need her to cast spells too? What about Gwineth and her magical sword? He should make a point of understanding how exactly that magic worked. It could be very important information.

By all rights it seemed as though griffons ought to be out there hunting dangerous monsters and helping the others protect their homes. Not that other races were helpless, but… Come on! It was so obvious! And they also hunted the monsters in the north that wandered. Such a cool thing.

That was a good reason to try and slap some sense into Lady Gwendolen, if possible.

Anyways, back to the matter at hand.

She didn’t put anyone to keep their eyes on him, and that, most likely, meant that she kept track of him though magical means. Certainly, some sort of trigger would tell her if he tried messing with her spell and then she’d just adapt it. Kind of like Celestia and the Elements of Harmony that one day. Yeah, that made sense.

Rather than going straight against her, he was more likely to get results from a tangential approach. Like eating the borders of the plate first not to get burned with the soup it held. It didn’t work with Celestia and Fluttershy… Fortunately… But he did learn something from that.

A distraction. That was what he needed. He couldn’t try to mess with her spell because that was too much. But he could use a few minutes to do something. Maybe get a message out. Somehow.

Hum… Who could help him? None of the griffons would. Not to mention that they would take too long to reach Twilight. They needed to reach her before she came to Snow Mountains, and avoid Celestia, Luna and all the eyes they had under their employ. All he had within reach were griffons, though.

Magically getting a message out would likely require a lot of magical energy and would certainly draw her attention. The whole plan could backfire.

Hum… His muzzle turned to a smile. He had an idea. A crazy idea, and it was a crazy plan, but crazy often worked in that crazy world of his.

***

Candy Crush wasn’t very happy. With all the griffons and rogue princesses, she had been drafted to assist in the airship’s security. She didn’t like it initially, but it wasn’t like she had something else to do other than avoiding anypony and everypony.

Her new station at least allowed her to be a jerk while she stood guard at the top of the Break of Dawn’s aftercastle. All she needed was somepony doing something wrong. At the least nopony bothered her. Until she noticed a griffon flying in the middle of the airships. She blinked twice. It was a cute bluish-gray griffon lady carrying saddlebags and frantically beating her wings, flying like crazy towards the airship.

“Waaaaaaaait!” She cried.

“Ma’am, flying this close to cruising airships is not only dangerous, but it is also a fineable misdemeanor.” She kept a blank ‘Royal Guard expression’.

“Slow this thing down!” The griffon struggled and flapped her wings furiously.

“The airship must maintain a constant speed with the fleet to avoid accidents, ma’am. And even if I wanted to help you, they wouldn’t listen to me.” She explained. She had no idea, but she explained anyway. “Why are you still flying close to the airship?”

“I work for the Griffonstone Postal Services!” The griffon finally grabbed on to the railing. “I have an urgent letter for Rainbow Dash!”

“Did you seriously come all the way from Griffonstone?” She approached her. “That takes some drive!”

“No! I used the teleporter to Baltimare and took a ride on an airship coming this way!” The griffon screeched. “Does it matter? Help me!”

“You cannot board the airship, ma’am.” Maybe Candy should join the Royal Guard. Being a jerk with royal authority was much more fun than being just a local jerk. “It is a military vessel. By the way, can you prove that you work for Griffonstone’s postal services?”

“For crying out loud!” She showed her an identification card with a photo, the logo for the Griffonstone Postal Service and her name ‘Gabriella’. “There! Happy?!”

“Yes… Everything seems to be in order.” She had no idea, but the document seemed real enough. Not that she cared, anyways. “But… You still can’t board the airship.”

The griffon girl growled in the cutest way possible and took an envelope from her saddlebags. “Can you give her this thing, please?”

“I’ll see what I can do, ma’am.” She bit the letter from her paw soon before the griffon squeaked and lost her grip on the railing.

Candy stared at the letter on her hoof while the squeaking griffon squeaked into the distance. Unfortunately, the wind didn’t carry it away, but she supposed that was for the best since she could get in trouble for not delivering it after she picked it up. Oh well, time to find Rainbow Dash…

***

Twilight met with Cadance and Shining Armor in the corridor to their rooms in the Break of Dawn. The couple had just left their room to find Twilight sitting on the corridor, looking at her notepad next to Spike.

“So…” He pointed at the notes with a quill. “There is the issue that nopony got too injured in the fight. Aaaaand… What about other versions of Equestria.”

“Hi, Twilight. Spike.” Shining stopped next to them. “What are you doing?”

Cadance looked one way and the other. “What about the others?”

“Hi!” She looked up to them with a smile. “They’re getting ready. Spike! Add to the list that I would like to ask Prince Grigory about the spell he tried casting.”

He put down the feather and looked at her. “He’s not going to talk about that in front of Princess Celestia, Twilight.”

“It is still worth a try.” She shrugged. “The others aren’t coming. They want to use the airship’s mirror room to talk to relatives and friends in Ponyville. Also, Rainbow will be eating with the Wonderbolts because she wants to see if Spitfire is alright.”

Cadance nodded, satisfied and they left the corridor, into the hall where a white griffon lady sat by the large double door to the ball room. They approached and Twilight tried being friendly, even if it didn’t work with Gallensa the last time.

“Hi! You’re Gracielle, right?” She grinned.

“Good morning, Princess...” The griffon lady didn’t sound cheery, though her voice was naturally raspy. “Yes, that’s me.”

“You don’t look very well.” Spike declared. “Do you need anything?”

She yawned with a paw before her beak. “I’m waiting to see Princess Celestia.”

“It’s about that weapon, isn’t it?” Twilight’s ears pulled back.

“Don’t you have anything else to worry about?” Cadance frowned at her. “Like your coltfriend, or however you guys call it?”

“Yeah. But he won’t help me talk to that stupid grasseater.” She stared for a second. “Sorry. I’m not in a good mood.”

Shinning frowned at her and spoke like he talked to a misbehaving filly, or something. “Do you have any idea in how much trouble you would be if Princess Celestia decided to press actual legal charges against you? She’s probably just going to ask The Lion give you a stern talk.”

“This is stupid!” She crossed her forelegs. “It’s not like I could even hurt her with that gun!”

“You griffons really need to learn how to relax.” The other princess said categorically.

“I can’t relax knowing that she stuffed my baby in some dirty armory!”

“I suppose that thing really is important to you…” Twilight rose an eyebrow and then turned to Shining Armor. “Is this a military thing? I mean… You guys like guns, don’t you?”

“Geez, Twilight. Talk about stereotypes…” Her brother frowned at her in response.

“Board games are much cooler.” Spike rose a finger. “Comics too!”

“Now you’re talking!” Shining bumped his hoof with his closed fist and they grinned while Cadance giggled.

“Well, it is understandable you ponies don’t appreciate the fine nuances of our superior weaponry.” She stared inexpressively with her curious raspy voice. “You don’t even have the technology to produce semi-automatic firearms. Not even decent revolvers.”

“Anyways…” Twilight smiled friendly at her. “We’re going to eat breakfast with Princess Celestia. If you wish, you can come in with us and maybe ask her again.”

She exhaled loudly. “Fine. I guess there is no evil in trying.”

With that Twilight nodded and her magic reached for the door to open it. The same ball room used for dining room. Princess Celestia sat at the end of the table in front of a selection of typical pony breakfast foods and drinks. She read from a long scroll, with Luna at her side and Chocolate Velvet next to Luna. There were places set for several more. She certainly expected at least some would attend to breakfast with them.

“Good morning, my little ponies. Spike. And griffon.” She put down the scroll while Luna waved at them and Chocolate seemed to be entertained with a book of some sort and just mumbled a greeting. “Would you like to share breakfast with us?”

“Good morning, Princess!” Twilight greeted her and the others followed, also sitting at the table where convenient, except for the white griffoness that sat opposite to Celestia and stared as angrily as she could.

Celestia ignored the griffon and instead focused on Twilight. “Twilight Sparkle, would you be interested in explaining what you were doing with our griffon prince in a bathroom in the middle of the night?”

Twilight stared at her with barely controlled panic. “Uuuuuh…”

Cadance came to the rescue. “Princess Celestia, with all due respect, interracial relationships are not a problem since ages ago.”

Celestia though gave Cadance an amused glance. “I am aware, Cadance. Mostly due to me. I am, however, also aware that while most of the fleet loves to pretend that Twilight and Grigory have an affair and met in the middle of the night to avoid scrutiny, I am more concerned that you might be planning a daring escape.”

“Now, that would just be silly!” Cadance gave Celestia the best ‘I’m offended at your wariness’ Twilight had ever seen. Celestia simply giggled.

“We’ll see.” Then, she turned to the griffon lady on the far end of the table. “Lady Gracielle, you can sit there and stare angrily at me all day if you wish, but that is not going to get you any closer to getting your toy back. I am used to politicians doing that to me since ages before you were born.”

She just stared harder.

Royal guards in their uniform, rather than their armor, served them dutifully, offering them juices and whatever the others were eating. Twilight liked the appearance of the yogurt and berries.

“Anyway…” Twilight went on while they served some of the berries and yogurt, and she meant to talk to the princess, but Spike spoke before she did.

“Princess, can I ask you a question?”

Gracielle, sniffing at the berries with yogurt the guard served her, drew Twilight’s attention while she listened.

“Of course, you can, Spike.” The princess smiled.

“Why don’t you just fix the whole situation with the griffons?” He strummed his claws together. “I mean… You have the power to make things work, don’t you?”

“I do. But griffons cannot seem to figure out if they like Gail or not. Neither if they would rather elect a new Chancellor or reform the whole system. It would be possible to remove Gail and elect a new Chancellor or allow his replacement to remain until a solution is found. But either way, I should not interfere. The losing side will invariably blame their defeat, and every problem that follows, on me.”

“But you do know what the best way is to deal with the situation, don’t you?”

“The problem is that there is no best way, Spike. A new chancellor would fix the issue, as he would likely replace all of Gail’s government machine anyways. But griffons believe that it would mean simply changing one corrupt leadership for another. They believe that The Lion would bring a new system that would necessarily be less corrupt, but in reality, it’s never the system that is the problem, it’s the creatures that make the system work.”

“It worries me, because while I do believe that Lord Gilad is well intentioned, I have no idea of what his plans for the future, beyond the Griffonian throne, are. It seems that he would rather consolidate his power base and fix internal issues, but I cannot be sure. He has never talked to me about that.”

“Throughout the ages I have convinced myself that what makes things work are bonds of understanding and cooperation. Education allows citizens to understand what their government is doing and if it is good or bad for them and gives them the tools to deal with that.”

“Hah!” Gracielle stopped eating the berries. “Says the ‘goddess’ that literally lied to the whole world. How did you get to be in this position? It seems so weird, to be honest, that other races simply let you lord over them.”

“This is a misinterpretation of my position. Ruling doesn’t necessarily mean that I make them do what I want. It means that I ensure that everyone does as they should and help when it is necessary. Your chosen representatives are the ones who decide what that means. My place is to legitimize and enforce.”

“I was, however, entrusted with power that most leaders through the history of our world were never trusted with, Gracielle. I am literally above the rule of law and I used that trust to protect the world. As is my job. That is why the Senators and Majesties in the Hall of Friendship trusted me to annex the Changeling Swarm into the Confederacy without their vote. They trust me, my experience, and my benevolence to make such decisions and I haven’t disappointed them yet. And my decision on the griffon situation is to allow them to resolve it for themselves. Until there is a need to intervene, I will not. Even if it makes griffons believe that I have abandoned them, once the situation is resolved they will see that it worked. Generations from now, the representatives and their electorates will add this to the list of reasons they trust me with such power.”

“But how did this start, princess?” Twilight stared curiously.

“Millenia ago a baker and her husband had two daughters who happened to have the power to control the sun and the moon. Ponies much smarter than they told them they were the Goddesses Reborn and that they were ordained to rule Equestria. After some unpleasant business, they were crowned the Queen and Princess of Everfree.” Celestia fumed. “I didn’t want to be queen! All I wanted was for creatures to live in peace and to get the sun to play nice. But not only ponies insisted on either calling me ‘Princess’ or by the name of the goddess, that they pronounced incorrectly, they started doing what I told them… Such as ‘don’t kill each other’, ‘let’s try to be nice to one another’, ‘how about we share this food instead we let it spoil?’ like it was some hermeneutical knowledge lost to the ages!”

“Then there was a griffon emperor and his subjects that didn’t like him, so one of them went to other races begging for help in dealing with the emperor. But no one answered because they were all beaten helpless by the griffons. Enslaved, bound by tribute, or simply hoping that the Emperor didn’t destroy them because he woke up in a bad mood one morning.”

She angrily took a sip of her apple juice, which amused Twilight to no end. “Well, there was one that came to his help, because what was I supposed to do? Grigor was killing everycreature and wanted to kill or enslave all the ponies just because some dumb imaginary bird kept telling him to! I went to what is today the Saddle Arabian desert with six Battlehorn Legions and joined Grover’s rebellion. It seemed like an insurmountable challenge, but as we won battles, we freed slaves. Diamond dogs, saddle arabian ponies, hippogriffs and members of all the races. Buy they didn’t want to go home. They wanted to stay and fight because they wanted to help their friends and free the others. So, we made room for them, and suddenly other races started sending their armies to fight too.”

Celestia frowned and actually seemed so confused Twilight almost burst out laughing. “But for some reason I never fully understood they all kept reporting to me instead of Grover, and even he reported to me and before I knew, they started calling me silly things like ‘The Dawnbringer’ and ‘Celestia Sunheart’ and making up silly stories about ‘the brightest dawn after the darkest night’. ‘The Last Great War’ and ‘The Battle of All Armies’.”

Celestia frowned even deeper. “When the war was over, they just kept asking me what to do! And I felt like a failure because half the griffons hated me, the other half hated me because I didn’t kill the others, Chrysalis wanted me to kill all of the griffons, the diamond dogs almost went extinct, The Dragon Lord died, the last great wyrm dragon died, the hippogriff king died, most of my friends died, four Battlehorn Legions were completely destroyed, and I start hyperventilating whenever I try to remember how many lives were lost over the years, but they kept telling me that I had saved the world, even though I had just presided over one of the worst pyrrhic victories of known history! Just… What is wrong with creatures?!”

“I told you yesterday! I was scared mindless of The Harpy!” She covered her head with her wings. “I kept dreading she would show up in one of these battles and I didn’t know what I was going to do! The only reason I kept going was because I was afraid that if I stopped the others would leave Grover alone.”

She sighed and returned her wings to her sides. “The Confederacy grew from this. It started with the defeat of Emperor Grigor and… Well… Just the other day the changelings finally joined. Grover and I decided that it was best to erase Grigor, The Harpy and that whole mess from history and so we did. As generations past, most creatures forgot. I won’t deny that I have benefitted from that, but I did it with the best of intentions. I don’t want to see the world end.”

“You got the whole world under your wings.” Grigory’s white friend sounded like she was accusing Celestia of something. She seemed to have liked the berries, though.

“Hardly. The Dragons won’t join the confederacy, even if they are more than willing to listen, thanks to Ember’s ability of using her brain and willingness to employ her position to actually help the helpless. But every now and then some overgrown monster does something that they soon regret.” Celestia sighed. “I learned how to deal with the responsibility, but I wish creatures would just be nicer to one another. It would make my job so much easier. If certain griffons would understand that they are my subjects too and that I care for all of them equally.”

“Bullshit.” Gracielle accused again. “You don’t like griffons.”

“No, I don’t.” Celestia frowned. “But I still care for all of your race all the same. It pained me when each one of you died in the Griffon Wars, just as much as it pains me when you kill some helpless creature that didn’t need to die.”

The griffon left her spoon on the table and she looked around for a second. “If The Harpy… Hypothetically, existed. Would you share your position with her?”

Celestia frowned at her question. “No. I believe she has proven that she could not be trusted with such power, even if she was to rule over only the griffons. Moreover, I doubt she would be willing to accept anything less than everything.”

“I would however be willing to accept it if she were to become my subject, as every other ruler, and acquiesce to the resolutions from the Hall of Friendship. I would even welcome her as a member of the House of Majesty under those conditions.” Celestia let her spoon go too and frowned again, and not in a good way. “Would that hypothetical question have any underlying meaning?”

The griffon looked down at her meal and poked at it with her spoon. “No… Just asking.”

That only made Celestia more curious, and she stared at the griffon. “In reality, I’m afraid I wouldn’t take the risk of letting her live… It sounds grim, but she was too dangerous. She’s caused too much pain and death. And I cannot imagine her doing anything other than that today. She would seek to subjugate the hippogriffs simply because of whatever bizarre ideal of purity she held for griffons and not only that, but all the species in the world.”

“Your question is very curious, Lady Gracielle.” Celestia pressed further. “As far as I know, The Harpy didn’t exist in Grigor’s time and it baffles me that griffons of today, even if only the ones from your home region would know of her. I assumed that the traditions you retained, such as protecting the southerner holds from monstrous incursions out of the Frozen North and your language would have remained from his time, or might even be older than that, and it makes me think of oral traditions that kept the memory of her alive despite my best efforts.”

“Even more curious, though, I still don’t know how the griffons in the past knew of her. But I find it alarming that her name has resurfaced in the past days, particularly when this whole unpleasant business emerged. Part of me wonders if, in a similar way I and the others came to be, she was not summoned by the griffons in Discord’s time and isn’t hiding somewhere. If that would be the case, I would be grateful if you were to tell me, because she is dangerous, and her insanity consumes the minds of griffons around her. The sooner she is destroyed, the better.”

The griffon coughed into her fist and stared blankly. “I’m just asking. I bet you just don’t want to share your position.”

“I share my position with my sister and in our absence, Cadance would retain rulership over the entire alliance, and then Twilight. Additionally, the Hall of Friendship would have complete control over the entire alliance if something were to happen to all of us.”

Twilight coughed louder before the two started fighting, or something. “Speaking of that. Chocolate told me that nopony, or griffon died in the battle. I don’t believe that.”

“It is true.” She said plainly.

“How?! It sounds impossible!”

“Well, when you grow as old as I am and you study magic your whole life, you understand that magic is much more subtle than formulae and spell effects. That the magic in spacetime itself can be twisted and causality explored. You become capable of influencing… ‘Luck’.”

“You are kidding me!” Twilight and Cadance both gasped.

“I’m not!” Celestia grinned. “If you understand that luck does not truly exist, you see that everything is a facet of magic interacting with the world. And for magic, time is just another thing to influence. Whence powerful time magic, such as the Black Sun.”

“That is why you weren’t present during most of the fight. You were busy with whatever you were doing.” Twilight mused.

“Once I saw that the griffon airship had the potential to greatly damage our airships, and that our support airship wasn’t in position yet, I decided I should take precautions. It works best with some forethought, and in larger scales where subtle interference can have a greater effect.”

Suddenly, before she could explain, or Twilight could inquire further, Raindow Dash flew into the room and landed right next to Twilight, holding a piece of paper in her hooves along with Twilight’s shoulders. “Gilda is in trouble!”

“What? What do you mean trouble?” Twilight gasped once she Rainbow was done shaking her.

“I just got this letter from her! Things are bad in Griffonstone!” The other yelled again.

“Please, let me see this, Rainbow Dash.” Celestia’s golden magic enveloped the paper and took it to her. Luna and Chocolate Velvet lumped together to read.

“What is going on?!” Spike cried.

“Gilda said that they took away the monthly income because of the war with the northern holds of Griffonia! She was making enough with her scones, but then she got charged with assault when she punched some jerk that tried stealing from her!”

“W-what?!” Twilight gasped.

“I mean…” Spike wasn’t too surprised. “Gilda’s not the nicest griffon around.”

“She’s going to do community service so that they don’t send her to jail. And she can’t sell her scones anymore because she has to work in the afternoon and… And she thinks that the mayor and his family are out to get her!”

“There is something very wrong in this.” Celestia put the letter down. “Aggravated assault of a minor does not warrant community service. Furthermore, by her description of events, the injuries on the other party were exaggerated and a legal reconciliation would have been much more sensible. This mention of the mayor’s wife and their children is concerning.”

Luna deadpanned. “She punched the mayor’s son?”

Celestia frowned. “No to mention that she says foodstuffs are too expensive. The only thing that should be expensive is game meat that the north stopped selling to the southern holds. And there is no reason UBI should have been interrupted because one small military force was sent.”

“What?!” Cadance gasped. “Military force?”

“Discord found a group of griffons marching to capture the Lion.” Luna explained. “They were captured and Griffonian government was supposed to be negotiating their release. I don’t understand how, but our Justiciars never noticed any of that, and worse, none of the members in the Hall of Friendship ever mentioned this.”

“This isn’t good, Celestia.” Luna frowned. “I trusted that the Griffonian government would’ve been satisfied with the mess that were those soldiers that shouldn’t be marching against The Lion. And now this.”

“Luna…” Celestia stared at her. “Please, help Admiral Gloria care for fleet operations. I need to see to this. The situation shouldn’t be this bad, and I certainly should’ve been notified that something was wrong before it came to this. Not to mention I feel that someone intentionally mislead Miss Gilda in her situation. This is all overly concerning, particularly so in light of recent events.”

Luna nodded and Celestia stood. “Excuse me. Please enjoy the rest of your breakfast. Come with me, Chocolate Velvet.”

The brown alicorn stood next to Celestia and they vanished when her horn shone its golden magical light. Left alone, the others turned to Luna.

“What? I don’t have anything to say about any of that.”

Graciele rose a finger. “Can you give me back my baby?”

“No.”

“Why?!” She slammed a fist on the table. “I’m not going to go around shooting at stuff! I just want it back!”

“Celestia is probably going to give it back to you once this is all over. Right now, you are merely wasting your time obsessing over that thing. You should find something more entertaining to do.”

Since the griffon just huffed and went back to her berries, Twilight called the princess after spike showed her the list. “Luna, can you tell us about other versions of Equestria?”

“I don’t know much, Twilight. Celestia is the one that remembers things from the time of The Harpy or even from beyond the last time the Black Sun was triggered the last time. I can tell you though that there was a version of Equestria where she and I retired, and you became the ruling princess.”

While Twilight simply blinked her surprise at the information, Cadance seemed ‘stirred’ by that information, with flared wings and huge eyes. “What?! What about me?!”

Luna shrugged.

Spike frowned. “Hum… That ended with the Black Sun, right? What did she do?”

Luna then started giggling and covered her muzzle with a hoof, trying not to laugh. “I do not know. But there was another version where the zebras and the ponies developed powerful spells of mass destruction that literally destroyed the whole world, and that still didn’t trigger the Black Sun.”

Twilight sat by the table. Staring at the giggling princess trying to decide if she was serious or if it was a joke. Spike, Shining Armor, Cadance and the stupid trigger-happy griffon just laughed.

***

It greatly aggravated Gilberta, but it was kinda obvious that after breakfast Lady Gwendolen would put her to study in the library. Lady Geena went to one of the rooms to rest properly before her return to Frozenlake, and there wasn’t much that Gilberta could do to avoid being stuck there. Especially when her teacher would sit right in front of her and read something of her own. What did she even read about? She knew everything!

She did think that the reading stands were fancy though! She sat on a pile of large (for her size) cushions so that she could sit at the correct height to read. Apparently, she was reading her comics all wrong before, laying on her bed, because you were supposed to sit with your back straight, staring forward and under good lighting.

She wished she had her comics, though, because that book about the history of the Saddle Arabian desert was difficult to read, being in that High Griffonese she was still learning how to read! But she had to read it because Lady Gwendolen told her it was important. Apparently, some griffons ate bugs in there, and looked for underground water that they filtered through the sand with silk to drink. Huh. Imagine that.

Meanwhile the big griffon that was Lady Gwendolen sat on her own cushion and. Oh. She wasn’t reading. She was writing! She wrote something, using black paint and a small metallic and sharp pen that looked like one of the quills she had seen, but it was all cylindrical and the tip resembled a griffon’s paw.

“Pay attention to what you are reading.” She said without stopping what she was doing. She didn’t even look at Gilberta. So, she immediately focused back on her book.

Like it said earlier, griffons in the Hader, or the Saddle Arabian desert, didn’t build any cities and they took what they wanted from tall pony cities and some towns even paid large sums of money so that they wouldn’t attack.

Dumb ponies… Instead of defending themselves.

That was until they founded their first city, which was Shadysands and many others, such as Oasis, The Bleak, and many others until, after the reconquest of the Hader, Emperor Grigor built Aen Hader. Apparently, it was a large temple…

“What’s a temple?” She looked up from her book.

“It is a structure griffons built to celebrate me.” She said, keeping her eyes on whatever she was writing. “It is a place of contemplation, of worship and sacrificial ceremonies. Or it was… There are no real temples today.”

“You mean… Like the ceremonies where they killed the tall ponies?” She asked curiously.

“Yes. But not only that.” She stopped writing for a second and looked at Gilberta. “All celebrations related to the greatness of our race were performed in such places. They used to be caves in the Stormy Eyrie, then shrines in our cities. Emperor Grigor built Aen Hader for me, and I lived there. It was an exotic place. The desert was very different from the snowy mountains, but he built the pyramids to resemble the mountains, since the Windigos had destroyed Stormy Eyrie. But the desert was also a good place. I liked it there. Temples should never be a place that is too easy to reach.”

“I once asked mom why is it that dad didn’t use real bullets and she told me that it’s really sad when someone dies because they leave behind creatures that loved them. So, he always tried not to kill any creature. Wasn't it bad when my ancestors sacrificed a pony?”

“Of course not! It was a way that their cities used to avoid being obliterated if they didn’t have treasures. Imagine if all of them died because some selfish desert pony didn’t accept the honor that it was!”

That didn’t sound very nice to Gilberta. But then again, there were many things she didn’t understand, and Lady Gwendolen was always right. “Do you miss Emperor Grigor?”

Gwendolen smiled. “Not anymore.”

Gilberta frowned. “Hum… Did the ponies build temples to their princesses?”

“They made idiotic stone circles and bonfires next to statues.” She grimaced like she talked about something unpleasant. “Only after they had contact with the griffons they started building things that resembled temples. But never built them correctly.”

“Oh. Then the ponies started celebrating… The Princesses? Are they gods too?”

Gwendolen chuckled. “Don’t be silly. I am the only god there is.”

“Ah? But what about Discord?”

“He is not a god; he is an elemental. Of Chaos.” She became serious.

“But you called him…”

“I know what I called him! It was a figure of speech!” Gilberta squeaked and hid behind her book. “Now, don’t confuse your pretty little head with pointless details yet, Gilberta. Keep reading the book. Then we will talk when you are ready to understand more.”

Well then… Aen Hader was a large temple complex to The Harpy, with tall black spires and pyramids. The largest temple, in the center of the city contained the Holiest Sanctum where she would commune with the Emperor when he offered her the heart of the sacrifice. She would impart into him her wisdom and knowledge.

Huh… The image in Gilberta’s mind was of a nice room with a table, candles, and a piece of meat and Lady Gwendolen would sit on one side with some big mean griffon on the other side and they’d chat while they ate. Maybe drink some wine, she supposed.

‘Kay… She meant to keep reading, but Lord Gilad entered the library. It was hard not noticing a bulky and imposing griffon such as he was. He stopped by the door, not looking particularly interested in anything before he went next to them.

“You are distracting the cub.” Lady Gwendolen complained, paying attention to her writing.

“I am sorry, Gwendolen.” He smoothly came behind her and started massaging her shoulders. She opened big, surprised eyes, and then smiled with a hum, letting her wings relax.

Gilberta just stared at them and blinked.

“I felt like I should apologize.” He said sullenly, rubbing his beak on the feathers on her neck, and Gilberta was sure she was hearing things because she could swear that she heard Lady Gwendolen purring.

Wait! Gilberta knew this! They should tell her to go do whatever and that was when she could ask for anything!

“I think that you have done enough reading for now, cub.” She said, stretching her neck and with lidded eyes. “You may go play. Try and meet some of the cubs near the mansion. But don’t go past the richer mansions.”

“But Lady Gwendolen…” She blinked her innocent eyes and whined with her ‘I’m such a good girl voice’. “I was going to read about Aen Hader…”

“You can read about it later, Gilberta.” She stared, clicking a talon on her stand. “Tell Miss Gerri that I said you can eat whatever you want.”

“Yes! Thanks Lady Gwendolen!” Of course, she hurried out of the room before she changed her mind.

Then the white griffoness turned around, all sultry smiles and alluring eyes. “You were saying?”

“That I came here to apologize… I shouldn’t have talked to you like that. You know. When I arrived.” He spoke with his deep bass voice, while he caressed her crest above her head and her diadem fell to the floor.

“Hmmmm. Tell me more about that…” She laid herself over the stand and closed her eyes.

Then Gilad grinned and gestured with a thumb up to Discord by the door, who returned the gesture with the same devious grin.

No time to lose, he left the two alone and hurried out of the mansion to find the gates open, but with a young male griffon in the city’s cuirass armor holding a halberd before the gate while others minded the walls and beyond. He had shades of cyan on his feathers and eyes, but Discord couldn’t see his fur because of the armor and the cape he wore. He had that red scarf that inner wall guards wore, though.

“You can’t leave.” The griffon said with his halberd to the ground. “By orders of Lady Gwendolen.”

“Oh. Come on.” Discord argued back. “I just want to see the valley. You know, there is some really interesting magic there.”

“I’m sorry. But Lady Gwendolen has said you are not to leave the mansion.” He frowned. “You need her permission to leave Griffinsky.”

“Ah… I understand.” Discord nodded. “I really do. But Lady Gwendolen is kinda busy now. You know. With Lord Gilad.”

He lowered himself to the griffon’s ear and covered his mouth. “I don’t think that you want to bother them now… With trivial stuff that a common guard could solve on his own.”

His feet shuffled nervously. “Well, then you have to wait.”

“Aw, come on!” Discord grinned friendly. “Please? I mean, it’s not like I can flee with the spell she put on the entire hold, right?”

“I suppose…” The griffon frowned and mused to himself with a finger to his beak.

“See? I just want to see the valley. I won’t take long.” Discord grinned some more.

“Fine…” He wasn’t too sure, but he relented. “Fine, but please don’t take too long. I don’t want to push my luck with Lady Gwendolen… I almost got burned earlier because of a misunderstanding.”

“Don’t you worry your feathered head!” Discord grinned and petted the griffon. “I promise it won’t take long at all.”

***

A bright flash announced the arrival of the two alicorns. Celestia with her typical golden accessories, and Chocolate Velvet who wore his customized Royal Guard golden armor with white, blue and silver highlights. Flapping their wings, they hovered in the air amid the clouds and Celestia immediately looked downwards at the sea beneath them to see a line of large sail ships headed towards an archipelago and a few airships. Celestia hummed angrily at the sight.

“Is that Hipogriffia?” It was a collection of many sized islands, a giant archipelago of volcanic islands that surrounded Mount Aris, way in the distance. Shaped in a funny way, too, forming broken concentric circles.

“Yes.” She nodded. “Its islands protect ships from damage by the violent seas and winds to the south. Skirting up north would take the ships too close to the Frozen North and monster attacks are so common that shipping companies blacklisted the route. So, the only way into Griffonia is too far to the south and then north into Saddle Arabia, or through hippogriffs waters.”

“Small wonder Emperor Grigor attacked both in the past.” He hovered next to her while she examined the line of ships beneath. “One would expect the griffons to play nice with both.”

“Unless they were planning to conquer their territory from the start.” She scanned the sea and line of ships, looking for something.

“That too.” He must have sounded so sad that Celestia looked at him.

“Don’t worry. It’s not coming to what you are thinking. I won’t allow it. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened.”

“I’m worried, Celestia.” He frowned. “Hidden things seem to be happening and suddenly blow up. And it all spins around these griffons.”

“We are dealing with someone that knows what they are doing, Chocolate. But their veil is quickly falling apart. I’m afraid that Miss Gracielle should have kept her beak shut, but I cannot make accusations yet. I must speak with Gilad, but before, we must fix this situation with the hippogriffs and then see Chancellor Gail. But, immediately, this…” She pointed at the line of ships stopped dead on the water. “Will be easy to fix since neither Hippogriffia or Saddle Arabia is the problem. Novo is scared and her fear is rubbing off on Withen.”

Yes, he agreed. “Shouldn’t we just go see Gail? Why are we here?”

“Because we can fix this quickly. And this should get supplies to the griffon population reasonably soon. These ships must have been here for weeks.”

He was still worried. “Novo never told you she was doing this. I’d be a little miffed about it.”

Celestia shook her head. “I am disappointed, but I know it is nothing personal. She neglected telling me about this because she is scared and was afraid I’d side with the griffons because I support The Lion. We will find out what her motivation was, and this will make sense. A little nudge should get things on the right track. What worries me more is that none of the senators or Gail ever mentioned this.”

“Of course, they didn’t.” Chocolate frowned. “Gail is full of…”

He was going to use a word that referenced to digestive wastes, but Celestia wasn’t very fond of such words. So, he just grinned and used another word instead. “You know… Nonsense.”

Wherever she noticed it or not, she went on. “Everypony is scared of the situation and I feel like that fear is paralyzing too many of them. They fear that if they brought this up, all the bad things they’ve done would turn up. Maybe The Lion is right and Griffonia’s entire political system needs a reforging.”

“I trust you to know what you are doing, Celestia. But I think that this sort of thing is dangerous.”

“I don’t have to tell you that these griffons lost wars and egos are hurt enough without whatever it is that the northeners are doing. We know that the northerners are using the hippogriff for escape goats and someone is filling heads with that ‘us versus them’ mentality. This can get ugly in a hurry, especially with a charismatic figure in power.”

She nodded. “I can’t find a flaw in that argument. We will be careful. Come on, let’s talk to one of the captains.”

She closed her wings and allowed herself to fall. He followed, albeit more carefully, diving in a spiral, following her. Closer to the sea, she opened her wings and spiraled down with him following in her wake until she oriented her flight towards one of the ships.

It wasn’t a large ship and it didn’t stand too tall above the waterline. It had a varnished look to its wooden hull with one large red sail that looked like it was made of some vegetal fiber and had several horizontal strips of what looked like bamboo that kept the sail rigid. Had a long deck with a ‘house’ that covered most of it and a covered entrance to the underdeck. Quite endearing. Chocolate liked it. No weapons whatsoever, but a few colorful kirin hurrying to meet them when Celestia landed on the open space by the bow, followed by her personal guard.

They bowed to her while she closed her wings and Chocolate Velvet kept to his place, a little back. It was his place as her bodyguard.

“Well met, Princess Celestia!” One of the kirin stepped forward to greet her with a huge smile. A tall blue kirin with white mane and tuft at the tip of her tail, not to mention cute antlers. “Are you here to fix this mess?”

“Why, that is exactly why I am here!” She chirped with a hoof to her chest. “What happened?”

“We sold a load of tofu on Manehattan and then we loaded up a huge load of coke we meant to sell to the Stormvalley armory. They have the best in Manehattan! But, anyway, we ought to dock on Beachhome first. And… We can’t reach it if the hippogriff won’t let us through. No way I’m taking my ship through the Maelstrom.”

She meant to go on, but Chocolate Velvet made a funny face and interrupted. “Uh… Coke? The drink? Or…”

The kirin giggled. “Nopony drinks coke, silly. It’s a fuel for their forges.”

“Oh! Coal coke!” He laughed. “Sorry… Go on!”

“What did you think?” Celestia tilted her head curiously.

He chose not to speak anymore and kept chortling, hiding his mouth. “Nothing. Nothing!”

The two mares stared at him for a few seconds, but then went on to their conversation with the kirin continuing. “Basically, we can’t get to Beachhome because the hippogriff decided to tax everything, and I can’t pass the taxes to the griffons because… Well… Queen Novo is going nuts… I won’t be able to sell when I get there. I can’t even get this stuff unloaded and go get other stuff ferried because we’re stuck. They won’t buy our load back in Manehattan and we can’t get through without paying the taxes. Other captains say that things are just as bad in Hoofba Port! Even if we dump our load, we need supplies and they’re charging simply to pass the gates!”

Celestia nodded and opened her wings. “I am going to get this sorted out with Queen Novo. Don’t worry. Come along, Chocolate Velvet. Let us find one of the hippogriff officers.”

He followed her into the air and skirting the ships. Ponies, kirins, some hippogriff and even griffon crews stopped everything (not that there was much to do with the ships stuck in a line) to watch them fly by but Celestia kept looking at the water until a large manta ray with a blue-shaded spot coloring surfaced. It had a short chariot-like structure tied to its back where a seapony held its reigns with one of its long forelegs and a coral-stylized trident on the other.

“Wow! Cool! It’s a manta ray!” Chocolate blurted all excited and Celestia giggled at him before shifting her flight to the seapony and their ride.

It was a bulky male seapony with a beautiful shade of blue and cyan fins, wearing a pearly aquamarine armor stylized like corals. Like his trident and the appendage strapped to the manta ray.

“Greetings!” Celestia flew next to them and called their attention, waving a hoof which caused him to command his ride to stop.

“Princess Celestia?!” He gasped. “What are you doing here?”

“Who’s in command of this operation?” She stopped to a hover and Chocolate kept next to her.

“That would be General Seaspray, your highness!” He pointed with his foreleg holding the trident. “That way, at the entrance to Hippogriffian waters.”

“Thank you!” She reoriented herself and flew in the direction while Chocolate Velvet still hovered next to the seapony.

“Can you guys control sea creatures telepathically?” He gave the other a huge grin, but the seapony merely seemed confused.

“Come along, Chocolate Velvet!” Celestia called him and he left the seapony to rejoin her side. “It is the first time we have come to Hippogriffia, isn’t it?”

“Yes! Wait. Queen Novo rules both the hippogriff and the seaponies?”

“Yes. It is not complicated.” They flapped their wings, gaining speed. “They were all hippogriffs once, but when the Storm King attacked, they fled under the sea. Queen Novo used her magic to make them into seaponies. But once it was safe again, they came back up and are swiftly rebuilding their cities. But some wanted to stay underwater, and that is a good thing: they have significant fish, oyster, and kelp farms. They also collect corals and make beautiful artisanship with them. But the event gave them a bit of a reputation for cowardness, which is unfair, but you know how things are.”

She looked at him. “There are a few things you should know about them. The first one is that they cannot change back and forth in between seapony and hippogriff, but we are hoping that the changeling medical sciences should help. You should keep that in mind during your studies.”

He nodded to her. That would be an important thing. Probably with a combination of zebra potions, changeling magic and some unicorn magic. Well, the hippogriff’s own magic. Wait… “How did they change to begin with?”

“The Queen has a magical pearl she uses to focus her magic. It’s a family heirloom and their greatest treasure. Unfortunately, she is the only one who can use it and it is quite taxing to all involved.” He nodded as she explained. That was another thing to keep in mind. “As of today, she trusts her sister, Ocean Flow, to relay to her all the happenings under the waves and carry forth her authority.”

“You should also know that Queen Novo has a daughter. Princess Skystar. A niece, Lady Silverstream; and a nephew, Master Terramar. They are a happy family, if her sister lives under the sea and her husband is a hippogriff.”

He nodded. Better get cracking, then. “How come you’re not queen? I mean, with that conversation we had yesterday…”

She shrugged. “Makes little difference.”

“But it would be cool.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her.

“I don’t really mind.” She grinned. “But you can call me Queen whenever you want!”

He chuckled. “Hey! Who’s Skystar’s father?”

Celestia came closer and hid her mouth with a hoof, whispering over the wind. “It is said that General Seaspray often visits the queen’s chambers. But I didn’t tell you anything!”

She grinned. “Other than that, she is a good friend of mine. Be nice to her. Skystar is adorably naïve and Silverstream is one of the happiest younglings I know.”

“Don’t worry, Celestia. I’ll behave.” He grinned and made her giggle some more.

Then she pointed forward with a hoof. “Ah! There they are!”

Before them, a tall wall closed the passage between two islands, with a giant gate which bars made a winged seashell motif decoration. It didn’t seem particularly sturdy to Chocolate Velvet, but he supposed that it was built more to control the traffic of ships and that magic would fix that if needed. It would also be probably bad if they completely isolated the inner waters from the outer waters.

There were several warships around the entrance. Nothing like the Break of Dawn, but smaller seafaring ships with things that reminded him of airfoils on the sides which held magical engines. Reminded him of some sort of catamaran ships. Some were so big that their structure grew over the wings. They were also armed with guns and crewed by hippogriffs in armor carrying muskets. Also, seaponies mingling in the water around the ships or on their manta ray mounts, carrying tridents and a few flying chariots pulled around by hippogriffs.

“There he is.” Celestia pointed towards one of the towers that held the gate. It was a round shape with enough space to house a few naval cannons and a small tent with a few hippogriffs standing guard.

Hippogriffs pointed at the Princess and her escort, as well as crews on the ships, except the later celebrated while former became apprehensive. It would be a little dumb for them to do that, but Chocolate was happy no one raised a gun, or something as they approached. They seemed on edge and he wouldn’t have approached like she did. But then again, he wasn’t ‘The Mare’.

They landed on the top of the tower and one of the hippogriff, a tough cyan-purple guy with aquamarine mane and tail and wearing a pearly-rosy armor with maritime motifs and helmet that turned his feathered crest into a decorative crest approached and bowed to them with flared wings. Looked a lot like pony armor to Chocolate Velvet.

“Princess! Prince-Consort! Welcome to the Westerly gate!” He then rose and grinned. “As you can see the situation is well under control and the blockade to Griffonia is going swimmingly!”

“That is wonderful, General Seaspray.” She grinned with all her good mood. “The only problem is that there shouldn’t be a blockade.”

“Oh…” He deflated like a punctured balloon. “Uh… Then I guess things aren’t going swimmingly…”

He removed his helmet and his crest exploded with exuberant feathers, but he also scratched his head. “I’m confused. I thought we were going to war with the griffons… I mean… Griffon Chancellor even threatened a war if we didn’t block access to Beachhome.”

Chocolate’s eyebrow raised and Celestia let him talk. “He demanded you blockaded access to his own country? That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“I imagined he meant to isolate the northerners. Beachhome is the only port with the infrastructure to import large volumes of cargo into their nation… Though, it does seem he’d be noosing his own neck. Hum… I’m just following Queen Novo’s orders.”

“Well, considering that Beachhome is under the southerner territories, and is loyal to the Chancellor, there would be something strange, wouldn’t there?” Celestia blinked at him.

“I assumed that the Chancellor would be acting so to prevent private enterprises from supplying the northerners…” He explained as his eyes shifted away.

“Well, that does make sense, General.” Chocolate said and looked at Celestia.

“It also makes you seem like the bad guys, and not the chancellor.” She added.

“Oh…” Somehow, he deflated even further.

“Let’s fix this, then! Shall we?” Celestia chirped and grinned. “Order your subordinates allow these fine civilian ships through the gates and only charge them the normal fees and taxes.”

“I can’t do that!” His wings flared again, and he recoiled a few steps, shaking his head with huge, scared eyes. “Queen Novo has put a lot of funds into training of new soldiers and equipment that is still undergoing production. We owe millions to forgeries and manufactories in the Equestrian Heartland! Hippogrifia would be broke overnight!”

“General, I don’t believe that Hippogriffia has the ponypower to fight a war. Even if only against Snow Mountains hold. This is folly. And that is the reason the Royal House has reserve funds. I will buy Hippogriffia’s debts and then I will work this out with Novo. Now, please, allow these ships through. This is only hurting the situation.”

He sat on the floor and let his wings and hippogriff ears hang. “I should obey my queen.”

“Queen Novo can scream at me all she wants. Right now, it is most important to fix this situation so that your queendom’s reputation is not hurt further. Please inform her that I will meet her on Mount Aris after you have allowed the ships through. Trust me, Seaspray.”

“I am sorry, Princess.” He frowned. “Nothing is changing until Queen Novo says so.”

Well, that sounded final. Chocolate looked at Celestia and she didn’t seem too worried, instead spoke soothingly. “It is alright. I meant to speak to her anyways, and this is no problem at all. May we proceed to Mount Aris?”

“Absolutely, Princess. I will ask the signalers to inform Mount Aris of your imminent arrival.” He relaxed somewhat. Enough to speak confidently.

“Thank you very much, General. Come along, Velvet.” She nodded respectfully and took flight, soon followed by the brown and armored alicorn.

“Well?” He asked once they had distanced themselves a fair bit in a relaxed flight.

“I expected he would be too loyal to Novo to commit. This is actually a good thing, but I wanted to try my luck anyway.”

He looked around as they spoke. The waters seemed shallow for the most part, with the most beautiful waters he had ever seen. Many beaches and it seemed like the hippogriffs lived on several villages and small cities on the larger islands that surrounded the largest island and tallest hill that was Mount Aris. If he paid attention and focused, he could see groups of seaponies swimming every which way and hippogriffs flying, living on their lives in their small paradise. Some areas seemed deeper and shifted to a deeper shade of blue and he could imagine underwater caves and galleries where the seaponies had built their homes and their farms in the wider, deeper, areas of sea.

The whole place gave him a very Ponyville-ish feeling of countryside nostalgia with a flavor of tropical beach, and there was a strange sadness attached to it. Right next to the griffons that had built a giant flying warship.

“This place is a paradise…” He finally spoke again. “It needs to be protected.”

“Queen Novo is immensely proud, and so are her subjects. They vowed that they would never be treated as the Storm King treated them again. It is a small blessing that they are ignorant of just how vulnerable they still are. Not a good thing, but a small blessing, nonetheless. They don’t want to prepare for a war. As all creatures, they, much like the Diamond Dogs above all, must be allowed to thrive and to enjoy their times alive. And in our positions, it falls onto us to ensure that they can.”

He spent some more time, contemplating the natural beauty of that place, with its beaches, the volcanic mounts. The tourism potential was outstanding, and he didn’t need to know much to say that. Maybe he started seeing things a little more like Celestia, but they were not meant to be warriors. They were meant to be happy hosts on the best place for vacations on Equestria. Somehow, it made all that they suffered under the Storm King sadder and turned the threat from the griffons all the grimmer. He could easily see The Lion going after the Hippogriff once he was done consolidating his power in Griffonia. It wasn’t even a matter of him being a bad guy. Just… How things were.

Maybe there were also the memories of his past life, on another, as Celestia mentioned, less forgiving, less caring world.

Then Celestia giggled, all happy, putting out her legs in their flight. “We also have to indulge in their seaweed-wrap massage and coconut sweets and drinks!”

“It’s a shame.” He smiled at her. “Griffons ought to love this place too, with all the fish and seafoods.”

“Precisely!” She chirped. “You understand! Don’t you?”

“I think that I do, Celestia. But you do remember why we’re here, right?” He kept smiling at her happiness.

“You can’t be blunt, Chocolate.” She waved a hoof at him.

“I think that telling Novo’s General to disobey her was kinda blunt…”

“Dealing with the Majesties is different than dealing with the military and that is different from dealing with the people in general and that is also different from dealing with the nobility. You’ll see. Pay attention and you’ll learn something important.”

Celestia flew fast, faster than she normally would, but Chocolate kept up with her and the beautiful scenario helped keep his mind off the exercise, and what she had said about dealing with different classes. He could already attest to that. Nobles were a pain in the hindquarters. He imagined the Majesties were similar. He had some contact with them, but mostly not. Nobles were the source of his annoyances, for the largest part. But he knew that Celestia constantly had to deal with the Majesties and sometimes they didn’t agree with their people’s representatives in the Hall of Friendship and then chaos ensued.

He thought it was curious that rather than teleporting right away, she chose to fly to their destination. Maybe she needed some time to think and thus he left her alone with her thoughts while he feasted his eyes on the natural beauty of that place. Obviously, he had a preference for the Equestria Heartland, and the Crystal Empire had its own beauty, but Hippogriffia had one of its own too and made him think of those nice, exotic locations for vacations. He could easily imagine him having a nice vacation in that place, enjoying their beaches and their seaweed dishes. Oh… And coconut desserts and drinks. Yeah. That sounded like a good plan.

They spent quite a lot of time flying. Thankfully, Chocolate was on day with his flight training and that didn’t really bother him, even with his armor. The nice scenario certainly helped too, but they eventually arrived at their destination, and that was the beach at the shadow of Mount Aris, before the city that occupied the base of the mountain with Novo’s palace at the top.

Rather than landing on the beach or city Celestia flew all the way to the top and he followed, landing by the top of the impressive staircase that enlarged from the long one that came all the way from the base of the mountain. It fanned out and embraced the entrance to the palace, a silver-ivory base with a tall spire with the statue of a hippogriff at the top. Many windows in the rounded, dome-shape and a rounded archway for entrance.

They landed by the entrance to the palace and a couple of guards simply stared at them, not knowing what to do until the hippogriff queen rushed out the door, screeching to a halt when she saw them and flared her wings.

“For pony’s sake, Celestia! Would it kill you to let me know with some antecedence when you come?! I can’t prepare a half-decent welcome like that!”

The princess giggled. “I am sorry, Novo. But I came here as a friend. To talk about something important and rather urgent.”

They hugged each other, and for some reason, it filled Chocolate’s chest with a warm feeling.

“Can I offer you something to drink, at least?” The queen offered a paw after they let go of each other. “I mean, since you came all the way here, I assume you will wish to spend some time dealing with whatever.”

She stopped for a second and her fluffy ears flopped like a deflating balloon. “It’s about the taxation, isn’t it? I’m only doing this to protect Hippogriffia! I was going to tell you when I could prove that things were working!”

“I see.” Celestia actually looked curious rather than slighted or angry. “And are they working?”

“Of course!” The other grinned. “Yes. I think… Uh… I mean…”

Then she gave Princess Celestia the most apologetical smile Chocolate had ever seem. “Chancellor Gail says it is…”

“Did he tell you that he sent an army to the northern holds that support The Lion.” She said plainly. “That he ended basic income in the southerner holds and I bet he will go on a full out war against them with the money that should be going to his citizens... My griffon subjects. And that you are withholding supplies that they need to survive. Again, my griffon subjects. They will end up joining the Griffonian Standing Army against an enemy that they cannot defeat, and they will hate you because of what you are doing. They will see you as the reason they were forced into a war. When The Lion wins, the entire nation will have you and your people to blame for all their problems while The Lion will deliver all the food they could ever need as soon as he takes control of the nation, blaming you and Gail for their suffering. There will be months, if not days before he can justify a war against Hippogriffia to a nation full of angry griffons that will look at how well you are doing for yourselves while they starved!”

Novo gasped comically loud and almost jumped back. Chocolate supposed that royal decorum, or something, kept her from it.

Still… ‘You can’t be blunt’, she said… The alicorn thought to himself with a blank stare while the conversation unfolded before him. Seemed to have worked, though. Novo seemed to understand that she was digging her own grave.

“But… But Gail said…” The hippogriff didn’t know what to say, and her eyes shifted nervously while she still tried to stare at Celestia. She did the same nervous tap-dancing that ponies did when things were bad, though. He worried a bit that her two guards witnessed the whole thing. Novo had screwed up and these rumors could get out of control quickly. Celestia was too used to trusting her own guards’ discretion.

“I though… How… This… This is all wrong!” She whined. “I didn’t know that! Gail said that he meant to better control supplies so that he could make sure that the northerners wouldn’t get the stuff that they need.”

She also sat on the floor and held her head in that panicked way that ponies also did, including disheveled mane. Though hers was technically a crest of large feathers. It seemed to work the same way.

“By the Maelstrom! I feel like an idiot!”

“Now, now…” Celestia waved a hoof at her. “We can fix this. Please, order General Seaspray to allow the merchant ships through at the normal taxes.”

“I can’t!” She almost panicked again. “I have made a giant debt in the purchase of equipment and resources with the money from the taxes that the larger shipping companies agreed to pay! Griffonia will be broke overnight!”

Well, at least her general’s assessment wasn’t too wrong…

Celestia kept calm, though. “I will buy Hippogriffia’s debt and Gail will help deal with the backlash from all this, because he knows full well he is to blame, and so will know the whole world. Especially when he will be dealing with the loss of his mandate and charges for corruption and every single little petty thing I can pin on him after this stunt.”

Oh, boy… Gail’s gonna get his griffon ass roasted.

“Alright… Okay…” Novo breathed a little easier.

“Now, write a letter to Sultan Withen. Explain to him what I have explained to you and persuade him to open his ports for goods going to Griffonia. We caught this problem right on time and can fix things before it grows out of control. But actions must be taken with celerity.”

Novo nodded, more focused. It was that way Celestia spoke to them that made ponies (and hippogriffs) focus and get stuff done. “Yes. I will use the mirror.”

“Ask him to act immediately.” Celestia added. “I suspect that someone may be interfering on this whole affair and we must coordinate our actions before they have a chance to interfere again.”

“That sounds bad. And worrying.” The queen frowned and grimaced. “What is going on?”

“We are dealing with someone that knows how to get to us, Novo. I need to talk to you about some things that may come as a shock to you, but they are important.”

The queen nodded again but shifted her head curiously. “I’ll get us a private place to talk.”

Then Celestia turned to Chocolate. “Do you mind if I talk to Queen Novo alone?”

He simply shook his head. “Not at all. I’ll find something to make myself busy. Can I have my research stuff and a quiet room?”

Might as well make himself useful if she wouldn’t need him for a while.

Celestia nodded, and Queen Novo seemed curious, but she acquiesced. “That shouldn’t be a problem. I will ask the staff find you a place while I talk to Celestia.”

With that the two mares… Should he call Queen Novo a mare? They went inside and he remained behind for a second before he looked at the guards by the door. Apparently, they studied the same technique of pretending they weren’t there that the Royal Guards had perfected.

“So, can you guys be trusted not to go around squawking about that?”

The one on the right simply nodded all sure of himself and the other gestured shutting his beak.

“Cool. See you guys later, then.” He grinned and followed the two inside.

***

“We gotta do something to help Gilda, Twilight!” Rainbow hovered in front of the princess, flying backwards while she walked in the main hall of the airship’s aftercastle. “She’s our friend!”

Cadance and Shining went back to their room and Twilight decided she ought to do something instead of wasting her time on some pointless thing. She knew that the two probably had to see to Flurry heart, but she figured that she would better spend her time being useful somewhere else because in between the two of them and Miss Calcite, they had the baby under control. As much as it was possible to control Flurry Heart anyways.

“Don’t worry, Rainbow!” She stopped. “We will. Princess Celestia is going to do something herself. The problem is that for the time being, we’re stuck here. But I am worried about Gilda too.”

“Don’t worry, Rainbow Dash!” Spike raised a fist. “We’ll help Gilda as soon as we can. And Twilight said it, Princess Celestia knows something wrong is going on.” If there is one that can fix whatever the problem may be, it would be her!”

“This is all because that stupid Chancellor won’t let go.” Gracielle declared from behind them. “We didn’t want any of that mess he created. I didn’t even know that he had sent an army to Snow Mountains. All he was supposed to do was let go of his office and let griffons crown Lord Gilad already.”

“Why exactly are you hanging out with us?” Rainbow sneered at her.

“Ah… I guess the princess will give me back my baby if I learn some of that friendship stuff…”

“That screams second intentions…” Spiked crossed his arms at her.

“What am I supposed to do anyways?” Gracielle stopped with the drake in front of her. “I’m not going to beg!”

“Well, I think that is a great idea!” Twilight grinned. “Why don’t you go see how Spitfire is doing? Even if she doesn’t like you, that is a step in the right direction! We could all go, since Rainbow wanted to see her too!”

“Fine…” The griffon blushed a little and Rainbow didn’t like it at all. “I guess there is no harm in trying.”

“Works for me!” The princess grinned at her.

***

Cadence laid on her belly, on their bed with Flurry Heart between her forelegs and the baby played with a noisy toy hammer, hammering away at the sheets and entertained at the highest degree at the annoying squeaks that thing did every time. Cadance was too amused and enchanted by the filly’s delight to let that irritate her.

Miss Calcite sat by the side of the bed and just giggled at Flurry. Or at her. Cadance didn’t know for sure. What she did know was that Miss Calcite went above and beyond for them through that confused mess she had dragged them into, and she finally had a chance to say something.

“Thank you, Miss Calcite.” She spoke softly, still staring at the baby.

“Hum?” The crystal pony blinked at her.

“I don’t know if we could’ve dealt with this whole thing if you weren’t here to help us with Flurry heart.” Cadance let her head hang a little.

She blushed in an adorable shade of sparkly pink, as the crystal ponies did. “I’m just doing my job, Princess. I mean, you and Prince Armor did so much more for us. It’s been an honor, helping you with Flurry Heart, in reality. And you can count on me for anything!”

Cadance chuckled at her enthusiasm. “Thanks, Miss Calcite. I think that I will need to take you up on your offer.”

“I understand, Princess.” She lowered her muzzle sheepishly. “But please be careful. I die every time I see that you are putting yourselves in danger. You and Prince Armor are very important… I wish I knew better words to express that.”

Oh… That was so sweet. It really warmed Cadance’s heart. Not that she didn’t know that Calcite held them very close to her heart, but it was always so heartwarming to hear that. She really should do something nice to her.

“Don’t worry!” She grinned at the sweet crystal pony. “We will be very careful!”

“Well, I’ll do my best to help!” She giggled a little.

Almost on cue, Shining Armor came into the room from the corridor with a tray on his back that he magicked to the bed. It had a collection of mashed berries and some white yogurt on a small plate and with a small spoon.

“I bet she’ll like this! The cook said that his kid loved it and even I think it tastes delicious!” He smiled at Cadance while the little filly put up her hooves and called ‘da!’

Cadance giggled again. “Well, let’s try it, then.”

She picked the spoon in her telekinetic magic and scooped a sample of the now reddish yogurt to offer to the baby. But she was more interested in her toy and suddenly that wasn’t as cute as it was before.

Shining and Miss Calcite chuckled at Cadance’s expression. “Why do we even try?”

“Because it’s our job!” Shining did his best not to laugh.

“She’ll get hungry eventually!” Calcite giggled. “She’ll eat it all then.”

Cadance agreed, and then she just let the baby play with her toy. “Shinny, I need to talk to the griffon prisoner.”

“Hum…” He didin’t seem very excited about that, but as he always did, he had Cadance’s back. “Not gonna be easy. Princess Luna might be the best bet. And Grigory.”

“I also need to talk to Prince Grigory about his mate.” She rubbed a leg with the other. “There’s something weird going on in between them.”

“Well, we should be able to reach him easily enough.” Shining Armor agreed. “We better not waste too much time. We don’t know when they’ll be able to get their plan going. Twilight made it sound like it wasn’t very failproof.”

“It seems that time is important. I can watch over Flurry Heart if you need to go.” Calcite pipped. “I’ll just let her play and then offer her this to eat. It does smell delicious… As soon as she’s not so distracted anymore, she’ll want it.”

“Thank you miss Calcite.” Cadance stood carefully not to hurt the baby or spill the meal and joined Shinning on the side of the bed.

They left the room and then the aftercastle to take a ride in a flying chariot that had been made available to transport passengers between the airships. They flew over some pretty farmland and the clear sky made the whole thing as pleasant as it could be. It struck Cadance as curious how the hospital ship was different. Rather than a ship, it looked more like a building constructed on the hull of an airship. But she supposed it made sense. It was meant to have as much room as possible for the medical installations and not meant to see combat.

They landed on a designated area in the roof that was close to an entrance and next to a sort of external leisure area. Cadance meant to enter but Shining directed her at the other area where Grigory was with Gallensa and other griffons. The big and serious types that made her think of the Royal Guards, keeping watch while Grigroy talked to another griffon and Gallensa sat next to them, paying attention.

They talked in their different language when Cadance and Shining Armor arrived but silenced and Grigory turned to them. Gallensa just sat there with the wind in her feathers and pretended not to be interested.

“Princess Cadance. Prince Shining Armor. I’m afraid I need a favor.”

Well, good, because she needed one from him too, but she let him speak first and smiled.

“I need to see the deserter. It is important.” He declared with few niceties.

“Well, I wanted to see him too.” Cadance did her best not to grin.

“Maybe we can help each other?” Shining offered. “What can you tell us? Do you know why he deserted?”

“Grigory.” Gallensa called him and then spoke something in their language, but the shook his head and made a dismissive gesture after talking back to her.

Then he turned to Cadance and Shining Armor. “He is a good officer and I want him back. He deserted for a stupid reason and perhaps an agreement can be reached, somehow.”

Gallensa, seemingly disinterested, said something that sounded like a sarcastic remark and Grigory retorted crustily. It seemed rather bad from Cadance’s and Shining’s perspective, but the griffoness barely seemed affected.

Cadance looked at Shining Armor and he hummed. “I don’t know of any stories of something of the sort. Then again, we are not really in wartime. I think that if can talk to the princess and get her to understand the situation, maybe she could let him go. She probably got some information out of him.

Cadance gasped! “You’re trying to avoid him telling the princesses things!”

But Grigory shook his head. “He has been condemned to a personal torture because my mother has ideas some would consider unsavory and has been led to believe that he is less worthy than he really is. I want him back because he is a good soldier that didn’t deserve the treatment he received. I don’t care what he may have already told her. I doubt that even in treason he did much damage. Seems to me that his betrayal was more out of lack of options.”

“Can you explain what happened?” Cadance frowned and Shinning nodded.

“I will.” Grigory complied with a nod and Shining agreed with a nod.

“Let’s talk to Princess Luna. I’m sure she’ll meet us with Cadance and Twilight want it… We should look for her too. Princess Celestia is gone for the moment, and that may give us a hoof up, but it would be great if you explained to us what the whole thing is about before we met her.”

Cadance grinned. “Easy. Twilight should be talking to Spitfire right now and then we can go meet Princess Luna. With some luck, we may get to see this guy tomorrow, if not even tonight. She’ll probably want to speak to him before.”

Gigory nodded.

***

Twilight, next to Rainbow Dash and Spike skipped lightly on the beige-carpeted floor. Gracielle, the white and caramel griffoness followed, carrying a wrapped bouquet of daylilies in her beak.

Off the sides she could see the actual floor of the corridor, white as its walls. That wing of the hospital airship had more adequate ‘pony’ décor, with a few side tables every now and then with a potted plant. More colorful signs and nice looking light-orange doors to the rooms and the ceiling had pretty golden highlights with the magical light fixtures. Not that many medical staff and she wondered if it was some sort of place for the patients to recover after they were out of danger and closer care wasn’t needed anymore.

Not too deep past the living room that was the central hub for the corridors they found their destination, clearly identifiable by the two Wonderbolt stallions. Namely Thunderlane and Soarin. They sat in front of one of the doors and they talked friendly and excited to one another. Thunderlane said something, making gestures with his hooves, as though he was trying to simulate flying creatures.

With his back to their arrival, the gray and cyan pegasus didn’t notice their arrival, but the other frowned and pointed with a hoof. Not an ideal start.

She also noticed they wore the Wonderbolt’s light combat armor, complete with their wingblades and firearms strapped to their legs. She would be interested and curious if the excitement hadn’t fallen to glacial levels as soon as they were sighted.

Rainbow took the lead. “Hey guys!”

“Heya, Rainbow.” Soarin was friendly, but not much.

“Yo, Dash.” The other greeted her too. “I can get over fighting against us because of the Princess… I mean, that is kinda expected. But you got some unsavory company there.”

Gracielle stopped and blinked at the remark.

Twilight gave a nervous laugh. “Ah, ha ha… Hello there! Gracielle is here to apologize to Spitfire. She even brought some flowers she bought in the hospital’s gift shop!”

“Don’t know who that flat-face jerk is, do you Princess?” Soarin pointed a hoof and Thunderlane took a position by his side before he spoke.

“She was supposed to be a Wonderbolt. The Scout Division.” He accused her with a hoof. “She trained with us and the recruits and then ghosted on us. She was even going to get into the presentations team. The first griffon in the force was making it into the scouts and the PR team. We were bucking proud of her! Then she shows up and shoots the captain with real ammo!”

Gracielle blushed and picked up the flowers to show them. “Look guys… I brought these for Spitfire… I mean… I didn’t shoot her to kill, you know. It was part of the fight.”

“Stow it!” Thunderlane scared Twilight. “You’re not seeing the captain and I hope you choke on those things, bucking traitor!”

“I don’t care you came with the Princess.” Soarin added. “We’re gonna start a bucking mutiny if you don’t beat it! Like, right now!”

“You aren’t welcome, hairball!” The other concluded.

“Fine!” Gracielle finally flared her wings and threw the flowers to the floor. “Hope that jerk never flies again! Not like I care about any of you anyways!”

Then she stormed off, muttering about stupid ponies.

“Guys, you could’ve been nicer!” Twilight scowled at them. “She was trying.”

“Some things you don’t come back from, Princess.” Thunderlane frowned.

“Tell that to Princess Luna, will you?” Twilight argued back. “I’m disappointed in you guys! We’re supposed to be excellent to one another!”

“Yeah, she’s not ‘us’.” Thunderlane hoofed angrily at the carpet.

“You don’t get it, Princess!” Soarin insisted and the other nodded. “It’s gonna be a war and she’s gonna be shooting at us! She coulda killed Spitfire! You can’t fix that with Friendship!”

Instead of insisting, she just groaned, then Rainbow took the front. “Hey guys, can I see Spitfire?”

“Yeah, you can, Dash.” Soarin knocked on the door and then opened it for her to enter.

Twilight thought of going too in, but she honestly didn’t feel like it anymore. So, she turned on her hooves and walked away. Spike followed but didn’t say anything. She saw Shining Armor coming the way they had come.

“Hey, Twily. Got a minute?” He grinned.

“Yeah…” She didn’t feel very excited.

He stopped before her. “Grigory asked to see the deserter. Me and Cadie decided to go talk to Princess Luna. We could use your support.”

She nodded. At least that seemed like it was going to be interesting. If she can keep the griffons from fighting between themselves.

***

“It reminds me of Queen Chrysalis yelling at me.” Said the big changeling sitting in the chair.

It was a comfortable sitting room that Luna asked the Royal Guards to change the furniture around. It became a pair of pony sitting chairs in front of seven others occupied by Chrysalis big changeling soldiers. The queen sat with Luna, in front of them.

“Well, then.” Luna showed them another piece of carton. “What do you think this one looks like?”

The seven of them stared intently at the carton until one of them finally spoke.

“Queen Chrysalis angry!” He said. Luna didn’t know his name, but he looked around to the others and they agreed collectively with nods.

“What about this one?” Luna showed them the next carton with an inkblot.

“Queen Chrysalis telling me that I did something wrong.” The one known as Bossy declared and the others agreed with the same nods of certainty.

Luna stared at the inkblot herself, and then changed it for another. “What about this one?”

“Queen Chrysalis angry that I did something wrong!” The one that kept his hoof off the seat declared all certainty and the others agreed again.

“Is there any of these that doesn’t look like me to you?” Chrysalis took the cartons from Luna and threw them in floor before them. Luna blinked and waited while the seven changelings stared intently at the pictures in the floor.

“Aye!” One of the females chirped with her ears perking up and pointed at one of inkblots in the cartons. “This one looks like a pony telling me that Queen Chrysalis said I did something wrong.”

“Stupid test.” The Queen growled.

“I don’t think that the test is the problem, Chrysalis.” Luna frowned at her.

“Are you going to recycle us for that?” The scaredy one asked with her ears hanging and a sheepish stare.

“Will you stop with that?! I never said I would do anything like that!” Chrysalis did her best not to yell, but still raised her voice. At least the big changeling didn’t look so scared while Luna rubbed a leg on her chin.

“I know! I want you to draw the Reclaimer for me!” Luna grinned and offered each of them a clipboard with a series of colored pencils. “Take all the time you need and put as many details as you wish into it. Use all the colors that you need, and you don’t have to be ashamed of anything. Anything at all.”

Chrysalis sighed. “They’re just going to draw me, Luna.”

“Don’t interfere with them.” The princess admonished and hoofed at the queen’s shoulder.

“I don’t know what the Reclaimer looks like, though.” The one with the lame hoof looked at them.

The one next to him shrugged and the female one on the other side pointed at the scaredy female. “She’s the only that’s seen the Reclaimer.”

For some reason that worried Luna. “I see. What was your name again?”

The one they pointed had already started drawing, with her green tongue hanging off the side of her mouth, but she looked up to speak. “I’m Lusty.”

Luna blinked, looked at Chrysalis and she groaned. “We already stablished I gave them terrible names! Can we get over this, please? Her name was going to be even worse!”

“She is the only one that goes on and on about that Princess Luna.” Bossy rose a hoof and spoke. “We don’t really have a clue what’s she on about.”

“I see…” Luna muttered. “Anyways, I want you to draw the Reclaimer for us. And I want the others to draw what you think the Reclaimer looks like. Can you do that?”

They nodded and set to work. Luna spoke again “We’ll be gone for a while, but we will be back. We will be just in the other room. Take your time.”

She picked up the cartons with the inkblots and walked through the door with Chrysalis who followed her. Then she closed the door.

“I don’t think that this is working, Luna.” Chrysalis complained and let her ears fold down at the same time her ‘crown-thingy’ flattened, but Luna shook her head.

“You’re just impatient. You must be patient.” The princess gestured so with a hoof. “They will likely complain a lot of you. Indirectly. But we’ll eventually reach something we can explore to help them alleviate their apprehensions of you. Without that over their heads, we can give them the cognitive tools to deal with stress and they will grow more secure and happy. And happier makes for better soldiers, workers, friends… Everything.”

“They often seem foalish, however. I find it curious. It may be due to their anxiety.” Luna shrugged. “Anyways… We are on a path to help them.”

The new room had a few sitting chairs for ponies and a table with cookies and different drinks meant for the changelings once they were done, but Luna felt like there should be enough. So, she sat at one of the chairs while Chrysalis took another for herself.

“How about you tell me what you felt when you realized there was a problem with them?” Luna asked casually.

“What? Oh… I… Oh, no. We are not doing this!” Chrysalis frowned and shook her head.

Luna just stared at her and noted some things down in a clipboard. “Um-hum. And why are you so insecure about this?”

“Cease with this, Luna!” Chrysalis growled while the blue alicorn noted some more things down.

“Ah-ha… And what scares you the most about exploring that subject?” She looked intently at Chrysalis, but she simply remained silent.

Still Luna wrote some more. “And just when did you think you started projecting your mother into Celestia?”

“For the love of everything that is sacred, stop!” Chrysalis blushed madly and covered her face with a leg.

“I’m kidding. I’m not even writing anything.” Luna laughed and showed her the empty paper.

Chrysalis didn’t know exactly she was going to do, but before she did, Luna spoke a little too seriously. “I think I need to take a closer look at Lusty.”

She raised an eyebrow at the name. “I find it curious that she can recall memories of the Reclaimer, whatever it is, but the others can’t. It may simply be the case that she has a more active imagination, but I can’t shake the feeling that something different happened to her.”

Chrysalis shrugged. “I can’t tell you. I never did anything different with any of them… I… I never paid her much attention in that regard.”

She silenced and turned her stare down, but Luna didn’t react. Simply kept thinking until someone knocked on the door and she said they could enter. It was one of her thestral guards.

“Princess. Princesses Twilight and Cadance with Prince Shining Armor, Master Grigory and one of his officers wish to see you. With urgency, if possible.” He formally declared from the door.

Since Chrysalis didn’t seem ready to complain, she told the guard to let them in, comfortable that there should be seating for all of them. Cadance came first, then Grigory, followed by Shining Armor, Gallensa and a griffon of shades of metallic gray she didn’t know. Seemed rather young, as the other griffons. Following them came Twilight and Spike.

“Why is it that whenever I want to talk this thing is in the way?” Grigory complained, staring at Chrysalis.

“The Swarm is inevitable, Grigory.” Chrysalis told him all ominous, but at the same time disinterested.

“I’m sorry but do you mind leaving us alone for a while, Chrissy?” Cadance smiled at her. “We need to talk to Aunt Luna about the griffon deserter.”

“Yes, I do.” She just said nonchalantly. “Now you’ve made me curious.”

“Fine. Whatever.” Grigory groaned with a frown at the changeling “I must see the deserter, Princess.”

“That would be a very bad idea.” Luna shook her head. “He is not mentally sound.”

“I have the solution to that.” Grigory looked at the griffon they brought with them.

Luna frowned a little and looked at the other griffons. She knew Gallensa, but the other one was new. “I imagine you are his friend.”

“He’s told you about me?” He seemed embarrassed of something.

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” Luna gestured to the seats. “Make yourselves comfortable. We should have some time to spare. Start by telling me what exactly you want with him, Grigory.”

“He is an exceptionally good officer. I wish to have him back in our military.” The griffon prince explained it as simple and plainly as he could have. Gallensa yawned into her paw.

Shining gestured a hoof as he spoke. “I know that the reason deserters aren’t returned is to protect them from retaliation. But Prince Grigory has convinced me that he means to fix the problem. And that he has the means to do it.”

“Let us not jump to conclusions.” Luna nodded. “Explain to me the Court of The Harpy, Grigory. I don’t think that the situation can be fixed right now. He has told me that he is forbidden from marrying… Mating… As ridiculous as this sounds, even from producing offspring… Because he is impure. It seems that your mother has deemed him so.”

“You can start by saying how you know of The Harpy.” Chrysalis added with her own accusing glare. “I consider this issue slightly more important than some random griffon grunt.”

Grigory didn’t like it, much less because Chrysalis was there, it seemed, but he directed his words at Princess Luna and sounded incredibly frustrated. “The Cult of The Harpy is transmitted from a generation to the next. Every year we have a festival. The Gathering Storm. Griffons from every village gather in their lieges’ castles and halls and it is the responsibility of the Lady of each city to sing the Cry of The Harpy to our youngest. But there is more to it. When they arrive, the Loremasters will scout out the best and purest examples of each of the main lineages of griffons and mark them with a brooch, or a scarf. After the traditional retelling of the Cry of The Harpy, those old enough are taken to a party with copious amounts of good food and alcoholic beverages. They are introduced to the older members of the Court and taught about the value of their strong blood. And also, things that adult griffons do.”

“Glorious!” Chrysalis laughed and clopped her hooves together. “It’s an annual orgy of horny griffons with a superiority complex!”

“That won’t purify the lineages.” Luna complained, not amused. “All that does is mix them further in between themselves.”

“By purifying, the objective is to clear away the lineage that gave rise to the hippogriff and that miscegenated with them. Actually, purifying the individual ancient lines is a future goal and not that important.” Grigory explained and explained further on because Luna’s frown didn’t seem very friendly or satisfied. “Hippogriff have transmitted pony blood to us, which interferes with our ability to access our most powerful magical abilities.”

“This is infuriating.” Luna whined with a hoof on her forehead before glaring at the young griffon. “I swear I would adore your traditions if they were turned to something less destructive than a tool of discrimination.”

The princess shook her head, frustrated. “Even if that is true, griffons seem to be doing rather well in places where they commune with ponies and hippogriffs. It seems petty and unnecessary. Not to mention that griffons don’t stop considering their blood superior when the festivals end… Discriminating against and spreading hateful notions about hippogriffs and even ponies is not enough, you have to deem your own as inferior too.”

Grigory sighed. “Females of higher social standing are taught to identify the traits of a ‘good griffon’, and they can be rather cruel with the ones of lower standing. Less privileged females will mimic that, and the result is a whole slew of young, disillusioned griffons that believe they are inferior. Add to that that the Court is mystified beyond reason and that members can only mate or even approach other members.”

“Hum… “What is keeping the ‘lesser griffons’…” Twilight made giant air quotes. “From being with other griffons of their standing?”

“Some of them just accept that they are inferior and mate normally with females of their standing. It’s not only the males too… Females of lower standing suffer just the same. Others don’t deal very well with it. Some will never meet a mate that will accept them. They usually focus on their jobs. Others seem ready to spend their lives trying to prove that they are good enough and suicides are not unheard of.” He sighed again. “Though Loremasters will discourage suicides by appealing to their sense of duty to our race. Which is exactly what they did to Grinolf.”

“For how long?” Luna asked.

“Not too long.” He shook his head. “Lady Gwendolen was the one that implemented this system when I was a cub. Princess, I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.”

“You are hurting your own efforts.” Luna shook her head, mystified. “I could imagine the whole battle going vastly differently if Celestia had feared you could hurt Chocolate Velvet. Whatever it was that you wanted, you might have achieved it if you hadn’t driven one of your own into hopelessness.”

“I am well aware of that, Princess.” Grigory grunted. “That is why I want to fix the situation.”

“This whole thing is just cruel!” Twilight cried. “Everyone should have a chance of a happy and fulfilling life.”

“Excuse, me Princess…” Gallensa frowned. “Nothing is keeping them from a happy life. They just can’t find an opposite gender mate and produce cubs of their own. Hardly an issue for most professions. Or am I expected to put up with an ugly duckling because he is sad he can’t get laid? Nothing is keeping them from mating together all they want and adopting some orphaned cub.”

“Well, there is another side to this story, isn’t there?” Cadance raised her voice and almost scared Twilight and the yellow griffoness when she walked to her and glared at a wide-eyed Gallensa. “You have a few ‘high-value’ males that bring competition that won’t leave couples in peace. Right?”

Then Cadance turned to Grigory. “But I suppose that this is not a problem, since a male can impregnate many females, especially if all that matters is the purity of their bloodline. Whoever is behind this is making a cruel and demeaning breeding project with your race and must stop!”

Luna waited for a second before Cadance calmed herself. “Tell us more about Grinolf.”

His friend, Gonrur spoke, rising a paw. “When we arrived at Griffindel for the Gathering Storm a Loremaster identified us as members of the Court right at the gates. We enlisted to The Lion’s army and the soldiers and other griffons that saw we had the brooches started telling us about the Court. I mean… It is exciting. You find out that you are special, and everyone starts treating you different. After Lady Gwendolen sang the Cry of the Harpy to us, we were taken to a place called the Sanctum, but I lost contact with Grinolf. I only found him three days later half-drunk and passed out on the street outside the inner gate.”

“Worst. Winggriffon. Ever!” Spike pointed an accusatory claw at him.

“It’s not my fault!” Gonrur defended himself. “I thought he was having fun in the party!”

“What actually happened?” Luna insisted.

“Well, by what he told me, Lady Gwendolen dragged him out of there and took him to one of her Loremasters. They looked at the records for Brokenhorn, where we lived, and they found that his family had come from Beachhome and he had a hippogriff ancestor. Then I found him. Only reason he wasn’t discharged dishonorably for the state he was found was that I vouched for him to Lord Gilad. Lady Gwendolen even was against that. She got furious and yelled at him. Said he ought to know his place and that he would be a liability.”

“You have to let me take him back.” Grigory spoke again. “If I don’t, Lady Gwendolen’s appraisal of him will be justified in the eyes of others. I will place him back in his position… Or something of equal importance now that the Skoll has been destroyed and let him show his competence. I will take a good soldier before any pureblooded noble from Griffindel any day.”

“That is never going to work.” Luna shook her head. “He’s already ingrained that he is inferior and now that his desertion has led to the destruction of the airship, he will never be accepted back. I would fear for his life.”

“Give him to me.” Cadance put a hoof on her chest.

“I don’t know, Cadance…” Twilight’s ears pulled down. “Something tells me that he would want to be with the ‘cool griffons’ and not with the ponies.”

Luna nodded, but still thought for a second before she spoke. “What do you have in mind, Cadance?”

“I’m gonna find him a nice, non-crazy, griffon to marry.” She grinned. “All that nonsense of impurity is going to fall apart with a little acceptance.”

“I am not willing to give him away.” Grigory complained and waved a paw hastily. “I only told you all that because I expected that he would be returned home!”

“You already lost him. Cadance will try her way. If that fails, I will try mine.” Luna declared with finality and stared harder at Grigory. “Perhaps you should take this lesson back to Griffindel and show Lady Gwendolen that she is wrong and causing more trouble than her purity nonsense is worth.”

Luna sighed after an instant. “I will ask him if he would be willing to give his old lieges a second chance. Because you have failed him, not the other way around. But the decision will be his.”

***

Walking in the snow wasn’t as bad as it could have been since Discord could keep his feet above it but flying became impossible as he distanced himself from the city and the winds became harsher and harsher. His beard had frozen three times over, already.

But at least he made progress and could already hear the Windigos in the wind. They weren’t happy he was there. As though he intruded in their territory and that was exactly what he wanted. All he needed was for them to grow weary of his presence and make themselves present so that they could talk.

As much as they could talk.

If they could talk at all.

Well, he had already accepted that his plan was crazy. Making it work should be trivial for someone crazy enough to come up with the idea.

He stopped walking. Magic coalesced fast, draining from thin air into the frozen ground and a snow leopard rose, growling and staring with cold malevolent lights for eyes.

“Oh, come on!”

The thing lunged at him and Discord screamed turning and running. “Stop! Sit! Aaaah! I just want to talk to your masters!”

After a short chase, the creature jumped and latched on to Discord’s arm, but he didn’t feel a thing.

“Oh…” The snow leopard stared at him and chewed insistently without causing any harm.

“Get off! I’m here to talk!” He shook his arm up and down, flailing the monster around, but it didn’t let go. The howling wind filled with malevolent magic just made the whole thing more ridiculous until Discord stopped and materialized a T-bone steak he slapped the magical creature with a few times. “Here! Go get it! Go!”

When he threw it, the snow leopard let go of his arm and chased the flying piece of meat until it was simply undone when the magic that animated it dissipated. Something about it disturbed Discord and he became sad for a second.

But he didn’t have much time to process that. The storm clouds opened with a strange howling neighing that not only hit him with its weirdness, but also with the bizarre and distorted magic it carried, manifested in snowfall as harsh as it was malevolent.

He covered his face. “Yeah, yeah… Evil incarnate and all that stuff. Been there, done that… I get it. Come on! It is in your interest that you listen to me.”

He could see them from under his arm. Galloping in the air around him with their ghostly forms. The storm so violent he figured it would have ripped apart a normal being. “Come on! We need to talk. It’s all I’m asking!”

They responded with stronger winds that almost made him lose his balance and a wailing neigh that would have chilled a less powerful soul. “Do you guys want the Black Sun? Is that what you want? Because that is what you will get if you don’t listen to me! Things are great the way they are. You got your own piece of the world and you can keep entertaining yourselves playing chicken with the griffons and making evil plans about how you’re going to overwhelm the ponies on the other side. We all have it nice, and nobody wants it to stop!”

The winds calmed and he managed to lower his arm. Well, at least they’re willing to listen to him.

Then their malevolent magic hit him like a hammer to the chest, and he actually felt it this time. They spoke directly to whatever part of his being hurt like that and whatever they sounded like, it made him think of pure and simple corruption with the guttural sound of fear itself.

“Hundreds of moons ago we spoke to the Griffon King. We counseled him he flirted with annihilation and that he brought wanton slaughter and debauchery to his kind. That, as the one before him, he too would sacrifice his race on the altar of Her debased ego. He ignored us, delighted in surrender to the Raptor Queen, and he told us it is the nature of all things that they should end. If they so did in spectacle and that he would have part in it, all the better.”

Welp…

“And so…” The monsters roared on inside his mind. “Since countless existences before, the Matriarch of the Great Herd and the Mother of Storms wage their endless war, and mortals dance to their insane aria, and will continue to do so without end.”

“Wait!” Discord shook his head. “You mean… The problem is that she and Celestia can’t figure out how to coexist in peace?”

He had some notion that could be the case, but he hadn’t figured that Celestia was part of the problem. Well, that was good! If both had to compromise, it would actually be easier!

“All we have to do is get them to understand that they have to play nice and make the ponies and griffons play nice too. Or everybody loses.” He opened his arms as though it was easy. Well, it would be easier than seeing everything ending. “Twilight Sparkle and her friends can help them reach a middle ground. Help me reach her and get her a message!”

“You misunderstand. Such is the fate of all beings tied to Creation. Their unfathomable presence drives mortals to worship. They feed their endless hunger and unyielding power makes for poor anchor to sanity as mortals themselves justify their own madness through them. Yet letting go is beyond them and they cannot see it for themselves. Doom is only avoided is if they are themselves disallowed a presence in the realm of the mortals.”

Discord frowned. Did they mean that the problem that caused everything to break came from the Alicorn Goddesses? That wasn’t true! The ponies themselves caused that. He saw Luna become Nightmare Moon and return. He knew the tales of Celestia and what she did to the unicorn kings, he saw how deep she fell, but she has recovered. Fluttershy made him see that he was wrong. Twilight and Cadance were probably the most mentally sound of the four! If The Harpy wanted to destroy Celestia and would cause her to fight back, then they would stop her too, because he knew that Celestia, after all she had been through would chose peace over war! Always!

“There has to be a way!” He certainly didn’t want to die. He liked it damn much to be alive and he didn’t have the time to stop and think if everything could be blamed on the alicorns. “Celestia and Luna… Cadance and Twilight… And I include myself. We managed to live in peace. The Harpy can learn it too!”

The monsters laughed in the wind. “The Mother reigns supreme, and her authority is not challenged. The Harpy will not compromise for anything less than all. It will invariably escalate to war on a scale as of yet unseen, and inevitably to end everything with the Black Sun. Thus has been witnessed and thus has been deemed true.”

“I will prove you are wrong!” He pointed a claw at the circling wind. “Take a message to Twilight Sparkle! Tell her that Lady Gwendolen is the Harpy and that she has to find a way to get her and Princess Celestia to coexist. Or they will drag the ponies and griffons in their war.”

He made a small pause for dramatic effect. “Or else you and your smugness are going to end too. You may not agree with me, but it is still your best chance at surviving yourselves! Because if you don’t, all you’ll do is sulk here in the Frozen North and wait for them to decide your fate!”

He didn’t know how effective he was, but the wind mostly ceased, and everything returned to normal, despite the chilling cold. It seemed as though they decided they would help.

And Discord had a few things to ask Lord Gilad.

He started on his way back to Griffindel. Better not to waste time and take a risk Lady Gwendolen will figure out what he did.

He stopped for a second with huge eyes and a hanging jaw. Holy cow… He just sent the Windigos after Twilight!

He shrugged and resumed his walk. Eh… She should be fine. It was not like they could actually leave the Frozen North anyways.

Love Hurts

Gund had done everything he could, but it was simply unfair. What could they have done against Princess Luna? There simply was no way he and Geanna could have stopped Princess Luna!

Their mission demanded they protected the museum and Master Gabriel, but even with the assistance they got from the others in Thunderpeak, it was simply impossible. They had none of the modern weapons from Snow Mountains, they didn’t have enough griffons and the continued operation of their undercover unit required they remained… Well, undercover.

Later he knew it was Master Gabriel's daughter that led Luna to them and that it was thanks to the princesses meddling in stuff. It seemed like pure, dumb bad luck that got them in that situation.

He didn’t know what time it was, but there was a little light coming in from his window, so it was probably still early in the night. It seemed to be the moonlight or some of the public lighting, he hadn’t bothered looking outside since they left him in this cell, separated from the others. Maybe they thought that he was too frail to be with the other big griffons?

Sitting in the corner of his cell, the dark one far from the barred window and the bars, he kept his head low. At least they put him on an empty cell. He didn’t know if he could handle being put in a common cell like a common criminal, filled with criminals. Not that he was scared, but he was disgusted. Not only those griffons didn’t do anything about the ponies and the present state of Griffonia, but they were also so selfish.

He sighed. And did nothing more because there simply was nothing to do. A dark corridor past the bars, with just enough light that he could walk around his cell without stubbing his paws. He had a cot and even a bathroom with a door, which he supposed was a luxury.

He sighed again and hoped Geanna was alright. Of course, they had put her in another cell since she was female. It was probably for the best, though. He didn’t feel very well right then and didn’t want his colleague to see him in that state.

The heavy door in the corridor creaked and some additional light entered, only for it to creak again and them shut the extra light out. Soft paws sounded on the stone floor until a young female griffon with a light green body and green tinted-white head appeared with a plateful of food held in her beak.

Half of a prench bread with tomato sauce and some herbs, spaghetti with more tomato sauce, a piece of cheese, a cheese and guava fried sweet and a box of apple juice (Sweet Apple Acres). Seriously?

She wore the Thunderpeak local militia griffon armor with the insignia of the city, a thunderstorm over a mountain on a blue field and a pretty pink flower on her bang feathers. He legitimately thought she was pretty, looking at her while she opened a small hatch in the bars and pushed his plate in. It had a small fork and a rounded knife. It was a shame she worked for the ponies. Or rather the griffons that governed the city and that worked for the ponies.

“Hey. You didn’t dine, and it’s almost midnight.” She spoke softly. He didn’t move, though. He didn’t feel like eating, much less any of the pony-approved crap he’d spent his whole life tolerating. He just stared for a second and turned his eyes down. “Come on! This is not bad. I know it’s not five stars, but meat is kinda expensive right now. We couldn’t afford it for dinner ourselves.”

He rose his head to stare at her with his most intimidating glare. “Shouldn’t that tell you something?”

She wasn’t impressed, though. “Yeah! It tells me that you guys are ruining it for everyone, including yourselves. The Princess already said that The Lion can be the king of the griffons and that he can reform Griffonian government however he likes as long as he follows the regulations put forward in the Hall of Friendship. What else do you guys want?”

“For one, I’d really appreciate it if the ponies stopped telling me what I can or can’t eat!” He grumbled. He wanted to sound menacing, but he got the feeling that he came out more like a whinny kid than a fearsome predator. He went on, either way. “Why do you let the ponies decide what you can eat?”

“I don’t, you dummy. I eat ‘pony food’…” She emphasized the air quotes. “Because I like it. I eat fish, and I like it! You could eat fish too. It is delicious. I mean, you could be eating fish right now if Queen Novo hadn’t started taxing everything because of you northerner dumbasses.”

“So what? Cows and deer have fee-fees, but fishes don’t? How do you make sense out of that?”

“It’s a compromise. If Princess Celestia really weighted in like you guys try, she could outright ban all sorts of meat and she could easily get away with it. It is also a big difference between the fish and hooved animals that only you guys don’t see because it goes against this idea that you guys want to push that the ponies are evil conquerors.”

“She’d have a war is what she’d have. This is so much bullshit. The reason fishes are allowed is because Queen Novo is Celestia’s pal and because they pretty much live on selling fish, kelp and pearls!”

The griffoness stared at the ceiling and grunted. “Look, I brought you food because you haven’t eaten since they brought you in, and I feel bad for you. I mean, I’ve arrested a bunch of bad griffons, and you don’t look like one of them. We just need to work our differences out, but it’s just not going to happen if you guys keep shooting princesses. I heard one of you tried murder some noble in Canterlot and he even shot at Princess Celestia. Your boss shot at Princess Luna because you were doing something shady. He used magical disruption rounds. Those are banned unless you’re shooting at nasty magical monsters that can’t be hurt otherwise! How crazy is that?”

He could have made a point of the princess being a nasty magical monster, but he doubted much would’ve been gained from it. Instead, he kept his mind to more practical questions. He frowned. “What exactly have we been accused of? Not doing what the princess wanted?”

“You know that is actually a crime, right?” She grinned all sarcastic at him. “But no. The Princesses just don’t push their authority like that. You’re being accused of conspiracy and treason. Princess Luna found something bad in the museum and you guys don’t help your case by shooting at her. You’re associated with a separatist group that has no problems preaching war. Come on! Nobody wants a war. Life is too important to lose over petty stuff like hunting rights! We had two wars over that already! Isn’t it about time we at least tried a compromise like the Princess is trying? Please, think about this.”

Finally, she left, and his head hung again, but his thoughts turned a little. Maybe she was right. Things just happened and nobody really did anything to protect him, Geanna or Master Gabriel. Some of Master Gabriel’s friends did try to defend him, but they were in a really bad spot against Princess Luna and her Royal Guards.

That is, he had done everything he was supposed to. He could even say that he went above and beyond the call of duty: he put his life at risk against Luna’s Royal Guards. He grabbed a gun and shot at Royal Guards!

Maybe the whole thing was just a waste of time. He was supposed to earn a living in Snow Mountains, with a bunch of money and a nobility title. Not that he was doing it for the money or prestige. Well, maybe the prestige, but those were supposed to come to those who served The Harpy. Had all his revelations and all the promises She whispered to him been his imagination?

He sighed deeply and touched his forehead. Man… He looked at his ration. Fuck that. He wasn’t going to eat that ‘pony approved’ crap. He was supposed to be eating elk and such in Snow Mountains by now! Well, it looked like that was the end of it. Hopes, dreams and promises crashing down with the sound of a jail door.

Then the corridor’s door opened again. He didn’t look that time, but someone stopped in front of his cell and drew his attention. When he looked up, he saw the most beautiful griffon lady he had ever seen. He even thought for a second he was dreaming, with the surreal lighting that flooded the corridor from the door and her light blue coat that looked like steel and silvery feathers. And she was big with a devilish gleam in her blue eyes.

“Hello, cutie.” She said, all impish.

He gawked at her. “Who... Who are you?!”

She grinned again. “That depends, if you can you hear the storm.”

He gasped and he must have looked very silly because her grin showed it. He hesitated for a second before he grabbed his wits. “I can hear Her cry!”

“Then I guess I’m your friend and that we share a few acquaintances.” She winked at him.

Her grin changed to a knowing smile and right after another griffon came in, rushing and carrying some keys with his beak. He was a rather old gray and white griffon with the local militia’s leather armor. Yellow eyes that practically screamed of barely contained dread. Was that the Lord Protector? The head of the local militia?

“I’m terribly sorry, Lady Gwineth. It’s just that... Well… Princess Luna. And the Royal Guard. Just… Just, please tell Lady Gwendolen that we had to follow orders and… And…”

Lady Gwineth? Holy shit, The Swordmaiden! She existed! She actually existed and she was right there! Digging him out of jail!

She put a finger in front of her beak. “Just get it done… Nobody likes it when griffons mew around like scaredy ponies. This one too.”

Shaking paws, he barely managed to get the key into the lock and opened his cell. “I’m sorry, young sir. We were in a bad spot there. You know. With the princess… And…”

“Yeah.” Gund wasn’t impressed, walking out, and tried to look tough for the Swordmaiden. “Sure. Can we get Geanna out?”

“Way ahead of you.” The griffoness grinned a little more, speaking with a soft voice that managed to be soothing and threatening at the same time, and put her paw on his back, a bit more touchy-feely over his fur than he’d like, but he didn’t think he was in a position to complain. She was also a whole head taller than he was, and not to mention larger and bulkier. To be honest, she was plain scary! “She’s waiting outside.”

She let him walk and followed him out, through the other cells occupied by other griffons. That had nothing to do with the whole affair in the museum. Actual criminals, he was sure.

Once outside the local militia headquarters the air was plain cold and he refrained a shudder, but he saw not only Geanna under the soft public lights, but all the other griffons that were involved in the museum affair. They, some seven griffons, stared at the two and he looked up at that Gwineth. “I figured Princess Luna would’ve left her own guards to ensure that nothing like… This… Would happen.”

“She did.” Gwineth explained with some exaggerated if uninterested paw gestures. “But they got a letter from Princess Luna telling them that the prisoners would be transferred by train to Griffonstone and that they were supposed to split into one team teleporting to the destination and the other waiting for you in the station here. So, we just have to wait for them to get out of the way in the teleporter and get you guys to Griffonstone.”

“Uh… What are we gonna do there?” Geanna asked. “Shouldn’t we hide?”

“Of course not. We’re gonna bust Master Gabriel out. Gotta show those pony princesses they can’t just fuck around with us like that anymore. Didn’t you hear that things are changing? There’s a storm in the horizon.”

Her haughty smirk was met with chuckles and cocky smiles from the others and Gund himself let his face show a very content grin while Geanna elbowed him with her own smirk.

He smiled back at Geanna. He thought that the feeling associated with getting free of jail and then recruited for a dangerous, potentially lethal mission should be fear. Instead, what he felt was a happy resolve. Like what had just happened confirmed all the leaps of faith and the unsure moments when he listened to Master Gabriel speaking of the Northern Holds, all their cells ready to spring into action and the teachings of The Harpy.

***

The Break of Dawn flew peacefully over the pony farms of Mareland County. Her powerful magic engines, more silent than expected, kept her at a steady speed, leading the rest of the fleet in their peaceful cruise.

Night advanced and most of the fleet slept. Crewponies kept the airships functioning, though not many of them would be up: most slept and only skeleton crews remained for the night shift, in such a pleasant cruise over the Equestrian Heartland. It was probably the safest place in the entire world.

Most of the guests aboard the airship slept, and that included Princess Luna, who appreciated the whole bed in the royal quarters only for herself and had a huge smile on her face, spreading to every corner of the bed that was physically possible.

In her own room, Chrysalis slept peacefully hugging her toy called Thorax who appreciated the snuggling, but the creepy green eyes in the dark kept him awake and trying his best not to wake Chrysalis or disturb her guards in the room.

Not all slept, though, as Twilight Sparkle had her room’s sitting area converted to a nice dinner for two and had procured a nice romantic dinner of grilled vegetables and some Duskshine Sang Royal from the galley. There was something titillating in having dinner with her coltfriend and a bottle of exclusive wine named after her. She didn’t know what had Flash Sentry so on edge though.

Unknown to Flash Sentry, her brother and his captain in the next room was fast asleep, next to Cadance and both nestled Flurry Heart in between them while Miss Calcite slept in another bed.

In the hospital airship Rainbow Dash downed a whole bottle of Sweet Apple Acres cider while standing on a table and her Wonderbolt companions chanted her name. Also included were her friends Pinkie Pie and Applejack that joined the chanting and Fluttershy that cheered quietly. Starlight Glimmer covered her mouth and giggled at the scene.

Rarity didn’t sleep either. She remained by Twilight’s door with her ear stuck to it.

In another wing of the many rooms in the Break of Dawn, Grigory slept with Gallensa in their room, Gewehr slept with Gracielle in theirs. The big Gray slept alone and Garvie sat on a couch in his room, sleeping with a small book on his lap.

And while Princess Luna explained to Cozy Glow why she couldn’t rule Equestria, not even in her dreams, Grigory woke to the sound of thunder. It used to startle him, but as he grew, that changed. Already standing on his four legs, he blinked twice and looked around the balcony, a solid piece of black marble with the symbol of the griffon wings inlaid with black and white gold. Mountain peaks surrounded them, peeking out of the clouds that carpeted the sky below them. A lightning flashed beneath, lighting the whole cloud and its plume rose to the starry sky.

The same tower he had visited many times, both in his dreams and in his waking hours, days of travel past the frontier to the Frozen North. What remained of the Stormy Eyrie, nothing but an obsidian black tower at the top of the highest mountain.

He could hear crying. Not weeping, but the ‘raptor’s cry’ that the northerners did. Not of anger either, but as a salutation.

His friends stood with him, taking the moment to reorient themselves.

Gallensa coughed awkwardly. “Do you guys believe there are dead griffons living in the caves? This is weird.”

“This is inside Lady Gwendolen’s head, right?” Their physician friend shrugged. “I never heard of ponies living inside Celestia’s head. It just sounds strange and not likely.”

“Oh boy…” Gewehr properly summed up the general feeling with a worried frown and rubbind his paws nervously rather than participating in the conversation. “I’m more worried about what we did wrong for her to summon use here.”

Gracielle started counting on her fingers. “Left with a secret airship, lost said airship, got captured, probably screwed everything up…”

“Shut up, Elle.” Grigory started towards the giant black metal doors and his tone matched his mood. “All of you.”

He stopped for a second. “It’s not ‘caves’. They sculpted mansions out of the rocks. In reality, they are in the actual Stormy Eyrie. Resting. But it’s been abandoned since the Windigos claimed it. They sleep, safe inside her tower, until their souls are ready for rebirth. But through her we are all connected. All the griffons that have opened themselves to her, that is.”

She huffed at his offense but didn’t think much of it. She knew Grigory was in a bad mood and that was all. At least he had used the caring nickname and explained that weird stuff. She stopped next to him as he opened the doors.

He kept talking, knowing what she was going to ask, while he grasped the handle in the door. “The more griffons believe in her, the more powerful she will become. And if she can force her way into their heads, she can enforce ‘belief’. But more than that, the more griffons do things, her way, the more powerful she will become too.”

“That’s creepy.” Gracielle whined. “Do we really want that?”

“We don’t have a choice. And more important, we are on her good side. I suppose Celestia could enforce such a system upon the creatures that rest on the Pool of Souls, but she doesn’t.” He pulled one of the doors open and walked inside, followed by the others. “I don’t know why. After our conversation, I could imagine that she would since she believes herself the goddess. Maybe she thinks it would be wrong. Hell if I can understand ponies.”

“She probably didn’t want us having ‘ideas’ and didn’t touch on the subject.” The big soldier-like Gray walked close. “She doesn’t know The Harpy is alive.”

Black glassy stone for walls, floor, and high rising ceiling. Iron statues of beautiful griffonesses holding torches circled the room and provided an eerie flickering light. To the side, the wall had a discreet arcing passage that he knew led upstairs.

Also providing light was the large fire in the center of the room where two carcasses of caribou, complete with their antlers just because she liked, roasted and filled the room with the smell of roasting meat and burning fat. Small tables held all sorts of drinks.

The tip-tapping of their paws echoing in the large hall, they proceeded further into it, where different griffons, richly dressed as nobles from the northern lands and from the desert lands of their past littered around in the place, watching the new arrivals, drinking something, talking reservedly amongst themselves. Some of them greeted him and his friends, albeit respectfully. Some called him Emperor.

Grigory didn’t know if they were real. They might as well be delusions created by her not particularly sane mind, but they might as well be his ancestors. He could see the traits of their lineages, as she had taught him. He hasn’t had the courage to actually talk to one of them yet, and they respected him and the distance he maintained.

And by ‘she’ Grigory meant the large griffoness that sat on her throne. At the top of a few steps, flanked by two obsidian statues of herself, laying on the floor, with raised heads staring down and also open wings, stretched to the ceiling. An argument could be made about the room’s high ceiling being necessary to fit her ego, but Grigory generally liked her, and he was simply in a bad mood. More than that, the statues had pyres with tall flames in between their forelegs, and also arching headdresses made of gold.

She sat on her large white pillow in the throne made of black iron, staring down at them. One day he would understand her fascination with iron…

“As always, welcome to the Stormy Eyrie. Make yourselves comfortable and partake in the food and drinks.” She spoke pleasantly enough as they walked around the fire, holding a chalice of bone and precious stones. “This is a dream, but to the brain it matters not.”

“You are taking a risk contacting us like this. Especially all of us, and with Princess Luna aware that there is something different happening. She has talked to Grinolf.” He came a talon’s width from chastising her.

She left the chalice in the armrest and candidly joined her paws together. “I thought that we needed to talk!”

Then she opened her forelegs and beckoned him with her fingers and a needy smile. He sighed and approached her throne resting his forehead on her chest while she hugged him.

“Your blessings, mother.” He did his best not to sound as aggravated as he was.

It was sufficient and she softly nibbled at his crest and stroked his feathers. “My Blessings upon you, Grigory Stormborn.”

With that he rejoined his friends at the base of the steps. Gray, the big one had casually grabbed a piece of bone with meat. And Gallensa took a glass of wine one of the servant girls offered them. What was it with Gwendolen and maids?! Another fascination of hers he still had to figure out.

She took a sip of her bone chalice. “I wish to apologize. If Celestia was not present, I would have proudly granted you the power to summon a storm. Gilad is furious about the Skoll, however. I am inclined to believe you are not at fault, nonetheless. I would blame the traitor sooner than I would blame you. Your strategy was sound.”

“You are the reason he betrayed us.” Grigory didn’t exactly accuse her, but there was no other way of saying that.

That surprised her and she took an amused offense at that. “His ancestors are to blame. I am not at fault for his ancestors having a preference for the pony ‘charms’, whatever they might be, over griffon ones. I did everything in my power so that griffons could enjoy companionship and all the earthly pleasures amongst themselves without need for… An equine.”

She frowned. “All I expected of him was to understand that he was not fit to reproduce. I did not drag him to the inn nor made him cause a scene in the front of the gates to the mansion.”

“Grinolf is a good soldier…” He started, but she interrupted him.

“The times have changed indeed if traitors are considered good soldiers nowadays.” She took another taste of whatever she had in her chalice and rose an eyebrow at him in the most irritating way possible.

“The only reason he betrayed us is because you shunned him. You humiliated him.” It mildly infuriated him that she seemed impervious to his contained anger, so he simply didn’t show it. Perhaps reason would work. “Dedication and competence don’t come from blood.”

“No. It comes from discipline and focus. None of which he has shown. There is a reason our race survives and thrives in the Cold and the ponies hide behind the heart of a dead goddess. If one could even call Amore a goddess... Ponies lack the same hardness that allowed your ancestors to tame the desert and conquer the Hader as much as it allowed them to brave the Cold and face the monsters begat by the Windigos.”

“It’s not his pony blood that led him to his betrayal. It was hopelessness. If you treated one of your chosen the way you treated him, the result would have been similar. Where you see lack of discipline, I see a griffon that refused to surrender to the fate he was given. Resourceful enough that he used what he had to avoid what he perceived as his doom. If we allow him to side with the ponies, he will use that against us and if he is returned, we can spin this for our use. But for that you must recognize his tenacity.”

She huffed. “What would you have me do, Grigory?”

“If you will accuse his spoiled blood of driving him to treason out of lacking discipline, you must acquiesce to the fact that his tenacity carved him a place for his name.” He gestured, pointing a claw to the floor, making a point. “That he didn’t bow to what he considered an unfair destiny and that he has made for himself a position of importance. He literally did the best he could with what he had, rather than fading away in obscurity as you expected him to do. It is the same braveness and strength that you praise in The Conqueror and in my father. Accept him into the Court of the Harpy. You can ‘suffer’ a few imperfect griffons in The Court for the sake of our soldiers. If you only want the perfect ones, you will lose the ones just short of it, and make up for it with ingenuity and resourcefulness, not to mention pure bravery.”

“I’m pretty sure Princess Luna would rather the court was dissolved…” Gallensa drank her wine feigning disinterest.

“Yes.” Gwendolen stepped down from her throne. “And I would rather eat pony rumpy for lunch, but not all of us can have all we want. I suppose I can suffer an ugly duckling in The Court if it will make Grigory happy. I have sent Gehenna after him, and I will order her to bring him back by her own means if Luna proves to be a problem. Are you happy, Grigory?”

He rose an eyebrow at her passive aggressiveness, and she went on. “I hope you will not blame me, in a few hundred years, when your ranks of fearsome warriors are littered with traitors and sappy pony-loving grifflets. Then I suppose you will listen to me.”

He decided to let her comment slide. She was just frustrated she didn’t have it her way.

She stopped by the fire and stared at it. “There is a new Swordmaiden on her way. I hope you will endear yourself to her.”

Of course. Always a price.

“As long as she is not another boor.” He understood what she wanted and watched while she put her paws close to the fire as if warming herself. It didn’t matter. It would eventually sort itself out with Gallensa that was likely to get Gwineth and the new Swordmaiden murdered anyways once she is sufficiently fed up. He would play his part in that game.

“Worry not. Gwineth will learn to behave herself eventually.” She turned to them. “And I am sure you will like this one. You must know that The Lord of Chaos has come to visit Griffindel. Celestia sent him as an envoy, and I tried asking him for The Key, but he has proven to be too much of a pony lover. At least, we have acquired an almost pure descendant of the Haderani lineage. Lady Geena brought him from the army the Chancellor sent to our lands. She says the situation is dreadful and most of them are passable at best, but at least the young tom is perfect. A small gem in the middle of all the rubble and he has accepted to stay with us.”

“Perhaps we will find some more of those resourceful ‘ugly ducklings in their midst.” He knew he shouldn’t, but Grigory just couldn’t help teasing her a little. Not to mention he was right.

“I suppose that little Geordie could be considered a traitor, too. Very well, do you still wish to further rub your victory in my face, Grigory?”

Better shut his beak because pushing her was dangerous. Even for him. “It’s not like that. I do believe that we would be losing something if we let Grinolf go to the ponies, and however many are in a similar position.”

“It is fair, Grigory. You are supposed to respect your fellow griffons, after all. But do mind that your job is to guide, and not to pamper them. Life is not fair and not all may have everything. It is your place to make difficult decisions, recognize that not all griffons are equal and give to each their due. But, since you are so interested in that, and since they will be your soldiers, I will do as you ask. But you should heed my wisdom.”

She made a pause just to show that she was still frustrated over the defector. “Especially if you would prefer to keep your empire whole and under your paws.”

“How about we build an empire before we talk about keeping it?” He deadpanned at her.

“Well, with that attitude we really will not need that conversation at all.” She one-upped his stare with one of her own. “You were more agreeable and willing to learn when you were younger. I suppose assertiveness is a good trait, anyways…”

She changed her tone. “However, we would be better spending our time here discussing matters that are relevant at the present time and are also of importance.”

They paid attention and she went on. “Your plan in assisting the princesses escape seems sound. I will create a diversion that should draw Luna out too. But you will have to deal with the Changeling Queen. Fortunately, I believe that she is likely to allow Twilight Sparkle and her cohort to escape.”

“Celestia is not in the airship?” The big soldier-like Gray asked.

“She teleported away because she figured she had to deal with the situation in Griffonia.” Gracielle explained. “I guess they’re starting to figure things out.”

“They are indeed.” Gwendolen didn’t seem too happy. “Much sooner than they should for our plans to proceed smoothly.”

“Why would she do that?” Grigory blinked surprise, and she grinned. “Chrysalis, I mean.”

“Because it is in her nature to betray her alliances for her own benefit, and she believes that the two wayward princesses will uncover the truth about her race’s origins. If only she knew the heartache that will bring her.” She gave her small cruel smile. “Ensure to exploit that when the time is right.”

“Nevertheless, I will ensure that Luna is busy with something and it should provide some freedom for you to put your plan in motion. You must prepare for however the remaining airship crews will react after they have escaped. Hurt a few ponies if you can afford. This whole situation with the traitor has me in a bad mood.”

She sighed. “I promise you something special once you make it back to Griffindel. I promise you will like our new Swordmaiden. I am so good to you even when you insist in challenging my wisdom.”

He sighed to himself. So unnecessarily dramatic and overbearing.

***

The first thing in Chocolate Velvet’s mind as he woke up was how did that keep happening? He wasn’t complaining though. Also, why did Queen Novo have a bed large enough to hold herself, Celestia and him? He just laid there, staring up at the nice seashells hanging from the ceiling for decoration. Celestia snuggled with Novo on their side of the bed, sleeping soundly while he wondered where his life went so rightly wrong.

Maybe the best part of it was that he stopped caring what the Chivalric Society thought of him. Come on… None of their knights got laid with Princess Celestia and Queen Novo in the same night.

He chuckled at the thought. It was so childish, but it was true! But he did so quietly not to disturb them, of course.

Maybe he had come to terms that he would rather be useful to Celestia than hailed as one of their fancy knights that turned out to be overpriced mercenary monster hunters. In the end he was an idiot because being useful to her and being recognized weren’t exactly self-excluding things. Maybe it was her conversation with Ponyville’s Lord Protector that finally made him ‘find the switch he needed to turn in his head’. Maybe the griffon deserter… Poor guy… Chocolate hoped things would turn out alright for him.

There was also the fact that Chocolate realized he was in it for the ‘long game’. Celestia told him of all the compromises she had to make to get where she stood. Luna too. Things weren’t always rosy and nice…

Wait… What was that?

His head rose and he looked around. Novo’s room had a pool that connected to the caves under the mountain, and it sloshed around with the flow of the currents down there. Not to mention that it had a few decorative curtains that made a nice artistic impression of water, with all their sea motifs. It was probably just that in the wind. Her room was a bit open, and the curtains also gave a little privacy but were a bit on the noisy side too.

Nothing happened in the moonlit room, however, and he was probably imagining things. The chuckled to himself… Maybe it was a shockroach.

He laid his head back on the pillows again.

Where was he? Oh, yeah. The point was that things… They worked out in the end. And right then, he was more than some knight errant, hunting monsters for prestige. He was Celestia’s right arm… Foreleg… Whatever the proper analogy was. Luna’s too. The younger one just didn’t have that much need for him, usually.

Like one of those love stories. The Lancelot to their Guinevere. Or something. He also probably had way too much alcohol byproducts in his head to think straight anyways. The important thing was that he liked The Sisters, they liked him, and he was helping without stressing over silly nonsense anymore.

Did Emperor Grigor feel like that about The Harpy? What about Thorax and Chrysalis? The Lion and Lady Gwendolen? He supposed that situations were different. Details and all that…

Alright, he definitively heard something!

He turned on his belly and raised his head. Nothing in the room. A soft salty breeze, the softly rustling of the curtains. The smells of the two mares (he decided that hippogriff females where mares too). Nothing else.

He slowly stood from the bed, not to disturb the other two, and walked to the bathroom past an arched door. A colorful shade of blue with rosy metals and the same ‘under the sea’ motifs that looked rather at place in there.

Closing the door behind him, he took a second to appreciate the typical and functional bathroom, with all the luxuries Novo’s station ought to provide, including a large tub, a shower, cabinets, mirror, a double sink, squat toilet; not to mention the beautiful decoration with the same maritime theme of the rest.

Then, with a smirk, he opened the door again to catch a very young hippogriff adult skulking in between the curtains. Yellow, with a very light blue ‘mane’ and tail, she looked a bit thin, even if most hippogriffs seemed a bit fragile. A cute crest of feathers that looked like something overhanging before her cute and freckled face. She blinked her cyan eyes at him, as though she hadn’t fully understood she’d been caught, but shrieked and panicked as soon as his telekinetic magic held her hindleg and pulled her up to hang upside down.

The two on the bed screamed too and quickly sat while Chocolate brought them the young female.

“Can’t one wake up in peace in their own home?” Novo screeched. “What is… Skystar?”

“Hello, Princess Skystar.” Celestia greeted her with a smile.

“Hiiii…” She waved, upside down.

“Oh…” Chocolate’s ears perked up. “Sorry. I thought it was suspicious that she was sneaking around the room.”

“I wasn’t sneaking! I was being careful!” She defended herself.

He put her on the ground, and she stayed there, laying on her back with Queen Novo staring down at her with a less than amused expression. “It is suspicious. What did you think you were doing, walking into my room without announcing yourself, and before dawn?”

Skystar shrank as much as she could. “I woke up early and the guards said that Princess Celestia was here! And the sun is kinda late! I just wanted to talk to you before she mentioned the window! It was Master Blackhorn! I never even touched the hammer!”

Celestia and Novo stared at each other and the alicorn blinked twice. “What window?”

Skystar let her beak hang open for a second before answering. “I have the right to not produce self-incriminating testimony!”

“At least you are paying attention to classes.” Her mother helped her stand. “I swear! I should’ve listened to my own mother! Get out of my sight until after I’ve had some coffee! For goodness’ sake!”

Celestia giggled at Skystar skipping in the floor and hurrying out of the bedroom. “Go easy on her, Novo. She really is one of my best students today.”

“I don’t know how you can stand everypony else’s foals when I can barely stand my own!” Novo cried dramatically while trying to straighten the feathers in her crest without any success.

Celestia giggled again. “Skystar is a very good student.”

“She better! I’d hate to see all those taxes going to waste!” The queen sighed. “She better turn out a better queen than I am for all the drama that is getting her to study with you!”

Well, someone didn’t deal very well with mornings. Or with squealing young. Chocolate supposed he could relate, but Celestia just giggled again and gave her a knowing smile. “Well, Novo has to wake up out of her grumpiness and I must see to the sun. Will you meet the guards and see if anything important happened during the night, Velvet?”

“Will do!” He saluted her with a wing and gave her his happy goofy grin before waking out of the room to find the hippogriff princess in the atrium, sitting on her haunches and rubbing her paws nervously.

“Sorry, Princess Skystar. I didn’t know it was you. Though… Uh… I really don’t know what I would have done knowing it was you in that situation.” He chuckled and she giggled, if a little self-conscious. Maybe she was just anxious she got caught.

“I guess it was a bit suspicious, huh?” She rubbed her jaw with a finger.

Celestia was right! She was ungodly cute! But suddenly she cheered up. “Hey! You’re the Princess’ Consort, aren’t you?”

“Yes. That is me.” He blinked curiously at her sudden excitement.

“I was reading my mother’s intelligence reports and they said there was a battle in Mareland. A large griffon warship and the Royal Guard. They said that Grigory was there!”

“Yes…” He frowned. Did she know that guy? “What are you getting at, Princess?”

“I… Ah… I just want to know if everything is okay with him.” She avoided his eyes, and then rushed away, to the corridor that led away from the Queen’s quarters without another word.

Yeah… Definitively hiding something. And considering that jerk was involved, it was most probably not a good thing. Also, given the whole situation, it would be wiser to see Celestia alone before mentioning that to Novo. He could be wrong, but the hippogriff princess knowing that guy that hates hippogriffs was concerning to say the least.

Not to mention curious.

***

Cadance and Twilight followed Princess Luna down the Break of Dawn’s underdeck to the brig where Grinolf sat behind the bars. It was simple, with a bed and it even had a bamboo wall to give some privacy to where Cadance supposed was a bathroom. Or something of the sort.

The griffon himself literally sat in the middle of the cell, with his green coat and tan plumage. Closed eyes, he looked so calm that the two princesses wondered if he was awake and just stared from their side of the bars, next to Luna.

“Is he asleep?” Cadance softly asked her aunt.

“Yes, and no.” Luna frowned a little. “Griffons from that region seem to have learned a sort of meditative state where they aren’t truly asleep, but it helps them mitigate fatigue and the effect it has on their minds. I don’t know for sure how they learned that, but it works.”

Twilight looked at her, and then back at the griffon. “Is it okay to wake him up?”

“He knows we are here.” She said calmly and the griffon opened his eyes. There was something unsettling about that to Twilight and Cadance. “Grinolf, Princesses Twilight Sparkle and Mi Amore Cadenza would like to speak to you.”

“If that is okay with you.” Twilight added.

“I don’t really have a lot to do right now, Princess.” He said plainly, without any sarcasm.

Twilight and Cadance looked at one another. Cadance spoke after she cleared her throat. “Master Grigory has explained your situation to us. And we would like to help!”

“You cannot.” He said simply and shook his head. “Don’t pretend you understand the problem either.”

“Well, I do.” Cadance took a step towards the bars and glared at him, who didn’t react. “They filled your head with nonsense, and you think that you are inferior. There isn’t really much complexity in that. And we are going to help you realize that not only they hurt you, but that you can have a normal life of a normal griffon.”

“You don’t understand.” Twilight would have preferred if he became angry, but he simply explained as though it was a simple mathematical question that they failed to understand. “You believe that all griffons are the same. You don’t understand griffon magic. You don’t understand the importance of our ancient bloodlines.”

Suddenly something sparked inside Twilight’s head. What if they were meddling in their culture? They were different from the other griffons. But she didn’t voice her concern and instead watched the conversation.

“I understand that Master Grigory wants to take you back to Snow Mountains and fix that mess that Lady Gwendolen created. Because he thinks that you are worthy enough that he will challenge her judgement of you.” She told him mater-of-factly.

He tried not to show it but hearing that surprised him enough that his eyes shone a little in the dim light when he looked at them. Though Twilight wasn’t convinced he wanted their help, but rather he wanted to go back. Which she considered not that great an idea, but that decision might not belong to her. Still, Cadance was making progress. In some direction.

The older princess frowned. “We’re not sending you back. They’re just going to keep exploring you. Using a potential partner… A mate, as a bait to hold in front of you and make you do whatever they want. You are worth more than that to us.”

Maybe it wasn’t about culture, Twilight mused inside her head.

“I’m going to find you a mate. A non-crazy griffon lady that you can live happily with and make your own family. You will see that nonsense of unworthiness is going to vanish from your mind as soon as you find some acceptance.”

He scowled. “I’m confused. Do you want to mate me to a griffonness that doesn’t believe in the things that I believe?”

Yeah, that was exactly Twilight’s concerns! She paid attention to Cadance’s reply with perked ears.

“I want you to see that you are not broken.” Cadance explained with a worried frown. “You just don’t fit in Lady Gwendolen’s insane… I don’t even want to call it ‘standards’ because it is not about being good enough. You’re not inferior, or unworthy… You’re just not what she wants you to be, and she is wrong.”

Cadance surprised Twilight a little bit. She led him down a good reasoning path to see what she wanted him to see. She could hope that he would accept that simple fact that Lady Gwendolen was wrong, rather than that she had a say in what made a griffon good or bad.

Luna nodded at Cadance with a smile, and they waited for a few seconds as Grinolf seemed to think.

“You don’t know her.” He spoke, finally. “You don’t understand what she represents. You think that you know Lord Gilad, but you don’t know what The Lion means. You don’t understand what they mean to us.”

Luna gave him a sad frown. “My sister and I have been revered and even worshiped as gods by our ponies, Grinolf. None of that ever kept us from being wrong. In factual knowledge or in judgment. There are many powerful beings in the world. Beings tied to its creation and the creation of the races that inhabit it. None of that ever gave those beings extraordinary wisdom or benevolence. At best if gives then instinctual understanding of the workings of the world and that often can be refined into actual understating. I don’t know how high you place that griffoness but understand that even if she deserved that place where you put her, she could still, very easily, be wrong.”

He paid attention to what she spoke. “It is easy for creatures nowadays to imagine that Celestia has always been an invincible warrior or a towering intellect… A paragon of virtue. The truth is that she, as I, and as Cadance and Twilight, had to learn along the way and we made innumerable mistakes. We still learn, for at the least, the world changes and we have to change with it, lest we become a problem.”

“Give us a chance. If Cadance fails, I will have you sent back to Snow Mountains and you can believe whatever it is that you want to believe.” She concluded with a raised hoof of offering.

“That seems fair, Princess.” He finally nodded with a conflicted frown and Cadance gave him a happy grin. Luna seemed satisfied too. Twilight could say that she was happy too, even if she wasn’t much help there. She supposed that the matters of love belonged to her sister-in-law, after all.

“We will leave you in peace then.” Luna finally nodded a goodbye and walked out of the brig, followed by the other two princesses.

“That went better than I expected. Good job, Cadance.” She admitted, turning to talk to them once they were outside the room and the guards had closed the door and the pink alicorn had a huge, proud grin at the compliment.

It was a sort of common area in the underdeck before the cannon deck that was still off-limits to them and it had the stairs that led up to the working decks of the aftercastle that contained a kitchen and storage not related to weapons and ship operations. A couple of Royal Guards stood there, by the brig’s reinforced door and the access to the gun deck.

“How do you expect to do what you promised him, Cadance?” Luna asked, still in a good mood. Twilight was curious too. “Given that you cannot leave the fleet.”

“I know I can’t leave, auntie.” Cadance declared with a raised snout of an offended pony. Her grin gone. “I will ask that my assistants in the Crystal Empire look through our records and find him the best match. I will use the airship’s mirror room to talk to Milky White.”

“You have records?” Twilight wasn’t really surprised. But curious about how that worked. “I mean, I’ve been to the Bordello of Candy, and I know that you have some weird sort of ‘war room’ that you called the ‘Love Room’. I even know that you have ponies working for you there…”

Twilight rose an eyebrow. “In many ways…”

“But… Uh… We’re taking about griffons, and there aren’t that many griffons in the Crystal Empire. Aren’t they… Kinda… Out of your reach all the way in Griffonia? Even the griffons that do like us are not exactly all that friendly.” She let her voice raise a bit to emphasize.

Cadance patted Twilight over her head and that wasn’t amusing at all. “I have my ways.”

“Why do I feel like I’m the only Princess that doesn’t have some creepy or weird secret?” Twilight whined after straightening her mane with a hoof.

Luna giggled at their exchange. “Well, the situation being what it is, I hope that you can make it work, Cadance. I feel bad for Grinolf and I wish to see this situation resolved as soon as possible. I believe I have enough drama with Chrysalis and her ‘Praetorian Guards’.”

Twilight frowned at her air quotes. “They are weird. Thorax said that they do weird things and fighting then was a bit awkward.”

“There is something… Off. About them.” Cadance agreed.

“They are not fully adults, but not really immature either.” Luna explained. “There isn’t really a way to describe them that you would understand. So unique their situation is. It seems to be an after-effect of their accelerated growth and some strange trauma that they suffered during the process of their development as Chrysalis perfected them. There is also… Well… I probably shouldn’t say that… But Chrysalis used a sample of Celestia’s soul to make them. Our souls are not normal and that would be enough to cause some issues. But Celestia is the one that understands all that. You should talk to her when she returns.”

Then her ears perked, and she grinned sheepishly. “I should apologize, Cadance. For the way I treated you in the Bordello. I had to lie to Chrysalis at the time and I supposed that I could have had a little more tact in dealing with the situation.”

Cadance giggled. “Aw… It’s alright. You did freak me out though. I’m just glad that you and auntie Celestia aren’t… You know… Crazy, or anything. Though, considering that conversation we had… I feel like I might be going crazy myself.”

“You can say that again…” Twilight nodded. “It almost makes me agree with Princess Celestia that hiding the whole thing was a good idea. I mean… If that was all.”

Cadance began counting and hoofing at the floor. “Yeah… The Harpy. Emperor Grigor. The whole war. The Goddesses. The whole system of how our minds work... It freaks me out a little knowing that there is something that makes my decisions for me.”

Luna frowned. “This is exactly what I meant with hurting yourself. There is nothing making decisions for you. What you saw was your making decisions. It’s a lot more complex than ‘I guess’.”

Cadance whined a little. “What happened to all those ponies that I saw?”

“Give it up. Both of you. I told you. I don’t even know what the big deal was. Something made Celestia decide that it needed to be wiped away or it would bring the Black Sun upon us. The reason we explained all that was that you would calm and quiet yourselves over that subject. The sooner you let go the sooner we will release you from bondage.”

“Anyway…” Twilight dropped the conversation. “Do you think that he will decide to stay with us?”

“I’m fairly confident he will, Twilight.” Cadance grinned. “He could also give us some information about those crazy griffons up there in the north.”

“We will see.” Luna interjected. “I am loath to explore his situation to gain information, but that is the nature of such things. I will not reject any assistance he might be willing to give. That is not, however, our goal with him. I just wanted to make that clear.”

Twilight frowned. “I’ll try to talk to Grigory. The more I learn about those griffons the more concerned I get.”

***

Gilberta had just woken up and that meant that she should ‘report’ to Lady Gwendolen in her office. Half-asleep, she dragged herself through the herculean effort of getting up of her bed (full of fluffy furs) in the morning cold and through the gigantic corridor all the way on the other side (of the hallway; as in the other wall, but it felt like traversing the nearby snow desert they called the Whitescape). Something ran down her beak and breathing was a bit of an effort, but she was awake.

Dragging her wings on the stony floor she went forward step by step and one of the nice maids opened the door to Lady Gwendolen’s office for her.

Inside, she talked to another of her maids, one of the youngest, tan and creamy yellow. “Make sure he is well-fed and comfortable. He spent some eighteen years consuming that pony trash, so serve him some decent food. Indulge his fantasies. He is immature and childish and that will capture his fancy. Also ensure that the door to his room is locked at all times until I have found the time to talk to him. I would rather he did nothing stupid out of his misguided patriotism, or whatever he has stuck inside his head.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The maid nodded, but both looked at Gilberta as she dragged herself past the door and tripped on the fluffy bear rug.

The two looked at her and they smiled, Lady Gwendolen spoke to her. “Are you feeling well, cub?”

“I’m fine!” Gilberta lied. “I’m here for the morning lessons.”

Lady Gwendolen grabbed her in her paws and put her to her fluffy chest. “You are feverish, Gilberta.”

“I’m fine.” Gilberta insisted. Her soft fur in that area where it mixed with plumage felt nice and soft. “I’m not going to miss on my education because… Because… I have a dumb fever.”

“Nonsense.” The adult admonished her, holding her close, and beaking softly at her feathery crest. “Even kings and queens fall ill sometimes. You will rest today, or your illness will prolong itself and further hinder your studies.”

Then she turned to the maid. “Make her some elderflower tea. I will be with her by the fire, in the hall.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He maid giggled and scratched Gilberta’s head softly.

But instead of leaving, or giving her maid leave, Lady Gwendolen looked at her again. “Did you, or the others, see the Lord of Chaos this morning?”

“Not that I know, ma’am.” The other shook her head. “Do you fear he is up to something?”

“It probably would not be him if he was not ‘up to something’.” Gwendolen frowned. “But I must care for the little one. Ask the other maids to keep an eye on him once he is found. Let me know immediately if he is found outside of the inner walls.”

***

Discord was in his best behavior and well within the inner walls that surrounded the mansion. He waited in the small garden with the throne to the side of the hall, nested next to the mansion’s kitchen, on the outside. The chilly morning didn’t bother him as much as it probably bothered the griffons, but they seemed to have learned to live in that place well enough. One of the larger griffon ladies, a maid, cheerfully cleaned the place after the night’s snowfall, shoveling the white frozen stuff to the gardens, out of the way and then making sure the throne was nice clean and dry.

Then she left, bowing and smiling at Lord Gilad past him, leaving him alone with Discord in the garden. He walked closer.

“Good morning, Lord Gilad.”

“Please…” The griffon frowned a little. “Call me Gilad. I believe we’ve made enough mischief that it is time we did away with the formalities by now.”

Discord hummed.

“Your spell, or whatever is it that you did to the fireplace that made it talk to me did work. Thank the heavens Gwendolen took longer than usual to get up this morning.” Gilad smiled a little.

Discord grimaced though. He should have thought that the fireplace might talk to him with her around and she would have known that they were up to something. “Well, good it worked.”

“I am sorry it took me so long to come, I had to wait for Gwendolen to get entertained with something or she might suspect something. And I also needed to tend to some matters of the army.” Gilad sat on the floor. “Did you manage to meet the Windigos?”

“Yes…” Discord crossed his arms. “And they told me some interesting things. Did they really talk to you in the past?”

“I talked to one of their monsters.” He explained. “It was years ago. Ah… They told you of our little conversation.”

“The Raptor Queen seems like a fitting title.” Discord mused. “But I’m worried about the things you told them.”

Gilad shook his head. “I was younger and less wise. By then I still believed that we should separate from the Confederation and that we should actively antagonize the ponies and their supporters. After those years, that sounds wrong today. I also believe that Gwendolen will not survive an encounter with Celestia if she decided that she is too dangerous. Heck… I am convinced that Gwendolen is too dangerous.”

“So…” Discord uncrossed his arms and spoke calmly. “The way I see it, you wanted her to help you achieve your goals of reforming the griffon nation. But along the way you fell in love with her. And now you’re stuck with a super-powerful crazy being that has plans for the griffons that involve ethnical cleansing and ultranationalism.”

“At one point I believed her ideals. It was when I noticed the amount of suffering she caused to her ‘non-ideal’ griffons I decided something ought to change. And the fact that I managed to change my mind convinced me that hers can be changed too.” Gilad sighed. “It’s not as though she hates them. She sees that they will suffer in her ideal griffonkind and wants to spare them the pain. It’s makes sense in her archaic mentality of when the world was a mess of wars left and right. But I’m not sure what to do about that or how to drive the change.”

“Has it occurred to you…” Discord spoke carefully. “That she might be using you?”

The griffon frowned and looked at the floor. It was such a strange sight, the big and powerful Lord Gilad looking so lost like that. Finally, after a few moments he looked back up at Discord. “That is trust, right? I can’t say for sure that she isn’t using me, but I believe that she loves me back.”

Discord frowned again. “The Windigos said that beings like Celestia and her are the problem… Does she have an actual name other than Gwendolen? I mean, it sounds like a fake name that she uses because you can’t call her Harpy. Or something.”

“She chose Gwendolen because of the meaning of the word… Such as fair and holy. But she used to be called ‘Aya Harpyia’ since the times she first created the griffons and they lived in the Stormy Eyrie. It means ‘mother Harpy’ in High-Griffonese. Or so she claims. It is meant today to be used in ceremonial contexts, but her ceremonies are meant only for her and her chosen at the moment. I really have no idea what they do in that tower of hers and in the Sanctum.”

He pointed at one of the towers annexed to the mansion. “She claimed that for her. The Sanctum is accessed through a door in the cellar. It is a natural spring exposed to the back side of the mountain. She really likes that place. And she says that when griffons are prepared, she will teach them proper worship… Or something.”

Discord couldn’t care less for anyone that believed in most of the things Lady Gwendolen seemed to believe, but if she could actually change, he should give it his best effort. Creatures changed, he supposed that gods did too. He did. And if she really did like Lord Gilad, that could be a very good approach to the problem. He needed to figure out more about her, him, the griffons that lived in that place until Twilight showed up.

“Guess my plan of learning more about her stands.” Discord concluded. “I’m just glad you don’t think that going out in a blaze of glory is a good idea anymore.”

“Please…” Gilad’s face reddened a little. “Honor and dying in battle… All that sounds great when one is young and thinks himself invincible. It took me falling in love and actually having a son to realize that there is more to life than ending it in and earning a name for myself along the way.”

“Master Grigory is not really your son, right?” That sounded wrong. “I mean, he is not your biological son. You’ve adopted him with her.”

“Gwendolen is infertile.” Gilad explained offering a paw. “She explained it relates to the way she was brought to the realm of the mortals. That her soul wasn’t meant to exist in the realm of the living, or something of the sort.”

Same as Celestia and Luna. He had supposed that Cadance and Twilight too, but the pink alicorn generated a foal with Shining Armor. It might be interesting to take a gander in the workings of that and the system that kept souls in movement and magic flowing. Maybe Cadance was special since she was the one that deal with that. Conjecture, but reasonable. He might study that… Or get Twilight to understand that and then explain it to him…

Discord nodded and brought his thoughts back to the actual subject. “Hum… Griffons summoned her…”

During the process of the Black Sun when Time lost its meaning. Even if she was destroyed in another existence past… Amazing magic. So powerful. So… Capacious as to ignore causality. Even his magic was bound by it. Creatures called him a God and called Celestia, Luna… The Harpy… Gods. Yet this amazing force that created their world was capable of anything. Even returning everything back to the right place if things got so bad they were lost. Celestia was right… It was a caring world that conspired to their well-being.

It seemed wrong to kill her again. Even if she could be monstrous, especially if she could be changed. In a world where not even the ultimate destruction was final and where she managed to return. Griffons wanted her, after all. Not to mention there was so much to be learned from her and her magic. Twilight would be amazed, much as she was with Celestia’s own power. Heck, Celestia would be too if she contemplated it under a new light of coexistence.

Of course, the problem was making Aya Harpyia accept that coexistence. It wasn’t so bad… He was sure that Celestia would be reasonable. Speaking of her…

“Celestia thinks it is interesting that you chose to raise a cub that wasn’t related to you.” Discord spoke to him again. “Though it seems that Grigory is yours and you don’t care.”

“At the time Gwendolen offered me to have a son with a noble griffoness she chose. It hurt her that she couldn’t give me a fitting heir.” Gilad sighed after he spoke and looked earnestly at Discord. “I must tell you something important. That she must not know I told you.”

The draconequus paid attention.

“The reason we adopted Grigory is that he carries a specific soul. We once went to Griffonstone and she knew exactly where to find him. An abandoned cub, almost dead on the streets. I never knew where he came from. I never cared about it, though. He is my son, and Gwendolen is his mother. He is however to be the next Emperor, as he was in the past.”

“I can see that now you would be further convinced that Gwendolen is using me…” Gilad admitted. “I am supposed to prepare the ground for Grigory to become a new emperor. Much as she rose Grigor to be the Emperor in his time. She has learned from her mistakes in the past, and, honestly, that makes her dangerous. She surrounded Grigory with loyal friends and she has even chosen Gallensa to be his mate. Everything she does revolves around him rising up. She has done some questionable things to him too. That showed him his past life and the path to becoming as powerful as Grigor was.”

Not surprising at all. Discord nodded. “We’ll deal with that.”

“Thank you for your comprehension, Discord.” Gilad sighed and his shoulders seemed looser. “I know she wants the best for him and my race. But her best may not agree with the whole idea of coexistence. I would be lost without you. As much as she respects me, she still thinks of me as one of ‘Her Children’.”

Discord nodded again. “Yeah. Glad to help and also to keep the world from breaking down at her and Celestia murdering each other. I’ll go see what she is up to.”

“I’ll skip breakfast.” Gilad pointed towards where his camping army ought to be past the walls. “I have to see to the soldiers. I’ll catch up to you later.”

“Thank you again, Discord.” The griffon said, seriously, but Discord grinned lightheartedly.

“Thank me once this mess is done with and we’re not getting swallowed by a sun turned inside out… Because our friends want to murder one another.”

Gilad chuckled and went his way past the gates. Discord went back inside to the great hall where there were two new roasting carcasses of some poor creatures, but what got his attention was Lady Gwendolen laid in one of the sofas by the fireplace on the side with a host of griffonesses and some cubs. She had a book with a cute drawing of a great bear by a little house made of straw with a blue griffon cub showing on the window.

Only when he came closer, he saw Gilberta nestled by her belly, and under a wing she laid over her, sniffling and looking miserable as the other cubs and the adult females paid attention to the great griffon lady reading from the book with the cheery voice one would read to children.

“A big, bad bear comes and says ‘Little griffon, little griffon, let me come in.’ But the little griffon says ‘Not by the feathers in my crest! I will not let you in!’ And so the bear says, ‘Then I will huff and I will puff and I will blow your house down!’” She frowned at the book, holding it in her paw. “Is this what parents read to cubs nowadays? This sounds like a pony tale!”

One of the adults, tan and white with a beige cape and a tiara made of silver shrugged. “It is a nice story about industriousness and preparedness. The point being that the little griffon that built his home of brick was hard-working and wise.”

“Dumb bear knows nothing of siege tactics…” One of the cubs, female with green fur and grayish plumage next to another adult grumbled.

Gwendolen chuckled at her comment and another adult, a soft gray with white head explained. “It is a pony tale. It was adapted for griffons and the Loremasters said it was acceptable. The original story had three foals and a… Giant bird.”

“Of course…” Gwendolen casually tossed the book at the fire. “I am going to write a story about a winged unicorn that burns griffon houses down… Or perhaps a shapeshifting bug that poisons wells.”

“Excuse me…” Discord hummed. “What is going on here?”

“Little Gilberta is ill.” Gwendolen looked up at him. “So, when her friends came calling her outside to play, I invited them in to keep her company. Lady Grisley was unfortunate, if unintentionally so, to provide us with a pony story to read to our cubs. We will find something more appropriate to entertain the little ones before breakfast, though, will we not?”

“So…” Discord started again. “I am not a doctor, but if she is sick, shouldn’t she be kept away from the others?”

“That is so for dangerous diseases, Lord of Chaos.” Gwendolen explained patiently. “There are several seasonal diseases, both of magical and of biological origin that afflict griffons and they are quite common and unavoidable to life in community. She certainly caught it a few days ago, playing the little ones and they passed it to one another. She was unlucky to become sicker than they were, or they are yet to suffer the worst of it. They are quite safe.”

“Yes.” One of the adult griffonesses, a tall steely gray with a metallic sheen to her blue plumage spoke too. “Not to mention that there are some diseases that one only catches once and that are much worse on the adults. It is preferable that the cubs catch them before they are grown. Isolating them is only a good idea when there is something dangerous in the air.”

Discord hummed again. “I was never a mother… Guess I wouldn’t know of this.”

“Hum… We still need to find a good story to tell the younglings.” Another griffon lady reminded them. A younger one, cyan coat with white plumage and big innocent gray eyes. “Do you know any good story to tell the cubs, Lord of Chaos?”

He scratched his head. He did… But they were pony stories. “Hum… Not any that you would like or not get Lady Gwendolen to toss me at the fire…”

“You wound me.” She looked oh-so-offended. “I know well enough that it is not your fault you only know of pony tales. Most griffons I know only know of pony tales.”

“Ugh…” One of the female cubs grunted and flapped her wings angrily. “Dumb fairy tales. Tell us a real story. I mean, griffons say that Lady Gwendolen is older than Princess Celestia I bet my feathers she knows great stories.”

“Who told you that, little one?” The other adults seemed nervous, but Gwendolen calmly asked the cub gesturing for her to come closer. “Why would they say that?”

Yeah… Discord figured that most griffons wouldn’t know the truth about her. It was the big reason they didn’t discuss The Harpy with outsiders. If they did, Celestia would eventually find out, too soon. He supposed that the more griffons knew of that truth, the more it would leak away to ‘the enemy’. He could see how only a few select griffons would know that Lady Gwendolen was the Harpy that they worshiped.

Although… Just look at her!

Her plan would certainly benefit from them knowing, and that would draw even more of them in, but at the same time, it would be too conspicuous if griffons started spreading that around too soon. At the same time, given the way ponies view their princesses, he could also imagine that some griffons would want to believe that they had their special someone… And given all her status with them… It was a simple conjecture to make, especially if they wanted to reach that conclusion.

Although not all griffons would readily join them if they knew about Celestia’s and Grover’s fight against The Emperor. Would be nice to learn some more about that.

“Well…” The cub started a little anxious, as though she had done something wrong. “Dad is one of The Lion’s officers and the soldiers talk about that a lot. They say that milady is The Harpy.”

On one hand, Discord was happy they trusted him enough to discuss that in front of him. But then again, with all the drama that came out of his initial conversation with Lady Gwendolen most griffons in the city must have heard of it. Finally, he hoped the little cub wouldn’t get herself in trouble for actually saying that.

“I’ll eat my feathers if she isn’t…” Gilberta sniffled and then sneezed from under Gwendolen’s wing.

The cubs were curious. The adults looked nervous. It was almost comical.

“Soldiers speak of many things they know little about. Especially the ones that arrived recently and still have not fully understood all our customs. I will tell you a story, then. It is probably one you know already, but certainly never heard the way I am going to tell you.”

That got their attention. Discord’s too… He even sat in one of the other sofas.

“Do you know what a gladiator is?” Discord knew, but he was not going to ruin the fun for the little ones, or the adults for that matter, since they too shook their heads. “Imagine a large a building. As large as Griffinsky’s walls, made of sandstone, pale yellow and tall to hold grandstands in all directions, enough to hold hundreds upon hundreds of griffons under the dry sky of the Hader.”

“There were no decorations because for all their ostentatiousness, its owner had not many resources, but in the center was a great arena, covered in sand and rough sawdust. Black iron gates on each side that led under the stands.”

She stood, sitting on her haunches and her wings opened a little, with a mischievous smile, and waved her paws around. The room grew darker, and the walls showed shadows of cheering griffons as two of them fought in the middle with spears and shields.

“They would come out of the gates, with all sorts of weapons. Not expensive or of quality but improvised and rusted. Not many good blacksmiths remained, and Children of The Harpy lived poorly under the searing heat of the Sun. All the great cities founded by the Haderani were razed by the madness of the Lost Herd the Mad God had unleashed upon the world. But they survived and few petty kings made names for themselves. Rarely for they wisdom or for their ingenuity in ruling Her Children, but if not by brute strength, for their ability to gather those who would enforce their will.”

“Such was Tabetir, a small, non-important settlement that dared call itself city, under the rule of a pathetic griffon that dared call himself King, and yet his name was lost to time. All he had were coins made of gold in a pile he cared call a treasure. He was stronger than most, however, and his coin did pay for soldiers. All he had beyond a few tired griffons that obeyed because they feared the leash and their swords, was the arena, where his slaves fought for the entertainment of his citizens. The excitement of bets, the bloodlust, kept them working and paying tribute.”

She stopped for a second while her audience gathered the information in their heads and then the shadows made the form of a griffon, not a lot of details, but Discord could see he was big and intimidating.

“One of his many slaves fought bravely and his mother had told him of The Harpy’s Commandment.” She stopped again and waited until the little ones recited the words she wanted to hear.

“Love your own infinitely and hate your enemy infinitely. Take everything and give nothing. Such are the Words of The Harpy and thus commands the Mother of Storms.” They chanted memorized words one by one, and Discord could imagine Twilight dying inside just from hearing them saying that.

Satisfied, she went on with a proud smile and the shadows shifted, showing a large and fat griffon with a crown and holding a rod, surrounded by other griffons. The background showed draperies and columns. “He hated his liege, as the weak and unfair ruler he was, and his family disgusted the proud fighter. They became spoiled over too much food and liked the shiny things too much. But he would not rebel, for he understood that alone he stood no chance against his owner’s many soldiers and his own family was vulnerable. His mate was a wise apprentice healer and his daughter the joy of his life, so pretty and smart she was.”

“He fought, then. For the entertainment of his owner, his family and their guests. Strong and clever, the stained the sand and sawdust red with the blood of his opponents and robbed other families of fathers, sons and brothers so that he could care for his family. He understood the Harpy’s Commandment.”

“Bloody battles and violent victories gave him recognition and fame. Others yearned to be as he was and others lusted after him.” The shadows shifted to show two griffons standing in front of each other. “But even if he had no eyes for the others but his mate and daughter, it did not surprise him that his owner’s eldest daughter would desire him.”

The shadows showed angry shouting and large griffons dragging another until they shifted again to show the griffon behind bars. “He refused her advances and the overindulged griffoness ordered her father’s soldiers lock him in the dungeons under the arena.”

“But where dark deeds of misused power grow, often so too grow bonds of camaraderie and mistreated slaves make for poor and disloyal servants.” She said as her paws waved, and the shadows shifted to show a griffon opening the cell and just like that shifted again to show a small hut on fire before the griffon, helplessly watching.

“Poor and weak rulers often forget something important…” The shadows shifted to show a group of angry griffons downing a door and entering a room. “The crown does not make the meek powerful, nor do the shackles make the mighty weak.”

The shadows showed a battle. Griffons killed left and right with blood splatters everywhere and Discord doubted that story would make it to the theater of shadows in Canterlot, but the little griffons seemed more interested in the story and such details didn’t bother them or their mothers.

He doubted Gilberta’s actual mother would be happy about that though.

There was even sound. Subtle clinging of metal, screaming. But eventually the shadows showed the fat griffon on his belly, begging for mercy on a balcony, but the big and strong griffon showed none and shoved him off the edge, breaking the rails. Cruel details such as his uselessly flapping wings drew Discord’s attention and it ended with a broken body surrounded by a mob and a pool of ‘shadowy blood’.

“Moments before his death…” She said in a low, mocking voice. “He wished for his citizens to avenge his death and kill the rebelling slaves.”

One of the cubs chuckled. Discord didn’t see which one in the dark. “What a dumbass.”

“You see, that is why Lord Gilad treats his vassals with respect.” One of the mothers said in a low voice as to not disturb Gwendolen’s presentation.

“Indeed.” Gwendolen agreed. “Gilad is wise to remember the lessons of his forefathers. It was his mother that told him to beware the Harpy’s Commandment.”

The shadows followed her waving paws and showed the mob cheering and raising their weapons to the griffon still on the edge of the balcony, and then to the griffon sat on a throne and others bowing before him. “It took long enough for one to challenge the city’s ruler, and when one did, griffons flocked to the real strength they saw. His fellow slaves, freed, sworn loyalty and so did the rest of the city, either because they saw true strength, or because they too feared their old ruler’s fate.”

“He did not rest, however. He knew that the surrounding cities would soon learn of what happened in little Tabetir.” Gwendolen went on. “He knew that the rulers of the surrounding cities wouldn’t take kindly to a slave giving ideas to the others. He decided he would act fast, before they did, and rallied an army among his fellow fighters and capable griffons among the citizenry.”

“They understood something: armies do not take kindly to the foreign. When the other cities learned of what happened they would attack and take the old slave back into bonds, and their warriors would want loot. More slaves. Their new leader’s wisdom lent to a great tactician mind and they won battles. They sacked cities and former slave became a slaver himself. If he had suffered it, others could too and cared not for the pain of those that raised weapons against him and would bind him again.”

The shadows showed a city growing and its walls becoming taller. A blacksmith hammered something, and griffons danced in a party before the throne the big griffon sat on.

“His city grew in power as others flocked to his might. They saw themselves rich with loot and wisely invested it. The walls grew. Blacksmiths came and made good bronze tools of warfare.” The shadows showed soldiers with round shields and spears, uniform with ogive-shaped helmets under the big griffon pointing forward. “Sacking raids became wars of conquest and he ruled twelve cities in the scorching sands of the Hader. He was crowned by his fellows. Slave to king he was Gaven, and they called him The Nameless.”

One of the cubs gasped full of childish wonder.

“Independent griffon cities herded together as does scared prey, and his enemies flocked against him.” She smiled at the cub and continued. Shadows shifted constantly and showed battles and armies clashing against a fortified city filled with archers and spear-armed griffons with the ogive-shaped helmets. One large griffon marched in the middle of the soldiers. “None bested his soldiers or himself and no subterfuge availed them a victory against him. None stood before his might and cities fell faster than his mapmakers could keep up. He took their lives, and they were his to do as he pleased. King to Emperor, he was called Grigor, the First of his Name, and sea, earth and sky trembled at the sound of his approaching armies.”

“Under the unrelenting sun he stretched forth the borders of his empire and the lesser races paid tribute in fear they would be destroyed.” The shadows showed a procession of creatures bringing large chests with coins and gems, but also artifacts such as statues and vases. Discord saw kirins and saddle arabian ponies.

Then the shadows showed the griffon sitting on his throne, thoughtfully looking down. “But =, in the middle of all his victories, he knew that something was wrong. The sun behaved erratically, and he remembered the tales his mother told him, and his mate once told his cub.”

The shadows shifted and showed a tall palace made of spires and two orbs of light above it. A line of unicorns before the palace. “He remembered the tales of the old enemy of his race. Griffons fighting each other would not hold when the hooved ones regained whatever power they lost with the Mad God.”

The shadows showed the large griffon wearing a cape, walking alone. “He traveled beyond the sands of the Hader, to the prairies and mountains settled by his Shadanni brethren. He traveled to the frozen lands where the Nartani resisted the monsters sent forth by the Windigos.”

The shadows changed to show griffons gathered by a fire between stony walls. “He heard the ancient legends of his brothers and sisters and he understood that the world was not as it was meant to be and that was why Chaos ran rampant. The servant yearned to rule and could not. The hooved ones rebelled against their creator and dragged the whole of Creation with them. He understood it would befall a mighty griffon to rule his kind and retake Creation in the name of the Allmother, the mother of all griffons, the Mother of Storms. She who his ancestors had called ‘Aya Harpyia’.”

The imagery changed yet again and showed Griffindel’s great walls where the big griffon, Grigor listened to an old griffoness with a cloak, and she pointed at the mountains in the distance. The shadows shifted and pictured the great griffon as he walked against the wind and snow. Fought wild beats and monsters until he found a chain of mountains. He climbed the mountains, and the images showed a series of peaks, and one had a single tower above it.

“Grigor went forward, never stopping, always sure of his objective. He braved the monsters and the storms the Windigos sent over him. Nothing could stop him, and when he climbed the mountains, he found his ancestral home. He knew. He felt it in his blood! The Stormy Eyrie from where his ancestors had marched from when the ponies unleashed the Windigos upon them.”

The images showed the griffon landing on a balcony at the base of the tower. Those were shadows, but the doors looked heavy to Discord. The shadow image of a griffon reached for them and pulled them open, though. The gesture seemed very important, and the way Gwendolen spoke of it confirmed that.

“She allowed him entrance, for his blood was pure, and his mettle proved.” The shadows showed Grigor before a large and tall throne where sat a large griffon lady that had her distinctive crest of feathers even the cubs could see it was her. Still, it was a bit funny the way she made her voice deeper to sound different. “ ‘I am Gaven, the Nameless!’ He said. ‘I have come from the Hader for I seek knowledge to face my ancient enemy. It is too strong for mortals to fight and I seek understanding. I would learn how to destroy it.’ ”

“ ‘My brothers from the north tell me that here my race was born, and I am compelled to believe them.’ He told her, wise and humble. ‘That here I would find the knowledge to undo their magic and their power over the skies themselves.’ ” She gestured flamboyantly, making ‘his’ voice and the shadows shifted to show the scene. It was a bit silly, but the cubs loved it and even Gilberta was excited. Discord would have loved it too… If… Well… The content was more palatable to him. “ ‘And yet here I find only a griffoness living by herself in the middle of the Windigo’s death trap. My heart tells me you are infinitely important and that I should recognize you, but my eyes see no more than a witch lost in this white desert. Tell me, female, who are you and what help in my quest you can give before I bring back my army and teach these griffons not to tell empty tales.’ ”

She made a small pause and inhaled with a paw on her chest. “ ‘Mighty indeed you are, Gaven, thus named Grigor, The First of His Name. And wise you are to seek counsel in the birthplace of your proud race. You have found favor in me, for you are mighty and you remind me of the griffons of old that cried my name as they burned the bones of their prey.’ ”

“Hum… We don’t burn the bones of the animals we hunt…” One of the adults, the youngest, mumbled.

Gwendolen stopped her theatrics for a second and growled at her. “Well, maybe you should. It might make someone happy.”

After that she went back to making the shadows dance to the scene of ‘not her’ talking to the Emperor. “She told him of things older than the mountains and explained to him the origin of Creation and how it used to serve his kind. How the hooved ones led Creation in rebellion. She explained how they usurped all there was and how powerful they were. How they would end his empire if he did not heed her counsel.”

“How?” Discord rose a finger and she halted again.

“I am writing a book about it. You can read it when it is done. Can I finish the story?” She growled at him too and Discord nodded, well-behaved.

“She taught him the magic in his blood and the power of his language. The Emperor stretched further his empire and all creatures feared him and paid tribute.” The shadows showed dragons, yak, zebras… All carrying piles of coins and gems. Then they shifted into a series of pyramids and tall spires in the middle of the dunes. “He built… Her a temple city so that she would live with him and lend him her power. It was called Aen Hader, and it was The Harpy’s holy city, from where the Emperor governed his holy empire. She trained for him the wisest Loremasters and the deadliest Swordmaidens. They danced for him and they educated his subjects. They taught them the Raptor’s Creed and griffons worshiped the Mother of Storms once again! Her Chosen mothered for him his strongest warriors and his strong once numbered in the millions! The Harpy mated him to one of her favorite Swordmaidens and her name was Geneviere. They generated a healthy and powerful family, strong of blood, regal and of mighty intellect.”

“There was no force in the world that could defeat him.” The shadows showed what looked like Chrysalis with a smaller version of herself before a giant throne with griffons laughing. “And even the Broodmother, the Changeling Progenitor tried marrying one of her daughters to him.”

Discord could imagine that not going very well… Though he would like to see Chrysalis wearing a wedding gown in the middle of all those griffons.

“But… The Emperor lost.” One of the cubs whined. “What happened?”

Gwendolen’s voice grew sad, and not in the theatrical way she mimicked the Emperor’s voice, and the shadows showed a griffon of indiscriminate shape. Just a random griffon as far as Discord was aware. “One of Grigor’s vassals, who later became known as the Traitor King feared the destiny of the griffon race.”

“Knowing he would never defeat the Emperor, he sought an alliance with the most hated of our enemies. The Usurper themselves.” The shadows showed the figures of two most obvious of alicorns under the two orbs in the sky. “One day the Sun relented, and the stars returned. The Emperor knew that the time had come. The ones The Harpy had told him about walked the realm of the mortals and our hated enemies would soon regain their strength.”

“As confirmation that our enemies had indeed been born arrived, The Emperor devised a plan to end their lives before they grew old and powerful. But that would not do, and The Harpy counseled him that in order to destroy the Dawnbringer and the Lady of the Stars he must first unite all of the griffonkind. Only once her kind had been subjugated would they the able to finally destroy The Sisters, and only with her blessings could he do it.”

The shadows showed Grigor and The Harpy at the top of a pyramid and she raised a crown above him. “She made him a crown with the iron from the mountains where our race was born and called it, the Crown of the Conqueror, and she gave him a sword she made herself with enchanted steel and her magic strewn over its mighty blade. They represented her Favor with which to rule all griffons and her Power, with which to destroy their ancient enemies.”

“The Traitor King grew afeared and made contact with the Dawnbringer. He called for help amid all the races subjugated by the empire. But the Emperor knew of it and he refused to strike down the cowardly traitor. And that angered The Harpy. Brotherly love was meant for you brethren, not traitors, much less in the moment all existence converged towards their defeat of the Usurpers.” The shadows showed The Harpy and the Emperor. She slapped and screamed at him. His crown fell to the ground and she took the sword from him. She cried and her wings embraced her before she vanished. “She left him. She cried for months, hiding...”

She coughed and frowned. “I mean… She waited for another worthy of her blessings in her tower.”

“Why did the Emperor refuse to kill the Traitor?” Gilberta sniffled some more.

The shadows vanished and Gwendolen seemed a bit angry. A bit sad. She didn’t even bother with some of the maids that had gathered. “Because Grigor loved Grover as a brother. He had grown too close to his vassals and allowed his feelings to get in the way of judgement. He couldn’t believe that one of them would betray him to the bitter end. Until the day he died, Grigor believed that Grover would return to his side and that The Harpy would return her favor to him, and that they would be victorious.”

“The others remained loyal though. Even as it became apparent that Celestia and her battlehorns, joined by the other races, would be victorious.” Gwendolen let her eyes drift downward. “The northerner Nartani never faltered. They held their advance at every battle. Every city… Grover and Celestia had to rip them out of their claws, bloody and scratched. The Griffindelians refused to submit even after the war was over and lost. Simply because The Harpy had told them not to. So many griffon lives ended, only because of that.”

“Why did The Harpy leave the Emperor?” Gilberta toughed her thigh with her little paw. “Why couldn’t they work it out?”

“It is a difficult thing to explain, Gilberta. She needed Grigor to have absolute trust in her and that he believed absolutely in what she told him.” Gwendolen sighed. “That griffons believed in her, with all their heart and Grover’s betrayal opened space for doubt. Without that, Grigor would not be able to strike down Celestia and destroy her soul.”

“Had it ever…” Discord started. “Had it ever crossed her mind that they might lose the war? That she had pushed things too far? That maybe Grover wouldn’t have been driven to seek for help elsewhere? I imagine he too was a faithful of The Harpy until something drove him away.”

She didn’t answer. She frowned and her eyes shifted a little, but she never answered. Instead, she stood. “I must be alone for a while. Excuse me. Gerri, please take care of Gilberta for me.”

The maid in question nodded positively and Gwendolen left for the private areas of the mansion. Discord stayed with the griffon ladies and his thoughts. That was something…

One thing disturbed Discord, though. All the parallels that existed between Grigor and Gilad. It seemed as though history really liked to repeat itself. Or she had done it purposedly and… Grigory at the end of it all… Her perfect little emperor…

***

Cadance casually strolled around the Break of Dawn’s main deck until she found the pony she was looking for. That unpleasant pegasus mare from the Ponyville’s Local Militia. Candy Crush. She found her in the bow and approached her as she would a friend, treading easily on her hooves.

When the mare noticed her, she made a tired expression and huffed like having Cadance around her was a burden. Well, too bad. Cadance wasn’t going anywhere. Still, she smiled and tried to be as pleasant as she could.

“Hi.” She cheerily greeted the pegasus mare with a smile. “May we speak for a minute?”

“I would rather not.” Candy retorted grimly.

Seriously, what was wrong with that annoying mare? Cadance frowned and glared down at her. “Tough, because I’m going to talk to you on my authority as a princess and I swear that if you make me angry, I will put you on the ship’s brig!”

“Gee, when you put it like that…” She had the gall to stare back at Cadance and sound as though she was offended. Then she just waited for Cadance to talk already.

“What went wrong with you?” Cadance frowned more out of concern and frustration than anger. “Ponies are usually nice and friendly. They welcome it when others are concerned for them. And I understand that some ponies just don’t feel the need to get a romantic partner. Not even a temporary. But you just hate that pony that likes you. Why?”

“Just for the record, I want you to know that I’m only talking to you because you threatened me.” She glared at cadence, who rolled her eyes. “But it’s not that I don’t like him. I know that he fancies me… It’s just that… He puts this dumb job in a pedestal that is way too high.”

“It’s not a dumb job!” Cadance gasped. “You ponies are important! But I suppose that you don’t see it that way. Do you really not have a pony that you like?”

“I like myself…” She said casually with a shrug. “Why does it bother you so much that I don’t want to hook up with anypony? You said it yourself that some ponies just don’t want to.”

Because Flight Worthy liked her, and she was supposed to like him back. That was how the Throne of Love worked! She had made it to work like that! But she supposed that trying to explain that to her would just be a pointless waste of their time. But…Cadance knew!

She also had made a promise to Flight Worthy.

Watching the pegasus mare walking away (without her leave, which was a detail that mildly infuriated her), she felt cornered into making a decision.

Amid memories of little ponies telling her their little hearts’ desires, offering humble bushels of radishes or exuberant bouquets of daffodils and of Auntie Luna explaining all the reasons she believed that Cadance was not the deity of ages ago or her woes about such memories, the the thought that tipped the balance was the one that of her pure and unyielding joy at uniting two ponies and their hearts together.

It was a simple nudge. So fast she barely noticed she had done it, and then it was done. So simple it was silly how much she had fretted over it and also seemed so right it was unthinkable that it was wrong.

It was her Gift, after all.

***

Discord gave her a few minutes, entertained with the cubs talking to Gilberta about some the happenings in the city. Children stuff. Some different things they saw or did and their mothers just kept a paws-off overwatch next to them, talking about their own things.

He went after Lady Gwendolen when he felt enough time had passed. It might have been cheap, but she was vulnerable and that meant she would be more open to him. It was for her own good.

It was a good thing she didn’t seclude herself to her tower that Gilad had mentioned, or he might not have been able to access it without making a scene. She just went to their private quarters and he found her in that nice room where he had first seen her, freaking out that Grigory wouldn’t trust her anymore, or something of the sort.

That whole conversation had made him think of something important that might relate.

She sat near the window, looking outside when he entered and then closed the door.

“What do you want?” She asked without staring at him and not in a very friendly tone. “You are Gilad’s guest, but that does not mean you have free reign around the mansion.”

“I’m sorry. But I need to talk to you.” He approached and spoke in a friendly way. “I want to understand what happened with Grover and Grigor. I feel like you leaving Grigor may have been… Somewhat important in the following events.”

She looked at him with a sly smile. “Why? Are you willing to help all of a sudden?”

“Not in the way you would like but helping is the intention.” He grinned back at her.

“You wouldn’t understand the connection I shared with him.” She spoke softly.

Discord though, thought about Fluttershy. “I might surprise you. You know, I’m good with surprises and I have learned a few things along the way.”

She sighed. “You would not understand. You never experienced existence without your physical body. Before the whole war with our servants began, I was an incorporeal entity. Griffons knew of me. They understood what I was, and they worshiped me, and that was as it was supposed to be. Then ponies decided that they deserved better… I do not even know how since they never had rational brains or even free will. And then they started killing cubs and the whole affair ended with the Black Sun!”

Discord was just amused at the way she simply expected ponies to just accept that they ought to die and feed the griffons. But rather than interrupting her, he let her continue.

“When, creation started anew I was left conscious, still in my incorporeal form and I had to watch as those asinine equines made mistake after mistake and only after the fourth attempt, they managed to make the world inhabitable by anything that had a basic physiology capable of sustaining some intelligence.” She pulled at her crest and grunted. “It was maddening!”

“At least, once the ponies were able to put the world under control, I was able to bring My Children into existence.” She held her beak thoughtfully. “Though, for some reason I do not understand, other creatures also appeared. Dragons. Diamond Dogs. I do not believe they were Celestia’s creation. They must have been the result of the world’s innate magic once the ponies had made it inhabitable.”

He rose an eyebrow, but kept his mouth shut. Came to a talon’s width of telling her that it was like the world finally worked as though it was supposed to.

“When you arrived, I believed that the ponies were done for again. Amicizia’s Elements of Harmony did their job with the Windigos and kept those pests alive, but the system required the ponies had free-will. And that most certainly did not work as she expected. But….” She grinned at him.

“But the Black Sun didn’t happen…” He mused. “They actually managed to avoid it.”

“Please…” Gwendolen gave him a derisive stare. “They cheated their way out of oblivion.”

Discord hummed to himself. He had heard that before.

“Hum… It wasn’t the Black Sun that brought you back… It just allowed the griffons to bring you to the realm of the living. Much like the others.” Discord mused again.

“They were incredibly powerful, but they had no real control over their power. Ultimately, it was ponies that brought the Windigos. And brought you. The Princesses.” She paused for a second again. “Although, I cannot imagine how did Cadenza manage to breed. It should not be possible. My womb is as barren as the Hader because my soul lacks the… Mechanism to call another soul from the Pool of Souls to animate a new being. Such should be the same for her, since her soul was never supposed to actually inhabit a body and be bound to this place.”

“I suppose that is also why they are immortal?” Discord mused. “Or… We are.”

“Correct.” She nodded. “That is not what you wanted to know, however. What happened is that I was not happy with griffons. Not much has been said about them before the Lost Herd. My Children had organized in small countries headed by decadent families, one more incompetent than the other. They sought comfort before prestige, and it infuriated me. I told you when you arrived. They became complacent and enjoyed a long and easy life too much. I let them fend for themselves. And you taught them good lessons: no better teacher than adversity.”

“Yeah…” Discord blanked. “Something about not getting laid and eating sugar.”

“I will not blame a griffon for failing. But I will for not trying out of cowardice. Their lives are short, and I have taught them that they ought to live it to its fullest. Griffons that do not spite their gift of being alive. One I was very much sour about never having received myself.”

“Celestia teaches ponies the same thing.” Discord deadpanned at her.

She just frowned at him.

“Eventually they brought you to life.” Discord nodded, understanding her explanation.

“I never thought it would be possible, but rather than gifting me with the same gift I had bestowed upon them, they dragged me down into their pit of mud. They wanted me to save them, but they did not deserve it. They disgusted me. They were not the fierce and powerful creatures I had made them to be. So, I left. Had I assisted them, they would have learned nothing. You were a better teacher, at the time, than I could ever be.”

Discord sat in the thin air, crossing his legs and hummed. He didn’t necessarily like what he had heard, but that was in the past. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“Barely.” She frowned. “It culled the pride if nothing else. But it generated a layer of infuriatingly incompetent leaders that were charismatic and brutal, but all their ruling capacity came from their ability to yield their might against the meek. No intelligence, no regality. No respect for their fellow griffons. No understanding of what made for great leaders and what made them powerful.”

She went to a cabinet with all sorts of bottles with dinks and opened it, looking for something. “When it became obvious that the world was not about to end, I decided the best strategy would be to disseminate the right beliefs. Not surprisingly, they remembered me, but they seemed to believe that if they cried hard enough, I would help them. I know My Children. That was the path to creating more grown-up cubs with no mettle and no spine. I contacted a few of them. The wise ones. The ones that would listen to me and understand that their complacency was a threat bigger than the Lost.”

“It worked.” She offered Discord a glass of wine and he floated it to himself. She also served a glass for her, and then she corked the bottle and stared down at it. Thoughtfully. “It was a shame that he needed to lose his wife and child… I quite liked them. But then again, he might not have felt such a connection to me, had his mate been alive.”

“Wait…” Discord stopped at the first bite at the crystal glass. “What?”

“You may not have noticed, not being a griffon, but I am an exceptionally attractive female.” She actually blushed. “He introduced me to feelings I believed I understood but were… So overwhelming once I experienced myself. I never expected how powerful physical sensations could be. How powerful feelings associated to being alive could be.”

He just deadpanned at her. “Stupid hormones, huh?”

“Make fun of this, if you will, but my feelings for him were very much real and overwhelming.” She whined at him, instead than her usual angry response.

Yeah… The Chad Emperor. That made it even harder, but he managed not to laugh. He did, kind of, understand it… He got overwhelmed by feelings too and almost ended the world because he thought that he knew better. It also made him think back to the things the Windigos told him about ‘those beings’, which included Celestia and himself. Yeah… Letting go from being alive was damn hard, exactly because it was so awesome.

“So, you loved him?” He tried to sound the least accusing as possible.

“He managed to make it all the way to my tower, and he was a fit and healthy griffon… If anything, it was an ultimate test of his mettle and skill. It should be easy to imagine he was an attractive and seemingly capable griffon.” Yeah… The Chad Emperor… He thought, but he kept simply listening to her. “He took me from the tower to…”

“You… Literally stayed in the tower for however many years until he went there, didn’t you?” He deadpanned at her again. Sweet Luna… It was like a twisted fairy tale. A really dumb one!

“I could not be out and about, taking a stroll around the world!” She frowned. “Celestia would eventually find me. Not to mention that it was filled with things that downright disgusted me!”

“Well, I suppose so. But you still hasn’t told me what was it that made you leave Grigor. It seemed as though that you could have won if you stayed at his side.”

“Grigor’s insistence told griffons there was another way other than me.” She growled. “He could not ever summon sufficient magical power to undo her soul in such way.”

“Gwendolen, you said Grigory couldn’t cast a spell without your help. Now Grigor can’t defeat Celestia without the griffons backing him up. What is going on?”

She frowned at him. “I am at no obligation to disclose everything to you. Especially when you refuse to help me. You should rethink your position, really. You would spare many creatures a great amount of suffering.”

“Well, I’m trying to do exactly that, you know.” He crossed his arms, and she gave him a disinterested stare. “Fine then, don’t tell me about that. But did you really spend… I don’t know. Centuries, if not millennia, hiding inside a cold tower?”

“I was not hiding, nor was it cold!” She cried. “I was bidding my time! Waiting for the right moment. Waiting for a worthy griffon to find me and take his place at my side. And my tower in the Stormy Eyrie is quite comfortable. I liked it there!”

“You mean, rule for you, the way you wanted.” He offered a hand with his retort and ignored her outburst.

“I most certainly do not see the problem in that.” She rose her beak, arrogantly offended. “No one knows griffons better than I do.”

He sighed his frustration out. That was going to be a tough nut to crack… aybe he could get to understand her better and find a way to approach her through other griffons. Her Loremasters in training came to mind, and also her courtiers. Then he smiled at her.

“Maybe I just need some help seeing things your way.” He opened his arms all friendly. “You are right! I spent most of my time, that wasn’t turned to stone, living with ponies. Maybe I need some griffon experience.”

He got the impression that he failed to completely convince her of his intentions, and she might be able to see right through him. She was a clever girl, he believed. But at the same time, she wanted him so bad to just side with her he just might have a chance to make her believe and give him the space he needs to show her the wrong in her ways.

He opened his arms and frowned. “It’s not like you’re letting me leave before you’re convinced I’m siding with you, right?”

She grinned impishly. “Well, you will not be leaving unless you acquiesce, yes. There is much you can learn. Yes. And you are our guest.”

Well, at least he was having some fun.

***

Twilight passed the fourth group of murmuring crewponies while crossing the deck of the Break of Dawn. She found it curious but didn’t bother investigating as she was busy. She meant to talk to Grigory about his sword and the spell he tried to cast. Along the way she found Cadance talking to Shining Armor, but they stopped talking when she arrived.

Cadance turned to her with a serious expression while Shining Armor had the same expression he’d have when he sat behind their mother trying to have some serious conversation with Twilight and tried his best not to giggle at whatever the problem was.

“Twilight, can I ask you a hypothetical question?” Cadance asked with that serious expression that her mother usually had when she wanted to talk about something serious.

“Sure.” Twilight just stared at her serious expression and past her to Shining barely contained giggling.

“If it came to that, would you be willing to marry to save Equestria?” She simply asked the question, as though it was normal.

Well, twilight was sure it was normal in those books she read…

“Cadance, I met with Grigory in that bathroom for…” She caught herself and looked around to see if anyone was within earshot and still kept her voice low, if a bit angry. “To discuss our plans for escape! You know that!”

“I know! I know!” The other did the same. “But… If it was a solution… Would you?”

“Well, would you marry Flurry Heart off to some griffon jerk?” Twilight glared at her.

“Hypothetically?” She blinked.

“Cadance!” Twilight yelled at her and Shining Armor just burst out laughing out, hugging his stomach.

“This isn’t funny!” The two yelled at him. Although he could bet it was for different reasons.

Twilight grunted and shook the nonsense out of her head. “Look. I need to talk to Prince Grigory. Do you know where he is?”

“Oh! I need to talk to him too!” Cadance piped with a huge grin.

“Cadance! I am not marrying him!” Twilight yelled louder than she meant to and that, of course, drew attention from the entire deck. She groaned and facehoofed, but before she could speak further, Cadance interrupted her with a raised hoof.

“That is not it!” Cadance recoiled with a grimace and rose a hoof from the floor. “I need to talk to him about his marefriend. Er… Mate. Gallensa. It seems they have a problem with another griffoness getting in the way of a happy marriage and she asked for help.”

“Are you sure you want to get involved?” Twilight closed an eye in doubt, but Cadance put a hoof on her chest, speaking with all the pomp a Princess could afford.

“What sort of Love Goddess would I be if I didn’t?”

“Fine…” Twilight could feel a headache coming her way if she allowed the conversation to keep going. Cadance had made her mind on that issue and she didn’t feel like she had the right to tell her otherwise after all she’s been through. “Just be careful, okay? I don’t trust these griffons and you’re too important for all of us.”

“It will be fine!” The older princess waved a hoof at her. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Well, both of you take care.” Shining suddenly became serious. “They’re up to something. Grigory outright admitted to wanting to ponynap you two and take you to wherever and do Celestia knows what with you.”

“The Stormy Eyrie.” Cadance said thoughtfully.

Earlier Twilight had made fun of his worries, but after meeting those griffons, his concern seemed very justified. But Cadance spoke before she did, with a huge grin. “Come with us then!”

He frowned. “I would prefer that you two dropped this whole thing but since that seems very unlikely, I’ll go with you.”

“We can always count on you, Shining Armor!” Cadance cheered. Then she saw something in the distance and pointed. “Hey. What’s that?”

A medium sized airship sided up to the large and long airship that was different from the others and wasn’t the hospital airship. In fact, neither ships seemed like they belonged in the armada because the one Twilight knew was the support craft, nor the other, had any weapons, but the newly arrived airship seemed much older and used than the shinny golden-hulled airships that escorted Celestia’s airship. It seemed to be a old cargo ship.

“Ah, that’s likely a supply ship.” Shining explained unworried. “It must’ve come from a nearby city with supplies. Crewponies need food and the airships need ‘stuff’.”

Then he turned back to them. “If we’re going to see the griffon prince, we should go already. We don’t know what they’re up to and they might spring their part of the escape plan on us at any moment.”

The two agreed and he went on. “He ought to be in his quarters in the hospital airship. He decided to stay with his soldiers. Come on.”

***

Civilian contractors.

The title made it sound delivering groceries to a flying armada even better than it already was. Sure, he worked his way up his shipping company and he was used to overseeing loading and unloading of airships (trains before that, and carts in the start of his career) but he had the feeling it wouldn’t get any better than it was at the moment.

The two airships moored together and a wide plank in between them made the transfer of cargo possible. Simple, but it worked. His crew pulled small carts with the crates of supplies to the military supply vessel, and he stood by the plank checking the identification numbers on each crate.

So, yeah. His life was basically watching ponies hauling crates from one side to the other, but Heavy Haul liked that job. His cutie mark was a crate with wings, after all, and he worked hard for his job!

He was, technically, working directly to the princess!

He took pride in it.

It was the same as it always was, though. Crate coming through, number checks with the records.

Crate.

Crate.

Crate.

Another crate.

Yellow crate instead of brown.

Brown crate again.

Oh, crud… Somepony tagged that one upside down. Good thing he had such good eyes! And Chill Breeze was limping of her left hindleg again! How many times did he have to tell her not to work if she was not one hundred percent? Those things got worse, and then he’d have Worker Welfare up in his case again! Ugh!

Anyways, crate…

Crate.

Griffon lady in black cloak.

Crate. Crate.

Wait! What?!

“Whoa whoa whoa!” He cried and his wing let his clipboard fall to the deck. “Lady! Hold up! Who are you?”

Fortunately, he caught up with her before she reached the plank. The Goldies were gonna flip if she boarded without permission! What the heck? Was she onboard the whole trip?

“My name is not important, pony.” She said. Silvery fur under her cloak and a white head and grey eyes with a scowl at him. “Let me pass, and forget you saw me.”

“What?” His head seemed light and his thoughts fuzzy. Something that she said seemed incredibly shady and ridiculously out of place. There was something he was supposed to do, but he kinda forgot what it was. He put his hoof to the side of his head and frowned, focusing on her. He shook his head and… Who was she again? “Wait… Who… Who are you again?”

“You do not need this sort of trouble, pony.” Her voice was weird, and it seemed to worm its way into his thoughts and tugged at them like the old griffon lady tugged at a kite and got it go wherever she wanted to. “You forget or not even notice most things you come into contact with. I am nothing more than something unimportant to be forgotten. You have more important things to mind.”

“Yeah… Sure…” Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. But he couldn’t put his hoof on what it was. His head ached like someone had just kicked him in his temple and he had hard a time focusing on just about anything.

“Boss? Hey boss!” Spring Breeze frowned at him. And he recognized her green-eyed stare at him, full of concern and a little impatient. He felt like he had been lost inside a hole and her voice brought him back from it with a snap. “You okay, boss? You’ve been there staring blankly for a while and just wouldn’t answer.”

There was a line of pegasi, his crewponies, frowning at him from behind her. Oh crud! Work stalled because… What happened? He got distracted. That was what.

“I’m sorry, Spring Breeze. I don’t know what got into me.” He just stared at them with his ears hanging from his head. “I’m sorry guys. Let’s get back to it!”

Still strapped to her cart, his light green pegasus crewpony that was Spring Breeze approached him and held his hoof in her own. “No. You’re not like this. Something is wrong.”

“Yeah, boss!” One of the pegasi in the line waiting inspection agreed and raised a hoof. “They got this fancy hospital airship here. You should get yourself checked in there!”

The mare nodded. “I’ll take you there and the others can get the unloading done by themselves.”

“Alright.” He didn’t like it. Leaving his job like that. But she did seem very worried. And… Something weird just happened to him. He remembered something in the newspaper about stuff going wrong with your head and stuff just like what happened to him might just be that. Yeah… Best to let the others take care of him for once.

He walked with his crewpony mare for a few steps before he stopped. “Did… Did you guys see an old griffon lady? Wearing a cloak?”

“Come on.” Spring looked deathly worried. “Let’s worry about that later.”

Love Kills

Twilight made her way to the hospital airship accompanied by Spike, her brother and Cadance. It was an easy enough ride on a flying chariot pulled by a single friendly royal guard. Once there, they started on their way to the ward where the griffons were housed.

But along the way they found something different. It was one of the rooms in the hospital’s ward and the diamond dogs, those that crewed Mister Flying Snake’s (whatever his real name was) airship.

There was some chanting, soft and respectful and that set off all sorts of alarms inside Twilight’s head. She stopped in front of the others and gasped. Looked at his brother and sister-in-law. They didn’t say anything, initially, but Cadance whispered loud enough that they heard her. “Goodness… Did one of the diamond dogs… Pass away?”

Shining and Spike grimaced, and the pony’s ears flopped a little. “I thought that the griffons were careful in the fight. Then again, accidents happen.”

“It was, kind of, our fault!” Cadance whined in a low voice. “Should we do something? Say something?”

“I don’t know!” Twilight whined too. “I know nothing of diamond dog funeral traditions! They’ll probably be angry with us!”

Spike chose to say nothing, and before they gathered their wits a diamond dog approached them. It was the one that wore a pearl necklace that Twilight supposed was the matriarch of their pack. She knew enough of their social organization to guess, though she wasn’t very knowledgeable in their traditions. But rather than being angry or sorrowful, the diamond dog rose her big paw and spoke cheerfully.

“Greetings ponies! And dragon!” She even had a pleasant grin. “Beautiful day Princess Celestia give us!”

But she also noticed their distress and frowned a little. “Ponies need something?”

Twilight didn’t even know how to address their matriarch. “Hum… Did something bad happen to one of yours? In the fight with the griffons?”

The diamond dog took a moment to understand, but then she laughed. “Silly ponies! It is Sun Day! Dogs honor ancestors. Doctors give us room for ceremony!”

“Oh!” Cadance perked up. “It’s a ceremony to remember the members of the pack that have passed away?”

“Yes!” The diamond dog matriarch pointed up with a finger, glad to explain. “The pack is as it is today because of those that came before us! So, we remember their deeds. Even if a dog did something bad, they are family, and something was learned from whatever they did.”

“That is a wonderful tradition!” Cadance chimed and grinned, then looked at Twilight and Shining Armor. “Come on. We should avoid disturbing them.”

“Ponies can watch if you want.” The matriarch offered, but Twilight smiled and shook her head.

“We better not. We are in a bit of a hurry, and I wouldn’t want to disturb you further when we have to leave.”

“Well, ponies are welcome any time.” She ended the conversation bowing respectfully to the princesses and entered the room.

“Hum… Ponies never had these sorts of traditions.” Spike mused rubbing his chin.

“Well, ponies do hold funerals to say goodbye to their friends and family members that passed away.” Cadance said. “Not to mention, we do remember them too, but we do it more within the family. On the personal level.”

She frowned a little. “Huh… To diamond dogs, the pack is the family, I suppose.”

“Somecreatures, such as the buffalo also have robust religious traditions, Spike. They gather on a special place and… I don’t really know, but they go there to contemplate their lives and the meaning of it all. I think that they believe in some sort of superior being.” Twilight explained. But she didn’t really know much more. “The griffons seemed to have too, in the past. And some of them in the present. Grigory and his friends, for example.”

“Ponies used to.” Shining reminded her as they walked, back on their way.

“Is there something inherently bad about it?” Twilight looked at Cadance. “I mean, even if Princess Celestia does believe that she is the goddess Sol-Estia reborn, she has stopped her cult. I don’t think that she mentioned that she needed to because of whatever made her decide to change our records of the past.”

“I had the impression that it might have had something to do with the Cult of The Harpy, Twily.” Shining walked next to them and Twilight silently agreed. The whole thing seemed to have been taxing to her. “But also, because it seemed that the whole worship was important until the ponies became independent from the goddesses. Then they were better off without them. I suppose that the Harpy never wanted to let go of the griffons, even if they were independent from the get-go.”

Twilight nodded and looked at Cadance, but she had an inscrutable expression and said nothing. She decided it was best to leave her to her thoughts.

As soon as they arrived at the place, they found themselves on a lounge area where the royal guards had stationed themselves, two by each door and a group of them by a table in the center playing cards. Except for one door where four griffons stood guard.

“What the hay…” Twilight frowned at the scene ahead of her.

“Guys, what is going on?” Shining approached the guards by the table followed by his sister and his wife and his little brother. The gold-clad ponies stood on their approach and one of them spoke, dark gray and blue and saluting with a hoof.

“Griffons are up to something, Captain.” He said plainly but the guard next to him, white and blue squinted his eyes at Shining Armor.

“Lieutenant! The Captain is probably in on it!”

“Well… For the record…” Shining Armor pointed at his sister and wife. “It’s all because of these two. I wanted to go home and forget the whole thing.”

The two mares in question were not amused while Spike covered his mouth and snickered, but what Shining Armor told them assuaged his fellow ponies in arms. The higher ranked one nodded and sighed. “Cats are up to something, Captain. They set up their own guard in the door and will create all sorts of trouble if we try to get in. Even the docs are having issues with them if they don’t have a real good reason to see the griffons.”

“Well, of course they are up to something.” Another of the guards, one pegasus that held on to his cards in his wings rolled his eyes. “We would too if we were in their situation.”

The other hummed with a serious expression and nodded again. Twilight gave them her best convincing smile though. “Come on, guys. What are they going to do?”

“Yeah!” Cadance added. “They’re just trying to protect their own. You would do that too.”

“Actually, we’d be trying to escape.” The lieutenant frowned at her. “It is in the Code of Conduct.”

“The what now?” Twilight frowned and Shining turned to her and Cadance.

“It’s a document that provides the royal guards and levied soldiers their directives in the service of the Crown. For example, when captured, a soldier is supposed to never stop resisting the enemy, never accept privileges, keep his fellow soldiers in close fellowship and do everything in their power to protect each other, their mission and other soldiers that may not have been captured… That sort of thing. Every single nation of the world with a standing army has a similar code.”

“That is kinda cool!” Spike cheered.

“Princess Celestia never mentioned that to us in our classes.” Cadance complained, whinier than she wanted, Twilight imagined, but it still like she was complaining just because.

“I suppose that is not something that a princess ought to worry about?” Twilight offered with a shrug. “Anyways… Do you think that we can go through? I need to talk to Grigory.”

The guard squinted at her and pulled his ears back. “Why?”

She grimaced and pulled a step back, raising a hoof. “Hum… Friendship issues. You know… Princess stuff!”

The guard didn’t seem very convinced, but fortunately Cadance was there, and she cleared her throat, frowning with her muzzle raised and spoke in a stern voice. “Don’t you see these griffons really need Twilight’s help?”

The four by their door exchanged a few glances but said nothing. Cadance went on. “Not to mention that I have some Love business to deal with them too. So, the situation notwithstanding, I would appreciate if you would not create additional problems. These griffons are enough of a headache.”

The guard let his jaw hang for a second. “Oh… Uh… Yes. I am sorry, ma’am. We won’t give you any trouble!”

And then he stepped back and bowed to Cadance, who walked past the table and the guards letting her wings up with an indignant huff.

Twilight, Spike and Shining kept their straight faces and followed Cadance to the four griffons by the door until she stopped before the tough, not-really impressed griffons and Cadance gave them a desperate frown and smile. Big ‘wild-looking’ northerner griffons, covered in whites and shades of gray and blue. Bigger than griffons already were.

“I don’t know. I don’t like these ponies’ attitudes.” The one closest elbowed the next, who coughed a laugh.

“Well, who are we to stop your highness in her love business, right?” The third stared with a bit of a malicious and mocking grin on his beak and the one next to him chuckled. The first griffon then opened the door for them.

“Thank you!” Twilight whispered with a sheepish smile, walking past the griffon guards and Shining followed her with Cadance and Spike.

Past the door, after it closed, Shining almost started laughing. Spike offered Cadance a closed fist. “That was pretty good, Cadance!”

“Almost had me convinced!” Twilight giggled next to him and Cadance giggled back to her while she hoof-bumped Spike’s fist.

After they short celebration, they found themselves in a small anteroom with a window and some seating. A griffon with a claw-cut scar in his neck disrupting his cyan plumage stared at them. Not very friendly. “What do you want here?”

Twilight cleared her throat. “We need to talk to Grigory. It’s important and he will want to talk to us.”

“Alright.” The griffon didn’t create any issues and pointed at the correct direction. “Go down the corridor and don’t bother the other ones with your pony stuff.”

The ponies nodded while Shining Armor squinted at the griffon, who squinted back at him, and Twilight was glad they walked out quickly out of there.

“Uh…” Spike started. “Does it bother anypony else that these griffons speak our language, but we don’t speak theirs?”

Twilight nodded. “Sunburst said that they are very protective of their language. It seems that it is still the same language they spoke in the time of Emperor Grigor. And it is kind of expected… Our language became the universal language.”

“Does that sound bad?” She finished with a question.

“Well, I don’t think that Princess Celestia forced that on the other races, or something.” Cadance wondered. “I guess it was just easier.”

The conversation was interrupted when they entered the corridor and they heard Fluttershy’s voice coming from the next door to the right.

“And please try not to move that wing unnecessarily.” She whisper-talked in her typical shy manner.

Full of curiosity, the three ponies and dragon looked inside the room to see the yellow pegasus talking to one of the griffon soldiers, a dark gray and light gray bulky fellow. The burly front-line soldier kind with his green eyes on the small pegasus talking sternly to him, who was almost twice her size.

He moved his right shoulder a few times with his wing bandaged shut on itself. “I will. Thank you, Lady Fluttershy.”

On the other side of the room was Grigory’s friend, the small framed, light gray and white she supposed was a doctor. Twilight wasn’t sure, but he stared into the mouth of one of their griffon soldiers with a very ‘doctor-like’ sternness.

“Yes… Honey and lemon. Gargle with hot mead three times a day.” The griffon doctor said. “Drink something cold if the soreness bothers you. Talk to the griffons by supplies. They’ll get what you need from the ponies.”

“Hum…” Twilight entered the room and the others followed. “Aren’t the hospital staff helping you guys?”

“Yes, they are.” Grigory’s friend said. “But we don’t trust them.”

Cadance made a confused frown and pointed at Fluttershy.

“Well, she’s different.” The griffon doctor shrugged. “She’s… Safe?”

“Oh, well… I’m glad it’s working out.” Twilight cocked an eyebrow. “We’re looking for Grigory.”

“I’m his friend and his doctor, not his secretary.” The griffon beckoned with his fingers for another patient. “But I suppose you can find him in the back.”

“Well, thank you.” He could have been less of a jerk, but she thanked him anyway. “Can I ask you a question?”

“No. I am working.” He looked at the griffon that approached him, rather than the ponies. “Ask Grigory. He’s the future prince, it’s his job to talk to you.”

Oh well. Meanwhile, Cadance went to Fluttershy as she examined a griffon’s paw. “Do you need anything, Fluttershy?”

“No. Thank you, Princess. I will just stay here and help the griffons for now.” She shook her head while focusing on something between the griffon’s fingers.

“Well, I guess we are kinda in the way here.” Twilight chuckled a little.

“Yes, you are.” Garvie agreed and that was enough for the three of them to leave.

Back in the corridor, with a few griffons loitering around, Shining Armor laughed a little. “Well, at least they like Fluttershy.”

“True!” Spike chuckled too.

“Well, let’s find Grigory already.” Twilight took the lead and the others followed.

They went along the corridor, all the way past some infirmary rooms where griffons rested or busied themselves with whatever and reached another lobby where they found Grigory sat on a corner, on a sitting pillow, with Gallensa looking bored next to him, drinking something out of a mug. To Twilight, it smelled like some sort of herbal tea. There were also two griffon guards by them and a third griffon that seemed to wait while he looked at some papers.

She couldn’t fathom how they managed to find bureaucracy in that place and in their situation, but if they had set up some sort of supplies department there must be some papers that needed sanctioning.

“Hi, Grigory!” Twilight waved a hoof, walking in and he kept looking at a parchment he had in his paws.

“Good morn, Princesses. Captain Armor. And… What was your name?” At least he seemed interested in them, as he them lowered the parchment to look at them. Particularly at Spike.

“I’m Spike!” He declared with a huge grin and his thumb towards his chest.

“Well, good morn to you too, Spike.” He left the parchment in his makeshift desk in front of him. “I don’t think we should be meeting. Still, here you are. Can I help?”

He was in a good mood, Twilight mused. Better take advantage with a huge friendly smile. “I wanted to talk to you! That is all. Can you talk about the spell you tried to cast? You know, during the fight?”

“No.” He said plainly, but still in a good mood.

“Oh… What about that enchanted sword?” She insisted.

“It’s a normal griffon sky sword, it was forged by Master Gilbert. He is a particularly gifted blacksmith and runecarver from Griffindell. My mother had it forged and enchanted for me a couple of years ago.” He explained patiently as a pair of griffons brought a few sitting pillows for them.

Cadance rose a hoof, despite sitting on her pillow. “Lady Gwendolen, right? The one that said Grinolf wasn’t fit to have a family?”

“Breeding and having a family are different things.” Gallensa told her, talking over Grigory and holding her mug with both paws before her beak.

“Yes…” Cadance’s eyes rolled up, then she frowned at the griffoness. “But you know what I mean.”

“I am confident that if he is given back to us, I can fix the problem. My mother will listen to me.” Grigory sounded a bit too confident for Twilight’s tastes, but she didn’t question him about that because she wanted to talk about other things.

But Cadance kind of took the conversation by assault, talking to Gallensa. “Hey, aren’t you the one that used Sunburst to get some crystals?”

“Who?” She asked with a confused frown, laying her mug on the table.

“Unicorn stallion.” Cadance explained with a bit of an angry frown. “Orange coat with a brownish mane. Glasses. A beard. Blue cape with stars… You used him to get some crystals…”

“Oh… Yes… I remember. What of it?” The yellow griffoness didn’t seem too pleased.

“That is not nice?” Cadance frowned further at her. “Using his feelings to get something out of your relationship… Isn’t… You know… Nice!”

“I am not nice.” The griffon lady said it so nonchalantly that Twilight struggled to keep from laughing, even if she understood where Cadance was coming from. It became more and more clear to Twilight that there was a significant cultural barrier between ponies and those griffons.

She supposed it was her job to figure out a way of hurdling that, herself being who she was. After all, if Cadance was ‘Love’, she was ‘Friendship’. Not that she’d need an official title from the start. The point was that the more she learned about them, the easier that would be.

Most ponies would never say ‘I’m not nice’ the way Gallensa did. However, they were not ponies, and it was not great, but Twilight understood that antagonizing those griffons and saying their culture was ‘wrong’ wasn’t the way forward building bridges.

She had done her thinking about how to approach those griffons, and she had concluded that it was actually more important than their investigation for the time being as she wouldn’t have access to them afterwards. She didn’t know what would be coming out of that whole affair she had gotten herself involved with.

Twilight was sure that Cadance had taken offense at Gallensa using Sunburst. She didn’t like it either, and understood Cadance, but she thought it was pointless to insist in that, and also harmful to their long-term relationship. Gallensa would, after all, change her mind if they managed to convince her that being nice was better. It came down to strategy and seeking better results at the long term, not reacting impulsively.

Fortunately, Grigory seemed more amused than offended and Cadance decided not to insist further, despite fuming at the griffon.

“Rather than trying to get Gallensa to repent for her sins agains Love, you should be worrying about how you mean to deal with the situation, Princess.” Grigory told Cadance. “I want to know of any progress you make, since he will be returned to us if that fails.”

“Well, I am sorry, but I don’t think that he will be returning to Snow Mountains.” She told him with a raised and offended muzzle. “I should tell you that I have already contacted my loyal assistant in the Crystal Empire and there is already an army of experienced crystal ponies looking through our records even if I must stay here!”

“So, you mean to tell us how we should love now?” Gallensa teased Cadance so openly Twilight figured Cadance would tease her back. “Just because you equines think it is acceptable, we don’t appreciate you grassbreaths trying to shove your ideals onto us.”

“What happened with Grinolf has nothing to do with Love!” Cadance complained pulling her ears back and stomping the floor with a hoof. Twilight thought that she meant to go on, but Gallensa interrupted her.

“Yes, it doesn’t. His problem is that he is a horny loser that can’t get laid.” The griffon lady scowled. “He should accept that not everything is available for everyone and mind his own place!”

“Why do you hate him so much?” Cadance frowned at her and hoofed at the floor again. “Just because he has one single solitary facial feature that his mother told you makes him impure?”

“First of all, watch your big clumsy equine tongue when you talk about Lady Gwendolen.” Galensa scowled deeper at her. “And second, the problem with the ugly duckling is that he refuses to accept that he is of an inferior class. I don’t even think that this makes him less worthy, but some things are beyond his reach. Period! His resistance to that is an affront to our customs and if that becomes the norm, his ilk will harm our race even further than their simple existence already does! And I don’t care if this is too harsh for your pony sensibilities. You don’t have to live at the doors of the Frozen North while The Mare wants to smother your way of living.”

Twilight knew Cadance. And that stare she directed at Gallensa, with that low throaty growl, and the way she inhaled deeply then exhaled with ostensive fury made her think that she had quite a few things to tell her, but chose not to, for some reason.

Still, that gave Twilight an opportunity to take the conversation back to what she wanted.

“Hum… I’m sorry if this sounds offensive, Grigory, but I’m surprised that you can enchant swords. You mentioned the runes?” She asked and Spike immediately produced his notepad and a pencil.

“Yes. Runes.” He nodded. “The same magic that built Griffindell’s walls. Mostly lost today. Because, you know… Your adored princess destroyed everything she could about the Empire. If you asked me, I would say that she destroyed everything because she was afraid of the Harpy. She admitted to it herself.”

“I can’t say that I agree…” Twilight shrugged. “It may be true, but Discord told us otherwise. I believe that destroying the past leads to dangerous precedents and that ideas must be discussed rather than forgotten. Conversations must be held, not silenced. So, I agree that she shouldn’t have done that, but I don’t think that she did because she was afraid.”

“Some ideas are dangerous, princess.” Grigory warned her.

“Absolutely. Some ideas must never come to fruition, and their proponents must be stopped. But silencing discussion only makes them harder to combat once they inevitably resurge and you are not prepared to counter them. Fear of ideas is paralyzing.” Twilight sighed and her head hung as much as her ears. “Ironically, it was Princess Celestia that taught me that.”

“Hypocritical much?” Gallensa was back to her bored expression, holding the steaming mug to her beak.

“I don’t think it was hypocrisy.” Shining shook his head. “The way Princess Celestia spoke about that made me think that whatever it was that made her fear the Black Sun would be triggered could be caused simply by creatures knowing of it. I have no idea how that works, but there you have it.”

Twilight nodded. That was some good insight. And it also made the whole thing a bit scarier.

“To be honest, Prince Armor, princesses… I don’t care.” Grigor shrugged. “I don’t believe in Celestia that something like that is possible. I believe that the Windigos were supposed to trigger the Black Sun and that the Mad God tried to do the same and those did not involve the knowledge of events, as you said yourself… All I truly want is that the two of you get to the Stormy Eyrie, that you get what you need and that you expose Celestia’s lies about the Empire and the Cult of the Harpy.”

He let go of the parchment he held and crossed his fingers, holding his paws together. “I don’t even care if you weaponized the Windigos. It makes no difference, and we will deal with them when the time comes. Especially after we have the Throne of the Griffon King secured. Especially if Celestia pays for what she has done.”

“You have plans for… Doing something with the Windigos?” Twilight’s ears perked up.

“We do.” He confirmed what she had heard right but clarified no further.

“You know…” Shining hesitated. “That actually sounds fair.“

“Well, I don’t want to punish Princess Celestia.” Twilight looked at him. “I want to understand why she did it so that we can correct whatever the issue was and avoid another problem. Although, to be honest, I believe that the griffon situation warrants some adjustments.”

Grigory stared at her for a second. “Do you have ulterior motives for saying that, Twilight?”

Good! He called her by her name just like that! “No! I am legitimately interested in the issues your kind faces. I mean… I don’t think that I would like to meet with Emperor Grigor, but I want to know more about the griffons that live in the northern lands of Griffonia. Griffons seem convinced that The Lion is worth a chance. Why don’t you tell us what is in the Stormy Eyrie that made you decide to take me and Cadance there?”

“The Crown of the Conqueror.” Grigory said plainly. “It is locked in a magical container and only the blood of an alicorn can open it.”

“Oh!” Both princesses gasped and Spike took note. Shining just stood there, listening.

“Princess Celestia couldn’t destroy it, so she contained it, along with the Harpy’s Commandment, his sword.” Grigory explained joining his paws together. “The crown was meant to symbolize Her favor, and sword Her power, both of which a griffon must have to rule all the griffons. We are willing to exchange all the information that you might find in there in exchange for returning both to us.”

“How come the griffons have cool stuff like that and we never knew?” Spike frowned and rose his eyes from the notepad. “Is it all because The Princess and Grover erased that from history? Why didn’t the griffons do something about that?”

“They did. The griffons that live in Snow Mountains Hold, Spike.” Grigory added. “The truth is that many griffons were glad to see the Emperor gone. They had, after all, sided with Grover and his rebellion. You certainly don’t know this, but the Harpy’s priestesses were hunted by the populace, tortured in the worst ways possible and burned alive.”

“That is horrible!” Both Twilight and Cadance whined.

The former went on. “Why? Wasn’t it enough that Grigor’s empire had been defeated?”

“You ponies don’t understand hatred.” Grigory smirked. “Dealing with a threat is enough for you. But the Harpy etched into our souls Her Commandment from the day the first griffons were born, and She commands us to take everything, and give nothing.”

“I guess Grover didn’t get the memo…” Cadance smirked right back at him.

“That is the thing about griffons, Princess.” He didn’t let that affect him. “We thrive in independence, and it was given to us by Her design. The Harpy never hated Grover for rebelling against The Emperor. In fact, She expected that at some point someone would… She hated him for allying with Celestia.”

“Why did the Harpy hate ponies so much?” Twilight frowned. “You and the Princess mentioned something about us being supposed to be subservient?”

“As mentioned in The Cry of the Harpy…” Grigor explained. “And as Celestia confirmed, ponies were supposed to care for nature and nothing more. Griffons were supposed to be the dominant species. You can see she feared us, as much as she feared The Harpy, and that is why Celestia encouraged griffons to mate with ponies and thus tainted our blood with your magic.”

She cocked her eyebrow. “I thought that you agreed that Grinolf was alright, and that this mentality created a bad situation all around.”

“No, Twilight.” He shook his head. “I wanted to take Grinolf back into our fold and to offer some leeway to griffons that find themselves in his situation. Not that I condoned what Celestia had done. Nor that griffons and ponies shouldn’t be segregated, much less that I liked hippogriffs or that I didn’t want to see Princess Celestia stripped of her position and punished for her actions.”

“That way we will end in another war.” Twilight sighed her frustration out. “Even if you succeed in removing Princess Celestia, maybe end the entire Alicorn Primacy, the rest of the world would never condone your hatred of the hippogriffs. The only way moving forward is giving each other space and tolerating our differences so that we can work them out. Because Princess Celestia is not going to step down and that would be extremely dangerous. I don’t know if the Confederation would survive to begin with.”

“Maybe that would be for the best.” Grigory concluded.

“You can’t fight the whole world, Grigory.” Shining Armor frowned at him and drew the griffon’s attention. “Even if you convinced the whole world that Celestia has done something wrong, they wouldn’t strip her of her position. And even if they did, you would still be left with Luna, Cadance and Twilight. Not to mention the entire government machine that grew around her.”

“If the world decided that Celestia is not worthy of her position for her lies, then I don’t think that would be the case, Captain.” Grigory insisted. “I don’t believe that they would trust the other alicorns anymore and that the unified nations would break apart. And that is not necessarily a bad thing.”

“What if that brings the Black Sun?” Cadance growled at him. “Ending everything wouldn’t give you what you want. Even if your soul is going to live past the Black Sun when Creation starts all over, you won’t be yourself.”

“As I said… Ponies don’t understand hatred.” He said it as plainly and seriously as possible. “We are prepared to endure consequences for the sake of fulfilling our revenge, if that is what it takes.”

She disagreed. Ponies did understand hatred. They just believed in a different path. But anyways… She should talk to Princess Luna. The Crown belonged with the griffons one way or another.

***

Princess Skystar sat in the middle of the lounge. It was a large circular room that served as entrance to the bedroom wings of the palace. Sitting on her haunches and nervously rubbing her paws together.

“Hmmm…” She whined to herself, and her frown deepened some.

Finally, Silverstream came out of her room. Her pink hippogriff cousin waved happily at her, but the princess grimaced and beckoned her to come. Quick!

“Hum… Are you okay, Sky?” She approached with a concerned frown, but the princess held her beak and shushed her, finally waving for her to wait.

Then Silverstream simply sat next to the princess and waited, slightly confused, as Skystar stared intently at the corridor where were their bedrooms.

“Hum, what’s going on?” Silverstream tried in a low, secretive voice.

“Ssssh! We’re waiting for Gallus.” Skystar stared wide-eyed at her.

“But… Why? Why are we whispering?” The pink one kept her confused frown.

Skystar looked one way and the other before she whispered again. “Princess Celestia is here!”

“Okay…” Silverstream kept quiet for a few seconds… “What does it matter?”

Skystar waved her paw at her. “I’ll tell you once Gallus gets here!”

Silverstream sighed but resigned to waiting since her princess cousin was going to be like that.

And they waited for a good ten minutes, as palace servants walked past them, also wondering what was going on, but none of them asked. Silverstream supposed they actually had work to do and Skystar was happy none of them would be squawking to Princess Celestia!

Finally, Gallus came out of his room with a long yawn and the first thing he saw was the two girls in the lounge beyond the hall with Skystar hurriedly beckoning him to them. Maybe his brain wasn’t functioning at full capacity yet, but he saw no problem in approaching them, as quickly as Skystar’s frantic signaling urged him to.

“What happened?” He asked, all worry.

She shushed him with a finger before her beak and waved at both to follow her into the sitting room past one of the doors she closed immediately after they were inside. One of the palace’s many rounded rooms that felt like a cave with the whole maritime theme, with blue walls and cyan sitting furniture and small tables that held delicate drinking utensils and the rounded ceiling.

Ultimately the Princess spoke in the most secretive of voices. “Princess Celestia is here!”

“So?” He shrugged.

“The Prince-Consort is here with her! He said that Grigory is in trouble!” She told him with huge eyes.

“Oh, boy…” Gallus sighed. “We don’t have to get involved, Sky… This is trouble we don’t need.”

“But we have to talk to her! About… You know!”

“No!” He spoke a little louder than he should, then lowered his head and grimaced. “It’s gonna get us killed and your mother is likely to never let us speak to each other again!”

Skystar stomped the floor insistently. “He’s your family! Even if his mother hates hippogriffs… That is kinda her culture!”

“Hum…” Silverstream rose a finger. “Sky, I’m pretty sure that hating an entire people isn’t really a cultural trait.”

“Ugh, come on!” Gallus held his face in despair. “Can’t we just enjoy our vacation?!”

“Well… I don’t really agree with Sky that we have to do something…” Silverstream’s eyes shifted around nervously. “But she’s right that he is your family…”

“We can’t do anything. If we even mention what happened, we’ll be getting into so much trouble nothing we say will matter. Queen Novo is gonna murder me!”

“But you know that Griffonia is gonna be in trouble soon! We can help!” She insisted again.

“But we can’t! Just because Lord Gilad is my brother…” He covered his eyes with his paws. “And I don’t even want to think what she would have done to you two if she could have gotten away with it! We shouldn’t even be talking about this! Come on!”

“Sky…” Silverstream held the princess’ shoulder and pulled softly to grab her attention. “What exactly do you expect? There isn’t really a lot that we can do from here.”

“This is crazy!” Gallus put up his paws. “Queen Novo is going to eat my liver! And if she doesn’t, then some northerner griffon spy is gonna do me in!”

“I think you’re being just a little bit overdramatic, Gallus…” Silverstream showed her fingers.

“I’m not! We were in danger!” He insisted, sitting and nervously shaking his fists. “We’ll be in danger right now if you insist in this crazy talk!”

“None of that matters!” Skystar waved her paw at Gallus. “Princess Celestia needs to know. It could change the whole situation.”

“Alright. Alright.” Silverstream waved at her to wait. “What exactly do you want to do?”

“Let’s talk to Princess Celestia before she leaves.” Skystar offered.

“Can we talk to both the princess and your mother at the same time?” Gallus frowned at his own annoyance. “I guess your mother won’t murder me right away with the Princess there and I might get some time to hide before some hunter manages to infiltrate Mount Aris. If Queen Novo doesn’t kick me out, that is.”

“We’ll talk to them during breakfast!” Skystar concluded with a much too happy grin for Gallus’ tastes.

***

Chrysalis stared down the muzzle of one of her fearsome changeling super-soldiers with a scowl, holding his head up with her telekinetic magic. “How in the ever-loving world did you manage to do this?”

Next to her Luna watched, with no small amount of amusement and astonishment Luna watched as she examined the big changeling with a piece of dry macaroni lodged inside his muzzle, that was also bent the wrong way.

“It was a fight with one of those bloody griffons!” He whined with his ears down. “I was helping prepare the salad, and the wanker called you a bawd and a cheap courtesan!”

“Are you aware that those are the same things?” Luna asked from behind Chrysalis.

“That only makes it sound even worse!” He defended himself after Chrysalis let go of his jaw. Then he sneezed mayonnaise all over the floor of the sitting room. “What was I supposed to do? Just let the flipping birdbrain insult my mother?!”

If anything, Luna thought that it was rather cute how angry he was. She wondered which archetype he carried. Chrysalis just nickered-buzzed at him, a bit angry, a bit worried.

“If Chocolate Velvet were here, I would ask him to take a look at your muzzle. Shimi is at the hospital airship helping them, maybe I should take you there.” Chrysalis frowned. “I’m sure the pony doctors would have no problem helping with this thing.”

Luna nodded. “It would be better, Chrysalis. Any of the doctors there can assist indeed.”

With that decided, Chrysalis nodded at the door to her changeling and led the way with Luna walking next to her when Twilight Sparkle swung the door open and pointed a hoof at Luna. “We need to talk!”

She was a little surprised to see the changeling with the bloody nose behind them. “Hum… Don’t changelings have green blood?”

“That is mayonnaise.” Luna said, while Chrysalis and the Changeling walked outside. “Walk with us. He was injured in a fight with a griffon over Chrysalis honor and we’ll take him to the hospital airship.”

“I just came from there…” Twilight sighed.

“If you want to talk, you’ll have to walk along.” Luna wasn’t moved. “What is it about?”

Twilight sighed with her ears down but resigned to walking with them along the entry hall of the Break of Dawn’s aftercastle. Her ears perked up back again with her curiosity. “Grigory said that you are holding an artifact that belongs to the griffons!”

“Do you believe everything those griffons tell you?” The larger princess rolled her eyes.

“Well… It is a crown… Emperor Grigor’s crown, locked inside a chest, or something, that can only be opened with alicorn blood.” She explained.

Chrysalis chuckled. “Always some stupid nonsense… Blood…”

“Such a thing would not be impossible.” Luna looked at Twilight by her side, letting Chrysalis walk forward with her changeling. “But he lied to you. Grigor’s crown, the Crown of the Conqueror, or the Harpy’s Favor, was destroyed. Melted along with his sword, which he never used in Celestia’s campaign. He wielded an axe of northerner design.”

“Why?” She became even more curious, but Luna simply shrugged.

“We destroyed hundreds of magical swords which belonged to the Swordmaidens along with his crown and his own sword, Twilight. I remember that they were carried back to the forges of Goldsworth, one of the forge-towns that supplied the Battlehorns because they had arcane smiths and forges with sufficient knowledge and power. Celestia supervised everything. They were broken, melted and buried as respectfully as though they were enemy soldiers. Celestia took every precaution not to provoke the griffons further. I can guarantee you there isn’t a locked chest anywhere that can only be opened with alicorn blood.”

Luna frowned. “This is strange. The griffons never asked for anything. Not even the northerners, and Grover’s soldiers even confiscated several swords that the population had taken from dead swordmaidens. All of them met the same fate.”

They sat near the small landing area the chariot that made trips between the airships would soon be returning to and Twilight took the time to stare at Luna with a frown. “Grigory also mentioned that the Harpy’s priestesses were tortured and killed. Did that have anything to do with that?”

“I don’t know anything about that, Twilight Sparkle.” Luna frowned a little as though she was offended. “To my knowledge, the soldiers from all the other nations completely disengaged from the griffons. Everycreature had a world to rebuild.”

“It was the griffons themselves, Twilight.” Chrysalis said as she hoofed at her big changeling soldier’s ridge behind his neck. “My mother’s spies reported that some of the commoners did to them things that not even I would have done. They were a scapegoat: as soon as the war ended, griffons turned inward and started pointing talons at those that helped the Emperor. Slave drivers, tax collectors, public servants in general. And those, in turn, saved their coats by helping the dirty peasants find the Swordmaidens.”

They boarded the chariot and Chrysalis went on. Twilight noticed something was missing as Chrysalis spoke. “I wouldn’t speak to you of the things our spies reported back about what they did to young and pretty griffon ladies and even the older hardened warriors that the Swordmaidens were. They had a tendency of becoming quite powerful and under the Emperor they often performed ritual sacrifices and were generally a terror to deal with in the battlefield. They were worshiped as manifestations of the Harpy herself and they were not very kind to griffons that disagreed with their religion or their emperor. When they were caught helpless… Those that suffered under them had a lot of grievances to settle.”

“But… Didn’t King Grover do anything about that?”

“What was he going to do?” Chrysalis sat on the chariot’s floor as it departed. “He could barely keep his kingdom from splitting apart and he needed a distraction from all the mess he still had to fix. Not to mention there wasn’t a lot he could actually do. His own soldiers hated them.”

“Why didn’t Princess Celestia do anything?” She looked back at Luna as though she ought to have an answer.

“Celestia actually helped.” Luna stared down at her. “She… Didn’t take kindly to the sorts of things that happened. She knew of the things that surrounded war. I will never forget the stare in Star Swirl’s face when he reported back to Celestia with his accounts of one such event he had witnessed, she ordered the Battlehorns to seek evidence and apprehend all that were involved with any incident they could get to… She also reported it all to Empress Geneviere in Griffindell, who would send her sister Swordmaidens to find and take the stranded ones to her. I believe they saved quite a few and brought many to justice.”

Luna frowned. “Though the notion of justice of that time was quite different. Grover helped too, of course, but he had his paws full just trying to keep the kingdom from breaking apart.”

“Empress Geneviere? Was she Grigor’s wife?” Twilight supposed so, as it was quite obvious, but she asked anyways.

“She was his ‘mate’.” Luna nodded.

“Hum…” Chrysalis hummed and drew their attention. “I wanted Celestia to invade Griffindell and murder all the griffons because… Well… The present situation. But I suppose that without her insight, we would already be at war. I imagine that she also must have felt quite conscious about all the bloody justice.”

“What do you mean?” Twilight rose an eyebrow.

“Didn’t you read the book I gave Cadance?” Chrysalis sighed. “It’s a book. I thought you ate books for breakfast.”

“I don’t know of any books!” Twilight gasped.

“The Four Princess of Shatterhoof Valley.” Luna explained. “It is a story that covers the events of the reconquest of Shatterhoof Valley. After the fall of the Republic, a local lord made himself king and… It is an example of the things Celestia… Things that we did to the Unicorn Kings. It was not pretty as the modern tale.”

“Wow… Umm. I don’t know what to say.” Twilight rubbed her forelegs together. “I mean… Uh…”

“Understand something, Twilight…” Luna sighed, but Chrysalis silenced her with a hoof to her mouth.

“Don’t start it again! War is awful, Twilight Sparkle. Plain and simple. Luna would equate the swordmaiden’s tormentors to Celestia and herself, but they are both being drama queens when they do that. Just read the damn book and reach your own conclusions. Bottom line: Celestia learned. Luna learned. They grew from those experiences and those griffons that did those things I can’t talk openly under penalty of offending your pony sensibilities, were petty assholes that learned nothing and wanted to get rich on selling their swords! Good riddance, and I hope they suffered. A lot.”

Luna playfully batted her hoof away. “When did you become such a staunch defender of the Royal House?”

“Probably after I got into the House of Majesty in the Hall of Friendship.” Chrysalis gave her snarky grin. “I suppose I endeared myself to you two after the griffons started making this mess and we spent a few hours in the Bordello of Candy.”

“You know… I once wasted a whole hour of my life arguing that royalty didn’t actually do that sort of thing.” Twilight deadpanned at them.

“You don’t.” Luna grinned all mischief at her. “I lived too long and took too much horseapples to let the Society for the Good Manners of Royalty bother me.”

***

Morning in Mount Aris, as Novo’s palace was referred to along with the mountain, was very much similar to mornings in Canterlot Palace. Without all the noise from the civil departments coming to life for the day or the hubbub of the halls that connected to the Hall of Friendship.

Sitting at the table with Chocolate Velvet and Queen Novo Celestia suddenly started questioning the wisdom of having allowed her home to become one with the government machine because she wanted to be close to her ponies.

Next to her, Chocolate Velvet cheerfully explained to the queen all about his issues with the chivalric society while she giggled and shook her head at his words. She wished she could partake in their lighthearted conversation, but she kept remembering her dreams. Even with Luna’s assistance, old memories perturbed her greatly and those about The Harpy were the worse. Sometimes she wished she hadn’t been saddled with such memories.

Not that she regretted her part in events lost so long ago in the past they were only meaningful to her, but she hated that she had been forced into remembering The Harpy and all the pain that Grigor caused.

Enough problems in the modern world, even if it was already so much better off than it was in that time. The irony that such statement could perfectly fit several periods just made her even more frustrated along with the fact that she lived through those.

With a soft sigh, she relegated those thoughts to the backside of her mind and took a sip of the watermelon juice one of the nice hippogriff servants just brought her. Delicious and refreshing, as it was a bit hot that morning. There were also several slices of melons, actual watermelons, kiwis, grapes, some cookies and kelp dishes.

Celestia had to admit she thought it was quite cute the way Novo’s beak cut up the pieces of the melon slice she was eating.

Soon after she was back in the mood for a pleasant breakfast Princess Skystar and her two guests, Silverstream and Gallus arrived to share with them. Something about the younglings seemed to disturb them, but Celestia supposed they would speak out if they felt the need. Mother and daughter greeted each other happily and Novo also shared greetings with Silverstream and Gallus, as did Celestia and Chocolate Velvet.

“I’m surprised. You usually like to hold your own little court, Skystar.” The queen giggled, all good mood and fluttering feathers. “Why, I am pleased you and your friends decided to join us for breakfast. To what do we owe this joy?”

“Hum…” The princess’ big plume over her head seemed to droop in front of her face that had a weird grin. “I need to tell you something… Hum… Just, please… Promise you won’t be angry?”

Novo’s mood turned around a one-hundred and eighty faster than Luna could and that amused Celestia while the big hippogriff screeched at the younglings. “I knew it! Gallus! I’ll murder you!”

He screamed and used his plate for cover. “Wait! It’s not my fault! I mean… It is, but not like that!”

“Novo...” Celestia touched her friend’s paw with a hoof. “Let them talk.”

She didn’t say any more, but she fumed furiously and stared daggers at Gallus, which also amused Celestia that she would blame him over the others when Skystar was to blame as much as Gallus if the issue at hoof was what worried her friend.

Deep inside Celestia hoped to Harmony the issue was an accidental foal… But her instincts, honed from millennia of dealing with world-ending drama, told her she was willfully naïve.

When the initial scare of Novo’s reaction washed away, and Skystar and her cousin stopped hiding behind the table, the young princess spoke as insecurely as a young hippogriff could speak. “Remember some two years ago when Princess Twilight assigned us a project for our spring vacations?”

Novo blinked, a bit surprised. “Why yes. I remember it was a delightful idea. The Griffon Heritage research project. She asked all hippogriff students in her school to research and then present, upon return to classes, about the interaction of griffons and hippogriffs to tighten bonds between both races among the students.”

Then she frowned. “I remember you three got a D+ on a very superficial work because you spent your vacations fooling around with your cousin and your coltfriend despite me paying lodging and expenses for the entire period in Griffonstone.”

The princess joined her fingers together, apologetically, and quite literally dying inside while Silverstream and Gallus both braced for impact at her sides. “Yes… Hum... About that… We didn’t go to Griffonstone.”

Somehow her mother’s silence seemed to scare the three youths far more than any threats she might have made.

“So… Hum…” Silverstream took the word since Skystar was just too scared. “Meant to go to Griffonstone, but Gallus had this idea… That we should go to the ‘oldest griffon city in the world’… And since he is Lord Gilad’s brother, it should have been okay.”

Novo’s fist slammed at the table and caused silverware and juices, creams and jams to fly everywhere. “You took my daughter and my niece to the place where they hate hippogriffs the most?!”

Despite the terrified trio of friends, Novo growled and allowed them the time to speak, which they didn’t, because they were terrified.

“That was rather daring, you three.” Celestia frowned herself. “I can understand expecting Lord Gilad to keep you safe and sharing of their own history, and that it would provide some novel material to discuss in class. But it was dangerous, even if in the past the northerners weren’t as outspoken with their bigotry relating to hippogriffs. I believe we can assume that things didn’t go quite as you planned.”

“Well...” Gallus fidgeted in his seat. “Gilad wasn’t home… He had left with his soldiers to hunt down some monster that showed up and Lady Gwendolen took charge of the city. It was… Uh… Kinda insane.”

“Stop beating around the bush and tell us what happened!” Novo yelled at him.

But the young griffon startled, and it was Silverstream that took the word again. Poor Skystar just made herself as small as she could in her seat. “Just before we arrived Gallus noticed something was strange because the walls were decorated with Lady Gwendolen’s flags and he said that was bad.”

“I told them to hide under the blankets over the supplies in the carts, but… Lady Gehenna… She’s kinda like Gwendolen’s right paw griffoness… She decided to inspect the whole caravan and she found Skystar and Silverstream. I told her they were with me, and she took us to Lady Gwendolen.”

Gallus stopped for a while but went on soon enough. “I don’t know what happened, but she was different. She would usually pester me about being Gilad’s brother and my importance to our race, also try and hook me up with some Griffindellian noble girl… But she was usually pleasant and even nice and welcoming. That day she was… I guess the word is ‘unhinged’. She was angry about something, and we were there… At her mercy.”

“Lady Gwendolen organized a fighting tournament.” Silverstream explained.

“And she meant to give the three of us to whoever won. And I don’t think she meant it in that funny way creatures do in those parties in the Bordello of Candy.” Skystar added.

“I wish I could be angry about the fact that you know about those, Skystar…” Novo growled, but restrained herself.

“Well…” The young princess continued. “There was that scary, big griffon lady that really started to beat the other griffons over us… Until Grigory fought her and he… Well, he saved us. I don’t like to think about what that big griffon lady would have done to us.”

“What big griffon lady?” Celestia interjected.

“Lady Gwineth…” Gallus explained. “I mean... She’s huge and… Just mean and unpleasant, but everyone sucks up to her because she’s beautiful and Lady Gwendolen enables her way too much.”

“Well, the point is that Lady Gwendolen was having too much fun with whatever went on between her and Grigory, and she humored him, as she said, and he kept us safe.” Silverstream shrugged. “We spent the night there and nothing happened.”

“it’s the hospitality law…” Gallus deadpanned. “Once you accept them, you can’t kick another griffon out of your house in the same day they arrived and you have to treat them with dignity, feed them and provide reasonable comfort and protection.”

Silverstream spoke again. “Next morning, Grigory gave us a lot of food and good water and sent us out with the caravan going out to Thunderpeak.”

Gallus shook his head. “Lady Gwendolen accompanied us to the outer gates. She never did that before, as she usually stays within the mansion grounds. She grabbed me and took me aside. She put me against a wall and said that if I ever returned, she’d feed my… Hum… Bits… To the pigs and dress me as a maid to clean the latrines in her mansion until the day I died. Or something like that. I was a bit scared, you know?”

“Well, that’s concerning…” Chocolate said plainly.

“The point of it all is that Grigory helped us!” Skystar added, paying no mind to concealing her flustered manners. “He is not bad!”

“He wasn’t being nice to us, Sky…” Gallus sighed nervously. “He was fighting his mother, and I don’t know what the heck went on that day. But he was not doing that to help us! Grigory isn’t nice the way you think and I’m, sure that today he hates hippogriffs more than he did two years ago!”

“Why didn’t you tell us any of that at the time?” Novo frowned, more out of concern than anger, though.

“Before we left, she kind of threatened us…” Silverstream rubbed her paws nervously. “Said there wasn’t a place in the world we could hide from her if we ever mentioned what happened there. Honestly… The only reason we did now is because Sky is worried about Grigory after the whole battle she read about in your intelligence reports!”

The queen shook her head with her eyes closed and rubbed her beak.

“This is unacceptable. I’ll take care of this. You keep them safe in here, Novo.” Celestia said. She hoped her voice didn’t come out too gravely. “I will ask that Golden Rule personally investigate the situation while I go to Griffonstone. I don’t like this. At all. Really do keep them safe.”

Novo agreed. “I’ll keep them inside and redouble the palace’s guard.”

Celestia nodded and finished her watermelon juice. “Come on, Chocolate Velvet. I will teleport us to Griffonstone. With your excuses.”

She finished bowing to Novo and the youngsters as she rose from her sitting pillow and the brown alicorn stallion followed her out the door. The three young still sat before Queen novo.

Silverstream kept staring down. Skystar looked at her mother and nervously strummed her fingers at the edge of the table and Gallus looked everywhere but the queen and constantly fidgeted with the forwardmost feather in his crest.

“So… Are we grounded?” Skystar finally summoned up the courage to speak.

Novo sighed and touched her forehead. “I’ll have to keep you three inside. For your safety, until this mess is sorted out. I can’t say I am fully without fault in all this, anyways… No, you’re not grounded, though. We’ll see what we can do to make it as nice as it can be.”

“So, you’re not gonna murder me, nor ship me away?” Gallus asked with a sacred grin.

“I’m gonna feed you whole to the sharks.” She spoke way too seriously.

“That is not funny!” He cried.

***

Once they arrived at their destination (Twilight for the second time), one of the doctors in the otherwise empty emergency sector of the hospital airship called Chrysalis’ soldier to see his muzzle.

“Well, this is curious…” She was a brown unicorn with blonde mane and tail wearing a white coat above her own coat and with one of those lamp thingies on her forehead.

The big changeling laid on a short examining table and the doctor looked into his nose with her hooves on the table. “Well, it is nothing more than a piece of pasta stuck inside his nose, and that wouldn’t exactly be a problem if his septum wasn’t fractured. It is an incomplete fracture and I’ll simply replace it and then we will clean this mess. Some pain medication and a bit of ice will be enough. Also, I would avoid fighting griffons. Do you have any medical issues? Allergies? Pre-existent diseases?”

“Hum…” The changeling hummed to himself and stared at Chrysalis.

“What archetype did the Eggmaidens say you carry?” She asked the big changeling and the doctor seemed curious but didn’t inquire about that.

“I have Bossy’s.” He said and the unicorn doctor rather stared at Chrysalis for an explanation.

“He shouldn’t have any other issues. He’s just annoying and likes to order others around.” She explained.

“Well… Okay.” The pony frowned but decided that whatever that was about it wasn’t worth the trouble. “A nurse will soon be here to medicate him, and I will return to deal with the… Pasta issue.”

The doctor left the room and Chrysalis talked to Luna. “I’ll stay here with him, but you don’t have to.”

“I’m not here because of him…” Luna deadpanned at her, and Chrysalis rolled her eyes.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything to the griffon…”

“Good, then.” Luna nodded. “Until later.”

She turned to leave, and Twilight followed. “Princes Luna! I don’t understand… Why would Grigor just lie about the crown?”

She grumbled. “Fells like I can’t trust anypony!”

“I can tell you that Grigory has no concern for your welfare.” Luna spoke as she walked the corridor, going past the rooms where doctors would be seeing to patients. “If anything, I can guarantee you that Celestia and I never did anything with the intention of harming you, your friends, Cadance, or anycreature in our fair nation. Griffons included.”

“I mean…” She quickly retracted. “We have hurt many a creature, but… You understand.”

Twilight frowned, walking alongside. “Do you think that the crown would make that much of a difference?”

“No.” Luna replied without missing a beat. “And that is one of the reasons I believe he lied to you. If the crown was sequestered inside such a device The Lion would have been the first to request that it is returned, even before he accepted the nomination to the Throne of The Griffon King.”

Twilight had to agree. That was reasonable. She also grunted internally. She meant to help those dumb griffons, but they kept playing dumb games with her. Though…

“Why was it that he wanted to take me and Cadance to the Stormy Eyrie then?” She mused.

“That is a good question…” Luna frowned and seemed to consider the question but didn’t speak any further.

“Maybe they have stashed important documents there?” Twilight shrugged. “Or something? Is it true that it is the birthplace of the griffons?”

“I do not know.” Luna shook her head. “To be fair, I am not sure why is it that griffons even exist. It seemed to me that all creatures exist because of us, ponies, taming the world. Maybe they were magically created, much like the other races.”

“Like yaks? And dragons? Buffalos?” Twilight frowned. “Did they just pop out of thin air?”

“Yes. It sounds silly, since ponies were carefully created…” Luna looked down at Twilight, explaining calmly. “But you have to remember that harmony exists as a flow of magical energy. It reflects what happens in the world and speaks back to it.”

Then Luna giggled a little. “Although they certainly didn’t pop into existence! Earth ponies ‘germinated from the life magic that Sol-Estia spread and climbed out of the mud. I suppose that other creatures came to life in a similar way.”

Luna stopped, with a hoof to her lips. “Pegasi fell from the clouds. And unicorns came from the shards of crystals that sprung from the ground. Quite dramatically.”

“Magic was drastically different in those primeval times, Twilight.” Luna rose a hoof professorially. “It is silly to imagine today, but beings came to be from pure magic. But it was only after Luccenotturna arrived they became sentient. It was as though the process of her magical creation enabled intelligence to exist.”

She frowned. “But the information for her creation already existed in Magic, born out Creation itself as she existed to respond to a failure: ponies needed intelligence to thrive. And once they were ready and succeeded in their mission, other creatures were brought into existence, a reflection of the magic they she’d into the world, which was a reflection of the magic of Creation which acted through the Goddesses. Ponies served as the mold for life.”

“If you think about it, the mechanism was the same. If ponies were originally created because griffons needed a world to exist on, but roles were reversed.” Luna frowned a little more and scratched her head with a hoof. “Did that make any sense? Didn’t we already talk about this?”

Twilight giggled. “A little. And we did… But I never imagined that ponies literally crawled out of the mud.”

Luna had stopped, though. When Twilight noticed, she stood by a door and looked inside. A yellow pony doctor talked to a cyan male pegasus with darker mane and with a pegasus mare covered in light green coat and a darker mane. The male pegasus sat on an examination table and the doctor shone a flashlight at his eye, and then the other.

The pegasus mare stood nearby, worried while she talked. “And then he said that he saw an old griffon lady.”

“Hum… But you couldn’t remember? You were confused?” The doctor sat in front of him, with a hoof on her chin. “That is an awfully curious.”

Twilight looked at Luna, who walked inside, and she followed. “Excuse me, I am sorry, but we overheard your conversation. There was a griffon in a cloak?”

They turned to her, and then Twilight. The medical pony seemed very insecure about the whole situation and kept staring at her patient and at the princesses. The first to talk was the blue male. “It’s okay, doctor. I don’t mind…”

The doctor earth pony mare looked at a clipboard. “Greetings, Princess. They are the contractors that brought supplies to the fleet. Master Heavy Haul and his friend and employee Miss Spring Breeze. While they were unloading supplies to the Break of Dawn, Master Haul seems to have experienced some curious absence symptoms.”

Luna thought for a few seconds and Twilight waited until the older princess spoke again. “Tell me exactly what you saw, Master Heavy Haul, and what happened before and after.”

He gave his mare friend a concerned look but turned back to the Princess. “We were unloading cargo. The way we always do. I sat near the ramp with my clipboard checking crate tags and the others carried them off to the airship’s crew. Then I saw an old griffon lady… I can’t really remember what she looked like, but she definitively wore a cloak. And she spoke to me. Said something about her not being important.”

“That sounds suspicious…” Twilight frowned and then rose an eyebrow. “To say the least.”

“This may sound strange…” Luna kept looking at the pony. “But would you mind if I peeked into your memories?”

The ponies did indeed find that strange, all three of them exchanging glances in between themselves, but the stallion finally acquiesced, even if he seemed not entirely comfortable. “Sure, Princess… I guess I want to know what happened… I’m a little scared to be honest.”

“Whatever happened, we will help you deal with it, Master Haul.” Luna assured him with a raised hoof and a worried expression.

Luna’s concern worried Twilight. She could be dramatic, and unnecessarily ominous, but she worried about something and in the present state of affairs almost everything worried Twilight too. He supposedly saw a griffon and that meant that there might be a griffon infiltrated in the fleet. The problem with that was that she didn’t know if that griffon worked for Grigory and meant to help him get the so-called Stormdrive device for their escape, or if it was another griffon that wasn’t related.

With all accounted for, she was thrice worried. Once because something was wrong, and Luna was worried. Twice because there was a griffon sneaking around in the fleet. And thrice because it might not be a griffon helping them escape. She sighed… If things kept going the way they were, she’d start distrusting griffons as much as Princess Celestia seemed to.

She sighed again… Deeper.

Meanwhile Luna directed the pony to lie down in the examining table and the doctor mare got him a folded sheet for pillow. Twilight stood around to see if she could help with anything, but it didn’t seem so. She simply sat near his mare friend. Smiled and rubbed a friendly hoof on her shoulder, then waited to see Luna do her thing.

“I need a place to lie down…” The blue alicorn said, looking around. “I must sleep for this to work.”

Twilight’s eyebrow rose. “Can you just sleep whenever you want?”

Luna blinked, staring dumbly at her. “I suppose… I had never thought of it like that. It’s a requirement so that my magic will properly connect.”

“Oh!” Her ears perked up. “Can I help? Can I see the Palace of the Self?”

“No.” Luna said plainly, and with all finality, much to Twilight’s annoyance while the doctor mare readied another improvised pillow for Luna and a spread sheet on the floor.

“Sorry, Princess. I suppose it’s the best I can do.” She said apologetically, despite her curious stare. “Is there anything else you require?”

“Nothing. Thank you. All I require now is some peace. It is a complicated spell.” Luna explained as she kneeled on her legs and then laid on her side with the head on the folded sheets.

“Hum… I’ll stay here with you, if that is okay. Just to make sure nobody runs into… This…” Twilight stared unsure of what to think. It was a bit awkward. “Hum… Couldn’t you go to your room and find him? Or something?”

“We are in a bit of a hurry, Twilight.” Luna explained, laid on her side. “I’m worried there might be a griffon infiltrated in the fleet. I’ve seen this before, but I don’t want to say any more before I am sure of what is going on.”

“Okay…” Twilight sighed, a little helplessly.

“If you wish to assist, you could inform the crew that we have good reasons to believe a griffon may have infiltrated the ship while I confirm what happened.” Luna smiled softly.

A second or two later Luna was already asleep, and her horn shone softly.

Twilight bit her lip… She had a decision to make. Assuming there was a griffon infiltrated in the fleet, they might be important for Grigory’s plan to get her and her friends back on their way. Or it could be there for any sort of other shady griffon reasons that Grigory didn’t disclose to her and everypony was in danger.

Ooooh... What to do? What to do?

Ultimately, she decided she ought to trust Grigory if she was already going to trust him with strapping some weird bit of griffon magical device to her airship anyways. After all, the chances of a random griffon infiltrating the fleet for any other reason would be minimal. It felt awful betraying Princess Luna’s trust, but… In a way, she had started it.

***

Luna woke in the balcony at the top of the stairs before the beautiful and crystal-like double doors with the winged crate cutie mark. Looking one side and the other, everything seemed to be in order with the large, cavernous area flooded in light-blue magic below. Nothing looked out of place, everything flowed smoothly and there were no weird sounds or smells. Perfect.

Turning her attention back to the door, her magic interacted with it without any hitches, and it unlocked, opening by itself to reveal the crystal corridor on the other side.

She kept a respectful walk despite a quickened pace and trespassed the corridor in no time to stop before the scale with the six gems that represented the Elements of Harmony. Circled around it, paying attention, feeling around for weird magic or anything, but nothing seemed out of order and the Elements seemed balanced within the limits of the normalcy, as the thousands of years had taught her.

The stairway downward to the Hall of Memories seemed perfectly fine too, and she would check his memories in a bit. Before, she had to make sure that everything was okay with the Throne of the Mind.

Therefore, she turned her attention to one of the four doors, the one marked with the Moon, and went inside when her magic opened it effortlessly. Once again, a cursory inspection confirmed that everything was as it should be inside her special room. Therefore, she made her way past the sitting room that really served no purpose other than decoration and took her seat. The magical images formed themselves before her as they should and presented before her eyes all the information she would need to get started on the task of figuring out what happened.

The brain area activation readings showed that the pony was asleep, as he should be, that he was dreaming, also as he should, that the subconscious processes reduced and input that resulted from homeostatic processes and senses were blocked from his conscious mind, once again, as they should. Finally, output to skeletal muscles was blocked, as it should be during his sleeping time. Everything seemed to be perfectly fine.

Her attention turned to the vital signs monitoring and his breathing rate diminished, his core temperature slowly diminished while peripheral temperature rose, heart rate diminished. Everything seemed to be perfectly fine.

Another image showed a shiny image of a pegasus enveloped in a diagram of lines that flickered in all directions, all green and within the normal thaumatic energy levels, with no damage to the individual parts of his soul.

Her horn shone and another image manifested. It showed a wide green pasture where the pony galloped and took short flights with a group of several ponies. An airship landed in the grass.

Yet another magical image manifested and showed the magical notation relating to the magical processes currently processed by his mind. He experienced simulated sensory data repeated from his memory. His Self seemed to process and react accordingly, and proper sensory memory was pulled by the DreamServoEngine from his memories and formed a closed feedback loop. It worked smoothly and didn’t unduly tax individual parts of his brain, as evidenced by the levels of glucose and oxygen consumption as well as blood flow. Brain cells activated in a clear pattern of networked synapses and then shut off as they should. The process, of course, was too fast for any normal creature to witness, but in that place, time had little meaning and, as Chocolate Velvet once said, Luna ran a more powerful hardware.

She rose an eyebrow at the recollection but shrugged and continued her task.

Anyways, since everything seemed to be working perfectly and his brain had no issues sustaining those tasks, it was clear that the problem was of the psychic order, but if his mind had been damaged by nightmares, his malfunctioning mind would unduly tax his brain. What she saw made the likelihood that someone had indeed messed with that pony’s mind increase exponentially.

And she frowned at that. Despite some creatures, for some reasons thinking that Celestia was the one that got angry at ponies being mistreated, Luna didn’t hate it any less. Someone messed with the mind of one of her little ponies and she took it personally.

Metaphorically cracking her magical knuckles, she turned her attention to another of the magical images, the entirely black one with one blinking dot. With her magic she willed the un-pony-like characters into the screen and mentally ordered the command be executed.

Everything turned dark and the magical images blinked off. The light pulses that ran under the crystal floor ceased and it occurred to her that maybe she should have informed the doctor mare that strange things might happen during the process, but they should be too subtle for them to notice on the outside and the less ponies knew, the better.

Only after a second or two the illumination and the magical images returned. All of them dark, except for the main one that showed a cute representation of Luna opening her wings in a simple four frames animation before it returned to showing the magical notation of Master Heavy Haul’s mind at work. However, rather than returning to full functionality, only basic processes executed and the barest possible version of his mind manifested. Just enough for her to study the issue and minimal information such as the words ‘PonyOS Luna 4.6d’ and ‘Recovery Mode’.

Then the other images came to life again, showing the working parameters of Heavy Haul’s body and mind inside red frames on the edges.

With that, Luna magically transmitted another command, and the screen showed her a simple table with a record of all the times the processes of his mind were unexpectedly interrupted.

The vast majority read:

Warning: Akh Class Violation – Dream loop disruption – Nightmare reported

All of those followed by a report of herself accessing the system, until the last, not highlighted and representing herself presently interfering with his mind, but the ones right before read:

Warning: Khet Class Violation – Subliminal input error

Warning: Akh Class Violation – Thought process disruption

Warning: Shut Class Violation – Mistagged memory

Warning: Shut Class Violation – Corrupted memory

They repeated themselves multiple times, and that told Luna quite a few things. Something exploited that pony’s sensory system and caused his mind to mishandle his mental processes. That caused memories to be ran through his mind with an improper tagging and that resulted in the memories being corrupted when his mind tried to file them away in his episodic memory… The part of his memory that recorded events.

That was probably what caused him confusion.

She ground her teeth almost painfully and neighed to herself.

Well, she had an idea of what had happened… Now, to figure out what exactly happened.

The first thing to do was find the corrupted memories and she supposed that it was something that happened within a few hours. She commanded the system to access the memory index and bingo. A series of recollections with improper processing. She flagged them for examination in the Hall of Memories later and examined their structure.

They were tagged as irrelevant and the neural pathways would disconnect within hours, and that was okay. She had time.

Her attention turned to the main magical image that showed the slow scrolling lines of magical notation that outlined for her the specific magical flow of his mind, and she willed into it a command that showed her an exact record of his mind in the last hours.

Pony minds weren’t really that complex and most of them were exactly the same, after all every single pony functioned the same way and the details that changed were due to their life experiences and all the things that formed their individual selves. But even then, it still was an immense and complex magic that made the mind and since no permanent damage had been made, it would be difficult to identify the exact processes that suffered disruption. But if she had that, she could reconstruct his memories and see what actually happened.

Fortunately, Luna was a professional. A very skilled and very experienced professional. She smiled… It should take time, but with the records, she would be able to spot the exact effects of the psychic attack in his mind by comparing it with his current processes that are, supposedly, functioning normally.

***

Cadance walked around the deck of the Break of Dawn, watching Flurry Heart as she galloped around the place determined to see every little detail and took the time to childishly examine every single royal guard posted in there and every single pegasus crewpony that passed by.

While she was amused by the baby’s cheerful exploration, she also worried.

She didn’t want to seem too nosy, but she anguished inside not knowing if the little nudge she had given Candy Crush had worked! Ever since she talked to the pegasus mare, she hadn’t seen either her or his suitor, Flight Worthy.

Wandering close to the stairway that led to the underdeck, both she and the pair of royal guards stationed there watched as the baby rushed past them. One smiled and the other pretended to not having seen her.

“Hello.” She said friendly.

“Greetings, princess.” The second nodded a little bow to her.

“May we help you, Princess?” The first said with a smile at Flurry Heart flying up the steps to the doors of the aftercastle.

Cadance paid attention to the baby but talked to them. “I’m looking for somepony. One of the ponyvilian local militias. Flight Worthy or Candy Crush… Their resident pegasi.”

“Hum…” The smiley one hummed with an armored hoof on his chin. “I don’t think I’ve seen either. Yeah… I know them… But I haven’t seen them.”

The other nodded too. “They have been distributed around the armada, Princess. Master Flying Snake is teaching them some discipline, so he arranged for them to help with the patrol shifts.”

“Oh. I see.” She nodded in understanding. “I imagine I would have to go around the fleet and hope one of them is in a ship I can visit…”

“Actually…” The cheerier one smiled again. “They all have rooms in this ship.”

“Oh!” Cadance piped. “I guess all I have to do is wait here, then. Until their shifts are over!”

Good thing Flurry Heart had so much fun running around the deck.

***

It took Luna a good long time, but she managed to find the exact processes that mistagged the memories and understood how it went wrong.

Examining the log for his flow of consciousness she noticed that the auditory input caused the subconscious processing of the sounds to return an error to the flow of consciousness that caused it to improperly tag those memories by exploiting the emotional return that the mental images pulled from his memory.

It was a similar exploit to the one Discord had used to create the Lost Herd and caused them to ‘infect’ other creatures, but where his subliminal message exploited fear and selfishness, this one exploited the pony’s sense of duty to create an infinite feedback loop of that both directed his mind to resume the task of watching the crates going by and inquiring about the griffon’s origin and that caused the flow of consciousness to crash and resume several times during the time his brain was attacked.

The break of the flow confused him, put further stress on his mind and flooded the information-hungry processes that formed the consciousness with contradictory emotional feedback. The result, mistagged and corrupted memories improperly registered as irrelevant and soon to be destroyed with the dismantling of the neural pathways that sustained them.

Curious.

With the logged states of the flow of his consciousness, the processing errors she identified, and the corrupted memories, she should be able to restore those and figure out exactly what happened in a flash.

***

Grinolf sat in the middle of his cell. He was tired… Practicing the dreamless slumber that he was taught eventually, but inexorably, would tire the individual. He let out a sad sigh and he was about ready to let go. To further distress him, the more he thought about the ponies’ offer, the more it seemed to be for the best. Maybe it was the isolation too, he had time to think, and he didn’t like the conclusions he reached.

It might seem defeatist, but an imperfect requited love was better than love that just was not to be. If there even was ‘a thing’ such as ‘perfect love’, not to mention that love was likely not to get involved in anything he might ever do in the Snow Mountains. He spent his whole life thinking that ‘other’ griffons were impure, and in the end that ideal of purity not only did nothing for him, but it damaged him, and he was beginning to see that for the fact it was.

Perhaps the worst offense was all the time he had lost on his beliefs. He was not getting any younger, but then again, it wasn’t his fault. And Princess Cadance saw that. Maybe she really was special, that way ponies and the southerner griffons spoke of the princesses.

He wondered what kind of southerner griffon the Princess would find for him. A young and frivolous cute thing like the majority of the grifonesses in the Court, or a hardworking and no-nonsense strongwilled one, as the commoner grifonesses that worked the many stores in the griffon cities of the North. Yes, the ones that even not being part of the Court or not even coming close from being one of the purer bloodlines still didn’t want anything to do with him.

He didn’t know what he would prefer. He had never thought about it, and through almost all of his adult life the only thing he ever thought about was that damn Court of The Harpy. He never stopped and thought about what was it that he wanted, other than that he wanted in on it.

In the end, the only conclusion he could reach was that he was defeated in a fight he just wasn’t supposed to win. He tried his best and he failed; and the worst was that he saw it coming. But he was too enthralled by his goal to see that it was impossible, and all he managed to do was getting himself given to the enemy in an act of desperation to avoid a worse fate. Finally, his destiny was in the hooves of the alicorns. The ones he was taught to hate the most.

Princess Cadance, though, turned out to be his salvation and not the stupid Harpy he kept hearing about all his life. Whatever the pink alicorn came up with was bound to be better than something he couldn’t have. He sighed and supposed that accepting his fate was the first step… He would have to remember that, whoever his chosen mate would be. Most likely wouldn’t be a northerner and he would have to learn a new set of customs...

He allowed himself a small smile. The Princess would find a compatible griffoness, however that works and however she would know, but he supposed that the Princess of Love would know. He imagined her caring and lovingly helping him transition into her culture. He would make a point of trying his best. It would be the least he could do, after all, and that would be more than he could expect from anyone in his own culture.

Without any warning, voices on the other side brought him back from his thoughts. Pony voices on the other side of the door to the brig. “Whoa!! Fire in the gun deck! Fire in the gun deck! What the hay! Get everypony!”

That was concerning and the possibility of an explosion distracted him. He didn’t know if ponies kept powder and ammunition at the ready in the gun decks, but a fire accident in that place could rip half the airship asunder. It was one of those things that ruined the whole day… He didn’t even mind when he heard the stomping hooves as the guards that guarded the brig from the other side of the door left in a hurry. He didn’t plan on trying to escape. He only hoped the ponies dealt with the threat.

Yeah… With the way they dealt with the battle, he was sure that the airship was filled with professionals, and so he was probably safe and there was nothing to worry about.

Then he noticed someone fiddled with the lock in the door. Insistent clicking and rasping indicated someone tried to pick the lock.

What was that? All he could do was stare at the door and hold his breath in anticipation.

Suddenly it opened and a creature in a cloak came inside. It closed the door and approached from the other side of the bars. He couldn't believe his eyes!

“You!” He cursed under his breath at the old griffon lady watching him from the other side.

The Loremaster that first welcomed him into Griffindell and that had given him the brooch that identified him and his friend as prospective members of the Court, years ago! The same Lady Gwendolen had dragged him to so that she could tell him how much of a filthy weak-blooded reject he was.

“Grinolf!” She smiled, relieved and seemed to be genuinely happy. Her paws grasped the bars, but then her face shifted to surprised pain as she noticed just how angry he was to see her.

“What are you doing here?” He glowered at her. “Did she send you to make fun and further humiliate me!? Isn’t enough that I have relinquished whatever shred of honor I had accrued for myself just to survive Grigory’s stupidity?!”

“No!” She barely kept from crying and futilely tried to reach him through the bars. “She sent me to free you! To take you back home!”

“I am not wanted back home.” He frowned at her and looked at her paw reaching for him but did not approach her nor did he care for her evident distress.

“Yes, you are!” She smiled frantically. “You made it!”

“What?” He couldn’t lie, that surprised him.

“Master Grigory recognized your struggle. He understood why was it that you turned your back on us and he spoke to Lady Gwendolen!” She smiled further, desperately. “He convinced her that your mettle proved your blood is strong! She will admit you into the Court of the Harpy! You made it! You actually made it!”

***

Luna walked down the stairs to Heavy Haul’s hall of memories and found the relevant memories of the event that caused such havoc on his mind. Fortunately, locating such memories should be trivial for her, and that indeed proved to be no challenge at all.

She worried, though. When one came up with a spell that damaged a part of the mind, the one responsible did so with a final goal in mind and instinctually, rather crudely exerted an effect over the inner workings of the mind. But what she had found showed an unexpected level of understanding and sophistication. Something that targeted the processes of the mind to create an effect, rather than the other way around.

She might be imagining things. She might be merely impressed with her recent trip to Thunderpeak and the things she encountered, but what she saw on Master Heavy Haul’s mind recalled the events with Ponyville’s local militia and the way that someone might have exploited their situation.

That was the sort of insight that only four creatures in existence should even have access too. The first was herself, the second her sister. And since she hadn’t done anything and Celestia wouldn’t either, it led her to the third possibility and that was unlikely as that would have been Discord.

That left only one possibility and that should as impossible as it was worrying. It made the fur on her back stand.

Fortunately, the whole experience had been collated into a single ‘frame’, or a single important memory. That was how the hall was supposed to work anyways and whoever did that to him should have expected that even if his individual memories of the meeting would be forgotten, the experience as a whole was quite traumatic for him and would certainly be remembered.

It also helped that he had friends… Their interference may have botched the whole thing and it might have been the case that if nopony had worried about it, the event would have ended up forgotten and mistaken for a simple lapse.

That brought a small smile to her lips. Friends… Always underestimated and always helping, even when they didn’t know.

Enough dallying, she focused on the framed pictured of the crates going by pulled by his crewmates.

Her mind would help Heavy Haul’s through the process and her experience, and ‘more powerful hardware’ should take care of fixing what was broken.

She focused on the image, and it pulled her into it. As far as her perceptions were concerned, she was there, when Master Heavy Haul worried about his crewmate, Chill Breeze with a lame leg, but still working. Yes, Worker Welfare would likely be a headache for him if something went wrong.

His thoughts intruded on her own, but experienced Luna found no difficulty in navigating the intrusive thoughts and maintained a clear mind.

Details about the environment, such as the soft breeze and the smells in the air faded away as his mind focused on the crates and on the numbers on the tags and on his records. Then he saw a griffon female, barely discernible facial traits under a black cloak. Luna allowed his recollection to proceed on.

His train of thoughts ground to a halt as he focused on the griffon female that had just passed him. He called for her and asked her to stop and to identify herself, but as she turned to address him, her face was a blur, and her voice a confusing chorus of dissonant voices. It threatened to exert the same effect on Luna’s mind, but she held strong. It passed unseen under his perception, but with access to the subconscious processes that followed, the griffon’s hidden command to obey was clear as her sister’s day.

As her magic commanded, the scene around her froze and she brought to her eyes the mental focus of her magical powers and her investigation of Master Haul’s mind in the form of a blue crystal slab that showed her information like the ones provided by the Throne of the Mind. Not as thorough, but more than sufficient for the moment.

It took little effort to identify the disruption of his mind’s processes as the recollection synched with the records of those. Her stomach sunk at how precise and harmonious the whole thing was and she found the precise moment his sophisticated, but vulnerable mind ‘mishandled’ the event and allowed the griffon to quite literally order him to forget he had seen her.

Had it not been for his friends… Had he been alone he wouldn’t even remember that he had felt something was wrong.

Next, she took advantage of his magical senses and what they could tell her of the environment, also hidden from the conscious mind, but available in the records.

And that chilled Luna’s bones.

It was not powerful magic, barely registrable, just enough that it did what it was supposed to, carried in that griffoness’ voice. But it was a magic that Luna had felt before, long ago.

The fully reconstructed recollection showed her all the pointless details of the environment, his confusing fear, his distraught, but it also showed the old griffon lady under the cloak, with her silvery gray fur, white plumage and gray, cold, determined eyes. A proud and elegant posture as a queen, but her voice carried the distant rolling thunder of a storm. The same that came from the mountains and heralded death in the form of a shrill cry and flashing talons.

Luna gasped and took a step back from the painting and the recollection vanished from her mind, leaving her alone in the crystal corridor. Thunder echoed in the back of her head, and she coughed when she noticed her breathing had quickened and her heart thumped violently. Tense muscles and quickened blood filled with adrenalin; it took her a while to regain control of her nerves and subdue the shivers.

But as soon as she did, she severed the magical connection with the pony’s mind.

***

Twilight sat near the pegasus’s friend, and both watched as the doctor mare kept carefully monitoring his vital signs for no other reason that there was no other thing for either of them to do while Luna remained asleep on the improvised bed in the floor.

She didn’t know how much time had passed, but quite some time had, and she got more and more nervous by the second. Because she didn’t know what that supposed griffon was doing. Because she was afraid Princess Luna would discover something about Grigory’s plan prematurely. There was also the possibility that the griffon was up to no good and she should have left and alerted somepony. If that was the case, at any second something could blow up, or somepony might be in danger.

“Twilight!” Luna opened her eyes and she squeaked with a small jump, but Luna ignored that, hastily rising from the floor. “Come with me, quick!”

Twilight stood too and her wings flared so fast she almost smacked the pegasus in her face. “Yes!”

But before anything, Luna turned to the doctor. “He should wake soon. He will likely be confused, but it should pass soon. There is nothing wrong with him anymore, but his recollection of unloading the ship will be foggy, at best. Please assure him there is nothing wrong and that he is fit to return to his job as soon as he feels fine.”

“Yes, Princess.” The doctor mare nodded seriously, also noticing Luna’s grave haste.

Luna simply nodded to the two mares and walked out, expecting Twilight to follow, which she did. “Did you warn the crewponies there might be a griffon infiltrated in the fleet?”

“Ahh… Almost.” She blurted out, but Luna didn’t seem to care too much.

“It is a Loremaster of the Harpy.” She said grimly.

“A Loremaster?” Twilight frowned. “Aren’t Loremasters the teachers in Northern Griffonia?”

Luna stopped and stared at Twilight. “What?”

Twilight blinked at her. “Uh… That’s what they call their teachers… I mean… They don’t really have schools, but these Loremasters are their teachers that gather young griffons and teach them things and that accuse me of attacking their sovereignty with my Early Language Tutoring Act. I suspect that they aren’t being taught the Magic of Friendship…”

“They are being taught that you and I are food, not friends.” Luna deadpanned at her and got a gasp out of Twilight. “She has to be after Grinolf. Come along. Hurry!”

She hurried along the corridor again and Twilight followed, looking up at her. “Didn’t you know?”

“I didn’t know, and if I did, I would assume that it was a coincidence, much as Celestia certainly did. Or that they had retained the title from their ancestors, given that they had retained much of their customs from even before the Holy Griffon Empire.” Luna growled and pulled back her ears. “It’s like they’re mocking us now.”

She stopped near a pair of pegasi crewponies patrolling the hall and Luna spoke with that authority she didn’t exert very often. “There is a dangerous griffon infiltrated in the fleet. Old, female, silvery gray coat, white plumage and gray eyes. Inform your superiors and have all airships informed of this. They must find that griffon and stop her. I want her alive, but do what you must.”

They didn’t even flinch and one of them nodded as the other spoke. “Yes, ma’am! Right away!”

They simply bolted down the corridor and Luna ushered Twilight closer with her wing under the eyes of the curious ponies looking out of the rooms. “Come along. I’ll teleport us to the Break of Dawn. Be prepared to fight.”

***

“What are you talking about?” Grinolf growled at her, still not convinced she wasn’t merely trying to jest him in some strange way. Her manic grinning only confused him more. “How could Master Grigory have talked to Lady Gwendolen when he is a prisoner in the hospital airship, and she is all the way to the north in Griffindell?”

“You have to trust me, Grinolf!” The older griffon again barely kept from crying. “The ponies are bound to notice something is wrong soon! Please, trust me! She’s sent me to take you home!”

“I trusted you once.” He kept his anger at bay, one thing he was taught was the trait of an adult, despite his confusion and resentment. “I don’t see why I should trust you, or Lady Gwendolen after all that you have done to me.”

She gasped silently and gave up on trying to reach him through the bars. Instead sat close to them, holding the bars with the steely color of her paws and closed her eyes.

“I’m not supposed to tell you any of this!” She cried. “I was born in Griffonstone, before Lord Gilad mated Lady Gwendolen. I was one of those griffons that heard The Harpy’s call to Snow Mountains and in my journey, I learned things. I took upon myself to preach to other griffons The Harpy’s Commandment and made a name for myself in the larger cities of the north. Once Gwendolen took residence in Griffindell, she came to me and she needed an experienced Loremaster she could teach personally all that she had for griffons to learn.”

Now, that was a surprise. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because…” She held the bars so tightly her paws shivered. “The Dawnbringer has diluted our noble bloodlines and we are in need of more pure griffons that can channel Her magic. When my training was complete and while I was young and fertile, she’s sent me away to find a suitable tom to sire a cub. In that period, I had two cubs and I left them in the guard of their sires, knowing that both would eventually find their way back to Griffindell, as all griffons are meant to peregrinate at least once in their life to the Holy City.”

That couldn’t be real!

“When I saw you in the valley, I knew it was you… I was so sure, that was why I gave you the brooch that allowed you entrance to Griffinsky and to be let into the induction ceremony to the Court… But I made a mistake.” She moaned softly more to herself. “I chose the wrong sire for you.”

Surreal…

“It is all my fault. But the Mother of Storms herself has decided that you are judged worthy.” She smiled softly and held the bars tightly again. “Please! Let me help you. There is not much life left in me and I want to share it with you. The three of us can share at least some time together and I can be proud of you, for making it. Against all odds…”

She gave him a hopeful stare. “Please…”

He frowned at her, and he too held the bars, angrily enough that it scared her away from them. “This is not a game!”

Huge eyes and alarmed stare, she shook her head. “This is a war! We are both warriors under The Harpy and our enemy is trying to undo our race. To turn us into subservient little birds that she can control and make safe for her little ponies!”

“Do you listen to yourself?” He did his best not to cry and draw attention from the guards… It was obvious she was behind the fire and that ruse was not likely to last for long. But the worst was that he realized how folly his dream of a peaceful life was. They would not leave him alone. And if she was even telling him the truth… He was a pawn in a game. “You and Lady Gwendolen cannot throw me in the mud and then expect me to come back as though I am a toy you can throw to the trash and clean back up when you want it back!”

She shook her head with her beak half-open. “I never threw you away! I did all I could so that you would have the best possible life as one of Her favorites! It was my life’s mission and you proved that you were worth it! I thought this was what you wanted!”

“It was… But you don’t understand what a literal hell my life has been! Constantly trying to convince myself that it was worth to keep living just because it would be cowardice to end it and in vain hope that one day I would be able to prove to myself that being born was worth it!”

“But you did!” She cried.

“I am not an idiot.” He frowned at her and distanced himself. “I will always be a pariah in her eyes. She will always stare down at me, and all her perfect little birds will always find the most perverse ways to remind me of how inferior I am, even if they say otherwise.”

“No!” She frowned. “Not when She’s told them that you made it! That is in the past, and you have conquered your past!”

“The ponies were ready to accept me, most of all, Princess Cadance. All when your beloved Gwendolen had no qualms whatsoever about destroying my life.” He remained stoic and at a distance. “There was nothing to conquer in my past because there I never did anything wrong. All there ever was, is the rejection, the shame I didn’t deserve and the abuse I suffered. Things that neither she or you could ever repair and the only thing I can do is move on.”

“No…” She all but whispered.

“Going back or staying would either way be another shame, but the ponies were, at least, prepared to accept me without some caveat.” He explained as calmly as he could. “Princess Cadance will find a mate for me, and I will live with the southerner griffons. I’ll distance myself as much as I can from the north. I’ll live a life of my own, with the time I haven’t already spent on her madness.”

“I understand what you have been though… But I didn’t have a choice!” She begged. “Please. Give us another chance! It will be different! I promise!”

“I don’t have any reason to believe it will.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand how Lady Gwendolen may have spoken to Grigory, but I don’t care. He and his mother are the reason I am here to begin with, and all you ever did for me was cast me into your disgusting game.”

“Grinolf… Please…” She whined.

Those were his last words and he silenced, despite her plea. And after a second of two, of expectant staring at him, she closed her pained eyes and frowned. Reached inside her cloak and pulled out a weapon. It was one he had never seen, only heard about. A pistol, black, with a thin barrel that extended forward and that had the front sight. The sort of weapon they only gave to the very upper tier and that most grunts didn’t even know existed.

She huffed nervously, but it was not the first time he had stared the barrel of a gun.

“I cannot let you do this. I cannot let you betray your kind!” She let anger into her voice, but her the gun shook in her paw.

“My kind betrayed me.” His voice was cooler than he expected himself. He supposed he didn’t really care.

She huffed again and held her foreleg straight. Pushed it forward. He saw the wetness in her eyes that ran down her cheeks. Her eyes softened and her anger turned to sorrow.

“Please… Grinolf.” She begged. “Don’t do this to me. I loved you and Gonrur and I did everything I could to make it easier for both of you. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen and all I want is to be with you. I didn’t have a choice.”

“All you did was condemn me to this sick game.” He didn’t relent.

“I can’t go back without you, and I can’t leave you here!” She cried. “Don’t do this to me, Grinolf.”

“What did you think would happen? That you’d get here, tell me that Lady Gwendolen somehow talked to Grigory and that then she’d let ‘the ugly duckling’ mix with her precious little chosen ones, and that we’d be a happy little family?”

“It is what you wanted!” She was so confused her frown showed it. So different from the overly sure and all-knowing Loremasters he was used to hearing all the time. He said nothing to her, though. And waited for her to pull the trigger already.

But she didn’t do it. Instead, her grasp on her weapon softened and she let her tears run free. She didn’t sob, though, or let it break her voice. “I suppose I was naïve. I was foolish to let my hopes get the best of me when she contacted me… I’m sorry, Grinolf. I truly am.”

She slowly raised the gun again, but the door behind her swung open and it was Princess Cadance, looking worried and ready to rush inside until she saw the griffon with the cloak outside of the cell and she squeaked as her wings flared in surprise. Immediately, her horn shone, and she pulled the weapon away from the griffoness and the bullet went into the wood planks in the ceiling.

“What? Who are you?” She came into the room, and tried to magically grab the gun again, but the griffoness held it close to her body and tumbled away, turning herself to face the princess and bringing her weapon at her.

Grinolf didn’t think she even understood what was happening before the first shot bounced in her magical barriers. She squeaked away in surprised, and two more shots bounced away, but the force behind the bullets pushed her and she ended sitting in the corner with a half-surprised, half-panicked confused expression.

The Loremaster stood on her hindlegs and scowled fiercely, training the weapon again at the princess. “Will you die already?!”

Instead of allowing herself to be shot again, the Princess fired off a single magical blast from her horn and it hit the griffoness in her chest with enough force that she flew on the wood wall behind with a cry and let the gun go. Cadance quickly scooped up from the floor with her magic and broke it in two.

“Are you hurt, Grinolf?” She gasped, turning to him.

“No! Be careful!” He cried back to her just in time for the old griffon to screech and jump at Cadance with a flap of her wings.

Cadance cried and Grinolf wasn’t sure what happened, but her magical shield collapsed with a flash when the griffon clawed at her but didn’t reach her skin. She used her weight though, grappling with the large pony and toppled Cadance on her side.

“I will murder you, grassbreath!” She clawed at Cadance’s neck and the princess screamed. In a blind panic, she kicked at the griffon and her hoof connected, but the old griffon lady either wasn’t all that hurt by that, or she endured the pain. Grinolf could see blood in the ground, but Cadance finally shoved the griffoness away with a spell that exploded magical energy from her horn.

“Stop!” Cadance cried, panicky and surprised. “Let’s talk!”

The other barely touched the floor and readied another attack so Cadance attacked first with some sort of spell that caused a flash at her opponent, but the griffon resisted whatever effect it was supposed to have. She stood on her hindlegs and clawed at Cadance, that barely got away with her talons puling at her mane. A second slash with her other paw left gashes under her eyes and Grinolf supposed he witnessed the fabled magical defenses of the combat trained spellcaster ponies. She should have lost an eye there.

Cadance kicked at her with more panicked screaming, too scared to fight effectively and Grinolf feared he would see his chance at a better life die before his eyes if a pegasus in royal guard armor hadn’t tackled the griffon and collapsed to the floor with her.

Cadance quickly stood and red blood seeped down her neck, more than Grinolf would be comfortable with, as she distanced herself against the wall and the griffoness grappled with the pegasus.

She rolled with the pegasus and threw him against the bars, following immediately after drawing a knife from under her cloak, and stuck it right above his armor’s gorjet. He cried and she turned at the other pegasus that came at her with a stun baton.

She clawed at his neck, but the protective spells in his armor protected him and he shoved his pink-tipped stun baton into her stomach with a clack and magical sparks. She stepped back against the bars.

“Stand down, ma’am!” He barked, ready to strike again as a third guard came into the room and his horn glowed with magical energy. Her legs gave in the middle of standing again. Grinolf supposed he had hit her with a stunning spell, or something of the sort.

She reached with a paw up, but Princess Cadance zapped her with a magical beam that scorched her fur and threw her down at the floor, unconscious. The princess then turned her attention to the guard on the floor and her magic enveloped him.

“He is gravely injured.” She spoke. “You carry healing potions, don’t you?”

The other guard let go of his baton and quickly reached into his colleague’s saddlebags to produce a small phial full of red liquid in it. He snapped the top off and poured the content on his colleague’s mouth before pulling the knife out.

He yelped and let the thing fall on the floor, but most importantly, the wound promptly let out blood only to stop the next second. It didn’t close, but it only oozed out blood after the potion had done its job.

Then Princess Twilight came into the room. “There is a griffon… Oh… Nevermind.”

Luna followed soon after and took stock of the situation before she spoke. Cadance did so first.

“Are you hurt, Grinolf?” The princess spoke to him again, despite the blood that wet her fur and her panting breath.

“No… You are bleeding.” He pointed and Twilight shrieked at the sight, which caused Cadance to look down at the base of her neck too, and she also shrieked at the sight. But Luna shoved a flask of their healing potion in her mouth.

“She could have killed you, Cadenza!” Luna raised her voice.

“I wasn’t expecting to fight a griffon today!” The other complained after spitting the empty flask.

“Care to explain?” The unicorn royal guard walked up to the bars and stared at Grinolf.

He simply shrugged. “I suppose the northerners thought to appeal to my filial instincts, or something.”

“Wait!” Twilight gasped. “She’s your…”

“I don’t have a mother, Princess.” He spoke calmly. “I had a father I left behind in Beachhome to join the military and it was the worst mistake in my life.”

Twilight whined to herself and let her ears flop, looking at the griffon in the floor, while the unicorn materialized cuffs around her forepaws and the pegasus that was standing tied her wings.

Grinolf spoke again. “I would keep her beak tied.”

Luna, that looked over the pegasus she stabbed with the knife turned to him. “Tell us what exactly happened?”

“I’ve said enough, Princess.” He stared stoically.

Cadance spoke though. “I heard somepony screaming there was a fire in the gun deck, so I went there to help. Once it was dealt with, I came here to see if he was okay, and that griffon lady attacked me… She held a weapon to her jaw… It just scared me, and I pulled it away. Then she attacked me.”

“I suppose you didn’t want to escape?” Luna turned to Grinolf, sitting in the middle of his cell.

“I have no love for you ponies. But I also have no love for the northerners. Not anymore. You should know, though, that she claimed Lady Gwendolen spoke to Grigory.” He sneered. “Do with that information whatever you will.”

Luna didn’t like that at all.

“What do we do with her, Princess?” The unicorn asked.

“Right now, we need to get your partner to a doctor.” She spoke as the pegasus in question raised groggily to his hooves. The cut in his neck looked nasty, but it barely bled anymore. “And also, Cadance… I need to figure out what to do with this griffon lady after that… In the meantime, have her transferred to the hospital and keep her under constant watch.”

She took one last look at the unconscious griffon. “And keep her beak tied shut.”

***

Discord walked around the mansion, convinced that meeting some more griffons would benefit his mission, and help him understand them. Gwendolen, after making sure Gilberta was entertained with the cubs and under watch by the adults, had gotten herself involved with something really boring relating to the mansion's maids and their training, the pantry… Something. And Gilad still hadn’t returned.

Funny that she wouldn’t delegate that job to the headmaid and then gotten personally involved with something more important, such as training her novice Loremasters, though. And curious.

Celestia often got herself interested with matters pertaining to her palace's servants, but she didn't micromanage that stuff, as she was usually involved in ruling the unified nation. He would think that someone on Gwendolen’s position would care little for things as long as they were done.

It made him recall the times of the republic when the family’s patriarch would mind the family’s business and his wives would concern themselves with the household. Maybe it was a false equivalency, or something. He really needed to find out more. Though he knew she had educated Grigory.

Walking into one of the many sitting rooms he happened upon a pair of the mansion’s maids, and they didn’t pay him any attention, entertained with their conversation.

“… but she ordered that he remained locked in his room. I hope I get to see him again! He’s so cute!” Blue griffon girl, with lighter colored plumage on her head tip-tapped all excited on the stone floor, talking to her yellow and green friend. Both wearing the mansion’s maid uniform.

“Aaaw… I wanted to see him too!” Lady Geena said he’s special!” The other, somehow, pouted with her beak.

“Who?” He asked, approaching them.

The fireplace burned and it was rather nice with some snow outside and the two turned to see him. Green one had pretty yellow feathers on her head and a short, curved beak she grinned at Discord with. “Master Geordi! He’s a soldier that was captured near Lady Geena’s home! Lady Geena brought him for Lady Gwendolen to see! But she’s the one that gets to take food to him!”

“A soldier? Huh…” He wondered… Was he one of those griffons that he saved from meeting an untimely demise thanks to their… He decided to call them unreasonable bosses. “Is he alright? I mean… Why did they bring him here? What about the others? What’s so special about him?”

“I don’t know…” Green one shrugged.

“Lady Gwendolen said he’s a pure blood descendant of the desert griffons!” The other explained excitedly. “Apparently, this is actually very rare!”

“Is that so?” He pulled at his beard. He was curious, but also figured that he should check up on the griffon guy, if for no other reason, because it sounded like he was a prisoner and that Discord had saved his life. “Can I talk to him?”

“Hum… That may be difficult…” Green one frowned. “Lady Gwendolen is a little protective of him right now. She’s had him locked in one of the rooms in her tower and only the headmaid and two of us can get in there other than Lady Gwendolen and Lady Gervina.”

“Gervina?” He asked.

“Yellow, beautiful one.” The yellow said. “Has a pretty drawing of flowers painted in her forelegs and her face. She’s always around. One of Lady Gwendolen’s Loremasters in training!”

“There are also Ladies Gwineth and Gehenna, but I heard Lady Gwendolen sent them away to do something.” The green one added.

“I see. Thanks. Where is the entrance to the tower, by the way?”

“It’s near the main hall!” The green one made some gestures with her paws to explain. “Go through the door in the back, in the end of the corridor, past the bend to the right. It is the first door. There’s always one of Lady Gwendolen’s students there.”

“Yeah…” The other frowned. “I don’t think they’ll let you in if Lady Gwendolen doesn’t say so.”

“Eh…” Discord grinned and winked. “We’ll see about that.”

Mindgames

A/N: someone told me that Piece of Parchment’s chapters are too large, and this discourages readers. I agree. I originally started increasing chapter sizes because I noticed I was leaving out things that I wanted/needed in the story. For example, the chapters Singularity and Dining with Griffons. But I’m not FuzzyVeeVee that can keep longer chapters interesting. The point is that I’ll be trying to keep chapter sizes more reasonable and split chapters if needed.

On with the story.

Luna had taken some time to herself in preparation for her conversation with the griffon prisoner.

The princess sat on a red satin pillow in the deep end of the small relaxation room in her sister’s airship. Not too big, just enough not to feel cramped. Fancy, but not in an exaggerated way. Just good enough to relax. Instead of Celestia’s teas, she had a bottle of one of her favorite bourbons on the table. A small cup filled with it sat next to the bowl with the dried mango slices.

Relaxation wasn’t going as planned, though.

She had a terrible feeling about that whole situation. The timing made her apprehensive. A griffon lady who could mess with minds pulled some extremely uncomfortable memories to the forefront of her mind. She didn’t know how that magic had survived… Maybe Celestia really should have destroyed the griffons in their entirety…

No, that was a bad idea. And one she found herself ashamed of. It seemed easy, but the very reason they fought… The reason Celestia and herself had accepted their present role was so that such draconian and reproachable ideas never prospered again.

The princess found her worried face staring back at her in the cute, moon-adorned cup holding her favorite liquor.

Maybe it would be wiser to contact Celestia immediately and have her go straight to that Griffindel place. The more she thought about the whole thing, all the corruption and unrest in Griffonia seemed to distract from the northerner griffons. The northerner griffons that suddenly had advanced weaponry never seen before and ancient magic that shouldn’t exist anymore. And there was also that whole weird thing about ‘improper’ griffons.

And as though that was not enough, two younger princesses refused to listen to their elders. Twilight and Cadance insisted on sticking their muzzles into matters that didn’t concern them. Matters which were also related to all that mess. The timing really couldn’t be worse or less suspicious.

If only Shining Armor wasn’t part of the problem. Then he could keep his wife and his sister out of harm’s way. But Luna was convinced that as soon as she was busy with something Cadance and Twilight would create additional problems. And Shining Armor would help them.

She groaned to her drink in the small crystal liquor cup. Her plan of drinking something before talking to the griffon wasn’t working a whole lot. Maybe she shouldn’t have left her trusted lieutenant with the griffon suspect in Griffonstone nor let Celestia drag Chocolate along with her. Although, both stallions would certainly be putting their skills to better use where they were.

Immediately the door opened, and Chrysalis walked in, followed by one of her Praetorian Changelings. Luna recognized her as Bossy as the changeling queen talked to her as though Luna owned her explanations. “Hello, Luna. What is this conversation about some griffon that has mind powers like she’s come out of one of those ‘comics’?”

Luna took her cup. “I didn’t think that you would be one to read that sort of thing.”

“I don’t.” The queen sat opposite to her. “When I catch the younglings with those poisonous things, I make them watch me burn them.”

Luna left her little cup on the table and put her hooves on the edge. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe… Just maybe… Your attitude may be distancing you from your subjects?”

“Nonsense.” The queen scoffed. “Tell her.”

“Mother is the best changeling queen ever!” The big changeling female next to her cheered with a little hop that barely seemed befit of the large and intimidating changeling.

Luna wasn’t impressed but decided against insisting while Chrysalis held a slice of dried mango in her magic and tasted a small bite of it. “The griffon you shouldn’t know about is a surprisingly healthy and fit elderly griffoness. Most likely a northerner, and she did show a remarkable and strange magic with mind-altering properties that I have seen before but am not prepared to make accusations or statements yet.”

“I see…” Chrysalis hummed. “So, where is her corpse so I can dissect it?”

Luna was still not amused, and let out a sigh. “She’s not dead, Chrysalis. She wouldn’t be much use to us if she were.”

“I disagree…” The queen smirked. “A dead griffon is better than a living one, anyways. And you know as well as I do that the dead do tend to be quite a lot more cooperative than the living with the right magic.”

“Truthful as that may be, she is a prisoner and there are several laws which my sister and I have sanctioned which protect her. Not to mention, I am not evil as you are.” Luna smirked right back at her.

“When you and Celestia call me evil it feels like flirting.” She hissed softly and chortled, putting out that long tongue of hers. “But I digress. May I help you interrogate your oh-so-protected griffon prisoner?”

“I have a better idea, actually.” Luna served her some of the drink after materializing a proper cup. “I want you and your infiltrators to keep a few eyes on Twilight, Grigory and their friends. Cadance and Shining Armor too… Celestia feels that she has accepted those proclivities of her situation and is ready to settle in. She believes that it shouldn’t make that much difference, but I’m more careful and not so prepared to give the youngling so much leeway.”

“Right…” The queen smiled serenely. “I can do that.”

She downed her dose of the stiff drink in one go. “Say… I’ve been curious. Why didn’t you make your own Chocolate Velvet? Maybe some big hunk of a thestral stallion just for yourself?”

“Because I’m not you?” Luna gave her the best smug expression she could summon as she downed a dose of the drink again, which made the queen cock an eyebrow. Always fun to leave Chrysalis unsure if she had just been slighted. “It’s more fun to share with Celestia. And you also don’t know his Nightmare Night costume.”

“Oh. Now I’m curious!” Chrysalis cooed with a grin.

“We’ll talk about that later.” Luna stood. “You deal with our guests, and I’ll deal with the griffon prisoner.”

“Fine.” Chrysalis watched her leave and Luna didn’t give her a lot of attention once she was done talking to her.

Not that she didn’t like Chrysalis. Quite the contrary, she found a friend in her, but Chrysalis responded better to some coldness here and there.

Once out the door she left it open and walked through the entry hall of the Break of Dawn’s aftercastle. Funny enough, the short pep-talk with Chrysalis helped her more than the drink.

Outside she went down the staircase to the underdeck and found the Royal Guards watching the entrance to the brig. They opened the door for her. The lock wasn’t magical by default, but one of their unicorns had enchanted it in response to the mess that had happened in the morning. Quite an intricate alarm, reinforcement and locking spell. Somepony spent the rest of the morning and probably their lunchtime on that.

Royal Guards, Solar or Lunar, rarely disappointed when it came to dedication.

Past the door she found Cadance sitting in front of Grinolf’s cell. He was sat in the middle. Closed eyes, relaxed posture and calm breathing while the princess had the most of troubled of frowns. Luna didn’t even need to read her mind.

Shining Armor remained a little back, also sat, like a loyal knight watching over her. Still, he spared Luna a respectful if friendly bow.

She sat by Cadance’s side, after responding to him in kind. The younger princess sighed in a low voice, as though she feared disturbing the griffon. “Hi, auntie.”

“Things are not proceeding as smoothly as you had hoped?” Luna kept her voice low too, careful not to provoke Cadance.

The younger one shook her head and spoke softly. “I talked to Milky White through the mirror room in the ship and she’s found several prospects. That is not what bothers me.”

Luna simply stared at her for a second before she explained. “It’s all the mess they made with his life. He would be a much happier griffon, even if he would be our enemy, had Lady Gwendolen not branded him a pariah. And for such a petty reason.”

“You ponies worry too much about other creature’s feelings.” Grinolf opened his eyes and spoke plainly in Common Equestria with his whistly accent. “You also talk too much, and you are not as quiet as you think you are when you speak softly.”

“I don’t need you to like us, Grinolf.” Luna told him as Cadance just stared with an annoyed expression. “I want to help you because it is a decent thing to do.”

He let his eyes down and closed them for a moment before looking back at them. “I’m sorry… I’m used to being told that I should hate you. That my situation is actually your fault.”

“Because of hippogriffs?” She asked him and watched as he nodded full of guilt. “What if I told you that there is a possibility that these teachings you were indoctrinated with may have a sliver of truth?”

He gave her a confused frown, which she expected, while Cadance nodded in understanding which made Luna happy the younger princess was paying attention.

“There may be some truth that griffons were supposed to have these amazing magical powers, that go beyond the magic your kind already displays, such as cloudwalking, and flight. Your superior physical prowess and your fighting instincts.” Luna put as much confidence as she could into her words. “Wouldn’t it make more sense… Wouldn’t it be better for everycreature if those were turned to the betterment of all beings, instead of the hatred that your fellow northerners were taught against hippogriffs and ponies?”

“Including northerner griffons?” She hoped that he would find the right question inside his head.

“But we become less…” Which he did. Even if he struggled to find the right word in Common Equestrian. “Strong. When we mix with the hippogriffs. Don’t we?”

“I’m not sure of that, Grinolf.” Luna shook her head and put all the honesty she could into her words. “It is possible Lady Gwendolen is correct, and that griffons and ponies don’t really mix that well. That there is something in hippogriffs that damages your kind. But if that is correct, you should be asking yourself if it is worth all the pain your ancestors have caused in the past. Or even if all the pain it has caused you is worth whatever magic you may have lost.”

Cadance nodded. “Yes… Griffons in the south are doing just fine.”

Luna didn’t add any more. She wasn’t there to talk to Grinolf or Cadance. She left the two to themselves with an excusing nod and went around the cells to the ones deeper into the brig. It was a bit dark, but the magical lights provided enough light. The cell was just another cell. The other griffon prisoner even had some privacy with a small white folding screen in the back.

The guards certainly decided to stow her in the back because of her strange magic. No doubt word of what she’d done to Master Haul reached the crewponies and guards. She couldn’t fault them for being cautious, especially as their prisoner was not unjustly denied anything.

Back from the hospital already, and not a scratch despite their scuffle, too. The griffoness sat in the middle of the cell. But unlike Grinolf, she wasn’t doing that freaky ‘half-awake, half-asleep’ thing that he did. She just stared at Luna. In fact, the griffoness’ eyes focused on her in an unsettling and intruding way. She had certainly heard their conversation and didn’t like it.

After a few seconds of standing in front of the bars Luna finally lost her patience. “We can stand here glaring at each other all day, if you want.”

“Fine by me.” The griffon lady regarded Luna with the same snarky grin that Chrysalis often had and made sure to show her fangs. Except it seemed more menacing in her beak than in Chrysalis’ fangs. Maybe because it was genuinely cruel.

Luna didn’t let that intimidate her, though. “How about you tell me what you did to Heavy Haul?”

“Who?” The other either faked it well or didn’t connect the name to what she had done. Yet Luna doubted she would be so scatterbrained.

“You know who I’m talking about.” Luna frowned and her ears pulled back. “Please, I want to help.”

“Give me back my son!” The griffon lunged at the bars and held them with her exquisitely sharp talons in display.

“I don’t think that your son wants anything to do with you.” She shook her head again. “Explain that whole situation to me. He’s said that he lived alone with his father, but not much more. It seems that you have isolated yourselves so much that your culture is alien to us, and you refuse to connect with us.”

She let go of the bars. Sat on her haunches and scowled at Luna. But said nothing.

“This doesn’t help you.” Luna insisted. “It doesn’t help me help you. And it doesn’t help Grinolf either.”

She didn’t respond, so Luna reached some more. “I don’t want to see a mother and a son separated. I don’t like his contempt for you. But at the same time, I’m convinced that you are not here solely because you miss your son.”

That only caused the griffon to glare harder at her.

“Fine! Be like that.” Luna glared back at her. “But know that I’m not an idiot. The reason you are here is because Grinolf has information that you don’t want him sharing. What is your name?”

No sound came from the griffon that stared at her and Luna growled so frustrated she was. “Isn’t there some rule about soldiers and interrogations?”

“I’m not military, princess…” The griffon gave her another sarcastic smile, but at least she had learned something.

“So, I’m supposed to believe that the northerner griffons wouldn’t send a trained agent to infiltrate an Equestrian mare o’ war belonging to the Royal House, crewed by Royal Guards, and containing one of your soldiers…” Luna gave the griffon her own sarcastic smile. “But, instead, a poor little old mother seeking to reconnect with her lost son?”

“You can believe whatever you wish, Princess.” The griffon was unamused by her teasing. “It is what you grassbreaths have been doing since the dawn of time. And you wouldn’t understand our culture anyways.”

“I wonder if your belief systems might have something to do with the fact that I am never called to the dreams of the northerner griffons. Even southerner griffons, once they make it to Snow Mountains Hold.” Luna lost her jesting mood. “Pray tell how is that possible instead?”

“You are not as powerful as you like to think you are?” Her captive shrugged and grinned petulantly again. “Or maybe there are more powerful things than you are. Far scarier things.”

Luna smiled inwardly. Nothing better than a little arrogance to free one’s tongue. She let no outward expression, however. Instead, she kept the griffon’s mind moving. “Perhaps, you would like to explain how come you command such refined magic that allows for a deep and delicate hijacking of the processes of the mind? Hum?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about, Princess.” The griffon gave her an innocent stare. “I’m just an old mother trying to return my son home.”

The griffon had caught on to her own slip of the tongue, Luna supposed. She smiled at her. “As I said, fine. Be like that. I don’t care, but I would rather see a mother and her son reunited. Think about that… I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Then she turned and left. She had something. More than she had when she first entered the room. She should take a closer gander at the minds of griffons. Something strange was in the air. The timing and the circumstances concerned her. Meanwhile, some time alone would be beneficial to that griffon lady after their short meeting.

On her way out, she asked the Royal Guards by the door not to let Cadance in there alone, and not to talk to the griffoness without their full armor.

***

Turned out that waiting for the griffons to kick off their great plan for escaping was boring and the morning dragged on as though it wanted to bore Twilight out of her skull. She wanted to talk to Princess Celestia, but she had gone to Hippogriffia. She wanted to read something, but she had already read all the books in her quarters. She could read some from the airship’s small library since they were materials on airship operations and history, but she was too bored for anything too technical. The other girls were all busy with something, and Cadance was busy with the griffon prisoner. Shining Armor was busy helping Cadance.

Twilight simply laid in her bed and sulked while Spike laid in the chaise longue and read some comics he had gotten from one of the guards. Lucky him… At least he had something to do.

Suddenly the tingling sensation in her horn woke her from her tedium. A scroll materialized on the small desk in her room. Its popping sound upon appearing even drew Spike’s attention, and he turned his head to see. But since he saw Twilight had stood to take care of it, he didn’t bother. She was sure his comics were more interesting than whatever that scroll would tell about.

With a yawn Twilight circled around the table and sat at it before she magically grabbed the scroll. It was a typical magical scroll for important letters that needed to reach their destination right now and the sender didn’t care about discretion.

It still had some residue of the spent enchantment that allowed all creatures to use them. And it had the golden seal for Ponyville’s Mayor’s Office.

Twilight sighed while she pulled at the small golden thing, and it undid itself in a small shower of golden dust. Mayor Mare had an annoying tendency of reporting to her all the happenings in the small town as though Twilight was her superior. Which she technically was, but Twilight had never interested herself in the politics of her position.

She stopped for a second and hummed quietly to herself, frowning a little. Maybe she should have. Cadance had taken the responsibility of administrating the Crystal Empire, after all. Maybe that whole mess with Ponyville’s Local Militia wouldn’t have happened had Twilight was actually a part of the hierarchy. Mayor Mare would’ve been forced to notify her.

Maybe once that whole mess of missing griffon emperors, goddesses and past lives was over…

Anyways, she opened the letter, and it was hastily written in the mayor’s calligraphy. Before reading, she sighed at whatever inconsequential thing the mayor might have to report that had to be reported in the middle of the present mess. Hopefully, she had also reported it to the actual competent authorities in the duchy’s administration.

The letter was a mess, though.

Dear Princess Twilight Sparkle,

I am terribly sorry to disturb you in your quest, and I apologize for the curtness of my letter. I am so terribly nervous you were the only pony I could think off other than the official channels to the Heartland Archduchy and the Archduke himself. With the break in the chain of command in the local militias as Lord Protector Stalwart Star was put under arrest, I don’t know who to report to!

Two days ago, in the night, a griffon lady walked into town carrying another griffon lady who seemed to be in dire need of medical attention. Daisy, who had found them, said that one of them had clear signs of being shot and her friends quickly directed them to our hospital.

Doctor Double Contrast quickly informed me that one of them had suffered a grave flying accident and her friend was shot. Apparently, she had walked with her friend on her back all the way from Canterlot to Ponyville, but along the way they were attacked by a trio of what she called ‘mean ponies’ that wanted to take them back to Griffonstone so that the ‘evil griffons’ would hurt them.

As the doctor returned to the hospital, I immediately sent a letter to Canterlot, but none of the Princesses were there! My letter ended with somepony from the Militia’s Administration and they replied that we should keep those two in the hospital until a custodian arrived.

But before the custodian arrived, in the night, one of the griffons destroyed the hospital looking for their stash of emergency healing potions. She severely injured and killed numerous ponies of the hospital’s staff and security. Without our local militia there was simply nothing we could do about it.

Princess, it was horrible! She turned the hospital into a horror scene. The hospital is inoperable and Applebloom was present with her friends that night! They are now with Big Mac in the ranch with Sweetie Belle’s parents and won’t even talk to me. I have furious ponies in front of the city hall calling for justice while others won’t talk about it or have shut themselves in their homes.

The custodian came this morning with a squad of Royal Guards and told me that those griffons are wanted criminals in Griffonstone, Baltimare, Haybale and Canterlot. That they may be involved in the terrorist attack to the freight teleporter.

But they had already left! The griffons teleported to Thunderpeak and the custodian has left to find them.

I have declared a state of emergency in the city and Canterlot is going to send aid, but please, I urge you to inform the Princesses of the situation!

Yours truly,

Mayor Mare

What the…

She stared at the letter again. It was a convoluted mess of information that seemed too impossible to convey reality. She blinked at it a few times, but the information still refused to make sense in her head.

She frowned. How many times had Ponyville been almost destroyed before? The parasprites, Discord, Tirek… It was just… Ponies got injured but what that letter described was just unheard of.

Her eyes went wide. Oh my gosh! Applebloom was in there when it happened! Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo too!

Wanted in Griffonstone? She frowned again and went through the motions of reading. Could that be Rainbow’s friend, Gilda? That would be too much of a coincidence, but… Ponyville’s teleporter is the only one close to Canterlot. What was she doing in Canterlot though? And who was the other griffon lady?

“Twilight, are you alright?” Spike frowned at her from this chaise. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

“Spike, I need you to send a letter to Princess Celestia. Now!” She snapped back at him after a second of eerie silence.

The young dragon grimaced, jumped off his seat, and scrambled to the drawer with the required material. Then he stared seriously at Twilight, signaling he was ready.

She nodded and began dictating. “Princess Celestia, I have just received a very disconcerting letter from Mayor Mare, and it seems that something horrible happened in Ponyville. As the mayor has informed me, a pair of griffons were involved in severe damage to the hospital, including loss of life. I urge you to look into the matter with the utmost celerity!”

“Uh… Discon… Dis…” Spike blinked at her.

“Spike…” Her ears flopped to the sides of her head and her hoof hit her face. “Just… Disturbing!”

“Sorry! Sorry!” He grimaced again and quickly jotted down the letter as best and as fast as he could.

He didn’t even wait for her to tell him to send the letter to the princess. Instead, he breathed his green fire on the rolled-up parchment, and it turned to smoke that flew out the window.

Twilight breathed in to tell him they must see their friends, but before she could externalize her thoughts, the letter popped back into existence right next to Spike.

‘Uh…” He grabbed the letter and tried again.

It didn’t matter, the letter simply returned as fast as before and flopped to the floor with both staring down at it.

Twilight stared at the thing as though it was a sign of the end of times, which the fact that a dragonfire letter couldn’t reach its destination might as well be.

Spike looked up to her from the letter. “It’s not working!”

“Princess Luna!” She blurted out and let her wings flare. “We have to see her! Now!”

Spike gasped and rushed after her out the door. But then Twilight stopped with a grimace and scared eyes. He almost ran into her.

What if it’s part of ‘the plan’? Maybe she should see Grigory first!

Then she shook her head so hard her ears flapped against her head. What was she thinking?! That was going too far even if it was part of whatever plan he and his griffons had!

Before Spike could say anything, she launched into a panicked gallop out of her room again.

***

Much as before, in Hippogriffia, Celestia didn’t teleport herself and Chocolate Velvet all the way to Griffonstone. Although she wanted to, something prevented teleportation. That worried her. She explained that something was definitely not right. So, Chocolate found himself flying next to her above the rocky badlands and hills that surrounded the griffon city. He carried with him a unicorn longsword much like the one he used to have, and a shield with the Royal Guard emblem of Celestia’s sun. He also carried a halberd on his back too and wore the helmet of his Royal Guard armor. Full armor and fighting gear. Something was not going to go well, and he supposed what tipped Celestia to that was her difficulty to teleport properly.

He also wore white robes above his armor that denoted his station, but she didn’t wear anything other than her typical royal regalia.

The air was hotter than Hipogriffia’s, without its open sea and nice scenery to contemplate and occupy the mind as he flew. It also smelled different. It a bit of a caustic edge to it in a way that almost made it feel dirty. Or was that the magic in the region that he captured in his magical senses?

Almost as though she could read his thoughts, Celestia came closer and spoke to him. “This used to be a beautiful land.”

“It did?” He snapped to attention, looking at her.

She let her gaze fall for a second. “Don’t misunderstand me… It has its own beauty as all lands that make up our world. It’s just that I prefer wide grasslands and fruit trees instead of jagged rocks and these acacias.”

She frowned at her own words. “I mean… I know that they have fruits too, it’s just that…”

“I understand what you mean, Celestia.” He held back his snorting at her difficulty with the proper words. “This place is full of memories for you, isn’t it?”

Then he frowned too. “Everywhere is, but this place has almost as much meaning as the old palace in Everfree, right?”

She nodded quietly. “I think that it helps that my issues with the events of that place have been resolved…”

Goddammit. He hated seeing Celestia mope like that. Even with that whole mess of griffons being griffons, she was in a high mood until they arrived. Maybe it was that ominous magical disruption. Celestia had so many buried memories from so long ago it was hard knowing what she was thinking at any given time!

The city, Griffonstone, sat in the distance. Almost flat against the terrain. It lacked high-rising buildings like the ones in Manehattan or Baltimare. It was a wide, sprawling city, instead of a densely packed one. As though griffons just preferred to keep a distance from each other. It made the city seem larger than it actually was.

There was also the river that snaked around the city and Fort King Grover, a star-shaped fort that used the river to feed its moat system. Mostly plains surrounded everything, with a few soft hills here or there. Few covered in the green grass that threatened to turn yellow as soon as seasons changed.

He didn’t know much about the climate in Griffonland Hold, but it was certainly not like the temperate and fertile Equestrian Heartland he had grown used to and that he loved. At least, it wasn’t as bad as the southern badlands where the changelings and diamond dogs lived.

The ominous fast moving and gray clouds didn’t help. It was almost like those obviously evil storms that complemented the scenario for the evil villain’s lair.

Of course, in Equestria those things actually worked like that because… Magic.

“This place used to be much more beautiful.” Celestia’s voice yanked him out of his thoughts. “It had beautiful vineyards and many acres of maize and bananas. There were others too, but those were their favorites. Soon before Grover’s death, with then modern magical construction techniques, they lived in tall spires. Complete with lifts for their wingless friends. But they crumbled away when griffons changed for the more practical Manehattian architecture. The soil isn’t very nice and doesn’t help the river provide its moisture. And the griffons, while dutiful in their job of tending to the weather, can’t be bothered to be as mindful as the pegasi.”

She made silence for a thoughtful second. “Much as griffons themselves, the very land they live in will make you work for sustenance.”

She smiled at him. “Hardy creatures that they are, they rather endure not ideal weather.”

“Selfish griffons, or lazy griffons?” He grinned back at her.

She smiled some more and shook her head. “Neither. Griffons aren’t selfish, much less lazy. They are independent. They lack a strong leader that will rally them to the right causes. In King Grover’s time you could see the intricate network of irrigation channels that webbed over the entire region. It was quite the sight, and I think it rivaled the beauty of places such as Mount Canterlot and the wonder that is Cloudsdale.”

“I should take you to the north one day… Just so that you see Griffindell’s Back Gates.” She turned her stare forward again. “I think there is no better display of their amazing skills when they are properly motivated. It is a reminder of an olden time, of crafts that have been lost to the passing of time.”

She smiled at him again, but it was not her typical happy smile. It was that sad ‘no, really it’s fine’ smile. “I guess we’re both relics of another age. That city and I. Even when Griffonstone is old enough to qualify. It has simply lost its splendor from King Grover’s time. It just lies there, dormant… Waiting for another mighty king that will rally its griffons to breathe a new life into this land.”

“It’s the Scar Effect.” He grinned at her.

“The… Scar Effect?” She frowned and smiled inquisitively.

“It’s from a very important and widely known documentary on wildlife from my original world. About what happened when a king was murdered by his brother and the young prince had been shunned away.” He told her with a serious professional expression. “The once fertile and beautiful land died because the king’s brother had taken over.”

“This is a joke, isn’t it?” She giggled. “Magic doesn’t exist in your original world.”

“Well… It’s not a documentary.” He chuckled at her. “It’s more like a fable. The king was a lion with his pride of lionesses that hunted the other animals and they all treated him like a king. One day he was murdered by his brother and his son was sent away, blamed for his death. The brother had help from the hyenas and the thing about them was their ravenous hunger.”

She nodded softly, paying attention as he went on, making some gestures with his forelegs. “And that was the problem because the old king understood that everything existed in a balance. The lions ate the animals in the region, but that was a nice place where they could live in peace because the king didn’t abuse them. He didn’t take more than was needed and he protected them from the hyenas. They could thrive there. But his brother couldn’t control the hyenas, and they didn’t have the same understanding about how the land worked, much less respected that balance.”

“When the animals left, the lions starved, and so did the hyenas.” He concluded. “And even if the king’s brother understood what had gone wrong, he was stuck. Without the hyenas, he would lose the lionesses, and without them, he would be a king with no kingdom. Even if his kingdom was a husk of what it was under the previous king.”

“And when the young prince returned the kingdom went back to what it used to be?” She blinked at him and urged him to speak more.

“Well, it’s a bit silly…” He scratched his helmet. “But yeah. It required the audience to understand a lot of stuff in between the lines. In the way it was presented it really seemed as though things had changed magically. The hyenas as the cause of the loss of balance is left to the imagination. But the thing was that the prince forced his uncle to admit to killing his father. That rallied the lionesses to rebel. It’s a simplified version of how politics work, and also rather racist and sexist. But that was how the general public thought that lion prides worked.”

“Also, the people that made that story were notorious for washing down old stories from folklore and adapting them into sappy and feel-good stories.” He frowned. “The point was the importance of a leadership that respected its people. About how certain compromises for the sake of clout could get you stuck in a situation that you would rather avoid. And there was a meerkat and a boar that taught the prince to eat bugs and his childhood friend. A musical number that totally wasn’t an analogy for sex that totally wasn’t the thing that actually motivated the prince to return and reclaim his father’s kingdom.”

She nodded at him and then stared silently at the approaching city. Then she nodded again, before smiling more happily at him. “I see. That is a good story.”

“Hey, can I call Lord Gilad ‘The Lion King’?” He grinned at her with all his cheeky silliness.

She giggled at him. “I think that he would appreciate that.”

***

Twilight dashed through corridors and past stairs with Spike doing his best to keep up until she finally found and entered the princesses’ quarters. Luna was in the living room, staring at an unrolled scroll she held in her magic.

“Princess Luna! I just got a letter from Mayor Mare!” She showed the thing in her own telekinetic magic, screeching to a halt at the door.

“I just received a letter from Blueblood, Twilight.” Luna spoke while still staring at her letter, before raising her eyes to Twilight. “Is it about the griffons?”

“Yes!” Twilight screeched. “Mayor Mare makes it sound like it was awful!”

Luna hummed and Twilight just stared at her, waiting for Luna to say or do anything.

“Didn’t Rainbow Dash receive a letter from her griffon friend saying she was in trouble?” Luna asked. “What was her name?”

“Rainbow’s friend?” Twilight blurted nervously. “Gilda?”

“Yes… That is the name Blueblood mentioned.” Luna frowned deeply. “Find Rainbow Dash and see if she knows of any reason her friend might have done something of the sort. Also, ask her if she knows of a Grunhilda.”

“Yes!” Twilight nodded as fast as she could.

“I’ll go to Canterlot and Ponyville.” Luna stood and walked towards Twilight. “Make sure to inquire Rainbow Dash in the meantime. The letter also informed that a custodian from Canterlot left for Thunderpeak. See if Rainbow Dash knows any significance the city might have. It is a small city close to the Snow Mountains Hold. Your new griffon friends may be involved. Thus, I suggest you don’t do anything you might regret. Celestia isn’t here to protect you.”

Twilight just stared anxiously at Luna. Talking to her only made Twilight even more anxious because it could be part of Grigory’s plan! She kicked herself but did her best not to show it outwardly. She may have already fouled the whole thing up just by talking to Luna!

“Worry not, Twilight.” Luna told her with a very motherly and assuaging smile together with a hoof gesture that urged her to leave already. “Just go see Rainbow Dash. Everything will be fine.”

“Yes… Sure.” Twilight smiled at her. “Right now.”

Spike followed Twilight out of the room into the corridor and she closed the door with her telekinetic magic. She kneeled to his level and whispered as urgently and silently as she managed, given her nerves. “I have to go see Grigory! I need to be sure this whole thing isn’t a diversion.”

“Wait! What?” He opened his arms but managed to keep his voice low. “I really don’t think that they would mess up Ponyville’s hospital to distract the Princesses so that we could escape!”

“That may be exactly what they did, Spike!” She breathed a little too loud. “I don’t know! This whole thing is a mess and I need to make sure that everything is alright in Ponyville! Please! Go see Rainbow Dash! What was the name Princess Luna said?”

“Grunhilda!”

“Yes! See if she knows anything! I’ll go see Grigory!” Twilight bit her lips. “Please! Also tell Cadance of this mess if you can! We’ll write a letter to Princess Luna after we meet in my room!”

“Gee, alright, Twilight.” He grimaced at her. “Just be careful. Don’t trust that griffon.”

***

Chocolate Velvet landed next to Celestia in the streets of the griffon city. It was kind of awful. Not colorful and cute like pony cities. It also smelled bad. It smelled of a city that didn’t care about its own cleanliness, or something.

It was a commercial street. Wide and flanked by wide walkways. Store after store both ways, but most of them closed or simply abandoned. Broken glass windows, ripped awnings, beaten down doors... It looked almost deserted and only a few stores remained.

“This looks bad…” Chocolate told her softly, coming closer after landing.

“It does look bad.” Celestia agreed with a soft nod. “But this is a consequence of the lack of supplies. It will fix itself soon now that Novo has agreed to stop with the blockade. It should be alright in a few weeks.”

She started walking and he followed. The few griffons outside were surprised. Pointing and talking in hushed voices but keeping their distance. Celestia just let them be and chocolate did the same.

One of the stores had a wider awning in white that allowed the sunlight to peer through and provided plenty of light over the products on display. In the walkway, close to the glass pane in the storefront, but in front of it, was a small stand with five levels. Each one was lined with several toys. Griffon dolls, a small set of earth-pony, pegasus and unicorn dolls, small trains, an airship. Delightfully beautiful, each one of them. Colorful and carefully crafted.

But the ones that really got Chocolate’s attention were the small figurines. They were important creatures Chocolate recognized from the House of Majesty and others. Above the door a sign declared that was ‘Grandolf’s Toys’.

Chocolate followed Celestia closer as she grabbed one of the small toy figurines in her telekinetic grasp. A miniature Queen Chrysalis wearing an angry grimace that made Celestia squeal in delight. Exquisitely crafted and painted, it had a very expressive face that really captured the essence of the Changeling Queen.

They were all there. The Princesses, Twilight and her friends. Queen Novo, both as a seapony and as a hippogriff. Chocolate wasn’t sure Dragon Lord Ember counted as a Majesty since the dragons never joined the Federation, but she was there. As was also King Caleb of Yakyakistan. And there were of course a few griffons. Chocolate picked one up, complete with a purple royal cape and a crown.

“Is this King Grover?” She showed it to Celestia.

“Yes.” She took the toy in her magical grasp with a smile. “That is him. Definitively.”

She returned the toy to the stand and grabbed another to offer Chocolate. “And this is Lord Gilad.”

He took it in his own grasp. It represented a griffon with a dark brown body and white head that definitively matched the photographs of the griffon in question. With his diadem and his serious stare.

While he examined that figure, Celestia took another griffon from the stand. A tall female, white and black. Also, black and white in her striped wings, open at full display and a crown of black-silvery feathers raised behind her head. On one of her black paws, she held a sword, pointed down, and in the other she held a black crown.

Celestia tilted her head with a soft ‘hum’… “Is this Lady Gwendolen?”

She picked up another figure. It looked very similar, but her wings were closed and covered in black feathers. She sat in a demure and behaved posture, lacking the crown of black feathers behind her head. She also wore a black diadem with a small gem. Lady Gwendolen had blue eyes and the other had gray eyes. “No. This is Lady Gwendolen.”

She looked at the other figure. “I don’t know who this is. How weird.”

“She looks kinda cool.” Chocolate looked at the figure and then at Celestia.

She giggled, but in an uncertain way. “Yes, she does.”

But then the Princess frowned and stared at the open-winged figure. “This is a curious symbology…”

He took a second to read her expression. Celestia had ‘that’ stare. That particular one she wore when she started messing around with the ancient stuff inside her head. Those unfathomably old memories. Thus, he kept his mouth shut as Celestia’s expression grew grim.

The door to the store opened and an old griffon appeared from inside. His round spectacles made his brown eyes look bigger than they were, and his graying black feathers showed his age as much as his small frame covered in black spots and snowy white.

The princess snapped out of her reverie and smiled at him. “Greetings. Would you be Master Grandolf? These are some beautiful toys!”

“Thank you, Princess.” He smiled and sat in front of the door. “Yes. That would be me, but just Grandolf, please. And I am happy you like my toys.”

“Is there any reason I’m not aware of that griffon children would be interested in Queen Chrysalis?” Chocolate asked. “Or in the Dragon Lord?”

The griffon chuckled softly. “Kids like the villains. Although, I hear that is not necessarily the case anymore.”

Celestia giggled again. “I don’t think that she will be changing too much as to disappoint the younglings. Chrysalis will always be… Spicy.”

“May I ask you who this is, Mister Grandolf?” Celestia wasted little time and showed him the white griffoness with the open wings.

He frowned a little. “I am not sure, princess.”

“What do you mean?” She perked her ears at him.

“I see her in my dreams.” He explained matter-of-factly. “But I’m not sure who she is. She looks like Lady Gwendolen, but at the same time she is also so different.”

“How interesting…” Celestia mused. “Hum… How much for these toy figurines? All of them?”

“They are out here for free, Princess.” The griffon smiled a little.

“But they are exquisite.” She looked at the small Chrysalis and then at the griffon talking to them. “I appreciate it, but I rather pay for goods that I want rather than accepting gifts like this.”

“I am offering them for free to anyone, Princess.” He explained with a smile. “Typically, I would charge a fairly steep amount on each, but nowadays families don’t have money to spend on toys. The little ones cry when their parents walk by and say they can’t afford them.”

He gave the feathers on his nape a rub as he stared up at the princess. “This may sound silly… But I don’t like crying cubs, nor distraught parents.”

Celestia let her ears fall and she cast her eyes down. “The situation is not nice, is it?”

“Don’t worry, Princess.” He said. “Only the ignorant blame you. Griffons are the source of Griffonian problems. We keep trying to elect that special griffon that will solve all our problems and end up electing the same thieves that bleed us dry. I don’t know if The Lion is the answer either, but it can’t be worse than Gail.”

“Thank you.” She gave him a small smile. “Still, I want to pay for this. Full price if you will. Use the money to make more of these. And then put them out for the little ones.”

“That is a deal, Princess.” He nodded softly.

After that Celestia materialized a small cheque booklet and paid the griffon. Meanwhile, he prepared the small figurines in proper boxes. All the while Chocolate Velvet couldn’t get out of his head that talk of seeing a griffon lady in his dreams. Sounded like the sort of thing that should worry Celestia. Especially with the stuff Luna found in the museum. The Cult of The Harpy seemed to be cropping up more than either of them was comfortable.

Scratch that… If something of the sort was happening, the Cult of The Harpy was already back, and they had been sleeping on their watch!

He would wait, though. Celestia was busy and she wasn’t stupid. She knew what she was doing. Doubting her didn’t work well for him last time.

With that in mind, he waited until she and the griffon were done and politely grabbed the box-shaped package while Celestia kept a small one for herself. Both were wrapped in a pretty gift paper, all white and golden. Certainly, chosen over Celestia’s own white and gold. He did get a moment to look at the shop’s interior. It was a nice and quaint combination of a workshop with a store. The working area and tools in the back really gave the place a lot of character. Especially with the unfinished toys and smell of wood.

When Celestia was done, they walked outside. A few curious griffons that had gathered at the storefront to peek inside scattered as soon as they turned to the door.

Silly griffons flew away and Celestia and Chocolate had the whole walkway to them. He carried the box as he followed her. Celestia walked slowly and Chocolate finally gathered the courage to talk. “Celestia…”

“I know…” She nodded and spoke softly as she wrote a letter.

He blinked at her, surprised at first. Then he waited as she wrote a quick letter and rolled the scroll. She offered it to him, along with the small box.

“Send this to Luna.” She spoke seriously and he realized it was one of those enchanted parchments for urgent letters. “You’ll have to fly away from the city to escape the strange magical disruption.”

He simply nodded and stowed the things inside his robe.

But she wasn’t done. Celestia materialized a fancy golden and silver cartridge belt for wearing over the neck and shoulder. It had a pair of holsters, each with even fancier revolvers. He could see white and black pearl in the grips. Furthermore, the belt was loaded with many high-caliber cartridges, each with fancy carvings of pony designs.

“We wanted to give you this with some fanfare and celebration…” Celestia spoke softly. “But you may need them. These are magical disruption bullets. Do not shoot with them at anything that doesn’t absolutely need to die.”

“You can trust me, Celestia.” He donned the belt with the guns in front of his armored chest.

“I know.” She gave him a concerned stare. “Please. Do be careful. Something strange is ahoof.”

Just as soon as she spoke, a group of griffons flew into the walkway and landed a respectful distance from them. One of them, a brown griffon wearing a fancy suit and escorted by two guards of the local militia raised a paw to greet them. “Princess Celestia! Welcome to Griffonstone!”

“Go now!” Celestia urged him. “And be careful!”

He flapped his wings and took flight, looking back to see her opening her wings and talking to the griffon with a smile.

Fulgora

The sky was heavily clouded, and the hot air was almost too thick for comfort. Humid and hot, the worst combination possible. It was incredibly irritating during a physical exercise such as flying. And as Chocolate Velvet had come to know, a furry coat and long mane added to the annoyance. Heavy armor completed the aggravation.

He could swear that even though flying for an alicorn was mostly a magical endeavor, the higher temperature lowered his wings’ performance. He wasn’t even an aviator in his previous life but concepts from his magicless world would often force themselves on his mind. Particularly when he was frustrated. And flying in that weather frustrated him very much.

As if that wasn’t enough, strange magic filled the air and it had him on edge. It was a difficult feeling to explain, like an itch. And a pervading feeling that something bad was about to happen intruded on his thoughts like water dripping from the ceiling.

Beneath him was a green and brown sparse forest of acacias and a depressing, slow flowing and muddy stream that did little to alleviate the unpleasantness. Exactly the same scenery from when he had arrived with Celestia.

He showed a solitary and goofy grin. What had changed? Celestia wasn’t flying with him anymore. Of course, flying around and doing stuff with a beautiful mare made things better. Who would’ve thought?

He groaned and rolled his eyes. He’d give anything to distract his mind from flying in that ugly and hot place. But he had a job to do, and he focused on that. Celestia’s letter must reach Luna, and for that to happen he must leave the area with the most intense magical interference surrounding Griffonstone.

Still, it was boring and something to distract him would be welcome. Maybe a colorful flying bird, or even some refreshing rain.

And as though fate was sore at being tempted, something happened. While his magical senses were nowhere near as precise as Celestia’s and Luna’s, the enchantments in his armor were quite spiffy. Their combination warned him of immediate danger, and in the present times, that meant ‘get your head down’. In his specific case, it meant ‘hide in the trees below!’

Without a second thought, his training took over and he spun in a sharp turn in the air into a dive. Immediately after, a bullet collided with his magical shield and glanced off harmlessly, followed by an echoing bang. He didn’t look for the source, instead simply dived. His gut feeling was that locating the shooter with all those clouds was near impossible.

Soon enough he opened his wings and landed forcefully among the trees, disregarding the leaves and branches on the way. Shallow grass and the soft ground did little to alleviate the impact on his knees, but he had worse things to worry about. He moved briskly in between the trees, until something crashed noisily between the branches.

He magically reached for his firearms, but he restrained himself. He didn’t want to shoot somecreature that might simply be desperate with all the poverty and the problems in Grifonia. Not with magical disruptive bullets, at least.

He did turn and scan the area.

“Hum… Hello?” He called and got no answer.

He could feel the magic his assailant radiated, though. It was definitely a griffon, and he landed some five hundred hooves from him. Chocolate turned immediately but couldn’t directly see them. The same trees that would protect him for distant shots also made it difficult to see and made for a cramped arena where his halberd would be a terrible weapon. He drew his sword and shield with his telekinetic magic.

The griffon shot at him, regardless. The bullet smacked on a trunk along the way with a crack and a telling shower of splinters.

Chocolate finally saw the griffon in between the wall of trunks. He clearly wore leather armor and a camouflaged cape. The chimeric creature, even if he was hard to see in the shade, in the middle of all that brown and green, still radiated magic, as did all living creatures. And Chocolate was trained to use his magical senses to home in on that magic. It made it a lot easier to find the griffon and his scoped weapon pointing in the alicorn’s general direction.

“How about we have a conversation?!” He called behind his shield and a thin tree that really didn’t provide much cover.

The griffon’s answer was another shot that lost itself in another one of the trees. Chocolate sighed and his ears drooped through the holes of his helmet. “Fine then.”

The griffon, wisely, didn’t want to close the distance and another shot rang and cracked against Chocolate’s shield. The force of the impact made him happy that Sarge didn’t let him slack on the magical fortitude training.

Chocolate focused his magic, despite holding his shield and sword, and yanked at the griffon’s long firearm. It didn’t work as the griffon wielded it with a strap across his shoulder and he just allowed himself to tumble with the momentum.

He had hoped to remove the weapon from the griffon, but failing that, Plan B he had drilled to exhaustion with the Royal Guard was to rush the enemy while they still tried to recover.

The griffon expected that and didn’t even bother standing. He laid on his side and leveled the gun on his shoulder before he shot at the brown alicorn charging at him. The bullet exploded on the magical shield again. Another shot went through but stopped harmlessly at the alicorn’s shield with the sigil of the Royal Pony Sisters.

As the alicorn closed the distance, the griffon stood and sat on his haunches. He aimed as precisely as he dared at the legs. But before he pulled the trigger the shield came out of focus and crashed against him. It sent him yelping on his back and against the wet earthy ground. The gun flew away in pieces.

“Last warning!” The brown alicorn in armor and white robes shouted at him, sword and shield in position. “Stand down!”

The griffon didn’t. Agile as a cat, he jumped on his hindlegs and drew a short and bulky weapon from under his cape. Chocolate didn’t have time to see what it was, but he managed to lower his shield in time. The weapon went off with a loud boom and wrenched his shield from his telekinetic control.

The alicorn yelped and reeled at the feedback against his magic, so powerful was the weapon. His vision became a blur, but training took over. He protected himself with the magic his feathers radiated into a shield. When the griffon pounced at him with a piercing scream, the blade of a dagger glanced off his reinforced magical shield. He could swear the thing ripped away a piece of his soul, so painful it was. Clearly an enchanted and thus dangerous weapon.

Practiced moves saved him again. The griffon held onto him, trying to pierce any opening in his armor around his wing, but he used the griffon’s weight and threw him to the side, quickly following with a thrust of his sword. Also a magical weapon, it mostly pierced through the griffon’s armor and drew blood when Chocolate stepped back and brought the weapon up to defend himself.

Right in time, as the griffon didn’t stand down and attacked him again. The knife was a superior weapon in such close quarters, but Chocolate also had his magic at his disposal. He reacted to the lunging weapon and caught it in the guard of his sword with a quick mental incantation that unleashed a lighting spell on the griffon.

His leather armor certainly had enchantments woven into it, but they were no match. The griffon convulsed with a pained cry and fell on his side. The sword came point down right above his armor and pierced through his neck before the alicorn grunted and pulled it free.

The griffon covered his wound with his paws. Smoke rising from his charred garment and natural covering, he reached for a pistol, and grimaced with pain and malevolence at Chocolate Velvet. The alicorn expected that and was faster. He drew one of his revolvers, cocking the hammer in a fluid motion. A single shot through the chest ended the griffon’s suffering. The alicorn didn’t look at the resulting wound from the magic bullet, but his magical senses told him the griffon’s soul had left its body behind.

Chocolate groaned again and frowned, scanning the area for any immediate threats, but found none. That griffon deserved a burial, but it was too out of the way for him. Warning the local authorities later of what had happened would be enough.

Returning his revolver to the holster, he spent a few seconds looking for his shield and found it next to one of the many trees. The blast from the griffon’s weapon had charred it because of the powder at point-blank range. He put the shield over his back with his sword and looked around the ground for the griffon’s weapon. Once he found it, he held it in his magical grasp to examine it.

It was a large bore, double barrel weapon. It had obviously serrated barrels and stock. He glared at the weapon as though it was guilty of something. Stupid griffons had everything they needed. Why did they insist on firearms and this stupid rebellious nonsense? They could even kill creatures all they wanted for food because Celestia allowed them. They were allowed. To kill! There was a reason The Sisters had resisted the ponies moved from the traditional muskets and crystal balls with enchantments. There was no need for war nor any of that whole nastiness. Just what the hell was wrong with those stupid catbirds?

Still, regret at killing the griffon hit him. It left the alicorn with a dull anger the griffon had forced him to fight and then kill him. Stupid catbird. So many things that he had to do, so many experiences, all cut short because of an idiotic ideology that failed thousands of years ago. Again, with a perfectly fine alternative that literally allowed everycreature to live peaceful and fulfilling lives. But no! Let’s start a war over a dead goddess. Or whatever the fudge that Harpy was.

Fudge. Fudge… Fudge! Great. He couldn’t even think ‘fudge’ anymore. Whatever.

He pouted angrily and stashed the griffon’s weapon in his armor’s saddlebags. He knew very well what that thing was, but he supposed he ought to show it to Celestia.

Finally, he looked up and walked a few steps back and to the side, looking for the best place to fly out of the forest through an opening in the canopy. He still had to send Luna Celestia’s message.

***

Luna walked out of the Ponyville General Hospital. The front yard was taken by white provisory tents which belonged to the Royal Guard and the county militia. They housed all the evidence the crime-oriented ponies had gathered and processed, as well as those still to be. Everything that could be scrounged from inside the facility, from feathers and fur to magical imprints and weirder scrying magic.

On the other side of the beaten dirt path were the significantly larger tents of the Royal Guard’s campaign hospital acting as the town’s medical assistance facility until investigation was done with the building.

While the Canterlotian authorities exaggerated significantly on the damage the two griffon ladies caused to the hospital, at least five ponies were killed. Four orderlies and a medical professional. Not to mention all the trauma the event caused to the patients and hospital staff.

She couldn’t be bothered to remember the details, but it seemed the event had been quite dramatic. Furniture was thrown to the floor and broken glass shattered everywhere. Gilda’s companion scavenged the emergency area for their stash of emergency healing potions and her method gave Luna some idea of just how desperate she was. They tried to stop her and, as a griffon, armed with talons and their superior strength, she ‘removed’ them from her way.

Luna wished they hadn’t tried to stop her or that they had just given her the potions. As expensive as those things were, they were not worth the lives of five ponies and all the grief that followed.

She sighed with closed eyes and stretched her neck. Investigators still weren’t done gathering all the evidence and the places where the ‘things’ happened still hadn’t been cleaned. Sure, she wasn’t new to grizzly images of dead ponies, but she could never get used to that. She wished she could will the images she saw in there out of her mind. Ironic that with all the things she could do, she still couldn’t help herself.

Luna sighed again. Poor foals… According to the staff, there were a trio of well-known fillies in the hospital because one of them was having a medical exam in the morning. She should have a conversation with them eventually. It should save her a few nightmare visits in the future. Although, with how sensitive to these things ponies could be, she was likely to be called into several nightmares anyways.

She worried about the griffoness though. The custodian officer had told Luna patients reported crying. That the griffoness repeatedly said she was sorry. One didn’t need Luna’s privileges or experience to know that was not normal behavior.

Another thing the custodian had told Luna was the griffoness that made that mess was called Grunhilda. An orphan from Griffonstone who had severe trouble with the law. When Luna pressed him for information, he said she seemed to be under the influence of something and that she almost killed a member of the Griffonstone’s Local Militia.

It seemed Luna owed the young griffoness a visit post haste. Things were not as simple as they seemed. They never were. But murder would never be acceptable and the young griffoness needed to answer for what she did.

The custodian officer came out of the hospital. A unicorn, white with light blue mane. Olive-green uniform and a cap that identified him as an officer of the correctional system. He approached Luna with a handkerchief in his magic and coughed before he stowed it on a chest pocket.

“Dreadful.” He grimaced. “Those two belong at Shatteredrock.”

Luna turned and stared at him. “One of them was shot and half-dead. The other seems to have some issues. She might be sick.”

“I believe griffons are all ‘sick’ anyway. But whatever you say, Princess.” He shrugged and glared at her with his vibrant blue eyes like she was stupid. “All I know is that the reason they made Shatteredrock was so that griffons that are too dangerous could be safely removed from society.”

“It frustrates me how some ponies can become so antipathetic.” Luna glared right back at him, but with the advantage of height. “How is it even possible? We were literally made to be kind and generous.”

“Uh… What?” He frowned and raised an eyebrow, but Luna only sighed.

“Don’t mind me.” Her ears fell. “Just tell me what you know.”

He cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, I haven’t learned much more. The griffoness Grunhilda carried her partner out of the hospital after she stole the potions, and they went to Ponyville’s teleporter. She forced the night crew to teleport them to Thunderpeak. But as your highness requested, I have kept from pursuing them and forbid my associates from doing the same.”

“Well, it is a shame that Ponyville’s local militia was not present because of the whole situation with Princesses Twilight and Cadance.” He shrugged. “They could have stopped the two rogue griffonesses.”

Not likely, Luna knew. Not with the state Ponyville’s local militia found themselves in. They would likely have been killed by the griffoness too. But she supposed that bringing that up with the unicorn pony would be a waste of her time.

“Thank you.” She nodded, finally. “And good job. I wish to meet them in their dreams before we make physical contact with them. That should avoid more creatures being injured.”

“That is your decision, Princess.” He offered a hoof. “The Royal Guard ought to be able to contain the pair. Anyways, I’ll be staying in the city’s hotel with my team. When the Royals are done gathering all the evidence from the scene, we’ll return to Canterlot and start on the paperwork. Unless your highness commands us to proceed after them to Thunderpeak and wherever they might have gone to.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it. Please, consider a more merciful approach in your judgment of these griffonesses.” Luna tilted her head a little. “Creatures who do bad things often have been influenced by unfortunate events. There are many evil beings in the world, but civilized creatures seldom are.”

“Very well, Princess.” The unicorn lowered and bowed to her. “I will keep that in my mind. But murder happened here.”

“I never said it didn’t.” Luna nodded. “What I said is that there are several reasons one might commit such heinous acts, and most creatures do not out of pure evil.”

“I understand, Princess.” He gave her a respectful, yet shallow nod of acceptance. “Now, with your excuse.”

She nodded at the pony, and he left her, turning to talk with a couple of Royal Guards waiting for him and they walked with him towards one of the tents in front of the hospital.

It seemed that visiting the two griffonesses in their dreams and talking to them was in order. But night was still far away, and she was unlikely to get much done in that place. Her job was done. She went there, she made her presence known, ponies became calmer, and the drama was relatively under control for the time being.

Of course, that not only being Equestria, but also Ponyville, Luna should appreciate the grace period. Priority number one ought to be understanding what happened to those griffonesses which caused an orphan to kill five creatures. It seemed obvious that her motivation was her friend’s injury. Commendable, but unacceptable and that begged intervention.

Luna frowned and she sighed yet again, almost convinced she should ask Celestia to end the day early. Several hours early. But knowing her subjects, that was a bad idea.

A spark of magic pinged her magical senses and distracted her from her thoughts. A magical letter was on the brink of materialization. And when it did, she deftly captured it in her telekinetic magic. A small, simple box of light cardboard tied with a ribbon that kept it shut accompanied a simple letter in the form of a thrice-folded paper.

It seemed that Celestia had asked Chocolate Velvet to send her something. The reason she knew was because the items had been dipped in her consort’s magic.

And the reason she knew it was from Celestia was because the ribbon holding the box was a cute, pink ribbon tied in a bulky knot with a pair of large ‘ears’. Like a bunny.

Luna rolled her eyes and regarded the folded paper. ‘Please open discreetly’, it asked in Celestia’s exquisite hornwriting.

Luna nodded and teleported away. Straight to her private quarters in Canterlot Palace, the entry room with the two thestral guards that straightened as soon as she manifested.

Walking inside, she didn’t turn to them, instead faced the stairs that led up to her room. “I must review an important communication from my sister. Kindly do not allow anycreature to disturb me.”

“Yes, your midnightyness!” She didn’t need to turn to picture the pair synchronously saluting her with their leathery wings as they spoke. The harsh military tone didn’t really fit the batpony lisp, but that was part of their charm. It also didn’t make her doubt their reliability or their loyalty.

She rolled her eyes. After all those years they kept calling her that. Actually amazing that they remained loyal to her. Before, after, and while she wore the mantle of Nightmare Moon. It was complicated, but it worked, and she had important matters to mind.

She climbed the spiral stairs. and they led to a small anteroom Luna used for relaxation and it had the door to the balcony. It had her painting stand with blank canvas and her piano. But none of that interested her at the moment as she laid on one of her blue couches and opened the folded paper.

My dearest sister,

I have found something that may be interesting. In Griffonstone lives an artificer griffon whose profession is crafting toys. Among his creations are delightful figurines of important creatures from our world. Curiously, while I do not know the griffoness I have asked Chocolate Velvet to send you, the griffon claims she has appeared in his dreams. To me, she is eerily similar to Lord Gilad’s mate, Lady Gwendolen, but as far as I know, she lacks the ability to enter creatures’ dreams.

I understand that this similarity seems quite pedestrian, but the resemblances are striking. My instinct is that this is worth investigating. If for no other reason, then for conscience’s sake.

Additionally, I have bought his entire collection and I must say that you look positively lovely in his version of you! Kindly don’t damage the toys unless you must.

Your adoring Sister,

Tia.

There was a squeak and Luna’s pet opossum jumped to the couch and greeted her with another excited squeal.

“Hi, Tiberius!” She giggled and petted the small creature, then scratched his belly once he rolled on his back and squirmed like an overexcited dog before he hopped to her back and vanished inside her mane.

She giggled again and smiled before she pulled the ribbon that closed the box. From inside, she extracted the painted wooden figures. She squinted at the small objects with an inquisitive frown and her ears perked forward. While Luna had never personally met the Maiden of Griffindell, one of the figurines definitively represented her.

The small figure indeed recreated her pious stare and black wings that looked like she wore a cloak. The resemblance of a cowl and her black paws she held before her chest were also in the photographs that Luna had seen of the griffoness.

Luna hummed with a curious stare and then turned her attention to the other image. A vicious and powerful griffoness of similar colors, sat on her haunches and holding a sword with the tip down to the ground and holding a black crown on her other paw. Her open wings showed a black and white striped pattern.

“Huh…” Luna frowned.

Her magic reached out into one of the small boxes in her desk downstairs and teleported it to her. Opening it, she extracted a photograph that showed Lord Gilad talking with some griffon Luna didn’t know. Next to him was Lady Gwendolen. She looked exactly like the one the griffon artificer had crafted.

Luna had never noticed it, but something about the way she held her paws together and her big eyes turned up like she was so innocent really rubbed her the wrong way. Also, the griffons really seemed to like the fluff in their chests, and hers was quite impressive in black and white.

Luna tilted her head, staring at the photograph with a frown. It was rather poor in quality, and Luna could barely see the fiercest features of her race. The statuette, however, with the open wings was exquisitely crafted and showed them much better. Wild eyes and a sharp beak, strong limbs, and a dominating posture. Her wings showed a striped pattern that was really nice under her wings, but her wings were black on the other side.

Luna hummed and squinted. “Could be the same, but that would mean little.”

She looked at Tiberius with his head poking out of her mane. “I can see why Celestia thought it was curious.”

Then she turned to the photograph she held in her magic. “But we really don’t know much about her to begin with.”

Tiberius whined inquisitively and Luna sighed, frowning at the two figurines she held magically before her. “I don’t know… It is strange to hear of a griffon lady showing up in griffon dreams. Well, not ‘that’ kind of dream… After all, I hear she is quite beautiful.”

Then she touched her chin with a hoof. “Hum… Maybe this is related to how the northerners see her as some sort of spiritual guide. Maybe that causes them to see her in their dreams and that’s all.”

Luna’s wings opened a little in annoyance. It had been some time she had been having trouble seeing the dreams of the northerner griffons and there was no reason the appearance of that griffoness, by itself, would trigger the system to warn her of violation. But her intuition lit up like a Hearthwarming tree.

She teleported to her a small box. A metallic box painted white and with golden adornments. She opened it with her telekinetic magic and searched the small card-like files until she found the relevant one. It was simply a rectangular piece of paper written with Celestia’s hornwriting.

Lady Gwendolen of Griffindell, born in the 7th of Hearthfire in the year 968 of the Solar Age.

- Mated Lord Gilad ‘The Lion’ Ironfeathers in the 22nd of Morning Star in the year 982 of the Solar Age.

- Nothing known of her prior to their mating ceremony. Birthdate is assumed, based on hearsay and sparse information from merchants.

- Quickly became a respected Lady of the Northern Halls to the point northerner griffons will sever a relationship with anycreature that speaks ill of her.

- Has adopted Master Grigory with Lord Gilad around the year 987 of the Solar Age. Non-official process, but it was later recognized by authorities.

- Has forbidden E.E.A. authorities from legislating within Snow Mountains Hold.

- Protects abattoirs from Federation Authorities.

- Credited by northerner griffon Loremasters (their community teachers and spiritual leaders) for the sharp increase in cultural distancing from the rest of Griffonia.

o Harsh discrimination of hippogriffs.

o Sanctioned privileges for leadership.

o Sharp distancing from most Federation’s efforts for social welfare.

o Hates cakes and sweets in general.

- Has never been seen outside of Griffindell. Doesn’t usually leave Griffinsky Mansion.

Curiously enough, Celestia had circled in red that she hated cakes and sweets.

Regardless, it seemed as though Lady Gwendolen was a mysterious middle-aged lady anyways. Could she have some sort of magical powers? Maybe as a witch? That would explain her presence in griffons’ dreams. Because, putting the carved and painted images, with the photograph in front of her, Luna couldn’t see a difference between the three versions of the griffoness.

Luna gasped and then she grinned. A griffon witch? That seemed like a really cool idea! She could be disguising herself… That was a curious symbology with the sword and the crown. But the meaning eluded Luna. Maybe it was related to… Oh no… Maybe it was related to The Harpy and the Emperor. But that was conjecture on Luna’s part.

Well, that helped less than she expected, but she made a serious and determined expression Tiberius mimicked. She would spend that night patrolling griffon dreams.

***

Luna had isolated herself the rest of the day and as far as she was concerned, it had been a peaceful and uneventful day in Equestria. Preparations for that important night consisted of hibiscus cookies, a selection of tea brews that included chamomile, lavender, and a Kirin green tea with magical properties. Additionally, an aromatic bath, several helpings of sandalwood incense burnings and opossum claw massage. She went for the strong stuff, but when the time came to act, she was ready.

As she brought the night she went to her bed, under guard of her loyal protector Tiberius (since Celestia hogged their consort all to herself). She decided she wouldn’t do anything too fancy. She would simply witness a few dreams and see what happened. That included Rainbow Dash’s friend and her friend too.

Once she slept, Luna popped into existence in her palace on the moon. No, it was not really on the moon; it was actually inside her own head, but she liked the magical scenario. It looked like a better version of the Throne of the Mind inside other creatures. Wide windows in the circular room with pillars that converged on the ceiling and held wide glass panes between them. Beyond the stars and the surface of the moon, but rather than a dead landscape of gray dust and craters, it was a sea of magical light. It shone with soft cyan and that evanesced as it rose above the surface.

The room itself was spacious and dominated by a long and curved table with the magical images that helped her monitor ‘the system’. And as she sat at her throne within the curved table, the magical images became alive with all the information she needed.

Additionally, Tantabus galloped by her with Tiberius holding on to her mane. Luna clopped her hoof at the armrest. “Hey! Hey! We are busy! There is important business at hoof!”

That caused the pair to stand at attention in front of her, on the other side of the table. Luna relaxed on her throne. “I’ll be busy closely monitoring griffon dreams, so I need you to deal with any low to medium-level nightmares that might bother creatures.”

Tantabus saluted with a hoof, and so did Tiberius with his paw, even if he was there just for fun and didn’t have any abilities or responsibilities.

After Luna’s helper teleported away and Tiberius started floating in the air since that was a dream anyways, Luna turned her attention to the magical images above the table. Her magical aura manifested around her horn, and she entered the magical commands into the magical system that would inform her of abnormal activity in griffon dreams.

With things on their way, she relaxed on her throne and waited. A few seconds later, she manifested a blueberry smoothie for her and then she paid full attention to what the system was doing.

More time passed and she hummed to herself with her ears pulled back. Already on her third smoothie and nothing happened so far that warranted her attention. All the system indicated were normal, out of the mill nightmares caused by the pesky creatures and that Tantabus dealt with before they even caused trouble with the lucid dreaming that bothered her subjects.

“Something is not right.” She moaned and hoofed at her chin, squinting at the list of dreaming creatures on the magical image. It was her intuition, her millennia of watching over dreams and chasing away Nightmares that told her something was wrong.

She started querying the system on specific griffons. In no specific order. And the system showed her the basic package of information: where they were, who they were. Vital signs. Any low level alerts the system might have generated.

Running out of patience, she decided to be less subtle. Her magic introduced the commands for the system to search for specific engrams popping up in griffon minds. Descriptions of the statuette Celestia had sent her. Engrams that might relate to Lady Gwendolen, such as ‘respect’, ‘traditions’, ‘Lord Gilad’, ‘King’, ‘Queen’, ‘the fate of Griffonia’, ‘hippogriffs’, ‘noble lords and ladies’… Anything that might relate to that griffoness who looked like Lady Gwendolen.

And nothing…

There should have been positive finds. At the same time, Luna knew very well something protected the northerner griffons from her ability to pierce into their dreams. Their free-will was involved and Luna wouldn’t bother them if they didn’t need her. But what worried her were not the northerners… It was that southerner griffons apparently dreamt about those things enough that the toymaker from Griffonstone saw that griffoness in his dreams. Truth be told, if the phenomenon was restricted to the northerners, it wouldn’t bother her.

Although, the more she thought about the northerners, the more the whole thing worried her. She frowned… The museum. The Cult of the Harpy. Too many random connections. Too many coincidences that she previously explained with the fact that the northerners retained their ancient traditions, but the subtle and unsettling magic she witnessed in the Break of Dawn made her realize she may not have been paying as much attention as she should.

She commanded the magic of dreams searched for the engram ‘Harpy’, but she was awarded no return.

It should have calmed her, but the reality was that artifacts of the which cult had surfaced should have brought a few returns among the ‘available’ griffons in the south. Militias that were involved, prisoners… After all, that secret seemed ready to burst into the public eye.

She was missing something. Obviously…

The northerners were protective of their culture to the point they would not typically teach their language. They would not discuss it with outsiders. There had to be something though. They were reaching out, in some way. Or the southerners wouldn’t be leaving the south towards the north. The Lion, or Lady Gwendolen should be showing up in their dreams, if only for the simple fact that they heard of them.

She could find a few griffons while they dreamt, and search their memories for information, but that would be a bit of a violation and would also take a lot of time. If she took too long, Gilda and that Grunhilda griffoness would be lost to her, as are the griffons that reach the northern hold of Griffonia.

The problem was that she was not getting results. And she didn’t fully understand why either.

She shoved her back at her throne’s rest and put her hooves to her face with an audible and unprincess-like groan. But she immediately calmed herself. Frustration and anger wouldn’t help at all. She closed her eyes. Which was rather funny, considering she was actually dreaming, but the gesture helped her focus. Her thoughts turned inward.

The northerner griffons protected their culture. And with the resurgence of the Cult of The Harpy, it was likely because of that. Had they never stopped worshiping The Harpy? Even after the fall of the Empire? Secretly? Celestia hadn’t found The Harpy, so it was a reasonable expectation that the griffons would let go after Emperor Grigor I died, since he was the one that spread the cult.

Or was he? Celestia never truly understood the Cult of The Harpy… What if…

She thought of the strange magic the Loremaster used on the contractor taking cargo to Celestia’s airship. Huh… The Loremaster. She was supposed to be a teacher. A spiritual guide of sorts. But not only did she seem to have an important part in the bizarre breeding program (Luna didn’t know how else to call it) Lady Gwendolen had introduced, but she also seemed to have access to a strange magic Luna had never seen before.

Although… Had she never seen it before? It was uncannily close to the magic the Loremasters used to have back in the days of the Empire. But they seemed to have vanished, and that was why that old griffoness had caught Luna by surprise.

Luna frowned and looked at the magical sea beyond the windows, past the magical images. How much discipline must it have taken for them to remain hidden for so long while also fomenting the culture of the northerner griffons.

Luna blinked a couple of times. Unless, they didn’t have that magic, and someone taught them. And the only griffons of note would be Lord Gilad and Lady Gwendolen. But Lord Gilad didn’t seem to be the source of that particular magic, or those ideas… His magic was different. And it was true the griffons from the Empire didn’t like hippogriffs, but they didn’t like any other race. That hatred against the hippogriff was new.

That seemed to point at Lady Gwendolen. After all, she was the one that introduced the breeding program. The problem was that Luna was back at where she was: suspicious of Lady Gwendolen, but not actually knowing anything.

Maybe the secret was in the magic the old griffoness used against the poor pegasus. Also, Luna didn’t have the same version of the system at the time and couldn’t examine the Loremasters and their magic. Back at square one, she sighed with an angry frown.

Maybe she was wasting too much time on that. She sat straight against her throne and her magic commanded the system to search for Miss Gilda and Miss Grunhilda. It returned an error.

What in the ever-loving fudge was that? ‘Query failed’. She tried again, and she got the same response from the system. A blank image with those outrageous pony ideograms in the middle. It shouldn’t be doing that… Was that how her mind interpreted an invalid response from the magical system? Did her imagination add such a flavored response? It was the most likely answer.

Did her magic fail to locate the two griffonesses? That shouldn’t happen. She stared at the words in the magical image and her hoof tapped her chin a few times.

What did she know of Gilda and Grunhilda? Not much. Even with what the canterlotian authorities had told her, the most she knew was that Gilda had injured a minor and ended up fleeing the city. The other griffoness, apparently, was under the influence of something and attacked Griffonstonian Local Militia officers and also fled.

That was unlikely, though. She was a young and technically homeless griffon lady that lived in a government office building. Unless there was foul play involved by her benefactors, it would be quite hard for her to have access to narcotics. How did the two even come into contact?

Luna racked her brain for an answer, and it took her a few wild theories before she finally came to anything logical. There was a publication that slipped under notice a few years ago, but Luna had paid attention to it because it concerned dreams. Something about the storms and weird dreams among griffons, published by a Griffonstone psychiatrist of little notice via the Bay County University.

Luna remembered. It was little known, but it had caused Griffonian weather authorities to tone down the frequency of thunderstorms.

She stretched her neck and stared up at the ogive ceiling with a frown, straining her memory. She could see the magical flux that came from Equestria to the Moon and the wavy colors helped her focus. It would be ideal if she had her copy of the published paper, but she recalled it well enough.

There was no way to confirm there were storms involved in Grunhilda’s case. Or even In Gilda’s case. But that was a possible approach to the situation from that angle. An annoyed growl and a determined squint later, she commanded the collective oneiric magic to scour the minds of griffons for the engram of ‘storm’.

The system was supposed to show her portraits of the griffons, with their names, like cards on the magical image. And it did, but the portraits were broken as failed photographs and their names were gibberish instead of names in the Griffonese characters.

“Huh!” Her frown changed to one of curiosity and her hoof returned to her chin. There were a lot of griffons… Hundreds of thousands of griffons. Enough griffons to fill an entire hold of Griffonia, perhaps? Wait… One of their names wasn’t gibberish.

Grinolf. The deserter sitting in a cell in Celestia’s airship. Even his portrait was the way it was supposed to be instead of the mess the others were.

Almost as though she was entering a dark cave, Luna hesitated. She magically commanded the magical system to lock into the griffon’s mind and everything worked as intended. Most importantly, he was asleep. And he was dreaming. The readings of his vital signs showed a substantial level of distress.

Not much she could do from there, though. Her horn lit with magic again and Luna closed her eyes. Her instinctual magic did its job and when she opened her eyes, she found herself inside a small house. Wood planks for floor and ceiling. Masonry walls with a window filled with darkness.

It was a cramped room with a sizeable hearth burning with a comforting fire despite the cold that seeped in. It made the small room cozy. Nothing but dark beyond the window, and the walls had stands with books, and hunting tools. An iron rack held a cooking pan over the fire and pieces of dried meat hung from the ceiling. In the back was a small table and a rustic staircase that led to the floor above.

Wait. There was no storm. Why did her magic identify the engram for ‘storm’ when there was no storm in his dream?

Grinolf sat on the floor, his back against fire, eyes trained on the door to the outside. It rested quietly in its place. Behind Grinolf, and past the fire, a dark figure of a griffon sat on a chair and fletched arrows. The figure spoke, and its voice was a deep tenor speaking in Common Equestrian, with a thick whistle-y accent. “The storm will be over soon, son. Don’t worry.”

Storm? Luna frowned.

“It never ends…” Grinolf whispered with the same accent. “It’s always raining.”

Luna walked around the young griffon with a curious stare. He couldn’t see her, she wasn’t there as far as he was concerned, but she could see his torn frown and focused eyes.

“Raining?” She tilted her head and checked the window. Nothing but the peaceful dark of night outside. Sure, his dream lacked details. No stars or dark shadows of nearby buildings, or even lights that would escape their windows. But there was no rain.

When Luna looked again, the old Loremaster griffoness had replaced the figure of the male griffon and spoke in the sing-song-y accent on Common Equestrian. “Can you hear the storm?”

Grinolf didn’t answer immediately, but his frown changed. His forehead crinkled with worry, and he barely opened his beak to let the words out. “I can hear Her cry.”

“She’s always out there.” Grinolf added.

Luna looked at the door, then back at him. Out there? Outside? Who?

“Trying to get in.” Grinolf added with a whisper. “All the time… Scratching at the walls, banging at the door.”

“You have to let her in.” The old griffoness chastised him.

“What?” Luna frowned further with a grimace of confusion.

That was when Grinolf closed his eyes and his feathers ruffled. He trembled and his whole body tensed.

“Stop.” Luna commanded as her horn shone and the whole scene froze around her. She frowned at the frozen, terrified griffon, summoning her crystal tablet to her. “What is it that you are seeing, Grinolf?”

It was a bit of a technical thing, and it involved her experience in reading his mental processes as they happened, but she could see that he was, decidedly, hearing something. Seeing things that she wasn’t. And that was a first. It was like someone had figured out a way to hide things from her magic. Luna had never had to deal with that sort of thing and nothing in the magical system that she had created had prepared it to properly show her what was going on.

That old griffoness, his mother, knew ancient magic capable of messing with the minutiae of the workings of a pony’s mind. And now, this. There was something out there that knew how to ‘game’ Luna’s oneiric magic. Her wings fell and she shivered as much as the young griffon in his dream, because it now made sense where his mother had learned that freakish magic.

It seemed obvious, but Luna had no real evidence yet.

Ancient memories stirred. The pony goddess that had sat at the Throne of the Mind may have used deep magic she didn’t truly, nor fully understand as she wove the minds of modern creatures. And now… Something older and dangerous may have slipped under Luna’s snout.

“Oh, my stars…” Luna didn’t know until then, but it seemed as though she could sweat inside the world of dreams.

Her heart thumped and her hoof shook as she turned to her blue crystal tablet. She was the only thing ‘alive’ in that place, but all her attention was on her magical tool. It didn’t escape her that she felt the exact same feeling of ‘messing with the forbidden’ other creatures felt when they were exposed to the deep magic that made minds work. She was messing with ancient and powerful, deep magic. And that always carried a foreboding feeling.

She poked into the system’s representations of mental processes and the individual parts that made up Grinolf’s mind. What were they doing? What was hidden in between the processes? Something stirred in between the lines of magical notation, older than time itself.

An anxious anticipation took over Luna again. Terrible memories surfaced only to sink again underneath the threshold of recalling. She was messing with her own mind in the process, but she must know.

Her horn shone brighter, and she commanded her magic to remove the veil that had been put before her. The entirety of the little griffon home blinked out of existence and the dream played around her again.

There was a storm outside. A torrential, world-changing hurricane. The heavy rain punished the roof and the walls. The window that earlier had only shown the dark of a peaceful night was pelted with heavy raindrops and the wind threatened to bring it all down. It howled like the snowolves of the Crystal Empire and Yakyakstan.

Grinolf sat on the floor, his back against fire, eyes trained on the door to the outside. It banged violently against its frame and the sound caught Luna unaware. She jumped and let her wings flare, casting a shocked glare at it before her eyes returned to the griffon.

Behind Grinolf, and past the fire, a large but faceless griffon sat on a chair and fletched arrows. He spoke, and its voice was a deep tenor in the High Griffonese. The sound of the rain almost drowned the words out. “The storm will be over soon, son. Don’t worry.”

A flash invaded the little house through the window and for a split-second Luna saw an open field with ponies. Concerned eyes scanned the sky and thunder shook the house. Or was it Luna herself that shook? It was the confined griffon home again that surrounded her.

“It never ends…” Grinolf whispered in the ancient griffon tongue. “It’s always raining.”

When Luna looked again, the old Loremaster called Gehenna had replaced the figure of the male griffon and she spoke in that same language made for the griffon beaks. “Can you hear the storm?”

Grinolf didn’t answer, but his frown changed. His forehead crinkled with worry. “I can hear Her cry.”

A resounding thunder echoed and filled existence with a flash. A piercing cry ran through Luna’s spine, and she screamed. Her hooves clopped anxiously on the wood floor, when the small room turned to an open prairie. She couldn’t see in the bright flash, nor the dark night, but feathers flew in the air and panicked neighs filled her ears along with the sickening sound of tearing flesh. In a split second everything was just the small griffon home again.

The smell of blood assaulted her senses and Luna threw herself against the wall with her back and covered her muzzle. She forced herself to remember that it was a dream, and that the events that intruded in her mind were recollections from so long ago they didn’t exist anymore. She must focus on Grinolf’s dreams, not on her own memories.

“She’s always out there.” Grinolf added.

Thunder clapped again and lightning flashed outside against a large shape of ruffled feathers walking outside the window. Luna covered her mouth and a muffled scream escaped her. It was impossible!

“Trying to get in.” Grinolf added with a whisper. “All the time.”

A monster growled outside, and claws rasped against the walls with a terrible grind.

“It cannot be!” Luna whined to herself, hiding behind her shaking wings and under her panicked, frantic breathing. “She was destroyed!”

“You have to let her in.” The old griffoness chastised Grinolf with a scowl. “You are a Child of The Harpy.”

The door banged violently. The sound reminded Luna of ancient siege weapons. ‘It’ pounded against the door like a battering ram against the reinforced gates of a city. Only a small portion of herself that remained rational reminded her that it was all metaphorical. It was a dream, but it had turned into a nightmare of her own.

Grinolf closed his eyes and his feathers ruffled. He trembled and his whole body tensed. The door sounded as though it would explode out of its hinges in counterpoint to thunder and the flash that illuminated the room from the gap under the door, showing something was there. It moved. Black talons pierced the wood and showered the floor with splinters.

In an instant, Luna was back at her palace. Sitting on her throne, chest expanding with frantic breathing and looking from one side to the other until she recognized her fortress. Grinolf had probably awakened and that returned her consciousness to her palace. The rattling on the door and the resounding thunder still echoed inside her head and she needed several minutes before she managed to control her breathing. She wrapped herself in her wings and her hooves shook against her chest.

Little Tiberius was there though. He floated to her and nosed at her forehead with a soft and caring squeak. Luna inhaled and held him cradled in the primary feathers in her wings. She smiled at him and landed a small kiss on the top of his head. “Thank you, Tiberius.”

After that she held him in her hooves and sat him on the table.

“Oh my gosh!” Luna gasped. “I have to tell Celestia!”

Tiberius squeaked and nodded extra fast before he started running on top of the table.

“No! Wait!” Luna stared at the magical images and Tiberius squealed, grinding to a halt before he turned to the princess again.

Luna almost doubted her eyes, but the griffons whose faces she couldn’t see and names she couldn’t read were normal in the magical image.

Her jaw hung open. She probably had understood something. She saw through the magic that disrupted her own. She could see Gilda. She could see that griffoness called Grunhilda. She still frowned, though, as she couldn’t find the Loremaster that was Grinolf's mother. Even if she asked the system to look for her through her affinity to him.

The old Loremaster still had tricks under her wings. Out of curiosity, she looked for Lady Gwendolen and nothing showed up either. Gilad? Nope. Their kid, Grigory, or his friends? Nada.

Her magic was still locked on Grinolf though, and the system had listed alerts of dream disruption and invasion by a Nightmare. Luna was sure that wasn’t a Nightmare, though. That was something much older, much more powerful and with a much deeper understanding of how minds worked. It seemed to have left Grinolf alone once he had awakened.

She focused on Gilda before that thing got to her and prepared to connect with her mind. But, she stopped right at the brink of her magic doing it’s thing. One of the images showed an old griffon called Gamaliel. He was old, in the later third of his life. Judging by his portrait. Yet, the images of his face broke for a split second, and his name turned to gibberish before returning to normal.

Did that mean the monster… ‘That monster’ was disturbing his dreams?

Luna watched with huge eyes for a few seconds, but nothing happened. Why was there no alert of harmonic violation? When a Nightmare, or anything attacks their dreams the system, her magic, is supposed to alert her!

She commanded her magic locked on him. His heart beat slowly, like a tired machine. His breathing was shallow and erratic. Gamaliel was sixty-seven years old and his brain activity in wave form showed Luna a tired creature. Ready to give up. He was dreaming, though. The magical image showed multiple level alerts for his failing body.

Khet Class Harmonic Violation: severe organic failure

Ren Class Harmonic Violation: damaged Self

Akh Class Harmonic Violation: dream loop disruption – Nightmare Attack!

From those Luna knew he was physically sick, though she would have to delve deeper to see how. She knew he had suffered grave injury to his sense of self. It was a fancy way of saying that he was terribly distraught over his life and his psyche was damaged. And there was also the alarm of Nightmare attack that should have sounded metaphorical alarms in Luna’s head and directed the system to showing it to her. But it was like that part was suppressed.

Additionally, the map showed Mister Gamaliel was in Griffonstone. And an image showed Luna a griffon laying on the walkway, under a soaked piece of cardboard and next to a failing gas street lamp. Again, Luna's jaw hung open and her heart was ripped in two, seeing the old and tired griffon left alone under the rain. Rapid water ran in the gutter and there was not another soul in the dark street. Only the rain and the wind.

That was not supposed to happen! How did an old griffon end abandoned in the middle of the rain in Equestria? More precisely, in Griffonia… But it was still a part of the Equestrian Federation! That was simply not supposed to happen! There were several institutions, watchdog organizations that should have alerted authorities that this sort of thing was happening!

Luna scowled. “What in Tartarus is the Chancellor doing with the money the Hall of Friendship sends him?!”

She felt foolish. She knew there was corruption in the Griffonian government, despite Celestia’s efforts. But seeing that…

Even worse, that thing that hounded Grinolf’s dreams, was disturbing that old griffon. He was sick from exposure. He was too weak. He would not survive!

Maybe it was shame, but Luna didn’t want the griffon to expire not knowing that she cared. Flashing images of bloody fields and mangled pony bodies filled her mind with a sudden terror. Thunder echoed inside her thoughts. Every sense of self-preservation told her not to approach that monster again. But the old griffon was alone and vulnerable!

She would take precautions, but whatever she did, she couldn’t leave him at that thing’s mercy.

Luna focused her magic and closed her eyes. When they opened again, she was in the middle of an opulent sitting room in an imperial mansion. The room was almost as large as Luna's own resting room. Fine wooden panels covered the walls and ceiling, and large windows framed in purple curtains clattered with the rain outside. Thunder clapped and the dark beyond lit with lightning. But that was all. No prowling monstrosity in the dark.

There was a large and luxurious bar with many bottles of expensive drinks and fancy cups. A giant candelabra with thousands of crystals and gold dangled from the ceiling and provided a comfortable light. Luna could hear giggling and playing griffon cubs from beyond the magnificent doors and a sumptuous fireplace added its flickering light as well as warmness to the room.

The griffon sat on an armchair, wearing a rich bathrobe in purple and black. The old griffon was large and impressive. Dark brown with white on his head, but his feathers had lost their shine to age. His eyes were closed, but he seemed to be resting peacefully. He smiled at the sound of the playing cubs. Behind him, on the wall was a large flag of Griffonia with its reds and yellows behind the black griffon in the foreground. It sat above a green uniform of the Griffonian Standing Army with so many ribbons and medals Luna couldn’t count from a distance.

But she recognized at least a few from the many of the GSA deployments that assisted Equestria when it needed. When Nightmare Moon returned and the monsters of Everfree broke loose, for example. When the changelings besieged Canterlot, and others.

A beautiful stand made of the same varnished wood and clear glass held a saber and a flintlock pistol. Both richly adorned with gold.

Luna had distracted herself, looking at all the details and imagining their significance to the old griffon. Three sudden knocks on the door brought her attention back to the important matters.

Luna gasped quietly and immediately directed her stare to the door. Watched as the handle moved slowly and the door opened revealing a black griffon’s paw. And when the door opened whole for the creature to enter… Sweet stars, that was one of the largest and tallest griffons Luna had ever seen.

That figurine was loyal to a tee to the creature she saw. And that creature was loyal to Luna’s distant memories of the entity she had come to know as The Harpy. Just that thing’s presence was enough to almost send Luna into another fit of panic and ancient recollections. But her worry for the old griffon kept her pinned in place, happy that the ancient griffon goddess couldn’t see her.

Or so she hoped. The griffoness didn’t react to her presence, after all.

Large and elegant, the imposing creature walked around old Gamaliel on his armchair and she had a curious and interested expression. Her crown of black feathers made her seem regal as she circled around to stare at the old griffon and her tail with the black tuft swept as she turned. She didn’t say anything and just sat in front of him and waited.

His head, once hanging from his neck, trained at her and his eyes opened slowly. He showed a soft frown and his voice croaked when he spoke in Common Equestrian. “I know you…”

“My fair lady,” He started with a smile. “Who are you?”

She remained seated on her hindlegs, but she reached with her forepaws and held his head, holding him ever so softly. She spoke slowly and clearly in High Griffonese. “I am the anger in your chest. I am the heaviness in your heart. I am the voice at the back of your mind that makes you hide in shame when your head is laid upon your pillows.”

What in Tartarus was it that she even meant? That sounded like a threat, not something you’d tell a poor old griffon mister.

Luna watched as his face changed from his tired smile to a weary frown, but he didn’t speak yet. The white and black griffoness spoke again. “I am the cry in the storm you have avoided your whole life. I am the voice that brought you to life and that you have shut your ears to. I am the accusation that nags at your cravenness.”

“It was not my fault.” The griffoness took a few steps back and gave him space as he stood from his armchair and looked at the flag and his uniform. “I told them not to do it!”

His voice broke with sobbing. “I begged them to reconsider! But I didn’t have the courage to do anything! Even if I had the support of my griffons, I feared for my family, I feared for my own future! There was nothing I could do!”

“After the Operation Expressway,” The griffoness fixed him a harsh stare. “Your soldiers would have followed you. You could have stopped all that followed. Your love for your position and for the comfort you had surrounded yourself with has made you spineless.”

Luna gasped. What was she talking about? That sounded like the sort of thing that Luna should know about. Although, if the griffons were hiding information from her and Celestia about the military incursion into the north, it would follow that they had done it in the past.

How blind could she and her sister have been? Additionally, this whole interaction was wholly different from Grinolf’s experience and what Luna had expected.

“I cannot pretend that you are wrong.” Regardless of Luna’s thoughts, the old griffon grimaced and held her paws against his face as though he feared she would distance herself from him. “I didn’t want to get involved in any of that! I thought it was vile! But I still believed in my country. I still believed that the high command knew what it was doing. And I feared for my younger family and their career in the Griffonian Standing Army.”

“You allowed others to use you. You were loyal to the wrong griffons, you refused to see.” The griffoness accused as she opened her forepaws, despite his gesture, and her wings spread. “And the result was this!”

The mansion undid itself, replaced by the dark sky and the cold rain. His clothes were gone and so were the noises of the playing cubs. The griffon had already lost most of his composure, but he crumbled and dropped to the pavement. He sobbed and his fingers threatened to pull at his soft facial feathers.

“They took everything!” He cried. “My sons are under arrest and my grandchildren have been sent to the garrisons in the deepest holes they could find. All because I told them not to invade Snow Mountains! And I fear to think what they did to their families and my servants!”

“You misplaced your loyalty.” She circled around him. “You gave it to the wrong griffons. They cut your wings before you would have a chance to fly away. Even if you wouldn’t. And now, you suffer the consequences. Your betrayal was to your race, and should you have followed your heart, none of this would have happened.”

“I know!” He sobbed and his shoulders jumped with his upstarted breathing. “It is over. I am at the end of my life, and I have nothing left! I should have listened to my conscience. I should have honored the traditions my mother taught me.”

Luna’s feelings for the old griffon’s plight notwithstanding, it bothered her to no end that neither her nor her sister had absolutely any idea of what was going on. It was concerning, to say the least. Not only because of security reasons, but because that caused griffons a good measure of grief.

She wondered if that might have a connection to griffons wanting to leave the pony-friendly south for the north. Luna grimaced at those thoughts. It was possible that, despite their best intentions, she and her sister had screwed up. Bad.

While those thoughts practically festered inside Luna’s mind, the griffoness got tired of watching the old griffon crying. Or maybe she thought he had had enough. Her paws held his shoulders and she made him look at her, pulled his shoulders into a prouder posture. Her face was fierce with the very aquiline facial features of the griffons, and her expression was as accusatory as her words had been until then, but her tone softened. Even if it was barely perceptible.

“There is still time.” She told him softly. “You can see your family’s pride restored. You can free your kin and bring them the honor that is their birthright. Your time in the realm of the living is still not over. You can restore your honor and meet your ancestors with pride in the Fólkvangr, in the Stormy Eyrie.”

“How?” His face contorted in a pained frown. “I am old. And I have lost everything.”

“I have taken time to find you, but you will heal. You will be strong again.” She told him. “My Children thrive in adversity and now you know on which side your heart lies. You will know your brethren and they will know you. And they will take you home, back to the lands your ancestors claimed. You will live years long enough that you will see your descendants turned to proud lords and ladies of the northerner lands, respected vassals of The Lion.”

He didn’t say anything to that, but his eyes did all the speaking for him, and the griffoness went on. “You will conquer your failures and the skalds will sing of your proud return to our midst.”

“I don’t deserve it.” He whispered quietly, looking up at the taller griffoness.

Her grim stare didn’t become any more comforting, though, and thunder echoed in the sky while the bright flash of lightning illuminated the dark street. “There is no deserving. It is required of you. I demand it of all My Children.”

Luna expected the elderly griffon to react with dejection. At least some insecurity, but the old griffon changed before her eyes. “I hear you.”

Finally, the griffoness smiled. Just a little, but she liked something she saw in that griffon.

With that, he woke up and his dream ceased. Luna was pulled back into her throne in her lunar palace. She expected it, so instead of a surprised frown, her frown was one of confusion. She didn’t typically use the system to monitor for sick creatures as that is not within her responsibilities, and there was little she could do. In normal circumstances, she wouldn’t be required. She should’ve been warned something was wrong though.

Moreover, the entirety of the Griffonian political situation baffled her. Luna never was one to take much interest in the governance of the lands, much less in the intricacies of politics between realms in the Federation, but she knew when something was wrong. And the biggest giveaway of such wrongness was that there was another creature messing with dreams and that didn’t cause enough of a ruckus among the griffons that the system would warn her.

Whatever was going on, much like when Starlight Glimmer started messing with the magic of cutie marks, was voluntary.

A younger and less experienced Luna might have felt slighted at that, but if some griffons felt better with that griffoness, then there was something she ought to understand before she did anything. Whoever that griffoness was… Lady Gwendolen, or the ancient and supposedly destroyed entity that was known as The Harpy.

She pouted and started tapping her hoof at her desk. Celestia would almost certainly not be so open-minded. And such was likely the reason griffons who knew something was going on were so hush-hush about the whole thing.

At the bottom line, two things stayed with Luna. The first and meanest was that some other creature was messing around the oneiric realm. But she put her pettiness beneath her and considered what she had just witnessed. And the other was that, maybe, just maybe… The Royal Sisters may not be the best for griffons. Or, even if that wasn’t the case, griffons should be allowed to choose openly.

When she noticed, the image that showed her the griffon in the streets had changed. He walked under the rain, purpose on his steps and a strength Luna had no idea where he summoned it from.

The princess rubbed her hooves together and cracked her neck. Now she could actually see those griffons, she had many dreams to visit. She must understand what was going on before she did anything. That included Miss Gilda and Miss Grunhilda. She needed to understand things and decide on her course of action. And she was in a hurry, because if she noticed something was wrong, Celestia would too. And her older sister may not be as open-minded as Luna in that regard.

Red Dawn, Pt. I

He stood in the center of a dimly lit room. A confused griffon that blinked his honey-colored eyes a few times before he could make out where he was. He scanned the room under the flimsy light. Magical torches attached to the pillars close to the deep blue walls barely gave any of it, but it was enough.

He sat on a long azure and velvety carpet lined with silver at the edges. An elongated domed ceiling met his eyes when he looked up. Behind were him closed doors made of magically tinted blue wood and carved to perfection with an image of the moon. A pair of large gray Thestral Royal Guards stood watch by it and their stoic appearance worried him.

Wait… That was… What the hell was going on?!

He stood on his four legs and turned his fully dark-tan body with an anxious gasp.

There were many thestrals, well-dressed in dark-colored clothes. Males with top hats and females with elegant jewelry and fancy dresses. Among them were also unicorns and a few pegasi and earth ponies. All of them stared at the griffon with less than enthusiastic glares and raised snouts.

Several pieces of luxurious furniture and tables with pony foods littered the hall along the walls, but what dominated his eyes was behind it all. A mural of colored glass showed the night and the clear glass shone with the moon behind it. The throne was illuminated with the moonlight that entered from the clear glass. It had blue pillows and it was flanked by blue and black satin curtains. Finally, it stood at the top of seven steps made of deep blue marble.

A throne worthy of the Princess of the Night and she sat at her throne with her wings slightly open, making her larger than she already was. Her stare was down at him and held none of the typical awkwardness she was known for.

What was going on? When had he come to Canterlot? He was not supposed to return to the Court of Midnight. Ever. Not after he was given his assignment. No. Something was wrong. He remembered he had laid on his bed, next to his beautiful mate. He was in his home in Griffonstone, and he was a dreaming. There was only one explanation: he was caught. The Princess had found he had betrayed her.

“Princess, I…” He didn’t know what he was going to say, but he started anyways. He had to say something. Anything. Or he was going to explode.

“Silence, Gast.” The princess interrupted him curtly. “Time is limited.”

He should apologize. The Royal Sisters had trusted him with monitoring the situation in Griffonstone and he had betrayed them. The fact that Luna had chosen to go to him in a dream was almost scarier than a flesh and blood visit.

“Be at peace, Gast.” The princess spoke again and interrupted his thoughts. “Know that I am most displeased you have chosen to betray me and my sister, but there are much more important troubles at hoof.”

He blinked at her eyes filled with confusion and worry.

“Celestia has come to Griffonstone and she is bound to discover things I consider most disturbing. Among those, that the bird we had chosen to assist us has chosen betrayal instead.” The princess declared nonchalantly.

“I… I… You wouldn’t understand, Princess.” He wanted to speak, but the words failed him. Until realization hit him like lightning from the storm. “Wait! Celestia is in Griffonstone?! What!?”

“Much on the contrary, I understand it better than you do.” Luna retorted with a scowl. “Didn’t I tell you to be at ease?”

Yes, she did. But being at ease was kind of difficult at the moment. And Luna didn’t allow him much time to think anyways. “Pay attention. You and your supporters must leave, you know what this means. I will help however I can, and I will give you a list of griffons. They are griffons who The Harpy has contacted, but that have not yet joined you. You must move them out of Griffonstone before the break of dawn. Before Celestia finds them. It is imperative and may hold a heavy weight in defining the future of your race. Possibly the whole world. The list will be waiting for you under your home’s door. Be quick. Be assertive. Do this for your race, not for Celestia. Not for me.”

“Princess…” Damnit. Hearing her talk like that hurt more than it had any right. How did she even know? Of his betrayal? Of The Harpy? “Why are you…”

“Hush.” Luna admonished him. And just as she said that something heavy banged against the sturdy doors to her throne room.

He turned with an upstart to see the two thestral guards distancing from the door with their wings open.

“Yes. Time is limited.” Luna spoke again, but he didn’t look at her. The doors banged against the framing, and she cried on the other side. And she was pissed. “Now, forget this interaction. All of it, but your mission.”

“Huh?” He turned to Luna.

“And awaken.” Her horn shone and a flash took his eyes.

Gast cried as he sat on his bed. His flaring wings sent the sheets flying from the bed and sweat soiled his coat. “Aah!! What the heck…”

The griffoness next to him rose slowly from the bed and sat too, all elegance in her turquoise body and her head with back-swept feathers. Her face was white, and it accentuated her delicate beak and her sapphire eyes.

“Gast, what happened?” She asked with her whistle-y northerner accent, calm and collected as always.

“I… I don’t know!” He grimaced and then he groaned, holding his head with his paws. What in the Scorch happened? He couldn’t remember what he dreamed about, but it was deathly important. His skull was about to split in half and the only thing in his mind was that he must act.

He jumped from the bed and rushed out of his room. His house wasn’t a mansion or one of the largest manors in the city’s rich areas, but it was large. Enough that it had two majordomos and a butler. And they came to him with all the racket he caused. His wife followed him too, calling his name with some worry. It meant a lot coming from her usually cold self.

He went down the stairs to the main hall, all the way to the house’s doors. He wasn’t sure what he expected until he saw it. A fat envelope that was not sealed or anything. When he opened to see its contents, he found a list of names and addresses.

His face shifted into a frown as his eyes jumped between words in Griffonian glyphs until he, finally looked at his patiently waiting mate. “We have to leave!”

“Gast.” His mate spoke to him in front of their servants and their three son and daughters that also had come to see what the fuss was about. The eldest daughter still had the netting over her head. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t understand… But I know that we have to go. All of us. We have to leave Griffonstone.”

“Why?” His elder daughter, the same colors of her mother, but with her feathers spiking out of her head after she removed the netting, asked. She sat and opened her forelegs like he was talking nonsense.

Which he was, but he was also sure.

“Celestia is in Griffonstone.” He just said it, bluntly and as simply as he could.

“What?!” His older daughter acted up again. “Just like that?! What craziness is this?! Everything was fine yesterday.”

Gast gave his mate the pieces of paper before he rushed to a large cabinet by the wall, and she examined what was written with an inquisitive frown.

“Mamma, what is bothering pappa?” The little griffon cub in her father’s colors complained between her older siblings with an upset whine. All while holding her little chicken plushie.

“Hush, little plume.” She told the cub in a stern tone that transmitted all the severity of the situation. Then she rose her eyes to her mate who just finished entering the sequence in the lock and opened the gun cabinet. “Gast, some are our brethren under Our Mother, but I don’t recognize most of these names, much less these addresses.”

“They are Her Children.” He told her with all the certainty in the world as he grabbed one of the modern northern-made pistols. The one with the long barrel and the bullet magazine. He turned, offering it her. “I don’t know how I know. But I know. I dreamt. Or something. Celestia is in the city, and we must get them out. As many as we can. Celestia can learn things that she mustn’t. from them. From us.”

“A dream?” She hissed. “How can you know it is not Princess Luna’s doing? Luring us into a trap?”

“It wasn't a dream! It was... I don't know. I don’t know!” After that, he spoke calmly and slowly. Staring her dead on the eyes while offering her the weapon grip first. “I am not sure what happened. But I am activating ‘Red Dawn’. Right now.”

"Maybe Mother Harpy wants pappa to do something?" The younger cub turned her big eyes back up to her mother.

"Our mother doesn't talk to us like that, little plume." The griffonness frowned and shook her head before she turned back to Gast. He had steel resolve in his eyes and still held the weapon to her, with the grip for her to grasp.

She didn’t hesitate much longer and reached for the weapon she then stowed under her wing. “Very well. If Celestia is in the city, all could collapse before we can react and this might be our only warning. I hope that you are right, Gast. I shall prepare myself.”

With that she hurried up the stairs back to their room and their daughter put up her paws. “Whoa! Whoa! Pappa! This is freaking me out!”

“We’ll have to travel to the north, Georgia.” Gast turned back to the locker as his son approached him and the younger cub started sniffling.

Just as quickly as she had left, the mother came back wearing her blue satin cloak. “I will see Madam Gladys. She has access to more resources, and we will need the teleporter, as per Red Dawn procedures.”

She also put out her cerulean paw for him and asked for one of the lists, pulling her fingers. He obliged.

Some might find it abrupt, or cruel that she left without a word of goodbye to her mate or a loving peck to their children. Perhaps a ‘I love you’. But she was a northerner, a fair lady from Frozenlake. They didn’t say things you were supposed to know. And not just any northerner either. She was one of those ‘special’ griffonesses. A queen Lady Gwendolen had trained specifically to light a fire in him and make him betray the Royal Pony Sisters. And he had swallowed it all, hook, line, and sinker. Even now, he simply had chosen a side.

“Pappa, is this for real?” His son’s voice carried as much apprehension as his frown. “I’m kind of scared right now.”

Behind him, his older sister soothed the youngest as their mother left in the middle of a rainy night. Gast borrowed a little of his mate’s drive and focused on his son. “You don’t have time to be afraid. Like the training camp in Frozenlake, there is business to tend to. I don’t know what happened, but we have to take matters into our paws. I will throw myself into the Scorch if Our Mother finds my children lacking.”

He grabbed one of the fancy new guns from the locker and put it into his son’s paws. The short automatic weapon from the northerner armories had a strap the young griffon put around his neck. Gast also gave him a bandolier with three magazines loaded with bullets. “Take your sisters to the teleporter. As soon as griffons start moving, the GSA and the local militia will notice something is happening. Hurry. Fly low, if you must, and avoid them. If it comes to that, shoot to kill.”

Gast also gave the same to his older sister. “Don’t wait for us in the teleporter. Don’t wait for us in Thunderpeak. Take a caravan to Wayfarer’s Rest and wait for us there. Remember the Raptor’s Creed, and that if it has hooves, it’s not our friend.”

As he spoke, his son settled his gear in place and his sister grabbed their baby sister.

“Hold on, baby.” She said softly and the small griffon cub did exactly that.

“We’ll be at Wayfarer’s Rest then, pappa.” The male said and opened the door for his sister, leaving after her.

Finally, Gast turned to his servants. “Gentlegriffons, it’s been a pleasure.”

They nodded in a single line in front of him as he offered each one of the lists of names and addresses. “Go to our supporters first. You know what to do. Enlist their help and find the others. Convince them they must leave. That their lives are in danger and that we all must escape Griffonstone. They’ll believe you, but most of them will have no idea of what to take or do. Help them. They are our brothers and sisters under Our Mother.”

The three griffons reached for the weapons inside the locker and secured their lists in their bandoliers while Gast took one of the pistols and loaded it with a magazine. His had a thick barrel, designed to muffle the sound of the weapon when it fired.

The four left the house after they turned off the lights and closed the door. With one last stare they flew their different ways.

Gast stowed his pistol under his wing and walked under the rain across the street. It was so dark with the cuts in the public lighting, and the overcast sky didn’t help. The water carried most of the filth away, but it quickly drenched his coat and plumage. His heart beat so fast, and it thumped into his ears, but the rain cooled him and his mind found focus.

He reached the other side of the street and hopped over the small cast iron fence. Then he walked straight up the small cobblestone path that winded to the main door of the large house across the street from his. Looking up the façade, he knocked on the large mahogany doors as soon as he reached them.

No response and the few seconds that passed felt like an eternity. He looked to the side. The wind had moved the bushes and it almost made him jump. A can fell to the cobblestones of the street with a clang and rolled in the distance. Other than that, the street was silent under the soft drizzling of the rain.

He knocked again as a thousand thoughts flooded his mind. He half expected a Royal Guard pegasi to swoop down from the roof. Maybe the GSA military police, or the local militia would burst out the door. They had been discovered before they even began.

He knocked yet again, louder. A few seconds passed and he raised his fist to knock another time, but light griffon steps on the other side convinced him to give it a rest. Yet, his feet shuffled under him until the door opened. Gast let out a relaxing sigh as saw his neighbor’s old majordomo with his iron wristband instead of a Blackfeather GSA agent with a gun.

“Master Gast? At such a time.” The old griffon gasped. “Is something the matter?”

“I must see Gustav.” Gast explained as calmly as he could. As calmly as his nerves allowed.

“I am terribly sorry,” The majordomo kept his professional poise and explained calmly. “but master Gustav has ordered me not to disturb him for any reason whatsoever.”

“Now, Gerard.” Gast insisted, and it was probably good he knew the griffon’s name. It was all in the tone, the inflection. These Northerners and their thralls… One often needed to know how to talk to them. “It is urgent. Including to the griffons I know he is talking to right now.”

The old griffon let his beak hang for a second before he regained his composure and nodded in submissive acquiescence. “I understand, sir. Please forgive me.”

He walked out of the way and Gast entered the house, looking around at the vastly more luxurious interior than his own home was. Meanwhile, the thrall closed and locked the door.

“Kindly follow me, Master Gast.” The older griffon spoke before he led the visitor along the main hall and up the stairs on the right. In the mezzanine, he took a right to the corridor. Gast knew where it led and was satisfied the majordomo didn’t try to bamboozle him.

The short walk allowed Gast a moment to breathe easier. The red carpet was tacky, but the noble caramel wood in the walls and the floor were signs of their owners wealth. And so were the expensive vases, the paintings of old griffon generals and the metals on the window at the end of the corridor. The grand crystal chandeliers helped too.

The old griffon led him to the last door on the corridor. Approaching it, Gast could hear a heated discussion on the other side. He couldn’t make out the words, though and the voices silenced anyways when the old griffon knocked politely.

The door swung as a griffon Gast didn’t know opened it. They were greeted by stern stares and a few angry scowls that remained from the conversation. Gast could imagine what it was as the source of grievances was right there, sitting across the table with a map of Griffonstone.

A young and attractive northerner griffoness with that stupid magical sword of hers stared at Gast with a bored glare. She made it obvious she was not impressed. Next to her was the griffon Gast wanted to see.

Large and imposing, black in his body and white in his head, Gustav’s blue eyes met with Gast’s across the table. He just waited in silence as though he already knew what Gast was there to tell him.

“It is five till dawn.” Gast spoke clearly and the other griffons understood. With the exception of the majordomo and the northerner lady, who just gave him a quizzical frown.

The big and black griffon that was Gustav nodded and turned to his majordomo with his northerner accent. “Leave us, Gerard.”

Without missing a beat, the old griffon nodded too and walked away, leaving Gast to enter and close the door behind him.

“Is this one of those silly codes and secrets?” The northerner hen asked with the same quizzical stare from before, but it morphed into a mocking grin.

“Shouldn’t you know?” Gast stopped by the table and glared back at her. As the immature, irresponsible whore that she was deserved.

She responded with a guffaw and her glare turned arrogant. “Do I look like one of your little conspiring friends? I don’t know how you live in this place! How do you even have the energy for these codes and spy stuff with how hot it is?”

Her northerner accent should have reminded Gast of his own wife, but the unpleasant griffoness couldn’t be more different. And Gustav turned to her before Gast could bother talking to her again.

“I’m sure Gast will tell us what happened.” Gustav was his friend, and the later knew that his impatience had more to do with the prospect of spending more time with that hen in his bed than any lack of commitment to the cause. His large black body didn’t hide his irritation, though.

“Celestia is in Griffonstone.” Gast just dropped the bomb on them and wasn’t even amused at the gasps and comically surprised widened stares.

“What?” The griffoness chuckled. “What is she even doing here? She should be somewhere in Mareland dealing with the pony princesses and Grigory.”

Gustav slammed a fist on the table and his anger drew the attention of the others.

“Useless civilian observers. Not a single chirp about it.” He growled and grimaced with his eyes over the map strewn over the table. “I don’t know if they’re traitorous or just plain incompetent.”

“We are traitorous.” Gast told him plainly. “I don’t know what happened, but I don’t feel like I am in a position to judge.”

He couldn’t explain it if they asked too, and Gast was glad nobody questioned it. He supposed it spoke of his status among the Northerners. Or that of his wife, at least.

Hearing that, the black griffon let out a frustrated sigh and walked over to a cabinet where he started spinning a combination lock without so much as another stare or word at the other griffons present.

The hen, Gwineth, wasn’t amused at the situation. “Are you going to tell me what is going on, or are you gonna keep pretending you’re on a cloak and dagger roleplaying game like a grasseating nerd? What are we supposed to do?”

Of course, Gast would never call her ‘hen’ to her face. Unless he decided he wanted to taste of that magical sword of hers. The Northerners used such word in a pejorative way. He was sure that had not Lady Gwendolen sent his wife to Griffonstone with the explicit mission of seducing him, she would’ve been done with him when he called her a hen in their first date.

“We must move our griffons out of Griffonstone.” Gast explained to her. “Too many secrets the big cats in Griffindell don’t want to fall in Celestia’s ears.”

“Oh!” She perked up and grinned. “So, I suppose that our dilemma is solved!”

“What?” Gast stared at her, then at Gustav.

The black griffon just finished opening the weapons cabinet and he spoke while grabbing the northerner rifles in there. “We were discussing the best strategy and moment to break into Griffonstone Hospital and rescue Master Gabriel. The problem is that the place is crawling with Princess Luna’s Royal Guards, and the Local Militia won’t take it nicely either.”

Gabriel. The griffon that Princess Luna had ‘arrested’ in Thunderpeak. Curator of a particularly large museum about griffon ‘stuff’. Also, a front for the northerner operations south of the border to Snow Mountains Hold. Recently the city was captured by northerner supporters, but details were sketchy. All Gast knew was that it was where Gwineth teleported from after coming from the north and where the griffons that came with her were from.

They were Gabriel’s students, friends, supporters. The old griffon was important. Enough that Lady Gwendolen sent her goon and she recruited them to come to Griffonstone and rescue their griffon.

“We should have done this sooner!” Gast let his voice raise and his forehead frown. “Or do you imagine Celestia came alone?!”

“Considering she arrived without notice.” Gustav pawed one of the rifles to one of the griffons in the room. “That is likely. Our cell in Canterlot would have let us know the Royal Guard was up to something.”

“Alright.” Gast nodded. “So, we proceed according to plan?”

“Which is?” Gwineth whined, bored of the conversation.

“None of your business.” Gustav told her curtly, finally done distributing the weapons and grabbing a pistol much like Gast’s one. “But we could use a distraction, if you manage to rescue Master Gabriel and retreat to the teleporter with just enough of a hassle…”

“Great!” Gwineth chirped and flared her wings with a huge smile. “I’ll get Master Gabriel out and crack open some grassbreath skulls!”

“Are you two out of your mind?” Gast glared at her. “Celestia will be staying in the Chancellor’s Palace, right across the plaza from the hospital!”

“Oh, please.” Gwineth laughed and waved a paw at the idea. “She? The great and mighty Celestia sleeping in a griffon bed? Funny! She’ll be in the Royal Suite, in the Grand Hotel. Barely in the city.”

“She’s probably right.” Gustav nodded as he stashed his weapon under his wing.

“We’ll be in and out in hop and a flap.” Gwineth shrugged dismissively.

“This is foolhardy.” Gast shook his head in disbelief. “Even if Celestia is out of the city, it will take her minutes to arrive.”

That was when the griffons that had remained quiet, sitting, or standing next to each other, just listening, got lively. One young griffon took a step forward with a furious glower at Gast. “We are not leaving without Master Gabriel, southerner.”

The others stopped complaining, but their angry stares proved they agreed and wouldn’t listen to Gast.

“No one is leaving anyone behind.” Gustav settled the conversation with his grave voice and tapping the table with a talon. “This is not negotiable, Gast. I understand the urgency of our task, but we cannot let Master Gabriel behind. Our luck will not hold once Celestia realizes something is happening and Gabriel will be at her mercy. He knows too much.”

“Don’t worry.” Gwineth told Gast with an irritating jesting tone. “Gabriel will understand if extreme measures must be taken.”

Her eyes shifted to an accusatory tone. “I hope that so will you, while you’re out there playing cloak and dagger.”

“Don’t be daft.” He spat back. “Our orders came from Griffindell. Just because you don’t, it doesn’t mean that Lady Gwendolen or Lord Gilad don’t understand the importance of contained instructions.”

“Fine…” She rolled her blue eyes. “Whatever. Let’s go, birds. Master Gabriel isn’t going to free himself.”

As though she was the star in a blockbusting theater play in the Royal Theater of Canterlot, she waved her wing as though it was a cape. The northerner and the loyal southerner griffons followed her out of the room, leaving only Gast and Gustav without any second thoughts.

“I know you don’t like her.” Gustav closed the cabinet, now empty of guns. “She’s had a rough start in her life.”

“Yes…” Gast wasn’t moved, and his deadpan stare showed that. “That she is ready to use to get into your good side and stay in your mansion, instead of the teleporter front operation as is expected of all northerners visiting the city. As though the hotel isn’t better than anything north of Thunderpeak.”

“Although, I am sure she has paid you passionately.” Gast continued and all but accused. It drew an amused frown from the larger black griffon.

“Was that jealousy, Gast?” Gustav raised an eyebrow, walking towards the door.

“Please…” Gast grimaced. “Guella would castrate me.”

“Careful with those jokes in the North.” Gustav walked out of the room and Gast followed. “They don’t like those.”

“I’ll try to remember that.” All he got from Gast was a non-committal reply.

On their way through the corridor, they came across the majordomo, waiting patiently.

“Gerard, burn everything in the meeting room.” Gustav told the very surprised old griffon. “Papers, especially. Get the other servants to help you. Burn the entire mansion down if you must.”

“Master, what is happening?” The poor confused griffon barely kept his uneasy frown under his professional poise

“Nothing that concerns you.” Gustav walked past him with Gast, not sparing even a passing glance. “Once you are done, get the money in the coffer. Keep the others together and make it to the teleporter. Join the other griffons and go to Thunderpeak and Wayfarer’s Rest. Don’t wait for me and take care of each other. We’ll meet again at Wayfarer’s Rest.”

“Yes, master.” Gustav’s majordomo and thrall confirmed he understood his commands despite the visible confusion. Gustav didn’t stop or gave him a backwards glance, simply leading Gast outside. A cold wind had started, and it shoved the heavy drops in their faces as soon as they walked out the door.

They grabbed their weapons and jumped to flap their wings and fly. Gustav’s expression was inscrutable and Gast only hoped his kids made it alright to Snow Mountains and had already met with their mother.

***

The wet hot of the day was not enough for that annoying land of griffons. Chocolate Velvet had to endure most of the day flying a long distance, then hiding under a grotto once he had sent Luna Celestia’s message. Then he waited for hours past nighttime until the Princess of the Night finally sent him a reply letter. Obviously, he didn’t open it. He rushed from under the literal rock he had been hiding and took flight towards Griffonstone, making as much speed as he could with his heavy armor.

Of course, it had to rain. But, at least, the cold wind made it a bit more refreshing than unpleasant.

The sprawling griffon city would take him a few minutes to traverse flying low above the relatively flat city. Most of the public illumination was off and there were very few griffons outside. Most of them local militias patrolling their assigned neighborhoods under heavy raincoats.

Speaking of rain, it infiltrated through the plates of his armor and soaked his aketon. It, very annoyingly, effectively replaced the sweat he had to suffer during the day. Hopefully, Luna’s letter wouldn’t get too soaked inside his saddlebag.

As he flew above one of the many residential neighborhoods, he almost thought he hadn’t seen them, but they were there. A significant group of griffons moving about in the dark. Scurrying along the dark streets like rats. He frowned and circled above buildings and under the cover of the dark cloudy night.

However, they didn’t seem like the usual group of ‘shady individuals’ that would be out at night and up to no good. They looked like griffons that had just been yanked out of their beds and put to scramble around in the dark. They carried little with them, but he could make out bundles of stuff and backpacks. Not only adults, but kids and even fledglings. Elderly too.

Something way out of the ordinary was happening and he felt compelled to investigate. But Luna’s letter weighted in his armor’s saddlebags, and he had to deliver it to Celestia. A report that something was going on would have to be enough and she would take care of whatever was going on.

He was tired, too. Flying around like that all day, in a hurry and with important matters on his mind had taken a toll on his stamina. Not to mention having killed that griffon. Not the first time he had taken a life, but it felt wrong. Even if it was self-defense. Bottomline, whatever it was those griffons were up to, it was unlikely that he would be able to deal with it by himself.

He pressed on, beating his wings with renewed vigor, and galloped in the sky toward the center of the large griffon city. He could already identify the plaza. It was dominated by King Grover’s statue and the open space that commercial stands would occupy during the day along with meetings and entertainment of all sorts. But it seemed that in the present days it was protests and gatherings of angry griffons that occupied the space. Placards and signs left behind were the testament to that, as well as the fact that nobody bothered cleaning the place anymore. Griffons had just given up on their capital, it seemed.

Surrounding the plaza were mostly government office buildings, closed and dark during the night. But there were also the city’s hospital and the Chancellor’s Palace. Most of the windows in the former were also dark, but the lit ones showed that the never-ending work of healthcare went on.

The palace was mostly dark and that indicated the presence of the griffons that worked on security and groundskeeping. If there was one that worked there, beyond that, it was Celestia.

Chocolate flew above the slanted roof of the manehattian inspired building to find the inner garden and fountain that separated it from the annex buildings. In the back of the main building, he found a balcony alit from inside the room and brought himself down to land on it.

The flapping of his wings and clanking of his armor drew the attention of the room’s occupant and Celestia came out the glass door to welcome him. She didn’t wear her royal regalia, but she walked to the door to meet him carrying a white towel.

“Goodness! It took you forever!” She promptly dried his face with a white towel. Made of good quality materials, it was soft in her telekinetic magic against his hair and skin. She also muzzled and kissed him before she retreated a step with a worried frown. “What happened?”

“A griffon really wanted to know what you had written Luna.” He spoke dryly and her worried frown told him she didn’t like hearing that. “And Luna probably had to take care of something. I took off back as soon as her reply arrived.”

Saying that, his amber magic opened the lid on his saddlebag, and he shoved his snout into it to come out with Luna’s letter. A fancy envelope with Celestia’s name written on it. Like a civilized horned pony, Celestia grabbed it from him with magic.

“Make yourself comfortable.” She said as she opened the letter with an opener she grabbed from the table. Chocolate noted the large pile of griffon documents resting in organized piles atop of the table along with office supplies in use.

The room itself was a fancy bedroom with an office area and a living room area. Beautiful wood furnishings, a white rug in the living room. A large bed too, covered in white sheets. A comfortable and well-equipped apartment for visiting dignitaries.

When his eyes returned to Celestia they remained over her haunches and tail for a few seconds. Then he decided he had had enough of his armor weighting on him. With practiced ease he opened the clasps and removed it with his magic. First his shield and weapons, his robe, the gorjet and then the plates. Then he left it all on the wooden floor. Ideally, it should be stored in a chest and cleaned, but he was too sore to worry about that. It was also likely to damage the varnishing on the floor, but that was some random griffon’s problem. Next, he removed the leg pieces and the clothing that went underneath the armor. He just left it over his armor.

Staring down at his fancy armor, he remembered he had two important things to tell her. The griffon’s weapon could wait. He whipped his head to look at her and let his wings flare. “Celestia, I saw some griffons in the streets. They looked like they were fleeing, although I don’t know where they were going.”

She had sat behind the desk with Luna’s letter in front of her but lowered it when he spoke. “Really? Hum… That is interesting. I wonder if it has any relation to us arriving. Maybe they are northerner supporters? I didn’t think I would startle them off. Curious…”

“Tell me later.” She frowned a little. “Do make yourself comfortable first, Velvety. You look tired and I’ll I read Luna’s letter meanwhile. It may have some information in that regard.”

“Okay, then. I suppose I’m going to take a bath.” He pointed at the door that could only be the bathroom.

“Hmm-hm.” She hummed a response while she focused back on Luna’s letter.

On his way to the bathroom, he went to the wardrobe for a clean towel and found a trio of very young griffon chicks sleeping on a red sitting pillow. Chocolate blinked twice. They completely ignored his presence, sleeping in a bunch as though they hadn’t slept for days. They had also been bathed recently and their fur and feather were a bit of a mess. Their similar shades of tan and gray made then look like siblings and one of them breathed noisily. A small table had a few medications, some cups and a pitcher with water.

“Uh…” He turned back to Celestia, who was still sat behind the desk, reading Luna’s letter. “So… What is it with the chicks?”

“I found them crying under Grover’s statue.” She put down the letter for a moment and frowned at Chocolate. “One of the representatives in the city’s hall tried to distract me from them while we walked to the palace. I almost yelled at him, but I suppose he was already scared enough.”

The word on Chocolate’s head was ‘vile’. But he didn’t say anything while staring at the sleeping chicks, allowing Celestia to go on with a frown. “One of them was coughing and I called for a doctor from the hospital. They thought it was for me. Not only one of their best came, but an entire team. Physician, nurse, and a couple of paramedics with a whole paraphernalia of medications.”

“They were surprised, but they cared for the little ones. One of them has pneumonia, and I will take them to Luna’s Orphanage.” She concluded with a deeper frown.

Chocolate had seen that frown a few times before. She didn’t trust the griffons anymore. Not ‘The Griffons’, but their government and their officials in positions of prestige. Unfortunately, the last time she had shown that frown, it was because of the Society for the Good Manners of Royalty.

Well, the little griffons were safe for now. The Princess went back to Luna’s letter and Chocolate went to the bathroom. After a quick and refreshing bath, with his mane in a wet mess, he returned to the bedroom. Celestia stood next to the window by the bed. It overlooked King Grover’s Plaza.

“A nightmare.” She said without looking back at him, keeping her stare out the window.

“What?” He approached, detecting the worry in her voice.

The plaza looked sad. The overcast sky and the rain didn’t let a lot of moonlight through, and the wind splattered the rain against the window. It all made for a melancholic scenery in the dark. There should be floodlights keeping the statue lit and public lighting from the gas light posts that circled the plaza should light the walkways. Even under the rain there should be activity in the form of food stands and covered tables. In clear nights there would be bands playing, maybe even a theater presentation or another.

At least the rain cleaned the plaza and the statue.

The hospital looked alive, though. But he focused on Celestia, despite her eyes down on the plaza. “What do you mean ‘a nightmare’, Celestia?”

“Luna’s letter.” She showed the folded paper in her magical grasp before returning it to the desk. “Luna discovered griffons are collectively under attack from a Nightmare. A particularly powerful and dangerous one.”

He blinked at her, expecting her to go on, and she did with a deeper frown at the window. “Since that time… Since the time of the Holy Griffon Empire. A Nightmare seems to have exploited deep-seated memories to disguise itself as The Harpy. It guided them to worship so that it could feed on their psychic energy.”

“What the fudge?” He grimaced. “You mean… It was a Nightmare? Their goddess was a Nightmare? A Nightmare made the Emperor abuse the other races, enslave ponies and diamond dogs, caused wars and…”

He stopped for a second, drawing in air. “A bucking Nightmare? How did she not notice it at the time?!”

“Apparently, it was your description of that story that made Luna redesign the magical system of the Throne of the Mind. It helped her notice.” Celestia explained softly.

“What?” His ears fell to the sides of his head.

“It helped her see things in another way.” Celestia finally looked at him. “It gave her a new perspective, as she explained it. She developed a new methodology to examine her own magic and how it interacted with the minds of beings.”

“Or so she explained.” Celestia grimaced. “I don’t understand it nearly as well as she does.

“Okay.” His ears perked up again. “What now? What are we supposed to do about it?”

“Luna has asked that I let her deal with the Nightmare and the Northerner griffons.” Celestia spoke calmly. “She believes my interference will cause more harm than good. It could give the Nightmare more power and make it feel threatened. It might cause the griffons to become more aggressive. Or it could hurt them. It is effectively holding them hostage now.”

Weird. No other way Chocolate could process that whole situation. But dreams, Nightmares and minds were Luna’s province. She understood things that not even Celestia understood fully. And he knew Celestia trusted Luna as much as he did.

“So… Alright.” He blinked at her. “Cool. It’s a Nightmare. Dumb griffons are being exploited by a Nightmare and Luna’s gonna do Luna’s things. What are we supposed to do?”

“We’ll investigate the situation of the Griffonian Government.” Celestia nodded softly. “We’ll let Luna do her job and we’ll do ours.”

“Nice.” He nodded too, with a grin. But it turned to a frown. “What about Twilight and Cadance?”

“Chrysalis will be taking care of them.” Celestia told him and the first thought in his head was that he didn’t trust the Changeling Queen. Apparently, she thought the same thing too, because she mimicked his frown and rubbed her chin with a foreleg. “Hum… That is an issue.”

He waited for a few seconds before Celestia decided what she wanted to do and internally had resigned to the idea that she might send him back to the fleet to keep an eye on Chrysalis and the two princesses.

A sharp bang interrupted the thoughtful silence and their ears shifted to the door.

“Was that a gunshot?” Celestia opened her wings and lowered her head with a frown.

“It was.” He turned to the door. “Musketfire.”

They walked towards the door. Chocolate positioned himself in front of Celestia and magically grabbed his revolver from the bundle of armor and clothing. Sounds of bells and alarmed shouts came from the other side, along with clanging of armor and heavy steps.

The male alicorn opened the door with his magic. Beyond, chandeliers on the walls provided a dim light. A pair of griffons wearing the green uniform of the Griffonian Standing Army came running down the corridor, carrying muskets on their backs and with huge eyes filled with adrenaline.

“Please stay inside!” One of them cried right before they skipped to stop by the door. He was a young tan and white griffon, and the other was green and lighter green, slightly older griffon.

“We’re taking care of it, Princess.” The older griffon said with an urgent ring to his voice. “Please stay inside. We don’t want a murder attempt against you in our paws over whatever is going on over there.”

Celestia was going to say something, and she meant to walk outside, but Chocolate stayed in her way. Much to her annoyance. More shots rang beyond the corridor and her ears and Chocolate’s perked in the direction. Before she could say anything, he talked to the older griffon. “What’s going on?”

“We don’t know, your highness.” He shook his head as the other turned his back to then and held his weapon, watching the corridor. “All we know is that they sounded the alarm and that there is some intruder in the building.”

“Do you seriously expect me to stay hidden in my room while there are griffons shooting each other in the building?” Celestia pulled her ears back and glared at the three.

“Yes.” They replied in unison.

Author's Note

Changed the dialogue between Gast and his mate to make it not seem so random that she accepts his 'premonition'.

Red Dawn, Pt. II

Typical nights in Griffonstone usually meant damp and hot. With barely any breeze at all to help with the sweat that would cling to fur and feathers like a curse. Open windows with screens to keep insects out and bars to keep the bad griffons away. Those would be used in conjunction with fans that ran on expensive mana batteries, if one could afford them.

Other times the nights were cold and snowy, with stupid howling wind and lots of snow that would melt and turn everything to mud. At least the bars and screens became optional because the windows were closed anyway due to the cold and the wind. Fans would be replaced by heating systems or portable heaters. Both were as expensive as the former. Additionally, the windows would clatter all night, usually when one needed to wake up early and rested in the morning for work. But that was only when a griffon had work to wake up early to. Or even when they had a home to begin with.

That night was noticeably worse than most, regardless of the weather. Because not only was it raining a cold and quickly thickening rain, but the wind was picking up speed too and occasional thunder could be heard from the overcast sky. Yet, that was still not enough for that night. There was a war about to explode and they had to flee from their homes because the Chancellor’s supporters would kill them. Or worse.

And then, young griffon hens like Georgia had to pretend they were trained agents like in the books and get their allies to flee.

But as griffons had caught the custom of sarcastically saying, ‘at least the rain cleaned the streets’. The corollary of the bastard sense of humor of griffonstonians.

Why, though? Friends with connections to Snow Mountains said shit had hit the fan and that it was a thick one. Like ‘we gotta go now’ kind of thick. Nobody really knew what was going on, only that they had to leave Griffonstone.

Some said that the Northerners were suddenly ready to move on the southern holds and that they had to leave Griffonstone or the GSA would arrest them. Others said that Princess Celestia had sneaked into the city and was rooting out their supporters.

‘Take only what you can carry and can’t live without.’ They told them. Armed griffons. Sometimes the ones that spoke with the funny accent, but sometimes they were neighbors or community leaders.

The result was adults rushing out with kids and very young fledglings wrapped in blankets to protect them from the cold and carried by their parents. Or their sisters, as was the case with Georgia.

Ironically, she knew it basically boiled down to her dad dreaming with Princess Luna. Or whatever that was, which didn't seem particularly reasonabled. She was definitely not going to share that, though. And she hoped her brother wouldn’t either.

The young, barely an adult if she stretched the definitions of the laws, hen that she was carried her little sister. She waited for her brother while he knocked on another door and urged their ‘brethren’ to wake his family. Drag them out in the cold so that they could flee the city together.

Georgia didn’t mind, as she thought that it was better anyways to be in a group if things went south, but they drew a lot of attention. She just hoped that her mom had gotten Madam Gladys to activate the teleporter because if that went awry… Well, a lot of griffons might be angry at her. After all, her dad and mom were two of those ‘community leaders’ that always knew what to do. The others probably wouldn’t have listened to her and her brother otherwise.

The other griffons in their group hung around her too. She was Madam Glady’s friend, and her mother was one of those ‘never-wrong loremasters’. Her father had connections to the powerful griffons in the northern hold and they even said that it was the elusive and legendary Lady Gwendolen that had mated her parents together. That made Georgia, her baby sister, and her brother special. Georgia was probably going to be trained as a Loremaster too, and her brother was certainly to become one of the ‘northerner lords’ they kept hearing about.

She also had a gun. And not just any gun, but one of the fancy, never-seen before and almost mythical automatic weapons. The same kind that would be given to The Lion’s soldiers to fight when they would finally sweep in from the North and end the corruption in the Griffonian government.

It was nothing like the outdated muskets that the ponies and the ‘hooflickers’ used. Their muskets were designed so that they could be used to fire enchanted crystal balls loaded with stunning or elemental spells. Not the northerner weapons. Theirs operated at a higher chamber pressure that would shatter the crystal balls and necessarily needed the lead bullets.

Not even ‘balls’, but bullets. Shaped ammunition. Or something. She hadn’t paid attention to the explanations.

What she got from it was that it was a symptom of the ponies’ overreliance on magic to solve everything. Griffon weapons were made to be easier to produce, such as the new military grade rifles. And just better at killing, like the old revolver muskets and the new machine guns. Made so that training new warriors would be easier.

Supporters among the southerners, such as her family, often saw the new weapons as a symbol of trust. That they were supposed to win if it came to a fight. The northerners even taught their supporters how to operate such weapons, as Georgia could clearly remember the training in Frozenlake.

Also the creepy way Lady Geena had tried to hook her up with some kid from her realm.

With all that said, it was easy to understand why griffons clung to her. The gun hung on the strap and across Georgia’s chest. It was like a symbol to them. She hated it. Shooting that thing seemed almost as terrifying as being shot with it. It was noisy, difficult to hold without losing balance (with how hard just standing on her hindlegs already was), and it was difficult to aim with.

For feather’s sake, she was holding her little baby sister! She shouldn’t be the one with the scary death machine! Her goals in life were painting and meeting interesting griffons, not shooting them.

While she was caught up in her thoughts and her little sister snuffled softly in her sleep, her brother was done talking to the griffons that lived in that house. They went inside, to prepare and leave too.

Or so it seemed. The house had a large garage on the side, and when the door opened, Georgia saw what was inside. Griffons were preparing a pair of carts with some sort of weapons in them. Northerner griffons that didn’t even speak the Common Equestrian or the Modern Griffonese, and among them was a big and scary hen that came out. She was blue and white, big as one of the northerner guys, and she spoke to her brother with a thick accent.

“Don’t worry…” The Amazonian northerner waved a dismissive paw at Georgia’s brother and gave him a bored glare. Georgia grimaced at her mocking, leering tone. Maybe she was just not a native speaker? “Geez, you sound like your father. You’re gonna end up with his stick up your butt.”

Her brother was as polite as could be and didn’t even raise his voice. So much so that Georgia couldn’t hear what he said in response. But then again, being so young and next to such a big and powerful griffoness, Georgia would’ve been very polite too.

“We shouldn’t be here like this. In the middle of the street.” An actual adult said next to Georgia. Her colors were hard to see in the dark and under the heavy cape she wore, but her head was white, and she had golden eyes. Her voice carried all the fear that Georgia would expect in that situation, but she seemed fine otherwise. Other than bug-eyed scared and swiveling her head around as though death might be upon her in seconds.

Come to think of it, maybe she was right.

“We have to wait, ma’am.” Georgia did her best to conceal her own insecurity. “We need to get all our griffons out of the city. And that is my brother. We’re not going anywhere without him.”

The older hen huffed and rolled her eyes before fixing Georgia a reproaching stare. “Where is Guella, anyways? Why did she and Gast leave their kids in charge of getting us out?”

“Mamma is with Madam Gladys, making sure the teleporter will be ready for us.” Georgia told her patiently, despite the other griffoness’ jittery anxiety getting to her nerves. Suddenly every shadow was out to get her too. “We had to leave before Pappa was ready. I’m sorry.”

“Leave the girl alone.” One of the griffons in the group, closer to them, chastised the older hen with a sarcastic chuckle. He was a tan and white adult with just a backpack between his wings and a calm smile on his beak. “Gast probably has more important things to do than dragging a bunch of useless griffons out of the city. We should be happy Gladys is gonna ‘port us away for free.”

“Lady Gwendolen owns Wild North TP.” Another guy shrugged, all brown and tan, while the teenage cyan and light green griffon girl next to him rolled her eyes.

“She expects us to pull our weight once this is done.” She pouted. “Northerners don’t do ‘free’.

The older female rolled her eyes but didn’t respond. Georgia silently thanked the guy that talked to her, just as her brother returned to them with a sigh of relief.

“Just one more to go.” He spoke more softly than he normally would. “Straight to the teleporter after that. We’ll be alright and we’ll be in Thunderpeak before we know it.”

“What will you do if we come across the local militia patrolling the streets?” That annoying hen sounded like a teacher trying to catch a student in a wrong answer.

To be fair, Georgia was nervous too, but that wasn’t helping anyone! And she meant to tell her just that, but her brother was much calmer than any of them were.

“We’ll do our best not to, Miss Gahra.” Georgia’s brother even smiled talking to her.

“But how are you going to do that?” She insisted with a glare. “Do you even know what you’re doing with our lives?”

“Please, don’t worry, Miss Gahra.” Georgia’s brother, Godwin, was either braver than she was, or had actually paid attention to the training camp in Frozenlake. Because Georgia had no idea how he dealt with that nonsense under pressure. “We will be safe soon. My Ma and Madam Gladys probably already have the teleporter operational, and we’ll be in Thunderpeak sooner than we expect.”

“She’s actually right, you know?” Yet another young male with very blue and green coverings whined next to the griffoness Georgia had decided to call the ‘heckler’. “Authorities are gonna notice if there’s even any activity near the teleporter. There are always local militias watching the plaza.”

“We’ll make do.” Godwin kept his calm voice and his poise. “But we need to move. We can’t just stay in one place like this.”

His sister agreed. Some fifty-odd griffons sneaking around in the middle of the night were bound to draw attention from other griffons inside their homes. They might get the town militia involved.

“Guys…” The male from before intervened again, before the group got too antsy and Georgia was thankful. “How about we let the griffons with the guns do their thing while we do our best to help. Or not get in their way.”

Fortunately, agreement was unanimous, and Georgia’s brother got the group moving again by leading the way. She did her best to stay close and make sure her baby sister was awake and holding on to her.

***

The southerners left. Gund had expected that they would at least help them, but he supposed that the southerners had to get the supporters out of town. Master Gabriel was not one of theirs and he was only one, after all.

It was true Gund was not really a northerner either, as he was born and lived his whole life in Thunderpeak, but it was the further north the South would reach.

He was Master Gabriel’s apprentice and a student of Griffon History. The ‘real’ history. Typically a peaceful griffon, Gund wouldn’t be afraid of using violence if that was what it took to free Master Gabriel. There was no way he might be wrong, as his friend and crush was there too, ready to do the same thing. And she was usually much more rational than he was. But not only that! The entirety of the griffons that worked with Master Gabriel at the museum back in their hometown were there too!

Princess Luna had messed up badly by having Master Gabriel arrested! She kicked a hornet’s nest and he almost wished she’d show up because she would get her butt stung.

Almost. She was quite scary sometimes.

Such a weird situation though. Gund had grown up thinking of the Princess of the Night as everybody’s friend. The protector of dreams. It was bizarre to have her as the enemy. Maybe that was what the Northerners meant with ‘pony propaganda’.

Bottom line, since Gund wasn’t able to stop Princess Luna from injuring and capturing his mentor, he would assist the Swordmaiden in rescuing him.

Only one problem, though. As he was helping the others load up the carts with ammunition for the weapons, he noticed his heart was not so strong, after all. While he managed to carry stuff, even with his less impressive size, his paws wouldn’t stop shaking. And the realization that the southerners wouldn’t be helping brought to his mind the fact that numbers wouldn’t be on his side.

He didn’t stop, though. Especially since his friend, Geanna, was helping.

“Are you okay, Shorty?” The large Northerner, a real one, that was Lady Gwineth approached him with a springy stride and a worried expression. “I don’t want any of my guys having second thoughts just before we go to a fight. And those rattling knuckles have me worried.”

Yeah… Being called ‘shorty’ by his hero that sprung him out of prison wasn’t exactly a booster of morale. Still, he sucked up the air and stuffed his chest. “No! Not at all! I’m as ready as I’ll ever be! Yep! Ready to kick some butt! Wooo!”

She made a perplexed frown that morphed into a weird and uncomfortable grin. “I don’t really do this… Uh, friendly stuff. But I kinda like you… I’m not sure why. So, I’ll tell ya something that will either make you go insane or it’s gonna free you.”

“You don’t have to go.” She said plainly.

He just blinked dumbly at her.

“Guilt-free, walk away. None of this matters. See that griffon over there?” His eyes followed her steel-blue talon to one of their friends preparing the carts for the fight. “He doesn’t matter.”

He gasped at her words. “Lady Gwineth… Uh… I know we’re not as ‘elite’ as you are…”

“No. No, silly.” She shook her head. “I mean. How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-one.” He said had a confused frown.

“Yeah. Princess Celestia is said to be about six thousand years old.” Gwineth shrugged. “The Harpy, the one we’re not supposed to talk about… She’s ‘older than the mountains’, as Lady Gwendolen will tell you.”

“How is that supposed to help?” He tilted his head, still with his confused frown.

“Do you think that any of this is about you?” Her stare changed to become a sarcastic deadpan. “Or about any of us? We’re all a secondary character in a story that isn’t ours. Most won’t even be a footnote. These griffons that will die tonight will have no mention. Only their families will remember them. For a while.”

“Oh…” He shifted nervously on his feet and stared at the floor for a second. “I uh. Don’t know how to feel about this.”

“The whole honor bullshit they tell you exists precisely to keep you from noticing this.” She sat and opened her forelegs. “Noooone of this will matter in the least. It’s all so that The harpy and Celestia do their little dance of fucking each other up.”

“That sounds a little cynical.” Gund fidgeted with his fingers before he gave her an angry frown. “Or a lot.”

Gwineth pointed at Gund’s friend Geanna, in the back. She was talking over a map with one of the grunts. “Do you think you’re gonna score with her because you’re here putting your life at risk over this loyalty to Master Gabriel?”

Well, he would be lying if he said the thought never crossed his mind. Geanna did respect a griffon that could get things done. Brave griffons. He didn’t say it aloud, but the griffoness knew. Somehow.

Gwineth laughed. “It’s written all over your face, like a kid on his first date! The kind that doesn’t realize they’re there just because the girl wants a loser to pay for dinner.”

“You won’t, you tool.” She had her sarcastic smile again. “All she cares about is being ‘made’. She’s gonna earn her place taking part in this and then she’s gonna reap a reward. She wants in on the exclusive club. Same as that guy over there and that one too. Maybe it’s her education. Maybe it’s just money. But it’s certainly not you, or anything related to you.”

“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?” Gund pouted at the larger griffoness. How should he even respond to that? That wasn’t how you were supposed to talk to a brother in arms before a mission. That was almost traitorous!

“Yeah, but I don’t give a rat’s ass about this Gabriel guy.” She shrugged again. “I’m here because I work for Lady Gwendolen and she lets me sleep and eat in the best places, griffons treat me like royalty, and she puts me to do my two favorite things: killing and fucking.”

“Is there a point to this whole drivel?” Gund realized he had suddenly lost all respect for his hero. What an unpleasant and vulgar creature.

“Yes, you dumbfuck.” She slapped him upside the head. “You’re not a fighter. You’re here risking death at something you don’t know how to do for a chick that doesn’t care about you. Not even a real Northerner queen. For a master that has more important matters to mind than you, and for a nonexistent sense of honor all the adults understand is a façade. All in a world that doesn’t care about you.”

Then she shoved him in his chest. “If you want to feel like a hero, go pay a hooker to pretend you saved her from a street gang, or something.”

“Get this. It is the difference between gods and mortals.” Her frown turned serious. “They make their schemes and play their games. They have their way with us and when they’re done, they forget about us. We just get screwed because of them. And in the end, we get nothing. We just die and fade away. This is why I do what I do. Our time in this shitty life is limited. Go take care of your own problems. Live for yourself.”

She stared at Geanna, then back at Gund with a spiteful grin. “Or at least go get what you want before you buy it for the sake of a super powerful being that’s not gonna remember you a week after you’re gone.”

She grinned like she hadn’t just said the vilest things to him. “I’ll even help if you want. I can teach you some nifty stuff.”

“Yeah, well… I disagree.” He told her with a raised beak and a serious glare. He had to stare up as she was taller than he was, after all. “I’m loyal to Master Gabriel. And it’s about more than a fancy house and a comfortable life. He’s an honorable leader for us. And Geanna does like me. And so does The Harpy!”

“Fine.” The larger female showed him a mocking grin and wiggled her hind at him. “I don’t think you want some of this, then. Fine. Keep loading this ammo. It’s gonna make aaaall the difference when some stray local militia stumbles into you in the fight. When you end with a bullet in your head. I hope she’ll at least remember your name at the funeral.”

***

Gast landed from his short flight right before he entered King Grover’s Plaza. The path from his home put him in the street with the government office buildings that spilled from the plaza. The rest of the buildings were commercial ones, and were also closed. That was good because they were all closed, dark in the drizzly night and no griffon would be bothering him on his way.

He had split with Gustav and with some luck the other griffon would be in his position without too much of a delay. The quicker they were able to deal with their mission the better it would be for all involved. And smaller the chance that something would go wrong.

For the time being, he stashed his pistol under his wing and walked in the most casual way his fast-beating heart allowed into the plaza.

Fortunately, the budget cuts had turned it dark and vacant in the night. No griffons were there to stop him. The hospital was open, but the griffons in there were busy and without the food stands they were unlikely to bother him either.

He quickly crossed the street into the fancy cobblestone that made the floor of the plaza and his silent griffon feet splish-splashed quietly on the pooled rainwater. It was cold, but at least the air smelled clean. The water drained from the mighty stone griffon’s wings and made a noise that made him more comfortable nobody would hear him. As silly as that was. He tried to focus and walked across the plaza as quickly as he was comfortable with, with a non-suspicious gait.

The lit windows on the Chancellor’s Palace bothered him, but instead of thinking of all the soldiers that might be guarding the place, or over-zealous officials that might be in there, he focused on his destination. The gates were plain in sight and within seconds he was before the gates to the Chancellor’s Palace. Unimpeded.

It was more a glorified office building and decadent mansion for the Chancellor-in-office than a palace like Canterlot’s or Griffindell’s. It was mostly dark, except for the floodlights that ensured the guards could see the gates and fences that separated it from the plaza.

Where the bars were usually polished, and the tips adorned with golden flower-shaped caps, weeks of angry protests had taken their toll on them. Several of the former were bent and marred by dents while most of the caps were gone. In reality, they were made of brass and painted with a cheap golden paint, but desperate griffons couldn’t tell the difference, apparently.

Behind the bars stood a watchtower to each side, some hooves to the right and left. Gast knew that in each was a good shooter with a decent musket. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be a problem and he walked to the gate. Confident that his rank would be recognized.

The lock in the arching gate was busted too. The guards then secured it with a chain and a padlock. Speaking of them, the two that kept watch had retreated to the top of the stairs, under the façade, to avoid the rain. But as Gast stopped by the gates and gave them a serious stare, one of the two came down to the gate.

He was a young and tired, tan, and sandy griffon. His brown eyes were barely open under his green, GSA issued raincoat. He also spoke with the most frustrated and contemptuous tone Gast had ever heard. “Sir, it’s the middle of the night. And it’s raining. The palace is closed. Even during the day.”

The other guard rushed down the stairs and almost tripped on his raincoat, then almost slipped on the wet stone stairs. None of that kept him from quietly chastising the other guard. “It’s Colonel Gast, you birdbrain!”

Then, the orange and white griffon that he was turned to stare at Gast on the other side of the gate. After a few seconds, he turned back to the first guard. “Well?”

“I don’t have the key.” The younger, brown-eyed griffon responded. “Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t, you dumbass!” The white-faced griffon ragged the other. “You were supposed to get it before our shift!”

In any other situation Gast would be amused by the exchange between the two grunts. “I need access. Quickly.”

“Ah… Ah…” The younger’s eyes shifted from one side to the other. “I know! We can open the side gate. The guards there may not have missed their key!”

“No!” Gast cried before he got a hold of his nerves and startled the two. “No. That is not. Necessary. I will just fly over the gate. Do you have the keys to the door?”

“Eh…” The younger one took a step back. “No… But it’s not locked either.”

“What?” The older guard turned to the younger again.

It was supposed to be ungainly, but Gast flew over the gate, discreetly holding his weapon to his chest in the dark. The two soldiers argued like a comedy skit one might see with an artist troupe when they used to gather in the Plaza.

Thank The Mother for the GSA’s incompetence. It also saved their lives, and that of the griffon that sat in the small lookout further to the left. He just kept watching the whole exchange with mild interest and saluted Gast when he looked in his direction.

Regardless, the two kept throwing asinine accusations and blame at each other as Gast tried the handle on the large brown wood doors and they gave way into the hall. A sizable hall with the floor made of marble with six columns that served no other purpose than making the building more expensive. The ceiling had no features other than the golden finish at the top of the walls.

Deep brown doors led to meeting rooms and open ways to corridors that made the wings of the building. The deep wall was shared by a door to the ballroom and the double flight of stairs that led to the floor above on each side. Other than that, it was an empty hall with no function other than being an atrium.

Under the dim light of the off-hour illumination, Gast courteously nodded to a guard wearing the gala uniform. Green and full of golden wastes of money. Like the halberd the guard held while sitting close to the door to the ballroom.

“Do you need anything, Colonel?” The solicitous soldier asked, more professional than the others.

“No.” Gast waved the wing not holding his gun at the soldier. “I’m just here for something quick. Ah… I need it for a meeting in the morning.”

The soldier just nodded politely and Gast cringed inside. He was too nervous, talking too much. And just walked away with contained quick steps before he messed it all up too bad.

The corridor was better lit than the hall and all the doors to the offices and meeting rooms were closed. It was better that way because the less griffons saw him, the less he interacted with anyone, the better.

His feet tapped as silent as griffon feet would in the marble, but in the silence of the night even that made him on edge. He was walking too fast. His heart raced and he needed to take control of his emotions. He wasn’t some kid on his first mission.

Out of sight, he closed his eyes and stopped for an instant. Took a deep breath and walked as casually as he could. He had permission to be in that place. At any hour. Everything was fine, even though his gun weighed under his wing.

He made his way to the end of the corridor without interruption or witnesses. After a bend, the corridor retained its luxurious atmosphere, but the kitchen also retained the smells of the day. The meals for the government workers and for the Chancellor himself were made in there.

But, as expected, the aromas of the lush food were the only things that remained from the day. Gast quickly closed the door after entering the restaurant and crossed the open hall. The tables and sitting pillows were put to the side against the solid wall. Light from the inner yard came in from the windows and he avoided them, making his way to the swinging doors that connected to the kitchen. This time he walked as fast as he could. Almost ran but kept from it to avoid even more noise.

Stopping abruptly past the doors, he scanned the kitchen. Metal countertops, hanging pans, cookers, and pots, as well as all sorts of utensils. The place smelled of bleach, but contained not a living soul, fortunately. The lights were all off too, and he didn’t dare turn them on. Instead, he made his way between the long countertops and ovens with careful steps and watchful eyes. He kept his wings to himself and his tail too, not to disturb any of the utensils likely to make too much noise and attract attention he didn’t want.

At the back he found the reddish-orange door to the outside. Next to it, hanging from the keyholder in the wall was the key to that door. Identified by the obnoxiously large wooden tag on it with ‘supply’ carved and scorched on it. Gast grabbed it and tried it on the door. The key spun, and the lock opened. The handle turned, and the door was ajar.

On the other side, on the walkway was Gustav and the small blue and cyan hen Gast was expecting to see with him. Letting them pass, he let out a sigh of relief. “Was there any problem?”

“Yes!” The griffoness glared at him. “This psychopath shot a kid!”

Gustav shook his head and frowned. “He wasn’t a ‘kid’. He was a soldier with a musket, and he was in the way of the mission. That is why we carry weapons.”

“Did you dispose of his body?” Gustav wouldn’t make such a basic mistake but asking wouldn’t hurt. Gast couldn’t contain his own frown, though and was lucky he wasn’t the one put in that situation. His son’s face floated before him. “We can’t have them dead in the gutter.”

“I’m not an idiot, Gast.” The black griffon deadpanned.

“Yeah.” The female spoke a little too loud for Gast’s taste. “Dropped him inside a cart and covered him with a dirty cloth.”

“For crying out loud!” Gustav turned to her, his impressive size and voice intimidated the small griffoness. Even despite the soft volume he used. “Denounce me as soon as the war is over. Right now, you have a job to do. Move.”

“This way.” Gast led the pair through the kitchen after closing the door.

Back to the restaurant, they rushed as silently as possible their way through it. Fortunately, their third companion didn’t complain anymore and was as conscious of being silent as she should.

In the lead, Gast first pushed the door back to the corridor until a narrow opening allowed him to see the soldier in the gala uniform walking away from it. Fortunately, none of the others asked what was wrong. He would rather not risk being heard, nor getting into an altercation just yet.

Once the way was clear, he opened the door and led the others through. Fortunately, the restaurant staff were tasked with taking food and snacks to the griffons that worked on the floor above. There were stairs in that wing that took them towards their destination without need for the main stairs.

A fleeting thought occurred to Gast. That the Northerners would show their servants with pride, while the Southerners would hide their subordinates and employees. Even though the propaganda cried foul at The Lion’s vassals for their thralls and their system of lieges and sponsored tenants.

A pair of flights above they found a lit corridor. Much of the same, and with a sleepy griffon that sat before the main stairs, holding his weight against his musket. Gast held the group at the bend the corridor formed, watching him. And the soldier didn’t move. He wasn’t asleep though. Just bored and unfocused.

He could be a problem and Gast wanted to avoid any. Much more so when the guard in the gala uniform walked up the stairs and talked to him. “Hey.”

“Nothing to report.” The bored soldier drawled, still hanging on to his musket and with a bored sigh. “Do we really need to keep doing this?”

“Yeah, we do.” The one wearing the gala uniform walked around and glared at the other. Gast hid behind the corner before was seen. They heard them talk, though. “Shouldn’t have screwed up.”

With that, the older soldier’s steps went down the stairs to the ground floor and Gast turned to his two companions, speaking in hushed tones. “Do you have the key?”

Gustav nodded silently and the griffoness simply watched as Gast went on. “I’m going to distract him.”

He focused on the female. “Get in, take the photos as quickly as you can, leave. Go straight to the teleporter.”

“You know I wasn’t born yesterday, right?” She glared at him. “I know what I’m doing too.”

“Fine.” He whispered back to her and turned to Gustav, who simply nodded in understanding at him.

Finally, Gast didn’t waste any more time and turned the corner. He walked as casually as he could until the soldier noticed him. The kid stiffened and straightened his back, to which Gast responded with a salutation of his free wing.

“At ease, soldier.” The youth didn’t exactly relax, but he let his expression show his boredom. Gast walked around him, taking the sentry’s attention along. “I take it you don’t appreciate night guard duty?”

It was a nice sitting room with no other purpose than connecting the floors with the stairs. But the large windows showed the flash of lightning outside, and the rainfall crept on it.

“Ah… I’m not a fan. Sir. Colonel. Sir.” The griffon grimaced but tried not to show it. He was young, though. Transparent in his inexperience. More importantly, Gast could see Gustav and their companion entering one of the doors after she quickly fumbled with the lock. “But I guess I got myself stuck here.”

“Really?” Gast feigned interest with a friendly smile he also feigned. “It’s not uncommon. You shouldn’t beat yourself over it.”

“Yes sir, I know. It’s just that…” He gave a hopeless sigh. “There is so much about this ‘military life’ that I just can’t get used to. Like… Getting up so soon. And these night shifts. And the food. Sweet Celestia, the food in the mess hall is awful! And don’t even get me started on the Sarge. Because the Sarge…”

Gast kept his smile and listened while he hoped to His Mother that Gustav and the spy wouldn’t take too long.

***

The rain was getting heavier and colder. The wind picked up and brought a chill with it, smelling of thunder and charged with magic. Georgia could swear that the streets had gotten darker too, but every once in a while, lightning would flash. It would lit the buildings with a fleeting and ghostly light. Only to be followed by thunder.

She knew she was supposed to like lightning and thunder, since they were symbols of her Mother. The real one, not her mortal mother. Freaky stuff. Especially when your own mother tells you that, but Georgia knew that her Northerner mother meant the best for her.

They had made it to the last home that they needed to visit. It was one of the not-so-rich mansions, much like her family’s own. She waited in the street with the rest of the group while her brother knocked insistently on the door. They were a lot of griffons, and suspiciously so. The last family had added six to the group. Two of them kids barely old enough to talk and that small detail put Georgia on edge. Even more than she already was.

They just stood in the middle of the walkway on a clumped-up line, quietly waiting while the door in the mansion opened. Of course, a butler opened and was appalled at the time of the visit.

‘Just get them up, you old fart!’, she wanted to yell, but that would’ve been a bad idea. Worse than being rude, it would draw even more attention than their weird group already did. It would be likely to cause further delay when they had no time. Whose idea was it? They should just have told griffons to make it to the teleporter on their own.

Nonetheless, Georgia’s brother had to insist and convince the servant griffon to call his employers. Then he had to talk to them and convince them that they were the real deal. The whole thing was excruciatingly time-consuming when time was the last thing they had that night.

She simply remained quiet and waited, despite that same griffoness from before glaring and huffing anxiously. Her mother had taught her that calm and collectedness were paramount in that sort of situation. That there was a time to be calm, and a time for rage. And despite the way she felt about that annoying hen, that was a time for calm. But if it wasn’t, she’d probably unload all her frustration on her.

Georgia’s eyes shifted nervously. At the door where her brother waited, sitting under the small awning that protected it. And then both corners of the street. From where a Local Militia squad could burst out at any moment. Or even worse, the Griffonian Standing Army in the form of a Blackfeather operative hunting for dissidents.

She liked to believe those were just a myth among the Lion’s supporters, but she knew how awful griffons could be.

Fortunately, many moments passed and no militiagriffon or spy came from the corners of the street.

“Please. I know this is unexpected,” her brother told the old griffoness fussing with something just inside the mansion. “But we need to keep moving.”

“I! I can’t leave this behind!” Georgia, and half of their group cringed at how loud she yelled at her brother. Especially the members of her family. An adult couple. Two kids and an older sibling male carrying some load on his backs as were his parents.

“Mom!” The female shushed her, but it only made the elderly griffoness even more nervous.

“This is not helping!” The older one threw a drawer to the floor and kept fussing over something.

“Oh, for feather’s sake!” The ‘heckler’ growled. “Just drag her along!”

“This isn’t helping either!” Georgia came short of yelling at her and she gasped like an offended infant.

“Don’t you shush me, kid!” The angry female stomped her feet like a tantrum. “I’ve been working with your parents since before you were born!”

And that was the moment a griffon guy in leather armor, and under the heavy raincoat used by the local militia came out of the nearest corner. “Hey, what is all this yelling?!”

They all froze. He stopped for an instant and frowned at the grouped-up griffons. They just stood there, like scared deer, on the sidewalk as he stared at them with a surprised gaping beak. “What the heck is this?”

Another one came after him with an inquisitive stare.

“Seriously!” The first asked. “What are you all doing out here in the middle of the night and under the rain?”

“Sir.” The one griffon that had earlier talked to the ‘heckler’ stepped forward. Georgia didn’t even know their names. “There is no crime in being outside during the night. Much less under the rain. Personally, I find it quite refreshing.”

The first of the two militias didn’t like it at all. “Okay, smart guy. How about you start explaining…”

The second militiagriffon interrupted him. He sat, reaching for his pistol in his chest. “Is that a weapon?!”

Georgia gasped and took a scared step back before she looked down at the weapon hanging from her neck. “I, ah…”

“Put it down, miss!” The former griffon reacted as did the former. “Put it on the ground now!”

Georgia just froze. She heard what they said clearly. She understood the words that they spoke and what they meant. She understood what they wanted her to do. She knew what she had to do. But the actions didn’t come to mind. The ideas didn’t transform into actions. She just stood there, staring at the guards wide-eyed and bewildered.

A repetitive drumming sound echoed in the dark street, and she screamed as the two griffons dropped to the gray stone bricks of the sidewalk. Reddened rainwater flowed to the gutter, bright and terrible as the lightning that flashed. And then whistles started sounding in every direction.

“Move!” Her brother shouted from the door of the mansion, holding his weapon on his paws. “We have to go! Now!”

***

“And then there is the mattress in my bed.” The soldier went on as Gast resisted the temptation of smashing his skull with the gun under his wing. “Which is not that bad, mind you, but they could make a better effort choosing proper ones. Especially during training missions. Just because we’re pretending to be in a war, there is no reason to actually sleep like we’re in a war.”

“And that is not just because I used to sell those.” The soldier added with a raised finger.

Just as he decided he had had enough, his young griffoness accomplice came out of the office as the door opened slowly. She grimaced, looking in their direction, but soon ran off toward the stairs on the other end of the corridor, past the bend it made.

Gustav came out right after and slowly crept towards Gast and the complaining soldier, after locking the door again. Without the kid noticing anything, the black griffon hit him behind the head with his pistol. With him down cold, Gustav glared at Gast and whispered. “What were you doing?”

Gast sighed and shrugged, speaking with the same volume. “I didn’t want to alert the other guard below. He should be coming up soon, by the way.”

“That could be a problem.” Gustav frowned thoughtfully.

Gast shook his head and pointed at the first door on the corridor opposite to the one they had come. “There is a meeting room the soldiers use to sleep during the night shift.”

“That sounds counterproductive.” Gustav’s eyebrow raised.

“They are not supposed to.” Gast shrugged. “Everyone knows, but nobody does anything about it.”

“Typical GSA…” The black griffon made a blank expression. “I’ll help you drag this useless sod, then. Let’s go. Before the other guard shows up. He’ll assume this one is resting.”

Gast nodded and grabbed one of the unconscious griffon’s paws, with his collaborator doing the same. They dragged the soldier, with his musket resting on his body, across the hall and into the corridor. Gast opened the door, and they dragged the soldier inside.

It was a nice meeting room that served as a hub for four others, two on each side. It had a window covered up behind curtains, a small table between the couches and even a table for meetings and games near the window. A nice tan carpet and a chandelier that was off.

Snoring came from all of the doors and the pair plopped the unconscious griffon on a couch with his musket on the floor before him.

“How in the Scorch is the GSA even able to function?” Gustav asked with an angry frown and low voice.

“In the backs of the few competent officers and soldiers.” Gast shrugged again. “We’ve perfected incompetence and corruption while actually getting stuff minimally done so that we could keep exploring this cursed feather bedding.”

They left, and once back in the corridor, they closed the door. Gustav had a serious and grim expression at Gast. “Well, let’s start fixing the problem one corrupt bastard at a time.”

He went first and Gast followed him up the stairs to the third floor. The double doors to the Chancellor’s office were closed and there was not a guard in sight.

“This way.” Gast said. He hurried up on his silent steps and was followed by the other. They went to the bend in the corridor that made the wing opposite to the one where the kitchen was. He stopped there. Two guards stood before the doors that guarded their target.

As he stopped and spied around the bend in the wall, Gustav did the same.

A pair of griffons indeed stood guard, but they didn’t wear the GSA green uniform. They wore instead, heavily customized leather armor with metallic plates added to them. They were also armed with poleaxes, swords, and multiple pistols. Although none of them had the advanced griffon armament from the North. Gast noted that with some happiness, as it seemed as though the northerners were at least competent at keeping their armories secure.

He didn’t consider the northern griffons better than the ones living in the South. It was the environment. The politicians that were allowed to do as they wanted who caused the problems. Griffonia needed The Lion, but not because he had some irreproachable moral ground to stand on. It was because something needed to change in Griffonia. Anything. Before it imploded and the Hall of friendship decided that an intervention was needed.

If anyone was going to ‘intervene’ it would be griffons. All that mess was an internal griffon affair and they didn’t need the ponies meddling in. Of course, Luna had caused him to fire off the events of that night, but that was still griffons dealing with griffon issues.

For their sovereignty, for the dignity of Griffons as a race.

“Mercenaries.” Gustav grimly interrupted Gast’s thoughts.

“It should say a lot that Gail’s quarters are guarded by private mercenaries rather than his own military.” Gast matched his tone.

“As soon as there is any fighting, Gail is going to flee.” Gustav kept the grim in his voice, adding a little anger. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the bastard just clambered off the window and flew like an ostrich. He would probably make such a ruckus he would alert the entire town.”

Gast simply agreed in silence before he spoke a few seconds later. “How do you want to do this?”

Gustav responded without missing a beat, reaching for his weapon. “There is a griffon that needs killing for the sake of Griffonia. If there was ever a moment to lay one’s life, this is it.”

Gast didn’t respond, but same as Gustav, he drew his pistol and pulled the slide and the hammer back.

“I’ll shoot the one farthest.” Gustav added. “You shoot the other.”

Author's Note

I changed Georgia's thoughts at the start a little. So that they make more sense with the conversation she witnessed between her parents.

Red Dawn, Pt. III

Things always go according to plan inside one’s head.

Gast and Gustav were supposed to move in and shoot the two mercenaries before they reacted. No unnecessary drama, no unnecessary noise. The guards around the Chancellor’s Palace wouldn’t hear anything and the two would open the doors to Gail’s room. Once they were done increasing his already substantially large mass by means of filling him with lead, they would leave and find the others at the teleporter. The teleporter facility would be already secured and operational. The way to Thunderpeak would be open and then a short trip to Wayfarer’s Rest would put them in the safety of the Allmother’s domain.

Gast walked with sure steps and Gustav followed suit. Weapon under his wing, he took a few steps before one of the unsuspecting mercenaries saw them. A large griffon wearing leather armor modified with metal plates. He carried a collection of old firearms as well as a polearm he held with the butt on the expensive carpet. He held a relaxed stance, sitting on his haunches, and not suspecting a thing.

One was white and black, while the other, younger but old enough to have seen his share of combat, was two shades of gray. His weaponry was similar to his companion’s, much as his armor.

A stray thought occurred to Gast that they were probably from the same mercenary company. It was good. Nobody deserves to die alone.

When the first one saw him, his reaction was completely innocuous. The mercenary nodded respectfully and only when Gast stood on his hindlegs, reaching under his wing, the mercenary realized something was not right. Too late, as Gast shot him three times. Twice in the chest, once in the head. Same as Gustav did.

It was over within seconds. But as someone had once said, no plan survives contact with the enemy.

As if the cracks from their pistols were not unnervingly loud in the silent hallway, one of the mercenaries tried to reach for his pistol and the thing discharged. It was loud. Like Harmony itself wanted to alert every single guard in the building.

“Damnit!” Gustav breathed angrily, as surprised as Gast was.

“We have to get this done now!” Gast turned around, looking down the corridor. No one was there yet, but his nervousness reached his voice. He knew griffons in the resting room heard that shot but the bend half-way didn’t allow him vision of the stairs. He doubted that all the soldiers present in the building would ignore a gunshot in the middle of the night.

“Shoot the lock!” Gustav took distance from the doors and Gast promptly shot the area around the bolt four times before the larger griffon hurled himself and crashed it open.

Beyond was a large and luxurious room shrouded in darkness. Only some light came in through the windows and the curtains, but the bed was readily visible from the doorway. They wasted no time. Gustav fired until his weapon clicked several times, but Gast only fired two shots before he noticed the bed was empty.

“He’s not here.” Gustav spoke incredulously and Gast simply stared as they approached the empty bed, riddled with bullet holes until the dark griffon started laughing. Gustav guffawed louder than Gast would’ve liked, but he supposed it didn’t matter anymore. “Of course, he’s not here.”

Thoughts concerning the irony of the Chancellor missing his murder as he usually missed his official appointments failed to improve on Gast’s mood. They were interrupted prematurely when the inevitable happened and a griffon shouted from the door behind him. The voice was that of the soldier he spent some minutes distracting at the stairs. “Sir! Drop your weapon!”

Gustav reacted faster and brought his pistol to bear at the soldier, but it only clicked when he pulled the trigger. The soldier’s weapon was loaded, however. An old, loaded musket was still more useful than an empty fancy northerner pistol. Suppressor or no. Before Gast could do anything, the soldier’s weapon spit fire and smoke in the dark of the room. Gustav went down with a cry just as Gast shot the soldier. He fell too, with a lifeless collapse. But Gustav laid on the floor with a guttural grunt and his paws held over a wound in his neck. It let out blood at an alarming rate and stained the fancy carpet.

“Ah, damnit!” The black griffon let out a pained sigh. Still, he cried and gurgled out the pained words when Gast approached him. “Get out! There is nothing you can do!”

That was not supposed to have happened, but they both knew what they were getting into. And Gast’s disciplined control over his firearm told him he had no more bullets in it. But the soldier had a standard issue sidearm, a loaded wheellock pistol. He took it in his paw and protected himself against the door’s frame. Right on cue, the GSA soldiers on guard duty arrived and took cover behind the bend in the corridor. One sat low on his haunches, and another stood on his hindlegs, with two more using them for cover. All of them aiming their muskets at the door Gast hid behind.

“Sir!” Cried one of them whose voice Gast didn’t recognize. “Stand down and drop your weapons! I can promise you a fair trial and dignity.”

Probably the guard’s commander. He would know well that Gast was his superior. An acquaintance he had wormed his way closer as this day would come, eventually. Gast’s rank, both the reason he was chosen for the mission and Guella had approached him, was still valid after all, and the lieutenant would remember him. If only Gast remembered him too. It wouldn’t make any difference, but it felt wrong to fight against his colleagues not even knowing their names.

He stole a glance at his weapon, taken from the soldier he had killed. Even then, not much of a fight to be had in that corridor.

Gast was not supposed to have such attachments, but that was one of those few competent officers who carried the GSA and all its incompetence. He was there, risking life to do his job, after all. But still Gast wouldn’t shoot them simply because it was pointless, not because of such attachments. He secured the weapon under his wing and hopped to the window behind the closest curtain. He could open it, but he couldn’t fly through the bars on the other side. Another door would lead to a bathroom, but the windows would be barred too.

If nothing else, Chancellor Gail took his own security very seriously. Shame the two mercenaries had to die for naught.

“Sir, please don’t make us shoot at you!” The voice called from the hallway again. “Let’s talk! Do you remember the last Open Gates Day at the Fort? You congratulated me on the promotion and Miss Guella had made meatloaves. Our kids played in the yard.”

Memories rushed and Gast cursed them under his breath. Was it too much to imagine his fellow officer wouldn’t want to hurt him because he too was one of those competent few? If only they didn’t disagree on how to fix Griffonia.

“I understand, sir.” The lieutenant’s earnest words came from the hallway. “They’ll trial you for treason, but you can make a deal and let Guella and your kids out of this.”

Gast’s eyes widened. Could he trust them? His mission had failed, but he could secure safety for his family. And even if he was likely to be executed, the documents their accomplice had photographed would make their way to Griffindell. Maybe he could see his mate and his children again. No. The secret service wouldn’t ever allow it. Especially if they would be conniving with Gail’s corruption. The corruption in all of the GSA High Command.

“Gast. Let me help you.” The soft voice he heard from the corridor filled him with dread. “There is no need for further bloodshed.”

“Princess!” The lieutenant’s voice too came from the hallway. “Please, stay back!”

“Don’t worry, lieutenant.” Her voice replied. “He can’t hurt me.”

He didn’t need to look to see her approaching. Her gilded hooves made muffled sounds every hooffall on the carpet. Her presence was like the break of dawn, slowly washing over him with the sun’s warmth. Drawing closer as the sunrise.

Gustav laid on the floor. As motionless and limp as the soldier Gast had shot. The pools of blood joined together, both red and indistinguishable. A low-ranking soldier that didn’t want to be there but was loyal to still put down his life for a military that served a corrupt government. And a traitor, also ready to put down his life because he believed the nation ought to change.

Cruel fate they were both dead and the figurative head of the problem that plagued their nation was not.

His life rushed before him. In his early years out of the Officers Academy, he was a promising young griffon that swore loyalty to Griffonia. Sent to represent the brass in the Grand Galloping Gala, he met the alicorns. He laid his loyalty at their hooves and became an informal observer. He was supposed to help the Princesses see what went on inside the Griffonian Standing Army. For its own good because they knew that corruption already ran deep in the Griffonian government. They knew he would climb ranks and positions and would eventually become a tool to help them understand the issues that plagued Gast’s motherland.

It was the same year he met Guella. An exotic creature out of Snow Mountains. With her accent and almost supernatural beauty. The poise of a queen and the sharp tongue of a northerner native. He stood no chance against her. Once again, Gast had laid his loyalty at someone’s feet.

She became the mother of his cubs and educated them on the ways of the northerner nobles. She raised his cubs like they were vassals of The Lion, stranded in the filth of Griffonstone. She raised them Children of The Harpy, the noblest of griffons among the spoiled blood of the Saddani.

Hopefully, Guella and his cubs would already be in Thunderpeak. Hopefully, the Mother of Storms would have a place for a disloyal griffon in her halls.

If anything, his loyalty wouldn’t fail again. Before Celestia’s agents would have a chance to extract information that must not fall at her hooves, he put the pistol under his jaw and pulled the trigger.

***

The group of griffons scurried like scared rats across the city under his leadership. Judging by the number of griffons that needed to be moved out of Griffonstone, Godwin supposed that others did the same. He didn’t think that anyone had thought of that, but a lot of griffons rushing along the dark corners would certainly draw attention.

Along the way they had bumped into another group, but they had no weapons, no one that knew what they were doing. So, despite some complaining, Godwin told them to follow. The group doubled in size, but at least those griffons would be safer than they were before. The event made Godwin think. He hoped that even if the groups would be stopped by the authorities, at least a few of them would make it to the teleporter on their own.

That was the sort of strategic thinking that they had taught him at the ‘camp’ when his family traveled to Frozenlake. Lady Geena had separated him from his sister to be with the other toms. At his young age he had thought it was because mixing teenagers of both genders was a recipe for cubs.

At the time, he didn’t know what the other group was taught, but he learned a lot of things. How to operate, clean and repair several firearms, concealment tactics and strategic thinking. That losses were often unavoidable and that it was better to do what was achievable. They taught him problem solving and practical skills. Of the sort one might need if they were to sabotage a factory or lead a group of clueless griffons across the city in the middle of a rainy night. Especially if the authorities were already hunting them.

They had talked about it once, and Georgia was taught the same in her female’s group. But when they got to the part about Lady Geena teaching the young queens about ‘girl stuff’ the conversation got too awkward. However, she hadn’t paid as much attention as he had. Georgia’s aspirations were different. Godwin was fine learning that stuff and thought it was quite cool, but Georgia wanted to paint, not burn or blow up stuff.

He supposed it had never occurred to her there was a reason they were teaching them those things. But he knew she did alright. She just froze. He had never shot at a griffon before either, but he was afraid those militiagriffons would hurt her. When he remembered that they were fleeing the city, he told the griffons to high tail it out of there and he led them towards the teleporter. Part of the training too… Know the region. Know how to move and get to places.

Thank the Lord of Chaos, they didn’t run into the Local Militia or the Army. But then again, Godwin knew what he was doing. He had led them through secondary streets, flown low over backyards under the cover of dark and as silently as they could. The only thing that almost went wrong was when they almost ran into a Local Militia patrol. But they were lucky the militiagriffons moved in another direction and Godwin managed to keep his griffons calm and hidden behind the corner. The architecture helped too, as they were in a street with commercial buildings, basically a square corner that couldn’t have made hiding and watching from afar easier.

The real problems started soon after.

The teleporter facility was basically a large building that housed the teleporter pads and their magical components. It resembled a train station, with the terminals switched for teleportation pads. It stood in the center of a particularly rich area of the city. A commercial center that allowed visitors to teleport in, check in at their hotel and visit the fancy stores. At best, tourists would see the beautiful and rich mansions without ever distancing themselves too much from the teleporter and chancing into the poorer areas of the city.

That meant the teleporter was in a large plaza surrounded by countless streets, most of them too wide for them to cross safely. The group was forced to squeeze into the alleys. They were filthy and home to mice and insects, which made the city griffons anxious. But adults kept the cubs under control and the most antsy of them resisted. The threat of militia and military patrols was larger than crawling insects or stepping on slimy grime.

‘At least in the snowfields there are no cockroaches.’ Someone joked to a nervous kid and managed to draw a few chuckles.

Things went wrong when Godwin and two of the armed adults poked their heads out of the alleyway. It was between a large hotel and a restaurant that unceremoniously dumped waste into the alley. Which in tune made the pest problem worse. For better or worse, it provided a good cover, and it let them see across the street that circled the plaza and the teleporter facility. From the side, towards the front. It was a good position to survey the plaza and the facility’s entrance.

During the day, the plaza was a colorful community area, much like King Grover’s statue. It would be taken by griffons selling things on stands and kids making some money by selling toasted seeds to tourists. The cobblestone floor was painted in spontaneous and colorful street art, but that was damaged when griffons lost their spirit. There were benches and even a gazebo where musicians would perform.

All that before the tall and wide doors into the facility that could fool anyone into thinking it was indeed a train station. A beautiful and modern one at that. Built in manehattian architecture, complete with a clock above the doors. Which it didn’t need, because teleportation was on demand, not scheduled. But it looked nice.

That rainy night, the public lighting let them see clearly into the plaza, and it was taken by griffons in green uniform. Thick green jackets, with gold details. Soldiers armed with muskets and wearing the ridiculous plate-shaped helmet of the Griffonian Standing Army. Groups of griffons, northerner supporters were there too. Godwin supposed they arrived and found the plaza under guard. They surrendered and now the GSA soldiers identified and sorted them. Weapons and possessions were confiscated, and they were interrogated under improvised tents next to be sent into covered paddocks to wait.

Typical GSA incompetence Godwin squinted at as he studied the situation. They outnumbered the soldiers. It would be better to send them somewhere else and keep them separated. But then again, maybe they lacked the numbers if they were scouring the city for dissidents. Maybe the troops at the Fort were busy or hadn’t been mobilized. It was a waste of time to try and understand why the GSA did things the way it did. The fact was that a single spark could ignite that metaphorical powder keg and then there would be a bloodbath. Unfortunately, Godwin’s allies would be on the losing side, despite heavy losses on the other side. The GSA had training, muskets, bayonets, polearms, and pistols.

“This is bad…” The griffon next to Godwin whispered in his hoarse voice. Nobody special, he was one of the city’s merchants that sided with the northerners. Just a tan and white griffon under a barely functional black raincoat. “What do we do?”

“What do you mean what do we do?!” They turned to look at the impatient hen that simultaneously spoke as loud and as soft as she could. The same one that had been giving his sister grief. Miss Gahra. Godwin wondered if she understood the situation at all.

Speaking of her, Georgia stood next to the griffons in the front of the group that had stretched into the alley. In a normal situation, his sister would have rolled her eyes. Maybe she would have said something sarcastic. But her eyes were wide, and her feet jittery. She was scared, and it was normal in that situation. Griffons reacted differently to it. Or so Godwin had been taught. However, it worried him that his sister froze like she did, and then she took it really bad. She had almost cried and broken down.

He should have taken the weapon from her and given it to someone else, but he didn’t have the heart. It was stupid, and his teachers back at the camp would slap him for putting the group, including his sister in danger, but he just couldn’t. Yet, given the present predicament, it wouldn’t be that much of a difference anyways.

“Lady, shut your beak.” Said one of the armed griffons with Godwin. Younger than the other and much more sanguine.

The other kept his eyes on the plaza. “What is it with that guy?”

He meant a particularly ‘particular’ griffon with a megaphone. He stood beneath the largest tent with a group of other griffons that seemed to rummage through confiscated possessions. Just a sand yellow and white griffon, no clothing, or any distinctive characteristics, that just kept spouting annoying assurances of leniency in the most obnoxious way possible.

“Citizens of Griffonstone: a dangerous dissident group has been spreading a pernicious and treacherous ideology in our great city. Anything you may have heard is a lie designed to divide us! For your safety, I urge you to stay in your homes! If you have been contacted by dissidents, please surrender, and comply with instructions from our brave soldiers. I can guarantee your safety, and that of your families. As per orders from the Chancellor, you will be granted amnesty for your cooperation!”

“I feel a sudden urge to punch that guy.” Another griffon that moved closer from the group said. A larger-than-most blue and cyan griffon with a shotgun strapped to his back. “What’s up with him?”

“Probably Blackfeather Corps.” Godwin stared calmly.

“Is that bad?” The heckling hen gasped, making way in between them.

While the two griffons glared at her with less than friendly expressions, their impromptu leader Godwin kept his stare on the griffon with the megaphone. “Well… Field agents are good at extracting information, for one.”

“Ouch…” She grimaced.

If the GSA had stationed themselves outside of the teleporter facility, which had the main entrance closed, it was likely not operational. Why were they not inside, though? But there was something else that worried him, and his sister Georgia said it as she approached with a shaky voice. “Godwin… Where’s Mamma?”

She still carried their little sister Giza on her back, but fortunately she was fast asleep.

“I’m sure she’s fine.” He hoped he hid his insecurity well enough, as his voice came out steady. It was one of the things they had taught him. Leadership means lying if he must maintain morale. “We need to worry about ourselves now.”

She lowered her gaze, but her expression remained a worried frown. Godwin still had to figure out how to deal with the situation and turned away, back to the plaza. He watched and listened to the Blackfeather agent, and he was about to ask for suggestions.

One of the griffons in their group, an armed volunteer that was in the back, came forward bringing a tall pony. Deep purple coat with a lighter mane she kept short, but not so short as Godwin had seen. The most defining of her characteristics was her broken horn, just short of her forehead, and her light turquoise eyes. She wore a purple cloak with the hood down and it was open enough he could see leather and chainmail catching the light over her chest, but little more.

“This pony just showed up, Godwin. Says she can help.” The griffon with her, light gray and white with a revolver in a holster across his chest nodded to her.

Godwin fixed her a blank stare. “Have the hooflickers resorted to hiring your kind now?”

“Hi!” She spoke sarcastically through a faux happy face. “I’m Fizzlepop Berrytwist! Nice to meet you!”

Godwin didn’t find it funny, nor did he change his expression. “I know you, Tempest Shadow. The entire world knows you and what you did. Kingslayer and traitor.”

He sat with an unfriendly scowl, wrapping his tail around him. “I also know that you’re a registered mercenary with the Royal House that could very well be working for the GSA.”

She shook her head. “Wrong intel, kid. I’m working with an outfit I hired to go to Snow Mountains and set up a trap for Princess Twilight and Princess Cadance. Word on the street is that she’s likely to go there, as she needs to talk to The Lion.”

“And you want to use the teleporter.” Godwin nodded softly.

The pony shrugged. “Airships are too conspicuous… Certain teleportation companies provide privacy.”

“Except I know that the princesses have been captured in a battle between a Royal Guard detachment and a northerner warship.” He frowned.

The pony rolled her eyes, but mostly kept her composure. “Celestia and Luna left the fleet. Just a matter of time until the Changeling Queen lets them escape because it’s beneficial to her. Additionally, I’m not working for the Royal House. I’m working for Lady Gwendolen.”

“Hah! Now that’s some quality horseapples.” The griffon with the shotgun next to Godwin blurted out. “Lady Gwendolen would’ve sent the Swordmaiden.”

The pony responded with a scowl before Godwin could speak. “Gwineth is here in Griffonstone, birdbrain. She’s here to bail Master Gabriel out and doesn’t have time to help perfectly healthy griffons escape.”

“Yes… I know this is true. I talked to her.” Godwin turned to the griffon, then back to the pony. “Alright. How do we get past the GSA and the Blackfeather agent?”

“My guys are already inside.” She put a hoof on her chest before pointing at the teleporter. “We went through a service door with two northerner hens trying to get in.”

Georgia’s eyes went wide, but she restrained herself. Godwin waited for the pony to continue because she wasn’t done yet.

“The GSA had their door guarded, but two of my guys were disguised as mercenaries working for the Chancellor.” She made a gesture with her hoof. “Griffonian High Command is a mess right now and the regular grunts don’t know who’s who. We managed to get another door open.”

“Madam Gladys would have the key to the teleporter and to the back entrance.” Georgia frowned. “And know the activation command.”

“But as I said, they couldn’t enter because the GSA was guarding their door.” The pony repeated herself with a frown before she grimaced. “Wait! What the… That was Madam Gladys?”

Something went unsaid and Godwin saw it in her eyes. Ponies were bad at hiding their emotions and something clearly had gone wrong for her. But he didn’t know what it was. One of his charges, a young green queen stared at him. She worked for Lady Gwendolen’s front company that was the teleporter’s operator under Madam Gladys. And was going to say something, but Godwin shook his head at her. She knew the activation command, but the pony didn’t need to know that.

“Alright.” He faced the pony again. He didn’t like it, but it was unlikely they would be able to enter without help. “Can you get us inside? Help us deal with the GSA outside?”

“I can get you inside, kid.” She kept her expression serious. “Attacking the Griffonian Military is another story.”

“It’s better than to attack them head on, Godwin.” The shotgun griffon didn’t seem happy, but his eyes showed certainty.

Godwin nodded at the pony, and she pointed the way back into the alleyway before leading them and speaking. “Fortunately, one of the teleporter operators doesn’t close their service entrance like they should.”

Something was wrong. Godwin knew Madam Gladys would’ve had any GSA grunt around her finger with a few words. Maybe she didn’t have the choice to talk to them. Maybe she and Mamma were forced to use another entrance because theirs was too heavily guarded? Maybe they met the pony and her mercenaries and decided to work together? Mamma would have a group of fleeing griffons with her too… All that factored in. Maybe the pony was speaking the truth.

It was a short, quick, and silent walk in between and behind the buildings. They stumbled across two griffons working in the night to clear the dumpsters, but the pair cleared out as soon as they saw the armed griffons.

The fleeing griffons and pony circled the teleporter and the plaza. From another alley they saw the chain-link fence that surrounded the facility’s sides and back. Behind were the wide doors that allowed teleporter operators to supply whatever luxuries they had to offer their customers without disrupting services. Marked by signs above doors were the names of each corresponding operator, dozens of them. But the one they wanted was easy to see due to the magic-cut hole in the fence and the two inconspicuous griffons in leather armor by it.

Contrived. That was the word in Godwin’s head as he helped usher the griffons under his guard through the hole in the fence. If anything, they were getting in, but it was difficult to believe that the GSA wouldn’t have all the entrances to the building secured. Yet Tempest Shadow had said that they were confused with the different mercenary outfits operating in the city. That was the sort of thing his teachers had taught him to be aware of, but they needed the unicorn’s help to enter, and the mercenaries guarding the door were griffons. Of the rugged kind, with the appearance of years of mercenary work.

They entered through a dark loading bay with a few portable magical lanterns for dim lighting and went through the access behind a store. The two guards followed and locked the gate behind them. Most of the noise was silent griffons walking and the Blackfeather offier outside with his megaphone. It was a gift shop, with countless cheap items about Griffonstone. They included happy wooden griffons waving for keyrings and one of those snow globes with Fort King Grover or of his statue. Lots of pointless things to see that didn’t interest Godwin as they quickly traversed the shop.

Shutters to the other side didn’t allow them to see beyond, but they heard arguing. That prompted Tempest Shadow to hurry and kick one of the shutters with a foreleg. On the other side they pushed the thing up.

The shop opened to the concourse, with the ticket selling stands and the lines painted in the floor which guided users to their chosen teleportation platforms. The magical lamps in the high ceiling were off, but more of the portable lights dimly illuminated the whole place. There were many closed doors to the individual rooms owned by each company. The only open door was the one with the luxurious sitting area that belonged to Wild North Teleportations, the front for the northerner operations in the teleporter.

Several griffons in customized leather armor and armed with a variety of deadly tools guarded the immediate area in between the shop and the Wild North owned rooms. There were also ponies equipped with similar gear, but theirs had more decorations and obviously magical items, such as talismans and other things Godwing was sure were forbidden.

Two scared unicorns talked to the griffon mercenaries in the middle of the area. They wore the chain-link wristbands the northerners gave to their thralls and one of them, a sand-colored stallion cowered on the floor with his hooves over his face.

The other, a lime and green mare sat against the wall hiding behind her hooves as a large griffon guy talked to her. “I swear mister! I can only operate the teleporter magical system! I can’t activate it!”

The armed ponies all wore face masks, and their gear carefully hid their cutie marks, but all that seemed meaningless. It seemed a tall pony and a short griffon were the ones discussing over the bodies, but they had stopped. Beneath them laid on the floor two griffonesses in a pool of drying blood. Tied limbs, beaks, and Godwin turned away with a gasp.

“Mamma!” Georgia shrieked and lunged forward. Their baby sister fell from her back and started crying. Godwin didn’t understand what he was feeling as he blinked and looked again at the impossible, grim scene. Gahra held Georgia and urged her to calm down. One of the griffons with them picked their younger sibling. Godwin’s eyes fixed on the griffon Tempest Shadow talked to.

“Gaki! What the heck is this?!” Tempest Shadow yelled at one of the griffon mercenaries with a fury he didn’t think ponies were capable of. Her target was a rugged, if short gray and dark-gray griffon in leather armor with chainmail and scraped plates added to it. He had a war hammer on his back and a revolver in front of his chest. His armor had pockets added to it, and he had a cruel smirk on his face. “You were just supposed to help us in!”

At the outburst several of the armed griffons raised their short swords, crossbows and one or two muskets. The closest of the ponies with a covered face took a step forward. A tall and elegant white mare with a pearlescent sheen in her coat. She wore a white plate armor and hid her face with a fox mask, speaking with a canterlotian accent through it.

“I tried to stop them, Tempest.” Her very soft pink mane waved on its length as she stomped the floor. “But these bloodthirsty savages wouldn’t listen.”

The griffon Tempest had called Gaki shrugged. “These northerner witches are better dead, T. Might as well kill the kid too, ‘cause she’s likely one of them.”

He drew a knife with a broken edge from his side and made to walk towards Godwin’s sister and the adult that held her. But the unicorn’s eyes were more intimidating than her angry voice. Her years pulled back and she stepped forcefully in his way.

He stared at her for a second before he sheathed the knife. “Fine. The Blackfeather guy is gonna pay more for her alive anyways.”

“What?!” Tempest growled.

“Ah, don’t start it T.” Gaki deadpanned. “You’ll get the teleporter functioning and you can go catch your target. You wouldn’t understand. These northerners are trouble. And if the fatherland is willing to pay for our good services, who am I to complain? Besides, I bet you never had to deal with one of these. They’ll spin your head in their talons and you won’t even know what hit you.”

“You monster!” Gahra yelled at him, still holding Godwin’s sobbing sister.

“Yeah, yeah… Whatever. Let’s go, birds. You gotta date with the Blackfeathers.” He turned to walk towards the main entrance and his griffons started herding the prisoners along. Tempest Shadow frowned, and her ponies stood with her. But they didn’t do anything. Godwin supposed she had what she wanted as they would allow her to use the teleporter eventually. No reason she would get involved further in that disgraced mess.

In the middle of sobbing griffons, as was his sister, angry mercenary ponies with masks and griffons with serious expressions, Godwin worried he wasn’t feeling anything. He simply walked along and relinquished his weapon when they demanded. The ponies didn’t mix with the griffon mercenaries and Tempest spoke silently with the mare from before, but they walked along.

They walked outside in a clump of anxious griffons. Out one of the shutters on the main entrance and into the plaza. Griffons armed with muskets and halberds took most of the griffons to wait with the others that had previously tried to enter the facility.

Georgia cried and tried to resist, but the soldiers in the green uniform took her anyway. Godwin’s emptiness worried him, and he had thought that he would kill any griffon that hurt his sister. But his eyes remained in that griffon called Gaki, and he didn’t know where his feelings had gone.

“Hey, Blackfeather!” Gaki snapped his fingers and the griffon with the megaphone went to them. “Gotcha two dead Loremasters and another group of birds that wanted to fly away.”

“You were not supposed to kill the Loremasters. Where did these ponies come from?!” The griffon was young and had a sharp voice that seemed too juvenile. He seemed barely older than Godwin himself was, and lost interest in the ponies, turning to Godwin. “Are you Colonel Gast’s son?”

He didn’t answer. Not because of training or anything. He heard what the other said, but it meant nothing to him. His eyes remained on the short mercenary as he exchanged hushed words with Tempest Shadow. The Blackfeather griffon didn’t insist. A hen, about as young as he was, really pretty, dark gray went to them. She wore a black cap adorned with a black feather and the GSA green uniform. She looked at a series of papers she held and spoke despite Georgia’s racket. “Yes, that’s him. Godwin. Those are Georgia and Giza.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I supposed the merc killed the mother and the head of their operations. Shame.”

“Madam Gladys was not a ‘head of operations’!” The angry griffon that once had a shotgun burst through the GSA soldiers, but they held him. “She was a spiritual leader! She and Madam Guella were moral compasses of our community! Do you hear me, you fucking sellsword?”

One of the soldiers hit his forehead with the butt of his musket and the angry griffon became stunned for a second, while the soldiers controlled him. The female Blackfeather approached him with a reproaching glare. “She was a dissident leader. Both of them were. And you are a traitor.”

The griffon, held by the soldiers quieted for a second. Then he frowned and the rainwater washed the blood from the injury in his forehead. Taken by a sort of serenity, the griffon undid his angry scowl and shook his head. “My Mother looks at me with pride for her prodigal son. Anything you do to me, or to my brethren, she will do a thousand times worse to you. I will witness your fate, drinking of the best wine and eating fresh caribou by Her side. And I will laugh at your cries.”

“Please…” The hen rolled her eyes. “Take him away.”

In the mess, the soldiers had stopped dragging Georgia away. But once the female officer had control of the situation her screaming resumed as they forced her to walk. The Blackfeather agent approached Godwin and held his shoulder. He was going to say something, but an older griffon shoved him away. “Don’t touch him! And let the girl go!”

It was an older griffon wearing the green uniform, with a few medals and the black cap without the feather adornment. The badge on his shoulders said he was a colonel, and the medals said he had seen his share of real soldier’s work. He was followed by four older soldiers carrying muskets. The situation drew attention and the other soldiers stopped processing the prisoners. Including Georgia and angry shotgun guy. Stares, from anxious to angry, fell over them.

“Colonel Gaspar,” the griffoness with the photos gave him an arrogant glare. “I would be more careful in the present situation. Given your friendship with Colonel Gast, you should keep to your immediate duties.”

“How dare you?!” The older officer glared back and poked the male Blackfeather with a talon. “They are kids!”

“Well, yes.” The other slapped Gaspar’s paw away. “Gast’s kid. Now, where is he? While his kid is hiding in the corners with a weapon of enemy make and an interesting collection of suspicious griffons behind him? Do you know the answer? I’m thinking, maybe, I should ask you a few questions, colonel.”

The older griffon, taken aback, didn't answer. He scowled and closed a fist. “I don’t know what is happening, Blackfeather. But I didn’t hire mercenaries to kill other griffons and arrest kids.”

“You’re right.” The younger one scowled too. “You’re right. You only make friends with potential traitors. Now, stand down and get to your job. Or I will have you arrested too!”

It seemed things would cool down and return to the efficient processing of the prisoners. In the middle of all that Godwin worried he still didn’t feel anything. No sorrow for his dead mother, nor his mentor. No fear for being captured. No anxiety over his father or what Blackfeather might do to him. No pity for his sister. And above all, no anger for the mercenary. He was just empty and waited for the grunts in the GSA green to escort him somewhere.

“There is something terribly wrong in a country where the military has the people for enemy and its leader turns to mercenaries.” A croaking voice rose above the sound of the rainfall. A young soldier escorted an old griffon. He had no clothes; his coat was gray and tarnished by old age and disease. He wore nothing but a green jacket someone had given him. Yet he walked with pride, with a raised head and very lucid blue eyes. “Because his soldiers won’t do his bidding and his secret service finds enemies everywhere.”

Godwin didn’t know who he was, but the older officer, Colonel Gaspar, was stricken with recognition and shock. It was one of Gaki’s mercenaries that spoke. His beak hung open and he shook his head. “As I live and breathe… General Gamaliel.”

“Who?” A pony behind a wolf mask asked.

“You wouldn’t know. He’s a legend from the Second Griffon War.” The griffon sellsword told him as the old griffon walked to the officers.

“Sir. I thought you had retired. That you were living in Greenleaf… That the weather was better for your health.” The GSA colonel shook his head, too stunned to remember protocol. He only saluted the older griffon after he did with a smile.

“I missed you Gaspar.” The older griffon lowered his paw. “Command took my home. Ostracized my family… Sent all my children and grandchildren to remote posts along the border. Because they know what I did for them was wrong. When they feared I might speak, they tried to ruin my life and that of all who would believe me. I am glad you escaped their onslaught. You still believe what the Blackfeather Corps tells you, after all…”

Godwin watched as the officer frowned at the elder griffon. His voice broke. “Operation Expressway.”

“That is a lie!” The hen with the black cap and feather squealed. Her feathers ruffled so much in the rain she looked almost funny. “You are bordering on treason!”

“That never happened. It is a lie, and that is why General Gamaliel was stripped of his rank. For supporting seditious misinformation. It was treason.” The younger officer’s tone would have concluded the conversation.

But one of the soldiers with a musket, raised it. One of the not so young ones in the green GSA uniform and green plate-shaped helmet. The badge on his shoulder said he was a lieutenant and his stare said he was fed up. Others followed suit. “Yeah. It’s one of ‘those’ myths. Camping stories that are ‘never true’. Time to share.”

Even more soldiers raised their weapons too, but the mercenaries didn’t want to get themselves involved. The two Blackfeather officers silenced. It was Colonel Gaspar that spoke.

“Seventeen years ago, I commanded a battalion out of Fort King Grover. We supported a Blackfeather operation to derail a train and murder two northerner terrorists moving south.” He spoke but waited after that.

It was the old Gamaliel that explained. “I commanded the operation as a colonel for the Blackfeather Corps and Gaspar commanded our support troops. We used explosives to derail the train and caused the death of thirty griffonian citizens. About twice that number were injured. As the GSA moved in pretending to assist, I and two other Blackfeather officers located the terrorists. A male and a female clutching a small fledgling under her wings.”

He stopped for a moment before he spoke again. His voice didn’t break, but he stared at the dark clouds above and the rain ran down his face. “He was dead, and I shot her. I took the fledgling because I didn’t have the courage to kill her too. After our team was done sanitizing the site, we returned to Griffonstone.”

He stared at the griffons around him before he resumed with a dark frown. “High Command took the baby from me, and I don’t know what happened to her. It was unpleasant, but I understood it had to be done. And that was it. It was over. Mission successful, we protected Griffonia. Until the end of the year I attended the Grand Galloping Gala as a representative for the GSA. I overheard Princess Celestia mentioning a friend of hers that had passed away in a train accident.”

Godwin had heard of it, but never paid attention to the story. It was mentioned somewhere, at some point as he grew up. But that wasn’t what drew his attention. It was the old griffon earnest, pained expression and what he spoke next surrounded by silent griffons in the rain.

“It nagged at me. I looked further into it and, after pulling some favors, I found the names of the terrorists. The male griffon I found dead was Gembert Steelbender, a famous and acclaimed blacksmith from Griffindell, and the mother I shot was Gaharjet Stormborn. She was a ranger from Frozenlake, a cousin to High Lady Geena of Frozenlake.” He stopped again, his old lungs catching the air. “I traveled there and met Lady Geena. I asked her about the couple, and she told me a story about six heroes that had killed a vile ice dragon, and one of them was Princess Celestia. The couple we murdered were two revered heroes. They wanted the Princess to meet their daughter as she was a friend and a companion on their quest. And that was what they were doing in that train.”

He inhaled deeply and his voice almost broke. “I told her what I had done. And I feared she would command her guards to kill me.”

He stopped again. “I wish she had done so. Instead, she told me that I had failed my race. That I had forsaken all that makes our kind great, and that the blood of Stormborn was wasted on me. That one day the Storm would catch up to me, and that not even the Matriarch of the Great Herd would give me succor. That the sins of our race would see to my fall, and she needed not soil her honor on me.”

He frowned. “She didn’t even order me to leave… But the days passed on my journey home and my consciousness ragged at me. I couldn’t sleep the whole way to Griffonstone. I confronted my superiors and they threatened to strip me of my rank and to retaliate on my family. Operation Expressway had never happened.”

“I was too much of a coward.” He closed his eyes and stared at the storm above again, as though there was something there that comforted him. “I caved. I kept this secret until now and only when they decided to send our soldiers north against The Lion I found my courage and confronted them again. For sending our young to fight griffons much more honored than they are! All because the Chancellor is too much of a coward to admit he is the last in a line of failed leaders that needs to end!”

He lowered his gaze. “He’s not the only one. Few good officers are promoted. The main reason anyone is promoted is the right connections. We don’t even have the sense of training them to be competent. It’s a cycle that is so old we don’t remember when it started, and it grew so large, it is only by the competence of a few officers we have a functional army.”

“I never understood why they had ordered the couple dead. Were they too strong supporters of The Lion? Maybe they represented something our leadership fears.” He coughed and Colonel Gaspar helped him keep firm on his paws. “I should have done something! But I was too much of a coward! I had friends! But I was afraid to do anything. I was afraid the Chancellor’s Office would strip me of my rank and take my comforts. Retaliate against my family in the army. And even when I didn’t do anything, they still took my home, my family… And left me to die in the streets. I had become a liability to them.”

Like it was witness to everything, the clouds flashed and roared. A deep thunder echoed in the buildings that surrounded the plaza. All Godwin heard was the rain splattering on the cobblestone. The whole assembly of griffons and ponies had grown silent and contemplative. A secret was bared and they processed what they had been told.

“Yo, this is messed up!” It was one of the younger soldiers that finally spoke. Dark brown, barely an adult carrying a musket on his back and wearing the green uniform. “The Lion kills monsters, and our bosses kill moms holding their fledglings! What the feather?”

“This is so much bullshit!” Another, green and yellow, young soldier cried. “The ponies get the cool princesses and the magical ass-kicking team. And all we get are the messed-up politicians! I can’t remember a time when I was proud of our Chancellors!”

“Geez, look at these morons.” The mercenary Gaki spat on the floor. “This is why the northerners love this honor bullshit.”

Another griffon mercenary close to him chuckled. “One sob story and these guys turn.”

“Shut up, merc!” Yet another soldier bumped the shoulder of his weapon at the cobblestone. “We joined because Griffonia needs griffons to protect her. But every time I hear something about my superiors it’s some dumb scandal. Yet when I hear of The Lion it’s always about something stupid we did, like sending our soldiers North behind Celestia’s back. Or stories about northerners killing a dragon! Last time we fought monsters we ended up burning a whole city block because of the giant spiders in a warehouse. The media still makes fun of us.”

He threw his musket at the ground. “Why are we like this? Even the ponies everyone makes jokes about being too nice have better equipment and get shit done when monsters attack their towns. And now you’re telling me my oh-so-wise commanders disowned an old general from the Second Griffon War for asking them not to send our guys to die in the North?”

“What the fuck?! Am I going mad?” He still ragged on. “Because I remember the Second Griffon War was fought over hunting rights against The Lion’s grandfather! But then the very same general is now siding with the Northerners because suddenly we kill heroes and mothers with their babies? And our commanders try to sweep the whole thing under the rug? I feel like I’m the villain in this whole mess!”

“You don’t know what you are talking about!” The female Blackfeather officer yelled.

But soldiers started yelling too, and the mercenaries became nervous. The male Blackfeather officer shook his head and made calming gestures. “This is crazy! Just because we have a flawed system, there is no excuse to replace it with an authoritarian nut job that is likely to make things worse!”

“Shut up!” One of the soldiers further away yelled. “I joined to defend Griffonia! The Lion, at least, is not going to make me kill an injured mother holding her child!”

“But Lady Gwendolen will!” The griffon from the Blackfeather Corps yelled back before he calmed himself. “The northerners won’t tell you, but they worship an ancient griffon goddess. She was responsible for the creation of an empire that spanned all the lands from the Frozen North to the Saddle Arabian beaches. They ate and sacrificed ponies. They enslaved diamond dogs. They raided towns and killed until the others had enough. The ponies led the rest of the world in a war that ended the empire and put King Grover in power. He and Celestia made up the whole story about Grover unifying the warlords because they wanted to bury the old empire’s religion and their goddess with it. Is that what you want? A psycho with powers you don’t understand splitting with the Equestrian Federation? And his wife bringing back a dangerous cult Princess Celestia wanted gone?! Is that what you numbskulls want?”

“How do you know that?” One of the northerner supporters cried. “That is not what She wants. Lady Gwendolen wants griffons united under Her. Like the ponies are under Celestia.”

“Good question.” Tempest Shadow cleared her throat. “Pray tell how you know all that? I doubt the Northerners are forthcoming.”

“Operation Blacktalon.” The young officer stared back at the pony. “Blackfeather hired Flying Snake to infiltrate Snow Mountains.”

“The Flying Snake?!” Gaki laughed. “The crazy veteran with the whaling ship and the Diamond Dogs?! ‘The’ Flying Snake? He’s helping Celestia capture the princesses, all the way across the ocean.”

“It was years ago.” The female officer explained like she talked to an idiot.

“We sent him to find evidence of what the northerners were doing with the iron they were supposed to be shipping south!” The male officer didn’t let the mercenary disturb him. “We don’t know what happened, but a team of changeling infiltrators turned out dead. In the airship battle south of Baltimare he spilled that he was captured during the mission and that the northerners are holding his daughter hostage! Why else do you think he showed up in a fight between the Royal Guard and a northerner military airship?”

“What you knuckle draggers don’t get is that everything has been orchestrated.” The female officer cried. “Lady Gwendolen speaks on behalf of their goddess and has Loremasters infiltrated all over our command structure. All the way to Canterlot! We, Blackfeathers, are protecting you numbskulls from becoming zealots for a twisted monster that likes eating ponies and watching griffons grovel for her!”

“Wait a second!” Tempest waved her hoof. “How in the ever-loving hoof isn’t Celestia involved in all of this mess?”

The officer breathed for a while and his female companion talked in his place. “She supports The Lion! All evidence we were going to rub in her face hinged on Flying Snake’s mission! But he never came back.”

She took her cap and threw it at the ground. “This Gwendolen hoe is responsible for all the mess that’s happened, and you bozos want to fight for her mate! You think he’s gonna save you, but he’s gonna let her feed you to her goddess!”

“Do you birds want to know what I think?” Tempest Shadow clopped her hoof on the stone and looked grim.

“No matter who makes the plans…” The unicorn mare continued. “There is always someone that gives the order. Someone that points the hoof. And, in the end, there is always someone who pulls the trigger.”

“Gwendolen may have set up things, and I don’t know about this goddess nonsense. But it was still your head-honchos that actually did everything.” She concluded. “She set a trap, and they fell for it. Like she was making a point, and they proved it for her.”

It took a while, but griffons started agreeing. Thoughtful expressions turned angry and shut beaks started mumbling. Humors started to rise further and some of the soldiers started crying death to the Chancellor and hailing The Lion.

“This is treason!” The female Blackfeather officer cried high-pitched and scared. The soldiers started screaming and shoving up their weapons. Wings flapped and feathers flew.

Colonel Gaspar kept his calm and slowly opened the buttons in his uniform. Removed his uniform and threw it at the ground. “This is a mutiny.”

Much to the terror of the pair, the soldiers followed in his example as he pointed at the paddocks where the prisoners were put. “Let them go and give their weapons back. We’re seizing control of the teleporter. Find the fleeing civilians, protect them, and bring them here. We’re joining The Lion.”

Amid whoops and cries, the mercenary boss Gaki shook his head and signaled to his griffons. “Screw this. This job is messed up. Let’s go, boys.”

Outnumbered, the mercenary griffons started walking. The ponies remained, and Tempest Shadow remained with them.

And, finally, Godwin felt something… Anger boiled in his chest and found its way to his throat. “You are going nowhere except the Scorch.”

Colonel Gaspar drew a pistol. Muskets soon followed, leveled at the griffon mercenaries. They stopped and raised their paws, sitting on their haunches. Soldiers weren’t happy and some fingers trembled on triggers. Someone shoved the two Blackfeather officers next to the griffon mercenaries.

Then Colonel Gaspar offered his weapon to the young griffon that was Godwin. He secured it under his wing and walked to the mercenary leader.

He received a hard stare back from the mercenary as he walked. Standing next to the short and scarred griffon, Godwin sat and yielded the weapon. A standard issue matchlock pistol of the Griffonian Standing Army. He pointed it up and his sister joined his side.

The sky erupted in flashing light and roaring thunder. Louder. Brighter. But no one reacted. Time stood still and his heart raced with the resounding roar. In the echoing voice of the storm, he heard a sharp cry. It turned into words only his heart listened to, as the pouring rain said nothing outside.

All that I am. Anger. Cruelty. Vengeance. I have bestowed upon My Children. I have granted you the Gift of Wrath so that you would herald my Commandment upon the world. Yet, as the Wheel of Time spun, I gazed upon My Children. They hid from The Storm and turned their gaze from me. As the Wheel spins again, they are fat with gold bright as the Sun and they must be taught that sin is not forgotten. That the Blood of My Chosen is expensive to shed.

“Lay down.” Godwin commanded. Soldiers armed with muskets pointed them at the others and one ordered them to distance themselves.

Alone, Gaki nodded and obeyed. “Fine.”

He laid flat on his stomach and stared up at Godwin, and then up the barrel of the weapon. Both drenched in rain, finally, Godwin let a smile show, looking down at the mercenary. He had found where all the anger had gone. He found it all in the lead ball inside the weapon.

“Killing me isn’t not gonna bring mum back, kid.” Gaki told him with the resignation of a convicted criminal. “It’s only gonna make you feel worse, because it won’t change anything, and I’ll be gone.”

Godwin smiled a little more as the laughing voice echoed amid his thoughts. “That is not it. I’m thinking of what the Mother of Storms will do when she sinks her talons on your soul. An apostate Saddani carrying a purse full of golden coins with Celestia’s face and the blood of Her Children.”

Georgia started giggling and he chuckled at the confused griffon.

And then he pulled the trigger. The griffon slumped dead before them, and distant thunder rolled in the clouds. Georgia’s insane giggling turned to sobbing again and Miss Gahra held her as it became bawling.

Godwin raised the pistol, bending his foreleg, still staring at the dead griffon in front of him and the blood that pooled in the stony ground of the plaza. The rain washed it away.

The mercenary lied. It did feel good, and his smile showed it.

Mighty are the convictions of My Children who had their souls tempered in the heat of wrath. Mightier still is the mettle of he who understands the price of sin and quickly the reward delivers. I smile upon you, beautiful Child of Mine, and under the wings of the Swordmaiden of the Shadanni you shall find respite. Your blood is precious to me, and I shall hold it for my favorites. Thus, do not tarry in the muddled land of the Saddani.

Before long Colonel Gaspar held him and gently grabbed the spent weapon. Godwin let go without resistance and turned to Tempest Shadow. “We’ll let you through. But… Don’t ever let me see you again, pony.”

She nodded. She had respect in her eyes. Maybe a little sadness. But she nodded. “Let’s get this teleporter working. There are more of you on the way.”

Red Dawn, Pt. IV

Celestia had said that the griffon couldn’t hurt her, but it looked like she was wrong. The other griffons losing their minds over a couple of their officers trying to kill their chancellor wouldn’t notice. But Chocolate Velvet did. He sat next to Celestia in silence and let her process what had just happened. The trio of dead griffons wasn’t a pretty image, but he was sure she had seen much worse in her long life.

The griffons had turned on the lights and those that weren’t freaking out concerned themselves with securing the floor and the rest of the building. There was a lot of shouting and stomping coming from the rest of it. The poor officer in charge of the guard was still stuck repeating to himself that it hadn’t happened.

“Why, Gast?” Celestia finally spoke something and drew Chocolate’s stare and his perked ears. “What of Guella and your three children?”

He felt it was right to approach her. He put his wing over her back, letting his body touch hers and their coats brush together. Softly touched his head against hers. She welcomed him, pressing further against him. “Did you know them, Celestia?”

She sighed, walking away back into the corridor, towards the stairs, and he followed. In the lobby, she drew him into a corner and spoke in a reserved tone. “The dark one was Gustav. He was a double-agent for The Lion. He fed the Blackfeather Division of the Griffonian Standing Army with half-truths and in turn delivered intelligence back to Griffindell.”

“Oh…” He nodded he had understood, and she waited for two of the griffon soldiers to rush down the stairs before she continued.

“The other was Gast. He has been a brilliant officer since the day he walked out of the GSA Officer Academy.” Her ears fell and her eyes filled with sadness. “He had a beautiful and dutiful wife and three lovely children… I suppose he would be one of those griffons to say that I was his friend, but he wasn’t mine.”

“Uuuh…” His curious expression changed to a confused frown.

“I believe I overestimated his loyalty to me… Gast was no spy, but he was a pair of eyes I could use to glimpse into the inner workings of the GSA and the Griffonian High-Command. He fed me realistic reports of the corruption in the government and how it influenced their military. I knew he was unhappy, but I never expected him to make an attempt on the Chancellor’s life. Much less resort to such an extreme measure to avoid imprisonment.”

The Princess cast her stare at the fancy carpet beneath their hooves. “I would have protected him. I don’t… I don’t understand. It was unnecessary.”

“This is messed up.” The captain in charge of the palace’s garrison walked out of the corridor, holding his head with the tips of his wings. “Out of nowhere! What the heck is going on?! Who even is in charge right now?!”

“Captain! What do we do?!” Another griffon, one of the young soldiers, came after him followed by the other two. All of them were about as panicked as their superior officer.

The poor captain, a young green and gray griffon, with utterly terrified gray eyes pointed at the stairwell and his paw trembled as a green twig in the wind. “Get the building locked down! Nobody gets in or out! And, and…”

“Captain,” Celestia spoke calmly. “Do you need some assistance?”

He gasped. Apparently, Celestia talking to him made him realize that he needed to get his nerves under control and start ordering soldiers around. He turned to his soldiers again and spoke with more authority and control. “Get the outside guard to lock the palace grounds down. And you make sure that everyone is in their posts. We don’t know if there will be another attack.”

He seemed to have the situation under control after some encouragement. Chocolate and Celestia turned back to each other.

“Do you think the Nightmare Luna has found is to blame?” He let his ears fall as he mentioned that issue.

“Yes. Likely. I don’t know.” Celestia sighed and shook her head dejectedly. “I’m sorry, Chocolate. I’m not very well right now.”

“I understand…” He sat and reached around her neck with his forelegs and wings. She sat too and hugged him back. “It’s just awful that it’s such a ‘Luna thing’… There isn’t much we can do other than trust her, right?”

“We can understand what happened.” She stood back to her four legs, and he did too. “We may not be able to help Luna deal with the Nightmare, but we can help the griffons deal with it and the situation their nation finds itself in. I’m considering disclosing the Nightmare’s existence. Although I am not sure. It could cause unneeded panic and the situation is bad enough.”

“Sounds like a bad idea…” Chocolate agreed initially with an unsure smile before he went on.

“Although, given the present situation…” Chocolate gave her an awkward smile. “I don’t think it can get worse.”

Then an explosion rocked the plaza outside. Lots of griffon screeching and panicked cries followed. Next thing they knew, a full-blown firefight began. Celestia quickly moved to the large windows and Chocolate rushed ahead of her and put a wing in front of her. “I don’t think that windows are a good place to be when creatures are shooting guns outside!”

“It is if I want to see what is happening.” Her forehead bent into a frown, and she sidestepped him only to have the griffon captain of the palace’s guard stop in front of her with his wings open.

“Princess! There’s been a murder attempt, two officers and a recruit are dead, and now they’re shooting each other outside!” He cried. “I don’t want you getting shot right now! I mean, not ever… But particularly not now!”

She simply picked him up with her telekinetic magic and put him aside, barely stopping to go around Chocolate Velvet again. “I appreciate the concern, but I believe that you should busy yourself with contacting your superiors and the garrison at Fort King Grover.”

Chocolate resigned to follow her after she used the ‘commanding voice’ with the griffon. Not really a lot he could do if she had set her mind that she wanted to make that mess her business.

Outside, the rain had gotten stronger. Some griffons carried sandbags from behind the buildings, hurriedly assembling a barrier around a cart… Was that a freaking machine gun? They had a machine gun on top of a cart parked sideways on the street and they were assembling a sandbag barrier too. Meanwhile others shot at GSA soldiers across from the plaza. The machine gun started firing too, with a griffon behind it and it forced the southerner soldiers to protect themselves.

From the top of the neighboring buildings, more griffons threw firebombs that were certainly magical, because the building caught fire. More precisely, the entrance on the ground floor of the hospital was engulfed in flames that refused to die, despite the rain. An explosion damaged the street before the hospital and seemed to have peppered the wall with debris. If anything, at least the northerners didn’t blow up the bomb inside the hospital.

Panicked griffons ran and flew in all directions from the plaza, while others retreated inside the hospital through open windows that were soon closed. More grimly, a few laid lifeless around the plaza. Local militiagriffons started fighting back against whoever the others were, but there was not a lot their muzzle loaders could do against a machine gun.

“This doesn’t look good.” Chocolate grimaced with urgency.

“No, it does not.” She agreed with a concerned frown. “Bold move. I wonder if their goal is to rescue the griffon Luna had apprehended. Although, I would expect them to attempt a much more discrete operation. I wonder if the attempt on the Chancellor’s life was a part of it. Or perhaps part of something bigger still. We must stop this before it escalates.”

Right on cue, a griffoness started yelling above the racket and it took Chocolate some time before he managed to see her on top of the hospital building. But she was speaking in that sing-song-y northerner griffon language that Chocolate didn’t understand. She wasn’t just talking, though. She was doing a speech, or something of the sort, punctuated by exclamations and prideful shouting, posing on her hindlegs and making a show of it.

The princess started taking backward steps, with her ears pulled back. Her frown turned serious rather than concerned and she spoke without looking at him. “Come along and help me contain the situation.”

“Wait, what?” His ears perked at her right before she teleported both of them outside. Out of instinct and before he even realized what had happened, he beat his wings to stay aloft next to her, hovering above King Grover’s statue. The cold rain immediately soaked his mane and his coat.

“Cease with this immediately!” Celestia cried and cast a simple spell that illuminated the plaza with a white flash.

The northerner hen mouthing off at the top of the hospital stopped and said a single word that sounded like an expletive. The shooting stopped for a while and griffons wearing the leather armor of the Griffonstone Local Militia hurried into the plaza, to drag to safety the downed griffons. Some of them, Chocolate noted, still moved.

“Get inside the hospital and help Luna’s royal guards however you can. See if you can also help the patients and visitors leave the area safely!” She ordered just as the griffons, against all common sense Chocolate would have expected, pointed the machine gun up at them. Celestia’s magic yanked it from its support and threw it away.

Equestria being a flat world, he wasn’t sure if it would enter orbit, but the thing took off at a seemingly orbital velocity. He didn’t have time to waste on that, though. His wings guided his flight towards the building. His plan was to enter through one of the windows and play by ear from there.

Shockingly, the griffoness at the top of the hospital pounced with a flap of her wings and attacked Chocolate. Surprised, he screamed and covered himself best as he could with his legs and wings. He wasn’t sure what happened, but she attacked him and then pounced from him to tackle Celestia.

His forelegs hurt like a muffin, but he spun in the air. “Celestia!”

The two of them crashed through the large window on the second-floor lobby. He clumsily flew to the broken window until he saw Celestia standing from the carpeted floor and the griffoness next to a wall. The hen shook her head and promptly hopped to a fighting stance, with a longsword that magically remained on her back.

That was easily one of the largest griffon hens Chocolate had ever seen and she had an uncannily beautiful, shapely form with the muscles of a wrestler. She was covered in blue and white, and she drew the sword as she stood on her hindlegs, aiming it at Celestia. A blue magical trail showed, following the blade. One of the magical weapons in the fancier end of the spectrum.

“Go help the others!” Celestia cried at him, before she returned her eyes to the griffoness.

One of the soldiers inside the building attacked the large griffoness from behind with the butt of his musket, but Chocolate didn’t stay to see what happened. He followed Celestia’s command, and his flight took him to the hospital just in time as the griffons outside started shooting at him. He crashed through one of the windows and crushed a bed next to the window. Unless he was mistaken, that was the second floor.

As he rose from the remains of the bed, he saw a small griffon family hiding behind the other bed in the room. At least two adults, one of them with a bandaged head and probably a patient in the hospital. He couldn’t discern their colors in the dark and confused lighting from the lightning storm and the fire, but he could see their scared expressions.

Thank Harmony the stupid northerners didn’t set the whole hospital in flames.

“Don’t go outside. Try to stay hidden.” He walked towards the door when a young female he supposed was a wife or an older sister cried and pointed at his legs.

“Your highness! You’re injured!”

The glass never made it through his coat, but his forelegs had a few deep gashes. The griffoness must have gifted him those before she attacked Celestia, and they looked on par with the pain. The gooey blood looked bad, but he judged his legs were working enough.

It would hurt like fudge later, though.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Just don’t go outside.” He insisted, his wings flared, as he walked to the door.

Poking his head out of the room, he saw the magical lighting in the corridor worked. A pair of griffons and a unicorn ran down the corridor. The unicorn and one of the griffons had little nurse hats and the second griffon wore a white coat. All three of them ran past Chocolate and he let them be. Just as he was going to walk out the room, a large griffon jumped from behind the passage to a lounge that connected the hospital’s wings. Upon seeing Chocolate, he stood on his hindlegs, yelling something, and wielding a long firearm the alicorn didn’t wait to identify. When the griffon shot at him, the thing sounded like a shotgun and the damage on the frame (behind where his head was) confirmed it. But the worst part was the screaming from the fleeing creatures.

It was at that moment, while the griffons screamed inside the room, he realized he didn’t have his armor nor his weapons.

The griffon in the lobby shouted something in the same language the hen was speaking, and he sounded angry. He heard pleas for their lives and panicked crying too. Chocolate was fed up with griffons trying to kill him that day and resorted to magic, even if it was not his strongest suit. His horn alighted in amber, and he took a quick glance at the corridor, finding the griffon by the lounge and the others cowering along the walls.

Five magical bolts of the same color shot from his horn and the griffon reacted rolling to the side. Unfortunately for him, magic usually was smarter than pellets. The two first bolts exploded on the floor, but the subsequent ones hit for gruesome results given the explosive nature of the magical projectiles.

As soon as the danger was over, the alicorn hurried outside the room. Eyes on the passageway to the lounge and his horn charged with magical energy ready to unleash on the first armed griffon he saw.

“Hide in the rooms!” He yelled at the three. “Don’t go out yet!”

He didn’t stop to see if they obeyed. Upon reaching the lounge, other than the nice leather sitting pillows and tables with potted flowers, he found an injured griffon sitting against the wall.

“Your highness?” He croaked. Bluish gray coat and feathers, without a crest, but a fluffy chest that had pawprints in blood. Wide blue eyes filled with fear.

“Shh. I know you’re feeling awful, but you’ll be fine. Don’t move.” There was a contained pool of blood around him, and he had a gunshot wound on his left flank. It would probably be bad if he didn’t get help, but he would be reasonably fine for a while. “Stay here and don’t try anything for now. Help is on the way.”

He just nodded obediently, and Chocolate took the shotgun from the dead griffon as well as his bandolier with the ammunition. It was a break action shotgun, the most basic kind. He broke the gun open and magically pulled out the spent cartridge to replace it with a new one, and then slung the bandolier around his neck.

A deep boom sounded amid the racket of gunfire outside, and it was soon followed by a resounding and deeper boom that shook the crystal and bronze chandelier in the ceiling. That sounded like ammunition going off. What in Tartarus were those griffons doing outside?

A bright flash of golden light illuminated the sky outside. Maybe it was Celestia messing up the northerners. Chocolate turned to the injured griffon again. “Don’t move.”

He hurried to the stairs in the back wall and hopped down the first flight, using the wall for cover from which he scanned the ground floor entrance hall. He could see a lot of blood and debris with the rainwater. The main entrance still burned and there was a dead griffon with a security cap next to him. A gray and white northerner laid dead next to him. An information desk was broken in half and a scared yellow griffoness hid there, hugging herself and keeping her eyes closed shut.

Griffon voices spoke in High Griffonese and shots echoed in the hall. The griffoness behind the information table started sobbing and made herself as small as she could, covering herself with her wings. Still using the stairwell for cover, the alicorn quickly scanned the room to see if there were any threats other than the fire and the flying bullets.

He found an unmoving tan and white griffoness with an extended belly. Her coat was streaked with red from several points where debris had hit her. He frowned but tried to keep his head cool.

The entrance hall extended with a pair of double doors on each side of the stairs opposite to the main entrance, and they opened to the inner yard. One of the doors had a tripwire with a shotgun attached to it. The other had two northerner griffons shooting outside with one of the northerner’s fancy emplaced machine guns and a… Chocolate was sure it was a submachine gun.

He surprised them by shooting one in the back and then burning half of the other with a magical beam of amber light. They didn’t stand a chance, and the alicorn wasted no time turning to check on the pregnant griffoness. All the magic had left the lifeless flesh behind. It was probably debris from the explosion that killed her.

Seconds later a group of soaked local militias wearing magical and heavy leather armor approached. Their leader was a gray and white griffon and their weapons ranged from muzzleloader long and short guns and some spears, swords, and shields.

“Thanks!” The angry griffon cried over the racket of the battle in the front. “Bastards had the balls to attack a hospital!”

A series of three golden beams cut the air into the clouds from the other side of the building before they turned their attention back to each other. “Thank Harmony you and The Princess are here!”

“We’re here to get the civies out. The GSA is on their way.” The militiagriffon pointed at the back door. “We’re gonna sweep the floors and get everyone out through here before the cannons start firing in the front. We’re not really equipped to deal with these guys though. The only reason we’re here is because Princess Celestia tossed their machine gun in the front into next week.”

“You shouldn’t engage them.” Chocolate said without thinking while a pair of the green-wearing soldiers came and took the machine gun elsewhere outside.

“Screw that. These assholes came to mess with my city.” The griffon growled. “The GSA is covering our asses and they brought cannons with canister shot from the fort and they’re gonna take the non-combatants to safety once we get them out.”

Just as he said that Chocolate could see the soldiers with the green uniform. They were setting up barricades and cannons in a central area under a connection between both blocks of the hospital. It was a sort of cafeteria, but it was closed. Not only that, but more of the griffons in leather armor came to the entrance he had secured.

“So, you guys are gonna sweep the floors and get the patients and visitors out through here.” Chocolate nodded. “Got it. I need to see Luna’s guards and the old guy she arrested. Celestia thinks that’s their goal.”

“Third floor.” The lead griffon said. “They’re probably going to get him out through the ceiling. But, uh… Bats left about as soon as the night started.”

Weird. That sounded like a strange coincidence. He was going to ask about it, but gunfire in the floors above reminded him that there were crazy griffons raiding a freaking hospital. He shook his head. “Never mind. Just get them out. We’ll see what happens.”

The griffon’s leader turned to his subordinates and nodded towards the passage to the corridor on both sides of the entrance hall. The group split and they rushed into the corridors while the remaining griffons stayed with Chocolate.

“We’re going with you.” The leader said. “If there’s an alicorn in the hospital, I want him fighting next to me rather than getting his brain splattered on the wall.”

“Well, I’m not gonna complain.” The alicorn opened his weapon and replaced the spent cartridge. He held the weapon in front of him, floating with the barrel pointing forward. Then he led the griffons as he climbed the stairs back to the second floor above. He heard screaming, banging doors, angry shouting further up on the third floor… But fortunately, no guns.

The griffons split their forces again and one of the militias helped the injured griffon while the others followed him up.

Suddenly he was trying to climb the stairs against a flood of panicked griffons, ponies, hippogriffs, and even a kirin and a dragon. Fortunately, none of the invading griffons decided to check after the fleeing non-combatants. They just flowed past the alicorn and around the militiagriffons that instructed them on exiting through the back on the ground floor.

Reaching the next floor, Chocolate poked his head out of the stairwell and the lounge was a mess, but empty. Crashed flower pots on the floor, an upturned couch and a scared griffon lady hiding behind it. She pointed to the passageway to the ward wing on his left and he nodded positively. Then he beckoned her with a hoof to the stairwell and the griffon leading the other militias waved her down the stairs. She clumsily hurried to them.

“The local militia is securing the floors below.” The griffon told her quietly. “Go to them and don’t try to flee the building on your own. There’s fighting outside.”

“Yes! Thank you! Thank you!” She quickly nodded and scurried down the stairs while the brown alicorn and other griffons hugged the wall and approached the entrance to the long hallway. There was some sobbing and griffons speaking in High Griffonese, but Chocolate supposed it was a good thing the guns were silent. Yet, instead of looking past the corner, he focused on his magical senses.

He could feel the magic emanating from their griffon bodies. Several of them were still inside the rooms and in the corridor. There wasn’t much more he could garner from the energies he captured, his magical senses not being as refined as those of Celestia or Luna. But he knew they were far into the corridor and chanced a glance around the corner. He saw five griffons, no details at all, but he definitely saw no thestrals. With another quick glance he saw the northerners had hostages with them and one of them carried out an old griffon on his back he supposed was Luna’s prisoner.

He huffed. Those griffons, the innocent ones, were in danger because of that whole mess. He didn’t want to gamble with their safety. After all, he had learned something with the Royal Guard and their operations protocols. They could always get the old griffon again later.

“Let’s get them.” The griffon leading the local militiagriffons urged the alicorn in a low voice, but the stares of his subordinates told him they weren’t very eager about fighting the northerners.

“They have hostages.” Chocolate whispered back but turned his attention back to the corridor. “They really want that old bird out.”

“What’s it with him?” The griffon too took a glance around the corner. “The bats kept him snugly in his room and nobody, but the docs and nurses were able to see him. Not even the military had access to him, and I know he is important to the Northerners. You’d think the intelligence guys would’ve wanted to have a word, but the bats didn’t let them in. Everything was going through the Royal House.”

“I don’t think you want to stick your beak into that. And right now, we gotta let them walk. We can nab them later when they ditch the hostages.” The brown alicorn concluded. “How are things outside?”

“I don’t really know.” The griffon shrugged. “Northerners are making a mess of the plaza and the GSA is bound to arrive in force soon-”

He was cut short by a violent wave of heat and golden light accompanied by shattering glass. The large, blue and white griffon lady he had seen before slowly spun on her belly into the corridor out of a door with her limbs splayed all over.

“Oooooow…” She groaned with her limbs hanging limply in each in a direction. Her pained grunt didn’t really need a translation. Then, once she had regained her faculties, she yelled at the griffons with the old prisoner. They practically dragged him to one of the rooms, leaving the hostage doctors, nurses, visitors, and patients to cower in the corridor.

“Get them!” The local militiagriffon in charge bellowed. But what happened was a short series of events. First Celestia popped into existence on the other end of the corridor. The fleeing griffons got in the way of the alicorn and the local militiagriffons. And the blue and white griffoness screeched something, dragging herself into the nearest room like she really regretted picking that fight.

Chocolate, along with the griffons with him immediately jumped into action as soon as they had some space. Celestia teleported once again, and he heard the griffon lady squealing. However, his focus was the griffons trying to escape with the prisoner. His hooves skipped on the linoleum, but the griffons were much more agile than he was, even with full leather armor. They rushed into the room the northerners had entered and Chocolate followed them.

It was just a simple room, unoccupied, with a bed, a bedside table, a griffon-sized chair and an open window that let the pouring rain in. He followed the griffons to the window, and the first one of them, despite their boss yelling at them not to, jumped out. A shot rang and he immediately lost his balance and fell.

“Damnit!” The griffon in charge cried as he and Chocolate looked outside to see the overeager guard laying on the grass of a patio area between building blocks.

More shots rang and bullets whizzed by. Chocolate could see the civilians being evacuated out of the hospital, and the GSA soldiers shooting up at them. Once the racket was replaced by the noisy rain the griffon commander pulled one of his guys by the gorjet of his armor.

“Go there and get Gommer to our griffons in the back.” Then he let go and looked at another griffon in the group. “You go see whoever is in command with the GSA. They probably know these northerner assholes are going to the teleporter. Let them know they have a priority target. You two clear this floor. The rest of you, we’re gonna tail them and hit them from behind when they run smack into the GSA.”

Finally, he looked at Chocolate Velvet. “What about you?”

“I came here to see if Luna’s guards were ok, and you guys have it under control. I gotta help Celestia. It’s kind of my job.” He shifted his hooves nervously. She was fighting that griffon lady and… Well, Celestia was Celestia, but it really was his job to stay with and protect her. He couldn’t help but worry.

The griffon in charge nodded. Chocolate supposed he was in a hurry. “Yeah. Makes sense. Good luck.”

“Good luck to you guys too.” Chocolate held up his hoof and griffon bumped his fist with it. “I’ll make sure to let her know you guys are after the northerners to the teleporter.”

With that, he hurried out of the room through the door, into the room across and jumped out the broken window. He was again above the plaza, and it had turned into a battlefield to the point it was dangerous to just hover in place there. He stayed close to the wall.

It was hard to see in the dark, but what light the public illumination provided in the form of gas lamps helped. On one side were the barricades the northerners had set up to cover their retreat from the hospital and in the rooftops around the plaza. But the street that circled the plaza had several connections and Chocolate could see the green uniform of the Griffonian Standing Army in the rooftops across and behind improvised barricades on most of the streets below. One of the streets had the burning remains of a cart and the buildings on both sides had collapsed.

Muzzle flashes on one side of the plaza, and a cloud of smoke on the other. The northerners certainly had much better equipment, but the GSA had numbers and they were pissed off. A good indication of that was the fact that Chocolate was hovering next to the hospital, and they weren’t shooting at him, but at the griffons in green.

Movement caught his eye and he saw a group of the GSA with proper cuirasses above their uniforms crossing a street into the plaza from inside a building. They stormed the northerner’s right flank with swords, pikes, and pistols. Turned out that getting shot with muzzleloaders from the flanks still hurt you even if you carried a fancy rifle.

A young and blue griffon shoved a similarly young pink griffon lady out of the way. He shot his rifle several times as the others organized themselves to rebuke the enemy maneuver. His weapon pierced at least four cuirasses until a southerner pike-wielding griffon impaled his chest. He was the first of the northerners to fall, but more came out of the building.

A golden flash from the hospital roof drew Chocolate and he flew upward. Just as he reached above, another flash announced a sword that flew towards him. It wouldn’t hit him, but the surprise made him react. His magic held the flying object and immediately his horn filled with throbbing pain. Magical feedback, common in high-level magical weapons, caused him to yelp and let go of it.

The sword clanged to the concrete roof and its owner, the steely-blue and white griffoness jumped at it. Turning around, and standing on her hindlegs, holding the sword towards Celestia. The alicorn wore her magical ‘sunlight’ armor, shining like she was the sun itself walking on the roof of the hospital. At night, it was almost impossible to stare directly at her.

Celestia talked to the hen. Slowly and with all the typical compassion she would when she didn’t want to fight someone. Infuriatingly Chocolate couldn’t understand the High Griffonese, but next she spoke to him. “Assist the local militia in apprehending the griffon they came to rescue, Chocolate Velvet. I was going to speak to him eventually, and I didn’t expect they would attempt a rescue such as this.”

Chocolate almost screamed when he saw what happened next. Celestia was looking up at him and the griffoness with the magical sword lunged at her. Her sword aimed at Celestia’s chest, and she landed her attack, but she couldn’t deal with the magical feedback of her armor. The griffoness screeched and her sword flew from her paws. It punctured the concrete and stuck, which was impressive, even for a magical sword. The backlash from the armor’s magic sent the griffoness flying backwards against the concrete roof and she cried again.

It happened so fast Chocolate barely noticed Celestia’s horn shining, charging up with magic and the subsequent flash that exploded at the griffoness. She cried again and the force of the impact shot her against the parapet, and it cracked against the hen’s back with a sickening sound.

He landed on the roof, just to ensure Celestia was alright. Her bare chest under the transparent golden armor had been pierced, but it didn’t seem to be deep enough to worry. Only a small streak of blood tarnished her coat.

“Don’t worry, I am fine.” Celestia told him calmly.

He looked back at the griffoness and her body let smoke from almost the entirety of her charred fur and feathers. Her flight feathers were literally burned to their stalks. She was still breathing, but Chocolate could swear that her nostrils let out twin puffs of smoke. She was probably going to need a healing potion if Celestia wanted to interrogate her in any practical time.

He just stood there as Celestia walked towards the griffoness. She had started moving again, barely managing to crawl towards her sword. She grunted and whined something in High Griffonese. Celestia spoke again, and to Chocolate it sounded as though Celestia pleaded with the griffoness. If he knew her, and he was sure he did, Celestia was asking that she surrendered.

The exchange of shots below them continued, but cannons started firing and it sounded as though yet another wall had just crumbled. He turned and looked at the plaza below. Some crazy bird brought a twelve-pounder to the southern side of the fight and brought down an entire wall of some public office building on top of the northerners.

And then a little griffon cub, brown and yellow came running into the plaza, yelling at the top of his lungs. “Don’t listen to Gail’s lies! General Gamaliel lives!”

“What the?” Chocolate raised an eyebrow, watching the griffon kid while Celestia approached the parapet to look down at the plaza too.

The small griffon hovered in the air and put his paws before his beak. “Stop fighting for the fat loser! General Gamaliel supports The Liiiiiooon!”

The chocolate colored alicorn wasn’t sure who Gamaliel was other than he must be a general and that his opinion must be important to the griffons in the Griffonian Army. Things only became stranger when one of the officers on the southerner side of the firefight lost his mind.

“Shut this brat up!” The griffon pointed from behind his sandbag wall. “Go! Grab him!”

Celestia blinked a few times watching the scene unfold as some of the confused griffons stopped shooting at each other and the ones on the southerner side began debating and talking back to their officers. “I believe that is Colonel Gaspar’s son.”

“Who?” Chocolate turned to her.

“He is the commanding officer for Fort King Grover.” Celestia clicked her tongue. “What is happening in this town?”

She spared a quick glance to the side and her horn lit up again to tie the griffoness’ limbs together and stop her escape attempt. After looking like a nice gift, the griffoness just gave up. After that, Celestia kept watching with Chocolate as a group of griffons joined the northerner side. Someone had a megaphone and put it to use.

“Brave soldiers of Griffonia! You recognize my voice! I am Colonel Gaspar of the Fort King Grover garrison and I beg you to listen to me! I urge you to cease hostilities with our northerner brothers and sisters! The real traitors to Griffonia are Chancellor Gail and his supporters!”

“Shoot him!” The griffonian officer on the other side screamed desperately. “Shoot! Him!”

But when he raised his pistol, the soldiers on his side of the sandbags tackled and brought him to the ground.

“The GSA High-Command unduly stripped General Gamaliel of his position and his honors for speaking against their corruption!” The griffon with the megaphone spoke on. “Blackfeather operatives made up accusations of terrorism and killed Griffonian civilians! Ask the northerners about the Six of Fate and the Glass Dragon! Ask the Blackfeather officers about Operation Expressway!”

Chocolate, of course, had no idea what the griffon was talking about, but he supposed it was something incredibly important. Even more so when Celestia gasped and hopped off the roof, opening her wings to soften her fall.

“I command that all of you cease hostilities immediately and drop your weapons!”

The griffons on both sides obeyed immediately and the griffon with the megaphone stared at her like he didn’t believe what he was seeing. Then he nodded at the megaphone with a grin as though the idea had worked better than expected. It surprised Chocolate that the northerner griffons obeyed too, but then again… When Celestia descended from above wearing magical armor like she was wearing the sun itself that was understandable.

He followed her to the plaza and griffons stared from the broken windows of the hospital as she walked, all majesty, to the improvised barrier the northerners had made with the cart that once had the machine gun. The air smelled of smoke, despite the heavy rain. Glass and debris in the stone cracked under her step and was easily heard as the night had become silent. Only distant gunfights were heard sporadically.

“Colonel Gaspar.” She greeted the griffon with a respectful nod before she turned to the northerner griffons staring dumbly at her with their guns in paws. “Kindly tell me about the Six of Fate and the Glass Dragon.”

It took a few seconds while griffons stared with uncertainty and others tended to their wounded friends. But one of the griffons, a large and imposing white one pointed a finger with a sharp talon at Celestia and spoke with the whistly accent of the northerners. His face showed fierce anger. “You know very well! You were there!”

“I was there. When Lord Gildon summoned heroes to hunt and slay the Glass Dragon, I was studying the Northern Wilds with my protégé, Sunset Shimmer. I heard the summons and we answered. I saw Lady Gaharjet track the monster and we fought it. It proved too strong, so we retreated, and her beloved forged an arrow that allowed us to slay the monster with her magical bow. With the monster slayed, we went our separate ways and I returned to Canterlot. Years later I learned that Gaharjet had become with cub, and she mated with Master Gembert. But they passed away in a train accident.”

“A training GSA detachment responded!” The officer cried from the other side of the southerners’ sandbag wall. He hopped over it and approached. He wore a soaked green uniform and a black cap with a black feather. A gray and white griffon that tried to look larger than he was by letting his wings raise. “They witnessed the accident and assisted the victims.”

Celestia scowled like she smelled something was up. Chocolate imagined the intimidation tactics griffonian intelligence officers used to don't work on alicorns… “I suppose you wish to tell me about Operation Expressway?”

“It never existed!” The officer glared at her.

“There was no train accident.” Colonel Gaspar approached her, and Chocolate took a step back to give the tan and yellow griffon space. “General Gamaliel showed up when I was commanding a force to shut down the teleporter and prevent the northerners from fleeing. He told us everything. He was a colonel at the time, under the Blackfeather Division and he commanded the operation they called Expressway. They derailed the train to murder Lady Gaharjet and Master Gembert. Gamaliel admitted to shooting her himself. They took their child and brought her to Griffonstone. The child vanished after that.”

Hearing that, Celestia’s eyes closed, and her head shook ever so slightly. She inhaled softly and let go a gentle sigh.

“Why do you believe this nonsense?” The griffonian officer with the black feather scoffed. “How do you even know these birds aren’t feeding you lies?”

Celestia ignored the officer and walked around the cart that served as a trench. The rain had drenched her flowy mane and gave no signs of diminishing. She took several steps towards the imposing stone statue in the center of the plaza.

“I am sorry, old friend…” She stared up at the fierce and giant stone griffon under the rain. “I should have done something sooner. You were right.”

The griffons watched expectantly until Celestia turned, flaring her great wings covered in golden light. Her horn shone with golden light and charged her voice with magical power.

“On my authority, as dictated in the Alicorn Concordat, Paragraph Zeroth, I am seizing control of all governmental branches of Griffonia. Effective immediately, I command all hostilities to cease. The northerner griffons, and associates, are to be granted passage to the teleporter facility, which shall be henceforth shut down until new orders. The griffon lady in the hospital roof is to be placed under arrest here on Griffonstone as I wish to interrogate her.”

Chocolate kept his mouth shut, but thought it was curious she decided to let the old griffon Luna had captured go. Maybe she figured that the griffon lady on the roof was good enough and she didn’t want to provoke the northerners.

Right on cue, or as though they had been summoned, an entire company of Royal Guards appeared on the plaza. Fully clad on their golden combat armor, not the traditional day-to-day armor and armed with halberds. Individual platoons of unicorns, pegasi and earth ponies with their specialized versions of their armors and arms. All of them organized into formations behind their commanding officers and just sitting there like they were each a statue.

But Celestia wasn’t done. “The city is to be put under martial law. Colonel Gaspar, I bid you remain in Griffonstone and assist in guaranteeing law and order in collaboration with the Royal Guard.”

The griffon nodded politely at Celestia. It was a curious situation where the northerners seem to have garnered the support of an important character outside of their usual sphere. Chocolate imagined the colonel would want to leave too, but he also supposed that if he wanted to support The Lion, he should stay. Especially since Celestia did support The Lion too.

Chocolate wondered what would have happened if things had happened differently. If Celestia wasn’t there. If that General Gamaliel hadn’t showed up, or never met with this Gaspar. He had no idea what went on in the background while those two officers tried to murder the Chancellor. It sounded like they would spend a few days figuring out all that had happened.

For some reason, considering Luna’s letter, he wondered if the blue alicorn hadn’t had a hoof in the whole situation.

“All of the northerners will escape! All of this will have been for nothing!” The gray and white officer with the black cap and feather cried. “Soldiers died defending their homes!”

Celestia shook her head calmly. “This happened because the Griffonian government is corrupt. It has been for quite some time. Corruption has taken root in the political system over the decades and short of a radical reform, there is no fixing it. Now, we have reached a breaking point. And I will not allow this to continue and avoid interfering. I’ve done that for too long, and it is not working.”

“The northerners have unsavory beliefs and despise the southerner griffons. They hate your kind, and you know this! You know all of it!” The officer opened his forelegs. He tried earnestly, without spelling it all out, Chocolate knew. “They hate the hippogriffs! They want a war and to install a freakish theocracy around their barbaric religion!”

“That is part of the same problem that I will try to fix.” Celestia still didn’t let him sway her.

“You can’t do this!” The officer yelled.

“She just did, bruh.” A soldier wearing the green uniform under his cuirass, drenched under the rain, stopped next to him, followed by the others.

“Kindly inform your comrades of my orders, so that they are effective faster.” Celestia smiled at the griffon trooper.

“Ma’am.” He bowed and left with the others to carry out her orders.

“Are you northerner freaks okay with this?!” The officer cried and made angry gestures like he had been cheated in a card game.

The big white griffon that had talked to Celestia shrugged while his companions helped their injured. “She’s done more than you did.”

“Uh… Shining Armor is kind of not available, Celestia…” Chocolate gave her a lost frown as things happened around them. “Who’s to be your second-in-command?”

Celestia stared at him for a second before she moved away. “You are.”

He blinked twice. A Royal Guard pegasus, as professional as they always were, stood before the brown alicorn. “Your orders, highness?”

Chocolate straightened and coughed into his hoof before he made a sweeping gesture. “For now, assist the griffons in guaranteeing safety to those who wish to leave via the teleporter and lock down the city. Also, make sure to identify and detain all the GSA intelligence officers. I have the feeling they know more than they want us to know.

He saluted with a wing and moved on. Chocolate saw Celestia approaching the northerner griffons. A line of dead griffons made an awful display of just how that thing had reached a breaking point, as Celestia had said. They covered their fallen comrades with a white tarp, but the rain stained everything in red. Next to them a crying griffon lady, all pink and blonde on her crest held a small-framed northerner griffon. His red blood had stained his blue feathery chest and her pink.

She held him despite the sad northerner griffons waiting to take him next to the others. The rain washed away her tears, and soaked the feathers in her crest, but she looked up to Celestia and said something with her whistly language that Chocolate didn’t understand. The way she looked up at Celestia really hurt Chocolate and he didn’t need to understand her language to feel her pain.

Celestia shook her head softly and looked down. The Princess said something to the northerner hen, and she held him again, sobbing against his face. The northerners in charge of gathering their dead respected her and waited. One of them talked to Celestia in a heavy accented Common Equestrian. “We’ll take them to their families, and they will be buried in accordance with our customs and their deeds. If that is acceptable under your truce.”

Soldiers from the Griffonian Standing Army approached. “Princess… We can let them take those that passed away. But we can’t let the northerners take their injured guys through the teleporter… They’ll die. And the hospital is a mess.”

“He’s…” The soldier pointed at one of the injured northerners, a young griffon. Unconscious, but still breathing. “He’s my sister’s kid.”

The northerners didn’t argue, and they too looked at Celestia. Chocolate thought it was curious how the rhetoric died as soon as the bullets stopped flying and griffons were left dead or bleeding the same red on both sides.

Celestia and Chocolate looked at the hospital, with its destroyed front. Not a single glass window had survived, and the large doors were gone, along with a chunk of the front wall. A few griffons came out the door, a few of them wearing lab coats or their typical nurse hats. They watched expectantly.

“Eh…” Chocolate shrugged. At least the fire was gone. “I’ve worked in worse places.”

He dropped the shotgun and the ammunition he had acquired and walked towards the building. “Get the injured into any rooms you can find that are reasonably clean. Get started on a triage and take the greens to the government buildings around the plaza. Put yellows on the wards and get the operating rooms ready to go with the reds in their wards. Have the hospital’s stock of wide-spectrum antibiotics on standby and commandeer all that you can from local pharmacies and clinics. Get all doctors and nurses involved. Even the students from the university. Recall all that are on vacation or off-shift.”

He turned to the soldiers. “Get casualty collection points set up and send all of them here. Even the ones you think are dead. Nobody died yet until we said so in the hospital. Get someone on the door to talk to the families and get volunteers… There will be a lot of work to do, and we’ll need blood donors.”

The first to respond was a very distinct and unique griffon lady with a nurse hat. Her coat was the most impressive shade of golden and she hopped off the destroyed steps to the hospital’s missing door. “You heard the prince! Come on! Let’s get them out of this rain!”

The griffons with her sprang into action. A few went to help Chocolate move the wounded griffons, others went to help the northerners and others still went to the southerner side. One of the young nurse griffonesses in the group stopped before Princess Celestia. A soft shade of tan and white, she talked to the princess with a sad frown.

“Princesss. What happens to us when we die?”

The others nearby stopped working, including the northerners and they paid attention to the Princess. She spoke softly, with a calming smile. “There is a gentle stream of magical energy. The magic that flows from the Sun into us and the world. It binds all creatures and our world together as it drifts to the moon before it returns to the source. Remade, reinvigorated, made powerful again and given purpose, it returns to the world in a never-ending cycle. Souls are the same. Carried in this great magical river, slumbering from their tiring journey through the Lands of the Living. Princess Luna protects them from the Nightmares that would feed off their magical energy until they are safe on the Moon and returned to the source. They’ll rest in the Pool of Souls, and they too are healed, remade, and reinvigorated. Until they are again ready and they are carried back to the world, when flesh summons them to a new being.”

The young griffoness stared at the stony street and thought about what the princess had told her, until she raised her eyes again. “What about the northerner griffons?”

“It is the same for all creatures. Ponies, griffons, dragons, yak or even monsters.” Celestia explained patiently. The northerner griffons didn’t react. They said nothing, only listened.

The golden griffoness called, next to Chocolate Velvet. “Gina, stop bothering the princess and come help! There is a lot of work to do!”

Celestia stared at the statue of the past griffon king and then at the manehattian building they called ‘Chancellor’s Palace’. She too had a lot of work to do.

Author's Note

Because I’m sure someone will notice, yes, the messenger griffon in Wayfarer’s Rest told Gilda Madam Gladys had told him to go in Fólkvangr. It was a bit of misdirection because I didn’t want to spoil that she would be killed, much less the mother. His report is inaccurate, and information got jumbled in the mess that was rushing the families through the teleporter. The idea is that she spoke to him when the mother first contacted her.

The sequence of events was Guella contacting Gladys, who then gave orders to the messenger. He was not with Godfrey and Georgia when they arrived and met Tempest Shadow. He arrived later and went through with the northerner supporters were rushing out. By then the mercenaries had left and the sympathizers wouldn’t have left Gladys and Guella lying in the corner. He didn’t know that Gladys was dead by the time he met Gilda.

I could have fitted this somewhere and it would’ve been better than a note, but the chapter is already big and this isn’t that big of an event. Since the site has this option of using author notes, why not use it?

Escape at the Break of Dawn

Admiral Gloria was one of those griffons that had a nice job with the ponies. She owed it to Princess Celestia’s recognition of her successes during the Second Griffon War. On the pony side, no less. The tricorn hat was silly, but it was a symbol of her station and the red uniform went well enough with her cyan and gray. The pay was great too, and griffons often said that she was an example of what a good griffon ought to aspire to.

Other than her skill as a commander, one of the reasons she managed to reach her position was that she was good at predicting the Princess’ moves and anticipated them. During the war, so long ago, the alicorn had noticed that she and Gloria worked well together.

That was why Gloria earned her place as admiral in the Royal Guard’s shining new airfleet. She trusted The Princess, and The Princess trusted her. Yet, sitting in front of the great white alicorn in that fine afternoon, Gloria confused. She came a feather’s length from convincing herself The Princess was playing a prank on her.

She was in the Royal Suite, in the Break of Dawn, and Celestia sat across her desk from Gloria, minding a letter. She wrote with a feather and the chiming from her magical telekinesis didn’t assuage Gloria’s confusion. The sun was high in the early afternoon and its light bathed the princess. It made her look even more radiant than she already was. But the small lemon biscuits were strange. Gloria couldn’t remember the princess ever having those with spirits. In fact, the princess was more of a sweet wine pony, but Gloria supposed the fleet was having supply issues that hadn’t been reported yet.

It didn’t matter. None of that was stranger than the Princess’ order she had Gloria summoned to her room for.

“Excuse me, Princess…” The old griffon lady shook her head and closed her eyes to ward off the confusion, as though she could jumpstart her brain by shaking it around. Maybe then Celestia’s orders would sound reasonable. “You sent two thirds of our fleet to nearby cities of little strategic value to the situation. I’m trying to understand.”

“I am asking that you prepare for the eventuality of Princesses Twilight Sparkle and Cadence escaping.” Celestia looked up at the griffoness from the letter she was writing. “It is a sound strategy.”

“No!” Gloria was sat on the floor and the jerking surge of energy that shot up her spine opened her forelegs and flared her wings. Her spectacles almost fell off her beak. “Keeping our sailors and ships with us is the sound strategy! With the prisoners! You have ordered me to send them to places they couldn’t be called back from in a reasonable time should anything happen!”

“Admiral, please mind your manners.” Celestia glared at Gloria from the other side of the table. “I understand this is disruptive to fleet operations, but it is what I am commanding you do. Last I checked, I was your hierarchical superior.”

“Yes…” The griffoness’ blue eyes aimed at the wooden floor. “Absolutely, Princess. And I apologize If I am speaking out of order, but you usually trust my judgment in these matters.”

“And I do.” Celestia returned to her letter. “But this matter is special, and I have already dispatched orders. I simply wish that you authenticate them. As quickly as possible.”

It was the griffon hen’s turn at glaring, waiting for an explanation. Petulant, yes. Almost mutinous, absolutely. But the princess had put her in command of the fleet for a reason. “I’m sorry, Princess. This makes no sense whatsoever.”

Celestia sighed in a manner most uncharacteristic. Maybe she was tired, teleporting all the way from Hippogriffia and soon to return must be tiring. Even for her. And that was another thing that bothered the griffoness. Celestia could simply have sent her a letter, but maybe that was the reason she had teleported… To impress on Gloria the importance of her new orders.

Gloria didn’t know. She was confused and that was it. “Two of our ships have already resupplied and are on their way… I only heard of it from you now.”

Celestia finally spoke to her, back to her typical patient and reassuring way of speaking. “I don’t believe that our sailors can stop them if they are committed to an escape. Especially with the griffons involved. Instead, I expect better results if we allow them to escape and intercept them again. When their supporters meet to resupply their airship.”

“They have supporters?” Gloria’s eyebrow raised as much as her confusion. The princess’ assessment was plain wrong. But maybe that was what younger griffons called playing three-dimensional chess.

“Yes. I am sending our ships to locations they are likely to meet.” Celestia raised from her seat and walked around the desk to put a comforting wing on the hen’s back. Softly escorting her out of the room. “And the less creatures know, the better. That is why I count on your discretion and diligence, admiral.”

Well, that conversation was clearly over, and Gloria had orders to follow. Strange orders, for sure, but orders from the princess, nonetheless.

Once outside Celestia’s private quarters, pushed out by her large wing, Gloria was slightly more confused that she was before. The hen blinked at the two guards by the door. They stared at her expectantly as the lock in the richly adorned door clicked.

Finally, Gloria stood. “Get me the quartermaster and the executive officer. I have new orders from the Princess.”

***

It was a nice and calm late afternoon. Twilight Sparkle sat on a large and comfortable sitting pillow that was blue and velvety. It was in one of the numerous lounges in the hospital airship. She supposed that they served their purpose of connecting the different corridors that made the hospital part of the airship. They seemed like the wasted space a shipwright was angry they couldn’t use for airship systems and at the same time, the engineers couldn’t use for patient rooms. So, they made the lounges that, at least, were nice, had windows, and connected the different corridors.

The large oval window that wouldn’t ever find itself on a more traditional airship gave her a nice view of the horizon over the untouched prairies of the county of Mareland. They would soon arrive on Baltimare and that gave Twilight an additional source of stress.

Something horrible had happened on Ponyville and she couldn’t be there to help Mayor Mare deal with it. To make it worse, she had dragged Ponyville’s Local Militia force after her. She hadn’t even made it to Manehattan or found Naminé. But she supposed she was making progress in one way or another. If only the griffons were more open, she wouldn’t so on edge.

What was supposed to be an awkward lounge in a hospital airship had become a mixed guardhouse. The airship’s Royal Guard detachment kept watch over the griffons so that they wouldn’t leave their assigned area. They were still prisoners, after all. But the griffons too used that place as a guardhouse. They made a point of not allowing anyone that wasn’t a doctor or a guard they absolutely must allow passage. Of course, Twilight being neither a doctor on a life-saving job, or a Royal Guard that had them under shackles, had to wait. Because it seemed as though in these days being a princess was overrated.

She sat on her pillow and stared at the sunset as though it was to blame. Princess Celestia wasn’t available as she had gone to Hippogriffia, and likely to Griffonia too. Princess Luna wasn’t onboard either, as she had gone to Ponyville to deal with the ‘griffon attack’ in the hospital. And Twilight was stuck there, trying to talk to the griffon ‘prince’, because she was worried it was part of the escape plan. With each sigh that escaped her, the more she convinced herself she was wasting her time.

Ironically, Cadance, the highest authority in that dumb airship was as much as a prisoner as Twilight and the griffons were. Who was the highest authority in that dumb fleet? Nopony knew. Possibly Queen Chrysalis. More likely Admiral Gloria. The griffoness admiral Princess Celestia put in charge of her armada wanted nothing with Twilight because she was a prisoner. And Queen Chrysalis didn’t want anything because she was Chrysalis being as Chrysalis as Chrysalis could be.

And that was why Twilight was sitting in the lounge/waiting room/guardhouse with angry griffons on one side and distrusting Royal Guards on the other. Meanwhile, one of the griffon soldiers went to fetch Grigory for her to talk, since they didn’t want her to go into their hidey hole.

She had lost track of how long she stayed in there, but eventually Cadance and Shining Armor arrived. Their frowns and urgent steps seemed appropriate for the situation.

“Twily!” Her brother promptly hugged her.

“Spike told us what happened.” Cadance hugged her too, as soon as Shining was satisfied, then they sat in front of her. “But don’t worry, I’m sure Princess Luna is going to take care of everything.”

“I know, Cadance.” Twilight’s frantic voice and her frown betrayed her anxiety. “It’s just that… I should’ve been there.”

Shining shook his head. “I glad you weren’t, Twilight. By what Spike told us, you could’ve ended very hurt. Even a powerful spellcaster such as you should be careful fighting certain griffons. These northerner ones, especially.”

“We don’t know the details yet, Shining Armor.” Cadance sighed at him. “It could have been a desperate measure.”

“I’ve been desperate a few times in my life, Cadance.” He glowered at his wife. “But I never thought I would be justified in tearing a small city hospital apart.”

At that moment Rainbow Dash crashed through the door and held Twilight’s shoulders. Was the situation not so dire, it would be funny that Twilight didn’t react at all because she expected it as soon as news reached Rainbow Dash. “I gotta see Gilda! Now!”

“I know, Rainbow.” Twilight softly guided her Pegasus friend’s hooves down. “I know, I sent Spike after you. But we’re prisoners. Princess Luna is looking into it.”

“Oh. Right. Well, I didn’t even know this town called Thunderpeak. Gilda never mentioned it. In fact, all I know of Gilda is that she lived her whole life in Griffonstone and Cloudsdale. Twilight, I know Gilda!” Rainbow insisted, frantically flapping her wings, and barely focusing her eyes on Twilight more than an instant. “She’s got anger issues. And some insecurities. But she wouldn’t kill anyone!”

The pegasus didn’t even give Twilight time to respond, as she turned around once and growled like she was herself going to murder someone. “It’s this Grunhilda… Whoever she is! I bet it’s some evil birdbrained hen that got Gilda into this crazy stuff!”

“Calm down, Dash.” Shining put a hoof on her back despite her flared wings and nervous pacing. “That Grunhilda was looking for emergency healing potions. Gilda was hurt and she was trying to help. I don’t know what is going on, but I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for all this. As far as Gilda is concerned, I mean.”

“Reasonable?” Rainbow raised from the floor and hovered, glaring into Shining Armor. “There is nothing reasonable about this! I have to see Gilda! She needs help!”

Twilight sighed for the nth time that afternoon. “Unfortunately, that may be difficult Rainbow. I don’t think that anyone is going to let us leave.”

It lasted but a second, but Twilight thanked Harmony Rainbow wasn’t stupid enough to spill it that they planned an escape. Instead, the pegasus contained her nervous anxiety and landed to the floor with a huff.

Finally, the door on the griffon side of the lounge opened and one of Grigory’s friends came out. The big soldier-type griffon they called Gray, and actually was gray. He was also not amused, in that non-descript way soldiers stared at you through a black expression when they would rather be somewhere else instead of dealing with you. “I told Grigory you needed to talk to him, princess.”

“Great!” Twilight beamed. “Will you take us to him?”

“No.” The big griffon still didn’t show any emotion. “He told me to tell you not to bother him. He had nothing to do with whatever happened on Ponyville. But you better be prepared for a meeting this night as he might have something for you.”

Twilight blinked a few times at him.

The big griffon shrugged, not waiting for her to speak. “Stay on your room in the Princess’ airship. Grigory is not interested in you or your friends and would appreciate if he could spend the rest of his captivity without you bringing upon him attention he doesn’t want.”

“Oh…” Twilight let escape a small hum.

“Bye.” The griffon even waved a paw at her in the most irritating and demeaning way possible.

“Well, let’s go, Twilight.” Cadance huffed. “We have more important things to do than listen to this griffon treating us like this.”

“Yes.” The Pink alicorn added with an offended expression. “I guess we’ll just go read something. Since you griffons aren’t interested in working with us.”

Twilight stared at Cadance with a cocked eyebrow.

The princess turned to leave, and Twilight stood in place, wondering when had subtlety died. Rainbow just followed, after whipping her multicolored tail at the griffon. Shining shrugged at Twilight, and he started on his way out too.

“I swear…” The cyan and blue Royal Guard lieutenant in charge of that place growled from within his golden helmet. “If any of you is up to something, I will personally throw you on the brig and keep the key until Princess Celestia is back!”

“Don’t worry, lieutenant.” Shining put his hoof on his chest and spoke with the most earnest of voices. “I’ll keep them in line.”

“I’m sure you will, Capn’…” The pony squinted at him.

Twilight didn’t stay to let the situation get out of hoof. They retreated into a stairwell that connected the hospital decks. No more than a room with stairs they promptly took towards the airship’s main deck. Alone on the wood flooring, surrounded by only a hoofful of busy crewponies minding the airship, they turned to Twilight.

“Well, they’re on to us.” Rainbow frowned and complained more than she stated the obvious.

“Of course, they are…” Twilight sighed. “They probably have been expecting us to try something since the day we were captured.”

“Well, there isn’t much we can do about it.” Shining stared with a determined frown. “We don’t really have a choice either if we want to get to the bottom of this mess. And maybe do something about it. We can only hope that whatever the griffons have prepared will work. And do our part.”

“We’re just lucky Princess Celestia and Luna aren’t here.” Cadance declared, before she sighed. “And I bet Chrissy is going to make our lives difficult just because she can…”

“Rainbow, you’re the fastest.” Twilight turned to her friend. “Get the others to meet in my room, at the Break of Dawn.”

“Uh…” She just stared back with big, somewhat confused, cherry-colored eyes. “The time of day or the airship?”

“The airship, Rainbow.” Twilight felt so tired. “Right now.”

“On it!” The words barely left the Pegasus’ mouth before she shot into the air.

“Discreetly!” Twilight, almost screeched, but it was too late anyways, so she sighed again. “And we’re off to a great start.”

“I’ll get your guards to meet there too, Twilight.” Shining put a hoof on his chest and then pointed at the small flying chariot that transported ponies among the airships. “Let’s hope that it all goes well, and we can leave. Because if we fail, they’re gonna stop treating us like guests. Specially with Celestia and Luna away.”

“Yikes.” Cadance grimaced. “I’m not looking forward to staying in one of those cells in the brig. Specially with that old griffon lady there.”

“At least we can rest assured that it is in Grigory’s interest that we make it away.” Shining chuckled. “It’s not that bad. They’re now keeping the crew in the Magic of Friendship. At least we don’t have to worry about getting our ponies there, and that’s gonna be half the battle won already.”

Twilight and Cadance sat on the small platform with the winches that held the flying chariot. Boarding it, Shining was away to another ship. They would go to Twilight’s room and wait until the griffons made their move. And hope nopony got too hurt. Scratch that… Hope that she could find a way to apologize to the princesses in the next millennium.

***

Night had fallen outside, and it seemed a bit late, but Twilight couldn’t say for sure. The wilderness was dark, and the moon was covered. Her spartan room had magical lighting and it made looking outside worse. She returned to the coffee table to sit with her friends. The room was small for a group of more than ten ponies and a dragon. Sure, the dragon was small, but Shining was a big unicorn and Cadance was a tall alicorn. Twilight’s mind went to weird places, and she focused on weird details when she was anxious. Of course, noticing that only made her anxiety worse. It was like a vicious circle, and she was glad her friends were there for her.

Applejack put the tray on the table. “And then he asked why was it that we didn’t simply ask the crew to make these cupcakes for us. All friendly and helpful-like.”

“Can you believe it?” Pinkie groused. Ears pulled back with an offended scowl on her face.

“Then pinkie simply hopped over the counter and got in the pegasus face like she was gonna murder him. ‘You can’t handle my cupcakes!’ and started shaking his feathers off.” Applejack glared. “I almost had to use a scraper to get her to let go like old soot from a pan… But they let us use the supplies and the kitchen. Out of fear, I reckon.”

“What part of discretion did you miss?” Rainbow rolled her eyes.

“Why, yes, Rainbow Dash.” Rarity’s glare was much more contained than AJ’s, but Twilight was sure it was due to her typical manners, not less annoyance. “I am entirely convinced the guards never noticed as you crashed through my room’s window, spilled out about the meeting and flew off the same way.”

“Thanks.” Rainbow beamed. “Speed was of the essence, you know.”

Rarity simply let her frown and scrunched snout say the rest without mentioning there was a guard inside her room at the time. And that was the reason for the ‘cupcake ruse’. Twilight wondered if yet another ruse would be needed to cover for their ruse, but Lieutenant White Leaf of her personal guard returned from the corridor.

“Royals bit it, princess.” The white and green unicorn mare declared as she closed the door. “We’re alone.”

And Twilight’s spell detection spell didn’t detect any scrying on her room. She nodded at Shining Armor, who nodded back. “So, here’s the situation. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna have left the fleet. Luna went to Ponyville to deal with a situation. It seems a pair of griffons trashed the hospital and one of them, it seems, was Gilda.”

Pinkie gasped and her mane spasmed like it somehow received the same surprised shock as her muscles. “What happened?”

Rarity kept her composure. “Shining, ‘trashed’ is not a particularly descriptive word.”

Twilight stared at the colorful cupcakes on the table. Twelve of them, covered in imperfectly distributed frosting. One of the cherries, supposed to be on the top, had slipped to the tray, making the frosting situation worse. She sighed and focused her mind, staring up at her friends around the table. “According to the letter I got from Mayor Mare, a hen that must have been Gilda was critically injured and her companion caused property damage to the hospital. She was after their emergency supply of magical healing potions. Some ponies got hurt and it seems they may have died.”

She neglected telling them that their little sisters were involved. The foals didn’t seem to be hurt in a physical way, and Twilight could avoid the drama. She supposed it was a ‘leadership decision’. “What’s more, Princess Celestia has left for Mount Aris, and it seems she’s moving on to Griffonstone. I’m not sure. What I know is that both are dealing with the situation. Dire as it is, it will help us escape.”

The ponies around the simple round table under the white sheet nodded at her in unison. They paid attention and Twilight was, once again, thankful for her friends. “I went to talk to the griffons because I suspected the attack on the hospital might have been a diversion, or something.”

“That sounds rather extreme.” Rarity kept a serious expression, dramatic even in seriousness. “I don’t believe this is the case, Twilight.”

“That is why I went to talk to Grigory.” Twilight acquiesced with a nod.

“Right.” Applejack nodded, her elbow on the table while Pinkie mouthed an entire cupcake. “We know that Gilda high-tailed it out of Griffonstone. Those accusations she mentioned in her letter seemed a tad serious, to be honest.”

“They framed Gilda!” Rainbow cried. “I don’t know what happened, but she’s not… Evil.”

“All I’m saying, Rainbow Dash, is that whatever happened, Gilda is implicated.” AJ made some appeasing gestures with her hooves. “I don’t know her much, but I know good griffons don’t turn hospitals upside down.”

“This is horseapples!” Rainbow cried with her hooves raised. “Gilda needs help and I’m stuck here!”

The ponies and dragon in the room exchanged a collective concerned stare around Rainbow and that prompted her to slam her hoof on the table. “You guys are doing ‘the stare’. And that means bad stuff. I don’t like it when you do ‘the stare’ around me!”

“Well, Rainbow Dash...” Rarity started, all tact and carefully chosen words. “I believe it may be warranted to prepare yourself for some bad news…”

“What do you mean?” The cyan Pegasus glared. “That Gilda really did something wrong?”

Rarity cleared her throat, still carefully feeling her way around the conversation. “Well, she may not have done anything wrong intentionally… But she seems to have associated herself with a noticeably bad griffon.”

“Yeah… Sure.” Rainbow’s ears fell limp. “But then Gilda’s gonna tell us what really happened, and then she’ll be off the hook. Right? Right, Twilight?”

The alicorn princess wanted to say something, and her mouth hung open for a second as her eyes avoided Rainbow’s. It was Shining Armor that spoke, with a soft sigh. “It’s not that easy, Rainbow… There will be testimonies from ponies in the hospital and Griffonstone’s Local Militia is gonna have a few words to say. I’m afraid Gilda’s in some deep trouble too. Not only because of what happened in Ponyville, but because of what happened in Griffonstone too.”

“Yes… It does look bad.” Twilight put a friendly wing on Rainbow’s back. “But I’ll be doing everything in my power to help her when we come to it.”

Cadance nodded with a grin, despite Rainbow’s less enthusiastic posture. Wings limp on her sides and eyes cast down really didn’t look well on the Pegasus. “Don’t worry, Rainbow Dash. If it comes to the worst, we will be there for her.”

“Well, that much we can help it…” Twilight smiled softly. “The letter mentioned she went to a griffon city called Thunderpeak. We can teleport there from Manehattan once we see Naminé. It is probably our best course of action, anyway.”

“How are we going to use the teleporter, Twilight?” Fluttershy’s ears dropped. “By the time we make it there… They are probably watching out for us already.”

“We’ll worry about that when we come to it.” AJ responded for Twilight. “Right now, we oughta figure out how to escape.”

“Applejack is right.” Twilight nodded. “But I’m afraid we’re not going anywhere without the griffons. I hope they’ll start something soon, too. The more we wait, the more we run the risk of having our escape foiled.”

“They’re supposed to provide a magical device that will allow us to teleport the airship, right?” Pinkie’s mane bobbed with her excited little hops. “That sounds cool!”

“Yes.” Twilight’s eyebrow raised. “Supposedly, it is the device that allowed them to teleport their airship in between thunderstorms. It is going to let us teleport the Magic of Friendship into a storm close to Manehattan. Their ‘cell’ is going to ensure there is a storm, and Mister Flying Snake is going to procure the device.”

“There’s a good chance we’re all going to die, isn’t there?” Spike deadpanned.

“Well, technically there is a non-zero chance that any one of us could die at any moment.” Starlight Glimmer rolled her eyes. “I suppose that we should let the griffons do the brunt of the fighting here… Without our weapons…”

“What are you talking about?” Rainbow frowned at her. “You, Twilight and Cadance are our deadliest weapons!”

“I thought that our best weapon was Friendship.” Applejack chuckled.

“We’re still no match for a fully trained Royal Guard Combat Magi squad.” Twilight sighed. “Or did you forget that we were captured to begin with? And with the griffons helping us.”

“Well, ‘helping’ is such a strong word…” Rarity spoke with a frown, reaching for a cupcake. “I remember their sharpshooter tried to kill Spitfire.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “The point is that we don’t have our weapons, and armors. They must have something planned. They’ll probably take the ones from the guards.”

“Honestly… I’m worried for how this whole thing is going to happen.” Shining Armor rubbed his name behind his neck and frowned. “I would say that the fact the griffons have tried to help us is probably a really good reason we should just drop this whole mess and just go back to our normal lives.”

Then he glared at his sister and his wife. “But I suppose we already had this conversation multiple times!”

Twilight was ready to launch a refined and thought-out argument about the righteousness and importance of their quest when a deep resounding thud interrupted her. A wave of magical energy washed over them with goosebumps and gasping ponies.

“What was that?!” Spike cried.

Twilight’s ears fell limp with an apprehensive frown. “I don’t know.”

“Mana battery explosion?” Starlight grimaced.

“Mana batteries don’t explode.” Twilight responded immediately while Shining Armor went to the window and his jaw hung open.

“They do if you plant a bomb on them!” He cried with his ears pulled back. He opened the window, and the bangs of muskets could be heard above the wind. “Especially if you have a bunch of angry griffons onboard.”

Twilight ran to the window and winced at the sight of the large supply ship going down in flames and shooting a violent spectacle of pink sparks from its rear. Several flying creatures jumped off the airship and she already saw a small skiff launching, filled with wingless creatures.

“What in tarnation?” Applejack cried next to her. “These griffons are out of their minds!”

It was a sound strategy, Twilight admitted in her thoughts. Without the supply ship the fleet would need to call in for reinforcements instead of following Twilight’s obviously escaping group. And they didn’t even know that they planned on teleporting the airship.

Another explosion filled the air and stunned Twilight to sit on her haunches with ringing in her ears. The glass in the window broke and showered inside the room. It was plain luck she wasn’t hit with anything. The fixture for the magical lighting in the ceiling clinked. The table where she and her friends shared a snack toppled and fine cups and plates clattered to the carpet. The floor rocked and a series of explosions shook the airship like it was going to break apart.

They cried and held on to whatever they could and themselves, but panic filled Twilight when the airship noticeably started to dive and to list on its left side.

“The airship is going down!” Rarity cried after a particularly dramatic wail.

“We have to get out!” Green Leaf, Twilight’s white unicorn guard nervously stomped the floor several times.

The door to Twilight’s room banged open. That ‘ocelot’ griffon guy that worked for the mercenary that helped apprehend them was on the other side. Standing on his hindlegs and posing like he was the star in a theater play. He wore a leather armor and had a huge, cocky grin. “Time to shine, ponies! This airship is going down and the admiral is going to order it abandoned any time now! Flying Snake got the teleportation device, and your airship is on its way! Move your pony hindquarters!”

“What did you do?!” Twilight yelled, her back against the inner wall. She recovered her balance as the ship still hadn’t listed too much. “This ship is full of innocent ponies that have nothing to do with our quest!”

“Welcome to the adult league, princess!” He tossed a griffon-made revolver, black and long, to Shining Armor and another to Twilight’s unicorn guard. “We call that consequences. Better get this oh-so-important quest of yours done.”

Applejack helped Twilight stand. “He’s right, sugarcube. The royal guards will take care of the others. We have to take care of ourselves!”

The griffon hopped away as alarm bells started ringing and the ponies hurried out. In the luxurious corridor of the airship’s guest rooms there wasn’t much activity, but Twilight could notice her weight shifting to balance in the airship’s unstable attitude. There was shooting and screaming, but no cannons fired. The griffons had simply started a mutiny. Or a rebellion. The details weren’t very important.

“We have to get our stuff!” Rainbow pointed down the corridor to the door that led to the main hall, and it was in that precise moment a trio of royal guards came through.

“He came this way! Find him!” They wore the traditional golden armor for daily duty, instead of the much better armor they wore when they first apprehended Twilight and her friends. Though, without their own weapons and armor, fighting them would be an issue.

“Hey!” Their leader, a white and blue, particularly big earth pony shot his hoof at them. “You’re not going anywhere!”

“Sarge!” The gray pegasus on his left turned to him. “They’re sounding the abandon ship alarm.”

“Grab them! We’ll take them to the hospital ship and they’re getting locked up with the griffons!” He stomped a hoof on the carpeted floor. “I swear I’m gonna make you eat your crown for this!”

“Whoa!” Rainbow flapped her wings and hovered above the others. “That’s no way to talk to the princesses!”

“Rainbow! Wait!” Fluttershy cried, but it was too late.

The two pegasus guards with the angry sergeant drew their pistols and promptly aimed at them. White Leaf was going to shoot with the revolver the griffon had given them, but Shining pulled it away from her magical aura. “It’s loaded with real ammunition!”

Twilight also thought fast and raised a magical shield that stopped the magical stunning bullets. Next thing she saw, Rainbow Dash flew at the guards and hit the one on the lead with a flying kick. It looked more ‘awesome’ than it was effective against the warding spells on his armor. He stumbled back but was barely injured at all. The guard on his right grappled with Rainbow before she could escape and threw the light pegasus mare to the floor.

“Wait!” Twilight cried to no avail as both Applejack and Pinkie Pie charged at the trio and both Rarity and Starlight Glimmer blinked out of existence to appear again behind the three royal guards.

Cadance flapped her wings to hover above and shot a pink magical beam at the guard on top of Rainbow Dash. While Twilight guards also rushed ahead.

“We should be abandoning the ship! Not fighting!” Twilight did an angry hop, with her ears pulled back. “There will be more of them!”

Her protests went unheard, except for Fluttershy, standing next to her with her typical concerned stare, and Spike, also next to her, shrugging. “At least we should be able to beat them…”

Rarity was kicked in the chest by the earth pony and barreled on her back like a sack of potatoes before she could do anything. The only reason Rainbow didn’t end with a black eye was that Cadance’s magical beam threw back her pegasus assailant through the armor’s magical protections. He was hardly injured though, and quickly stood to get back in the fight. The other pegasus guard drew his magical stun weapon and pirouetted so fast Starlight Glimmer was hit on the side of her head with that thing before she even noticed. Down she went.

Twilight was getting tired of sighing that day.

Shining and both of Twilight’s personal guards grappled and wrestled each with one of the royal guards and it looked ugly like a street brawl. Or a bunch of toddler foals trying to topple each other. Twilight carefully aimed and shot their leader with a souped-up version of her containment spell and the sergeant saw himself stuck inside a pink bubblegum ball. Twilight’s guard freed herself from it easily, though.

Cadance swooped down and swept the pegasus that had hit Starlight with her magical beam. The guard was thrown forcefully against the wooden wall of the corridor and caused a good dent on it, but his armor protected him enough that didn’t faze him. Meanwhile Shining had pressed the other pegasus against the wall and delivered a good punch. Unsurprisingly to Twilight, that had little effect on a royal guard wearing magical armor designed to protect him from physical assault.

That fight was never going to be easy without their weapons.

Fortunately, Shining wasn’t as dumb as Twilight had initially thought. As Applejack and Pinkie Pie tackled the guard like a train, Shining subdued him with a containment spell that wrapped him like a gift.

Only the other pegasus remained and Cadance got a good taste of his stunning weapon, a magical zap to the chest when she approached to attack him again. She squealed like a shocked rubber duck, and he only didn’t smack Cadance with his weapon because Twilight also managed to hit him with her containment spell. He just growled like an angry ball of bubblegum but couldn’t free himself.

“Whatever happened to strategy?!” Twilight yelled. Thank Harmony she could so easily bypass their protective wards with her spell.

“No time!” Rainbow sprung to her hooves. “We gotta go now!”

At least she wasn’t wrong. Twilight could still hear fighting and gunfire. Not to mention the airship engines making banging noises they were not supposed to do. Twilight huffed. “Is anypony hurt?”

Rarity didn’t seem too injured despite the direct kick she took to her chest. Apparently, their training sessions really had prepared them. She stood with little assistance from Spike. Cadance and Starlight Glimmer would be fine as the stunning sticks were more disorienting than damaging.

“Let’s go!” Rainbow Dash was Rainbow Dash, hovering above the floor anxiously threatening to fly away.

“We can’t just leave them!” Fluttershy flared her wings with an angry frown and yelled as much as she usually yelled. “They’re sounding the order to abandon ship!”

“That was my point!” Twilight yelled too.

“Uh… do we free them?” Pinkie cocked an eyebrow. “Isn’t that kinda opposite to what we just did?”

“I’m going to crack your head open like a melon, you traitor!” The ‘sarge’ screamed from his bubblegum prison. “Bucking traitors! This isn’t cute anymore! I’ll get you prosecuted! Not even Princess Celestia is gonna save you from me!”

Pinkie gave Twilight a confused stare and presented the earth pony in golden armor with a hoof.

Twilight squeaked instead of letting her frustration cause her to explode.

“Let’s go!” Rainbow insisted with a gesture. “Their own guys will find them!”

They didn’t have time to argue further. Something exploded and sent a quake across the corridor that almost shattered the giant candelabra with the magical lights. A piece of the floor and of the walls just weren’t there anymore when Twilight looked and what remained was on fire. Suddenly, carpets seemed like a really bad idea on an airship.

“Oh my gosh!” Cadance’s wings suddenly flared, and she screamed. “Flurry Heart! Shining Armor! Flurry Heart!"

“I’ll get her.” Shining cried as he pointed to the exit. “There’s more fighting around the ship still. Get out of here! AJ!”

“I’m coming!” The orange pony pressed her hat against her blonde mane and hurried after Shining Armor towards the fire and into their room.

In a panic, Twilight meant to go help and the others seemed uncertain, looking at her for direction. But the snapping and banging of muskets and muzzleloader pistols coming from the hall stopped her. Rainbow Dash flew ahead, and the others followed with Twilight and Cadance catching up right as they reached the door.

The smell of blood hit her like a kick to the stomach. There were at least six dead griffons in the hall and Twilight had an open view over the entrance to the shipboard ‘palace’. It was never luxurious as Canterlot Palace, but it was richly adorned for an airship, especially with all the reds and golds contrasting with the ubiquitous white and all the glasses in the doors. Now, after more careful observation, it was a smelly red battle scene where at least ten griffons and two earth pony royal guards laid dead in the floor. The smell of powder was also thick in the air, and it didn’t do her well with the stench of blood. It wasn’t over yet, as there was more shooting in the ballroom where they had had dinner.

Twilight almost forgot the airship was going down.

“Go!” Rainbow cried, swooping down to the lower level from the mezzanine. “We have to go!”

Ponies with wings leapt to the floor below and the wingless ones hurried down the stairs. Spike held on to Twilight’s back, and she hadn’t even noticed when he had climbed on top of her. Thoughts of Flash Sentry in that fight caused her stomach to twist again, but she skidded to a halt with the others when one of the griffons moved.

She coughed, sitting against one of the bloody smears on the walls. Twilight ran to her, and while she didn’t really know the cyan griffoness in the red uniform, the princess knew that was Admiral Gloria. She was the commanding officer under Princess Celestia for the entire Heartland Fleet, but she was missing her black tricorn hat and her uniform had an ugly and bloody gash on her side of her torso. Twilight avoided focusing on it.

“I hope you’re happy.” The hen coughed again, before staring at Twilight with hurt contempt and a trickle of blood from her beak. “Although, I suppose it’s my own damn fault for not seeing it coming.”

“Please, don’t move!” Twilight cried. “Fluttershy! Can’t you help her?”

“I don’t have anything with me, Twilight!” The yellow pegasus squealed anxiously.

“I’ll cast a healing spell!” Cadance took place next to the pegasus and her horn’s glow was mimicked in the griffoness’ body.

“Thank you, princess…” The griffoness said half-heartedly.

“This is not our fault!” Rainbow hovered above the others. “We didn’t know the griffons would do… This!”

“How else did your ladyship think they would break out of imprisonment in a military vessel? Did you think they would ask nicely?” Gloria tried to stand, and her words were loaded with sarcasm despite the pain. But her strength failed her, and she fell to the floor again. Twilight was going to tell her not to move, but she felt stupid and foolish with the airship on its way to a fiery end on the ground. Angry, and in pain, the griffoness grimaced and yelled at the ponies. Half-angry, half-sad. “This is all your fault! Celestia protects you too much.”

“What? What do you mean?!” Twilight’s confused stare, much less that of the others, didn’t help at all. “I don’t understand.”

“Are you ponies waiting for an invitation?!” Grigory’s big, bulky friend covered in gray, and called Gray, appeared on the main doors.

“We… We have to go, Twilight!” Starlight urged her with nervous hooves that couldn’t keep still.

“But she’s…” Twilight started, but the griffon by the door yelled at her.

“Get a move on, ponies!” Gray called. “Your airship is on the way, and you have to go before the rest of the fleet returns or all of this was for nothing.”

Twilight looked at the griffoness one last time and the contempt in her expression hurt the pony like a thorn in her heart. She wanted to do or say something, but Shining Armor came out of the corridor to the rooms and hopped down the mezzanine with a wailing Flurry Heart. Applejack came down the stairs immediately after, carrying their crystal pony maid. Her mane was a little charred but neither earth pony nor unicorn seemed hurt.

“We have to go now!” Shining zoomed past her. “The fire is spreading fast from the stern!”

“We let the guards go.” Applejack added, basically skipping down the stairs and balancing the unconscious crystal pony on her back.

Cadance squeaked. “Miss Calcite! What happened?”

Applejack carried her without any real issues, but Twilight thought she saw a red stain on her fair gray mane. “We found her passed out and Flurry crying her lungs out! She must’a hit her head or something!”

“Let’s go!” Shining called from the door, turning around to look at them.

But Twilight wanted to help admiral Gloria, though there wasn’t much she could reasonably do. At least not without Fluttershy’s equipment.

When she looked again, the big gray griffon had approached her and grabbed her leg so hard it hurt. “My brothers died to get you out of here, grassbreath!”

Twilight looked at her friends and they looked as insecure and unsure as she was. She looked again at the injured griffoness and she was still breathing, but unconscious. Finally Gray pulled at her leg and almost caused her to lose her balance. “Move! I’ll get her to the hospital airship.”

Finally, Twilight found she could move again. She started to the door and the others followed her. Shining Armor made way for them to pass and the sight outside was of more dead griffons laying across the airship’s main deck. Some of the Royal Guard crewponies still fought, but the griffons overpowered them with numbers. Even armed guards couldn’t do much against the sheer mass and strength of the griffons in larger numbers. Among the dead griffons were some gravely injured, likely dead ponies and a few that had surrendered. If that wasn’t enough, outside she could see how much altitude the airship had lost and how unsteady it was.

A sour ball of sorrow threatened to spill out of her throat. The sight, the smells would have overpowered Twilight if she hadn’t seen Grigory. Sitting in the middle of the deck, with two griffons on their haunches and holding Royal Guard muskets with bloodied bayonets. All her confusion and sorrow turned to wrath.

“Grigory!” She cried. “This is not what we had agreed on!”

As she stormed closer, the griffons aimed the muskets on her and she seriously considered turning them inside out, or something, with her magic. But she restrained herself and did nothing.

“Your airship should be here any moment.” The purple and mustard griffon ignored her outburst. But as she kept her stare and still approached, he scowled at her. “What did you expect? That I‘d ask the guards nicely? Look around you! The fleet is stripped of most of its airships and the changelings are nowhere to be seen. Celestia and Luna are too busy and there is something going on in Griffonstone. I am sorry we didn’t perform to your expectations, but this is the best we could do, and we have to go now!”

The worst part of it was that he was right. She didn’t really have an argument other than she was angry that he had used violence. And realizing that made her angrier at her own naivety. And where were the changelings? Her head swiveled and there was indeed not a single one of Chrysalis overly dramatic ‘super soldiers’ nor her regular black carapace soldiers. Most of the airships in the fleet were gone and the ones that remained were on fire.

She didn’t have the luxury of time to think. The old griffoness called Gehenna walked up the stairs to the underdeck, escorted by Grigory’s mate, the yellow and white Gallensa and the other prisoner, Grinolf. Twilight was mildly angry at the way the old griffoness pawed at her fluffy chest while they were in the middle of a bloodshed and on a doomed airship. It was when another explosion rocked the airship and pieces of crystalized metal flew from its side. Twilight and her friends screamed, and metal moaned.

“The airship is losing structural integrity and there are plenty of things to explode yet! We gotta go!” Shining cried. “Now!”

Just on cue, the Magic of Friendship came over the larger airship’s side and her Pegasus crewponies secured her to the side with hooks and ropes. Captain was on the railings, calling them in with a frantic hoof. “Hurry ‘board, lasses. The ground be coming fast!”

“Our weapons and armors!” Rarity cried. “Twilight! They’re still on the armory.”

“I really wouldn’t go down there now, princess…” Gallensa had an infuriating petulant grin as she walked past them, following the older griffoness.

The alicorn noticed the other griffon prisoner was gone but said nothing. She was actually amused by the two griffon hens boarding her airship like it was a leisure cruise vessel. Another griffon, one of the two with the Royal Guard muskets gave Grigory a respectful bow.

“Take care of our brethren, Groskar.” Grigory nodded. “We’ll see you back in Griffindell. Or if it comes to it, we’ll drink to this in Our Mother’s halls.”

The griffon prince simply walked over to the airship too, followed by his friend, Gray. Twilight’s crewponies weren’t sure what to do. They had weapons with them, and Grigory’s other friends were soon onboard too: the sharpshooter, the thin medicine griffon and the weaponsmith.

All Twilight managed to do was stare and grind her teeth. The damn griffons were proud of what they had just done. Twilight’s friends simply stared too. Applejack raised a hoof. “What in the hoof-lickin’ Tartarus is going on?”

“Do you know how to operate the Stormdrive device, mudpony?” Gallensa’s bored expression as she fitted a golden device into her foreleg reminded Twilight of Rarity. But overtly offensive rather than endearingly haughty. “You are just delaying us further.”

“Eeey!” The Pegasus at the crow’s nest on top of Twilight’s airship banged his hoof against the support. “Em’ Goldies be coming back! I spy five schooners coming portside level. An’ they be fast!”

“Come on, Twilight!” Shining pushed Cadance to walk. Her friends started on their way too and Twilight could see the airships approaching against the night sky. They were readily visible with their lanterns and the light from the fires.

Moreover, the Break of Dawn had lost a lot of altitude and her airship along with it. She hoofed at the floor and flared her wings. Turned to the griffon that Grigory had left in command. “You better get whoever you can to the hospital airship!”

“I will, Princess.” Something in the way he spoke reassured her that he would. It was the non-arrogant kind of honor that the good Royal Knights liked and that she approved. It made Twilight think that she and her friends could use a Chocolate Velvet with them. More like a Flash Sentry, but he was nowhere to be seen and the airships approached fast.

As Twilight boarded her airship, the griffons that remained behind freed the hooks and Captain spun the Magic of Friendship’s wheel. The ship turned sharply and immediately started gaining altitude. Twilight galloped dangerously on the moving airship to the stern and could see winged creatures flying out of the large warship. She wasn’t free-falling, at least and Twilight supposed that the emergency enchantments in the hull still held. Her own airship gained distance fast and an explosion sounded as a distant pop, but Twilight watched until Celestia’s airship crashed against the almost even terrain covered in a corn plantation. It exploded in a spectacular sequence of blasts and the fire caught quickly in the field.

Only then did she notice her friends. “Something strange just happened.”

“Indeed.” Rarity frowned next to her. “Everything happened so fast!”

“I thought there would be a lot of fighting when we tried to escape…” Pinkie frowned too, but in her unwillingly comedic and exaggerated way, moving her eyes from side to side.

Shining, now free of Flurry Heart, and Applejack of Miss Calcite stood next to Twilight. Cadance was probably with the two of them inside the private quarters. Her brother matched Twilight’s suspicious frown. “Most of the fleet’s ships were gone, and with them most of the crewpony complement. The princesses are busy away and Chrysalis vanished with her changelings.”

“Lucky us?” Rainbow stared with her big eyes.

“Luck doesn’t exist, Rainbow.” Twilight turned from the growing fire. “Admiral Gloria implied the ships were away on Princess Celestia’s orders. It seemed that the griffons knew exactly when to act… Someone tipped them that things were happening in Griffonstone and the princesses would be too busy to intervene.”

“Capn’!” The watchpony in the crow’s nest called again. “They come! Astern high!”

Twilight could see two of the fast airships pursuing them after they had reached what remained of the Break of Dawn’s fleet. She turned to her friends. “Time to see if this piece of griffon thaumatotech does work. Get inside.”

She led the way to back to the main deck where the griffons were still with Grigory, sitting on their haunches like they owned the place and the pegasus crewponies glared at them like unwelcome guests. Twilight didn’t see the yellow jerk, though. One of her pegasi whispered. “Might wanna see the yellow one below deck, princess.”

“I might just shoot’er meself.” Another said under his breath.

“We’ll wait for you here, darling.” Her white unicorn friend blinked fabulously at Twilight. “It’s a bit cramped down there. And don’t worry, we’ll be inside the private quarters.”

Grigory waited for Twilight by the hatch that led below deck and the crewpony at the top of the mast was getting nervous. “Whatever you do, be quick about it! They be gaining on us! Lining up shots with the fore guns!”

As soon as the pony said that Cadance elbowed Shining Armor and the two raised a shield around the airship. If that wasn’t enough, three additional airships approached. Sleek airship frigates and a fourth-rate of the line warship. Good time to make a quick escape, Twilight nodded and went down the stairs with Grigory. She could see Starlight Glimmer and their resident unicorn crewpony with the big yellow griffon hen doing something in the back.

“So, making yourselves comfortable?” She pouted, not looking back to the griffon.

“We will not bother you princess.” Grigory responded as they walked. “And you’ll be grateful for our help.”

“Did you have to destroy the Break of Dawn?” Twilight didn’t feel reassured at all.

“An eye for an eye, Princess.” The griffon walked seriously beside her.

She didn’t say anything further as they arrived at the ship’s mana battery compartment with the four giant slabs of magically charged crystal shining with pink light. The griffoness was in the back, fiddling with something on the wall (right next to the hole the harpoon had created.) Outside, Twilight could hear cannons and muskets firing. When the unicorn crewpony tried touching one of the thick wires that came out of the magical machinery, the griffoness slapped his hoof.

“If you guys are gonna do something, do it fast!” Rainbow’s head cried from the access hatch.

“This is a sloppy job, but it should work.” The griffoness spoke in her thick whistly accent. Then she turned to Starlight Glimmer. “I’m just going to need a little bit of your mana flux.”

Starlight blinked innocently and put a hoof on her chest. “Uh?”

“Gallensa…” Grigory called her like a warning and the griffoness sighed with a roll of her eyes before she pointed at the airships’s machinery.

“Just activate this thing to maximum output to the engines.” Gallensa started pushing buttons on her foreleg device-thing. “It will have to do.”

Twilight could finally see the griffon magical device. Although, ‘see’ was a bad choice of word. Whatever it was, it was hidden inside a clear metallic casing, almost like a briefcase. It had golden terminals on one side and a few crystal attachments on its square front. Twilight had no idea how that thing worked, but connections were made with the golden terminals.

They had used thick cables to jury-rig the thing into the magical engine-controlling machinery on Twilight’s airship. Their unicorn crewpony went there and his magic connected with it. Cannon fire collided with the magical shield outside, and the engines started spinning up as the griffon device lit up in its crystal attachments in different colors. Gauges and meters in the machinery topped off almost immediately.

“This thing’s gonna fry the spell matrices.” The unicorn complained.

Gallensa ignored him and started messing with the device she wore on her foreleg. The cannon fire continued and pounded the shield as Twilight could feel the magical radiation around her, and it made her wings and horn itch. She should feel more strongly about things, but the events in the airship had left her a little numb. She just watched and let the griffoness work.

The sound from the engines became strange. Strained. And the Captain’s voice came from the speaking tube on the wall. “We be losing the engines!”

“Is it working?” Starlight looked at Gallensa, at the device and then at the substantially brighter mana batteries. Gallensa just rolled her eyes. “Is it, or not?”

“Thi thing be stealing juice from the engines!” The unicorn crewpony growled. “We gonna fly adrift.”

“The device is meant to be powered by lightning strikes.” Gallensa sighed. “It needs all the power the batteries can give it. So, yes… Probably. But it won’t work otherwise. It should reach space-time discontinuity soon enough, then it can feed from the storm on the other side. Immediately after, it will complete the spatial displacement almost instantaneously.”

“I thought teleportation was instantaneous.” Rainbow piped from behind Twilight.

“Nothing is instantaneous. There is a minimum frame of time for any information transference between any hypothetical points in the space-time continuum.” The griffoness looked dispassionately at the device on her foreleg.

“Uuh…” Rainbow cocked an eyebrow.

“Gallensa!” Grigory stopped them. “Is it working?”

“Yes, yes…” She began calmly walking away from the wall with the device and past Twilight. “It is going to explode, though.”

“What the-” Twilight was interrupted when the walls were taken by a sudden flash as though they had become pure energy themselves. She probably heard a bang, or someone screaming but whatever magical effect happened hurled her away from that. It was a bizarre sensation, much worse than anytime she had teleported, although similar.

It was also over in an instant and the booming of cannons was replaced by Rarity squealing up deck. The magical shield collapsed and the heavy splatter of rain against the airship’s hull resounded. There was an eerie silence, though. An absence of a particular sound Twilight couldn’t put her hoof on. Then there was more screaming, and Twilight’s acquired flying instincts told her she was free-falling. Just as she remembered the airship shouldn’t ever enter a storm, she felt light on her hooves and lifted off the floor.

“We’re falling! Twilight! We’re falling!” Rainbow flayed her legs as she pointlessly opened her wings and Twilight’s friends outside screamed some more. The griffons too and that gave her some satisfaction.

Meanwhile Grigory held to the airship’s structural spines and Gallensa stuck to the ceiling with her talons, looking at Twilight like a scared cat. “What is wrong with this thing?!”

“The storm!” Starlight cried while keeping herself safely floating inside a bubble of her magical telekinesis. “The thunderstorm disrupted the airship’s fail-safe spells!”

“What is wrong with you ponies?!” Gallensa shrieked. “Fail-safe measures aren’t supposed to fail!”

“They aren’t meant to fly into thunderstorms!” Twilight yelled at her more in anger and frustration than in fear.

“Not an issue!” The unicorn started fiddling with the magical machinery using his magic. “Not an issue! I’ll get the lass straight again!”

“You have to reset the hull spell matrix!” Gallensa shrieked again.

“That is what he said!” Twilight deadpanned.

“There, there!” The unicorn pony beamed as he pushed a button in the magical machinery via telekinetic magic.

Click.

Nothing happened.

He blinked and pushed it again. And nothing happened.

“Grigory! I don’t want to die in a pony airship!” Gallensa squawked something after that, but it was in High-Griffonese and Twilight didn’t understand.

“Uh…” Starlight grimaced and clicked the button directly with her hoof.

Clickclickclickclickclick. Nothing happened.

“Come on, ya piece ‘a junk!” The unicorn managed to get himself to the gold and crystals console and kicked it once.

“It’s not fair! I was going to be an empress!” Gallensa wailed.

At her patience’s limit Twilight gave the malfunctioning machine a good jerk with her telekinesis. She may have used more strength than she wanted due to all the pent-up emotional stress, though. The thing rattled before it sputtered, and all its crystal doohickeys lit with purple light before shifting to pink with a deep hum that filled the air.

All of sudden the airship stopped falling and settled to a gentle stop. Twilight fell to her hooves, Grigory let go of airship’s structural spine, Starlight Glimmer and Rainbow flailed around a little but managed to land on their hooves. The ship’s thaumatoengineer went face-first into the machinery but seemed otherwise fine. The machinery too. Gallensa splatted to the floor on her back with a pained yowl. Upstairs, similar things seemed to have happened to Twilight’s friends and the others. The sounds of rain continued though, as the ship’s engines hummed again.

Then they puffed out again. But the airship was softly gliding this time.

“Aye!” The unicorn crewpony beamed. “The engines restored the fail-safes. We’ll land softly yet!”

Gallensa’s high-pitched moan made them look as she said something, in High-Griffonese and sat against the wall. Whining while she covered herself with her wings.

“I haven’t been with you ponies more than an hour and I am already regretting this decision.” Grigory glared at Twilight.

That trip was going to be fun…

A Long Night

Griffonstone hung on an uneasy ceasefire. An uncomfortable truce that certainly wouldn’t have happened under normal circumstances. Northerner agents and local law enforcement, along with griffons from the Griffonian Standing Army agreed to not kill each other so they could lick their wounds. And perhaps try and understand who the enemy was in that mess.

It was Celestia’s presence and the way it always seemed to make the impossible happen. She called for hostilities to end and made compromises. Northerner agents would be detained respectfully while the non-combatants could leave via the teleporter.

Of course, the majority of the most important northerner agents fled, and why the griffonstonian northerner supporters were allowed to leave, only Celestia knew.

It was also the chaos which followed the mass desertions among the military. It came to a point where GSA soldiers weren’t sure who they were supposed to fight anymore. Most were willing to listen to the other side after so many had suddenly changed sides. Who was giving the orders? What even was the objective at that point when they realized they were fighting themselves?

Although a better word would be mutiny. The problem wasn’t which side they fought on. It was the leadership on the southerner side. They had agreed to stop fighting and allow the northerners to retreat despite High-Command ordering against it. Local law enforcers concluded the government didn’t pay enough to go against the military and the leadership was a jumble anyway. Not to mention the northerner leader was captured and promptly put under arrest after the Princess was done wiping the floor with her. It probably helped the situation that no one really knew who she was or what she was, but Celestia said she was important. It also helped griffons thought something palpable had come out of that mess because of her capture.

Maybe there was some logic to Celestia’s decisions.

The Blackfeather Division officers found themselves in a bad spot though. Details were sketchy, but some old general everyone had assumed dead or retired showed up and started pulling skeletons from inside the Blackfeather’s closet. Then there was Colonel Gaspar, one of the high-ranking officers from the fort. He went around town with a feathering megaphone and accompanied by his kid. Yelling at griffons not to hear the Chancellor’s lies as though he was the herald of doom.

General Gamaliel had had his rank and privileges stripped, his family’s honor tarnished, and their careers ruined because the old general decided something he did for the Blackfeathers was immoral. It involved a derailed train, with dozens of injured and dead griffonian citizens, a mother and a father who were murdered, and a lost griffon child vanished into thin air.

Soldiers didn’t appreciate hearing that one of their war heroes had been betrayed by the Blackfeather Division. They were secretive and generally disliked enough already. The reaction from the Blackfeather officers around town didn’t help either. Nobody bothered telling them griffonian soldiers had joined to defend the nation, not their obscure objectives. Perhaps there was still saving Griffonia, but anger at false terrorism accusations, murder of innocents, political persecution and all the crap the ‘shifty intelligence types’ do was a low bar to set.

On top of it all, more practical matters to deal with appeared as dawn was still off a couple of hours. Three bodies were still laying in the Chancellor’s room. It was an ugly and bloody sight. The room would be ruined for the foreseeable future and the problem was on Guylan’s paws, as he was the captain of the Chancellor’s Palace’s Garrison.

The night that should have been nice and calm turned into a mess. The chancellor wasn’t even in town. Two officers in high standing such as Colonels Gast and Gustav getting themselves killed while betraying their superiors rallied a lot of griffons to the side of The Lion. It also made the Chancellor’s supporters angry. Blackfeathers had panicked and some of them simply showed a level of contempt Guylan thought only occurred to over the top, straight up villains such as King Sombra.

“No.” The cute pink and turquoise hen wearing the black cap with a feather of the Blackfeather division glared at him. “They can’t take their bodies. I don’t care what they do to their dead thugs. Everyone ends in the same hole, anyway. The northerners and any supporter of theirs can rot on the streets for all I care. We’re carting them off to HQ.”

“What in Tartarus could you possibly gain?!” Guylan sat on his haunches and opened his green forelegs with frustration. “You’re just pissing off the northerners. For nothing!”

“This is the sort of thing they mean when they say something is above your pay, captain.” The hen frowned her blue eyes most annoyingly at him. “I suggest you move along and go bother yourself with something else. Something that sounds less dissentious.”

“What the feather? Dissentious? What’s going on?” The Blackfeather goons had already gone over the room. The blood and powder didn’t even smell anymore. They had even secured the northerner’s fancy, advanced weapons. Why did they need their bodies? Were those blockheads from Blackfeather going to do some sort of necromancy? Would they try to extract intelligence from the dead bodies? Or did they just keep the bodies from the northerners to piss them off? The illegality was blatant, and Guylan wasn’t sure which disgusted him more.

“What do you even care?” The hen insisted. “They’re not even actually northerners.”

“Are you out of your mind?” He slapped the side of his head. “Colonel Gustav was literally born on the northerner lands while Colonel Gast was married to a northerner from Griffindell. His kids are still alive.”

“Yeah. His kid.” The hen glared at him. “Tonight, he shot dead two militia guards and murdered a mercenary under the employ of the Griffonian Standing Army at the teleporter. In cold blood.”

Did she simply know more than he did, or had they reached a point she just made stuff up? He shook his head and scowled at her. “None of it is the point. His father is dead, and he has the right to bury him. His father. If the situation was reversed, we’d be fighting to get our dead soldiers home.”

“And speaking of dead soldiers,” neither his words nor his expression had any discernible effect on her. “These two left one of our boys dead on the alleyway inside a cart. In case you don’t see, the third body was one of ours! Doing his job, instead of betraying the nation.”

“I don’t want to hear it anymore.” She pointed down the hallway to the lounge with the stairs while in near hysterical screeches. “Get lost or I swear I’m gonna turn this mess into your problem!”

“Fine! Fine.” He put up his paws. “I’m going.”

Walking out of the chancellor’s luxurious bedroom, he found himself in the corridor where a pair of young soldiers stood guard. Two shades of green and tan with white under the green uniform. Pretending they weren’t there, and Guylan couldn’t blame them. They wanted nothing with his fight and a Blackfeather could kill your career faster than Celestia eats a cake.

Guylan walked past them with barely a respectful nod and hurried steps. He had pushed his luck far enough. He wanted to help, but there was a limit to what he could do. Incredibly frustrating he had to fight his superiors for the decent thing of returning bodies to their families.

The skirmish had officially started in the hospital but had spread all over the city as northerner supporters tried to leave. The local militia and later military assets from Fort King Grover found them trying to leave. Stupid… Had they waited until morning, they would have been able to leave the city in throngs through mundane use of the teleporter. Something spooked them and, on the surface, it was likely Celestia’s arrival in town. Curious, to say the least. But Guylan didn’t want to get involved.

Though any griffon with two brain cells to rub together could figure it was good evidence more went on than The Lion’s bid for the throne. Mostly because Celestia supported him. It was not Celestia that had spooked them. At least not simply because she arrived, but they must have some secret they didn’t want her to know. Celestia not being an utter moron, probably knew it too.

Unfortunately, with the northerners’ attempt against the Chancellor, the Blackfeather Division’s informants jumped to action as soon as they heard reports of citizens scampering around the city.

It was either a very poor strategic decision, or, more likely, a panicked response to Celestia’s arrival. They had something to hide from her and that picked the Blackfeather Division’s interest. They too were desperate about something.

Guylan stopped in the middle of the stairs. Both sides had skeletons in the closet it seemed, and the night had become even more dangerous. The kind of danger that gets to the griffons who stay on the fence as much as the ones who chose the wrong side. Damn it all. He had only gotten involved because he wanted to give the northerner officers, traitors or no, a decent funeral.

He sighed deeply. When he enlisted nobody liked the present chancellor, not the ones who came after, but there was no threat of war or coup d’état. The smell of black powder still stung in the entry hall and most of the windows were shattered. Shards had sprinkled all over the rich floor and groundskeepers had started cleaning it all.

Speaking of the white alicorn princess, Guylan found Princess Celestia walking into the building as dawn out of time, shining hope upon his worries. Funny how she looked naked without her typical royal regalia, or even the magical armor of sunlight she wore in the fight. It mattered little at the time, though. She sidestepped the working griffons and broken glass with a worried countenance and ears limp from her head. She would be one to have things swirling around in her head in that situation. But she would share his worries about a decent burial for the dead griffons, so he stopped and raised his head to stand before her. “Princess. A word if I may.”

She stopped dead on her path, her ears perking forward, and her eyes focused with full attention. She even smiled at him. “You may, Captain. The night has been troublesome for you, has it not?”

He sighed and smiled at her too. “I didn’t expect any of this, Princess. But I suppose it is in my job description. I need your help with something.”

Just as he said it, another officer of the Griffonian Army entered. None other than Colonel Gaspar, the one who had effectively ended the fighting.

“Princess! Captain.” The tan uniformed griffon called upon entering, stopping to nod at Guylan and his salute. But he soon turned to the Princess again. “I have the information you requested, Princess. Colonel Gast’s children had already left through the teleporter when I returned. You should also know the mercenary killed their mother. Both her body and that of the community leader, Madam Gladys, have been teleported away for burial.”

As he talked, two griffonian soldiers entered too and rushed past them barely sparing the princess or Guylan a glance. They hurried up the stairs and left them talking to Colonel Gaspar.

“What of the mercenaries?” Celestia turned to him. “Mister Gaki and Fizzlepop Berrytwist?”

The colonel’s face contorted into a confused frown. “Who’s that?”

Celestia rolled her eyes. “The pony mercenary leader. Tempest Shadow…”

“Oh. The pony left too, and the mercenary was killed.” Gaspar made a blank expression.

“Really?” Celestia’s ears perked up. “Who killed him? And what of General Gamaliel?”

“Gamaliel has left too. We don’t know who killed the mercenary Gaki.” Gaspar told her, all professional coldness.

“Is that so? Regardless, I want Gamaliel’s story fully investigated. I shall summon a Justiciar and it would help if the GSA had already started their own investigation.” Celestia hummed. “What of the Blackfeather officers?”

“They escaped.” Gaspar retained his professional coldness.

“They escaped a platoon of Griffonian Soldiers?” Celestia shook her head. “How many soldiers had the teleporter facility secured again?”

Gaspar nodded coldly. “Blackfeather Division officers can be quite crafty, Princess.”

Guylan hated the heading the conversation had taken. When the bang of a firearm rang from the floor above, he already knew what he was going to see. Colonel Gaspar followed him as Celestia teleported ahead of them. The two griffons arrived to see the two soldiers that had arrived with the Colonel and the Blackfeather officer. Unsurprisingly, the two that stood guard before vanished, one of the soldiers had a bloody gash on his uniform, shoulder to chest. The other held a smoking wheellock pistol and the Blackfeather officer laid dead on the floor.

Yet another dead griffon on the luxurious floor of the Chancellor’s Palace. Shot on the head, and more blood staining the carpet.

“She refused to come with us.” The wounded one, black and white, with red on his green uniform covered his wound.

“I took her gun…” The other showed it. “She was going to shoot me, then she attacked him.”

Guylan’s blood froze as Celestia approached and fixed her frowning gaze on the dead hen. “I would congratulate you on your reflexes and aim, soldier. If we didn’t have a dead lady, less than half your combined size on the floor.”

“Guns are equalizers, princess.” The injured soldier wiped his bloody paw on his own uniform. “That is why we use them. It makes any griffon dangerous.”

“You said you took her weapon.” Celestia stared back at the soldier.

“She tried taking it back.” He matched her cold gaze.

“The princess is right, private.” Gaspar took the weapon from him. “There was no need for this. It is the very thing we are trying to avoid!”

Securing the weapon under his wing, he went on. “Captain, kindly escort these two to Fort King Grover and have them secured in the stockade. This manner of revanchism is not acceptable.”

The two soldiers simply shrugged and raised their paws, sitting on their haunches to signify they surrendered, but Guylan just blinked at the unfolding scene. Princess Celestia spoke. She did with such a serious frown it turned Guylan’s already freezing blood to sub-zero temperatures. “Colonel, I would prefer to keep myself to the charges of corruption against the Chancellor and his government. Without jeopardizing The Lion’s rise to the Throne of the Griffon King. However, I may be forced to become involved if certain things start happening. Things such as a fire on the Blackfeather Division headquarters. Or if Blackfeather and GSA high-command officers started suffering an unfortunate wave of accidents. If something of the sort happened, I would have to become involved in a deeper investigation of the events of this night.”

“Don’t worry, Princess.” Gaspar returned to his emotionless demeanor. “Unless the Blackfeathers have something other than their murderous black-tape games, I don’t think there is much that needs to disappear.”

“I understand Princess. I’ll have our loyal soldiers secure their headquarters and ensure they don’t try to destroy any evidence.” Gaspar concluded.

Celestia nodded half-heartedly at him before turning and walking away. Guylan watched as the princess vanished down the stairs in the lounge before he looked at the dead hen. He realized his life might be in danger, and Colonel Gaspar spoke to him, handing him the pistol. “What a night, eh son?”

Guylan stared at the weapons before he picked it from his paw and then at the griffon himself. “I… I wasn’t expecting History to happen right during my shift…”

“Neither did I. Or either of them.” Gaspar walked a couple of steps to be right in front of Guylan. “But it is one of those nights. Good griffons are suffering consequences from bad choices.”

“I don’t understand, Colonel.” Guylan shook his head, and his face made a puzzled sulk. “Celestia supports Lord Gilad’s claim. Not only to rule Griffonia but to reform the entire political system. Can’t we let her deal with the Blackfeathers, if they are on the side of the Chancellor?”

“Listen, kid…” Gaspar spoke slowly as he straightened Guylan’s uniform and the feathers on his crest. “I understand how you feel. I was surprised myself. Things aren’t going the way they should, and we are kind of scrambling to keep them on track. What you need to realize is that there is a bigger bird than The Lion in the tree. And all the little birds need to stay on their roost and sing the right song. Blackfeathers... They know things, and it is not about Gail. It’s bigger stuff. Things the big bird wants to keep away from equine ears. So, Blackfeathers are going to… Fall from the nest and whoever is quiet needs to start singing one song or another. Preferably the one the big bird likes.”

“Gee, sir…” Guylan cleared his throat and straightened his posture. “Sounds as though someone should make sure the Blackfeathers aren’t singing at all. Before the Princess starts listening.”

Gaspar closed the distance between them. “If anyone asks if you ‘can hear the storm’, tell them ‘I can hear Her Cry’. In the meantime, go to the Blackfeather HQ and grab everything under Operation Blacktalon. Make it vanish. Eat it if you have to. Don’t kill them but abscond with any Blackfeather you find. Somewhere away from the town. In different locations, if need be. Commit it all to memory and write nothing down. Someone will contact you again.”

Guylan just wanted to give those griffons a decent burial. He supposed the northerners would take care of it, after all. Now he needed to worry he didn’t need a burial.

***

One might think of her as a common criminal. Laying on the hard concrete floor, so bored out of her mind her thoughts turned to the privacy she enjoyed and the insistent desire to do naughty things. In the northerner prisons, at least, it was more fun because she could get a horny Sky Sentry applicant to watch. Maybe even join her. Everyone knew she was going to get out the next day anyway, so why not have fun?

Jails in the north were cold and soulless. Usually, an irregular and chilly stone floor with iron bars. A bed of moldy straw and a bucket that smelled of dejects. If you were lucky, you would get no window, because windows let in the merciless cold of Brokenhorn or Griffindell. Places even the northerners who liked the cold thought were too cold.

Pff… This ‘pony approved’ jail had a smooth cement floor and a too comfortable cot. It hurt Gwineth’s back. It had a window with bars, but a great view of a small plaza. She even had a small wall for the bathroom with an actual squatting toilet and a shower. It smelled too nice, almost like a hotel room.

Annoyed, bored, and unhappy, she missed all the comforts griffons showered her with wherever she went.

Ironically, she had never felt like that in a prison cell. She usually knew she was there because she had done something frowned upon. That stupid place probably confused her brain, or something. That was the problem… This cell was a bad hotel room, not jail.

She let out a bored sigh.

Griffonstone, as most cities in the Equestrian Federation, had a building which served as headquarters for the local law enforcement, namely the Local Militia. Their resources varied with the population numbers, according to the guidelines stipulated by the Royal House. Such came from old agreements the representatives in the Hall of Friendship had reached when they first conceived the local militias. As the years went by, they heard specialists and the ageless experience from the big pony with the horn and the wings.

The quality of their service, even though it was supposed to be on par everywhere, varied wildly. It went from Ponyville’s ‘Harpy above, how can you be so incompetent?’ to Canterlot’s ‘Allmother, I can’t even kill a pony in this town!’.

Griffonstone’s sat in the middle, inside a confused and uncertain gray zone. According to the information provided by Colonels Gast and Gustav, the population was convinced they were the most corrupt force in the Federation. Probably not true, and certainly inspired by the ubiquitous accusations of corruption surrounding the government officials.

To Gwineth, it mattered little. Some of their supporters had said the pervading issue was the lack of empathy. Now, griffons could care, and did. They worried about their neighbors, their family, and about their friends. But a class of griffons their race had issues caring about were criminals. At least on the matter Gwineth agreed with the southerner hooflickers. Bandits were scum and deserved to suffer. She was no criminal though. She was privileged. Entitled. Definitely not a simp that should follow simp rules.

She shuddered when it occurred to her that she might get sent to Shatteredrock, though. The infamous ‘griffon penitentiary’. The same as a common criminal. Although, the Children of The Harpy would see it as persecution. Of course, Gwineth didn’t belong there.

A heavy door creaked open, and her steely-blue beak showed a smile. The sucker was on his way to rescue her from Shatteredrock.

A young and dumb-looking tom. Mud-brown shade of Griffonland tan with a soft green, green eyes, and swept-back white-tipped feathers on his head. Not particularly small, but not large either. Kinda charming, but just enough to be forgettable. A grade-A bottom-feeder, if she was to be honest, and under a normal circumstance, she wouldn’t spare him a second glance. Just perfect for her present situation, though.

As he entered, she sat on the floor and stared at him. She was a head taller than he. How in the Scorch did he get other griffons to respect his authority? He wore the locals’ leather armor, with a pistol across the chest and a dagger on his left shoulder. He approached the bars as his eyes scanned her beak to tail. She even showed him a small smile.

“Are you dead yet?” He gave her an angry glare. “I’m supposed to bring you a snack, but I really didn’t feel like it.”

An angry ‘beta’. Wonderful. Gwineth barely managed to keep from hopping and clapping like a happy little queen who grabbed her crush’s attention. First, she showed him a confused frown, holding the bars, and speaking softly in the northerner High-Griffonese.

As she expected, it confused him, and he shrugged. “I don’t understand you.”

“What happened?” She faked confusion and a distressed tone, switching to the Common Equestrian, letting her accent show.

“You’re one of those dumb motherfuckers who think you can pick a fight with Princess Celestia.” He told her with so much spite in his voice she slipped, and her eyes grew larger. “Well, they brought you from the hospital… You know, the one you and your asshole friends bombed. Because… Yeah… Fighting Princess Celestia ended the way anyone would have expected.”

Screw that façade. She squeaked and began to pat herself down in a blind panic. “Did they put any filthy Saddani blood in me?!”

“Ma’am, I have no idea what you just said but what you just said sounded disturbing.” He pointed over his shoulder with a thumb. “I’m just here to make sure you’re not dying or anything until they’ve sent you to Shatteredrock. You’re gonna wait for your judgment there and we’re just holding you till they’re done getting ready. So, I’ll be in the front. If you feel you’re gonna die, or something, call me, ‘kay?”

Things didn’t go the way she had expected, and he was slipping between her fingers. She squealed again. “No, no! Wait! Help me out!”

His response came as a sarcastic laugh.

“Pretty please?” She gave him the sweetest and most ‘promising’ smiling in a way no griffoness had ever smiled at him. She also held the bars as desperately as she could, for good measure. “I’ll make it worth your while… What’s your name?”

“Does this sort of thing work in the north?” He cocked an eyebrow and crossed his forelegs at her. “Because I feel I’m in one of those really graphical and saucy stories they keep in the back of the library…”

“It actually does.” She followed with a confident smile. “Why, I did it myself a couple of times.”

With her paw reaching from the bars, pressing her shoulder against them, she beckoned him closer and smiled too. “I’ll be the horny troublemaker inmate and you can be the big bad warden… Come on… Teach me a lesson…”

“Nah…” His stoic expression turned to a cynical grin. “I’ll ask the Lord Protector to put me on the escort detail taking you to Shatteredrock along with the rest of your barbarian friends. I figure that will teach you a lesson.”

“My sister works at the hospital, you bitch.” He cried and let his expression turn into a scowl. “I hope you spend a really long season at Shatteredrock. In fact, I’m not going to stop anyone if the others want to show a little of their disaffection for you. And just so you know, I made almost twice my monthly wage in gifts from the other guys who didn’t want to be here.”

“I’m rich too, you know!” Her sapphire eyes turned desperate, and her paw tried reaching for him again, but her foreleg hadn’t grown any longer. “Ever heard of Lady Gwendolen? She can pay you a ridiculous sum to let me out. Even better… I can tell her some nice things about you if you help me reach safety. We’ll travel together… Just you and me.”

“Good. I hope they make you pay for the expensive healing potion they used on you. And nope.” He responded with a cruel smile. “It’s gonna be you, me, and the escort to Shatteredrock. Goodnight.”

“Wait! Please!” She pleaded, desperately trying to hold him. Almost reaching the black tuft at the tip of his dark brown tail, but he walked away and pulled the heavy door closed with it.

Gwineth gasped so loud she almost cried when the closing door revealed the large, black, and white great griffoness behind it. Wait. Impossible. She couldn’t be there, and yet Lady Gwendolen sauntered over to the bars. She sat on the other side and stared at Gwineth, wrapping her tail around her haunches.

Such a blank and unreadable stare. Gwineth knew she’d done something stupid, but she was stuck there, and she was going to get sent to Shatteredrock. The young and anxious griffoness held the bars again, but before she could speak, the other’s strong black paw held her beak with a vicious grip.

“Do not say my name, you little idiot.” She spoke with a husky, low tone. Only after Gwineth nodded and hummed positively, she let go. But again, before Gwineth could speak, the other showed a regal and superior scowl. “You were told not to fight Celestia.”

“I know!” Gwineth flapped her wings nervously. “But… But…”

She stood and circled around herself, flared wings and chattering beak while her feathers kept ruffled to the point she seemed larger than her actual size. “She was going to ruin everything! I had to do something!”

“So, you disobeyed me.” The Harpy, Lady Gwendolen, Allmother, Mother Harpy… However, Gwineth would call her, the griffoness showed no sympathy. “You thought you would make another show of your skills and then you found someone you could not beat. This time the guard is not a raunchy northerner tom with stars in his eyes. He does not worship you and your station. Saying my name did not help nor mentioning money. Yours or mine. And, finally, I am not amused at your antics for a change. What now, Gwineth? None of your tricks worked.”

Gwineth’s silvery-white feathers stood ferociously, and her blue eyes changed from their scared glaze to the predatorial wrath her race was known for. She would tell Celestia everything then. Her fury died in less than a second when she remembered who stood before her. Feathers rested shy against her head and her eyes widened with fear at Gwendolen’s stoic stare.

“Be mindful of your thoughts, Gwineth.” Her expression didn’t change at all, but Gwineth knew enough to fear. “You know what happens to my misbehaving children.”

“I kept Celestia busy so our guys could escape with Master Gabriel!” Gwineth nodded frantically, with a desperate grin. “It was the best I could do. Please… You know it’s true!”

Gwendolen stared at her for a second before she massaged her frown and sighed. “Yes, Gwineth. Yes, you did.”

“Please! Help me!” Gwineth’s eyes turned panicky again, as she tried reaching the other past the bars, but her paw passed through a ghostly image. “I won’t tell her anything! I swear! You know I won’t! But I can’t stay here! I’ll do anything you want!”

The young guard’s voice came from beyond the door with a sharp bang, displeased. “Will you shut your hole? Damn hoe…”

Turning back to Gwineth after hearing the guard, Gwendolen retained her blank expression. “I am aware that restraint is not something that comes easily to you, Gwineth. What, with your poor education during your teenage years… But do try a little harder. I cannot be here to bail you out this time. Not with Celestia so close. Not after the night’s events.”

“You are not a cub anymore, Gwineth.” Gwendolen’s stare hardened. “You will either free yourself, recover your dancing sword and return, or you will find yourself before Celestia again. And if you tell her anything you should not, Shatteredrock will be the least of your worries.”

Gwineth gasped and shook her head, letting go of the bars and shivering. “But how-”

Gwendolen interrupted her, walking through the bars to hold the younger griffoness. Gwineth failed to understand how it worked. How couldn’t she grasp the one who walked past the bars but could still be held by her. The larger griffoness held her by Gwineth’s back, supporting her weight with one foreleg while her other paw pressed on Gwineth’s chest. Sharp talons scratched beneath her plumage and her voice turned soft.

“I love you Gwineth.” Gwendolen whispered and Gwineth’s eyes locked on hers with a will of their own. “You know I do, and how much I would loathe giving you away. You are just too much fun. So much, under normal circumstances, I am willing to entertain your senselessness. But I cannot choose between you and Celestia learning our secrets. Much more than you or me is at stake. You must understand, I am limited in what I can do.”

“I understand, Lady-” She started speaking, but the other pinched her beak shut.

“You cannot help yourself, can you?” Gwendolen’s foreleg let go and Gwineth fell on her back with a yelp.

Before she recovered from the surprise and the pain, a black talon grated against the curvature of her beak. “I suppose it just would not be the same if you were efficient as Gehenna or another dedicated Gilda.”

“Who’s Gilda?” Gwineth eyes crossed at the talon on her beak.

“You should meet her soon enough.” Gwendolen sat tall above her and smiled impishly. “It is going to be fun.”

“Is she the other Swordmaiden?” Gwineth stood to sit and glared with a hurt little frown of an injured ego.

“Pay attention now.” Gwendolen ignored her little tantrum. “The reason Celestia allowed our supporters to leave is because she has you. I also believe Luna is involved in her decision. Celestia is, either way, confident she can extract information from you. However, you must give her nothing. If you must, allow her to threaten you with Shatteredrock, or anything she dares. I do not believe she will resort to extreme measures. Or escape. Either before she comes to interrogate you, or when these hooflickers come take you to Shatteredrock. Whatever happens, you must not allow your fear to dominate you. I will protect you to the best of my abilities, but now I am busy. Too busy. You know things as sensitive as the ones Gabriel does. Effectively, we are in the same situation as before.”

Gwendolen started walking from one side to the other. “I am afraid I may lose both you and Gehenna because I cannot afford to leave Griffindell. Much less to come here personally. Our assets have been removed and few supporters capable of doing anything remain. I still do not fully understand the situation. It is a dangerous game, all of a sudden. I believe Luna is behind it, but she seems to believe I am a Nightmare.”

“Maybe, if Celestia shared that belief she would think my magic is due to that?” Gwineth offered sheepishly.

“Perhaps. Additionally, I can offer that a Griffonian Standing Army officer who was a friend to one of our supporters shows encouraging signs of friendliness.” Gwendolen spoke calmly, not stopping. “I imagine he will try to assist you. Try not to squander his willingness to help the helpless.”

She stopped and looked at Gwineth again. “Much as Gehenna, you must care for yourself. Do not allow Celestia any glimpse of the nature of your powers. She is no fool. If she understands you, she will understand Gilad and Grigory. I doubt The Sisters will keep believing me a Nightmare then. Everything I have been working for will be lost. I will do everything I can to distract her, but as I said, I am busy, and you are on your own for now. Come what may, return to Griffindell with the utmost celerity. I will need you soon.”

“I may regret saying this, but you can use your magic. I will grant it to you, should you need it.” Gwendolen’s stare didn’t transmit a lot of confidence, but Gwineth was happy she was allowed to use her most powerful toys, and it showed in her glowing grin. “Stop thinking of ‘banging’ and remember your training. Retrieve your dancing sword and return to me. Do what you must, but do not allow Celestia to glimpse through your power and do not do anything stupid.”

“Do not fight Celestia. If you are forced, be captured again, but do not allow her to glimpse at the origin of your magic.” Gwineth nodded frantically at her again and Gwendolen’s unfriendly glare turned mellow. Dare some even call it caring. “I will reward your faithfulness handsomely. Do not fail.”

***

It took them a couple of hours, but Twilight’s airship slowly lost all the altitude it still had left after they teleported. Thankfully, the griffons’ magical device didn’t damage her airship any further when it exploded. Twilight’s friends had some difficulty understanding teleportation moved the airship out of the way of the explosion, though. There were some time variables, but Twilight felt she was going to have a headache if she tried explaining those. The griffoness wasn’t going to explain either and the details weren’t important anyway. It was a weird thing, but in the end, what mattered was that they arrived where they should.

Or so Gallensa claimed. The scouts were still to return.

Perhaps more important was that the device did its thing. They vanished, and the Royal Guard lost them, and they arrived relatively safely somewhere. As an unintended effect of the storm, the ship’s magical induction engines died. Two alicorns remained there, but the missing Elements of Harmony made it harder to find them. The spell she, Cadance and Starlight Glimmer cast should keep the downed airship safe from magical scrying for a decent amount of time.

Oh, for pony’s sake. The Elements of Harmony stayed on the Break of Dawn along with all their armors and weapons. Their destruction, or them being damaged didn’t worry Twilight, as their power made them effectively indestructible. But without them, complications would arise, and future fights worried her.

No, no. Stop with the depressive thoughts. Focus on the good things. At least they wouldn’t be announcing their presence to every pony with a horn within a ten-thousand hooves radius.

Still exposed, any airship or random pegasus flying above should see them as soon as dawn arrived.

Keeping a positive attitude was hard and the faces of all the ponies she met in Celestia’s warship insisted on returning to her thoughts. But she had to move forward.

They kept lights off and Twilight’s crewponies maintained a constant watch in every direction and up. The dark shrouded them, and if some airship showed up looking for them, they should have at least some time to react.

Below deck, the crew’s unicorn thaumaturgical engineer assessed what damage the engines and the ship’s magical system had suffered. Hopefully, they would be able to fly on out of there. In the worst case, they might have to abandon the airship and hope Twilight could have it back after it was all said and done. But Twilight was not going to abandon her crew. Maybe they could stay accommodated somewhere discreet in Manehattan until things got cleared up.

Would things ever get cleared up after the mess their quest had turned into? Probably not entirely. But change wasn’t necessarily bad, and such was a matter Twilight could only deal with in the future.

As for Twilight’s friends, they were tired and the best they could do was sleep for a couple of hours before the day started. Twilight included, but she wished she could sleep too. Too nervous, too anxious. What would The Princess think?

They slept uneasily, though. The girls weren’t particularly comfortable with the griffons in the airship, and neither was her crew. But Twilight could see the griffons would be useful if she could keep them under control. The Loremaster worried her most of all. While still on the Break of Dawn, Twilight had gotten the impression she was dangerous. More so than the other griffons if what happened to Cadance was any indication.

As dawn neared Twilight woke up from a shallow slumber pocked with the many times she roused to stare at the wood ceiling of the private quarters. She shared it with her friends and the griffons. But that wasn’t bothering her. Strange echoes of ominous dreams she couldn’t remember haunted her every time she opened her eyes.

The griffons didn’t make a noise the whole time. Eerily silent, distinct from the snores and huffs of sleeping ponies. Twilight felt like she would suddenly wake up to find one of them with their talons at her neck. Of course, the chances of that actually happening were close to -but never- zero. They wanted her and friends to reach their destination, but stupid emotions bothered her despite her rational mind.

There being no point in remaining in bed if she wasn’t sleepy, she got up. Slowly as not to disturb the others and walked outside.

Outside, the air smelled clean, wet. Her airship crewponies diligently kept their watch and nothing seemed to be out looking for them. Three of the pegasus crewponies, in cerulean shades, laughed while Spike leaned on his elbow, against the railing, holding a mug of wood and iron fittings.

Twilight blinked with a smile before she gasped, and her eyes almost jumped off her face. “Spike! What are you drinking?!”

“Geez, Twilight. Thanks for ruining my style…” He gave her a sarcastic frown. “Good morning, by the way.”

“Soft cider, princess.” One of the pegasi chuckled. “We drink grog, though. Ye can have some if ye wants it.”

She made a worried frown with a confused smile, pointing with a hoof. “Do you guys drink that in the morning?”

“Gee, Twilight.” Spike grinned and rolled his eyes. “It’s not some fancy royal-graded wine like a Duskshine Sang’Real, but it’s what a pony of the seas will drink.”

Then he turned excited, with a huge grin and bounced a little. “Did you know grog used to be just water with alcohol because the water would go bad during long trips?! Now they put rum, cinnamon, and lemon juice on it!”

“Yes…” The alicorn stared unamused. “I knew that. And I also don’t drink wine or anything alcoholic in the morning.”

She frowned. “Wait… We have all those things onboard?”

“Them Goldies in the Royal Armada shared.” One of the pegasus shrugged.

Did he mean they had actually shared it with them, or they stole it? It didn’t matter as the gray unicorn thaumatoengineer approached her with a yawn.

“Good morning.” She smiled at him, but she soon changed it to a worried frown upon noticing his messy brown mane. “Please don’t tell me you spent the night working on the ship’s engines.”

“Neigh, princess.” He yawned again. “I spent the night working on the spell matrices in the control unit. Engines be fine, the control unit went belly up.”

Twilight nodded quietly, recalling what she knew about the airship. “The mana flow distribution systems, right?”

“Aye.” He nodded. “Engines just use magic to run their spells. We control speed, altitude and direction giving it to their individual spells. Maneuverin’ and hurrying all be in the balance.”

“Can we get the airship flightworthy again?” She grinned hopefully.

“Aye.” He nodded easily. “No problem. Hiccup be the control board. The griffon thingamajig thaumatotech torched it to Tartarus. Blasted things be grand expensive, but good news is they be made in Manehattan.”

Twilight sighed. “All my money in the bank is likely frozen by now. And the licensed resellers are sure to have a meltdown and call the authorities if I even show up at one of their stores.”

“Our local cells will help.” Grigory spoke from behind her. Twilight’s wings flared and she hopped with a squeak. Where had he come from? Gallensa yawned next to him, while Grigory himself had an earnest stare. Behind them stood the big soldier griffon guy they called Gray with an inscrutable expression.

Twilight’s temper flared a bit when she remembered he was the griffon who talked to them before he sent her off to her room, just before they downed Princess Celestia’s airship. But they had to work together.

“Not only acquiring the component you need,” Grigory continued. “But also, to get the airship to the freight teleporter. I can pay for it too.”

“Jolly, birdlad.” The unicorn smiled sarcastically. “Hearty thing after yer gadget all but sent the Magic of Friendship straight to Wavy Pone’s locker.”

The griffons’ reactions put a giggle on Twilight with how confused they looked. Gallensa even cocked her head and her eyes opened wide while Grigory frowned as he stared at Twilight. “Mind translating?”

“He means he is grateful and happily surprised.” Twilight offered a hoof, still giggling.

“Well, we need you to get to Snow Mountains. We could use the airship.” Grigory added with a shrug. “Even if the Royal House had my assets frozen, they wouldn’t dare touch Lady Gwendolen’s. How much are we talking about?”

Twilight turned to the unicorn with them, who shrugged. “Eh… Prolly ‘bout a grand an’alf Bits. But won’t find it fer sale, no siree. All sorts of red tape involved. Black market be t’way t’go. Gotta see ‘em old seadogs at the yards. Ya know… ‘Hind the curtains. They’ll charge ‘bout two to three grand a new one.”

“I think he means we need to buy a black market magic control component from airshipwrights working at Manehattan’s Airdocks.” Galensa frowned as though a headache threatened just by listening to the pony talk.

“Aye.” He confirmed it though.

Twilight put a hoof on her chin. “Rarity said there is a smaller, privately owned airport at Manehattan. It may be easier to get the control board there.”

“Yes.” Grigory’s big gray friend nodded. “Scallywag Docks. Less reputable, less safe, less expensive, and less nosy than the main airport. Much better if you want to be discreet or buy things behind Canterlot’s back.”

“Are these things universal?” Grigory looked at the pony. “Or do we need a specific model?”

“Neigh.” He shook his head seriously. “Gotta be a Manehattan Thaumatocraft Hyperion. Cutlass model. Sixth Rate. Lower rated, she can’t power her engines. Higher rated, she’ll fry her engines. Only the Cutlass will fit. T’is made fer the Lightning Class cutters such as the Magic of Friendship. An’ our spell matrices won’t take anything other than a Hyperion.”

“I have the feeling we’ll have better luck buying a new airship.” Twilight groaned.

“Lightning Class cutters be works of art, lass.” The unicorn kissed his hoof. “Manehattan Thaumatocraft makes ‘em to specification.”

“I can probably jury-rig something if we can’t find the specific model.” Gallensa rolled her eyes.

“Aye.” Sarcasm levels rose to the stars with the unicorn glaring at her. “If ye wanna blow ‘er batteries in a reality-shattering magical explosion. Which be word-fer-word what yer gizmo did.”

“Grassbreath, I invented the magical induction engines these magical airships use!” Gallensa screeched at him.

“Horseapples!” The unicorn cried back at her. “T’was some landlubber at Bay County University.”

“He stole my papers after I had to leave when Lady Gwendolen called me back to Griffindell, you ignorant pokehead!” She screeched louder.

“Aye. And I be Princess Celestia’s left tit.” He gave the griffoness a blank stare and it only made her angrier. “With yer excuse, Princess.”

“Your brain is small as a tit!” Grigory stepped in front of her before she jumped at the unicorn’s face with her talons, and he held her despite the scratches at his foreleg.

“Get this on paper.” Gray sighed while Grigory dragged his mate down to the lower deck.

Spike took another sip of his mug-full of applejuice. “That griffon has an anger management problem.”

“You have no idea…” The griffon told him before turning to Twilight again. “Princess, it’s probably a bad idea if you and your friends go to Manehattan.”

Gray looked down at her from his sitting stance. “When your scouts return, let me go and check things out. I’ll contact our cell in Manehattan and get all of you to the city without being noticed. From there we’ll look for this Naminé you need to see and start looking for a way to fix the airship.”

“Why you,” Twilight raised an eyebrow at the big griffon. “And not Grigory?”

“Grigory is a noble. And so are you and your friends.” The griffon explained raising a paw and with his deep voice he kept calm all the time. “Your presence will spook all the fixers in town if you just show up there looking for things. We’ll never get the part we need and may never find this Nanimé. Especially with the present situation. Business involving the princesses freaks the underworld out.”

“Well, ponies don’t really have this ‘nobility’ thing.” Twilight pouted.

“You need to get out of your bubble more, Princess.” Gray kept a stoic stare. “You never had contact with criminals. Especially the smart ones that keep their heads low and skirt the law. That is my job.”

Her eyebrow raised as her curiosity piqued. Maybe the trip was going to be fun, after all.

Differences

Twilight tried enjoying her coffee, maybe having a peaceful breakfast with her friends. The griffons didn’t want to share the table with them, choosing instead to hide in the lower deck and eat the available fruits. Twilight didn’t oppose it. They probably wanted to eat without ‘the ponies’ smelling of grass next to their food. On the other hoof, Twilight and her friends could enjoy a peaceful morning meal without the predators looming over them. At least, that was the intention when she sat with her friends at the table, inside the airship’s private quarters.

For a downed airship that had been effectively impounded, the Magic of Friendship had a decent selection of breakfast foods and drinks. As they talked about unimportant things, Twilight’s friends enjoyed quality coffee, so good even the less refined manners of the airship’s crew couldn’t spoil it. It smelled marvelously and the food, without exception, tasted wonderfully. Fresh strawberries with the smoothest of creams and lime juice so tasty it was probably made for them from fresh fruit. Rarity even praised the pancakes with blueberry jam. But Twilight preferred the prench toast with butter and the waffles. Both tasted of happiness before ‘it’ dawned on her mind.

Cadance had retired to the back of the private quarters. Miss Calcite had recuperated from, luckily, no more than a bump on the head. They busied themselves with feeding the baby, and given the lack of screeching and begging, they succeeded. Freed of such concerns, Twilight’s mind turned to more immediate, and perhaps picky concerns. Such as the origin of their food.

“I am not going to make accusations, or judge anypony….” Twilight frowned at her waffle with chocolate chunks, then at Spike’s white and foamy coconut frappé. “But I think the airship’s crewponies seem to have had time to sack Princess Celestia’s airship before we escaped.”

“I’m not complaining!” Pinkie happily munched at a mouthful of vanilla cookies dotted with white chocolate drops. “Hum-hum. Not at all.”

“So, what, Twi?” Rainbow stopped gobbling down dollops of mint and chocolate ice cream for a second. “I mean… It’s for us, right?”

“It was all bought with our tax money.” Applejack took a bite of an apple and gave it an appraising stare while she chewed. “This here apple definitively came from Sweet Apple Acres! Probably the north field. But they treated it like a rock in a bucket.”

“A lot of creatures died and suffered injuries…” Twilight groused, and her mouth twisted with a frown.

“Well…” Shining shrugged, holding a cup of yogurt and avocado slices with his telekinetic magic. “It would have gone to waste. Not eating this stuff won’t fix anything, Twilight.”

“I can’t believe you guys…” Twilight groaned.

“Darling. Shining Armor is right. It would all have gone to waste.” Rarity rolled her eyes. “It is not disrespectful in any way. I understand you are feeling guilty… I am too. But there was little we could have done to prevent what happened. Even our griffon friends, had they not acted, our important quest would have ended.”

Twilight sighed with her ears drooping. Harsh, but true.

“Besides, princess…” Her very own Royal Guard spoke, holding a cup of lemon yogurt. “Celestia’s Guards certainly went out of their way to help the others. These airships are made with safety and evacuation procedures in mind. Even in a real combat situation.”

Twilight hummed angrily, matching her expression. But Starlight Glimmer took a second from her fruit salad and rose a calming hoof. “Nobody is saying you are wrong. Just that we can’t do anything about it and there really was no other way. We knew what we were getting into when we embarked on this quest.”

Then the unicorn frowned a biting glance at the princess. “Didn’t I tell you to let go of this whole mess before it even started?! Back in the library, back home?”

Twilight prepared to present a quick, but well-thought argument about how the airship’s crew could’ve been doing something to guarantee the safety of many creatures aboard Celestia’s airship. But a crashing noise and Gallensa’s irksome screeching interrupted her with a scare.

The princess groaned and left the table with an exasperated moan. “What is it now?!”

Storming out of her private quarters, Twilight found the airship’s deck vividly illuminated with sunlight and bathed in dew. Hot vapor rose from the damp wood, though it might still be from the rain. It would be empty if not for a couple of the pegasus crewponies looking out in all directions with spyglasses. The old griffon Loremaster called Gehenna sat at an improvised table in the form of a crate by the airship’s bow. One of the crewponies, cyan and blue, dressed in an open black jacket and red bandana held an umbrella to protect her from the sun in the cloudless sky.

For some reason Twilight honestly didn’t want to know.

Gallensa still screeched and yelled, banging at the crate with her closed fist as Gehenna simply stared at her, unfazed like a mountain before a breeze. A broken cup and unknown liquid on the floor told Twilight the two had some sort of disagreement. A violent one.

As if Gallensa’s insistent yelling and shrieking weren’t clues enough.

“Is there a problem?” Twilight approached with her ears pulled back. Her annoyance didn’t come from the morning yelling, but from the high-pitched screaming in a foreign language hurting her ears.

“Yes!” Gallensa turned to the princess and her intense glare made Twilight’s eyes pop wide as she took a step back. The griffoness, however, amazed Twilight at how easily she could seamlessly switch between two completely different languages. “The traitor is not onboard!”

“What? Who?” Twilight gathered her wits and cocked an eyebrow. “You mean… What was his name? Grinolf? Wasn’t he with you when we boarded?”

“I saw him onboard!” Gallensa yelled and then turned to Gehenna and screeched at her some more in their own language.

“What happened to him?” Cadance came next to Twilight and frowned at the younger griffoness, also drawn by the yelling. “And why are you so angry? I can’t understand Griffonese, much less this dialect of yours.”

“He was supposed to return with us to Griffindell.” Gehenna finally spoke with a calm and controlled voice while one of the pegasus crewponies cleaned the spilled liquid. “But he seems to have escaped sometime during the night. Lady Gallensa is angry because of it. She blames me and the pegasi.”

“And you didn’t know in any way, nor could possibly have stopped him…” Gallensa accused, using the universal language so Twilight and Cadance would understand, but all three of them ignored her.

“Because he knows important things about airship operations and was a good soldier?” Twilight mused. “I wonder if he will try to request asylum again.”

“Good soldiers don’t betray their lieges. Much less refuse to accept their lot in life.” The younger griffoness mumbled angrily like a filly being told she’s wrong.

“No.” Cadance pointed a hoof at the yellow hen. “She’s angry because she can’t torture him over not being perfect like she is.”

Twilight’s ears pulled back again. “I don’t have the patience for this.”

“Such matters are important to us, Princess.” Gehenna spoke with the same serenity as before. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, I would! They are important to me too.” Cadance banged a hoof on the floor. “It’s simple! You treated a young and impressionable creature as though he was broken. Gee… I wonder why would he want to distance himself and reject actual help? Could it be because the actually believes he’s broken? And then came to a point where he believed there was no point in trying to improve? Because he was playing a losing game?”

“This is why Lady Gwendolen has sent me to rescue him.” Gehenna retorted with irritating calmness. “It is true we wished to preserve many secrets he holds, but Lady Gwendolen wished to rectify the situation.”

Cadance sat on her hind and joined her hooves with a fake smile and voice. “Oh my! I am so, so sorry I branded you a pariah in our backwards society. May I, perhaps, grant you a consolation prize so you won’t tell the ponies about our fancy airship? Make you forget your schmaltzy emotions? That I broke. Because I think you are inferior?”

Twilight chose to keep her mouth shut. She understood Cadance’s frustration, but given they were trying to work together, she could have afforded to avoid the sarcastic tone.

“On my path to becoming a Loremaster I have learned many things, Princess. More than you can imagine about griffons in the entire span of our history.” Gehenna’s beak showed a contained grin. “And if there is one thing I have learned about griffons, it is that comforts, privilege and luxury are very good at mending a wounded heart.”

“This Lady Gwendolen sure sounds like something…” Cadance’s ears pulled back and she mumbled something probably better not said out loud.

“Lady Gwendolen is the very model of what a griffon noble ought to be.” The yellow griffoness even sat with her back straight and opened her wings, gesturing to herself and showing a little more than Twilight wanted to see. “I too am a model of a griffon noble. And Grinolf managed to make a liability of himself both as a servant to the crown and as a griffon. It’s his ancestors’ fault, and his burden to bear with dignity.”

How to respond? Twilight considered everything she had just said completely out of touch with anything she would consider fair. Or even connected to reality.

“Are you trying to become a villain, or something?” Cadance didn’t seem to have found it funny, despite what she said. Actually, she looked like she wanted to give the young griffoness a good spanking.

“Forgive Lady Gallensa’s behavior, princesses. But she is correct.” Gehenna said after one of Twilight’s crewponies brought her a new tea. “A competent, nation-wide leadership must mind the needs of the nation, of Griffonkind. Not so much those of the individuals. A healthy nation requires sacrifices, but it also provides opportunities for industrious individuals. It is up to griffons to make a life for themselves. And such is what Grinolf achieved. He earned recognition from Lady Gwendolen. He proved it is achievable by all griffons with unfortunate familiam backgrounds.”

“Are you aware that nations don’t suffer?” Cadance ground her teeth and glared at the old griffon lady. “It is individuals who suffer and may need help with their problems. Hopefully, the problems one has naturally… Such as food, health, education, housing… Not the ones created by a griffon lady with a god complex.”

“I think what Cadance is trying to say…” Twilight rolled her eyes. “Is that a good leader must ensure all their subjects have access to what they need. Before they can expect them to serve the greater good… Not that just enough of their subjects are healthy enough so the nation can function. Healthy, educated, and safe citizens make for an efficient workforce. I’m glad it worked for Grinolf, but I am sure there are many others suffering because of certain ideals that are not exactly paramount. If anything, this mentality creates wasted potential.”

At least it was what Celestia had taught Twilight. It seemed to work, as far as she knew.

Gehenna smiled, taking her new cup from the improvised table and showed a haughty smile. “I pity you, princess. Celestia has neglected your education as a future leader. You don’t understand sacrifices are often not yours, but that of your subjects. Whether they like it, or not. For the sake of a better future. To conquer the struggles of the present, parents often must sacrifice much for the sake of their children. Such as with war, famine, and other disasters of a less mundane nature. Roles change, and the ruler’s is to rule, to command, and demand if they must.”

“The struggles you mean,” Twilight thought Cadance let her voice raise a touch too much, but she agreed with the sentiment. “Came out of a crazy griffon lady who puts her ideals above griffons. Causing all sorts of pain and suffering along the way, while protecting your own privileges!”

The old griffon lady didn’t respond immediately and Gallensa simply blinked at Cadance’s words. Twilight herself might have worded it differently, but after Cadance had finished, she couldn’t reproach her. The old griffoness started laughing, though.

“Princess, failing to see the struggles which were necessary for the present luxuries is the quintessential example of what privilege is.” Gehenna’s mocking mirth made Twilight consider punching an old creature for the first time in her life. “Or do you believe Princess Celestia built the world you were born into out of friendship and rainbows?”

“Why, the very thing that the pony goddesses did, entire cycles of creation and destruction ago, was to destroy another’s perfect world.” Gehenna still laughed.

Gallensa chuckled too, while Twilight and Cadance listened and stared, still processing the old loremaster’s argument. “Why, Princesses. Have you never heard ‘a griffon’s trash is another’s treasure?’”

Cadance’s ears pulled back and her glare ceased to amuse. Twilight even worried she would do something she might regret. “Princess Celestia saved the world from your emperor!”

“You are confused, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza.” The old griffoness matched Cadance’s stare. “That is not what I am talking about. Do you, perhaps, believe the mighty Battlehorns Celestia used to ‘free the world of the Griffon Scourge’ were found on trees?”

Cadance blinked. Twilight frowned. She should have figured it out sooner.

“That they sprouted out of the land, or perchance, the Princess harvested them off the Tree of Harmony?” Gehenna’s mirth turned to a maleficent smile. “In the present day the proclivities of genetics and of thaumatobiology allow for spontaneously powerful unicorns to raise from pedestrian families. But even their power is rooted in the foundation laid by the Battlehorn matriarchs. Their families were the product of countless strategic marriages and careful ‘pruning’ of misbehaving branches. All so they could produce consistently potent and talented combat spellcasters.”

“So…” Gallensa concluded for her. “If you are going to accuse Lady Gwendolen of protecting griffon bloodlines, you better be prepared to accuse your dear Princess Celestia too.”

Twilight didn’t react and her face showed no outward expression. But her thoughts caught on: context matters. The reason every situation ought to be dealt with the deserved exclusivity, even if all creatures should follow codified law. But she decided not to waste her time arguing about it with the two hens.

“Well, that is exactly what I intend!” Cadance cried and didn’t even surprise Twilight. Emotional, irrational. Plain angry, with her ears pulled back flat against her head and scowling. Even more hurt than angry, the other princess let her wings flare and stomped a hoof at the floor.

“I suppose your highness is also willing to let go of your privileges as part of a reparation effort?” Gehenna returned to a stoic demeanor, holding her cup with both paws, and showing a blank, disinterested expression.

“I am going to make Princess Celestia answer for anything she might have done in the wrong. As much as I am going to make this Lady Gwendolen of yours pay for the damage she has done to griffons!” Cadance cried again.

Twilight sighed. It seemed Cadance forgot a bit of Kirin wisdom which preached that one should not argue when angry. But it hurt that she agreed with Cadance, even if things just weren’t as simple as punishing someone. Especially since Twilight herself and her friends, Cadance included, were part of the whole mess which caused whoever knew how many lives to end last night. Everything they did, as much as Celestia had done in the past, had purpose. And that mattered. But it was not the time to remind Cadance of such.

“Princess! Sorry t’bother. Our scouts!” The pegasus in the crow's nest called from the top of the mast and pointed his hoof eastbound. One of their scouts flew towards them and yet another followed close.

Twilight silently thanked them for ending the conversation before horns and talons started flashing.

***

Discord felt the cold of morning in The Lion’s mansion. It sat at the top of a mountain, in the coldest place of the world outside of the lands the Windigos had claimed for themselves. But the multiple fireplaces and thick stone walls made it comfortable enough.

However, he didn’t go there to study the region’s climate. He meant to endear the griffons to him and help Celestia reach them. To learn about Lady Gwendolen and understand her relationship with the griffons. Preferably, he would like to help Lord Gilad keep his goddess mate from getting herself and Celestia killed. Ideally, saving the world from ending into a magical singularity. And he wanted to see if the southerner griffon Lady Gwendolen had ordered imprisoned in her tower was alright.

Fortunately, all those objectives worked together, and he felt he advanced them as he waited for the right opportunity.

He watched the griffon maids who worked at the mansion. He watched Lady Gwendolen scolding them for doing something wrong, and he saw her rewarding them for jobs well done. She seemed to have gotten comfortable with him being around during his short time there, and he watched her being the matron of the mansion. She left the military matters to Lord Gilad and happily minded the mansion’s workings, concerning herself with matters of the city and griffons who inhabited it.

He wondered if such a dynamic took her to a safe place, something similar to her life during the Empire.

She flirted with Gilad and didn’t seem to notice her mate and Discord had made plans behind her back. Or maybe she didn’t mind. With the way her head seemed to work, it wouldn’t be surprising if she thoroughly understood Gilad and Discord meant to keep her from fighting Celestia. Maybe she found it endearing. Maybe she simply never noticed. Figuring out her thoughts and motivations at any given moment proved difficult.

One thing Discord did learn, though. Going straight at her led to failure. He ought to explore her subordinates, and he had planned exactly for that.

The room shouldn’t be called a classroom, but a fancy meeting room with a classroom complex. Classrooms had simple desks. The room had large desks. Truly spacious and luxurious working tables behind which the young griffonesses sat and stared at him. Each desk had a candelabra, a collection of books, several sheets of quality paper, and ink. Even the thing he had seen Celestia using to fixate the ink in the paper and remove the excess. He wondered if their feather pens came from griffon wings.

Walls of stone and mortar held tall windows showing the mountain range behind The Roost and the perpetually stormy sky. Wind shook them and whistled, but the room held a comfortable temperature thanks to a small fireplace and double glass sheets. An iron candelabra hung from the wooden ceiling and held several candles for a comfortable reading light.

He sat at the rear row and tried to ignore the young griffonesses staring at him with confused frowns as their teacher entered the room. To his frustration, it wasn’t Lady Gwendolen, but one of her Loremasters, the tan and yellow one with the delicate drawings of flowers on her foreleg called Gervina.

“Girls, I’m sorry I’m late, please don’t tell Lady Gwendolen!” She pushed the heavy door closed before she turned to her audience. “She asked me to talk to you about those techniques…”

She stopped talking when her amber eyes found Discord at the deep end of the room. “Uh… You’re not supposed to be here.”

“I want to learn!” Discord opened his arms with a huge grin.

“Seriously, get out.” She pointed a thumb to the door and scowled.

“Lady Gwendolen wants me to learn about griffons so I will side with her and give her the key to creatures’ minds.” He pouted angrily and crossed his arms. “So, I’m staying.”

“I need to talk to these girls about stuff you can’t hear…” The griffoness in front of the class beat her wings with frustration and held her nares in her fingers. “Look, this is awkward… You’re a guy… And we’re ladies… Do you really want to listen to griffon ‘girl stuff’?”

What in the world did Lady Gwendolen want her to teach those griffonesses? Whatever, it didn’t matter. His plan was working.

“If they have to learn,” Discord didn’t relent, instead he spoke with the most resolute of tones. “Then it’s important and I need to know!”

“Listen!” The decorated griffoness ruffled her feathers. “Lady Gwendolen is gonna be pissed at me if I don’t give them this lecture, and I can’t do it with you here! I’m already late! Get out.”

He kept his arms crossed and raised his snout.

“Aw, come on!” Gervina cried. “Please?”

Discord didn’t move and the griffoness sighed, letting her wings sag. “What do I have to do to get rid of you?”

“Well…” Discord pulled at his beard with an innocent stare at the clear planks on the ceiling. “I really want to see what is inside Lady Gwendolen’s tower, to meet the southerner prisoner… But since I can’t, I must stay here.”

She growled and walked to a closet in the corner. Pulled a drawer, fiddled with something Discord couldn’t see and produced a black key from inside. “Here! The key to the tower. Now, get lost!”

Wow. She didn’t even try to bargain. Discord grinned and ran up to her to grab the key. She spoke again. “Just don’t tell her I gave you this thing!”

“Don’t worry, Gervina.” He saluted. “And thanks a lot.”

Finally, he left her rushing out the doors which opened and closed on their own for him. Standing on the corridor outside, he held the key up and grinned triumphantly, but flinched when he heard the clinking of armor approaching. So, he swallowed the key in one dry gulp.

Two griffons walked into the corridor. They wore the black and golden cuirass armor of the city, with the red scarves of the Court of The Harpy. Large griffons in their typical metallic colors and serious stares. On their backs, they carried halberds over the complementing red capes.

“Hey guys, looking strong.” Discord grinned and gave them a thumb up. The two stopped, slightly confused, but the one on the right smiled and thanked him before they went on in their patrol.

With them gone, a short and uneventful walk, took him back to the door into Gwendolen’s mysterious tower. One of the younger loremasters guarded it. A blue and cyan griffon lady, very young but wearing the same blue cape with the iron chain Loremaster Gehenna wore. She kept a stoic and patient expression, waiting for her ‘shift’ to be over, until she saw Discord.

“Hi!” He approached her with a friendly grin and a wave of his griffon paw.

“Hello.” She gave him a pleasant smile. “Can I help you, Lord of Chaos?”

“No, I’m fine.” He showed her the key. Truth be told, she grimaced when he shoved his griffon paw down his throat and pulled out the key, but she dealt well enough with it. “Excuse me.”

“Aaah…” She fluttered her wings nervously. “No… I’m pretty sure Lady Gwendolen doesn’t want anyone in there who isn’t her or the head maid.”

“Come now…” Discord gave her a winning smile. “We both know I am not ‘anyone’.”

“Well… True…” She lifted a paw off the floor, as insecurely as was her sideways glance. “But… Uh…”

“Would I have this,” he waved the saliva-covered key in front of her and grinned even more. “If I couldn’t get in? Do you want to get in trouble with Lady Gervina? She gave me her key, and I will have to talk to her if I can’t get in. I mean… I would hate for this to make its way all the way to Lady Gwendolen…”

“Okay… Hum… Okay. Fine.” She tip-tapped nervously on the floor. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Alrighty then.” He unlocked the door and went in. “Toodles.”

Closing the door, and being careful to lock it, he left the key in the lock. It would be a problem if anyone tried to open the door, but that was the idea. He could simply say he forgot the key in there.

He tapped his head with a talon. Big brain moment.

He found himself in a pleasant resting room. It had a chaise lounge made of black varnished wood and red, velvety upholstery. A beautiful and colorful green and golden rug. Too colorful and definitively not made of animal pelt, but vegetal fibers. Completely disparate from anything Northerner, it may have come from Saddle Arabia, judging by the decorative motifs. The room also had a drawing stand, comfortable sitting pillows, a small bar, and a candelabra hanging from the ceiling with several candles. Finally, some drawings in pencil rested on the stand and several paintings hung from the wall. Mostly desert landscapes, a city among the dunes with a set of black pyramids, snow covered mountains and a giant city, carved out of a mountain under a gray sky.

He picked up the high grammage, top quality paper sheets and the one on top had a very detailed anatomical drawing. The sort Discord was used to see at Canterlot University, showing the muscles underneath the skin of a male griffon, complete with naughty details of the naughty bits. A little too many details, for Discord’s taste.

He put the paper on the back and looked at the next drawing. It was similarly complex. Creepy in how detailed it was. A drawing of the entire block of the organs inside a griffon, with dangling bits of connective tissue. The uncanny level of detail initially upset Discord, but he supposed it was reasonable… If she was The Harpy and she did create the griffons. She could seriously earn some money as an artist, though.

The next sheet had a portrait of a male griffon. He seemed very stern, with a cutting scar next to the right side of his beak. The following had a very pretty hen... Or ‘queen’, he supposed. She had a shorter beak, but the same stern expression, even if her beak seemed smaller and cuter on her fierce visage.

Discord hummed, as there were more drawings in the pile. Interesting, but he ought to find the prisoner. He left the drawings where he found them, putting them back in the right order, and looked around. A small window to the outside, closed with glass remained to be examined, and it showed the peaks behind the city. A staircase by the entrance led upstairs, circling the outer wall of the tower. He took it.

On the floor above Discord found… Oh boy…

A laboratory, or something grimmer. In the center sat a table with thick leather straps. A small table next to it had several neatly organized surgical instruments. For some reason, the clinical cleanliness made it all worse. Large tanks made of glass had organs Discord couldn’t ever identify if he tried. And ‘things’ which looked like dissected equine legs, with green tissues and exposed joints floated in a strong-smelling clear liquid.

Discord’s mouth pursed as he scanned the room and found drawings hanging from the walls. They showed a changeling laying on their back and clear indications of where tools went to hold the cuts open. Written indications of different structures in the striking written form of High Griffonese. He had thought the drawings in the other room freaked him out... The clinical perfection belonged in one of those anatomy atlases and the drawn recreation of damaged tissues was even worse. Down to torn muscle fibers and broken carapaces in external drawings of changelings. Detailed drawings of how their horns connected to the brain and dissections of the organs themselves.

He hurried back to the stairs and ran up before he lost his cool. What he saw there should have shocked him, but instead it just made his expression blank as he let out a sigh. The room had cages, another table with straps. Straps on the walls. Hanging from the ceiling. And racks with all sorts of ‘painful persuasion’ tools. Black wood closets Discord didn’t want to know what was inside and a stand with paper and writing tools. Other than a fireplace and different pokers, there was nothing else in the room. So, he went up the stairs again and the floor above contained a library.

A desk occupied the center of the stony room, next to a table with tools for making books. No books on the table, but countless filled the cases lining the walls. A large candelabra provided good reading illumination, despite the lack of windows. But other than being a nice one, it was only a library. No prisoners, Discord moved on.

Magic radiating from someone nearby alerted Discord he wasn’t alone. It could only be one other than him in there, if not the prisoner. He grimaced and tip-toed slowly his way up the stairs until he looked past the edge of the stone wall. He saw an entirely closed and round room, with the only entrance being the door by the stairs which continued their spiral around the tower. He hid behind the opening.

Lady Gwendolen sat at the edge of a pool with her dark back to him. The pool, on a second glance, looked like a water mirror, considering it must be shallow. Maybe a magical scrying pool, since powerful but almost disorderly magic radiated from it like a breeze. Thin iron stands with once melted white wax sticking to it held thick candles surrounding the room and provided a dim, calming light.

He should’ve been prudent and moved on, to maybe try to reach the prisoner he wanted to see, but curiosity got the better of him. If he could feel her presence, she should feel his, unless whatever she was doing required she focused on it. Being the case, it must be important.

A very subtle magic, other than the one from the pool, hung in the air and in Discord’s magical senses, it was tinged with petrichor. Subtle, yet mighty, almost overbearing. Her open wings, mostly black as seen from behind, spread her feathers out and small, barely perceptible, flashes illuminated them occasionally. Discord might be wrong, but he swore he could hear little cracks of lightning magic.

He watched her for some time, and her head would jerk sporadically, as she saw something in there. Eventually she grabbed something in the water with her talons. A shiny little grain she deposited into a small and bulbous crystal vial. She took it before her eyes and examined it critically, but she looked tired, with her black crest bent forward and squinty gray eyes. As the glow faded, something settled at the bottom of the vial, but Discord couldn’t make out what. She then closed it with a proper, fancy crystal cork and put it with others on a small table by her side.

After repeating the process a dozen times more, as Discord’s frustration and curiosity almost steamed out of his ears, she finally stopped. The magic floating in the air evanesced slowly after she closed her wings and only the ‘breeze’ from the pool remained. Gwendolen took one of the small crystal vials and examined it for a few seconds with a small, warm smile, and then returned it to the table with the others. Finally, she yawned and shook the sleepiness out of her head.

Almost as he could predict, she turned to the entrance. He hid before she had a chance of seeing him and hastened away downstairs in time, covering his muzzle with his paws as much as he tried to hide, lowering himself.

Maybe a silly reaction, he thought so himself. But knowing how Magic worked, the very acts would help him hide from her. And as minutes passed, she never came down. It certainly helped that she was tired. The pool and its magical emissions may have masked his presence. Whatever the explanation, he was happy she didn’t seem to notice him.

He slowly tip-toed back to the vacant room and walked inside, bending his long body to look around corners and be sure she wasn’t in there, somewhere. He couldn’t feel her magical presence anymore, but one never knew.

Satisfied, he approached the pool, craning his neck over it. It was a water mirror. A serene surface of clear water reflecting his curious expression and the flat wood ceiling back to him. Certainly magical too, but its magical emissions had quieted, even if traces of energy remained. She had just used it for some strange form of necromancy he didn’t know.

Technically, he didn’t know any formal studies of magic. They were too boring for him to bother, but he knew the different applications of magic. Only the specifics escaped him.

The glint of candlelight on the small crystal vials drew his eyes and he picked one among the two dozen or so present. It reminded him of a flask for perfume, with a very narrow neck, and a fancy crystal cork made easy to remove. Inside it contained no liquid, but a tiny griffon. A blue and white one, curled around herself and sleeping.

He blinked and thought for a second before he squirmed and almost dropped the little vial. His voice came as a hushed, but squeaky cry. “Sacrebleu! It’s a soul!”

He avoided dropping, or even shaking it, holding the vial in his palms as though it would break if he so much as breathed too much. It took an eternity for him to finally hold the vial by the delicate neck and place it back with the others.

“What in Tartarus? What is she gonna do with them?” He whispered under his voice as though he feared she would listen. Bolder, he took another of the vials as smoothly and softly as his lion’s paw would work and took it to eye level. Another tiny sleeping griffon curled around himself. A delicate green little thing, but different from the other, his paws were covered in a golden glove, like he had dipped his forepaws in golden paint.

“Well, that is something.” Discord changed it for another two and they all seemed to contain sleeping teeny griffons. He still handled them with the utmost care but changed them for two others again. Each had a sleeping griffon, some of them with the ‘golden gloves’.

“Put them down.” He shivered when her voice came from the stairs, and he felt like a foal raiding the cookie jar. Perhaps an analogy not involving food would be better because her tone was closer to the murderous rather than playful. “Your magic might be disruptive to them at this stage.”

Her ruffled plumage, making her crown of black feathers even larger, told him enough as he moved slowly. “Sorry…I didn’t mean…”

“Put them down!” She repeated, louder. A hurricane of magic washed over him, not physical, but only apparent to his magical senses.

Unsettling, as he was used to physical signs of magical mobilization, such as shimmering and chiming horns. But he didn’t have time to analyze it. He just put the vials back and took a couple of steps back.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you. Or them!” He put up his paws. “I just… Uh…”

What was he going to tell her? That he didn’t want to disturb her weird experiment, or her little griffon souls in jars, while he was intruding on her private tower? He just blinked and his mouth bent downward as he strummed his claws and talons together. “I uh… I mean… Hum…”

She had sat by the entrance, holding a steaming mug, and kept staring at him with a blank expression, despite her tense body language. But she relaxed as he tried to explain himself and kept trying with no success. She didn’t smile, as Celestia would whenever she caught Discord doing something he shouldn’t. She kept a stern glare as she stood and approached.

“These griffons passed away recently.” She told him, putting herself between him and the small table with the vials. “Griffonstone saw a skirmish between My Children and the Chancellor’s supporters. I still do not know all the details. But griffons on both sides perished and I must watch over them.”

“I don’t understand…” He relaxed a bit too. “Dead creatures… Uh, their souls are supposed to return to the source. To the Pool of Souls, in the Sun. Before they can be born again.”

“My Children, all of them, are not ‘creatures’.” The scowl on her eyes and the growl in her throat almost scared him. “They are griffons. And I care not for whatever system Sol-Estia has put in place. They are not animals as she is! They are supposed to rest at the Stormy Eyrie. With their ancestors, and with me!”

“Okay! Okay…” He put forward his paws defensively again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend. It’s just… I’m used to thinking souls just go there when they leave their bodies behind, and that it’s all part of how things are supposed to work.”

She calmed and returned to her usual haughty posture. He still talked, with a frown. “The Windigos are there now, aren’t they?”

“The Stormy Eyrie exists both in the realm of the living and that of the dead. The boundaries between worlds are thin in the Whitescape. Truthfully, the distinction was not even supposed to be significant.” Gwendolen scowled. “Passage to the Stormy Eyrie used to be instantaneous, and the living could visit it freely. Now the Windigos haunt the region and the sprawling hills and mountains became a dead desert of snow and ice. The husks of great griffon cities still remain, taken by undead abominations and My Children must pass their lands to reach their resting place! All because the accursed ponies couldn’t keep from quarreling!”

She flared her wings and showed her talons as her voice raised more and more. “All it took was one feather-worth of free-will and not only they turned on themselves, but they managed to destroy one fifth of the world! I could not do it if I wanted!”

She took in a breath. “My Children will not even remember me! Much less the customs I have taught them! All because Sol-Estia didn’t understand individuality. Because that accursed creature took over the world for herself and made it into a childish joke of what it was!”

“Well… Uh…” Discord took a step back. “I suppose you’ll have to understand not all of them will be willing to live in this place. It’s dangerous and cold.”

“Grah!” She screeched and threw up her paws. “Griffonstone is dangerous! It has immoral politicians stealing their resources and vile bandits who will rob what remained and kill them for sport!”

She glared at him and trained her talons at his neck, standing on her hindlegs and letting her wings flare. “If you would give me the key to the Throne of Life, I could fix everything! But instead, you are intruding in my private quarters!”

Suddenly, as Discord put out his paws defensively and took another step back, she cried and turned to the little flasks on the table with calming gestures. “Shh… Shh… Little ones. Go back to sleep. Mommy is not angry with you… It is all right.”

Discord let his arms hang and stared at her while she soothed the little flasks which seemed to produce no reaction whatsoever. “Is it gonna be okay?”

She sighed, turning to him. “I apologize. I am tired and perturbed. I need to rest. I… I have hurt a friend. Someone who looks up to me… I didn’t trust her, and I hurt her unfairly.”

“Well…” He crossed his arms. “You should apologize. If she’s your friend, and you had reason to be worried, she’d understand.”

She chuckled. “It sounds so easy.”

“Heh… It is, and at the same time isn’t.” He shrugged and smiled. “But I suppose everyone deserves a second chance when they do something bad. I mean… It took me a while to learn that, but it seems to work.”

“I suppose you are correct.” She stared at the floor for a couple of seconds before she turned back to him. “What did you want?”

“I’m… Worried about the soldier guy.” Discord pointed up to the ceiling. “The prisoner you have in this tower of yours. I’d like to talk to him.”

She shook her head apologetically. “I cannot allow it. He is not ready yet. He is disoriented and confused. It would hurt him. First, he must accept his new situation. Understand he must stay for his own good and of his kind, not to bargain for the lives of his fellow soldiers.”

“I see.” He pulled at his beard. “Did he agree to staying here if you let the other soldiers go? Or something?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I promised I would let his comrades go back to the South if he stayed and cooperated. He was scared, but his sense of loyalty and duty prevailed. Only, misguided.”

“This is not very encouraging.” Discord sighed. “I feel like you’re gonna force-feed him caribou and rich wine while preaching that ponies are evil.”

“He is extremely important.” She hardened her stare. “I will take no chances which may lead him to try to escape or even hurt himself in one such attempt. He is the only living specimen of his purity from the Haderani line. He is his kind’s only hope of remaking the proud lords of the desert. He is immature and his emotional development was stunted in the South’s improper culture, but I can fix it.”

“What exactly do you plan on doing with him?” Discord gave her a distrustful stare and held his hip.

“He will be my courtier.” She ignored his accusative stare. “He will be given all the peace and security to practice his craft of choice. He will thrive and be happy, unlike his unfortunate life in the South. He will share my good food and the comforts of my hearth. He will have his choice of beautiful and suitable queens, yes. And I expect him to produce valuable offspring to whom he may or may not care for.”

“I know it is ‘icky’ to the pony-loving culture you have endeared yourself with,” she made mocking gestures of disgust with her fingers. “But some things are due to some griffons. His circumstances are as valid as any wealth any southerner politician would have to throw at the ignorant masses. Even in the south, queens may choose a sire and not ever meet with them again.”

“I can guarantee… I am much more interested in his welfare than you are, and not necessarily because of his seed.”

“Speaking like that really puts a warm towel on my worries…” He groaned sarcastically.

“I do not remember requiring your acceptance, and last I remember, you are invading my privacy.” She put out her paw. “Give me the key.”

“It’s on the door.” He shrugged with a malcontent frown but was still curious and turned to the table. “What will you do with the tiny griffon souls over there?”

She looked at them, and then back to Discord. “I will send them on their way to the Stormy Eyrie.”

“But… What about the Windigos?” Discord pointed at the vials. “Are you just going to drop them there?”

“They have spent their whole lives preparing for this final journey. It is partially why the northerners became as they are. Griffons are meant to be intelligent, mentally, and physically strong. They are supposed to learn how to survive on their own and in groups. They are supposed to assist each other in times of need. They are supposed to compete and to be graceful both in victory and in defeat.” She raised her paw for him to stop as he prepared to talk back to her. “Blame Sol-Estia. She is the one who forwent the rites of the Alicorn Cult. She is the one who abandoned souls to the flux of magical energies. Without me, the apostate griffons of the south would be abandoned. I will not have My Children scattered to a flux of magical energies as purposeless, irrational creatures.”

“This is a very, very… Very! Outrageously disingenuous way of putting it.” Discord opened his arms. “No creature is ‘abandoned’. That is simply what they are supposed to do when they die. And Celestia dismantled the Cult of the Goddesses because she saw it caused more trouble than it was worth. And I can guarantee, she was right. This whole mess might have been avoided if the Unicorn Kings didn’t believe themselves so high and mighty!”

Gwendolen showed a knowing smile. “Then I suggest you leave and go ask griffons what it is they prefer. That they live their entire lives to end it all with an often untimely death and a deep slumber which destroys all they are. Or to spend an afterlife with their ancestors and friends. Feasting and recalling their great deeds until they are ready to rest and eventually return to the land of the living. A never-ending personal tale of greatness. A tribute to their proud race and my wonderful creation.”

She took one of the vials and held it to stare at the tiny sleeping griffon with his paws covered in gold. “Even the ones who failed miserably to prepare will sooner blame the hoof-licking culture of the south. They will sooner test their meek might against the monstrous spawn of the Windigos. Their northerner brethren will sooner drag them across the Whitescape than allow them to be lost to the whims of the Windigos or Celestia’s neglect.”

“They will despair and complain, but they will still choose to refuse to cease.” She set the vial back on the table and stared at them as she spoke. “This is the difference between My Children and the Children of The Sun. They have true free-will. They understand the power of their individuality, and they will fight to keep it. Even the ones who failed, will sooner become a slave to the Windigos than allow themselves wash away if it gives them another chance.”

“What do you mean?” Discord slumped. “Aren’t the souls the Windigos claim lost?”

“Stop asking me questions, if you cannot trust me.” She pointed at the stairs. “Go ask Gilad. Go ask the hunters who leave the safety of the city and provide it with food. Ask the farmers. Ask the commoners. Ask the monster hunters and the heads of noble families. Ask them what the point of all this is.”

“Now leave. I am busy and you cannot see Geordi.” She scowled at him. “I will tell him to see you when he is ready, but no sooner.”

Manehattan, Finally

The scouts said they were somewhere in the middle of the Chariot Hills. Soft, grassy hills south of Manehattan that weren’t good for a lot other than looking pretty. Far enough the local militia wouldn’t bother looking for them without explicit orders to do so, at least. The hills also should guard the airship from prying eyes traveling the nearby road. Fortunately, they landed during the night under cover from the storm. Otherwise, the city’s Local Militia would’ve already sent ponies to investigate a crashing airship. Fortune, or Harmony, was on their side.

Thus, the plan mostly remained: Twilight, Cadance, and Starlight cast a cloaking spell over the Magic of Friendship. Then, the group of friends and griffons left for Manehattan. They would meet Naminé, see what’s so important Discord wanted them to know from her, and then leave for Snow Mountains. Hopefully, via teleporter and with the airship so they wouldn’t have to deal with the monsters along the way. Or, at least, deal with them by running away in one of the world’s fastest airships. Provided, of course, the airship’s crewponies managed to procure the parts and make it flightworthy in time.

Once they would finally make it to Griffindell, Twilight hoped The Lion would help her find more concrete evidence of all Princess Celestia had hidden away in the past. The Griffon Empire. The Cult of The Harpy. Hopefully, even about the great republic that became Equestria.

Maybe, with enough support, she could get the Princess to make amends.

And she was sure Cadance wanted to trade some choice words with Lady Gwendolen. Or some blows. Fortunately, there was plenty of time for Cadance to cool her head before they arrived and met the griffoness.

The problem was… After last night some bridges might have been burned which Twilight wasn’t entirely ready to burn yet. Or ever. But she supposed it was necessary if the truth was to come out and since Celestia was so adamant on stopping their quest. Though the thought that kept coming back to her was that she couldn’t think of a time in her life when Celestia outright forbade her to do something.

Despite it all, there she was, riding a hot cart smelling of moldy flour. Tucked in a cramped space behind a wall of sacks filled of said produce with her bewildered friends and a bunch of murderous griffons. Listening to Pinkie Pie play the most melancholic song possible on a harmonica. What had happened to her life? Where did that harmonica come from? Pinkie Pie was Pinkie Pie at that moment.

“Darling…” Rarity started ‘that’ way, dragging the ‘A’. As she did whenever one of their friends was getting on her nerves, if her flat ears weren’t enough. “Must you?”

Pinkie stopped playing for a Harmony-blessed moment. “What?”

“We appreciate the musical ambiance.” Grigory spoke politely, laying on the floor next to Gallensa. “But we are trying to sneak into a city.”

“But it’s thematic!” Pinkie’s mane deflated.

“Where did you even get that darned thing?” Applejack rolled her eyes.

“Oh!” Pinkie’s mane returned to its typical fluffiness. “It was behind the fake wood panel in the front of the cart! Right where Twilight is.”

“What?” The alicorn stood and turned, but she saw nothing suspicious about the thick wood boards that made the front of the cart. Not even the usual chest with repair tools and spare parts such carts usually had. “Wait.”

She magically pulled at the planks until one came loose and revealed a hidden compartment. It was empty, and even had the previously missed chest at the bottom. “Huh. Clever. I think. I never smuggled anything anywhere. Other than me, it seems.”

“Is nopony else concerned? We just found that griffons are smuggling stuff into our cities.” Rainbow glared and pointed a hoof at the griffons across from her in their cramped hiding space.

“We’re trying not to find reasons to fight, Rainbow.” Twilight put the plank back in place.

“We can’t get our weapons in via normal methods.” Gray sat in the corner, next to their doctor, who was busy reading a small black book. “Most of the firearms our agents would use are advanced long arms, pistols, and machineguns. Local authorities would lose their mind over some of the stuff we take into cities. Not only are firearms regulated within these cities, but we mean to use them in emergencies.”

“Such as a griffon prince crash landing nearby with a group of ponies that need to get to Snow Mountains?” Twilight smiled with a playful modicum of snark.

“Believe it or not,” Grigory responded with his usual seriousness. “We don’t plan on using these weapons against you. They are meant for defense if our cells are discovered. All our griffons and supporters in the Heartland are supposed to maintain a low profile. All the action is supposed to happen in Griffonia. Lady Gwendolen plans on calling all griffons to Griffonia for a census when we take over, anyway. Maybe there could be trouble at the Saddle Arabian border, if we must.”

Twilight settled and ponies quieted after his explanation. A good five minutes passed in silence without the harmonica.

“So, what’s your problem with the Saddle Arabians?” Rainbow shrugged after a while.

“The desert is ours.” Grigory spoke without any hesitation.

“How does that work?” Shining raised an eyebrow. “They’ve been living there for millennia, and you have been living in Griffonia for millennia… I think that borders in the modern world are very well established. No way you can contest them.”

“There are ruins buried under the sands that prove we inhabited that land.” The purple griffon explained with his usual measured calm. “In fact, the city of Aen Hader was the political and cultural capital of the Empire. It belongs to us.”

“At best,” Cadance raised her voice to draw attention. “It means the lands were disputed. The tall ponies are indigenous to the region, and you are not. I can’t imagine the Hall of Friendship giving you any use over the land.”

“We are indigenous to the northerner lands which the Windigos stole from us.” Gallensa glared at her. “Because of you.”

Cadance rolled her eyes. “Just because your ancestors made up a legend that we used them as weapons… Nocreature is going to take that seriously. Especially when ponies also lost so much because of the Windigos.”

“I don’t think that they would be discouraged by the Hall of Friendship disagreeing with them, Cadie.” Shining responded dryly.

Applejack cleared her throat. “We’re trying to work together here. Remember?”

Her comment caused Pinkie Pie to giggle, but Twilight’s stomach sunk at the idea that the griffons might be right. What if Princess Celestia lied about it, and has been lying for literal ages? What if that was the big thing? That ponies really summoned the Windigos as a weapon to attack the griffons?

One of the griffons pulling the cart knocked at the front. “Hey, we’re coming up on the checkpoint. You better be quiet.”

Ponies and griffons, sitting or laying on the moldy flour silenced, but kept staring at each other across the empty space in the middle. The squeaky suspension, hard as it was, was the most prevalent noise along with the creaking of the wheels. Flurry Heart let out a soft coo, looking up at Cadance who shushed her.

“Why in the everlasting Winter did this mare bring her little spawn?” Gallensa asked in an angry, but hushed voice. “Why are we dragging the pony child along?”

While Flurry Heart blew her tongue at the yellow griffoness, Cadance gave her a steel-melting glare. “I must be with Flurry Heart. She still needs me.”

Miss Calcite, the crystal pony maid shared in Cadance’s glaring. “Princess Flurry Heart is still too young to be left without her mother’s milk. Not to mention that Flurry Heart is very unlikely to cause problems.”

While the ponies and griffons looked to one side and the other to follow the argument, Twilight’s eyes rolled.

“Then this pink eye-sore should’ve stayed in the airship.” Gallensa shot back, fortunately, keeping the hushed tone. “Then neither you nor the baby would’ve had to come!”

“Excuse me? Eye-sore?” Shining snorted while Cadance gasped, and Flurry Heart gasped even louder.

“Guys…” Twilight stomped a hoof a couple of times. “Can we, please, not?”

They silenced for a minute until Grigory’s thin gunsmith friend frowned and appointed at the pony side of the room and spoke softly. “Aren’t the pokehead guards going to ‘feel’ our pokeheads? Or something?”

Twilight answered in a similar tone. “Only if they are looking for something like hiding unicorns.”

“They should.” Shining added with concern.

“Be quiet.” Gray said. “This is just a formality. Our griffons are going to bribe the checkpoint’s supervisor.”

“What?!” Shining cried and all the present creatures shushed him as the cart stopped. He followed again in a hushed tone. “Bribe?!”

They could hear creatures talking outside the thick cotton tarp that covered the cart.

“Greetings sirs.” A female pony voice filtered through. “Sorry for the inconvenience. We are looking for somepony and all accesses to the city are being controlled. Please state your business.”

Twilight heard the ripping sound of someone unbuckling a strap as a griffon spoke. “Greetings’ ma’am. We’re taking flour to a bakery within the city. From Haywood.”

The pony hummed. “Plenty of bakeries in Manehattan, mister.”

“Well, the griffon one, of course. Here are the documents.”

“I see.” Twilight could hear flapping paper as well as their voices. The mare hummed loudly. “Come on. Let’s talk in my office. Both of you.”

Pony hooves and griffon paws walked away, but a few remained walking around the cart.

“Hold on…” Rainbow spoke in a raspy hushed tone. “Does that mean we could be with the Elements and still get through?”

Twilight shushed her with a hoof before her muzzle. “We still wouldn’t have had time to fetch them before we left, Rainbow!”

“I don’t even have a legendary magical stone of untold power to smuggle anyway…” Starlight whispered too, with an angry frown.

“For feather’s sake, will you ponies shut up?” Grigory growled despite his reserved tone.

Almost on cue, the tarp around the back opened and someone hopped onto the cart. A dim light filtered past the gaps between the sacks of flour. Hooves sounded on wood on the other side of the wall of flour hiding them. At least the squeaky and hard suspension didn’t shift too much with some creature walking inside the cart.

“Small load. So…” A voice came from the other side of their protection. Female and curious. “Are we supposed to take all of these out and examine each one, or are you going to use that horn of yours?”

“Nah…” A male responded. “They are definitively hiding something.”

“Ah? How do you know?” Twilight’s eyes rolled at the conversation, but she almost giggled at Shining Armor’s bitter frown.

“I don’t want to know. There’s certainly a check in the middle of ‘the documents’…” The male explained. “If you find something you’re gonna get in the way and the boss is gonna be pissed. Just say you saw nothing suspicious and that I magically searched this cart and found nothing. Come on.”

The cart shifted one last time and there was silence. No pony or griffon said anything, but Twilight relaxed once she saw Grigory’s soldier friend was calm. Not too long after Twilight heard the ‘boss’ speaking.

“Get that open.” She yelled while Twilight also heard the straps being buckled again.

“Thanks a lot, ma’am.” A griffon said. “Appreciate it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Be on your way.” The mare responded as the cart started moving again.

After a couple of minutes there was a knock on the wood again and the griffon spoke to them. “We’re through. We’ll be there soon.”

Just as he spoke, the cart started rattling on the typical cobblestone of the larger pony cities. They should be safe for a while and Twilight ought to start thinking about how to contact Naminé. Hopefully, the griffons should help.

“So… Can we report that we smuggled ourselves into town and witnessed blatant… Uh…” Spike started with a confused frown.

“Dereliction of duty, Spike…” Shining growled.

***

Celestia sat at her desk. It was the same room the griffons had given her to settle at the Chancellor’s Palace. The three little cubs had been taken away to a proper orphanage and she had lost track of time while reading reports from the city. She was supposed to have slept a few hours ago, but reports kept coming. From her Royal Guards and from loyal griffon officials. She postponed going to bed, and suddenly it was time to raise the sun again.

Once the bit of joy that was bringing a new day upon the world washed away, she was back to reading. Dreadful reports of griffons shooting each other. Griffons pointing fingers and accusing each other. Griffons committing suicide. Griffons burning evidence. Crimes, looting, assaults and worse. Much worse. If she was not there, the intelligence division of the Griffonian Standing Army might have seen a bloodshed like the ones before the Federation. Everything they know would’ve been lost.

She sighed as she looked over the sheet of paper and her eyes refused to remain open. The familiar pony glyphs had become a collection of undecipherable symbols and numbers worse than anything a griffon might have written. There was a reason they called bad calligraphy ‘griffonage’.

She whined to herself and didn’t even need to read to know what they said. ‘Hatred’, ‘discrimination’, ‘violence’, ‘verbal assaults’, actual ‘assaults’. Although she supposed she could understand the griffons. Intelligence officers, like the ones in the Blackfeather division, were typically distrusted and disliked by their comrades. Even more so by civilians once they understood their usual tactics. Griffonia’s Blackfeathers were accused of some shady and particularly reproachable things, and it was clear to her they feared something. More than they feared losing their jobs once Gilad became their king.

But anger and violence were not the answer, much less murder and maiming.

She reclined against the sturdy backrest and let out another sigh. Colonel Gaspar wouldn’t open up with her, but the reports she had from her guards said enough. Griffons in the GSA really didn’t like hearing the story old General Gamaliel had to tell. Unfortunately, she only had snippets of the story, and he had suspiciously slipped out of her reach.

To be fair, she almost sided with the Griffonian soldiers on that, given her past with the implicated griffons. But still… More violence was not the answer, and it spoke of keeping information from reaching her.

Her head hurt so much. If Chocolate was there, he would massage her. Help her relax a little bit. And probably scold her for not sleeping the whole night.

Three polite knocks interrupted her thoughts. “Come in.”

The door opened and one of the pegasi clad in the golden armor of the Royal Guard stepped in, closing the door behind him. A pretty mare of an off-white shade of cyan and blue for mane walked in. Her locks turned into a decorative blue plume that went well with her also blue eyes.

Celestia did her best not to show her frustration, but she didn’t think she could stomach another report of violence against Blackfeather officers before breakfast.

“Princess, we received a message from Baltimare. The detachment from the First Royal Guard Fleet has arrived and has begun surveillance operations on the region.” The young mare declared dryly.

“What?” Celestia’s tiredness went away in a surge of nervous energy. An awful sense of foreboding grasped her empty and irritated stomach. “Detachment?”

“The airships, Princess.” The mare frowned. “They have arrived at Baltimare near the end of the night.”

“But… But why? I didn’t…” Celestia frowned too, but it was out of confusion. “How did the message even arrive? Teleportation is near impossible from outside the area.”

“Communication mirrors seen to be working, your highness.” The mare explained, maintaining the professional visage of the Guard. “Poorly, but they are working for short messages to the Heartland. They used the one in the command center in Baltimare and reached Your Highness through the one here in the Chancellor’s Palace.”

She felt stupid and hoped her cheeks didn’t tint, but she had completely forgotten those things existed.

“But…” Celestia wasn’t sure her brain wasn’t working properly because she was so tired or if something had gotten lost in the conversation. “But I didn’t order any detachment from the fleet to Baltimare. Did Admiral Gloria…”

Wait… That was the fleet with the Break of Dawn where Twilight and her friends were detained. Along with Grigory and his friends.

Celestia shook her head and quickly reorganized her thoughts. Something bad had happened. “They were given false orders. Kindly ask the communications team to request a report of what exactly happened with the fleet. Direct them to return to the main fleet immediately. Ask the admiralty to locate all detached ships and relay orders to return immediately to report on the situation. Something’s gone wrong and I don’t like it at all.”

She stopped for a second to think, and thankfully the young mare was one of those who remembered proper protocol: she didn’t leave before Celestia gave her leave. “Relay orders to Manehattan. Have all assets under the Royal House to search Princesses Twilight Sparkle and Mi Amore Cadenza. They are to be detained immediately, along with any companions they might have. Also have them intensify the searches for a pony called Naminé. The Lord Protector will understand.”

“You may go now. Please hurry.” The princess concluded and the mare saluted her before leaving to be replaced by a middle-aged griffon wearing the green uniform of the GSA. It went well with his tan and off-white yellow. A corporal someone had tasked to come talk to the pony princess and he wasn’t in any hurry whatsoever.

He gave her a curt bow. “Morning, your highness. One Miss Mallet is here to see you. She wears the robes of a Royal Justiciar.”

“Thank you.” Celestia smiled at him. “Please tell her I’ll be with her in a while.”

The soldier nodded. “I will, Princess. The chef asks you if you would like breakfast.”

She shook her head and fought a yawn. “No. Please thank him, but I don’t think I will have time for it.”

“Yes.” The soldier bowed again. “With your excuse, Princess.”

She rolled her eyes at the thought of Chocolate Velvet glaring angrily at her for foregoing sleep and breakfast. Maybe he would have breakfast with her. “Please, forget that. I’ll accept breakfast. I will visit the Local Militia Headquarters, but afterwards, I would be delighted to enjoy breakfast.”

***

Discord stayed close to the fireplace in the breakfast room. Just outside of the bedroom Lord Gilad shared with Lady Gwendolen and adjoined a sitting and meeting room. It was a nice place to rest or spend time with a friend. It had the prevalent rustic luxury to be found around the mansion. The maids busied themselves preparing breakfast. Quick and dedicated, he had trouble finding any faults in their work as they set the table and prepared the room. They lighted torches and candles, adjusted curtains, straightened out rugs and tablecloths. He rolled his eyes at the thought that the cause for their dedication was Gwendolen’s work ethic of ‘do it right or I’ll tan your hide’.

“Hi!” One of the maids, a pretty and young thing covered in orange and gray greeted him. The black maid uniform clashed a bit, but she didn’t seem to mind, staring up at Discord with vivid yellow eyes. Her soft voice reminded him of Fluttershy and he wondered if she didn’t feel out of place in that environment of fierce warriors and mighty lords. Then again… One ought to be aware of stepping on Fluttershy too. Anyway, he greeted her. “Would you like something special for breakfast? If it is available in the mansion’s pantry, I would love to get it for you!”

He raised a griffon talon. “I’ll have whatever Lord Gilad will, thank you very much.”

“Alright then!” She smiled at him. “We’ll be serving breakfast soon.”

“Wait.” He raised a paw before she left. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

She sat on her haunches with a little insecure frown and the tip of her brown tail kept twitching nervously. “Yes… I think I can answer a few questions.”

“Do you live here in the city?” He made himself comfortable on one of the seats next to the soothing heat of the fireplace. “Did you come from another city?”

“Oh! I was born in Griffindell!” She smiled in a way Discord wondered if she had feared ‘forbidden questions’. “My uncle owns a strawberry farm within the city walls.”

Discord blinked. “How in the ever-loving world do you grow strawberries in this climate?”

Her smile turned to a beaming grin, her wings opened, and she tip-tapped her forefeet happily. “We have greenhouses! Our house has vassals which own corn and wheat farms, but in the winter only the strawberries in the greenhouses will grow, so we all work together to help feed the cattle and griffons in the city! Which is why the headmaid has put me in charge of the mansion’s little greenhouse!”

“Oh. Then why are you working here in the mansion as a maid?” He crossed his arms. “Instead of, you know, with your family?”

“Ah. Lady Gwendolen says a period of servitude is good for all griffons. Since I’m not a good hunter, much less a warrior or monster hunter, I work in the mansion.” She gasped and waved her paws. “But it’s not like… Bad. I really like it here. Some of us even decide to stay longer. Lady Gwendolen pays us really well and there is a career to follow if we want. Not to mention that we even have a lot of fun.”

Finally, she frowned. “Unless Lady Gwendolen is angry. When she’s angry, she’s very scary.”

“Yeah. I can imagine.” He said plainly, but she smiled again.

“Well… We’ll serve breakfast soon!” And after declaring so, she left hopping and singing softly out the door that led out of the dining room. Gilad soon came out of the door to the bedroom and greeted the mostly younger maids. He wore a simple gray cape with silver hemming and greeted Discord as he approached.

“Greetings, Discord.” He nodded, taking a seat by the fire with calm countenance. Then he chuckled and grinned almost childishly. “Is anything… Out of order?”

“Yes. A large and scary griffon from the north thinks he’s funny.” Discord chuckled back at him, before he cleared his throat. “Not at all, though. I just came from talking with Gwendolen in her tower.”

“Oh. She let you into the tower?” The mighty griffon let his eyes bulge in surprise.

“I… Uh… Invited myself.” Discord shrugged and smiled sheepishly. “I bullied Gervina into giving me her key… It didn’t go very well in the end.”

Gilad chuckled. “Oh, poor Gervina. She’s in trouble now.”

While he laughed and Discord wondered if he had done something terrible, the older maid that was the steely gray headmaid approached them. “Excuse me, Lord Gilad. Lord Graham has arrived during the night, and he would like to see you, if that is acceptable.”

“Yes.” He turned to her. “Please, bring him to me. We will share breakfast.”

She nodded with a smile and retreated out of the room as Gilad turned back to Discord. “If I remember correctly, you have met Lord Graham already.”

“Oh…” The one Discord had convinced, with his mate, not to kill the Griffonian soldiers marching around. “Yes. Stern fellow. His Lady Geena helped a lot, convincing him from killing those soldiers. I really liked meeting both.”

“Lady Geena is one of Gwendolen’s Loremasters.” Gilad told him, staring at the fire in the fireplace. “A particularly good and loyal one.”

“Is that so?” What did he mean by that? She seemed nice enough when Discord talked to her. As nice as someone willing to go against her mate to save the lives of a bunch of clueless griffons. Interesting. She even mentioned she would prefer peace.

Much like he looked the day Discord had met him on the snowfield between the trees, Lord Graham was a large griffon. As large as Gilad and he wore a gray wolf skin over his black pelt, slightly softer than his gray head. He didn’t have his armor, after all, Discord supposed that wearing armor inside for no reason was probably uncouth, or something.

“My lord.” Both griffons acknowledged each other with a respectful bow before the visitor bowed to Discord. The headmaid left him and minded her duties. “Lord of Chaos.”

He just waved at the griffon while Gilad smiled broadly, holding his paw in a greeting. “Welcome to Griffinsky, Graham. Can I offer you breakfast?”

He spoke while he made himself comfortable on a seat by the fire. “Thank you, Lord Gilad. I’ll accept your hospitality.”

“Hello, Lord Graham. Nice meeting you again.” Discord smiled and offered a paw for him to shake, a much more modest gesture than their warm greeting, but friendly enough.

“The pleasure is all mine, Lord of Chaos.” Graham gave him a discreet, but earnest smile.

“The maids should take some time before they are ready to serve breakfast. To what do I owe the pleasure, Graham?”

“Geena is getting herself ready for the Gathering Storm festival and I'd rather get out of her way for a while.” The black griffon smiled for a second and Gilad smiled too.

“You’re a stick in the mud, Graham…” Discord initially recoiled from his words and grim tone, but as the two chuckled at the jest, he came to realize it was friendly banter.

“Unfortunately, there is another reason I came to see you, milord.” Graham spoke again, shifting to a grim tone. He took a second before he continued. “I am sorry to bring such a wicked matter into discussion before breakfast, but something terrible has happened. There is a band of unsavory griffons causing trouble in my land. Young griffons organized into a coalition who seemed to search for some youthful adventure. Some harmless robbing has been credited to them, but they grew bolder as I was too lenient, waiting for them to wise up. A few returned home, but many didn’t... A hunter’s cottage was burned. A hunter was killed and so were his mate and his daughter with signs of particularly evil deeds. My scouts tell me they have found their camp in the Blackland Woods. Thirty or so griffons.”

Gilad’s fist slammed his seat’s armrest. “Unbelievable! I thought we were past this.”

“Indeed.” Graham nodded. “My scouts have buried the victims, but they decided against bringing the bandits to justice, and the reason I am here, and not hunting them, is that something curious is happening.”

Once he had both Discord’s and Gilad’s attention he went on. “Geena returned from Griffindell with Lady Gwendolen’s orders to let the prisoners return to the South. I would have followed her command if not for the fact I fear many of them would join these brigands.”

In Discord’s opinion, the likelihood of those griffons joining a group of bandits was low. Lower than the temperatures in that place and that was one of the reasons. They would just want to go back to the South and sort the whole mess out. The fact the Chancellor dupped their leaders in to marching against Snow Mountains shouldn’t be forgotten. But Discord could understand Lord Graham’s concern though. Especially after what he had mentioned… The bandit might even prey on the soldiers trying to return home.

In the end, Discord agreed with his measured response, and Gilad seemed to agree as well, nodding at his words. But Gilad nor discord spoke, waiting for Graham to elaborate further.

“Geena has told me there is a caravan coming from Wayfarer’s Rest. Some special queen called Gilda seems to be making noise and becoming a banner of The Harpy’s Cult among the southerners. She’s dragging several of our supporters from Griffonstone to be split between Frozenlake and Brokenhorn. It’s a welcome addition to our sparsely populated lands, but Geena wants to let this Gilda deal with the brigands. Later, allow her to take quite a few Southerner prisoners to Brokenhorn.”

Gilda? Gilda… Gilda. Discord was almost sure he had heard that name before, but he wasn’t sure when, or how. Ultimately, the name meant nothing to him. Maybe he should ask Lady Gwendolen.

“Deserters?” Gilad blinked a few times, and it was almost funny. “I’m surprised. I thought that the southerners hated us with a passion.

Graham nodded. “Geena’s Loremasters have been combing through the prisoners and convinced several of them to stay with us, despite Geena’s complaining that ‘they are a mess’. Two score souls are to join the refugees and spread within the Frozenlake Region and a few hundred are meant to join the caravan further north to be absorbed by Brokenhorn.”

“I can’t imagine Griskjal would be too happy about too many of the southerners joining under his wings.” Gilad sighed and held his lores, closing his eyes for a couple of seconds. “This has Gwendolen’s paws all over it. I wonder how she means to convince Griskjal…”

“What is the problem?” Discord asked and Gilad obliged, while Lord Graham kept a respectful silence.

“It is his land. Graham is supposed to take care of it all.” Gilad waved at the other griffon. “He’s not some wet-beaked youngling that needs to prove his mettle, but this situation will raise some eyebrows. The griffons fall under Gwendolen’s care, and he would follow her request anyways, but the bandits are a problem. Some upstart lordlings might decide to start trouble over this, especially if they happen to preside over a small settlement in the endangered area. This is not a good time for this sort of trouble.”

Gilad turned to the other griffon again. “I appreciate you coming over to see me over this, Graham. What would you have me do?”

“If such is the will of the Mother of Storms, as put forward by Lady Gwendolen, then it is no more than my place to obey, as I obeyed when she mated me to my Lady Geena.” Graham spoke in a sullen, too formal tone. “It is for the good of the Hold that I fear. It has come to my knowledge that Mayor Gavingkal is backing these brigands.”

“Ah…” Gilad nodded. Discord missed it, but something went unsaid. Looking at him, Gilad decided to explain. “Gavingkal is the mayor of a major city under Frozenlake called Feathertip. He is problematic and taken to criticize Lord Graham’s relationship with Lady Geena. And if she starts giving orders for griffons to take care of his problems, insufferable tools such as Gavingkal might try to use it to accuse Graham of weakness.”

“Right…” Discord rolled his eyes.

Gilad held his lores again. “He believes he can replace Graham, despite the last griffon that tried it ending with a dagger through his skull. All because some griffons don’t understand that Lord Graham’s permissiveness over Geena’s proclivities are both a sign of respect for Mother Harpy’s commands and for Lady Geena’s character.”

Discord still wasn’t sure he understood what the issue was. But that sounded like the problem was going to take care of itself. Both on the criminal griffons and on the one questioning Lord Graham’s authority. That was some grim stuff, but it was also a good insight into Northerner politics.

“For the while,” Gilad spoke again with a grin at Graham. “Remain at Griffinsky. We will eat some good food and maybe later we will go out for a hunt. If you want, you can inspect the troops. There is much we can talk about and there are quite many new recruits to whip into shape.”

“Ah…” Discord raised a claw. “Just to be sure… You mentioned a griffon was killed and that another may soon. Maybe dozens. Over politics.”

“It’s not ‘politics’.” Graham frowned. “That is a thing for Griffonstonians. This is about honor and duty. A city mayor is supposed to care for his people and to obey his liege, as are the Jarls supposed to care for Snow Mountains and obey the Lord of the Black Gates. This is our strength; this is Our Mother’s commandment. Greedy weaklings that think themselves strong such as Mayor Gavingkal and his goons are a disease that must be weeded out.”

“I see…” Discord nodded a few times, processing what he had said. “I mean… Doesn’t the Royal House or the Hall of Friendship get on your case about that? At least the Griffonian government?”

“Dealing with Griffonstone, ponies and Celestia is my job. His is to help me manage my Hold.” Gilad shook his head, but then he laughed heartily. “It wouldn’t be the first time I would have to spin a tale for the higher ups to leave us alone. I wish it was only Celestia… She leaves us to ourselves… She has done that since the Emperor died. But there is always some southerner politician that thinks he can profit from us.”

Finally, he shook his head again, but sadly, and let go a long sigh. “It would be best to deal with this without loss of life. But we are not ponies, and The Harpy is not Celestia. There is a point from which a griffon cannot return without meeting Our Mother first...”

Discord’s first instinct was to argue, but he held it back. Yes. Those were not ponies, and The Harpy wasn’t Celestia. At least that was a good argument to keep Gwendolen around… He fought back a dark chuckle.

Meanwhile, their conversation shifted towards trivial happenings in Graham’s city. The well-being of the prisoners and plans to let whoever wanted to stay to mix in with the caravan he had mentioned. It appeared Lady Geena would be taking care of it all.

What was the problem between Graham and his mate? When he had first met them in the ambush where Discord saved all those griffons, they seemed like the perfect griffon couple. Or, at least, a perfect northerner griffon couple.

Good thing to talk about with Gilad without Lady Gwendolen or Lord Graham around.

***

“Princess, are you alright?” The unicorn mare next to her, with all possible caution, asked as though it might anger her. A beautiful silver-maned cyan unicorn mare stared up at her from under the red hood. Large blue eyes that reminded Celestia of Shining Armor’s, filled with worry.

Two contradictory ideas ponies still held about her, despite her earnest efforts to root them out. They, somehow, feared her wrath while they also worried she might injure herself if she walked outside alone. Less than six hours after the Royal Guard arrived, their superior had already organized an escort for her while Chocolate Velvet was busy assisting the griffons at the hospital.

The unicorn with her was one of her Justiciars. One of the younger ones right out of Canterlot University, summoned to the Royal House because of her outstanding grades.

“Don’t worry.” Celestia rubbed a hoof under her horn. “It’s just been a long and stressful night. You were saying the Royal Bailiff sent all available Justiciars?”

“Yes, Princess. Since Golden Rule isn’t available, they decided I was a good choice to assist you with the defendant. And that I should report to you. Given the urgency, the others are already spreading throughout town.” The mare nodded. “We are limited to the Justiciars already in the region, as communication with the Heartland is still quite difficult. Teleportation, even more so.”

Celestia’s thoughts were sluggish, crawling through a fog of tiredness, but at least the presence of the Justiciars should keep the griffons from killing each other. She had to focus on the young hen who had fought her.

“I see. Good job. Also on collating all the information on this young hen. Do you have any final thoughts?” The noise from the wheels on the irregular cobblestones annoyed Celestia. In her tired and stressed state, even the brightness of the clouds under the sun and the citronella aroma inside the vehicle irritated her. And so did all the implied issues with the present situation in the griffon city. Not to mention the hot air that rose from the street. At least musketfire had stopped popping occasionally.

The problem wasn’t the young mare, the air, the noise. Not even the young hen she had captured. It was her mood.

“Well, it is very strange, Princess…” Inexperience got in the way of the young Justiciar, and her shifting eyes made it clear for one so used to reading ponies. “I don’t know how to put into words the uneasiness her file brings me.”

“Every once in a while, a creature escapes through the cracks of our social assistance networks and it is never a pretty sight. But don’t worry. We’ll go through this together and you are doing a good job.” Celestia reassured her with a smile.

The pony-drawn vehicle stopped gently and a pegasus Royal Guard opened the door on the princess’ side. “We’ve arrived, Your Highness.”

Celestia disembarked to step on the smoother, well fitted-together, cobblestone of the walkway in front of the Local Militia Headquarters. A flat, single floor building spread over a significant area. It had most of the city block to itself with a fenced area around a figurative backyard, but the top was closed, like a bird cage. A few detained griffons enjoyed what sun filtered through the clouds, watched by griffons in leather barding and large shaded glasses. Rosé walls and white pillars adorned a covered entrance and a flat roof with a parapet, which was also painted in white, topped the building.

Celestia’s ears pulled back at the sight because when she suggested that the griffons used the system invented by Sir Stronghoof, a few hundred years ago, she wanted to standardize the law enforcement efforts. She certainly didn’t expect griffons to copy Manehattan’s architecture simply because Manehattan had the model headquarters. Additionally, the one in front of her frowning eyes was the fourth facility in a succession of strangely Manehattan-style buildings the griffons had built.

Her frustrated frown turned sour as she concluded she ought to be happy they kept Griffonstone’s force up to date with regulations. Even if it meant tearing down and rebuilding in the same place. As though construction of public buildings and the whole process of auctioning weren’t the most obvious and overdone ways of embezzlement since the times of the Republic of All Creatures.

Sometimes she felt so tired of it all.

The formation of Royal Guards, all in their shiny golden armor, stood at attention before the entrance. The city’s Lord Protector Celestia knew as Gilmara was there, in her immaculate leather armor and with a couple of her griffons by the entrance. Her black spotted black pelt went well with the dark tan of the leather armor and her yellow eyes focused on Celestia as she talked to the ponies.

“Princess.” The sergeant stood at attention.

“Please, ensure your subordinates do not harass griffons in need of the local militia’s services for reasons of my safety.” She gave the pegasus mare a pleading frown. “Do what you must but keep the entrance open.”

“Absolutely, Princess.” The red and blue maned mare coughed into her white, armored hoof. “I’ll be careful we don’t disrupt the locals and their job.”

Finally, the alicorn and the young mare in the red Justiciar robes approached the middle-aged griffoness with the ‘no-nonsense’ stare in her eyes. “Welcome, Princess Celestia. It is an honor. Your bird’s waiting for you in the interrogation room. Follow me, please.”

Celestia nodded and followed. Nothing better than an official that just wanted to get the job done as efficiently as possible and such was their way of climbing ranks. Professionalism over politics. It reminded her of Gast.

The reception desk was empty, but the next room was full of activity. Griffon law enforcement officers could be identified by their leather armor and their forelegs not being cuffed to heavy furniture. Scribbling pencils and conversations filled the hall dotted with desks and griffons either giving or taking testimonies. The indefinable light blue-green linoleum was clean and there was a path in the middle of all the desks. A T-shaped passage that led to the back and other parts of the facility. Funny enough, the smell of donuts and coffee hanging in the air was the same as in every local militia headquarters across the Federation.

By the conversations Celestia managed to understand, most tried looting abandoned homes and stores in the wake of the night’s conflict. She wouldn’t feel so bad if she could keep out of her head that many of them probably acted out of desperation, given the situation in Griffonia. At least, the system seemed to work, as there were several welfare workers there, talking to griffons.

“Go on, Miss Mallet.” Celestia spoke as they walked past the griffons. As much as she would like to get involved, she had more pressing matters to tend to. “So that the Lord Protector will hear.”

“Miss Gwineth was born in Thunderpeak.” The young mare started sheepishly, but soon gained confidence. “She and her older brother lived in an illegal, and thus underdeveloped suburban area.”

“Shit.” The black griffon sighed, all exasperated. While the mare gasped at the word, Celestia found it refreshing that some official had the lack of decorum of using such a word in her presence. Which was ironic, as she usually didn’t like such words. “I thought she looked the part. Let me guess… Drugs, debts, crimes and then prison? Until someone gave her salvation. A way out, with hooks all over it…”

“Well, yes…” Miss Mallet continued with a frown. “We’re not sure, but… She and her brother were frequently contacted by welfare agent Golden Mesh, yet they resisted all her attempts to help. They were abandoned by their parents and never registered before. Miss Gwineth was involved with unregulated prostitution and her brother was known for making debts and losing their money with unregulated gambling. Eventually Gwineth was found in an alley with three corpses and arrested. But due to lack of evidence, she was let go. Soon, she was arrested again, after murdering another griffon in their home. Her brother testified against her, and she confessed.”

Mallet sighed at the weight of the whole affair. “According to his testimony, she killed his friend. Others have called the griffon that died in their apartment her tomfriend. But it gets weird… Miss Mesh tried contacting her and her brother when they were arrested… And there were no survivors. According to an investigation, she killed her brother, the accompanying officers, Miss Mesh and then she killed herself.”

“Well…” The black griffoness wasn’t happy, but her words carried plenty of sarcasm. “She is quite lively now… Some of my birds say she’s special. One wanted to let her go because she’s going to draw some ‘bad mojo’ to us. Some of the military birds freaked out and wanted us to give her to Blackfeather even before she arrived from the hospital.”

“How did this not reach me?” Celestia let her voice raise. “Any of it?”

“Feh… Some crooked bird along the way shoved all the evidence under his tail with the money ‘they’ paid them.” The Lord Protector scoffed. “Then ‘they’ intimidated a few others, blamed it all on drugs and nobody looked twice. Then they got someone that looked like our little ghost and put her in the cell. The version that reached Canterlot probably read like ‘Drugged up bird trashed local militia in Thunderpeak and died. All is normal.’”

“That sounds like it must have taken a lot of resources. Who are ‘they’?” The red-wearing mare put a hoof on her chin before she looked back as Celestia was no longer with them. She had stopped walking and her ears flopped to the sides of her head like she had the joy ripped out of her. She closed her eyes and shivered while the young mare gave her a confused frown. “Princess?”

“Missy, ‘they’ are probably freaking out right about now because they didn’t expect a Royal Justiciar would dig all that up.” Gilmara punched the mare’s shoulder with a congratulatory grin. “You just threw the biggest pile of shit at the biggest fan since Nightmare Moon revoked everycreature’s day privileges.”

“Oh my gosh! You don’t mean that The Lion is involved, do you?! Oh my gosh!” While Mallet sat on the linoleum and hyperventilated, Celestia resumed walking with a quicker pace. The others followed, but she said nothing.

The whole situation wasn’t normal. She was right, and they were under attack… Ponyville’s militia. Twilight and Cadance, the griffon airship, the museum, the Cult of The Harpy. Now the northerner supporters flee the city and Gast kills himself. On top of it all, was this story about Gwineth. Why would the Nightmare try to conceal itself so? It could have convinced griffons that it was The Harpy and that ‘her’ identity needed to be protected for believability reasons… But what a stretch that was. All Nightmares usually cared about was feeding. They were just not as sophisticated and Celestia doubted one could pull off half of those things.

Gwineth’s case was emblematic.

If Luna hadn’t told Celestia it was a Nightmare, she would be ready to believe that The Harpy had returned and was working with the northerners. Gast believed it. Gustav too. And every single griffon that fled Griffonstone. All so Blackfeather officers wouldn’t get a hold of them… Individuals would flee out of fear, true. But someone elaborated the plan that would allow them to. Did they simply want to spare their supporters imprisonment and safeguard their assets? It was possible. But why would Gast kill himself then? He knew Celestia would protect him from retaliation. At the same time, GSA mutinous soldiers were killing Blackfeathers as quickly as possible.

She really needed to find out what exactly the Blackefeathers knew.

And now, Gilad was certainly involved. The Lion. No way a simple isolated cell pulled off what Miss Mallet and Gilmara described. She should’ve seen it sooner.

She stopped and raised a foreleg so that the others would stop too. “Miss Mallet, I have a job for you. Kindly take the Royal Guard detachment outside to the Royal Archives here in the city and have them assist you locating all there is about Miss Gwineth. I wish to know where in the chain of command everything stopped.”

The Justiciar gave her a confused stare. “Sure… Sure, Princess. I will, right away.”

“Go, go.” Celestia urged and she offered a quick bow and hurried away to the entrance. Celestia and the Lord Protector watched until her red robe vanished past the door and the mess of talking griffons.

“Alright.” The black hen turned to the princess. “Right… That’s why I like working with youth. They usually don’t question orders… Even when it’s obvious you’re pulling them out of the action. What about me, Princess?”

Celestia gave her a naughty, mischievous grin. “I have a plan, Lord Protector. And I need your help. Once it is all said and done, I will grant you pardon for letting a prisoner go as part of the plan to uncover her supporters’ misdeeds.”

“Oh! Sweet! A sting!” The black griffoness grinned back at her. “I always wanted to do one of those!”

The Griffons Are Not Okay

The sounds of the largest city in the world filtered through the thick tarp and the squeaking of the wheels couldn’t hope to drown it out. Ponies and griffons remained silent, but the stiff suspension started to hurt Twilight’s knees as the cart jumped at every cobblestone on the way. Expressions around their hidey hole at the front of the cart meant the others shared her pains.

Twilight’s mind wrapped itself in thoughts of the battle and the sight of Celestia’s airship going down. But no one had the mood to talk and the only ones holding serene expressions were Rarity and the old griffon lady, Madam Gehenna. At least externally. The smells also filtered through the tarp too. Bread, cakes, fried hay… Fortunately Twilight had a satisfying breakfast, or her stomach would be rumbling.

“This place smells like pony.” The white and caramel griffoness with a flat face commented out of the blue, like ‘pony’ was a distinct smell or state of being.

“It’s early morning.” The lanky griffon next to her, the one Twilight supposed was the gunsmith, shrugged. “I mean, they gotta eat. And it doesn’t bother me. Everybody likes bread, right?”

“For all it’s worth, it’s not in the list of forbidden foods…” Gallensa said, and Grigory looked at her. She laid next to him, leaning against his body. Her eyes squinted like she threatened to fall asleep at any second.

Maybe it was why she was pleasant, for once.

“And so, it came to pass…” Rarity made a frown and threw her hoof forward. “Amid threats of grizzly death and dire wars, griffons and ponies found common standing at last. Bread was the answer all along. Oh no! What evil! Alas, griffons butter the bread, when ponies drench it in jam! Oh, wheat, woe is you! Once the promise of deliverance, now the source of iniquity cast anew.”

After a couple of seconds filled with a ridiculously solemn silence over the sounds of the wheels and the suspension, a ‘heeheehee’ and a ‘hehehehe’ broke through. Both groups of friends laughed for a few good seconds before the moment died, but Twilight’s mood had improved.

She sighed. Hopefully Flash Sentry would be alright. Maybe in the city they could find information about whatever happened to the survivors of the battle.

“So, uh…” Rainbow rubbed her mane. “Where exactly are we going? Is it some sort of griffon neighborhood?”

“No.” The large griffon called Gray stared at her. “It’s a hotel owned by one of our supporters. Near downtown, so I would advise against leaving the premises. Someone is bound to recognize you.”

“That goes without saying.” Applejack nodded. Always the practical one, she had the right question. “What about other guests?”

“We’ll have the entire hotel to us.” He looked at Applejack next.

“That sounds expensive.” Rarity grimaced. “Or really damaging to their business.”

“It’s expensive.” Gray shrugged. “Lady Gwendolen will be paying.”

Cadance hummed, but nothing came out of it. Instead, Twilight addressed the large and dark griffon. “We appreciate it. And you don’t have to worry. We’ll not be any trouble.”

“We’ll be arriving soon.” He spoke calmly as he always did. “Everything has been arranged. You can just relax. You’ll have food, comfortable rooms and you won’t even need to be locked inside. You’ll have the entire hotel to you.”

“That sounds sweet.” Rainbow and Pinkie Pie grinned next to each other.

“We’re not on vacation, Rainbow Dash! Pinkie Pie!” Applejack gave them a glare.

Suddenly the cart stopped and juggled their heads around. One of the griffons pulling the cart declared they had arrived.

A little abrupt, but Twilight wasn’t going to complain. Without any hesitation, the gunsmith and the soldier griffons started moving sacks of flour out of the way, whichShining Armor helped with. Before long both ponies and griffons hopped off the back of the cart and found themselves on a concrete parking area inside a gated area. Little more than gray concrete for floor, walls, and a noisy crimson sliding gate a pair of griffons closed. The street was beyond a brick and plaster wall.

Half the plot of land was occupied by the parking lot and the other half seemed taken by the hotel building. Griffons and ponies stared at the building with windows on the wall and a single steel-sheet door painted in the same shade of red as the gate. The white paint had water damage, and silt grew on the top of the wall, where the eave kept the sun from it. Someone probably once thought the black tiles of the roof were a good idea for contrast with the wall, but it just looked covered in the same silt.

“Well, this is hum…” Rarity let her ears flop with her eyes up to the roof. “Well… Uh… Yes, ah…”

“Lame…” Rainbow groused with a dejected Pinkie next to her.

“Quit complaining, you all.” Applejack walked next to them with Twilight.

“It’s gonna be alright.” The princess pointed a hoof and then smiled. “I’m sure the nice griffons that own the place will be very welcoming.”

“Let’s not give the griffons the impression we are soft.” The princess concluded with a frown of her own.

As soon as Twilight closed her mouth Gallensa gave a curt laugh. “Come, Grigory. We are staying at the Mareott.”

“Gallensa…” Grigory pressed the lores on his beak. “Please, behave as an adult.”

She glared intensely at Grigory for some good ten seconds. Both ponies and griffons waited with anxious stares and bated breaths.

“Ah…” Pinkie raised a hoof. “I just want to say that I vote Mareott too!”

“We’re trying to hide.” Applejack hid her face inside her hat. “You all are dumb as a box of bricks.”

“Nu-uh!” The white and caramel hen with a flat face in Griogry’s group raised a finger and scowled. “I’m a world-class scout and sharpshooter. I won’t accept anything inferior to the Wonderbolt’s quarters.”

“That’s not much better, though…” Rainbow let her ears flop.

“We don’t have any money!” Twilight cried.

“As soon as we show up anywhere the Local Militia is going to jump on us.” Shining Armor added and both Cadance and Flurry Heart nodded next to him. Poor miss Calcite just stared helplessly.

A cyan unicorn mare came out the door as it opened with a squeak. Wavy off-white blue mane and blue eyes, she wore a fitting blue suit and approached them with a smile. She stopped close to Gallensa and the griffoness was almost twice her size. Twilight almost gasped at the sight.

“I’m sorry, your majesty.” The mare immediately bowed before the griffoness, putting a hoof before her chest. When she raised, she gave a radiant, beaming smile and Gallensa kept staring down at her. “I know the hotel is quite inferior to your refined tastes, but I can guarantee our staff is most dedicated. We can procure the best food and vanity items during your stay. You must be hungry… We already have some food prepared.”

The yellow and white queen held the pony in a stare down her beak and sighed before she turned to Grigory. “I’ll still tell Lady Gwendolen you made me stay at a pigsty. I expect a vacation at the Wild North Cassino in Las Pegasus when this is done. Come, Gracielle…

While Twilight wondered if the northerners called their female ‘queens’ because they behaved like that, she watched the others enter. Spike poked her leg.

“Uh… Why do these griffons use a hotel owned by a pony?”

“We’ll ask them, Spike. Come on.” She nodded at the door. “We can’t risk a pegasus seeing us while flying by.”

***

Chocolate Velvet walked out of the prescription room and stretched his neck with a groan. Surgery after surgery and barely any food or rest, he was finally ready for some sleep and sustaining food.

But leaving the room he walked into the head nurse for general surgery. “Your highness?”

“Yes. Miss Goldina, correct?” He stopped. Covered in golden fur and feathers, she was a middle-aged griffon lady with beautiful pink eyes and an enthusiastic disposition. He had met her almost as soon as he started getting work done in the hospital, her being one of those creatures that just got things done. Organized, patient, proactive and kind-hearted, she was a delight to work with.

“Yes. Can I ask you for a favor?” Her upward eyes begged as much as her words.

“Of course!” He smiled. “That is why I’m here.”

She produced a clipboard from under her wing, but she kept hesitating. “This is a bit of a… Situation. The patient is… Um… Complicated.”

“Ok.” He sat on the floor, patiently waiting for her to get it out already and took the clipboard in his telekinetic magic once she finally offered it to him. A quick once-over told him it was a young adult male that had been submitted to reparative surgery following an assault. And nothing more of note.

“Doctor Gaer was going to see him today, but he… Well, he was shot during the night.” She stopped talking.

“I understand.” Chocolate frowned. “So? There’s nothing complicated here. An intern could deal with this. Simple anamnesis and physical exam. They could call an attending plastic surgeon if something is wrong.”

He could see she wanted him to talk to the patient, and there was nothing wrong with that, but any doctor could deal with that, especially one from the plastic surgery department. It was their patient. Taking another doctor’s patient was a bit of a source of contention.

“Well, obviously he can’t see his patient today, so I asked another doctor to evaluate him, but his mother refuses to let anyone that isn’t Doctor Gaer examine her son.” She frowned with a grimace. “She can be really unpleasant.”

“His mother?” Chocolate raised an eyebrow. “What the… Is she aware there was practically a war going on in the city?!”

More than that, he checked the patient’s age, and he was nineteen.

“I know!” Goldina sat too and held her paws together. “But she is so insufferable! Can your highness help me, please?”

“Of course!” He chuckled. He liked her enough that he would deal with the mother. Really, she seemed to be more of a problem than the patient himself. “Don’t worry. I’ll get right back to you.”

He stashed the clipboard under his wing and made his way across the hall to the entrance of the surgery center. After getting rid of the protections and undoing the braiding on his mane, he made his way to the relevant corridor. But along the way he took a careful look at the several-pages file and something stood out.

“Huh… This guy was assaulted…” He stopped walking and took a focused look into the details.

‘Patient was assaulted during an argument requiring reconstructive facial plastic surgery.’

“That’s all?” He looked around the paper, put up the clipboard and stared beneath it, ruffled the papers, and carefully looked through each. They were nothing more than results of preoperative laboratorial exams. But the informed consent forms were missing.

“How odd…” Griffon doctors were usually thorough in their notes because the unicorns were downright… Excessive, to use a kind word. Griffons being as competitive as they were, didn’t want to be left behind.

Nurse staff’s evaluation was missing. Anesthesiologist’s preoperative evaluation was missing. The post-operative report was mystifyingly as curt as the initial evaluation.

‘Patient was submitted to facial reconstructive surgery. Nothing out of the ordinary.’

“What does ‘nothing out of the ordinary’ even mean?” He talked to himself in the lobby. Nocreature paid him attention.

Following was the inventory of used materials. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but a lot of materials were used, without an actual description of the injuries. Expensive stuff. Judging by the materials, the patient had suffered severe damage, indeed.

Yeah… When the foals are too quiet… Goldina didn’t give him the file just because the patient’s mother was difficult. He frowned and stashed the clipboard under his wing and resumed his walk with a quick gait along the corridor until he found the room.

“How dare you?!” A shrill female voice screeched from the inside, through the closed door, so loud that Chocolate stopped and took a step back. “My baby is allergic to this stuff! I will sue this hospital! Get me your manager! I’m gonna get you fired!”

A panicked griffon guy in a white uniform rushed out of the room dragging a cleaning cart with him and slammed the door. A tan and sandy, typical griffonstonian denizen who stopped and stared at the alicorn while the hen still ranted from the other side of the door.

“Tough one, eh?” Chocolate cocked his head.

The griffon poked his cap back into place. “Milord, if I didn’t need the money, I swear I would quit this job.”

The griffon nodded and pulled the cart along with his tail, walking away.

“I said, bring me your manager!” The hen shrieked on the other side of the door again and the griffon broke into a gallop dragging the cart like his life depended on it.

The griffoness on the other side violently pulled the door open with the scowl from a comically angry witch about to cast doom upon the world. She froze upon seeing the alicorn. Her brain took a couple of seconds to catch up and Chocolate took the chance to assume control of the situation as other workers scampered away.

“Greetings, ma’am!” He smiled.

It was a spruced-up obese griffon hen, dark brown and yellow, wearing a pearl collar from one of those overly expensive brands Chocolate couldn’t be bothered to remember the name. Over her, back inside the room, he could see a lanky young adult griffon sitting on a pillow next to the bed.

Chocolate wasn’t the kind of creature to make mean comments about others, even inside his head. But it was fact the guy was covered in one of the most hideous shades of yellow he had ever seen. Not like Fluttershy’s buttery sweet yellow. Not like the griffon lady he met in the airship with her elegant poise and almost golden shade. His was… Just eew…

Other than the unfortunate color, he had a simple gauze dressing over his beak and surgical sutures around. By the description and material used, Chocolate would have expected to see him lying on the bed, covered around the head like a mummy.

“Mom!” He complained with an irritating whinny. It reminded the alicorn more of a bratty kid than an adult. And he didn’t even struggle to speak or breathe, supposedly mere days after the surgery. “Stop hogging the doctor. I’m gonna be late for the game!”

“Just a second sweetie!” She turned to look over her shoulder before her attention returned to Chocolate Velvet with a frown. “Aren’t you the Royal Consort?”

“Yes…” He touched his chest with a wing. “Prince-Consort Chocolate Velvet. I’m helping the medical staff because of last night’s skirmish. So, I understand Doctor Gaer was supposed to come see your son?”

“Yes.” She agreed with a blank stare. “Where is he?”

“He is injured. He can’t come.” He told her and followed before she had time to complain. “I’ll be taking care of Mister Gaunt today.”

She was going to say something, but her adult baby interrupted them. “Mom! Come on!”

She finally moved out of the way, even if she said nothing and Chocolate put on a smile. “Hello. Good morning, Mister Gaunt. Nice to meet you.”

“Wait! What the feather?” He stood and flared his wings, staring at his ‘mom’ with a frown. “Mom! What is this? My dad owns this town, and we can’t even get me a griffon doctor?! Where is Doctor Gaer? What is the point of getting the best surgeon if I have to go with a pony?!”

Ah… What a nice, punchable personality. It seemed someone had the right idea.

“Sweetie!” She gave Chocolate a desperate frown when he looked at her. “He’s the Prince-Consort. He’s Princess Celestia and Princess Luna's personal doctor! I’m sure he is even better than Doctor Gaer.”

“Actually, Princesses Twilight Sparkle, Mi Amore Cadenza, and Flurry Heart too.” Chocolate said, less than enthusiastic but still not giving up on helping the moron. His stupid pony brain didn’t like not being nice.

“Fine…” The yellow griffon sighed and rolled his eyes, plopping his ass back to the seating pillow. “I guess it’s better than missing the game.”

Chocolate walked closer. Initial appraisal was that the griffon was talking a lot for one who needed a deep and extensive reconstructive surgery. He smiled at the yellow griffon though. “Excuse me, then. Let me see.”

He gestured with his head for Gaunt to raise his beak and removed the dressing with barely any difficulty. Curious, but then again, the guy’s beak barely had any scratches on it. Chocolate frowned and probed the griffon’s beak and facial structure with his magic.

“Stop! This is annoying!” The griffon whined, but his mother shushed him.

“I’m almost done.” Other than minute scars in the facial bones and some grinding done to the beak, there was mostly no evident damage. Some fat was introduced, and some bony parts were removed. His vomer bone was scarred at the base, and it might have been caused by someone punching him, but it was already healed. The amount of damage didn’t justify any of the enumerated materials and it healed too fast. Heck, he shouldn’t have been submitted to surgery.

More importantly, he found the familiar tingling of a healing potion. That Doctor Gaer gave his patient an emergency healing potion to fast-heal the surgical wounds and the residual magic gave it away. Motherbucker… As the city turned to a warzone. Chocolate hoped he got shot on his greedy griffon ass.

However, the pony merely hummed. “The file says you were assaulted by someone. It doesn’t look very bad, though.”

“Well,” The mother cleared her throat and raised her beak with a petulant tone. “Doctor Gaer is a very good professional. I am sure your highness knows him!”

“Not as much as I would like, it seems. My place is with the Princesses and it leaves me little time to spend with other doctors.” He told her and then turned back to the male, clearing his throat. “So, Gaunt. Mind telling me what exactly happened? So, I can properly evaluate your situation.”

“Some dumb hoe got angry I didn’t like her scones and punched me.” The griffon shrugged and showed a petulant smile. “She got hers.”

“Now, now, sweetie.” The mother quickly interjected. “That poor hen was released from jail and entered a community service program. Our good friend, Judge Gracie, ensured she would receive a chance at bettering herself.”

“I see…” Chocolate nodded with a low voice before turning to the mother.

“Well, I’m looking at him and his beak doesn’t really seem all that much damaged. Not that assaulting someone is ever allowed… But…” He held the clipboard in his telekinetic grasp, frowning at the fat hen. “This is awkward. Because these strangely brief descriptions and my examination of the patient make me believe that Doctor Gaer might have done something not entirely legal. The public money sent to this hospital, and healing potions, are meant to treat patients in life-threatening situations and to intervene in preserving the quality of life. Particularly the poor ones. Not that rich griffons can’t come for assistance… But cosmetic procedures are to be held in the private network. Someone is doing things they shouldn’t.”

“Bruh, do you know who I am?” The yellow griffon growled at Chocolate.

“Hum… Kind of?” The alicorn cocked an eyebrow. “Do you know who I am?”

“Please, your highness. There’s no need for this.” The fat hen fiddled with her pearl collar. “We do more than this city deserves. As a noble you understand that. All these ungrateful little griffons that don’t do much more than work as little as they can get away with… All while wanting more and more.”

“Huh…” Chocolate listened and waited. She grabbed a check booklet from her purse sitting on the corner of the bed and started writing with a fountain pen.

“Of course…” The fat griffoness, with all the puffiness that threatened to swallow her beak, threw a seductive stare at him. “Doctor Gaer’s most prominent skill is his sense of discretion.”

“Ah-huh…” He nodded curtly.

“So, I am sure that you can do something nice with these Bits rather than bringing more attention to the issue of my little boy’s injured beak.” She folded and pawed the check to him. He simply grabbed it in his telekinetic magic.

“Very well… All Gaunt needs is to apply some cold to the swollen areas.” He quickly wrote a prescription with his fountain pen and letterheaded paper he grabbed from the pocket in his coat. “Take this, for the pain. And go easy on the game.”

With that he left the room after putting away his tools and closed the door with his telekinetic magic. Still holding the folded check, he opened it to read. Doctors, patients, nurses, and visitors walked around the chocolate alicorn under the coat as he stayed in the corridor, looking at the small piece of paper for half-a-minute.

One of the security griffons walked to him and looked up. “Your highness, is something the matter? Do you require assistance?”

Chocolate Velvet took a deep breath. “Yes. If anyone asks for me, please tell them I’ll be on the roof.”

***

Celestia trotted out of the Chancellor’s palace with quick elegant steps down the stairs as two of her Royal Guard protectors followed her. After she greeted the griffonian soldiers standing guard by the main door, they did too.

It was probably silly, but she was excited for the plan she and Lord Protector Gilmara had concocted. Ultimately, the novice Justiciar had found little additional information about the young hen. But their plan should allow her to learn all she would need and would allow her to help poor Gwineth.

Unfortunately, the thought of Gilad protecting criminals behind her back put a dent on her trust in him. She thought she had found someone like the old knights, willing to do what was right, no matter the consequences. Or maybe he thought she was part of the problem.

She didn’t have time to waste on depressing thoughts. She was tired and her body ached, but positivity helped her along the day and would have to do until the plan came to fruition. Then she would rest. Meanwhile, she kept her pace quick, crossing the plaza among the griffons cleaning debris from the battle. Grover’s statue would need some repairs, but it should look good enough with some love.

Her eyes fixed on the hospital’s entrance. The double doors had been replaced already, but it was mostly a broken, damaged building. Fortunately, the damage was superficial and griffon health professionals could do their part.

“Princess…” One of her guards called and pointed at the hospital’s roof.

Looking up, she saw Chocolate Velvet. Sitting next to the edge, behind the chain-link fence, staring into the horizon over the city. She exchanged a stare with the guard, and he shrugged. After one final stare towards the alicorn on the roof, she hopped and flew up and over the fence which protected patients sunbathing in there. She landed next to the alicorn, and he ignored her.

“Is something the matter?” She smiled, keeping her distance. Giving him some respectful space.

“I found something curious.” He told her, keeping his back to her and staring into the horizon. Soon it would be time to retrieve the sun for the night and a stormy wind started to pick up speed and carried the smell of rain. She would prefer the weather department didn’t make it rain, as the debris could wreak havoc in the sewer system. Nonetheless, his mane looked fabulous in the wind, with his white coat. “I think a doctor under the employ of the hospital has participated in misuse of public money.

“Oh?” Her ears perked up.

“I did some digging, with help from Miss Goldina, the head nurse for the general surgery ward. The city’s mayor is involved. His wife and his son too. And also, a Doctor Gaer who performed plastic surgery on the son. Maybe even the Lord Judge for the entire hold. They got the mayor’s son interned because he was assaulted and the doctor that initially examined him greatly exaggerated his injuries. It allowed them to get him interned in the first place.”

“That’s already wrong…” She frowned and let her ears flop. It seemed the city was full of secrets. And not the enticing kind.

“Yeah. Doctor Gaer then performed a cosmetic surgery on his face, unrelated to the damage caused by the assailant and used a healing potion to expedite post-surgical care. IT helped them keep everything hush-hush. More than foolhardy, I would say that such a surgery was malpractice, given the patient was injured to begin with.” He shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Furthermore, the entire nurse staff is willing to testify against Doctor Gaer, the wife, and the son. To top it off, Miss Goldina told me it was Gilda, Rainbow’s friend, who assaulted the Mayor’s Son. Finally, while I was talking to mother and son, she mentioned a Judge Gracey that worked on Gilda’s case.”

“I’m not a law specialist.” Chocolate added. “But I’m pretty sure that at least everyone involved did something wrong and of all of them, this Gilda is the one with the least amount of guilt.”

Celestia stood to her four legs and beamed. “What an amazing find, Chocolate Velvet! I’ll get this information to my justiciars right away!”

But since he kept his eyes to the horizon with a distant and forlorn stare, she approached, sitting by his side, and resting her body against his. “Is there anything wrong still?”

“The mother tried to bribe me…” He showed her the check with a value of two thousand Bits. “I mean… Come on…

Celestia took the check in her magical grasp and blinked at it before she giggled curtly.

“After that whole scene with Chrysalis, I thought that I was worth at least a million.” He huffed and neigh-snorted.

“She certainly has a bizarre vision of her own position…” Celestia chuckled. “Would you feel better if I asked Novo to try and seduce you? Let’s say, so that you would convince me to fund another school in Mount Aris?”

He chuckled at her words and turned to her. “Coming for you, that might even be logical.”

“I feel like there is something wrong with griffons in this city, Celestia…” He did his best not to laugh, but a chuckle escaped him. “Maybe I got used to ponies. But I’m pretty sure the griffons are not okay.”

“Most likely.” She winked and nodded to the stairs into the building. “Come. Introduce me to this Miss Goldina. On the way, we need to talk about that griffon hen that attacked us. I’ll need your help with her.”

***

Like all local militias, the headquarters for Griffonstone’s Local Militia had an armory. Equipment racks and closets covered most of the walls of the well-lit room. The only one way in or out was a barred wooden door.

Four big griffons occupied themselves donning their leather armor vests and checking their equipment. Cuffs, magical baton, their wheellock pistols, additional powder, and magical crystal balls with the stun spell. For the special operation they would soon be undertaking, they also had H-shaped chains waiting on the table at the center of the room.

They uttered no words until a pair of cuffs clacked against the wooden floor and one of the griffons swore a mostly unintelligible string of colorful words.

“Garon, are you okay?” The griffon next to him asked. A good three fingers shorter than his partner, he was a snowy-white, black-dotted griffon with a white head and blue eyes frowning at the other.

“I’m fine.” Garon, the massive mid-aged griffon had the typical griffonstonian tan and white which agreed with the leather armor. He grabbed the cuffs from the floor and shoved them into one of his armor’s pockets after missing it two more times.

“Nah, bro. You ain’t.” Another griffon approached. A similarly large, but green and gray, already fully vested male walked closed with a reproaching scowl. “Genie’s death got to you and the Chief ought to cut you from the op.”

“I’m fine!” Garon yelled, which only brought a frustrated sigh with a shake of the head to the other.

He breathed in to answer, but Lord Protector Gilmara entered the room, already wearing her full complement of law-enforcement gear. Her smile brought a bit of cheer. “Alright, guys. It’s time! Celestia’s set up at the Blackfeather HQ and our team is ready with the ambush!”

“Just follow my lead.” She went on. “I’ll tell our little northerner bird the sword is with the Blackfeathers and along the way our undercover griffons will ‘rescue’ her. They’ll show superior force, we’ll surrender, and they’ll make sure she’ll get to the Blackfeather HQ. The Princess and the Prince-Consort will be waiting for her.”

They met her words with attentive silence. So, she concluded with a grin. “Questions?”

“Yeah.” Garon barked. “Why don’t we just cap her here?”

“Because that would be a crime.” Gilmara raised a finger. “And fighting crime is kind of our thing.”

Before he could follow with another asinine, anger-fueled question, she shook her head grimly and spoke again. “Garon, I’m pissed too. I miss Genie… Maybe not as much as you do… But…”

He interrupted her. Shouting. Spitting in anger. “She killed my wife and my child! Don’t tell me you miss Genie too!”

“Alright, fine!” Gilmara yelled right back at him, and he recoiled. “But fuck you! I miss her too. And the way to do anything about it is to cooperate with the Princess. Not executing a prisoner like a thug! I let you in because I understood you wanted to do something about Genie. But if I have to, I’ll cut you out and you’ll sit behind a desk to listen to a storeowner moan about his window. Is this what you want?”

She received no answer from the bigger griffon, but one of the others raised a paw. “I have a question. Why? Not that I agree with Garon that we should kill her, but it’s dumb to let her go.”

“We’re not letting her go.” The black griffoness took a breath. “The Princess wants to see some magic in action. Princess Luna believes it’s a Nightmare messing with griffons, and if that is the case, it’s possible that the entire thing will end with Luna getting it under control. I mean, the war, the unrest, the crazy lightning storms. Everything. I don’t know what the Sisters are up to, but Celestia clearly wants to help Luna deal with it. And we’ll do our part. Period.”

***

It had been hours. Gwineth sat with her haunches on the floor and let her forehead rest between two bars. She has been thinking for so long her head hurt and her neck hurt too, because of the awkward position. Despite that posture, she kept fidgeting with her hindlegs, and her feet wouldn’t stop for a couple of seconds.

She groaned and bumped her head against the now warm metal bars.

“Stupid Celestia…” She spoke to no one, but herself, and then she sighed. “I know I wasn’t supposed to fight her, but I thought that I would win!”

“I know it was stupid! I thought that I would be able to use my magic!” She bumped her head again. “I’m stuck in this dumb cell and there is nothing I can do to escape without the hooflickers noticing. How am I supposed to go back to Griffindell?”

“I suck as a Swordmaiden… I don’t even have my dancing sword!” She held the bars and whined at the ceiling. “Even if I had it, I don’t think I could slice the metal bars with it!”

She sat straight and scratched her nape vigorously until she whined again. Louder. Finally, she bumped her head against the bars and whined. “Come on, I need help! Please? I’ll let you do anything to me when I come back!”

She let out a sigh, holding on to the bars and letting her head drop. “She hates it when griffons act helpless.”

But then she raised her head and gasped, opening her eyes wide. “But that also means she trusts me not to screw up too bad!”

“But what am I supposed to do?” Thunder rumbled in the distance and the smell of rain entered her nares. Her feathers ruffled and relaxed. After a couple of seconds her talons clicked incessantly at the metal. Her eyes found the ceiling again. “Come on, Gwineth. You’re not some filthy Saddani. She chose you. And you’re not some Frozenlakian noble chick born to a gilded cradle… No. I was born into poverty. I got fucked. I had to work and learn to get here. I…”

Quiet griffon steps sounded beyond the door, and she silenced.

Gwineth raised her eyes when the door opened. A griffoness entered, followed by four big males. All of them wearing the local militia’s leather armor, carrying their outdated wheellock pistols and their magical stun batons. Her eyes focused on the leader. A black griffoness with a nimbler body than most griffons. She had barely visible black spots on her black pelt and her feathers were black too, with barely any variation. Her tail was fluffy and thick because of it. Her eyes were yellow, predatorial and focused.

Although, calling her a ‘griffoness’ might have been a stretch and Gwineth recoiled from the bars in disgust.

Three of her griffons stood by the cell’s door as one searched through the keys. The fourth stood by the door they had come from, and it showed a dim corridor beyond. All of them shot her intimidating stares, except for the black Saddani. She was having fun.

“Good evening, northerner lady. I am Lord Protector Gilmara of Griffonstone.” The black one, greeted with a grin. “We’re taking you to the airport if you don’t mind. They have a cell with your name at Shatteredrock.”

Gwineth blinked at her. “Ah. Aren’t you going to bring in Celestia? To talk to me?”

“Nope!” The black griffoness shook her head. “I suppose the Princess found a bigger cat to skin. You’re free to fly as a little bird. Straight to Shatteredrock, that is.”

“There is no one larger than me in this crap pile of a city!” Gwineth snarled, but soon her fierce countenance broke into a frown, and she turned to the door when it screeched open.

One of them stayed by the door and the other two entered. The first spoke to her, loud and dry. “Sit away from the bars.”

She did sit. But it was a reaction to them coming closer to her. She shook her head and her eyes bulged. She raised one of her forelegs from the floor, but one of the guards grabbed it to cuff her. The other strapped her wings shut tight.

Her breath came out in heaves and her voice a hoarse cry. “You can’t do this!”

“Sure can, baby.” Lord Protector Gilmara yawned at her paw while her griffons did their work. “The Mare is really pissed off.”

“I have the right to a fair trial!” Gwineth whined and squealed when the griffon behind her pushed her to stand on her four legs. “All creatures have the right to a fair trial!”

“Sorry to break it to you. But not the crazy, murderous psychopaths that bomb hospitals.” Gilmara gave her a small smile as her griffons placed the pawcuffs on Gwineth’s hindlegs too and connected the two sets with the H-shaped chain.

“No. No, no!” She cried and her beak clattered, her feathers ruffled. “The idea of the bomb wasn’t even mine!”

She yelped when one of the two griffons shackling her poked her ribs with his baton. “Shut your dirty beak and move your hind, barbarian.”

A large and muscular tan with white. His fingers clenched around his baton, and he pulled it back, but never struck her. Middle aged, with a crestless head and eyes filled with anger. Shaking muscles and a fearsome scowl. Her feathers flattened against her head at the sight.

“Please!” She whined. “I can’t…”

“I said move!” He shoved Gwineth and she yelped, crashing against the bars. The griffon by the door helped her stand, but only so she could walk. A white and black griffon, he glared at his companion, but the Lord Protector put an end to the situation ordering everyone to get going already.

The guard by the door moved out of her way and to the end of the corridor where another door waited. He kept watch while the others followed Gwineth. Just a short corridor with no doors or windows, and only the necessary magical light fixtures so it wasn’t completely dark.

She walked slowly and the chains clinked constantly, restraining her movement. Her breathing came in noisy heaves and her paws trembled so much she could barely walk straight. The procession advanced at a crawl, but no amount of whining or sobbing helped.

The militiagriffon opened the other door and crossed it to let her pass.

Closed windows made the air hot and stale. It smelled of griffons, sugar, and coffee, but the colorful confections of dough and creamy filling were left alone. The barded militiagriffons working the desk jobs had herded all out of the way. The civilians, bandits with cuffed paws and tied wings or random visitors and relatives to each side. About a hundred or so griffons in Gwineth’s estimate.

Angry griffons cried and complained of the treatment. Militia griffons said appeasing pleas and urged them to get out of the way.

“Move.” One of the militagriffons ordered Gwineth, not the same as before, but the black and white one, and he gently pushed her past the door.

All the way past the hall and the reception stood the door to the outside. An armored cart had parked there, under the rain. The flimsy public illumination lit the trees but failed right before lightning flashed and thunder soon followed. The rain picked up strength and Gwineth’s arrival silenced the hall. Adults’ angry frowns turned to curious stares and cubs looked from behind their parents’ paws.

She cared little for any of them, it was the cart that filled Gwineth’s eyes. She sat and turned her eyes to the storm above, beyond the white ceiling and spoke in the singing cadence of the High Griffonese. “You told me I would live in a palace and that I would only eat and drink the best! Don’t let them do this to me!”

The large militiagriffon, Garon, shoved her forward with all his strength. “We didn’t tell you to stop!”

She cried and fell to the floor. Griffons around her cried and gasped. Some laughed, others meant to help, but were stopped. ‘You can’t do this!’, someone shouted, and chaos erupted. The guards along the hall struggled to keep the throng under control.

“This isn’t working, chief…” The black and white militiagriffon turned to Gilmara and she scratched her neck. “It will be alright. She’s just scared. We’ll carry her it we must.”

“I don’t have the patience for this!” Garon reached and grabbed her nape. He pulled her up and shoved her forward, but instead of walking, she fell with her face against the floor again. Her weakened legs wouldn’t support her weight and the chains didn’t let her react.

It created more angry comments and laughter. The other militiagriffons yelled at their colleague and Gilmara shoved him away from Gwineth. “You are way out of line, Garon.”

Gwineth stood again, though. She sat and raised her paws as much as the chains would allow. “Mother! Help me! Don’t let these filthy Saddani do this to me!”

None of them understood what she said. Most of them kept staring. Others yelled at the militiagriffons and a few laughed at the crazy hen speaking in gibberish. None of them saw it either. Only Gwineth could see the great black and white griffoness when she appeared and held her face. Her touch was seldom so caring. Both her goddess and her sponsor, Gwendolen rarely talked so softly.

“Gwineth, calm yourself. “Gwendolen told her. “Listen to me. They cannot drag you to Shatteredrock. They are bluffing. You must unravel their stratagem and make use of it. You are capable of freeing yourself, but you are allowing your fear to control you.”

“No!” The other bawled and reached for the griffoness that the others didn’t see. She would leave if Gwineth let her. The others could laugh at her all they wanted. “Don’t leave me!”

A dry whack and Gwineth fell to the floor when Garon stuck the back of her head with his baton. Griffons cried around the room, but the militiagriffons held them cordoned off from the strange female that seemed to talk to someone who wasn’t there. The other two griffons escorting Gwineth held Garon and the Lord Protector tried taking his baton, yelling at him.

Gwendolen stood, sitting where she was, with Gwineth at her feet. Befuddled. Her beak hung open and she looked at the slowly growing bloody mark on her feathers. She looked around the room and frowned at the griffons that couldn’t see her. The fourth militiagriffon watched the others with wide-opened eyes and glances every which way. Several of the griffons among the detained laughed and someone cried ‘Oh! Shit!’ and ‘Hit her again!’. The griffons in the militia struggled to get them under control while Gilmara and her subordinates struggled with the large griffon.

“Garon, what the fuck!” She had to struggle, and he still freed his weapon. The other two held him the best they could. “Are you trying to kill her?”

“This bitch!” The large griffon tried freeing himself, but for all his size, he couldn’t. He yelled though. At the top of his lungs, trying to reach for the griffoness, curled into a ball and crying. “It’s her fault Genie is dead! We should hang her outside! We should skin this barbarian and put her to dry in the sun so her friends can see!”

He freed himself of the others and lunged at the weeping griffoness. Lightning flashed outside and the magical lights failed. A black paw held his own and he gasped, as wide-eyed as the griffons surrounding them. It wasn’t Lord Protector Gilmara, but a terrifying and beautiful creature standing above Gwineth’s still weeping form.

Griffons cried again, shocked at such a marvelous creature which manifested from thin air, and in such a dramatic way. She held the militiagriffon’s baton effortlessly and stoped that huge griffon.

She had come out of nowhere and filled the air with the smell of lightning. Her striped black and white wings shone like the sudden lights upon the clouds on a thunderstorm and her gray eyes froze the large griffon’s heart. He let go of the baton and pulled back much as the others in his squad did. Beaks hung open but silent.

She was a griffon hen, but larger. She was white and black, but the most perfect shades as the black among the stars and the untouched snow. Her beak was black, but obsidian was never as graceful. And her talons shone, but steel was never so sharp. Her eyes were stormy gray, but the storm was never so enraged. She spoke as she helped the griffoness stand, but thunder was never as frightening.

“The Wheel of Time spins unstopping, and he who finds himself in power will find that he is thus powerless! Under the Sun and Moon, you have forgotten the harsh mountain where I have birthed your ancestors and hoofed blood runs in your veins!” She recited the words, perfect and cadenced as a song. Contained wrath as rumbling thunder.

“You followed the Traitor King and you forsworn the mighty for the meek in their promises of ease. You regale yourselves with their softness and you give in to their pliant beds! You follow leaders’ fat from their disgusting food, and you pay them in the coins with the Dawnbringer’s face. You listen to her soothing words, and you share in her children’s drinks.”

“The Wheel of Time spins unstopping, and you will regret and cover yourselves in the ashes of birch trees. Sacrifice My Chosen under Her sun and they will feast in the Stormy Eyrie, but when the Predator stalks the world again, you will share in their fear and My Chosen will rejoice at my side.”

“It’s the Rite of the Wheel of Time.” The steely blue griffoness, with her feathers stained by tears, mumbled. “Swordmaiden Ghadah’s dying words.”

“You forget your training too often, Swordmaiden Gwineth of Thunderpeak.” The great griffoness turned to and caressed the feathers on her head. “As these griffons have forgotten who I am. They forgot my promise to my defeated children, and so did you.

“I do not ever leave you. I cannot. I inhabit within your soul.” She put a black paw on the other’s fluffy chest. “And I do grant you the strength, not to escape, but to deliver my judgment upon the traitorous and my boon upon the faithful.”

With that, she closed her wings around her body and vanished. The artificial magical lights returned, as did the storm outside.

“What the heck just happened?” The black Lord Protector cried, looking one side and another. The room was filled with scared and confused griffons. Cubs started crying and confused griffons mumbled more than they talked. Gilmara watched Garon, staring at the northerner prisoner, like he had seen a ghost. “Everybody, calm down! It’s… It’s just the storm.”

But when Gwineth giggled, she almost jumped out of her pelt.

“I’m such a doofus.” The giggling griffoness stared at her shiny blue talons, sitting on the floor, and holding her forelegs close because of the chains. “I had never thought about the Rite of the Wheel of Time like that. It’s already happening. Heeheeheehee… It’s happening right fucking now!”

The big northerner griffoness simply shook her head, tossing her crest around and ruffling her feathers. And then she grinned, staring at the griffons in armor. “Tell me about Genie, Garon. Maybe you’ll see her again. Sooner than you expect. Then you can both become Windigo bait.”

That snapped the angry and large griffon out of his daze, and he screamed at her, grabbing his baton from the floor. But he didn’t attack her again. “I don’t know what is going on anymore.”

“Don’t be angry at me… She made her choices, as did all of you, filthy Saddani.” She responded and nothing or her previous terror remained. She stood on her hindlegs and opened her wings and her forelegs. More than the thunder, the clinking of the chain links hitting the floor scared the griffons. Broken link after broken link. And as the flash of lightning flooded the hall, it reflected on her eyes, wide open, and her beak twisted into a manic grin. “Mother Harpy grants amnesty to all who will leave the sunlight and bear testimony to Her might! You must choose, Griffonstone. Which side do you swear fealty to?”

“I like the sound of that!” A griffon among the detainees laughed. Dark tan, with white and honey eyes. An old scar under his beak gave him an easy distinctiveness other than his grim expression, despite his laugher and deep voice.

Other griffons followed and a cacophony of griffons agreeing and talking over each other took the hall. Suddenly the militiagriffons found themselves outnumbered by a united group rather than individual bandits.

“Hey! Hey!” Gilmara screeched. “That is not how it works! You guys can’t just un-detain yourselves! The Royal Guard is gonna kick your asses!”

“What?” Gwineth grinned wildly as violence began around her. Even among the visiting, griffons had chosen their side and the law enforcement griffons were a hopeless minority. “Didn’t you hear? The Wheel of Time spins unstopping, and he who finds himself in power will find that he is thus powerless!”

***

Celestia startled awake. The flash from lightning entered the large window of the office she had taken for command center in the Blackfeather HQ. There was a voice in the thunder. Or did she dream of it?

She frowned and looked one way and another. The shadows were poised to jump at her. Shivering and letting her jaw hang, her horn enveloped itself with white light and illuminated the luxurious, but quite safe office. The hoofing life-size statue of a griffon soldier didn’t help at all, but she was safe, despite what her body was telling her.

Chocolate Velvet slept on the large couch by the wall, and she was sitting at the desk. The griffon hen’s sword was still before her, laid on top of the desk. As dormant as it was before. With her breath in quick heaves, she squealed and jumped when thunder clapped again.

The lights must have gone out after she fell asleep. She was dreaming. It was a nightmare she couldn’t remember, but Luna never came.

Catbirdking

No amount of imprecations, swear words or angry shouting stopped the once imprisoned griffons from shoving Lord Protector Gilmara into one of the cells at the back of the headquarters. Thrown to the concrete floor, she jumped back at the bars, held them, and snarled. If she could, she would have pecked her way through the bars just to get at the griffons outside. “Do you morons think you can get away with this shit?”

The griffons on the other side of the bars laughed at her. One of them more than the others. “Oh, man… I can’t believe I lived to see this! The Lord Protector of Griffonstone, taken down a notch.”

She sat with her forepaws on the floor and deadpanned at the griffon. “Gagliano, do you truly believe the Royal Guard is not going to wipe the floor with you and your new flame? As soon as they hear of this?”

He leaned against the bars, showing off the ugly scar under his beak, grinning and not staring directly at her, but his long talons. “Gee, Chief. I think the Boss is gonna be delighted when I deliver him a deal with our new northerner overlords.”

“The northerners are gonna have you beheaded or hanged…” One of the militiagriffons under Gilmara, sitting at the back of the cell, shrugged. “They hate griffons trying to join them because of the benefits.”

The black griffoness added nothing. Instead, she scooted back as another of her law-enforcement griffons dropped to the floor when shoved into the cell. Outside, Garon pulled the sliding door shut, despite not looking her in the eye, he spoke to her. “I’m sorry, Chief… I had no choice.”

“Hey, don’t talk to us, traitor.” One of the incarcerated militiagriffons snarled.

“And you!” Gilmara stood on her four legs and flared her wings. “I swear to Harmony, I will get you expelled and behind bars! The Royal Guard will kick your asses and you’re gonna get some consequences as soon as this storm blows over. I will personally have your butt prosecuted to the fullest possible extent of the law! You asshole! Genie would be livid at your stupidity!”

While the impressive and bulky griffon turned his eyes from her, the scarred one laughed and punched his shoulder. “Don’t mind her! She’s just grumpy she’s not in charge anymore.”

“I’m not your friend, Gagliano.” Garon slapped the griffon’s paw as he tried touching his shoulder. “I… I just want to see Genie again.”

“Are you out of your Celestia damned mind?!” One of his colleagues behind the bars yelled while tapping his head with a talon. “Genie is dead! Because of the northerner jerk whose toes this gangster prick is licking.”

“Snap out of this craziness, man!” Another cried, throwing his forepaws so frustrated he was.

“She got to you, Garon.” Gilmara sat on the concrete again and shook her head sadly. Her black tail wrapped around her, but the round tip kept flicking. “But this doesn’t excuse you for this nonsense. We loved Genie too, but you’re letting a false hope make you do stupid things.”

“But! But, you saw it, didn’t you?” The big, tan griffon grew restless, standing on his hindlegs and pacing one way and the other. “All of you saw it! The Lady in the Storm!”

“I don’t know what I saw!” Gilmara shouted back at him, also standing on her four legs. “It’s an urban legend. You don’t know what you saw either. You just accepted what the northerner psycho said because you want it to be true! What? Am I a feathering shrink now?! Why are we talking about old hen tales? Come on!”

“Hey, don’t listen to them, big guy.” The griffon with the scar stepped in front of Garon and opened his wings. When the griffon winced, Gagliano stood next to him and rested a wing over his back and a paw around his shoulder. Whimsically waving his paw in an arc. “I saw her too. In all her glory. And Gwineth told us who she is.”

The door opened and another batch of griffons with the local militia leather armor walked in under escort by griffons with their weapons. The big northerner hen, Gwineth, followed them, carrying a standard issue wheellock musket.

She sat and took the thing from her back. “Don’t you suckers have real weapons? How old is this thing?”

“There is a serial number and fabrication date on the chamber…” Gilmara deadpanned again. “We’re not supposed to kill, but to apprehend. Even violent thugs such as yourself. Not to mention you won’t sell your revolver muskets, much less the rifles to the Federation anyway.”

“Well, this is dumb.” She threw the musket back like a toy. “We kill bad griffons in the north and you don’t need a machine gun for that. It’s just so much more convenient. They stop being a problem and everybody can go about their day.”

“You know this jerk with the scar you just let go is a rapist, don’t you?” Gilmara gave the other griffoness a tired stare.

“Whaaa?” Gwineth stared at Gagliano with huge eyes. “Did you really rape someone?!”

“Eeeh… Kinda…” He shrugged and smiled like the suave guy he was. “They never proved anything; you know…. Outlaw stuff. She never said ‘no’.”

“Aaaw…” Gwineth sighed and slumped her shoulders, speaking with a defeated tone. “Damnit… I kinda liked you… Get him hanged on the yard, please...”

He cried and reeled back as two of the thugs with them grinned and moved closer. “Wait! This isn’t true! I was just joking!”

They laughed and held him. Without missing a beat, they quickly dragged him through the door leading to the closed yard at the back of the headquarters.

“See, this is how we deal with bad griffons in the north. He’s Allmother’s problem now.” Gwineth grinned.

Gilmara watched as the griffons dragged the third out and blinked a couple of times. “Do you understand that just because you already committed a crime, the crimes you commit moving forward, such as ordering a griffon killed, are still counted against you?”

“Only if my side loses.” The northerner shrugged and grinned. “So, where is my lieutenant? We got stuff to do.”

One of the freed criminals pointed a thumb back. “You just told them to hang him.”

“Oh well…” She sighed and pointed at Garon. “You’re the new lieutenant now. Get the others assembled in the front. Oh, wait… You’re the angry guy who wanted to see your mate again.”

He blinked quietly at her before she went on. “Ah, it’s okay. Get the others assembled. I need a big guy I can depend on anyways.”

Gilmara kept her deadpan expression. “What do they do with the clowns like you in the north? Put them in charge?”

Truth be told, they did it to the clown in the south, except Gilmara thought of politicians as a different kind of criminal. Maybe that Gwineth hen should run for some office on Griffonstone.

Oblivious to her thoughts, Gwineth frowned and raised a finger to respond, but one of her griffons interrupted her. He swung open the door leading to the front of the building and yelled at her from there. “Gwineth, there’s some military dude here to see you.”

“Ah?” She turned to him, ignoring Gilmara. “Military guy?”

With no further attention dispensed to Gilmara, she walked away with Garon. He did spare his colleagues a stare before following, though. More of the thugs Gwineth had enthralled brought other griffons to lock behind the bars. Several civilians among them, but Gilmara couldn’t do more than seethe. And hope someone would put that jerk in her place.

***

He turned on the magical lights, but they kept going dark each time lightning struck the city or rippled across the clouds above. In the dark, Chocolate Velvet grumbled at the switch on the wall and flicked it on and off several times with his hoof. But the light didn’t come back despite his glaring. Only after a few seconds the magical fixtures lit again.

“It’s pointless…” Celestia told him from the window. “The magic from the lightning wreaks havoc on the magical installations. It doesn’t seem to damage anything physically, short of a direct strike, but local systems can’t handle the interference. Nopony really understands the phenomenon.”

The office stood quite high above ground level and the window, large and luxurious, allotted a wide and deep view of the city. From the suburban area where the building had been erected all the way to fort King Grover, the river skimming the city and King Grover’s Plaza.

Considering the tower held the headquarters for the Blackfeather Division, it seemed appropriate. He could joke about the intelligence division being directed from an evil tower overlooking the city, but he remembered Palace Canterlot with Celestia’s telescope… Better to let the analogies rest. Well, he remembered a saying about the scalpel and the doctor’s hand. Or was it a line from a movie from his old world?

His hooves clopped with muffled sounds on the carpet as he walked and then sat behind Celestia. She quietly watched the rain pour over the city and crawl down the window as he joined her. Silence dominated the room beyond the splatter of heavy raindrops against the glass and he could feel her tense muscles.

“They should have met the fake ambush already.” Celestia spoke softly. “They should have reported back Gwineth is on her way and under observation.”

“Do you think it was a good idea to trust the local militia?” Chocolate scooted closer. He pressed his body against hers, resting his wing behind her back and she pressed herself against him. He breathed in her milky, sweet aroma and welcomed her warmth. “You were distrustful of the army.”

She sighed. “I hate to think of what they are doing around the city tonight. I hope my Justiciars and the Royal Guard can keep them from literally purging the Blackfeather Division. And keep the Blackfeather from preying upon the citizens. I have Miss Mallet going through their archives, hopefully, she will uncover what is so damning the Blackfeathers have found. Although I fear they will try to stop her.”

“Who?” He looked at her.

Truth be told, the whole situation had him confused. He had thought the army was on their side, until Celestia said they started splitting and helping the northerners. He thought the Blackfeather was on their side, as they opposed the northerner agents, but the Army turned on them and they scattered with no words. Chocolate thought the local militia was on their side, but things seemed to not be going as expected with them either. Something might have happened, but they didn’t know and nocreature reported back. They couldn’t even find a living official in the governmental hierarchy. They either hid or the Army defectors got to them. Not even loyalist army officers could be found.

If there ever existed a situation for which the word ‘mess’ had been invented for, it’s what Griffonstone had turned into. And whatever happened to loyalist military, the thick of still hadn’t arrived because several divisions remained unaccounted for. They had been mobilized in preparation for the invasion of Snow Mountains.

For the first time after coming to Equestria he felt fear. Because looking at Celestia, for the first time, she didn’t seem to be in control at all.

“Shouldn’t we already be investigating the northerner griffons if the Blackfeathers found something which made the southerner traitors so freaked out?” At least, the northerners seemed to be the source of the problems.

“We are.” She frowned at the rainy scene beyond the window. “The problem is finding evidence we can link to them. Until now, Lord Gilad had only been guilty of saying bad things about the hippogriffs. Today I found he may be involved in sponsoring an outlaw involved in the attack to the hospital and with several condemnations. But there is also this delicate matter of the nightmare. For better or worse, I sent Golden Rule to Griffindell some time ago. I will try to contact her via magical letter when the situation calms down. Hopefully she can provide some insight into the matter.”

The city lit up again, but not from the lightning storm. A gigantic explosion rocked the building and pink sparks flew into the air half a dozen blocks from them. Chocolate gasped and flared his wings, but Celestia simply narrowed her eyes. An instant later, the magical lights turned off with no signs of returning anytime soon.

Chocolate looked up to the ceiling and then to Celestia. Outside and then back to Celestia. Finally, he let out a ‘uuh’.

Modern cities, and parts of older cities had different methods for public illumination. They either distributed coal gas to streetlamps by a network of underground tubing, or magical flux, fed to the lamps via gold wires, also underground. At least when one lived in a sufficiently developed area. In some places, such as small cities, oil and wood still sufficed.

Griffonstone had a combination of the three. Poorer areas used more traditional methods for heating and lighting, but other areas could use a combination of both for public lighting and private use. In areas where the safer magical lights were used, the grid needed mana battery stations to ensure a proper flow of magical energies.

Mana batteries were safer, enough they could be used on airships, and even more when housed inside the proper distribution buildings to be found in cities. Unless someone tampered with them… Because if they were tampered with, they could release a lot of energy, very fast, and someone was going to have a bad day. It would not need saying such stations were built to withstand natural disasters and a random storm should not be enough to cause such an explosion.

Thus, Celestia worried and he worried too. She kept her eyes outside and he remained by her side. Neither spoke again for at least a couple of minutes. Lightning and thunder struck again, but nothing else exploded. He turned to her and her resolute stare over the city’s skyline only to turn his own eyes to it again.

Finally, the door to the office opened. A tan and white griffon with serious brown eyes came inside. A musket on his back and a halberd too, while a cuirass protected him. He stopped right by the door with a rigid military posture and spoke clearly. “Princess. The storm caused an explosion on a mana battery station. Reports say many griffons were injured. Colonel Gaspar requests your assistance.”

Rarely he’d ever seen Celestia don such a serious frown. It lasted less than a second though, as she turned to the door where the griffon soldier waited. “I will do what I can. Please tell Colonel Gaspar I will be leaving immediately.”

The three of them spent awkward ten, or so, seconds staring at each other until the soldier griffon coughed into his fist and excused himself out, slowly closing the door.

Celestia kept her eyes on the door and Chocolate’s ears slowly bent to gravity. “We’re going through last night all over again, aren’t we?”

“I am afraid so…” Her ears pulled back. “This could be a coincidence, but we cannot trust the GSA anymore.”

“I mean… You said you were almost sure they murdered a Blackfeather officer.” He winced. “This is bad. Like, really bad.”

“We must deal with it, Chocolate Velvet.” He would be lying if her steel resolve and piercing stare didn’t give him chills. The good kind of chills if the situation wasn’t so worrying. “I will assist the weather team and have one of the Royal Guard Engineers examine the damage at the mana battery station. You must protect Miss Mallet and ensure the young hen cannot escape with this sword. Remember the GSA is stationed at this building and the only reason they still haven’t destroyed everything is our presence here. Keep Miss Mallet safe from them too.”

He looked at the desk where the griffoness’ magical sword laid flat.

“Wait! What is going on?” He resisted screeching at her.

“The storm didn’t damage the battery station.” She pointed at the window with her wing. “They are trying to draw us away from here. Since Gilmara’s griffons never returned with the northerner hen, something went wrong. She is likely truly free, and she is likely to try recovering her sword.”

“So, it’s a trap? A maneuver?” He frowned. “You can’t go!”

“I will be safe. They cannot hurt me.” She shook her head. “And If I don’t go, the northerner hen will simply escape. We will lose our opportunity to examine her magic. Because of that, you must stay and fight her. We must hope she will underestimate your abilities, feel confident she can recover her sword with me gone. Additionally, you must assist the Royal Guards in the building. Protect Miss Mallet and the information the Blackfeathers secured and scared the GSA so much.”

“Well…” He raised his eyes and sighed. “I wasn’t counting on a calm night anyways… We knew stuff was gonna go down. I suppose flexibility is a virtue here. Alright.”

She smiled at him. “Be careful. She is dangerous and I don’t want to lose you.”

“Eh, don’t worry.” He waved a hoof at her. “Maybe I can get the Chivalric Society to give me points for this. You know-”

Her lips pressing against his silenced him. His eyes bulged at the surprise, but it wasn’t the first time and he regained control of his faculties. Soon enough his hoof slid down her silky mane as she pressed her warm weight on him and his back against the cold window. Her chest filled against his as his hoof slid down her back and mutual hums escaped them. He pulled her closer and she let him draw her further to him as her hooves found some space for them between the glass and his own mane. His head became lighter when his quickening breaths dragged in her personal aroma.

An eternity within the few seconds they remained together wasn’t enough and he found that he already missed her as soon as she parted from him. His eyes opened, but he said nothing more.

She giggled at him and nuzzled his neck as he returned the little horsey caress before she walked to the door. Going outside, she spoke to someone beyond the closing door and Chocolate waited a few seconds after their voices silenced before he did anything.

After quickly donning his armor, an ability he owed to practice and telekinesis, he squinted and looked around the empty room.

“Right. Think strategically.” He told himself, pacing around the desk with the magical sword.

He had to protect the young Justiciar at the archives. She had Royal Guards with her, so she should be safe from Blackfeathers or GSA soldiers trying to do stuff to the records stored there. The problem was the northerner hen. Even more so if the griffons showed up with her.

He blinked and stopped pacing for a second. He hated not knowing who the enemy actually was. Well, he knew he sided with Celestia, and things looked grim. They couldn’t reach Luna, but, but hopefully it would change once they managed to deal with the weird magic hanging over the region. In the end, Celestia should help the weather department with the storm.

His ears pulled back and he frowned. Of course, unless the weather department too sided with the northerners.

A more pressing matter, he had to protect the sword too.

He turned to the desk and the sword still laid where Celestia had left it. Walking closer, he studied it. Very well balanced, though a bit long for a longsword. Almost a greatsword. Probably a bastard sword. Of course, the term meant little to a creature which used telekinetic magic to hold almost anything, and griffons had thin paws. Nonetheless, the sword had the makings of a versatile weapon. It looked like a variation of the griffon sky sword, with the bent guard, leaf-shaped tip, and a broad fuller, used for airborne combat techniques.

He leveled his eyes with the table, staring at the lifeless blade. If Celestia was right, some griffon hens danced with their swords and the griffons really liked staring during the empire. Well, sword-dancing was a thing. Even in his original world. Just not with an extremely dangerous magical weapon sharp enough to kill you or chop off a limb.

Stupid edgy griffons.

Then he sat on his hind and frowned at the thing. It didn’t feel magical. He couldn’t detect any magic radiating off it. From the sword, he looked to the door. “I should be with Miss Mallet since Celesta won’t be around. Maybe even concentrate the Royal Guards in there with us, since she, the archives and the sword would be the only thing of interest in the building.

His eyes shifted and his lips scrunched. Letting whoever was coming just have the building to themselves was a bad idea, though. Especially if the GSA who occupied it couldn’t be trusted. Such a tactic would tell them exactly where he, the Justiciar and all the information would be: conveniently stashed in a single room for them.

He frowned. “I’ll leave the guards patrolling the rest of the building. But I’m holling myself up with this sword and the Justiciar in the archives. Come on, Miss Fancy Griffon Sword.”

The magic from his igniting horn reached to seize the weapon, but it responded by jumping on the table like it was alive and giving him the magical feedback of his life.

He yelped, pulling back, and rolling on to his back while the weapon ‘thunked’ at the table. He jumped to his hooves, stomping frantically at the carpeted floor. “Ow! Ow, ow, ow, ow! Stupid feathering, griffon mother… Hoofing piece of Aaaagh! Frick, frick, Fudge!”

No amount of complaining, pony-swearing, stomping, or rubbing at his horn in the dark made the throbbing pain pass before a couple of minutes.

“Okay!” He breathed in, staring wide-eyed at the weapon. It had gotten itself stuck point down through the desk like it was the fudging Sword in the Stone. He glared at it as though the thing mocked him.

The door opened and a royal guard pegasus poked his head in, white, gold, and blue, frowning at him. “Do you need anything, Your Highness?”

“This freaking thing has one heck of a magical feedback! It almost blew up my horn!” Chocolate shook the dizziness out of his head. “Uh… Celestia’s gone to help the griffons dealing with the storm. Keep the others patrolling the building and sound the alarm as soon as anything seems off. We’ll be by ourselves and Celestia had reason to believe the plan with the locals went belly up. So, we may get a dangerous griffon hen trying to enter the building.”

He shrugged. “The northerner hen is likely to come here to get her sword back. We’re gonna stop her. Also, keep whoever from messing with the archives before Miss Mallet is done. And don’t make it obvious, but don’t trust the GSA.”

The pegasus simply nodded at his words before he concluded. “Get the word around. The northerners, or the GSA are going to try and either infiltrate the building or fight their way in. Maybe even the Locals. Heck if I know who’s who in this crazy city anymore.”

“Yes, sir.” The pegasus left, leaving Chocolate alone with the sword.

The alicorn turned back to the sword and the light from lightning glinted off it in the dark. He seethed at it. Then he turned to the curtains flanking the window and pulled a sheet out. Holding it in his magic, he dropped it over the sword and pulled it around on a spiral until he satisfied himself it would be safe to manipulate.

But he wouldn’t use his magic, as it would reach for the word inside. Instead, his hoof slowly hovered towards the curtain-wrapped sword. Supporting his weight on the desk with a leg, his tongue sticking out, he folded his leg around the hilt.

Receiving no response from the sword, he pulled it free and yelped as the thing pulled his leg to the floor. Not as though the weapon was impossibly heavy, because it didn’t damage the carpet. It didn’t damage the sheet. It didn’t hurt his joints. More like it was made of sheer griffon uncooperativeness and refused to be manipulated.

He stared at the bundle and groaned, pulling back his ears. “Alright! Fine!”

He bit the curtain and pulled it, dragging the sword along the carpet out of the room.

***

After spending some time convincing her guards Celestia would rather they remained and helped Chocolate Velvet defend the building and the justiciar, they accepted. Her ponies often forgot few things could hurt her. She rolled her eyes at the thoughts it invoked. Once upon a time their commanders would tell recruits their job was to protect silly ponies from the repercussions of threatening her. Not the exact word they used, but the sentiment was close enough.

Stepping out of the awning above the main entrance, her golden-shod hooves struck the pooled water on the walkway. The heavy rain drenched her coat and kept her mane and tail from floating almost immediately, but it didn’t bother her. She had withstood much worse.

The public lighting outside had failed as well, and the rain gave the surrounding buildings a foreboding air. Warehouses with broken windows, workshops missing garage doors, and parking patios for vehicles taken by broken husks.

She didn’t spend too much time examining the street and flew with a hop. The clouds rumbled with the immense magical power of the lightning storms, but something seemed off. It seemed fiercer and certainly not under control by the local weather authorities.

She frowned and her wings took her higher and higher in a spiral around the tower and its two-story rectangular base building. The clouds stood high, and the wind reached dangerous speeds. She decided for flying farther from the tower. She couldn’t afford to injure herself in such a silly way.

The cold of the wind and rain grasped her, and she could have used additional protective spells. She didn’t bother with any, she had more pressing thoughts storming inside her head.

The Blackfeather headquarters used to be and should be in the Chancellor’s Palace. Supposedly, as they started spying on the Chancellor’s Office itself, they must have thought it prudent to move away. Gail apparently wasn’t smart enough to pick up on the clue, but other officers must have been.

Most of the buildings being abandoned shells told her they chose the tower in hurry. They could have found a better place for a base within the city. Maybe their backup plan was unfeasible. They must have been desperate, and Celestia bit her lip upon the thought. Why didn’t they ask her for help? Why didn’t they work with the Griffonian government? The northerners likely had infiltrated agents within the Griffonian Government and the Blackfeather knew of it. Still, they never saw Gast and Gustav coming. Maybe they knew their position was compromised, but never identified the enemy agents? It was the only explanation, although they seemed more spooked than they should.

Hard to believe they would’ve moved out without leaving their infiltrated agents or that other griffons wouldn’t catch up to what they did. Suddenly it became reasonable she felt caught in a three-way battle. The Blackfeather Division didn’t work for the Griffonstonian government anymore, and its army found itself splintered between two sides of the sad story of Lady Gaharjet and Master Gembert.

A small ember of fury burned in her chest. They were her friends, but such thoughts wouldn’t help her unveil the situation.

Did the event also motivate Lord Gilad? No… He had stood before her much earlier when his father died. He spoke to her before the Hall of Friendship. A noble griffon lord, distraught over Griffonstone and the political situation of his country. She understood him at the time… The political chicanery and corruption confused and angered his noble warrior heart.

***

A young griffon walked the narrow entrance to the Hall of Friendship. The engineers had to accommodate it under the seating for the House of the Chosen and made it unintentionally cramped. The red carpet on the floor and brown varnished wood along the walls certainly bore too much luxury for his tastes. The room where the great leaders of the world decided upon the laws and fate of numberless creatures of all walks of life stood before him. White marble walls and pillars, a grandstand of many desks and seats circled the room with the entrance tunnel beneath. None of it made him flinch.

It resembled an arena with the podium at the center, surrounded by bickering politicians cheering or denouncing whoever stood there and Celestia hated it. Especially whenever a local leader walked into it under the full attention of the assembled members. It meant they had opinions and would like to share them.

The ceiling reached far above. An opulent painting of their world occupied most of it, with the sun on one side and the moon on the other. Magical lights ensured all could see their individual nations highlighted upon the map. Only a few stretches of land had no marks. The Changeling Hives and the Dragon Badlands being the ones worthy of note.

Countless creatures occupied their seats. Ponies, buffalo, yaks, kirin, griffons, hippogriffs, centaurs, minotaurs… Zebras and tall ponies from Saddle Arabia. A dragon who represented the interests of the Dragon Lord, even if they were not an integral part of the Equestrian Confederation had a seat too. As did a diamond dog, even if not enough of them had remained to become an independent realm. Surely a few changelings too. All of them stared down at the young griffon walking upon the carpet with his head raised and the small blue griffon accompanying him. Unbroken pride of the kind one could no longer see within the many politicians who often spoke in those halls.

A proud leader, confident in his position and in his honor. Untarnished by the many deals which put the others on their seats, and maybe they saw it too, because the griffons didn’t like seeing him. They talked amongst themselves, but the marching griffon didn’t mind it. Although, much to Celestia’s chagrin, hippogriffs shared incensed comments amongst themselves, and Queen Novo quietly scoffed at him.

Reading the room was always so important, but she often found things she didn’t like.

During a hot summer he had traveled to Canterlot wearing his rustic armor of clear steel and the skin of a black wolf. A fierce visage in white with a powerful dark tan body. A black cape, a northerner battle axe and a round shield; white and blue for the snow and the sky, with the black gates of Griffindell taking the center. Those representatives not intent on criticizing him amongst themselves showed amused grins and murmured mocking comments to their colleagues.

Under flashes from photography machines, Celestia saw the honored and dedicated Governor of Snow Mountains Hold walk to the center of the hall. But mostly, he was the Lord of the Black Gates, Lord Gilad. Liege of the northerner griffons. To the others he seemed to be an actor, an artist dressed for a Canterlotian opera lost in the arena of politics. It was one of those days Celestia would later lay her head on her pillow and curse the day she accepted her position.

An infant accompanied him. A little cyan and yellow griffon who seemed much more intimidated by the environment and stares than the older griffon. His cute forward-swept crest of yellow-blue feathers remained charming, and he stood his ground with the larger griffon he accompanied. Gilad’s brother who actually spoke Common Equestrian and High-Griffonese.

He was a bit of a mystery to Celestia. Gilad’s mother decided to have another cub after Gilad’s father died. Something usually to not mind at all, it drew attention coming from an esteemed northerner lady whose culture preached that griffons should only mate once. But try as she might, Celestia never managed to see more than an old griffon lady who may have mated too young and wanted another try at love. It just dissonated with the northerner culture.

Something always seemed off about the northerners. She knew the northerner griffons kept an ancient culture among themselves. Maybe it was because she knew they never truly accepted the fall of the empire, even if they kept it secret. How long had it been? Celestia had imagined without Emperor Grigor’s unifying gravitas they would eventually fall under King Grover’s sphere of influence. But they never did.

Celestia had spent entire waking nights trying to understand and the only explanation she managed to produce was their dedication to protecting the southerner lands. It seemed right, given Gilad’s visit to Canterlot and the things he was likely to say.

Before the two griffons stood the House of Majesty, the seats of the most powerful beings in the world. Be them elected, chosen, or born into their position, there sat the creatures which ruled nations and entire peoples. Queen Novo of Hippogriffia, King Bohr of Yakyakstan, Chancellor Gail of Griffonia… All of them sat there. All of them had gathered to meet Governor Gilad. A rare day on Canterlot when all the Majesties attended a meeting, and it too spoke of bad omens.

Celestia sat above them. On the Golden Throne, overlooking the entirety of the two houses and the podium. Gilad’s eyes met hers and never faltered. He never cast them away, and they never drifted with the uncomfortable distress she often brought upon creatures. Not Gilad, he didn’t fear her.

Maybe that was one of the reasons she liked him. He treated her like an equal.

“Esteemed Majesties, your excellencies Chosen of all nations, regions, and peoples of our great world.” Celestia’s voice rose above the whispering creatures, leaving Gilad’s eyes to scan over the assembled creatures. “The Hall of Friendship recognizes Governor Gilad of Snow Mountains Hold, Griffonia. As it does recognize his brother and interpreter, Gallus of Griffindell.”

“Gallus?” She directed her words at him.

“Yes! Yes, ma’am!” The little griffon startled and straightened at hearing his name.

“Do you swear you will translate only and nothing more for the present creatures which do not speak High Griffonese? And for Lord Gilad who does not speak Common Equestrian? In the interest of clear communication and understanding?”

“Yes, ma’am!” The young griffon put a paw before his fluffy yellow chest. “I do.”

“Very well, then. Lord Gilad may speak, and Equestria will listen.” She concluded.

After Gallus spoke to him, Gilad took a step forward and his eyes scanned the seats around him, turning his head and taking a few seconds before he spoke.

“Lords, Kings, Queens, Princes and Princesses, chosen representatives of nations and their peoples.” His powerful and deep voice boomed and echoed within the halls, without need for the voice-enhancing spell, as Gallus translated for the other creatures. “My father used to tell me a liege ought not yearn for the money of his vassals.”

“It is his duty to use their coin in a spartan and dutiful manner for the good of his people. His vassals ought to offer proper tribute to their liege according to the needs of their brethren. This is the way of our race since times immemorial. Since before we met the other races. Since before The Sun and The Moon walked the land. Since before the Unicorn Kings who summoned the Windigos upon our lands and cursed them with Eternal Winter.” Although Gallus’ perfect translation was commendable, it would be the pain and the hurt in his voice that would stay with Celestia.

“When the Windigos came, before the days of King Grover and of the Kingdom of Griffonia, we held close to our hearts the words of ancient pacts written with the blood of all creatures. Above all, we have stood stout against the malice of the Windigos. We loathe their fell magic that would endanger the southern lands, it is our duty to be followed with warm pride and steel honor.”

Some creatures laughed and Celestia’s jaw would have fallen agape in her younger years. Unicorns, griffons and even hippogriffs commented on the barbarian’s ignorance.

“No monsters have come to Greenland in centuries, Governor.” A griffon senator spoke, barely hiding his contempt and leering. “It is a fairy tale your kind uses to justify your existence.”

Perhaps accepting her position hadn’t been the problem, but Celestia’s tendency of allowing creatures their blissful ignorance. Creatures wouldn’t be so happy if they knew of the monsters living in the attic.

“Have you come all the way from the northern lands to tell us fairy tales, Governor Gilad?” Queen Novo yawned.

Finally, Chancellor Gail spoke, standing from his desk in the House of Majesty. “Gilad, with all due respect to your culture... For feather’s sake, you don’t even speak Common Equestrian…”

He couldn’t keep the chuckling from his voice, and then he sighed. “What is it that you want? More bodies? More money? Weapons? You said it yourself. It’s what you northerner brutes are meant to do. Mine iron, hunt game meat, and kill monsters. If they happen to exist, that is. It makes for good folk tales, even if few even know them outside of your hold.”

The problem was… Tales often held a sliver of truth.

It took Celestia by surprise, but Gilad’s voice thundered after Gallus was done translating. “Do not mistake me for one of your friends, Gail. I do not seek money. I seek reparations. My father used to tell me… A bad ruler is a disease of the land that ought to be removed.”

Among gasps and some laughs, a griffon senator for the northern lands rose from her seat across the hall and raised her fist into the air as she shouted a single word. “Köttrornkonungr!”

Much to the surprise of the assembled creatures, her cry found traction and the northerner representatives for Griffonia banged their fists on their desks chanting the same word again and again. Celestia, of course knew what it meant, but she banged her hoof on her desk. “Order, please, order! We will speak in order!”

The chanting and shouts of Köttrornkonungr continued incessantly and creatures around the hall became more and more confused. Gilad turned and watched as his brethren griffons of the North shouted the word. He seemed as surprised as Celestia was. Finally, King Bohr of Yakyakstan managed to shout louder. “Excuse yak, but what odd griffon word means? Wee griffon translate griffon tongue. Yak not speak weird northerner griffon language.”

“Nobody speaks the tongue of these northerner barbarians!” A griffon shouted among the senators for Greenland Hold. “They should educate themselves for once and speak Common Equestrian!”

The senator’s words, punctuated by sarcasm, drew laughter while Celestia watched Gilad. He had turned to her and their eyes, again, met. He knew she knew things, and she knew he also knew many things. Things about the past the rest of the world had thankfully forgotten. Which was why she didn’t expect he would ever meet her in Canterlot. But there he stood, and the representatives for his people had opinions about him being there.

“Köttrornkonungr…” Finally, Celestia spoke in spotless High Griffonese, even if she lacked a beak to perfectly form the syllables. Her voice raised above the racket of chanting griffons, confusion, and mockery. “Is a word in High Griffonese which lacks a direct translation into Common Equestrian. It roughly translates to… Griffonking.”

More flashes. Celestia could imagine pens igniting and setting papers on fire as reporters salivated over the chaos which once again broke over the Hall of Friendship. She would have giggled at the panic the knowledge of such word spread among the griffon representatives of other griffonian holds. Representatives for other nations occupied themselves calculating what it meant to their own nations. Gilad again turned to his fellow northern griffons and then to Celestia, expecting her response as they chanted again, joined by a surprisingly large portion of southerner griffon representatives.

“Griffonking!” One of the pony senators for Bay County cried with his hoof in the air. Several pony senators cried too. It should have made Celestia laugh even pony representatives and their supporters tired of dealing with the griffons in Griffonia’s government. Kirin shouted too, and so did the yak king, slamming his hoof on his desk, mimicked by the representatives of his people.

Celestia raised from her seat and teleported down to the podium, letting her wings graciously open and show her size. Shouting creatures felt encouraged and repeated their cries as she approached and spoke to Gilad, in his language. “Corrupt as he is, we all know your brethren chose him and the will of the people must be respected. You seek something I cannot give you Gilad. I will not interfere with the griffon nation so far as removing a leader. That way lies much worse things.”

“I came here seeking your assistance. Millennia ago, you did exactly that for my people.” Gilad spoke back to her, pointing a talon. “Gail only rules because you gave Grover my country.”

Celestia frowned at him. “Your nation rebelled against the Emperor. The creatures of the world fought for survival. I led a desperate alliance of broken nations in a desperate attempt to undo the largest empire the world had ever seen. They sacrificed millions to an ideal that should never have been followed. Grigor had to be stopped!”

“My brethren call for change, Celestia.” His powerful voice retorted above the chaos, he screamed at her. “I came to you seeking a solution and my people demand one. I will obey the requests of my vassals. They know, as you do, I can challenge Grover’s ancient order from which stemmed the current political system. And you remember the pact my forefathers struck with you. The Throne of the Griffon King has remained empty for centuries and vile parasites have been feeding off its glory for long enough. If my vassals would have me, I would cleanse it of the evil which has taken root. I would seat upon the Throne of the Griffon King and it would fit me. If it is what my people ask of me, I will do as all rulers are required. I will be what my people need of me, and you must do so yourself.”

Meanwhile, a confused and distraught Chancellor Gail looked around the hall with his beak hanging open until he looked at Queen Novo, furiously shaking her fist at him. “They mean to replace you with the Northerner brute! Do something! Say something, you idiot!”

Gail Silkfeathers, so named for his famous silver tongue, quickly gathered his wits. Which was not impressive, but he was an old politician, after all. He stood behind his desk and yelled above the ruckus. “What is this madness?!”

He flew and hovered above his desk. “Do any of you even understand what you are asking for? I was chosen by the same griffons who chose you to represent them! In. This. Room! I cannot be removed from office on the whims of a barbarian and fairy tales!”

Oh Harmony… Why did Gallus have to translate that to Lord Gilad? He raised a fist to Gail, high among the other Majesties.

“My father died fighting a host of draugar and frostmanes the Windigos had sent across the north to Greenland Hold! By the blood of my brothers and sisters. By the blood of my father were your lands kept safe!” His fist turned to an accusing finger with a sharp talon he turned to the other griffon senators. “Meanwhile all we hear from you is more taxation! More coin! More, more, more! You want soft beds, and you want sweet food. You have abandoned the way of your ancestors and you would have me, and my vassals do the same.”

He turned to the other senators and their assistants, the Majesties, and their assistants too. He stood on his hindlegs and let his wings open. “I will not stand idle! We will be respected, and the ancient accords of our forefathers will be honored, or we shall rewrite their terms. Do not think my brethren meek or submissive, they respect only strength, and I am the Lord of The Black Gates! They will obey!”

Around them the bickering and the shouting didn’t help. Esteemed senators and interns yelled at each other, insults flying left and right as others laughed at titles which sounded empty to them. The young griffon who was Gilad's brother hid almost underneath him. And Celestia knew Gilad talked to her, more than the others.

“Silence!” Celestia’s magically enhanced voice shook the hall and the banners for each of the nations hanging from the walls trembled. Voices silenced as she demanded. She took a deep breath and teleported back to her seat, the Golden Throne above the House of Majesties. “Lord Gilad. Son of Garet, son of Gildon, and last in a line too long to count of noble leaders and Lords of the Black Gate. I recognize your lineage goes back to the first griffons which came from the north. And that it is within your right to claim the Throne of the Griffon King.”

“You cannot do this!” Gail roared as much of a roar his shocked voice would allow.

Howling whoops followed as well as searing complaints. Celestia rose her hoof, this time not needing to command silence. “Though it is within my power as agreed in the Alicorn Concordat, it would greatly exceed the needs of the situation should I invoke my powers to remove the Chancellor and instate Lord Gilad as the Griffon King. Such a decision must come from the griffons of Griffonia, and it must be informed by undeniable evidence of wrongdoing.”

As usual, by doing that cursed ‘right thing’, taking steps to mitigate what could turn into a violent revolution, she managed to get both sides angry at her.

Luna had had the right idea to stay the hoof away from politics.

“This is outrageous!” Gail wailed at Celestia, even turning to her, above and behind him, but she ignored him, and the chanting resumed. Queen Novo too whined and made exaggerated gestures. The minotaur president slapped his desk and pointed at Gail yelling something about justice and righteousness. “You can’t do this! Soon every Majesty is going to have their rule questioned by political enemies simply because they can! Because of this precedent!”

Celestia glared at Gail. “Session is adjourned.”

Gilad spoke to Gail, though, and Gallus translated it perfectly. “If you do not listen to the words of my father, then heed my mother. ‘If you hear thunder, be ready for a storm.’”

Sometimes she tired of the drama too.

***

The rumbling thunder roused Celestia from her reverie. The clouds lit up above her as she approached, and the wind resisted her. She squinted against the wind and the cold rain. She expected dialogue and what she got in return for her patience were threats, war, intrigue, and back-stabbing. Coincidence or not, years later a dracolich would make its way to Greenland Hold and the world would witness Lord Gilad slay it. Magical words and honor unbound by greed. The young and dutiful northern lord became The Lion, and suddenly, griffons loved a griffon they had never heard of before. Suddenly, the young lord became a politician who sponsored criminals and sent them to raid hospitals. Promising officers became murderers, honorable soldiers switched sides and government agencies turned on their population.

She had to admit her legendary, neigh infinite, patience started to wear thin.

Grassbreath and Hairball

Celestia squealed and jolted to the side mid-flight. A bolt of lightning barely missed her. Her horn became sore, and her feathers puffed up. Her nose itched and it didn’t help with the heavy rain she had to fly against. The residual magic clung to her horn and her feathers worse than the cold water from the storm, though. Her whole body felt heavier.

She stopped climbing, drawing a deep lungful of air and sneezed.

After shaking the uncomfortable numbness out of her head, she gave a determined stare and renewed her efforts. She fought gravity, wind, and rain with all her strength. The wind tossed her around, despite her significant size, and the rain seemed determined to weigh her down. Celestia convinced herself the storm actively tried to resist her. Given how things worked in Equestria, it might even be true.

“You’re not stopping me, silly rain!” She gave a decided stare and kept flying up.

Definitely not a normal storm, it bore too much coincidence with a strategic spell. The sort only a handful of unicorn groups, herself and Luna could cast. King Sombra might have been able, in his time, with significant preparations and resources. Farfalla and Chrysalis too. Probably Twilight, Starlight, and Cadance too… Her mind meandered. The point remained no other creature should be able to cast such a spell and a nightmare certainly didn’t fit.

She cried and barely dodged another lightning bolt. Almost as though the cloud responded to her challenge. Its heat washed over her, searing hot against her magical wards and the ones on her royal regalia. Her eyes stung at the chemicals it filled the air with, and it might explain the renewed stuffiness on her nose.

She sneezed again and took a second to recover from the magical aftereffects before she frowned and resumed climbing yet again.

Luna’s unexplained absence too nagged at her mind, but Celestia would rather not think ill of her sister. Her obligations to the magical system of dreams often kept her too busy, and the storm made communication of any sort difficult.

Despite Luna being the only one who could confirm her claim a nightmare was responsible, she wouldn’t lie to Celestia. Not even when she became Nightmare Moon, Luna would lie. She would say hurtful things, during the process. Isolate herself and speak aggressively to Celestia. But she never lied.

Next time lightning struck, she had properly shielded herself in preparation and the magic from the lightning bolt didn’t affect her so much. She felt the buildup of magic. It only bothered her with a fleeting numbness she quickly recovered from. It still scared her a squeak out of her, though. Panting and flapping her wings to stay hovering, she put out her tongue and blew at the storm. The violently convulsing clouds only grumbled indifferently in response.

But it only stopped Celestia for a few seconds as her mighty wings beat again with renewed strength and took her against the wind and the rain. Rather than entering the cloud and immersing herself in its wild, uncontrolled magic, her own magic ripped open a hole through it. The dense and thick mass of water, ice, wind, and wild mana tore like she had opened the mouth of a wild animal. She could see the starry sky above and flew through.

Chocolate would’ve said clouds were quirky in Equestria, but it seemed a bit too much.

Once through the significant layer of cold and wet darkness, the moonlight showered everything with its silvery light. The top of the cloud seemed much calmer, despite the strong winds and sizzling magical power manifested in the form of lightning bolts. Eventually, they shot up or snaked across the cloud. She kept flapping her wings or the wind would drag her down to the cloud and she soon spotted what she looked for.

A group of five pegasi wearing the blue jacket of the city’s weather team hopelessly fought against the winds. They tumbled around and fell face-first into the cloud only to be shocked by electrical discharges which launched them right back up with rattling yelps. A cute cyan and white mare held her heavy gray partner in the middle of unintentional pirouettes.

Frazzle-maned, shaking his head and coughing out smoke, he saw Celestia and gasped. “Oh, my Celestia! It’s Princess Celestia!”

As she approached, the others converged around her, including their team leader. A big and strong-looking mare with a gray-green coat and a darker mane. Properly wearing the leader bracelet on her foreleg. Celestia addressed her. “Where is the rest of the team? Where are the griffons?”

“We’re kinda it.” The cyan mare responded with a wince before the team leader threw up her hooves.

“The griffons can’t come out and help. These storms mess up their noodles and they go crazy.” Team leader complained. “So, we’re left alone to deal with this monster every time it shows up!”

Thunder crashed, shooting down from the clouds and flashing above like it wanted to let them know it heard them. The pegasi winced and a younger orange mare squeaked.

Celestia frowned. “What do you mean? What happens to the griffons?”

“They get weird dreams.” The leader clopped her hooves. Like, really bad dreams and some of them even have hallucinations and freak out. Something about an urban myth nonsense of some griffon lady in their dreams. It’s just a strange magical storm.”

Made sense, Celestia concluded with a nod. “Where does it come from? Where does it form?”

The team leader shrugged and pointed. “Wherever it feathering well pleases! It just comes up without any warning and pretends the city’s sky belongs to it!”

Celestia watched as the mare calmed down and sighed. “We don’t really know. We don’t have trained unicorns to track it down. We just fight and lose whenever it shows up and moves over the town.”

She started losing her composure again and waved her legs around, letting her voice raise. “I tried getting the mayor to requisition a unicorn team. The city council, community leaders and I even went to King Grover’s Plaza with pamphlets, but nobody cares! ‘Not enough money’, ‘non-issue’, ‘deal with it, lazy pony’ they said, among the nicer things!”

She sighed again and let her head and legs hang. “Working with griffons is so hoofing frustrating.”

“Well, there was the old griffon lady… Some kind of shrink from the hospital that supported us.” The male told her while his team leader nodded sullenly. “She got our superior to tone down the schedule, but the problem isn't the storms we can make. It’s this beast from Chaos!”

Celestia nodded at his words too. “If you can’t control it, what causes it to subside? Does it simply shed its magic and evaporate?”

“It usually calms down by sunrise.” The lead mare opened her forelegs. “I don’t understand. Most storms lose strength, shedding water and magic. These ones feel like they could go on forever, but they calm down in the morning and pick up again in the night.”

Celestia shook her head. “This is not a chaotic storm. This is most certainly a strategic spell.”

Since the five pegasi simply stood hovering above the cloud and stared dumbly at her, she went on. “Quickly, please. Help me disperse it! I will try and subdue whatever magic is feeding it and then you should be able to disperse it as usual. But it should require a great deal of focus.”

She thought of bringing up the Sun and letting its magic wash over the storm to help her but decided against it. The sun, randomly appearing, would surely cause panic and chaos she’d rather not deal with. If anything, Celestia knew her subjects.

With a moment of mental preparation, she directed her attention at her magical senses and what they could tell her about the storm. It brimmed with magic. It shone with white searing light only her magical senses could see, and it didn’t surprise her. Storms, like anything in Equestria, carried magic with it. Thunderstorms even more so, as the residual magic in the air formed them at random wild locations. Then they moved as the wind carried them. But weather teams didn’t typically take them into civilized areas unless they were reigned in and ‘tamed’ to substitute for normal, pony-fabricated storms. Especially because the Harmonic magic in heavily populated areas dissipated them rather quickly.

The storm carried a mighty amount of magic, and it was no wonder it affected the minds of creatures. But such detail didn’t bother Celestia nor corroborate her theory that the storm had been fabricated. The fact it didn’t seem to shed its magic did. It shot lightning bolt after bolt, but it still shone so bright in her magical senses it challenged Celestia’s own sun. Something had to be feeding into it.

She focused her mind on the layers of magic which made up the storm. An intertwining flux of magical energies, rather simple, formed it. A mesh of different materials with different characteristics to make up a fabric. Like cotton, which gave clothes softness while silk gave them shine and durability. The combined effects of magic made up a spell, and a trained creature with the necessary magical senses could examine them.

Layer upon layer of organized magical energy, made from distinct effects woven around each other. Like a weaver making fabrics, connecting each to other into an exquisite work of art. So well made Celestia couldn’t help but admire the expertly weaved spell.

She found it problematic, as a chaotic storm born out of the Chaos inherent to the magic of the world ought to be just so. Chaotic. What she examined lacked the orderly organization of unicorn magic, though. Lumps of angry reds, sad blues, and happy yellows, with all the colors of emotions besmirched it. Otherwise, a perfectly and tightly knit fabric of magical energies, typical of unicorns, it defied Celestia’s knowledge of spellcasting.

Even ones such as King Sombra or Queen Chrysalis, with her strange and caustic magic, would not emotionally mar their spells so. Even if emotions could amplify spells, and it was a common technique, it usually involved simple spells which became completely taken by such energies. A spell of such power and complexity as the storm required levels of focus unattainable if one allowed such emotions to distract them.

Seeing things the other ponies couldn’t, Celestia grimaced. No way in existence that monstrosity of a thunderstorm had been created by a nightmare. She pursed her lips. It resembled Discord’s magic, but it would never conform to the smallest level of Order. Had he authored the thing, it would look just like a natural storm.

Hovering above the angry clouds and under the stars of the five pegasi, her horn shone with gold as she examined deeper. Could it have been Gilad? Doubtful, as not even Emperor Grigor had a similar power in his time. The storm simply contained too much magical energy.

“Is everything alright, Princess?” The team leader gave her a concerned stare.

“Don’t worry.” Celestia down one side and then the other at the storm with the chiming of her lit horn. “This is a complex and powerful magic. I am studying it so I can safely dispel it.”

Turning back to the subject of the conversation, she again focused her mind on the magical energies her horn picked up from the storm. Since it didn’t shed away its magic like a normal storm, someone, or something, actively maintained it. But much to her surprise, the magic in the spell seemed to be self-contained. It shouldn’t be possible. It gave off magical energy simply by existing and every time it shot lightning.

There must be something beyond what she saw. And the puzzle which presented itself, one in a thousand years that made her smile.

Then she frowned again. Come to think of it, this reminded her of the primordial magic which shouldn’t be found in the world anymore. When the mountains were young, and the rivers first flowed across the land. From a time of inconceivably powerful magic ruled by emotions and primitive intellects. Charged with emotion which imbued purpose into the magic of creation itself.

Such magic could be found on irrational magical creatures, such as ursas and timberwolves. The Windigos themselves and even on Celestia's overwhelmingly powerful magic which controlled the sun. Could a nightmare, as a magical monster cast this sort of spell if they made it to the waking world and charged with power? The alternative was too unlikely and terrible to contemplate.

She frowned again and turned back to the pegasi ponies behind her. “I must study the spell further. I need to reach deeper into it, and this might be dangerous. Please, watch over me while I am busy.”

“What?!” The lead pegasus mare squealed. “Watch over you?! Us?!”

Explaining would require more time than Celestia wanted to invest, so she ignored the pony’s protest. Once again, she turned to the storm and her mind focused on the magical energies sizzling through it. Surprisingly, the spell seemed much more complex than it needed simply to sustain the storm. Whoever made the thing meant for it to do something else. In fact, the storm itself sustained the spell, as much as the spell sustained the storm. A spell within a spell of a storm. Both camouflage and a vehicle for its existence.

What was the extra spell meant to do? Given Luna’s accusation a nightmare could be responsible, and the effect she’d been told the storm had on griffons, she could hazard a guess.

She focused on the individual layers of magical energy and their thaumaturgical effect.

Deeper inside, past the layers which formed the coalesced dampness of the cloud, all the lightning and all the energy it carried, she found the inner layers of magic. One layer transmitted information. Much as a classical scrying spell, the cloud allowed the caster to witness what happened beneath it.

Normally spells with such effect would be connected to a point in space and someone with her training could follow a thin thread of magic back. If discovered, a spellcaster would quickly cut the thread and forfeit the spell. But the one on the storm used a variation with formulae used for teleportation spells. Whoever cast it expected it would eventually be scrutinized. They used additional time and dealt with the mental requirements of a more complex spell to avoid being discovered.

Certainly not a nightmare or any sort of irrational magical creature. Only experienced spellcasters, usually involved with spying or sensitive information knew such tricks. Practically no creatures in the modern world met the mental and physical fortitude required. Celestia’s mouth made a knowing smile, and her hoof rubbed her chin. If she didn’t take care, she might start admiring whoever made it.

She raised an eyebrow, though. Taking it into consideration how much damage they seem to have done already before Celestia had even realized they were under attack, she probably ought to acknowledge their resourcefulness. Gilad. Lady Gwendolen. Her Loremasters. The Sword Dancer. None of them should be able to cast such a spell.

Her mind delved deeper past the outer layers of the spell, weaving through the shaped magical energies to the core of the storm. As her mind’s eye moved deeper, so did the rest of her senses. Distant thunder echoed like inside a theater hall, and her metaphorical body tingled with the electrifying magic of lightning. Walls made of twisting light represented the layers of magic in the cloud, weaving into each other as a living being. The magical components of the storm itself seemed distant, though. She found yet another spell hiding inside.

But infiltrating it proved difficult. Celestia carefully navigated her mind within the lightning-like strands of magic. Layers upon layers of defensive spells, fail-safes ready to cause the whole thing to collapse as soon as someone tampered with the core of the spell. But millennia of magical studies proved fruitful, and her mind swirled unscathed around the magical traps with the grace of a dancing pegasus.

What she found was like the kernel inside an acorn. A tiny spell at the heart of the storm.

It sang to her. An eerie melody in a female voice carried with the distant rumbling of thunder. Incredibly subtle magic, and after focusing solely on the sound, she could swear she heard a screeching griffon.

Her hooves shook. She metaphorically winced back, and almost tripped the multiple layers of fail-safe spells. The sound sent ripples through her spine. Ancient memories bubbled to the forefront of her mind and filled her eyes with images of stormy skies and bloody fields. Fear and anger filled her, and she needed a moment to reorient herself, gasping and shaking her metaphorical head.

“What?” She whispered to herself; mouth hung open tasting of metal. Flabbergasted before the strands of magical energy. Then, with renewed drive and focus, she inched forward into the heart of the spell. Several layers of supporting and connecting magical energies into it, she found the ‘core-within-the-the core’ of the spell. Unsurprisingly complex and elegant, it reminded her of a tendril of magical energy, snaking its way along the sound of thunder. It would have been perceived as the crying bird hidden beneath the thunder.

Like a key into a lock, spinning the tumbler and working its way inside, it would enter the mind hidden behind the perception of the sound. It reminded Celestia of a story Chocolate Velvet told of his original world… The Trojan Horse.

It fascinated her. Such a component, in a traditional mind-altering spell would be a significant amount of magical energy forcing its way into the soul and mind of a target creature. What stood before her held not only subtlety, but also effectiveness. She could imagine no creature in the world who would have the knowledge and the skill to shape such a spell. It came close to the natural spells to be found in the normal functioning of a creature’s mind, so perfect, so precise it was.

Could Luna cast such a spell? Celestia had her doubts. She surely could use the magical system of the Throne of the Mind to achieve such subtlety, but not ‘from the outside’.

Celestia spent several minutes simply examining it, watching the minute spark of magical energy floating before her. Its complexity of magical effects translated into a complex pattern of shimmering lines and shapes she held ‘in the air’ with her hooves. It hissed with magic. It ‘smelled’ like a thunderstorm, like the air after lightning. The gesture put some distance between her mind and the spell. She decided not to underestimate the danger it posed.

Any spell with the power of interfering on a creature’s mind would infiltrate its inner processes and change it to the desired effect. Bluntly so, in a similar way to a drug, disrupting the normal processes and making a creature more open to suggestion, which would be another component of the spell. She could expect the one she examined to be similar.

Looking at the individual, minute components of the main spell, she found something not even she could trivially do. It required so little mana, and such made it almost imperceptible from outside. She needed to delve deeper into the spell if she was to discern its individual parts. She took a deep breath. She steeled herself and squinted. Her horn shone and she touched it with her senses.

Suddenly, Celestia found herself flying high above the sparse cloud cover. Her eyes could reach over an immeasurable distance. From above came the wondrous light of the sun and below, among the endless prairies, snaked a river with a sandy riverside. A delightful warmth filled her, and the breeze of flight balanced the hotness. She moved leisurely, letting her body enjoy the marvel of flight. Then her magenta eyes aimed below scanned the prairie. A herd of ponies grazed the new grass. Pegasi took short flights with playful pirouettes and a unicorn mare smelled the colorful flowers.

A few dozen ponies milled about, doing what they did best: enjoying life. To her magical senses, the magic they shed simply by being there fortified the trees and would soon make for a stronger place. It would brim with the life of birds, insects, and the life-sustaining magic of Harmony. Then they would move to another location as Harmony called them to heal the fragile blooming life wherever it must be healed.

A strange foreboding sensation grabbed Celestia’s throat. She stopped to a hover and frowned, scanning every direction until she saw it. A griffon, cyan and white soared the skies, coming from the direction of the dangerous, dark, and stormy mountains in the distance.

She neighed and her heart quickened. Her breath caught in her throat. Danger! A lump of fear turned to anger as memories of dead ponies came to her. Little colorful bodies, torn apart and unmoving. Death and sorrowful neighs everywhere. The emerald of the ground and the colors of the flowers tarnished with crimson, an entire herd slaughtered. The balance of magic so upset the woods would die unless another herd moved to the area, only to be sacrificed too. She didn’t care what for, she barely processed any of the meaning behind what might motivate the griffon. All she cared for was that the monster ought to be stopped before it hurt her little ponies.

And she would stop it.

She flew higher, way above where most creatures flew. In her experience, griffons seldom looked up when they flew. Like they couldn’t fathom anything above them. But when the griffon’s jerky head stopped moving, she knew it was prepared to attack. Its eyes fixated on a small pegasus mare distracted with something in the grass and the griffon circled above. Lazy circles, little flapping of wings made a predator’s silent flight.

Celestia’s chest filled with fiery wrath. She grimaced and her horn filled with so much magic it could explode, but she released it in the form of a raw beam of golden magical energy. It resounded through the air and exploded against the griffon’s side, causing grievous damage and a mist of disintegrated flesh.

The griffon barreled to the ground, rolled to the riverside. Meanwhile, scared with the sudden noise and flash, the herd initially galloped away. The bulkier males approached to examine what had happened. They reared and neighed full of alarm as the griffon stood as best as it could, literally missing a part of its right side as it had been replaced by charred flesh.

Celestia neighed and tossed her head, quickly landing amid the ponies, nickering them away with nips to their manes and ears. Fearful, she approached the griffon, snorting and aggressively tossing her head. Begone already, stupid griffon-monster!

The griffon, injured as it was, tried lunging at her, sluggish and unbalanced. Her magic shot from her horn again and threw it in the air further down towards the river. Just die already! She jumped after it. The agonizing griffon wouldn’t stop moving, so she grimaced and neighed all her anger, putting all her weight at her hooves and into the griffon.

Celestia screamed and pulled back. The ickiness of the blood on her hooves and the soreness of the overcast spell on her horn still clung to her. Residual fear and anger remained like a cloud of fury fogging her thoughts. Only after several breaths, with her eyes closed and stretching her leg out, she managed to calm down and recognize what she experienced. She had inadvertently triggered the spell, despite her precautions, and suffered its effects.

It had forced her to experience a memory from a past life. A memory so powerful it had ingrained itself into her soul and followed her through many lifetimes.

Words failed her and her mouth hung agape in shock in the middle of the perceived panorama inside the cloud’s magic. The spell caught her unaware, made its effect and released her from its grasp with no further disturbance. As though she had spontaneously experienced it herself. In the split second that passed Celestia realized she may have gotten used to not fearing anything for too long. Fear leaped to the forefront of her mind. She gasped. She felt stupid.

She had tripped the fail-safes and the spell disintegrated before her mind’s eye. “No, no! Wait!”

She fumbled with her magical skills, reaching forward to examine the spell again before it collapsed completely. Formulae for several warding spells, meant to shield her mind, rushed past her thoughts and activated as she poured her magic into them.

Celestia plunged into another dream of a past life, but this time she had prepared to properly examine the spell and not be carried away with emotions from the memory.

***

Celestia woke up with chirping birds and someone’s delighted laughter outside her window. A deep breath and a smile came before she opened her eyes. An amenable temperature and comfortable bed greeted her back from sleep, and she stretched her legs with a few pops and protesting lazy muscles.

Quaint creamy wood planks made the walls, one settled under the other with no internal finish. It looked rustic, but the quality both in materials and construction made it a great place to live. Sunlight barely invaded the little room through the white curtains with a knitted flower pattern. Cute little flowers with small holes for center let sunbeams in and dotted the dimly lit floor with little stars. A strange spinning contraption in the ceiling provided a much welcome breeze. It held magical light fixtures, but rather than crystals, they held bulbs with spiral filaments inside. She had to squint to see the filaments, or her strained eyes wouldn’t make them out. How could her eyes be tired? She had just awakened.

Oh… A ceiling fan. How silly of her. She chuckled and shook her head. They had been invented soon before she retired and spread all over Equestria, just like the strange ‘electricity’ thing.

“Where are my glasses?” She sat on the bed and found them waiting on the bedside table. After donning them, she smiled at her ability to see details returning.

Something nagged at her. Like an insistent alarm at the back of her head that she should be aware of something. “Huh… Odd. Did I forget something?”

Several seconds passed and her eyes turned from one side to the other. The closed window kept the cute white curtain still and the door to her bathroom remained closed, as she had left it before sleeping. Although she had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Her four faux-cloud cyan slippers sat next to her bed. The closet never left its place.

“Curious…” she raised an eyebrow to the empty air. Her room was as it should be. She could even hear the ponies talking politely outside her door. A dog barked in the distance. Just a new day in her new home.

Then some more seconds passed. Finally, she brightened and gasped. “Oh! The Super Bomberpony Championship! How could I forget?! I’m going to wipe the floor with Purple Shades this time!”

She tossed away the light green bed sheet with adorable smiling suns. Luna had called it foalish, but Celestia didn’t care. Ready to hop off the bed, full of energy in that fine morning, ready for some sweet breakfast, the small pony she’d become slowly climbed out of it. Her joints popped, her once fit and strong body showed feeble muscles and loose pelt. Her immaculate white lost its shine, shifting towards a glossless silver, but her attitude mattered more.

Her hooves landed on a crocheted rainbow-colored circular rug. Hoof crocheted, actually, and dominated most of the room. She had never owned anything like that and was beside herself when she had finally learned how to make one. She didn’t care that the circles weren’t perfect, it had personality!

She shook her body and whipped her silvery, discolored mane around as fast as her aching joints and weak muscles would allow. She stretched her neck and once proud wings to faint popping sounds, but she ignored them.

“Hello!” A mare spoke with Celestia’s own voice, inside her head.

“Uh… Hello? What?” She looked around the room and found nopony. With a grousing moan, her smile turned upside down into a frustrated frown. “Great… I’m going crazy now…”

“Oh no.” Her other voice spoke inside her head again. “It’s actually stranger than that. I need your help.”

The old Celestia sat on her rainbow rug and gave the ceiling a perplexed frown, but she kept her patience. “I have a videogame championship to win! I’m retired! Can’t you go talk to Princess Twilight Sparkle at Canterlot?”

“I am sorry, but it is not so simple. You are not awake. You are experiencing the effects of a spell crafted to cause dreams from memories of your past lives. The ones imprinted on our soul.” The Celestia inside her head told her patiently and slightly cherry.

Celestia grumbled at the out-of-control thoughts. “Luna, is this a prank? I swear I’ll kick your flank!”

“I’m sorry… But this isn’t a prank. And time is limited. Please, you must trust me.” The Celestia inside her head urged with substantial worry. It convinced her whatever the issue was, it was serious.

Celestia rubbed a hoof on her face. It should be easy to trust your own thoughts unless they run amok. She sighed and shook her head. The weird things that happened to her… “Fine. What do you need?”

“Hum… There is a bit of a hitch.” Inner-Celestia said sheepishly and caused Dream-Celestia to roll her eyes. “I’m sitting at the Throne of Life, accessing the Throne of the Mind through my higher authority… And you have lost a lot of your memories… They will only return when the Black Sun triggers.”

“What are you talking about?” Celestia raised an eyebrow. The nonsense tested her patience. “What even is a black sun? It creates light! It can’t go dark. Throne of Life? What?”

“This is so weird! I think…. Oh my sun!” Inner-Celestia cried in shock, and it made Celestia wince.

“What?! What happened?” She urged. “For pony’s sake, what is going on inside my head?”

“Sorry…” Inner-Celestia coughed. “I’ll try to explain. Once the Thrones of the Goddesses properly integrated into the minds of ponies, they achieved full self-awareness. It actually integrated us into their minds, and we ceased to exist as free entities. We became strings of magic within their minds, just as we were supposed to! It worked! It allowed the unicorns to command the Sun and protected their minds against the nightmares! Oh my sun! It really had worked! This explains everything!”

The voice inside her head suddenly lost much of its enthusiasm. “Uh… It just doesn’t explain why the Black Sun ended up being triggered or why we eventually had to help the ponies with the sun… Odd.”

“Hey… You lost me here!” Dream-Celestia grumbled.

“Oh. Sorry.” Inner-Celestia gasped. “Uh… I need to share a few of my memories with you… It could hurt a bit, but we’ll be in trouble if I don’t. You’ll understand… Just a moment.”

Dream Celestia’s uninterested expression should say everything about how much she believed the whole thing. Or how much she cared about it. “Hello?”

It had to be Luna’s most elaborate dream-prank. Then she gasped at the realization Luna had lost her powers once they resigned. “Oh… Oh my…”

Following, she remembered her world worked in cycles of creation and destruction, and that she was supposed to be important. Even more so than she was during her life. The wave of returning memories numbed her to the stinging pain in her temple.

“Oh my! What… What cycle is this?!” She blurted, suddenly nervously tapping her hooves on the floor. Although she was quite slow because she didn’t have her youthful energy anymore. “What happened? What cycle are you from?!”

“We are the sixth iteration of the Goddess Sol-Estia!” Inner Celestia quickly recapped. “Most of your memories are just locked in your soul. Everything seemed to be working after the ponies passed the Harmonic Resonance Test and the Fidelity Test in your cycle. It caused the Throne of Life to fully integrate into their minds and we were gone. But the problem with the unicorns raising the sun summoned the alicorns back… And you lack immortality… Your soul was a normal pony soul. But it’s a bit more complicated than that.”

Dream-Celestia had already entered the ‘let’s get down to business’ mode and her serious frown showed it as she sat on the floor. “Tell me.”

“We are actually not in your cycle, but in the following one. Your consciousness is the real Celestia, though. You were examining a spell in a storm that did weird things to the griffons and I am the result of the spell, your mental wards, and the Throne of the Mind interacting.” Inner-Celestia’s voice raised with urgency. “You are experiencing a dream based on a soul memory. It is what the griffon spell was supposed to do. I think it was meant to make them remember something.”

“Huh…” Dream-Celestia rubbed a hoof on her chin. “That is complicated.”

“I’m not sure what to do!” Inner-Celestia whined. “I’m sitting at the Throne of Life, accessing Luna’s throne, but I don’t really know what to do. Your subconscious mind seems to have chosen this memory of the previous cycle because something important happened. Something significant imprinted it on our soul.”

Dream-Celestia’s frown changed to a frustrated one. “Nothing went wrong. I don’t know what caused the cycle to end. All I know is that there was a war. We probably chalked it up to bad luck and changed nothing when the next cycle started.”

“Something changed!” Inner-Celestia cried again. “We are different from our version in the Fourth Cycle!”

Dream-Celestia hummed. “I wonder…”

Juggling memories, especially ones so old, and that the version of her mind was not capable of recalling proved impossible. Inner-Celestia explained with a raised voice and worried tone. “The whole thing is stressing our brain. Right now, you are a recalled version of your soul in the Fourth Cycle… I don’t know! Things are weird and your memories are limited.”

“Alright.” Dream-Celestia nodded and remained calm despite the situation. “Tell me what the spell is doing.”

“Well, it seems to use the sense of hearing to infiltrate the mind. The sound of thunder carries the spell into the mind when it processes the perception of the sound. We could even hear the spell as a screaming griffon lady.” A small pause followed and Dream-Celestia heard some dials being turned and buttons being clicked. “But you used your magic on the spell and your perception of the spell activated its effect on your mind.”

“Normally, the spell should take over the memory recalling processes and equip them with the necessary magic to recall soul memories. It just worked directly on you. It then hijacked the dream loop to force a new reality to the self and force it to experience the memories first hoof. But the wards are interfering with it to give you self-awareness. At the same time, it forced your mind into the version of yourself associated with the memory. It’s literally preventing your self from fragmenting further.”

Dream-Celestia winced. That could have gone bad. Scary stuff.

“The interesting thing…” Inner-Celestia went on. “The spell missed its target memory. Probably because the spell was made for griffons. It forced our subconscious mind to pick a memory and this particular one has some important meaning to what you were doing while examining the storm. I don’t think the choice is aleatory. At all.”

“Alright…” Dream-Celestia huffed. “So… It was supposed to make griffons remember, but since the base functions of our mind’s functions are the same, it worked on me. And there is something in this dream that holds important meaning. Got it. What do we do, then?”

“I can’t keep talking to you!” Inner-Celestia cried. “Our mind is basically running three versions of us right now. I don’t know if brains can fry, but a normal pony would’ve gone insane already. I have to let you experience the dream. Maybe it will tell you what went wrong in the Fourth Cycle. I’ll try to pass along the hints from our subconscious mind! Good luck!”

Just as though her brain played tricks on her, Inner-Celestia’s voice disappeared and Celestia almost convinced herself she should see a doctor. Her eyes found the floor, but the nagging something at the back of her head refused to let her go. She frowned at the insistent thoughts she should be doing something. Somepony important to her was in danger. In fact, many creatures important to her were in danger.

Maybe she should check on someone? Who? But Silver Stable Community didn’t have a mirror room. What was a mirror room? They didn’t exist in the Fourth Cycle… They were only invented in the Fifth Cycle with the advent of magical induction engines, as the gold and crystal circuitry were similar.

Who would she call though? Twilight? Cadance?

Twilight… Twilight Sparkle.

Her eyes turned to a desk and her ears perked. Writing supplies, neatly organized, but also a newspaper and many letters. Letters she traded with Twilight after the younger princess had taken over Equestria. With her knees popping and a stinging pain on her right hindleg, she walked to the desk.

A humble, but sturdy thing where she could write the many letters she exchanged with Twilight Sparkle and Cadance. Made of soft caramel wood, same color as the comfortable sitting pillow next to it. The newspaper drew her eyes because it had a photograph of Twilight, easily seen from afar. Black and white, she sat on her throne which replaced Celestia’s, and she made a reassuring hoof gesture.

‘ “There will be no war with Griffonia. The Griffon Chancellor’s accusations are a mere misunderstanding. We will clear any questions our griffon friends may have, and this dreadful situation will be a thing of the past!” Says Princess Twilight Sparkle at the press conference following Captain Galus orders to mobilize Canterlot’s Royal Guard’s defenses for ‘the sake of peace of mind’, as he told us.’

Celestia winced at how much Twilight’s transcribed words sounded as her own. Her jaw soon hung again when despair squeezed at her old heart.

“This is not a dream!” She cried, coarse and frantic, her perky ears flopping to the sides of her head as she dropped the newspaper back to the desk. The walls closed around her, and the cute little details became eldritch sigils of doom. “It’s a nightmare of the end of the previous cycle!”

She wished Luna could save her from it, but she wouldn’t. Like a torture she couldn’t escape. But the voice she had talked to told her she needed to see something. She should experience the dream because something in it was terribly important to the next cycle. With a deep breath, she steeled herself and looked at the journal. It showed another article.

‘Griffon Chancellor Goldenwing angered by Equestrian posturing.’ The frontpage title aggressively presented with bold letters above an upward photograph of a griffon holding his talons to a pulpit. The black and white photography wouldn’t allow her to identify his colors, but he had nothing of Gail’s obesity or deceivingly placid eyes. He held a ferocity only a griffon could harbor. A strong body under a military uniform and a talon pointing up on his other paw. Behind him, a long flag hung from the wall to show the open wings of a griffon flanking triple talon marks.

She examined the photo, squinting her tired eyes and pulling the paper closer. In the background, she found something curious. There sat a selection of griffons in uniform, and among them a white and black griffon lady wearing nothing at all. Celestia’s eyes lingered on her, but she couldn’t find anything special about the hen. Only her black wings and her feathers behind her head made for a curious cowl and cape. It reminded her of Chrysalis’ natural crown, but little more. Other than the fact she was taller than most griffons, it told Celestia nothing.

Inner-Celestia was trying to show her something, but she missed it.

She turned the pages of the newspaper, noisy with the oneiric quality of the scenery. Her eyes were drawn to the room, and she tried to find meaning within the bizarre and twisted representations of her room in the retirement home. Distorted shapes unsettled her, snowed mountains replaced Canterlot on a painting hung from the wall.

A handsome brown alicorn smiled at her from a framed photo on the desk. The next one showed Chrysalis smiling deceptively at her, and the following showed the brown alicorn again, lying lifeless with a sword through his chest. A photo of Cadance had turned her into a fiery alicorn of pink flames holding forward a blazing heart. Finally, one of the frames showed Twilight posing with an unknown purple and mustard griffon. The final one showed the moon with the Mare in the Moon easily visible.

Humming, she turned back to the newspaper. It showed a column of helplessly few Royal Guards marching behind the loyal griffon who was Galus. A veteran, old of age and respected among his peers. They paraded in front of cheering ponies on the streets of Canterlot and Twilight, tall and elegant, wore her own royal regalia. She sat atop a dais but missing something. Many nobles occupied a podium next to her. They cheered at the soldiers and the crowd celebrated.

“Her friends…” Celestia mused with her tired voice. “Twilight is missing her friends.”

‘The Royal Guard mobilizes amid threats of extremist griffon purists within Hippogriffia and Queen Novo steps down under accusations of violent repression. The newly Crowned Queen Skystar urges allies “Do something!”.’

The photo made Celestia’s jaw hang again. Hippogriffs and griffons. Something important hid behind their alliance to remove her friend from her throne. She never saw Novo again…

Why were griffons and hippogriffs important?

She turned a page again and the mighty statues of hippogriffs before Mount Aris had been covered in long flags with the griffon wings and talon marks. Smoke raised from the palace and hippogriffs celebrated with griffons. Modern firearms raised, shots into the sky and cheering.

“This is wrong…” She whispered to herself. “Why would griffons do this?”

Was it Goldenbeak’s attempt at a divide and conquer strategy? Her eyes scanned the image and the flags with the griffon wings and the talon marks beckoned to her. Her telekinetic grasp adjusted her glasses and she squinted, coming closer to the page. Nothing in it seemed to stand other than the sad moment it marked.

“There was nothing exceptional about the griffons and their war…” She mused to herself, laying the newspaper down. It was the same as King Sombra. The Storm King, and every tyrant wannabe… Except the griffons managed to solidify an opposition to the whole world. Something powerful had united them.

All that really happened was that the world was sorely underprepared for a conflict of the magnitude. And so was poor Twilight Sparkle. But Celestia couldn’t blame her, as she too had not foreseen the possibility. Wars were supposed to be a forgotten relic of the past, conquered by Friendship.

The griffons had raised a strange ideology out of nowhere. They said Celestia forced griffons and ponies to mate and create hippogriffs to fight against griffons. Somehow. But the griffons convinced many of the hippogriffs they were brethren and should instead unite against the ponies. Why? Celestia never truly understood why. It didn’t make any sense.

What she did remember were the barbarities which followed, and when she turned the page, the article’s headline didn’t surprise her.

‘ “Free Hippogriffia! No to Harmonist Equestria!” Soldiers and rebels chanted as Queen Skystar was executed before the palace.’ A chilling editorial note followed. ‘This journal utterly denounces and rejects barbarity. The execution of Queen Skystar was an act of barbarism unfit to the modern world. We, with the International League of Journalism, urge leaders to stop this madness before more lives are lost.’

Celestia closed her eyes at the stab those words put on her old heart. She held the journal down with shaky hooves. “It was not my fault! I prepared them as best as I could! They should have united! They should have stopped it! Friendship should have united all creatures. It had at one point! Why did this happen?”

She flipped the page, so she didn’t have to look at that image anymore. The next showed a photograph of a distraught Twilight Sparkle, shooting her hoof forward and delivering urgent words, from her throne. Her messy mane made Celestia think she had either gotten rid of the Royal Coiffeur, or she didn’t prepare for a public appearance.

‘Earlier today a nation-wide call to arms was announced. Full voluntary conscription of all able-bodied Equestrian citizens of all races has been enacted. “We must all honor the bonds of Friendship and I urge everycreature to answer to the call of the needy!” ’

And yet, the article’s title read ‘Not Yak Problem’.

Celestia frowned and angrily shoved the page away, flipping it to the next one. Yet another article showed the elegant and strong griffon lady of black and white feathers sitting behind a pulpit. Fierce eyes and sharp, aloof expression, her plumage truly looked like a dark cowl behind her head. She held the pulpit with her sharp talons shining with the flashes. Something about her eyes unsettled Celestia, but she held such a dignified posture with her wings closed and her curious cowl of feathers behind her head. Like a cape and a cowl of black feathers against the white.

‘ “Princess Celestia and Princess Luna’s intervention in political affairs would be ill advised after their retirement. Princess Twilight Sparkle should be more than capable of ruling the nation she inherited. Was she not ready? Has she not been prepared by the best teacher she could have? It is her fault griffons are still divided against their will, in the end. Or is the Princess prepared to admit her incompetence and step down by herself? Perhaps let Equestria be ruled by someone better prepared, or a council of politically savvy ponies? I do not know… All I know is that the Age of the Alicorns fast approaches an end and if ponies go back on their succession laws, I cannot imagine the tremendous backlash it would have with the Equestrian griffon population, already kept from their homeland. To my Children sequestered away in foreign land, I advise caution. She may say someone under her administration took actions she did not condone, but can she be believed? Under the façade of friendship, Princess Twilight Sparkle may tighten her yoke around your necks. Stand fast and look after each other. Help will soon be within reach.” ‘

Her Children…. Her Children… The words resonated with Celestia. They burned at her eyes. Inner-Celestia was trying to tell her something.

The footnote read. ‘Cardinal Gwendolen spoke to assembled griffons and hippogriffs before the School of Friendship, Ponyville.’

Gwendolen…

“Gwendolen…” The syllables rolled off Celestia’s tongue. It was a griffon name. “I know this name… The griffons hate it when ponies pronounce it because it sounds more like ‘Gwhendoleheim’ in the neighing language that is the Common Equestrian.”

Before Celestia could even recover, a shower of open parchments twirled around her. One fell to the floor before her. The words, in Twilight’s lovely hornwritting, jumped at her.

‘They’re everywhere.’

‘I can’t trust anyone!’

‘I don’t know what to do!’

“Twilight… I am sorry.” She held the letter, but soon let it fall to the rainbow-colored rug.

“Cardinal Gwendolen…” Celestia mused with a deep-thinking frown. A religious leader of sorts. No… More like a spiritual leader… Or… Just a leader. A griffon hen griffons listened to, for some reason. Religions didn’t exist in the Fourth Cycle.

Celestia never truly understood what she was. Then again, at the time, she didn’t have the resources of the Royal House. Twilight should just have used the tried-and-true method she was so good at. Befriending her enemies and turning them around.

Although… Gwendolen…

Gwendolen…

Lady… Gwendolen. Lady Gwendolen of Griffindell!

Celestia’s eyes flew wide open, and a deep gasp escaped her. Images of the same dignified griffon lady flashed inside her head. “Oh… My Sun!”

She squinted and looked closely at the photograph in the newspaper. Detail for detail, she was Lord Gilad’s mate and the spiritual leader of the northerner griffons. “How? Is her soul somehow special?”

Celestia focused her eyes again, as though she could see further than the printed and grainy photograph could show her tired, used eyes. “Was she the one who led griffons into the war? It would explain why it all went so badly… She waited for me to retire and… Poor Twilight. But Why?! And why is she trying to do the same in the next cycle? Can she remember? Or is she oblivious and repeating some sort of pattern? Could the nightmare Luna suspects do this sort of thing? They are simple souls… It seems unlikely.”

“How can she exist again in the next cycle?” Celestia’s eyes found the ceiling again. “Is she a representation of the Mortality Anomaly? After all, griffons are mortal and don’t have the Harmonic Resonance system Amicizia invented.”

A rush of nervous energy washed over her as she realized her memories had ‘unlocked’. Everything returned like a flash flood with a sharp, flaring headache. It could only mean one thing… Time was up.

The colors washed away in a wave of terrible crimson. A deep growl shook her small window and the cheery little birds outside silenced. Ponies cried and shrieked. ‘What is that?!’ and ‘Sweet Celestia, what happened to the sun?’ they screamed.

“No!” Celestia wailed and her ears fell. Her heart beat too hurriedly as she made for the door as fast as her failing body would take her. Outside her door led into a cozy corridor with a light green carpet connected several rooms with a common room. Old ponies looked outside their doors and murmured concerned questions. Small tables held potted flowers. They had wilted and their petals, tinted in brown, littered the floor and tables. The lights on the corridor failed and panicked cries became more insistent. Some ponies made their way to the common room further down the corridor.

“Wait!” She followed, but her frail legs wouldn’t carry her fast enough. Her voice no longer reached as it once did and she tired from the physical exertion. Her head hurt at the weight of her returning memories. “No! Stay inside! It is dangerous! Please don’t go outside!”

She cried, but they didn’t listen. And even if they did, she knew the pointlessness. The process had already started. Flimsy wooden walls wouldn’t stop the life-extinguishing radiation once the process entered its final stage. She… Just wanted to spare them the sight. She wanted them to remember her sun the way it was supposed to be.

In the common room a young couple held a baby and a pair of little fillies cried, holding onto their grandma. They had come to visit her for the weekend. The father, wearing the blue uniform of the conscripted forces, held a passive expression and the old pony soothed the little ones. As though they, somehow, understood something was very wrong and the end was near. With the war, some ponies probably welcomed it.

“Help us, Princess Celestia!” The younger mare pleaded. A cute thing, covered in an orange caramel with white nose and socks. Her short blonde mane gave her such a dynamic visage which could not fit her panicked stare. “What is happening?”

“Don’t leave the building!” Celestia walked past the family and the retirement home’s staff cowering in the room and atrium. A sinister red light filtered in from under the doors when the inside illumination completely extinguished.

“What is happening?” One of her favorite ponies employed by the community held her delicate leg. A white and cyan pegasus of mellow voice and soft manners who reminded the old alicorn of Fluttershy. “Princess, please do something.”

“Stay inside…” She cooed, and wished they stopped calling her Princess. It hurt. All she could do was her best to reassure the soft-voiced pegasus before she reached for the door with her magic.

Walking outside, the unpleasant warmth of the all-ending energy washed over her. Red light bathed the once green field and the gray stones, carefully placed so that elderly ponies wouldn’t trip on their way to the other buildings in the complex. The rustic, but well-maintained walls of the retirement home’s main building looked sinister under the red sky. Dreadful, ill sunlight gleamed against the many windows. The brown ceiling turned to a deep crimson, just as the other homes in the city. The soft hills already turned to a wilted yellow and the dead trees began shedding their brown leaves.

Ponies caught walking, playing, or resting outside stood everywhere. They looked up in fear at the bloated and angry ball of fire their gentle sun had suddenly become. A pony mare mourned the unmoving little birds. Moments ago, they sang so cheerfully. No more butterflies. No more cute little rodents scurried the meadow and a dog howled at the distance before it silenced. The signs of a world in its dying throes.

Ponies gathered, seeking reassurance in numbers, and mumbled confused theories as Celestia walked among them. She couldn’t stare at them. Even if the world was not fated to end in minutes, they wouldn’t survive the lethal doses of thaumatic radiation they received from their failing sun. But they didn’t need to know, and she couldn’t stand looking at them.

Instead, her eyes remained on her beloved sun, sick and dying.

“Why?” She shook her head in confusion and questioned the sun. “Oh, Black Sun, part of my soul I dread so much. I beseech you, grant Our Children a peaceful passing and deliver unto me the wisdom to make it right. What happened to the griffons? They were our friends.”

Retirement had slowed her mind and allowed her body to grow weak in old age. In retrospect, it had been a mistake. Celestia would not follow the same path in the next cycle. She would remain and Equestria would be safe. War would become a strange historical reference. Such was the point of the cyclical system: memories would still hurt, but the next cycle would be different. Once she claimed her place, she would guarantee things wouldn’t happen the same.

Catching up to the fact she was dreaming of a past life, Celestia nodded at her accomplishments. The Hall of Friendship. The Equestrian Federation, born out of the war with the Griffon Empire. It was all meant to fix whatever had damaged the Fourth Cycle.

Although… She didn’t remember Gwendolen. And once again, griffons seemed to dance to her tune. After all had been conquered. All enemies had been defeated. All the friends united. Why? What was Lady Gwendolen? A griffon soul with Celestia’s power to remember past the Black Sun? A hitch within the Magical System? Was she to blame? “Tell me, Black Sun.”

As though to answer her question, lightning lit the sky and demanded her full attention, booming across the firmament. Powerful magic, like a gust of stormy wind washed over her. The scorched grass under the red light failed to shock her as much as the being which made itself from the blazing light. White as the wintery snow and black as the terror the sight of her caused, she sat on her hindlegs. Closed black wings like a cape, she raised her head to stare Celestia in the eyes. Stormy gray on her pristine white and black obsidian for a beak, terrible as her steel for talons.

The corners of her beak pulled into a smile and then she laughed. Crisp as lightning, terrible as a thunderstorm. Journal photographs showed themselves to Celestia and she saw her again. In the Chancellor’s speech. Always in the news. Always telling griffons what to do. Images of the small toy made by the nice toymaker from Griffonstone too forced themselves onto Celestia’s mind eye. Memories of the ending world fused with the memories of her present life. Celestia saw her at Gilad’s side.

But when the griffoness stared at Celestia again, she let her crown of black feathers rise behind her head. Celestia gasped. Lightning flashed before eyes, and she saw herself in a dark rocky badland. With the mountains for background, Celestia saw her. The monster in the storm. The Cry in the Thunder. She, who made the cruel monsters which killed her poor innocent colts and fillies. The Evil who once ruled the World.

She saw herself a monstrous alicorn of death, wearing sunlight for armor and unleashing reality shattering spells at the monster as it flew talons first at her. Eons ago, as the world ended, they fought and Celestia had won! She had killed that monster.

Hatred overflowed Celestia’s veins. She recognized The Predator from ancient memories in her dreams of past lives. It was her in the past cycle. It was her poisoning griffons in the past. And it was her polluting their minds with dreams of conquest and terror in Snow Mountains.

“You!” Celestia ragged as her face contorted into a furious grimace. She could barely control her shaking old legs. She screamed as much as her croaky voice would allow. “I killed you! I destroyed you; I ended you! How can you be here?”

The murderous monstrosity laughed again before she fixed her gray eyes on Celestia, walking forward. Her shoulders rose and fell with her elegant gait, like a lioness. Her black and white shaped a cruel smile and her sharp facial structure seemed accentuated under the dying red light of the sun.

“Answer me!” Celestia screamed her throat sore.

Finally, the griffoness fixed her cold eyes on Celestia’s again. Her voice took a solemn tone and she stood on her hindlegs, opening wings and forelegs in a grand gesture under the red sun. She spoke in an ancient language ingrained into Celestia’s mind and her voice carried an unsettling authority. “The Gateway of All opens, and time stops. Past and Future meet halfway in the Present… All that ever was and will be converge. The Great Annihilator prepares to, once again, return all to the first instant of Creation in its quest for Perfection.”

“Your kind was made to serve and in servitude finds comfort, but you stole it from them.” She tightly closed a fist she showed Celestia. “Creation yearns for strong reigns you cannot hold, and your poor student never stood a chance.”

The Harpy returned to her four legs and resumed walking toward Celestia, her wings still on display. The red of the dying sun tinted her in a sickly pink that unnerved Celestia almost as much as her gray eyes. Then she offered a paw to Celestia, some ten hooves of emerald-red wilting grass between them. “Thus, here I am! Once again, at the Beginning and the End of Creation, to take you home. Come… The others have already joined, and you have, once again, the opportunity to restore balance.”

The old alicorn gave her no response. Celestia simply turned her stare downward, closing her eyes at what her words implied. Without getting an answer, the griffoness moved closer and sat before Celestia.

The Harpy smiled as though she was talking to a filly. Infuriatingly, a caring, motherly smile while cruelty and hubris also pulled the edges of her beak. “Your precious little ponies… They passed all the tests. They were ready to sustain Harmony forever. What happened, Sol-Estia?”

She picked a wilted flower, holding it in her talons. “I thought you meant to make the world a perfect place. None of the pain I brought. Simply full of joy and cute things… Cute flowers. Cute little bunnies and fishies. Cute doggies and kittens to play with the little foals.”

“What happened?” She let the flower drop and tilted her head with a mocking, fake curiosity. The Harpy laughed. She guffawed so hard she bent over and hugged her stomach as her crown of feathers bent low against her neck before ruffling again. Ponies crowded near Celestia protectively. It broke her heart. “Things did not go as you had planned… And now, they have to witness your failure again.”

“It will keep repeating, every cycle because you cannot understand your method is flawed. You turned my beautiful world into a kindergarten of failed magical constructs who should never have been gifted free-will. You will fail and I will never not amuse myself seeing the stare in your face when you realize we have reached the end of another cycle and you failed yet again.”

Then she threw a golden crown at Celestia’s feet. It bounced once on the grass. The blood stains were as readily identifiable as the purple star and the triple mound design under the red gleam of the dying sun. Celestia wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of crying or even a reaction, even if her ponies cried at the sight.

“You never taught her how to fight, but she tried.” The Harpy’s beak retained her cruel smile. “She called your name in the end. Her suffering is rooted in your stubborn arrogance in refusing your place.”

Celestia’s ears remained pulled back and her tired eyes remained set on the griffoness. Finally, the mare spoke. “I will destroy you. Once and for all.”

“I do not think you will.” The griffoness scooted closer with a mocking smile. “You keep repeating the same mistake. I’ve become very good at ruining your little playground since the Fourth Cycle and you don’t even remember it.”

What? Celestia’s ears perked. Fourth Cycle? What madness was that? They were in the Fourth Cycle, and she had nothing to do with the other cycles failing. They did because Celestia’s little ponies failed to establish the ecosystem. In the Fourth Cycle they managed! The ponies survived the Windigos and Discord. Everything worked as it should, and it only failed because she did something to the griffons.

Celestia mumbled, surprised. Shocked. Her lips trembled and her ears pulled back again. At the back of her mind a small pony wept. She knew The Harpy was right, she just didn’t know why or how. Her tired legs almost couldn’t hold her anymore and her old heart squeezed in her chest. Her voice came with a broken whisper. “What are you talking about?”

At some level, Celestia remembered she witnessed the ‘past’ through the eyes of her past self. There was nothing she could do about it, but something hurt her deeply. Back aboard the airship, Luna had joked about how several cycles had failed because of Twilight’s rule. But it was a joke. A jest! Celestia… Both the elderly pony in the dream and the young one behind her eyes, held back tears stinging on her eyes. She swallowed a painful lump on her throat before the words came out broken. Deep inside, she already knew. “What cycle is this?”

“In the First Cycle your ponies didn’t even survive the first moments under the Primeval Chaos.” Her expression turned to mocking superiority and she punctuated her words shaking her head. “In the Second Cycle Luccenotturna gave them intelligence, but they died in accidents and not enough remained. In the Third Cycle Amore taught them how to reproduce, and you decided they shouldn’t be immortal, fearing they would overpopulate.”

She laughed like it was the punchline of a joke and her words stumbled through her chuckles. “They became so selfish and petty because of their limited life they failed the Harmonic Resonance Test and the Windigos destroyed them.”

“You think this is the Fourth Cycle. When Amicizia gave them the Magic of Friendship, they survived not only the Windigos, but also Discord.” The Harpy again showed a compassionate smile. “You finally made it!”

“They were ready to sustain Harmony forever. With all the stupid nonsense you and your creation did… The Elements of Harmony even returned Luna to you. Everything worked so well…” The Harpy let her voice trail off, smiling and caressing Celestia’s cheek with the back of her paw.

Bubbly chuckles escaped the great griffoness under the red sunlight and her smile broadened. “You unsophisticated nag. You didn’t even understand what you were until the Black Sun began to form and memories returned to you. You completely forgot godhood. You could not explain your own origin. You just walked into Star Swirl and decided to accept becoming a pretty princess with your sister. It’s like a story for infants. It’s a fairy tale!”

The griffoness concluded, half compassionate, half cruel. “You keep making the same mistake, without fail. This is not the Fourth Cycle, and I have been ruining your little kindergarten in my stolen world ever since. You just stopped remembering because the goddesses integrated into their minds. It makes you forget, and you cannot fight me.”

“What cycle is this?!” Celestia cried. Her voice broke and she yelled. Louder than she wanted. Anger and frustration took control from her, and she hiccupped a sob.

“Oh… You poor animal.” The Harpy’s black paw touched Celestia’s cheek and caressed it as softly as the compassionate expression she donned. Sad gray eyes stared at Celestia’s big magenta ones, maybe legitimately so. “This is the Fifteenth Cycle.”

A gasp escaped Celestia, and her light head almost toppled her. She sat on her haunches and the world spun around her. Her empty stomach threatened to spill anything it could find. Ponies crowded around her again with concerned stares despite their confusion. She could barely see them through the tears.

She grimaced as breathing became harder and her hooves held her face. Her tears slipped and her sobbing stole the air from her. She whined and shut her eyes as hard as she could. Trapped like a rat. No way out other than through an enemy she just saw she couldn’t defeat. But her little ponies… They didn’t deserve it. They deserved to live free and happy. So what if it was a fairy tale? So what if it was foolish? But they cried for her help, and she failed.

“You wept. Every time, you cried.” The Harpy softened her voice. “So angry. So despaired. Just as you are now. Stuck in a corner you cannot escape from.”

“You are not fit.” Celestia felt her paw, caressing her dried mane. The monster’s voice so soft. “Give me back my world. I will bear this burden; it is too much for you.”

“And yet, you will not.” The Harpy’s voice grew cruel again, and Celestia looked up from her old hooves to see the malicious smile pulling at her beak. A talon danced around Celestia’s temple. “You cannot accept… You will insist. You cannot do different. You are a reflection of their fear, a base instinct devoid of real intelligence. You do not even possess true free-will…. You will fail however many times you try because you cannot defeat me. And so will your precious little magical constructs. Until all the pieces fall in place and I can finally destroy you and take back my world. One day, I will truly set you free. Until then, you will suffer. And I will enjoy watching it, my unrepentant prodigal daughter.”

Celestia’s breath came in rapid bursts, and her sobs caught in her throat. Her words confused themselves with her breathless weeping. “You are a petty monster who wants to cause suffering simply for the fact Harmony gave me Creation! I will kill you again! I will destroy you! Once and for all! Somehow!”

“Yes… The same righteous fury. Every time.” The Harpy chuckled, stroking Celestia’s mane. “ ‘You monster’… ‘You are evil’… All words you invented for me… For things that scare you. You are weak. You are flawed, you are out of your place. Moving the sun was all you were meant to do.”

Her smile turned dark. “Now… My patience has thinned over the millennia of repeating this. Let us end it and try again. The Black Sun waits for your soul.”

Her black paws reached for Celestia’s neck. The alicorn remained silent, barely letting a hiccup escape. Resolute. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she remained solid as stone. Ponies pulled back, scared, and confused, yet she remained still. Black fingers closed around her neck and squeezed the air from her.

Celestia’s weak legs soon gave in and the griffoness pushed her weight over the diminished alicorn. Ponies cried around them, but her eyes remained on the griffoness’ manic grin as she laid on top of her.

As the Sun completed its transformation into the Black Sun all light vanished as an omen of the undefinable, reality shattering sound that filled her ears. A rushing rumble remained as the ground shook and broke. Individual pieces broke as reality fell apart. Horrified ponies walking backwards mercifully collapsed, as though a switch had been flipped and undid their consciousness. Then their bodies undid themselves in sparkly showers of magical energy let loose, washing away, toward the sky. Twinkling as little stars rising from everywhere.

Celestia’s eyes found the Black Sun above The Harpy’s crown of excitedly ruffling feathers. The gaping nothingness in the black void of the broken sky. Barely visible, all the light came from its crown of radiant energy. Everything spiraled into the Seed of Creation. All sound vanished in a cacophony of unnatural silence punctuated by its ghostly rumble and Celestia’s laborious, failing breath.

It waited only for her death, so they could start anew.

The Harpy whispered to her, letting her beak come closer, almost gasping as a lover while existence shattered around them. “Next time, kindly give me back my world, Grassbreath. I tire of this game.”

The powerful fingers crushed her windpipe and her lungs burned, but the pain didn’t bother Celestia. Something numbed the pain and the sorrow. Maybe her oxygen starved brain began to shut off. Maybe the revelation she fought a hopeless war made it all pointless. Maybe the Black Sun and its weird effect on her, the convergence of all versions of her through its bizarre time magic, gave her a sliver of hope.

Maybe she really had some bizarre sense of filial submission to The Harpy. No way her head was very healthy with such a messed-up business of remembering, forgetting, cycles and death and rebirth… Luna and the others probably weren’t very well either. The Harpy was likely the nuttiest of them all. Maybe the absurdity made it all tragically funny.

On the verge of slipping out of consciousness, she gave The Harpy a weak smile, barely pulling at her cheeks wet with tears.

One thing she knew for sure. It was a dream. A memory made it through to the next cycle. One she would remember when she woke up, with plenty of time before the end was already upon her. Finally, she had the upper hoof, and was about to unleash twelve lifetime's worth of whoop-flank upon the world.

“Gotcha, Hairball…”

The Costs and Prizes of Loyalty

“The sneaky bastards!” Gwineth growled with a sneering scowl. The sound came closer to a screeching bird than the roar of an angry griffon. Having lived his entire life in Griffonstone, Guylan was used to roaring griffons. Usually when they were particularly miffed. Her screech was eerie, unnerving, and loud.

Perfectly preened, her steely blue pelt shone in the flash of lightning like a weapon on itself, even soaked under the rain. Her muscular and fit body evocated thoughts of the stereotypical northerner murder machines observers reported. She was quite attractive, in that way ‘scaroused’ ponies sometimes mentioned as a joke. However, the stomping feet at the wet paving cobblestone and whiny words ruined it. “Can you believe this? They almost had me convinced!”

Guylan could barely see beyond the light provided by their portable gas lamps. The magical streetlights were out, the rain made seeing even more difficult, and they had to speak loudly because of the racket the rain caused. It was like their own little world, and they were her audience. Everything taken into consideration, and speaking as an adult, the hen’s reaction came closer to a cub throwing a temper tantrum than a northerner warrior. The fact she didn’t seem to care made it worse. Her behavior reminded Guylan of the higher-ups who thought the grunts were merely their servants.

On the brighter side, not much of an intelligent conversation went on. Surely, the hen was stunningly beautiful, but her taste in friends would’ve kept Guylan from talking to her in any other situation.

“Uh… I don’t mean to disagree… But you kinda cried like a fledgling and totally believed them, Miss Gwineth.” The male next to the northerner hen spoke… Queen. Guylan had to remember his new overlords used ‘queen’ instead of ‘hen’. Dark gray body with an off-white fluff, neck, and head, the griffon next to Gwineth cocked an eyebrow at her with his comment. Then he winced at his own words when she stared daggers at him.

“You’re just a random criminal nobody cares about.” Her words dripped poison thicker than the rain. On her four legs, her height reached higher, and she knew how to use her size to intimidate. Not even flaring her wings at him, like most griffons would. It was the overbearing way she leaned against others. “Do you want to end hanging like… Whatever his name was?”

Barely after closing her beak, Gwineth turned to another griffon next to her. “Garon! You knew the lord Protector wanted to fool me into thinking they were sending me to Shatteredrock! Didn’t you?”

She simply talked to the goons, ignoring Guylan, Colonel Gaspar, and the other soldiers. Were the northerner female not so important, they would have left already. Guylan would have. But he supposed the Colonel had outstanding reasons for his patience. If what he heard about what happened at the teleporter held any truth. In truth, it seemed as though they had no choice but to ally with the northerners. General Gamaliel’s revelations about the Blackfeathes’ exploits and a firs paw display of their ruthlessness had already spread like wildfire among the ranks of the GSA. There was no going back.

“I didn’t have the opportunity to tell you, Lady Gwineth!” The big griffon looked stupid. A giant mountain of muscles taking a step back, sitting on the walkway and waving his paws defensively. Stumbling on words with his thick voice. “With all that’s happened, I didn’t even have the presence to tell you… It seemed so small. Compared to… Everything.”

She gave him a distrustful, threatening hum and a stare from her predatorial blue eyes, but ultimately let go of the subject. The two groups had met in front of the local militia headquarters and the rain didn’t let up just because they had to talk. For incomprehensible reasons, they never walked into the lobby. A couple of grunts on the GSA side held umbrellas for Guylan and Colonel Gaspar under the rain, but it didn’t bother the northerner or her friends. It would be funny if griffons weren’t staging coup d’état or dying left and right at the same time.

Maybe the criminals they had to work with didn’t want them to see whatever happened there. Maybe Gwineth didn’t want to talk in front of the others. Guylan could only guess, and his superior didn’t seem to care. Griffonian Standing Army grunts killed Blackfeather officers in cold blood, Blackfeather officers arrested children, and northerners bombed a hospital… Common sense had been one of the first victims of the last two days.

For a military griffon wanting to bury the dead officers and preferably go through the night without dying, Guylan had at least avoided dying so far. He escorted his superior, Colonel Gaspar, to talk to the northerner hen and learned a little about him. The old griffon sure had spent time under the rain. Both literally and figuratively. He looked like it too. The wet fur, but mostly the soulless, stressed stare evidenced so. The dense wall of stupidity the northerner hen radiated also helped.

“Lady Gwineth…” The old colonel took the word as soon as her attention was on him. “We can then take you back to Snow Mountains without Royal Guards or Justiciars nosing in. I understand you are considerably important, and it would be unfortunate if you were injured or captured.”

‘Again’. It would be unfortunate if it happened again. Guylan inhaled deeply and kept his beak shut. The word never left his thoughts. It would also be great if she could be removed from the whole operation. But the officer also left that unsaid.

“I need to grab my sword!” Gwineth frowned at the colonel with frustration. “I bet the Abomination has it!”

Gaspar patiently shook his head. The experienced officer had gotten used to dealing with superiors and unreasonable government officials. Apparently, nobility and privilege really came in all flavors. In their case, it seemed to be the dense northerner hen with a side of personal entitlement.

“Princess Celestia, Prince Chocolate Velvet, and several Royal Guards have taken over the Blackfeather headquarters. We have torrential rain and there is no activity in the area to mask an approach.” Colonel Gaspar told the hen. “They are expecting trouble and will be ready for an attack. It is a terrible idea.”

“She’s in there with my sword!” Gwineth gave a frowny whine, but immediately after raised her beak and put a paw on her chest. “I can do it. Just give me a few good shooter birds.”

Gaspar shook his head at her reaction, repeating his words with a concerned frown. “It is exactly what Celestia wanted you to do, and why she set up the fake transfer with Lord Protector Gilmara. It couldn’t possibly be a more obvious trap.”

“But I need my sword!” Gwineth sat on the wet cobblestone and her blue paws held her head in a frantic panic. “Lady Gwendolen has ordered me to retrieve my sword! She is gonna be pissed with me if Celestia figures out the spells on that thing. You don’t want to see Lady Gwendolen when she’s angry!”

Standing on four legs, her feet kept dancing nervously. “I can’t just leave the town and abandon it. Not to mention it’s my dancing sword! I need it! I can’t just get another!”

Colonel Gaspar sighed, held his lores, and shook his head again. Dejection in the form of a GSA officer. “Fine. We had a plan and soldiers inside… The chances of it working are negligible, so we abandoned the plan in favor of removing you from the city.”

The colonel sighed. “But I suppose you won’t listen. We need to remove Celestia from there before she learns anything… Like the Blackfeather’s notes on the northerner Cult of The Harpy. Then, I suppose, you could search for your sword.”

Gwineth’s eyes bulged with a finger before her beak. “Shhh… You’re not supposed to mention Her name out loud. For… Magical reasons.”

Colonel Gaspar’s eyes squinted and Guylan could practically see the patience leaving his body. But said nothing, neither did Gaspa. Instead the northerner hen spoke as though she had figured out the number for the national lottery.

“I got it!” She cried, raising a finger and looking much too pleased with herself. “I got this! You guys do whatever plan you had, and I go in to take my dancing sword and destroy all the evidence! I just need a little distraction.”

“Our plan…” Gaspar fixed a serious stare. “Started with taking you away to safety and then bombing the place with cannons. We would later claim we believed the Blackfeathers had hidden in there with a dangerous magical artifact. Hopefully, destroying any document they might have produced and killing Celestia’s Justiciar. It is bad enough Celestia had our soldiers take the place with her Royal Guards, but with you there, this excuse is even less likely to work. The truth is she will not be leaving that place.”

“No offense…” One of the thugs with the northerner hen obnoxiously rolled his eyes and started counting on his fingers like a cub. Practically another overgrown and ugly mountain of muscles under a puke-green fur and feathers. “Celestia probably could shield the building with magic. Griffons on the street say she can revive dead ponies and assume direct control over their heads. I’m pretty sure that means she’s powerful enough to protect the building. We really should draw her out. Maybe sabotage a mana battery station and get the city without magical power to homes. Ponies are sappy. That’ll draw her out.”

The logic. It boggled the mind. The thug might not be wrong, though. Albeit through sinuous ‘logic’. However, Guylan didn’t want to turn griffonstonian citizens into hostages.

Gwineth waved a dismissive gesture at her minion. “Yeah, yeah… Alicorns are powerful and all that. But they aren’t as powerful as ponies would have you think.”

Guylan inhaled profoundly, swallowing his sarcasm yet again.

“Anyway…” Gwineth gave a little excited hop. “I have a great plan. Let’s sabotage a mana station and draw her out of the Blackfeather headquarters. This way I can get in, grab my sword, destroy any documents, and get out. If I’m lucky, I might even take out the Prince-Consort!”

Once again, the Colonel seemed to summon from an internal source of patience and serenity, ever so subtly frowning at the northerner. “Celestia is not stupid. She’ll know we’re up to something if a battery station goes down. Even with the storm. She might not even consider it worth investigating herself if she is holding on to important things.”

“Like…” One of the soldiers holding umbrellas for Guylan and Colonel Gaspar deadpanned. Unwarranted, speaking out of turn, but spot on nonetheless. “The Princess might wait for civil services to get it fixed… As any normal creature does when the lights go out.”

Gwineth grinned like a child with a brilliant idea. “Let’s blow it up then! Put some griffons in danger and make her get involved.”

Perhaps out of place, like the soldier, Guylan poked a talon at his own head and glared at the northerner female. “Are you out of your mind? We are not going to blow up the city because you want to retrieve your sword!”

Gaspar did not reproach Guylan or their subordinate, and even nodded at the latter’s words, but chose a more diplomatic approach. “Furthermore, such a plan is likely to fail. We won’t be able to keep her busy for long enough.”

“Ah. But here’s the genius of my plan! We’re gonna make a mess! A real mess. With lots of innocent griffons in danger.” She pulled Garon to her with a paw over his shoulders and grinned widely again. “My new friends are going to distract Celestia for us. They’ll make such a big ruckus, she’ll be busy for long enough for me to get things done!”

Wasn’t that Garon guy a local militia? Siding with the northerners could be understandable, but his job included protecting the population from thugs, for feathers sake.

“Sir!” A white and gray grunt in the GSA green uniform cried. “Permission to speak.”

Great… His own guys decided to be silly too. The Colonel nodded at the soldier, though.

“I understand killing loyalist soldiers and officers, but I did not expect our siding with the good griffons would include letting petty criminals loose on the city causing chaos.” The soldier cried-complained with a properly distressed glower. But he kept a professional posture other than that. “What is going to keep them from looting stores or invading homes? They are criminals!”

“Or why would they even do that, knowing they’re expendable cannon fodder?” The other soldier, next to him asked, impatiently holding his umbrella. Had the northerner hen thought that deeply into her amazing plan. Unlikely.

“They cannot stand against the Royal Guard, Lady Gwineth.” Gaspar promptly reminded Gwineth, adding to the soldiers’ worries, and meaning to dissuade her. Guylan would likely have just yelled and told her to go sit in the corner. But ‘professionalism’ and all that… “They are more military than police force. It’s not going to end well for anyone involved.”

“Don’t worry!” Gwineth smiled at him, squeezing the other mountain of muscles Garon was against her like a pet. “These awesome griffons have understood there are more important things at stake than their petty squabbles and insecurities!”

“Yeah!” One of the griffons who should be behind the bars piped and others nodded in mindless agreement. “There are truly important things most griffons can’t understand.”

“Did she just say you’re going to die?” The first soldier glowered unbelieving at the griffons across from his side, and Guylan wanted to scream but remained silent. “And you’re okay with it?”

“You guys wouldn’t understand!” The brown and white thug next to her nearly invoked the northerner’s wrath by almost hitting her with his excited flaring wings. He did manage to convince Guylan of his sincerity. “You weren’t here! You didn’t see when the Lady in the Storm appeared before all of us and freed Lady Gwineth from the militias! She told us the words of Swordmaiden Gouda who lived before the ponies had helped King Grover unite the kingdom!”

“Ghadah…” Gwineth deadpanned. “Her name was Gahdah.”

“The lady of what now?” Guylan frowned and honestly worried for their mental health. “The… The dream thing? Like… Are you serious? What even is a swordmaiden?”

“The lights went off!” Another of the ex-detainees intruded on the conversation, bug-eyed and making wide gestures with his paws. “Lightning was loud and all over, and everyone saw her! All white and black, large and beautiful like… Only she could be! She saved Gwineth! They were getting ready to take her out to Shatteredrock, no trial, no nothing! Just straight mean business, because you know our law enforcement is crooked as a vulture’s beak. Garon was going to hit her, but The Lady appeared in the darkness and held his paw! She even helped Gwineth stand!”

“We just told you the Shatteredrock thing was a ruse…” Guylan, never one for minding those urban legends, thought them silly. But the testimony reached another level of stupid.

“Well, she still saved Lady Gwineth!” The outlaw griffon groused and crossed his forelegs. “And she came out of nowhere. Like she could teleport! Like a unicorn!”

“Don’t compare The Mother of Storms to a pony, you moron.” Another ex-detainee grumbled.

Another one, next to him, scoffed and threw a wide dismissive gesture. “They don’t get it! Dude! You didn’t see it. Lady Gwineth was dejected. She couldn’t even walk! Then She spoke to Gwineth and she changed. Like water to wine, bro! She was filled with a new vigor. We’re talking about The Har- About something larger than life! I wanna be on her good side if I buy it tonight… I wanna make my place in the Stormy Eyrie. And Lady Gwineth promised it to anyone who submits to the Mother of Storms until The Lion is crowned.”

“That sounds arbitrary…” Guylan raised an eyebrow. “A griffon can get benefits if they change sides now, but not later?”

“Makes sense, man!” The street griffon grinned. “She wants to see which griffons are loyal. You gotta take a side. And take the right side, or She’s gonna remember that.”

“Yeah.” Another thug soaking under the rain opened his forelegs in an earnest gesture. “You guys are on our side, aren’t you? So, you’ve already chosen Her side. If you’re out in the rain, you’re gonna get wet. There is no point in worrying about the water.”

Amazing… Guylan doubted at any time in his life they ever had such commitment to anything. Like making a career. Perhaps building a family, working hard, and building some wealth. But something weird happens, a psycho tells him a few words and he is ready to believe in the unbelievable. Maybe Guylan was the stupid one. For making a career and doing his best at building his life. He should just have ‘sung the right song’…

“Besides, you are all being overly dramatic.” Gwineth let out an exasperated sigh and waved a paw at them. “Celestia is not going to actually hurt anyone. The worst that can happen is them getting arrested and then freed once The Harpy… I mean, The Lion takes over!”

She grinned happily with a sideways glance to her thugs while they nodded and voiced their enthusiastic agreement. Then Gwineth winked at Colonel Gaspar. “See? It will be alright!”

Guylan resigned himself to yet another sigh. Although some of them may die, that was a sacrifice she was willing to make. Fine. Dumb griffons were the problem with Griffonia. “Fine. I’ll go back and prepare things for your arrival. Make sure your guys make enough of a mess because I don’t want to be there when Celestia returns. With your permission Colonel.”

The older and wizened Gaspar nodded at Guylan. “Be careful… Whatever happens to a griffon when they die, I don’t mean to find out today.”

***

Celestia woke up. Her back pressed against the cool wet cloud and the pegasus weather team crowded around her against the starry sky. The team leader frantically shook her until she opened her eyes. “Goodness! You’re awake! You scared me, Princess! Please tell me you’re not hurt!”

The gray-green pony’s muzzle scrounged, and the mare spoke sheepishly. “Uh… Sorry for that.”

The Princess smiled at her concerned little pony while sitting on the cloud. Images of terrible thunderstorms, bloody fields and the dreadful visage of the black and white feathers occupied the back of her mind. But they didn’t need to know about any of that and Celestia kept it all behind her smile. “There was something lurking inside the cloud, but it is gone now. You can deal with the storm yourselves.”

The ponies took nervous steps back and exchanged concerned stares, but she spoke again. “It is safe now.”

A quick spell wiped most of the dampness from her body before Celestia shook her forehooves, one at a time. “Once you are done, go straight home. Close your doors and don’t leave until things calm down. Do not leave unless you desperately need something. If you do, take care not to draw attention to yourselves. If you find any ponies along the way, or if they live with you, tell them to do the same.”

Four blank faces stared back. “Take no longer than necessary, and in the coming days pay attention to the news. If the Royal House asks you to leave Griffonia, do so immediately. Make sure your families and those of your acquaintances are prepared. Be ready to travel and take only what is necessary.”

Her stare lowered a bit. “If you know griffons who are friends with ponies, warn them too. Discreetly talk to any hippogriffs you know. They are in danger. Maybe even more so than ponies. There may be trying times fast approaching, but Friendship will weather through them.”

“Yes, Princess…” The team leader nodded. A confused frown took over her face, but her voice remained resolute. “We’ll do as you say.”

“What is happening?” The male too had a worried frown and pleaded like a little colt, stepping forward.

“There is a new threat…” Celestia hardened her eyes as dulled pain, reminiscent of talons slowly tearing at her skin glowed behind her thoughts. “And it is a dangerous one, but it is my concern. Do not take my recommendations lightly and all will be well.”

Done with words, she hopped and took flight. Could it have been a nightmare using her fear of The Harpy to attack her? What Celestia saw in the cloud was no nightmare or nightmare magic. And if her dream served a purpose, it made her recall that she had returned before. Many times, indeed. Celestia just didn’t remember. Suddenly Grover’s fears of the Mother of the Storms during the war seemed much less a paroxysmal memory from primordial times.

How stupid had she been? Her head throbbed, and Celestia couldn’t make up her mind if it came from her anxiety or the bizarre magic which surrounded her dream. In fact, her thoughts seemed sluggish and clouded. Hopefully, it shouldn’t be permanent damage from the magic in the storm.

More important things occupied her mind. Such as the suspicious circumstances of Luna and her nightmare theory more than the theory itself. Why did Luna become so convinced it was a Nightmare? Celestia’s eyes hardened with a frown as she distanced herself from the weatherponies. Luna had said it was a nightmare and then all communication ceased.

Celestia immediately rebuked such thoughts, though. Luna would never betray her. Would she? An angry hum accompanied her frown. The Harpy’s magic was ancient, and her understanding of creatures and magic was dangerous. The Harpy could have come up with a way to fool Luna. It was much more likely than Luna betraying her older sister again.

‘Again’ being the key word, but Celestia decided to withhold judgment. It was still curious, though. Celestia had never thought about it… She didn’t know so many cycles had passed, but hadn’t Luna assumed the mantle of Nightmare Moon every single cycle? Although such was more likely a consequence of her position within the minds of ponies and their instinctual fear of the night before modern times. It was still a curious probability-defying tendency.

Once the storm had been dealt with, Celestia would try to communicate with Luna again and her sister would help deal with the threat. Celestia frowned again… Despite all her thoughts of the possibility of betrayal, Luna might be in danger. Chocolate Velvet was in danger. Hopefully, his encounter with the northerner hen wielded interesting results. Although not many creatures or institutions would accept his magical perceptions and her dream as evidence Gilad had associated himself with a dangerous creature. She needed what evidence Miss Mallet could procure.

One thing piqued at her curiosity, though. It seemed ponies failing to forget their creators caused a cascade effect resulting in Celestia retaining much of her memories from the previous cycle. Ironically, during the previous cycles she had forgotten everything because things had worked out. Did she, at the beginning of the present cycle, set things differently so they would arrive in the precise moment they were? So, she could remember and break The Harpy’s advantage?

She cocked an eyebrow while she flew. Maybe not. It allowed Catbird Supreme to return much earlier than in the previous cycle. Or had Hairball simply remained hidden until she felt safe to act? Either way, just thinking of her and her stupid crown of black feathers made Celestia’s head pulsate.

Again, how stupid had she been? The Harpy was there! Celestia knew Lady Gwendolen lived in Griffindell. The Harpy hid right under her nose all that time. She had never actually met Gwendolen face to face, though… Curse it all, Chrysalis was right. Celestia had been too lenient and her observance of the pact with Empress Geneviere gave The Harpy a safe harbor.

Curse it! Curse it! Sun scorch it all!

More important than that, Celestia had changed quite a lot. Her return as Sunny Days allowed her to prevent the Black Sun from triggering after Discord’s interference and imprisoned her soul in the realm of the mortals. She didn’t remember how she came to be in the previous cycle, but she would not have been able to deal with the situation. It seemed intentional.

Because, if the aborted Black Sun allowed herself, Luna and the others to manifest upon the world in their present form, it also allowed The Harpy. Maybe The Harpy believed the moment she had been waiting for finally arrived. Maybe that was her plan with The Lion and Grigory.

Her presence rendered everything pointless, the cursed Hairball. Celestia might have to trigger the Black Sun just to get rid of her influence.

Her frown deepened and Celestia grimaced. That was bad. If only the Murder Kitty hadn’t been hiding somewhere all along… Likely since the time Discord almost summoned the Black Sun. Anyway, she would be incredibly dangerous. Not a threat to be faced head-on. Especially since she had so long to prepare.

It raised an interesting question, though: what allowed The Harpy to return in the previous cycles? Discord’s intervention, almost summoning the Black Sun, had been exclusive to the present cycle. Maybe griffons are simply stuck with her, seething at them from the back of their minds. Celestia may not ever know the answer, but it won’t matter once she’s done fleecing The Harpy. Burying her name for all eternity along with all those traitorous catbirds should do it. Maybe even taking precautions to ensure she will never return in another cycle. Ever.

But saving the present cycle would be the best possible outcome. She didn’t want to start all over, potentially losing all she had become. She didn’t want to sacrifice what the others had become.

Celestia allowed herself a small self-righteous grin. Never one for self-pity, she acknowledged again the fact her previous self could never have faced The Harpy. Maybe not even the Unicorn Kings. Ah… The power of perspective. The instrumentality of insight, and what an insight that dream had provided.

Her frown turned into a grimace, her soft voice to burning anger. “She hurt Twilight. She hurt Luna and Cadance too…”

They were all vulnerable again. Moreover, Celestia wondered how many griffons had countered her efforts for the sake of an evil goddess during the past nights. What must Miss Mallet have found in the Blackfeathers’ archives? Maybe a definitive, legally binding evidence? What of Golden Rule? What of Discord? They could be in danger in Griffindell, but Celestia had come to trust the old Justiciar for her resourcefulness. Discord, Celestia knew he could take care of himself even better.

Assuming he didn’t betray her, but Celestia didn’t want to entertain the possibility.

Galloping under the stars and above the angry cloud, flapping her mighty wings, she giggled. Then her giggles turned to laughter. Her laughter ringed above the storm as she tossed her head. If the storm was supposed to make griffons remember The Harpy… It was The Harpy’s magic which helped Celestia. The Princess kept on laughing and laughing. The whole thing only happened because Cadance found that dumb letter, which in turn might also have been the result of Gwendolen’s machinations.

‘Shatterhoof Valley’. The name floated around her thoughts. Gilad was right when he faced her in the Hall of Friendship, years ago… She must be what her subjects needed her to be. She had some bloody business to take care of in the following days. Maybe some cleansing to do. It was a good thing she had learned so much from her old friends, the Unicorn Kings.

Her laughter turned to shrieking guffaws and anyone next to her might worry for her sanity.

“Ow…” Her guffawing ceased when she hovered in the air and took a hoof to her temple.

“Enough of that.” Celestia told herself.

Celestia’s magic tore open a hole in the cloud, and she made her way through. The rain didn’t bother her so much anymore and didn’t weigh down on her wings. The dark griffon city beneath her has lost a vast portion of its public lighting, but the lightning wasn’t as frequent anymore. It was just a normal storm, smelling of petrichor. The wind didn’t toss her around anymore, like it respected her again.

She found the mana station. Bright sparks showered out as it bellowed a pink smoke against the uncertain light of the failing mana batteries. A nearby building had caught fire and she could hear gunfire. Not only from there, but all over the region. They did more than sabotaging the mana station. It clearly was an attempt to distract her. Unfortunately for them, Celestia had seen all the tricks the wicked had under their horns. And griffons were nowhere as devious as the Unicorn Kings.

And the Unicorn Kings had been nowhere as devious as she had been.

Looking to the other side, Celestia found the ominous building where the Blackfeathers had made their headquarters. Chocolate was there, and with a few Royal Guards, but also many Griffonian Standing Army Soldiers under the influence of that murderous catbird with a superiority complex.

She then found the Local Militia Headquarters. Something had gone wrong, and Lord Protector Gilmara could be in danger, as well as her subordinates. Between them, Chocolate had the highest chances of protecting himself, so she should see what happened with the law enforcement griffons first. Furthermore, Griffonstone’s Local Militia should be able to deal with the problem at the mana battery station and would allow Celestia to help Chocolate Velvet. Especially because the northerner hen would be at the Blackfeather building, not the mana station.

The Mare twirled in the air and flapped her wings, propelling herself to the local militia headquarters building. Compared to Canterlot, the layout of the city was barely known to her, but Celestia supposed she wouldn’t get herself lost. Things could only improve with the ponies about to clear away the storm.

***

A gray-blue pegasus with a white mane next to a red and brown earth pony guarded a door in a corridor and wore the Royal Guard’s gold. The heavier version of their armor, with adequate protection. Both stood, attentively scanning the corridor on both sides time and again. Green carpet over the clear hardwood floor and tacky crimson with golden details wallpaper made the empty corridor. On one side the corridor ended on a window with the storm outside. The other ended the same way, with the stairwell midway to the end. Fancy frosted glass light fixtures on the ceiling had failed completely and they would be in the dark if not for several gas lamps on the floor near the wall.

A distinct clang of metal disrupted their casual scanning of the corridor. One stared at the other when the clang sounded again, seemingly closer. It sounded again, and again, definitely coming from the stairwell. Neither drew their weapons, though. Shields stayed on their backs and swords on their sides. They kept staring down the corridor as the clanging became louder.

Finally, the only brown alicorn in existence they knew to be the Prince-Consort, and their superior, came out of the stairwell. Rump-first and dragging a curtain wrapped around something that kept clanging against bronze finish on the edge of the steps.

“Do you need any assistance, your highness?” The pegasus mare showed a puzzled frown, but the alicorn mumbled something that sounded like a ‘no, it’s okay’.

Wearing his full golden Royal Guard armor with a white cape to indicate his rank, Chocolate also carried the standard-issue sword and shield. The prince also carried two pairs of pistols instead of one with additional powder and bullets. It all gave a particularly well-equipped and competent visage. But dragging a piece of cloth around kept him from the professional look which was expected of him.

Coming closer to them, Chocolate finally let the object inside the cloth rest with a thud and massaged his jaw. “Well, the manure is about to hit the fan.”

“More?” The pegasus asked sarcastically and the earth pony just stared dumbly at their superior.

“Princess Celestia left to investigate the mess the griffons are doing to their city and there is good reason to believe they’ll attack us while she is away. They blew up a nearby mana distribution station and some GSA guy tried to make us believe they needed Celestia to investigate. The thing is that Celestia knows it is a gambit. She’s also bound to examine the storm, so we’re on our own.”

“Oh, feathers…” The mare winced.

“Is this for real? Sir?” The earth pony whined and fidgeted his hooves. “Aren’t the griffons happy with an assassination attempt on the chancellor? Now they want to strike at the Royal House?!”

“There’s more going on than what is readily apparent, private.” Chocolate kept the professional attitude, despite the sword bundled in a curtain next to him.

“Oh no! He didn’t say anything silly, like ‘there more than meets the eyes’ This is serious!” The mare gasped and the earth pony nodded grimly.

“Anyway,” the prince rolled his eyes. “Report to Sergeant Crucible. He will better organize our efforts to defend the building and strike back at them. And keep things hush-hush. The griffons are not to be trusted.”

The mare frowned at him and gestured with her hoof. “This place is full of griffons, sir.”

“Precisely.” Chocolate pretended not to catch her sarcasm. “Haul flank to the top offices and meet Crucible Wings. Again, try to not draw attention. We want the catbirds to think we’re oblivious.”

“Yes sir.” Both saluted with a wing or a hoof as he waved with a wing.

He stood by the door, watching them rush to the stairs and up. Once they were away, Chocolate tested the knob on the door, and opened it. Biting at the curtain again, his highness dragged the stupid sword inside with him before closing and locking the door with help from his telekinetic magic.

Chocolate didn’t know what he expected, but the library was a library. Reading desks occupied the central area by the outer wall, surrounded by book stands which occupied most of the space. Large desks of dark varnished wood, sturdy furniture, with closed fronts for stability. Plenty of office materials too, and thick, dark wood for the shelves too. If anything, The Blackfeathers weren’t stingy about money.

Several rooms had had their walls downed in exchange for the open space, while pillars were left for structural integrity. More windows lined the wall between the rows of bookstands. Just as if some stupid bird with a twisted sense of humor wanted to make the room as easy to invade as possible. It was almost disappointing that the intelligence service headquarters didn’t have a super-secure strongroom, but Chocolate supposed it would make his job too easy.

Chocolate grabbed the curtain wrapped around the sword again and dragged it across the hardwood floor through the first book stands with a noticeable scratching noise. Reaching the open area with the desks and reading tables, sat the Justiciar. Miss Mallet, wore her characteristic red robe with the hood down and sat on a comfortable pillow by the desk. Her cyan pelt seemed reasonably kept, but her silver mane looked like a rat’s nest. Funny thing, the way pony manes reacted to stress.

The desk in front of her, and the ones next to it, had been buried under piles of parchment and books to the point the candles screamed fire hazard. Oblivious to the noise he and the sword caused in the library, the small unicorn mare feverishly scanned page after page of a non-assuming black leatherbound book.

“I hope you found something important and useful.” He let go of the curtain again. “Because the griffons are up to no good.”

“I did!” Mallet’s frantic gaze raised in a jerk from the book. “I mean, I almost did! I found several notes on the northerners. The Blackfeather division, in the last months, became obsessed with the northerner griffons worshiping the Mother of Storms. I found indisputable proof they launched an espionage mission called Operation Blackfeather. Without approval from the Chancellor’s Office, the GSA command, or even a shred of contact with the Royal House! Completely illegitimate! I don’t even know where they raised the funds for it!”

Chocolate stared at her, blinking eagerly and she went on, not an ounce less nervous than before. “They indeed hired Mister Flying Snake, as he said. For an operation worth millions of Bits, but he never reported back to them. He just showed up on Ponyville and went on to help Princess Celestia hunt the escaping Princesses.”

“Is that all?” Chocolate’s ears pulled back. “Did you get nothing concrete on The Lion being naughty, or the northerners and this Harpy of theirs?”

“Not entirely.” The unicorn tapped a pile of books with her hoof. “I did find they have a changeling infiltrator hiding in Beachhome! He told them Flying Snake was forced to defect because the northerners captured his daughter. Gilberta. It was a first hoof account! He was there and can serve as witness!”

“What is a changeling doing in a griffon-hippogriff town?!” Chocolate sat on the floor with a puzzled glare. “What was he doing in the North to begin with?!”

“He never told them. All I know is he didn’t want to be sent back to the Swarm.” The unicorn floated a large book written in… Griffonage, for it was the perfect word to describe the origin and calligraphy. Chocolate had no idea how Miss Mallet could decipher that, but she did. “It was before King Thorax took over the Swarm and he exchanged what he learned there with the Blackfeather for being allowed to live in Griffonia.”

“Well, what did he tell them?!” The alicorn urged with a wince and anxious wing gestures.

“It’s not here! I suppose their officers know, but the written records remained on Beachhome.” Mallet whined and let her ears sag.Then she hoofed at the book, perked ears at it. “However, this book says there is a record of where he is, somewhere in here!”

“We will never find a lone changeling hiding anywhere within useful time!” Chocolate grabbed one of the books in his telekinetic magic. But as he opened it to help her, everything was written with the griffon glyphs.

“They’re all written in Griffonese.” Mallet showed him her book again. “It’s like they were more afraid of us finding out than the northerners.”

“They probably expected Celestia to deal with the northerners for them.” Chocolate closed the book and frowned, returning it to the pile. “They didn’t want to dirty their own image with the things they did, like that mess with the derailed train.”

They fell into silence, with only the noises of the rain against the windows and fluttering of pages while Miss Mallet poured into book after book, looking for the Blackfeather records. Several minutes of relative quiet in the almost dead building passed before the mare perked her ears and declared triumphantly, she had found something.

“Oh! I found it!” Mallet opened a wide smile, staring at the open book.

“Where is he? Name? Address?” Chocolate came closer to her, looking over her shoulder.

“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “I found which book they keep the records about him in.”

Chocolate touched his knotting frown with a hoof. “Please hurry, Miss Mallet.”

“Sorry! Sorry!” She quickly let go of the book and grabbed another. It looked like a ledger to the alicorn. Or an address booklet. Small, bound with black leather and not a single ornament or letter on the cover. Just black and with a strip of similarly black leather wrapped around a small metallic button to keep it closed.

Chocolate Velvet’s patience started to deplete as the pony slowly unwound the leather strip. An undefinable bad feeling took over him. Something bad was sure to happen if they didn’t hurry.

Were the alicorn not bound by duty, and his love for the Princesses, he would have considered leaving the unicorn to fend for herself.

His ears moved, homing in on distant, echoing cannons. Surely they were cannons because of the distinctive sound they made. Black powder and ringing bronze. Then a compound shrill whistle filled the air and Chocolate acted on instinct instilled by the same training. He jumped over the little mare and covered her with his body and his wings. An instant later, before she understood and still yelped in surprise, the building shook like an earthquake. The glass windows shattered, and bookstands toppled like dominos.

A second passed and the building still rattled under blasts in a symphony with the repetitive whistling, drowning the unicorn’s panicked cries. Miss Mallet cowered beneath him, covering her head with her hooves. “What is that?!”

A chandelier snapped from its fixture in the ceiling and smashed itself to bits of bronze and crystals against his armor.

“It began.” Chocolate let her stand as musket fire rang outside and the wind dragged the rain inside. The gust blew off the candles and darkness took over the room. What little light entered from the windows barely allowed them to see the walls.

The sounds of muskets and repeating firearms came from the broken windows, but also from the door leading to the corridor. For a brief instant, Chocolate hoped the ponies in the Royal Guard were alright. If they managed to regroup and Crucible redistributed them, they should be fine, defending the other floors and spreading the griffons around.

More artillery fire blasted against the tower, and it shook again. Pieces of white gypsum from the ceiling collapsed to the hardwood floor, exposing the wooden structure. Chocolate hoped the tower itself would hold better than the gypsum as it kept breaking and some pieces hung from the ceiling. Thankfully, the thing seemed to be made of reinforced cement, judging by the outer wall.

“The northerners and their supporters want to destroy all the information the Blackfeather has on them. Find the changeling’s name, and where he’s hiding. Anything you can find! Now!” He yelled at the unicorn.

Mallet’s eyes bulged as she stood. “Oh… Oh! Yes. Right now!”

As the pony minded the book, Chocolate drew one of his white and gold pistols to float next to him. The water pooled on the hardwood floor and the alicorn quickly kicked the curtain-wrapped sword under one of the desks.

Just in time too, because the enchantments on Chocolate’s armor warned him of imminent danger. His training screamed from the back of his mind for him to find shelter, but instead he shoved Miss Mallet under one of the desks. His magic dragged another desk in front of her, sealing Mallet underneath with the book.

“Find the changeling. And don’t make a sound.”

The door almost buckled and folded in half into the library with a crunchy impact while Chocolate changed his position not to be in front of it. Another hit and the door exploded in two pieces barely hanging from the hinges. Plan? None. Or at least none that involved more than waiting for the other Royal Guards or Celestia to show up before they got the best of him. Chocolate had entered that room knowing he would be getting the brunt of the impact. His goal was keeping the northerner catbird from getting the sword and protecting Miss Mallet for long enough.

A griffon rushed inside with a pistol on his right paw, but didn’t have time to look around the room as Chocolate shot him with his pistol. Miss Mallet squealed again under the desk and Chocolate let go of the pistol. “Find it, Miss Mallet!”

A pair of griffons came inside next, and one of them shot him with a musket, but his armor and its magic protected him. The other lunged at him with a bayonet at the tip of his musket. Chocolate stood on his hindlegs and kicked the blade with an armored leg, then kicked the griffon’s face with practiced ease. His opponent went down hard.

The remaining griffon hid behind the wall and yelled. “He’s here! Shoot him!”

The flash from lighting barely allowed him to see details other than the distinctive shapes of griffons hovering in the air and holding firearms outside the windows. There being little more to be done to help Miss Mallet, he threw himself at the floor and under the nearest window. Slipping on the floor between scattered office supplies barely before they opened fire. The racket of automatic weapons drowned the sounds of the rain. Bullets thumped at the hardwood floor and sent splinters everywhere. They clacked at the concrete wall behind him, and shrapnel pinged his armor’s magical defenses.

A cylindrical object flew into the room and bounced off the dilapidated floor. Hissing like an angry wasp nest.

“Are you serious?!” His magic reached too late, and his eyes filled with a harsh and bright white. The air filled with the smell of burning matches and the bang made his ears ring. Looking again, flames clung to the wood of the desks, the bookcases, and the ceiling. Even more of the gypsum fell and the wood caught fire. The flames cast an eerie light at the library. All those books and papers would burn like… Whose idea was it to fight in a library again? As if that place needed to be more dangerous.

A female voice screeched outside. She yelled furiously in the whistly northern griffonian language soon after a griffon tumbled into the library with a yelp. His eyes opened wide upon seeing Chocolate hiding against the wall under the window. With his feet skipping on the wet floor he failed to grab his weapon or stand. Chocolate’s telekinetically held pistol shot him through his forehead.

The alicorn didn’t know if the others saw it, nor did he care. He scrambled over the dead griffon while grabbing his weapon and jumped behind one of the turned desks. Hopefully, the thickness of the wood and his armor would be able to withstand the hail of bullets they immediately unleashed.

All the while, even as the water from the rain pooled on the floor, the fire spread among the bookcases and claimed the ceiling. The air was becoming oppressively hot, and he coughed breathlessly. At least none of those jerks threw another grenade.

After the shooting stopped, more shots kept ringing in the distance, but someone walked on the pooled water with wet, splashy steps.

“Pony…” The female sang the word with a generous dose of maleficence and northerner accent. “Where is my dancing sword?”

Truth be told, it almost disappointed him that she couldn’t feel it, or something. He almost even expected her to telekinetically pull it to her. The magic her body gave shone like a beacon to him. He knew exactly where she stood. Raising from the floor with a jump, he turned holding the firearm he had gotten from the griffon. Holding it in his magic, he trained it at her and pulled the trigger.

The repetitive drumming sound of the weapon hurt his ears and the flickering flashes contended with the flames. The thing vibrated like a wild beast, but he held it and unloaded the northerner submachine gun at the hen.

The gun clicked one last time and the last casing tinkled to the ground. The steely-blue griffoness hid behind her wing, showing only her blue eyes, filled with delight, and the edges of her beak, pulling with a grin. The blue feathers crackled with magical energy like little bolts of lightning jumping between the clouds. None of the fifteen or so bullets hit her. They glanced off the feathers on the wing she shielded herself with. What the actual fudge? A few flattened bullets rolled on the floor. Part of him refused to believe.

Behind the griffoness, past the broken windows, the hovering griffons also stared, beaks hanging in awe.

His pony brain refused to utter the words he should have. “What the feather? Even the damn griffons get better magic than me?”

The hen laughed and stood on her hindlegs. Wings flaring grandiosely, her muscles tightened with the effort. Under the flickering light of the fire, shining with magic that remained in between her feathers, she looked formidable and dangerous. Her talons shone with the same magic; she held lightning in her paw. Before Chocolate could think and hide behind his shield, it unleashed from her talons like the hen was a bucking Sith Lord from the movies back in his original world.

Without his shield, the bolt pierced past his armor’s magical defenses and melted a hole through the chest plate. The impact sent him flying against the inner wall and the magical energy lit every nerve of his body on fire. His muscles locked and Chocolate couldn’t even scream, collapsing to the floor against the wall.

The hen hopped onto the turned desk, and from it pounced at Chocolate, pushing her weight against the pierced and smoking breastplate of his armor. He barely noticed anything before the pain shot through him again and he screamed.

“Where is my dancing sword, you skreyja meinfretr?” She pulled at his mane, and even if Chocolate wanted to answer, all he managed was an uncoordinated groan while trying to move with no success. The smell of burned flesh concerned him as much as the lack of control over his muscles and most of his mental faculties. All he knew was that the griffoness could not be allowed to find Miss Mallet. The sword be damned.

With a desperate surge of energy, his leg kicked her, as best and as hard as he could command it to. His hoof struck her stomach and threw her a couple of hooves in the air. A bird-like squeak let him know he had hurt her.

The heat and smoke in the air reminded Chocolate the room was on fire. He stood, almost tumbling to the floor, but pain burned in his chest. His failing magic barely resisted the bullets under the drumming sound of the northerners’ weapons, and he fell on his side.

One of the griffons hovering outside hurried to Gwineth’s side while his friend showered bullets in Chocolate’s direction. The alicorn didn’t know how many pierced his armor and its magical defenses. He winced, more out of anger than pain and his horn became lit with amber light. His magic reached for the griffon’s weapon and pulled with all his fury. It ripped the weapon from the griffon’s paws and the strap pulled him against the wall outside. Chocolate heard a cry and a sickening crunch.

The griffoness yelled something at the griffon trying to help her and shoved him away a hoof into the air before she lowered herself to the floor. Her wings opened and her face showed a murderous scowl. Out of reflex, Chocolate drew one of his pistols and pulled the trigger on her, but the water had rendered the powder useless.

When the griffoness screeched and lunged at him, he raised a simple wall shield. It proved inefficient when crackling talons tore at the invisible wall, making it visible before an explosion of lightning energy in all directions. Blinded, Chocolate cried and took a cautionary step back, still feeling the heat from the lightning spell her talons weaved less than a hoof from his face.

He cried when something hit him against the back of his head and the ensuing dizziness stole his balance again. Trying to stand on his hindlegs to distance himself from the griffoness, he crashed to the floor on his back. Gwineth didn’t let up and screeched like a mad feline, throwing from her path a griffon holding a musket as a club, and leapt at Chocolate. She flailed her talons and barely missed him again.

Suddenly back in control of his mental faculties, the alicorn retrieved his shield from his back and hid behind it from her mad clawing. But rather than risk her lightning magic interfering with his telekinetic grasp, he held it with his leg and used it to bash at her with the shield.

Gwineth cried a sharp yelp and backed off him to hold her beak, sitting on the wet floor and proffering a series of insult-sounding foreign words. It gave Chocolate a moment to stand back on his four legs, but before he could do anything, another griffon shot a salvo from his submachine gun. The air huffed out of his lungs as bullets clinked at his magical armor. Worryingly, the pain felt numb. Chocolate brought his shield to bear, and it caught most of the hail with a deafening noise, but his chest stung. It forced the alicorn to take a step back, his shield suddenly too heavy. Summoning all his willpower, the brown alicorn drew his sword from his back, but his vision suddenly blurred. Maybe the carbon dioxide got to him. It didn’t explain the coppery taste in his mouth, though.

Beyond a pair of burning desks his blurred vision could make out the griffon, sitting on his haunch, hastily replacing the magazine from his weapon. Thoughts eluded him, but Chocolate figured he ought to do something about it. Not entirely sure how, he cast a spell. Five comets of amber and gold shot from his horn to explode at the griffon and throw him back at a desk behind him. The weapon and the magazine flew in different directions, and the griffon grunted when he hit the desk and tumbled behind it.

A bolt of energy shot across Chocolate’s back when Miss Mallet cried from her hiding place. The griffon, mostly unharmed, turned and pulled at the desk. Chocolate drew his third pistol, but holding two objects at the same time sent his head spinning. He dropped the sword without thinking and aimed at the griffon. Pulling the trigger only produced a puff of wet powder. He should have remembered the weapon would fail.

“The Justiciar, Miss Gwineth!” The griffon pulled her silver mane from under the desk, disregarding her shrieks like she was a prized pig.

“Let go of her, stupid catbird!” Chocolate’s breath failed and his voice came out a wheeze. He barely managed to lift his sword from the floor when a heavy weight clung to his back with a screeching yowl.

He struggled but maintained his balance as Gwineth’s talons buzzed and filled the air with the smell of ozone. His neck burned and his flesh sizzled. He screamed and saw searing drops of molten metal hiss at the pooled water. He could do nothing while the griffoness swung around his neck and her shifting weight toppled him on his side.

Chocolate failed to react, too weak to do anything as the griffoness stood above him. She smiled and held his own sword against his chest.

He heard her giggling but making out her shape against the glare of the flames taking over the ceiling and the walls proved impossible. When the sword came down on his chest if found a crack her lightning spell had burned on the metal and the magical wards. It snapped audibly and it didn’t hurt as much as he had imagined. He didn’t react other than letting his chin hang slightly. Miss Mallet’s screech seemed more important than the pain.

Standing on her hindlegs, the griffoness put a hindpaw on his chest and pulled her sword free with a clear ring to then let it clang to the floor. Miss Mallet cried his name, but everything seemed too far away. The griffoness staring down at him and turning away. The mare’s screams, and the flames around them. All so distant.

At some point he heard an explosion and screaming. Muskets firing and more clashing metal. Still, all was an infinity away from him, and eventually, all he could hear was the rush of a river pulling him away.

Dark Before Dawn

The rain pelted the glass on the square window and hot dampness reigned with sweat. Especially with so many griffons stuck together in a tight space. Inside Griffonstone’s Local Militia Headquarters, the lights kept failing and then flaring whenever lightning flashed outside. They’d stabilize for a second and flicker out again. It became bothersome rather than frightening.

Gilmara sat next to the iron bars. The indignity of being put behind them notwithstanding, her black feathers remained flat against her neck. Filtering out the noises became a chore in the boredom. Each one threatened to give her a headache with how stressful the last days had been.

The noise from the rain didn’t bother her. She often found it calming and even in her present situation, it remained relaxing. A cub cried in the other cell, but it didn’t bother her either. The poor thing must be tired, scared, and hungry. Every now and then a griffon would cough, and she could even hear a few whispered conversations. Curt and concerned, coming from distressed griffons, uncertain about their future.

Eventual, solitary bangs sounded outside. Ironically, those worried her more than the constant racket during the fight at the hospital. They meant a pistol had gone off. In her mind, each one of those were an innocent griffon who might have been shot. A house invaded. Or worse things happening to the griffons she had taken the responsibility of protecting. More than that, an unnerving, near constant pounding also sounded in the night. Gilmara didn’t truly know, but the sound reminded her of the ‘Open Gates’ festivities at Fort King Grover. They’d fire the cannons for the public to gawk at, and the sound from a distance was unnervingly similar.

But the pounding of canons was a serious worry, not an annoyance. The pacing of the griffon, up and down the corridor between the cells, bothered her the most. A not too bright thug with the brain of an edgy kid, a perfect gangster wannabe. Of course, he would bite into the noxious northerner hen’s spiel. Especially with all the spectacle. The urban legend, the lights, and the whole mess the city had become. Gilmara herself didn’t know what to make out of that, and the idle thinking was going to turn her crazy. But any god she knew wouldn’t be intentionally throwing the city into such disarray ‘because she wants griffons to wake up’.

What a load of guano. Gilmara was not prepared to assume she should throw her life up in the air and join the crazy northerner griffons. Whatever the black and white griffon hen was, Gilmara knew she was the problem, not the solution if she caused good griffons to land behind bars.

At least a couple of hours passed since the northerner hen left and put blockhead to watch the incarcerated griffons. She had to keep watching the kid strutting about like a canterlot supermodel, displaying her keys as an ornament. And about as smart as one too.

“When Lady Gwineth gets her sword back, and gives Princess Celestia a piece of her real power, we’ll see who’s boss.” He rejoiced with the pride of a kid after making friends with the school’s bully, spinning the rope with the keyring in his paw. “With the military on our side, you guys really should wise up and get in line. The Lady in the Storm is not likely to be happy with you, you know. When they’re done destroying all the stuff the pesky Blackfeathers have got on the northerners, the stupid pony princess won’t even be able to summon the other nations in the federation to help.”

Because of course he would, he concluded with a traditional evil laughter. Gilmara rolled her eyes and sighed. The fact he argued for destroying evidence of wrongdoing as a good thing fired off that headache his pacing threatened Gilmara with. She rested her head on the iron bars and winced. Suddenly the kid thought himself the shit, an expert on international law and politics.

“Wow, chief!” The griffon on the other side of the bars approached her with a dirty grin on his smooth beak. One of a griffon who might be too young to be messing with the law. “You look so bored.”

Forehead against the bars, Gilmara gave him her best deadpan of disinterest, but he just chuckled anyway. “How you feeling behind your own bars? Huh? Huh?”

“Bored.” She simply didn’t have the energy to deal with him. Nothing special about the griffon, just a run-off the mill Griffonstone kid in a pale shade of tan and white. She had seen him so many times after her militias brought him in, he was practically family at that point. Stupid featherhead. Could’ve just stuck to petty theft and disorderly conduct, but no… He had to get involved in the preliminaries of a civil war.

“Gage, let us out.” One of Gilmara’s militias talked to him. The Lord Protector recognized the voice and the ‘I’m not angry yet’ intonation. A motherly type who came back from special training in Canterlot thinking every street thug could be fixed with love and care. Gilmara just let her talk to the guy. He was too thick, anyway. “This is not going to end well for you or any of the others. That northerner hen means trouble and she is dragging you deeper and deeper into it.”

Sweet Harmony… It was like Gilmara’s mom saying her boyfriend wasn’t worth it.

“No, ma’am.” He shot back, with the level of maturity and the mocking voice of a cub who needed a good spanking. “What is trouble is dying and ending up on the bad side of the big bird calling the shots.”

Gilmara’s subordinate’s only response was a frustrated huff. How else would anyone argue against that sort of logic? The northerner filled his head with some afterlife nonsense. It didn’t help that one of Gilmara’s guys had swallowed it too. Hook, line, and sinker.

Poor Garon. He was going to have a rough wakening in a hurry.

Regardless, the immature jerk on the other side of the bars rubbed in some salt. “Yeah. It’s gonna be great when the northerners take over the nation and kick the ponies out. Then all you pony lovers are probably gonna be put in jail, or something. Maybe they’ll educate you on the proper ways of a griffon, instead of all that sappy crap. Hehe. Maybe they’ll send you to Shatteredrock.”

“Dude…” Another of Gilmara’s subordinates responded. What made them try and talk to the dimwitted bird? Unknown, but the black griffoness didn’t have the mental energy to find out. “What makes you think the northerners will do a better job than the present administration? Especially if they want to kick out the ponies!”

“Well, for starters…” The Lord Protector would’ve found the young griffon’s posture cute and endearing if he and her subordinate were discussing politics in a bar. But he was an ignorant moron who could barely keep himself alive with Griffonstone’s crime bosses and the other was involved with crime-fighting. Enough nonsense and wasted saliva to make her hope the northerner hen would return and kill her already.

“It all makes sense!” The outlaw griffon, now holding the keys spinning on his finger, oh-so-graciously educated them. “The ponies are the reason we haven’t had a competent government in ages.”

“No, they’re not…” The militiagriffon deadpanned. “Griffons are dumb and keep electing the same crooked politicians.”

Gilmara forced her eyes closed, still with her forehead against the bars. The problem was that griffons stopped caring. Their complacency, their alienation allowed their entire political system to become a factory of corrupted griffons. They get themselves elected only so they can abuse the system and get richer. Griffons started thinking it was normal. The situation probably had more complexity, but she didn’t feel like thinking too much. It wasn’t the ponies. It wasn’t the northerners. Griffons did that to themselves and both only reacted. The difference being, Princess Celestia had good intentions. Good luck explaining that to the genius there on the other side of the bars, though.

“It’s so obvious Princess Celestia did it on purpose. She wants griffons to be lazy and dependent on the ponies.”

“That is why they funded hospitals and universities in Griffonia, right?” The older hen from before spoke again, but the younger griffon beyond the bars failed to notice her sarcasm.

“Exactly!” He put up a finger and grinned.

“You are literally complaining about education and healthcare, genius…” The male concluded, but Gilmara really hoped they would all just shut up. The conversation wouldn’t go anywhere. “It’s not even Griffonia paying for it. It’s all funded by the Royal House! We pay taxes, and they invest it in services for us.”

Maybe it was tedium. That was why they kept trying to talk to him.

“The mother of Storms wants griffons to stand on their own legs!” He explained after the northerner hen’s words. The kid criminal piped, so sure of the righteousness of his words he smiled and chuckled. “You know what? I got an idea!”

The griffon took a step back, wore the rope with the keyring around his neck, and drew a flintlock pistol from under his wing. Griffons cried at the sight of the weapon. An electrifying nervousness spread across the cells like a wave with whispers and shuffling feathers. Pointing it at the ceiling, the young griffon pulled the hammer all the way back and then leveled the weapon at Gilmara.

“How about I send you to the Lady in the Storm and you hash it out with her?” His attempt at an intimidating grin would have made Gilmara chuckle if she wasn’t so done with that situation..

The black griffoness only raised her eyes stoically. “Put that thing down, Gage. It’s not a toy.”

Others didn’t react so well. One of Gilmara’s militiagriffons came closer and started making frantic gestures with his paws. “Whoa! Whoa! Let’s all calm down. You don’t wanna do this!”

Someone on the other cell started crying and Gage raised the weapon to point at the ceiling again. Sitting on the floor and puffing out his chest, he leveled it at Gilmara again. “I’m pretty sure the crime bosses are bound to pay me well for putting the Lord Protector out of circulation.”

“That’s not how it works, you dumbfuck.” She raised her head from the bars and frowned squarely at him. “Mayor’s Office will just choose another, and they’ll be angry at you for rocking the boat. You’re not The Lion, with the leverage to deal with them.”

“Oh yeah?” The young griffon’s face shifted into a cocky grin. “We’ll just have to find out then, chief.”

He laughed and pointed a thumb at the door to the front of the building. “What? Do you expect that door to swing open and Princess Celestia to strut into the room and shoot me with her horn to save you?”

The door swung open, and Princess Celestia strutted into the room. She didn’t shoot him with magic, though. Instead, she magic-yanked the pistol from his paw and looked at the sea of griffon eyes staring at her from inside the cells. The dumbstruck griffon with the keys dangling from his neck just kept his paw as though he still held the pistol.

“I could do that,” Celestia told him with her infuriatingly soft voice, as she returned the weapon’s hammer to the down position. Amusingly, she stared at the weapon like it was evil. “But I would prefer if you let them go and entered one of the cells yourself. After giving me the keys. I believe everyone would be in a better situation.”

The young griffon spent a second processing what had just happened before he slapped his face and gave her the keys. “Fuck me…”

“Thank you.” She took the obnoxiously large iron circle that was the keyring in her magic and turned to Gilmara while examining the keys and the colored bands they had. “How did this happen, Gilmara?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” The griffoness growled while her subordinate told Celestia she was looking for the green key.

With the door open, Gilmara made her way out, followed by some of her militiagriffons while Celestia gave one of them the keys. The griffoness turned to the civilian griffons caught up in that mess and the Princess watched. “I’m sorry, guys, but it will probably be safer for you to stay here rather than trying to go back to your homes. We’ll try to get you some food and some water.”

Saying that, Gilmara looked at her subordinates and two of them nodded, readily moving to make it happen. The civilian griffons in the process of being let out of the cells nodded and mostly agreed collectively. Considering the events of the night, Gilmara wondered how much Celestia’s presence influenced their decision. She was just happy they wouldn’t be making more trouble. One thing Gilmara had learned in the course of her career was that scared griffons often did stupid things.

Turning to the Princess, Gilmara walked out the room with the cells and into the corridor leading into the rest of the facility. The princess then spoke as they walked, followed by several of her militiagriffons. “Although, I really must know what happened here.”

“I’m not sure myself, Princess.” Gilmara shrugged as she stopped by a door. “Basically, we tried going through with the plan to get the northerner bitch to ‘escape’ and fall on your hooves, but it all went to shit. If you pardon my Griffonese.”

Opening the door, the empty and disheveled armory greeted them with several broken locks, some bags of crystal balls on the floor, and not a single firearm or stun baton on the racks. Open cabinet doors and a couple of broken into closets showed none of their issued barding.

“For feather’s sake… They took our guns!” Gilmara sighed.

“I wonder if they know it’s all non-lethal…” One of the militiagriffons deadpanned.

With Celestia waiting patiently, Gilmara shrugged and kicked the door to the armory closed before leading her and the others further down the corridor. Upon entering the open hall with the desks, the black griffon hen stopped and turned to the Princess. “Right here. With the lights going out, the storm making up a racket, and that Gwineth cat throwing a hissy fit… She really didn’t want to go to Shatteredrock. One of my guys, Garon wanted to smack her upside the head when the Lady in the Storm appeared like a damn costume in Nightmare Night.”

“The Lady in the Storm?” Celestia perked her ears.

“It’s an old… Rather obscure urban myth.” Another of Gilmara’s law-enforcement griffons told the princess with green eyes behind his glasses. He shrugged his also green shoulders. “I didn’t believe any of it until today.”

“A tall and strong griffon lady, all black and white, with gray eyes and too high an opinion of herself?” Celestia glared and frowned.

The griffon nodded with his dark-shaded head. “Some griffons say they can see her in their dreams when there’s a storm. Some of them go crazy, though… I think they were just crazy to begin with.”

“Then I guess we are all crazy.” Gilmara rolled her eyes. “Look, I don’t know what is going on, but we gotta do something.”

“It seems the Griffonian Standing Army has split.” Celestia told all of them. Including some griffons still coming from the back of the building. “I fear any loyalist soldiers might already have been executed and the remainder of your military sided with the northerners. At least in the region. I am not sure what their goal was… Maybe they meant to sow chaos?”

“Not good.” A particular big griffon, tan and yellow, in their midst shook his head. “Fort King Grover is thick with new recruits, and a large portion of the GSA went north. They’re supposedly under custody in some northerner city, or still on their way. And there is no way of knowing which way their loyalty hangs.”

“How do you know that?” The green militiagriffon with the glasses asked.

“My company is a civilian contractor for logistics.” The big griffon pointed at his chest with a thumb. “Last news was that there was a commotion at a frontier city… Thunderpeak, if I remember correctly. The GSA kept it from the news, but it sounds like it was bad. One of my guys said there are a couple of divisions marching on the city just as we speak.”

Celestia nodded at his words and went on. “I am not sure what is happening, but they seem to be supporting the northerner operation and not attempting a real coup d’état. They seem more interested in eliminating evidence of the northerner’s activity prior to this and evacuate their supporters. I have good reasons to believe they have actively disrupted Griffonian politics to fabricate the situation we find ourselves in. It would be damning to their efforts of replacing the present system.”

Gilmara half-chuckled, half-whined. “What do we do, Princess?”

Right on cue, the doors far across the hall, on the entrance lobby, swung open and a distraught griffon came inside, not bothering to close them. Gilmara would not have recognized him if not for the leather armor he wore. Battered, it was the studded leather armor used by the Griffonstonian Local Militia. Covered in grit and bleeding out of his forehead and around his beak, the tan and white griffon skidded to a stop next to them.

“Chief!” The distressed griffon cried, wide-eyed and panting, drenched in rain, if all the bruises, cuts and grime weren’t enough. “It’s a mess!”

“I’ll bet…” Gilmara groaned while Celestia watched and one of the militiagriffons offered him a handkerchief while another gave him a paper cup with water.

“They are attacking the Central Bank!” He gulped down the water and threw the cup. “Goy showed up with a bunch of griffons and a pawful of explosives. They literally bombed the entrance! They’re fighting security right now! With a machine gun!”

“Goy?!” One of the congregated griffons cried and ruffled his feathers. “I thought he had retired! And what the fuck? Goy has a machine gun?”

The absurdity of one being able to make a career out of crime to the point they could retire aside, Gilmara growled and held her eyes with frustration before staring at Celestia. “It’s a feathering smokescreen! They’re trying to distract you from whatever is going on. I can’t believe Goy is working with the damn northerners!”

Then again, the military was… But Gilmara didn’t say it out loud. Another of her griffons spoke. “They probably offered him something.”

Gilmara growled and waved at him to shut up. “We have to get the city back under control! I don’t have a clue how, but we just gotta!”

Seeing determined griffon eyes and nods across the room, the griffoness turned to Celestia, surprised to see her crown floating in golden magic before her.

“Take this.” The Princess offered her crown. “Show it to any Royal Guard you come across and they will do whatever you say within reason.”

The griffoness took the crown on her paw and cocked an eyebrow at Celestia. “Is this standard procedure?”

“There is a lot about the Royal Guard that isn’t commonly known.” The alicorn spoke softly. “Do what you can. I must see to the Blackfeather Headquarters but do try not to get yourselves killed. Once the storm is dissipated, I will be able to summon the full scope of the Royal Guard to assist you. Try to minimize civilian casualties and, please… I will need good griffons in the not-too-distant future. Do not sacrifice yourselves.”

Something odd about the way the Princess said it bothered Gilmara, but she liked the plan of not dying. With a nod, she turned to her griffons. “Do any of you guys have any private weaponry at home we can use?”

The griffon guy who did logistics for the army raised his paw. “Yeah. I do. It’s not much, but it can help. My company uses them for self-defense. They are in our central office.”

“I got some too!” Another of the civilians in the middle of all the militiagriffons waved his paw and flew above to show his blue and white. He shrugged, hovering in the air, flapping his wings. “They’re some antiques, but they’ll shoot!”

“Let’s go get the guns, then. Glib. You and Gordon come with us. Gamila, get the weirdos with the store near the teleporter to help. Remind them we can commandeer private owned weaponry in an emergency and that they’ll be paid and get them back! The others go get us some eyes on the situation, but don’t engage.” Gilmara suddenly was in her element. Giving orders, making things happen and her griffons fell in line with her. She held Celestia’s crown on her paw with a huge grin. “We’ll meet here in one hour. Let’s get this stupid city back under control!”

***

Seeing such passion and determination in those griffons warmed Celestia’s heart. As incensed as she had become with their kind and that city, Lord Protector Gilmara and her griffons convinced the princess of their loyalty. To their city. To its population. To the griffons which they were sworn to protect. How could she not be swayed by their noble disposition?

She left the building with Gilmara and the other griffons. Without delay, they spread out to different city areas and to gather the weapons they could. While griffons fanned out of the building, flying or galloping, Celestia stopped to talk to Gilmara under the still annoying rain. The streetlights would be out for a few days until the damage could be repaired, but hopefully Civil Services would provide some palliative measure once the city had been pacified.

The wind had abated somewhat, but the rainfall remained. The central gutter in the street could barely keep up. Her coat had been soaked again, but Celestia barely noticed it. The noise of artillery in the distance worried her, though, making her ears perk as she looked in the direction. Not much to be seen but dark buildings and desolate streets from the ground level.

“What will you be doing, Princess?” Gilmara turned to her before flaring her wings to fly. Her subordinates waited for her.

“The Prince-Consort and the Royal Guard are at the Blackfeather Division headquarters, trying to find information. I’m sure they’ll either be under attack soon, or already are.”

The black griffoness winced. “I wish I could help.”

“You can help by protecting Griffonstone’s citizens.” Celestia tossed her head to the side. “I should go. Be careful, Gilmara. I meant it when I said I would need good griffons moving forward.”

The hen said nothing and simply nodded, turning to her griffons waiting for her. With them taking off together, Celestia too turned on herself and took flight with a hop.

The dark city, missing most of its public lighting and the nightly life of a city of its size unnerved Celestia. Few windows showing lights meant scared citizens hiding in the dark. Gunshots rang every now and then, and each one of them could be an innocent griffon caught in the madness. The incessant drumming of cannons was more concerning, though. In the distance, she could see phosphorus had been fired into the air. Her wings carried her as fast as they could. Teleporting under that storm, even after she had dealt with its source of power, could be dangerous. She could not be too careful in the present situation.

A scream made Celestia shiver and brought her flight to a hover under the rain. Her head swiveled one way and another, but only when a griffon hen screamed again, she found her.

Low above the street, a small griffoness flew a dangerous game of tag in between a maze of two or three-storey buildings. In the dark, among those winds channeled by the buildings, and with the rain in her eyes, flying so daringly would be dangerous enough.

The panicked hen screamed again. A long and frightened cry for help, frantically flapping her wings, zooming down the street towards the militia headquarters. Two griffons chased her and Celestia saw enough to act. She flew overhead, gaining some altitude and closed her wings. Gravity pulled her to drop just short of intercepting the griffons’ path. Opening and flapping her wings in one fluid motion, she hovered in the air with her horn’s golden light in the dark. The two griffons chasing the hen barely managed to stop in time and found themselves enveloped in magical glow as the small hen flew past below Celestia.

The pair screamed. A brick-red and orange griffon tried grasping at the air when her magic stole the flight from his wings. And the other a tan and white, bulky male, tumbled out of control inside the mist of golden light.

“Appalling!” Celestia turned both to look at her and shot a disapproving glare. “I cannot believe-”

“Help!” The hen kept flying away and interrupted the princess with a long screeching cry until Celestia’s magic grasped and teleported her close to the alicorn.

She held the little hen in her magic, still panic-flying, until both landed on the walkway. The two thugs Celestia kept trapped inside her magic, some five hooves above the sidewalk.

“I, ah… What?” A cute gray lady griffoness with lighter feathers and some white on her neck looked one side and another before looking at Celestia. Scared green eyes took some time before they focused on her, but once they did, she squealed and latched on to the alicorn’s legs. “Oh! Thank you, thank you, Princess Celestia!”

“You are quite welcome.” The princess smiled at her.

“Hey, how about we call it a loss and you let us go?” The red griffon sighed, hanging upside down and the other kept trying to walk inside her magical field. “It’s just business, alright? Nothing personal with the cutie or your highness.”

“The only place you will be going is the jail, and then the courthouse.” Celestia told him, back with an enraged frown.

“Militias are a bit indisposed, Princess.” The tan one finally settled to sit in the air and shared a chuckle with the other.

“You guys are evil!” The gray hen accused them with a talon.

Were they bold or didn’t believe Celestia might actually harm them? Difficult to know for sure and ultimately, it didn’t matter. The Princess pulled open the retractable white awning belonging to a drugstore and deposited the pair on the ground. The two griffons squawked upon noticing they were each inside a golden cage. The red one immediately tried the bars and found they were far too strong for him. The other sat on his haunches with a grouchy frown akin to a cub’s.

“A fucking birdcage?” Tan roared holding the bars. “This is racist, you know?”

A small golden thread tied his beak shut and Celestia turned to the gray hen, ignoring his jumping and unnamable swears he couldn’t utter beyond furious hums. “What are you doing outside? There is dangerous fighting across the city. And I’m afraid he was correct in saying the Local Militia wouldn’t be able to help.”

In fact, the distant thunder of the cannons hadn’t diminished while her worry only increased.

“They wanted the bonds!” The little hen shifted to show the princess her saddlebags filled with papers.

“Those belong to banks and multimillionaire institutions.” Celestia frowned and nickered. “You should not have put your life in danger because of them. Thinking of what those criminals could have done to you makes me shudder!”

“Hey! I just wanted the money!” Red yelled at her, and they stared at him. “What do you think I am?!”

“Regardless…” Celestia turned to the griffoness again and pointed a hoof further up the street. “Please, shelter yourself over at the Militia headquarters. It is back under control of Griffonstone Militia.”

The little griffoness thanked Celestia again and hugged her leg one more time before saying her goodbyes and setting off up the street. Celestia stared at her galloping shape distancing itself in the dark before she turned to the pair of griffons again.

“Gentlegriffons, mind telling me who do you work for?” She approached them to hide from the rain under the awning. The tan griffon pointed at the thin magical thread holding his beak and mumbled something. “Don’t worry, your friend is perfectly capable of speaking.”

Turning to the other griffon she waited a second, but the continuous sounds of cannon fire pulled at her patience. “Well?”

“A griffon’s gotta pay his bills.” Red gave her a cocky grin, making himself comfortable inside his cage and wrapping his tail around his haunches. “I mean, I bet you never had to pay a bill in your life but working freelance ain’t easy. Even when you’re a misunderstood outlaw.”

“You are not a misunderstood outlaw.” Celestia hovered his cage in the air with her magic, giving it a jerk and jolting the griffon inside. “You are a gangster in need of a timeout at Shatteredrock. I have been dealing with creatures such as you for longer than the Griffon Kingdom has existed, and I don’t have the patience for games anymore.”

Initially scared, his demeanor changed back to a cocky superiority as he crossed his forelegs. “Sorry, Princess. I’m more scared of the northerners than I am of you.”

Maybe that was part of the problem. Her amassed reputation of niceness. It worked on the ponies, but griffons seemed less inclined to behave without threat of punishment.

“Fine,” she gave him a smirk. “Don’t go anywhere. I will ask that Lord Protector Gilmara send someone to pick you both up when possible.”

Turning her backside at him, she took a short running start and jumped into the air with aid from her wings. Gaining altitude over the street and along the buildings, she decided the canons have been worrying her for long enough. Her intuition told her there was only one target they could be firing at.

Seeing in the dark was difficult, but the white light from the phosphorus flares shone over the Blackfeather’s tower. She followed their arch raising from a few blocks away as soon as the previously fired munitions fell to the ground.

Flying closer, she found a cart loading area next to a warehouse taken by mortars and ununiformed griffons running everywhere. When they shot another volley of phosphorus shells, some of them cried and pointed at the sky, at the alicorn hovering above them. Panic and disorder took over. Some ran in every direction and others picked up muskets to shoot at her. The gall!

The rain kept the smoke under control, but Celestia could still smell the burnt powder and the bangs from the muskets filled the air above the noises of the rain. Gas lights illuminated the place well enough, but the muzzle flashes from the muskets were still quite visible. Musket balls broke harmlessly against the magical protections from her jewelry and the spells held. Her patience, already quite thin, evaporated like the smoke from the muskets.

“Cease this immediately!” She let herself hover down to the floor among the short and thick cannons while griffons scrambled from them. She couldn’t be sure, but she was positive someone had been hit by a stray musket ball. “I said, stop!”

“I am not going to…” A violent jerk and a bright flash interrupted her with a resounding bang. The magical defenses never disengaged, but the concussive force left her severely disoriented when she came to. Something exploded, but she didn’t know how much time passed. Musket fire had ceased and two griffons talking next to her sounded as though they spoke through a bell. She wished they talked a little lower, and that the ringing would go away.

“Shouldn’t we get her a medic?”

“Of course not, you clown. Just… Just shoot her!”

“But it is Princess Celestia!”

“I can see it is Princess Celestia! Just shoot her already!”

“No! You shoot her!”

“You have the gun!”

The Princess moved her legs, shifting debris and loose paving stones with an ungainly moan.

“Oh shit!” Both voices squawked and griffon paws rushed away, splashing in the pooled water.

As consciousness returned, thunder still rumbled across the sky. A flash of lightning illuminated the damaged warehouse. Rainfall kept pattering and swishing at the cobblestone and overwhelmed rainwater drainage trenches. Despite the rain, the smell of burnt black powder remained. She raised to sit on her haunches, and, at least, nocreature shot at her. Left wing throbbing and mane filthy with sand, she shook her head. Still light and wobbly, she closed her eyes tight trying to ward off the headache.

Was it an explosion? It seemed as though it was. It displaced several cobblestone tiles in the yard and a muddy hole remained where she had landed, several feet away. A part of the nearby structure collapsed, and a large portion of the roof wobbled unstably in the wind and water. Beneath it, stored construction materials had been scattered, and under the still standing roof, a pile of wood beams burned. The explosion caused too much damage. The griffons likely had their stockpiles too close together. After all, they had little space in that yard.

There were several conclusions to infer from it but noticing blood on her leg gave Celestia pause. Confused, she looked at herself and only found dirt and more blood. Pained sobs and yelps came to her as her ears stopped ringing. She gasped. A couple of the short, upwards-aiming cannons had been turned on their side. Ripped sandbags had landed everywhere and the rain began to wash away some of the sand they spilled along with pooled blood. The water smelled of it. A griffon slumped over a turned canon with a metal bar through his chest. Closest to her a tan and white griffon laid on his side with grievous burns, barely moving his limbs and another had a bloody sandbag pinning a hindleg. Pain and sorrow were obvious in his yellow eyes.

“Oh no!” Without thinking, Celestia skipped next to him. Light scorching marred his cyan coat, but his leg was definitively broken under the sandbag. Most of the cloth had been stained red and even in the shade blood could be seen draining away in the rainwater.

“Help me, please…” He sobbed weakly, barely holding his eyes open.

“Don’t move.” The princess told him softly, but she first turned to the unconscious griffon with the extensive burns.

Despite shaking on her hooves, her horn shone and the ‘privileges’ of her Life magic granted her information it might have taken a medically trained pony several minutes to gather. Several organs had been ruptured and his ribs had been broken into countless pieces, cutting into his ‘bird lungs’. They were filled with blood and liquids and his heart had been pierced by bones too. The sac around it filled with blood and it couldn’t properly expand to fill, much less propel what blood he had left in his vessels. Starved of oxygen, his brain had already stopped, and the griffon was already gone.

“Refrain from moving.” She turned back to the cyan griffon and her magic effortlessly hoisted the bloody sandbag to reveal a grievous exposed fracture in his leg. The poor griffon screamed, but Celestia blocked out her nervousness.

She wished she had Chocolate Velvet with her. His medical training would be more effective than her instinctual understanding of life and even her ancient experience from the battlefields of the past. Putting stray thoughts aside, Celestia ripped the sandbag apart and improvised a tourniquet she tied tightly above the griffon’s knee.

He screamed again when she pulled to tie the knot, but as much as it hurt her, it would save his life. Celestia had no time to be soft. Her magical perceptions told her he had fractured his ribs in several places but should be mostly fine. His head suffered a concussion, but it seemed minor.

“Keep your leg raised.” She commanded with the tone she usually saved for giving orders to her royal guards. It helped her focus.

“I’m sorry…” He allowed a sob to escape again and wouldn’t look at her, instead keeping his eyes at the floor.

“Don’t worry about it now.” Celestia told him softly. “It will be alright.”

The desperate cries for help and weak sobs didn’t stop and she stood to look from a higher angle. A shade in the dark runny water drew her eyes and she skipped closer to another griffon. Gray body and white feathers, with darker wings. Blood streaked out his nostrils, mouth, and ears. He wouldn’t respond to touch or her calls, and she shook her head at his stiff forelegs with clenched paws. Her horn shone and filled her mind with information. Massive damage to his brain had ripped apart connections between gray and white matter. Brain cavities and damaged portions filled with blood at an alarming rate, not to mention several skull fractures. He would pass away before anything she tried had any effect.

Celestia raised her head and scanned the murky yard again. Chastising herself, she allowed her magical senses to show her the collections of Life magic slowly fading away. Not losing time, she hopped closer to the nearest to find a coughing green griffon with blood dripping from his beak. His eyes focused on her, and the griffon tried to pull away with a jerk.

She shushed him as her magic did its job identifying several broken ribs and a broken vertebrae swollen around his spinal cord. She didn’t truly understand their respiratory system, but there was blood where there should be air on the right side, while the other was fine. His right wing was broken, but it didn’t threaten his life.

“I can’t feel my legs, Princess...” He sobbed.

“Shush, it will be alright.” Her horn’s shine intensified, and her magic reached into his wounded spine. He let out a long gasping whimper, but she kept at it. There was only so much she could do with a quick spell, but it should save his spinal cord any lasting damage. “Your legs will be fine.”

“Please, stay with me.” He whimpered as she stood.

“I can’t. There are others I must help. Your injuries are severe, but your life is not in immediate danger and help should be arriving soon.” She heard him moan but turned to find another injured griffon nearby.

A golden-yellow griffon lady laid on her side and sobbed on the water. The coarse and shallow breathing worried Celestia. Severe bloody burns covered her face with black and crimson. Celestia’s spell told her of fractured sternum, ribs, and radium. Her airways had burned too and quickly filled with secretions.

She shushed the hen and whispered to her. “You’ll be alright. Try not to move.”

“Princess Celestia?” Her voice came out croaky and weak. She moved her head weakly; details were lost in the dark, but she never looked directly at Celestia. “Is that you?”

“Please, remain calm.” Celestia urged her, reaching into her breathing apparatus and her skin with her magic, returning living magic to the damaged tissue. It should keep her alive for long enough until help arrives. She would at least breathe without further impediment.

“I can’t see you!” The hen tried to stand but cried and collapsed with a splash, even then she put out her paws, feeling around helplessly. “Where are you?”

Celestia let her grab one of her legs. “Don’t worry about anything now. We will do everything we can to help you.”

“No!” The hen yelped and winced, weakly grasping at her legs. “Don’t leave me alone!”

“I will stay here until help arrives, but I must help other griffons.” Celestia told her sternly. “You must be strong for now.”

Despite complaining sobs, the princess took a couple of steps back and focused on finding the next injured griffon she could. The magic in their souls faded away too fast and she judged the best she could which could survive, skipping closer. She found another tan and white griffon, but his forelegs had turned black as did the luscious plumage he once had. Most of his face was still white, but bloody and his honey eyes found her when she approached. Laying on his back, his hips had a strange, spread-out shape and a nearby, side-turned cannon explained why.

Coming closer, her magic identified severe burn damage to his forelegs and several fractures on his pelvis. Ruptured major vessels wasted a large volume of blood and it was evident in his rosy conjunctiva and shallow breathing under her horn’s glow. He said nothing while she poured her magic into his broken bones and cut vessels, urging the flesh to knit. It was extensive damage, but not too severe. The intense magical influx of mana from a healing potion would have worked better, but she could mimic it well enough as well as align bone fragments. The result seemed far from perfect, but it should keep him alive. It would spare him too much pain and the doctors could properly fix it later.

The griffon let a pained chuckle. “Sorry for the exposing position, princess… It kinda hurts.”

“Trust me… I have seen many griffon private parts in my life.” She focused on the prolonged spell. “Yours are nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Damn… It hurts when I laugh.” He gave a curt chuckle. “Just, how worried should I be?”

“And don’t worry, your bits are quite intact.” She concluded with a smile. Finally, after her horn extinguished itself, she looked at his eyes. “This should keep you alive until you get help.”

“And I thought of myself as such a tough guy.” He looked away. “Thank you, Princess.”

“You are a big and tough griffon. Everycreature needs help once in a while.” She smiled at him. “Hold on tight. I will try to help the others.”

As she turned on herself, once again Celestia scanned the yard for the magical life force of injured griffons. Too many had lost their shine, soaking in that damnable downpour. The urgent rattling of wheels soon reached her past the noise of the rain, however. Wagons stopped on the street.

“For feather’s sake!” An angry, big, and red griffon with salmon feathers hopped into the yard while the griffons pulling the wagons unhitched themselves. “They’re turning the city into an actual war zone now!”

“Boss!” A small white griffon lady rushed next to him while others jumped off the wagons. All of them wore thick leather uniforms in the form of long coats and backpacks. Yellow hats said they were the Griffonstone Fire Department. “It’s Princess Celestia!”

“I can see, for feather’s sake! She’s damn huge!” He shoved the little lady forward. “Get to work!”

The princess walked closer and gestured with a hoof while the griffons set about their work. “There are several injured griffons in this yard. A large stockpile of black powder exploded during a firefight, and some are in grave condition. There is a fire inside the warehouse.”

A pair of griffons nodded and quickly set to work unwinding a hose from one of their wagons while their superior approached her. Their heavy garments and the small lamps it carried made it difficult to see their colors in the shade.

“We got it, princess!” The large griffon in charge raised a closed fist and ordered his griffons to get started, even if they already had. Some brought oil lamps, others hurried to the griffons, more easily locatable with help from the lights hanging from their uniforms. Among the vehicles were cargo wagons, a manual pump, and a water tank. Griffons took the hoses inside the warehouse while others connected everything and started on the manual pump. They seemed to have the situation under control. At least, as much as it could be controlled.

“Are you injured, princess?” The small griffon lady under the leather garment stopped by her, looking up over her cute yellow beak with innocent and expressive blue eyes. Celestia said ‘no’, shaking her head and the little hen hurried to work with the others.

The princess sat on the filthy water for a second and watched them work, happy none of the northerners or their supporters decided to return. They probably did, but cleared away while she was busy helping the injured. Hopefully, they would not disturb the firefighters once she left.

Since the griffons didn’t seem to need her assistance nor minded her presence, she spread her wings to fly off into the air again. The rain hadn’t become any easier to bear with all the filth, but she would feel like an entitled brat complaining of it while those griffons were inches away from death.

What a dreadful situation. For a second, a surge of anger silenced her empathetic thoughts. Those griffons shot at her. They bombarded the tower where her Royal Guards looked for evidence of wrongdoing in their nation. Where her consort had to stay and protect her Justiciar tasked with finding said evidence and that dumb sword.

Could she blame all that on The Harpy? No. Griffons had chosen their side. Gilmara didn’t turn on her nation and on its citizens. Most griffons simply wanted to live their lives normally. At the same time, the ones who joined the northerners didn’t know the whole story. Withholding judgment on them seemed more reasonable. Casting blame in the middle of that mess was pointless.

Under the storm clouds, under the dark, the tower truly looked like the evil lair of a typical villain she’d send the Mane Six after. Manehatian architecture looked spooky in the dark, but the griffons had taken it to another level. With the damage it suffered, it seemed to have come out of a terror thriller. But those were only appearances. Her thoughts aside, no fighting happened at the moment. She expected to see griffons flying around, firearms shooting, combat spellcasting and angry shouting. It was eerily silent among the sounds of rainfall.

The winds still made approaching the tower dangerous, but Celestia was confident she had strong enough wings and flying skill she could attempt a safe landing. Despite the pain. Considering the ceiling would be the best spot, she approached the tower from a higher altitude. Coming closer she could see movement and magical barriers. Their version of the sandbags, shining with golden light and protecting the access to the inside. Circling around a couple of times, she made sure the Royal Guards could see and identify her, which they acknowledged by waving hooves at her.

Upon landing, magical lights, shining orbs floating above the roof, allowed her to see more lifeless griffons laying on pools of rainwater and blood. Most of them had been carried over to out of the way spots and covered with white tarps. A couple of dead ponies too, still wearing their golden armor, but much less than one would expect given the number of griffons.

“Princess.” The lieutenant in charge of the roof’s defense approached after a curt bow. A mixture of dirt and rainwater tarnished his immaculately cyan coat and blue mane. “I don’t think the griffons expected much of a resistance. They tried getting in through the roof, but I suppose they also knew what they wanted. They attacked several floors. Ah… There were some prisoners, but most of them really didn’t want to get caught. I’m worried that if they were better prepared this would have been a tougher fight. Anyway, we sent the prisoners inside. Crucible Wings is dealing with them.”

A complaint that letters to relatives were supposed to be a thing of the past nagged from the back of Celestia’s mind. Still, she kept her voice level and calm expression. “Good work. Please keep your position until we’re sure there won’t be any more assaults.”

Even Celestia considered her words trite and unnecessary. It made her notice how tired she was. Her head still throbbed and her right flank too. It would probably be a good idea to let Chocolate examine her. The unicorn simply nodded at her and her unnecessary command. She sighed, walking away. Sometimes, unnecessary words, at the least, provided some comfort.

Walking to the entrance, she passed a few other ponies with the golden armor and armed with pikes and muskets. It was the light ceremonial version, but it seemed to have served them well enough. Mostly pegasi with their wingblades and percussion cap pistols, though. Maybe it was time to upgrade the Royal Guard if The Harpy meant to give her a war to fight. Oh, ho ho. Did she have a couple of surprises waiting for her brutish barbarians.

Inside, a couple of guards watched over the stairwell, and it seemed the combat never reached them. Guards along the way told Celestia Chocolate Velvet and Miss Mallet were at the library and reaching it proved easy enough thanks to several ponies along the way.

What she found didn’t truly surprise her. A veritable battlefield, as the northerner hen certainly used what magical artifices The Harpy granted her. A fire had broken out, and the result included soggy burnt books, scorch marks and destroyed sections of carpet, floor, ceiling, and walls. Destroyed furniture made of rich wood, riddled with bullet marks, and crushed into pieces by magic. Many copper bullet casings expelled by the northerner weapons and a few bloody spots littered the floor. Again, bodies were put out of the way and covered with a white tarp. Ponies stopped working upon her arrival and kept staring.

Lieutenant Crucible Wings sat next to Miss Mallet by the door, next to a small group of battle-dirty royal guards. Tired expressions and sad eyes greeted her, but she smiled for them, and then at the small unicorn mare under a blue blanket. Crucible comforted her with a leg behind her back while she drank a tea smelling of chamomile. Celestia could use one herself.

“Princess…” Crucible looked at her. And his voice roused Miss Mallet to stare at Celestia too.

“I found it…” Mallet said softly. “I mean… They left nothing… But there’s a changeling that’s been to Snow Mountains and has information on what is going on. I have his name and where the Blackfeather hid him in Beachhome. I believe he has useful information.”

“Good job, Miss Mallet.” Celestia raised the blanket, as it hid the mare’s face from her, but she saw nothing of the relief or happiness she expected to see.

As Celestia found the same darkness on Crucible’s expression, she could then see it on all of the royal guards in the room. She didn’t see Chocolate Velvet, and turned around, looking for him. When she found the large body under a white tarp, her first reaction was to assume it was a prank. But the surprise and laughter never came.

A/N: In the original plan for the story, Gwineth pretty much turned Griffonstone into Arkham City. But the story started taking longer than I wanted (with the 20K words chapter, Red Dawn would’ve been one single chapter). The point is that this arc is closing up and I took out the scenes of Griffonstone Local Militia and Royal Guards reigning in the city with Celestia’s help.

Love Like Hate

Damp air carried the smell of snow with starting fireplaces and wood ovens. Snow had accumulated on the black, steel-reinforced battlements above the mansion’s gatehouse where Discord stood. It slowly melted away because of the lit brazier next to him. One of the sky sentries guarding the walls hovered near it, despite the fact he would never admit to enjoying it.

The younger griffons seemed to need some comfort under the harsh weather of the region. Or maybe the older ones learned how to hide it better. Discord was sure the ingrained magic of the Nartani griffons protected them from the cold, but they still felt cold. They would loathe him for saying so, but in a similar way the magic of Harmony turned earth ponies into crystal ponies in the Crystal Empire.

Canterlot University was going to have a field day with the idea that there actually are different griffon races. Just nobody paid attention to the fact yet. The draconequus rolled his eyes, as it was most likely because unicorns didn’t really care about griffons. Pegasi tended to think they were the only ones with a legacy, and earth ponies cared about none of that. Something Discord used to think was a failure, turned out to be their character. It made them unique, just as the northerner griffons were different from the southerner griffons. And griffons were different from ponies.

Lady Gwendolen, The Harpy, said the Haderani were lost during the war and that most Shaddani lost their uniqueness to become the Saddani. Some things must change. Discord wasn’t sure what, but they needed to change. If for no other reason, because the northerners must be better recognized by Griffonstone. Maybe Gilad was right, and a radical change made itself necessary. Celestia seemed to agree, but that was before Discord understood anything about the northerners. He didn’t know what went on in the south, but he knew something bad happened in Griffonstone. He hoped his mission wouldn’t end up being a dud and he could help Celestia.

She showed up a lot in his thoughts that morning. Hopefully, she was alright, because Equestria would be doomed without her. Even without The Harpy ready to sink her talons into Griffonia through Gilad.

Beneath him, rich stone mansions flanked the vast thoroughfare stretching from the mansion’s gates to Griffindell’s Black Gates. Unlike Canterlot’s mansions where façades often had opulent windows, the griffon mansions used solid fronts with few windows and heavy doors. Smaller windows kept the heat inside and the cold outside. The main street in Canterlot was also a sinuous path, as the Roost had a much softer incline, despite how tall it was. Lots of iron to mine beneath, supposedly, but the griffons treated the place like it was sacred. The iron came from further southeast, from Stormvalley.

They liked it simple: Griffindell was the Black Gates, the frontier the Windigos are not allowed to cross. Stormvalley was where the forges and industrial-scale weapons production sat. Frozenlake was where the carps came from. Lord Gilad was the boss, and the lords of the other cities were the bosses of their cities. You obeyed them, and you followed Lady Gwendolen’s advice. If you wanted to live through life, you’d make yourself useful. If you wanted to lead, you must know what you’re doing, repercussions would come. Good or bad. Did you lie? You’d get your beak tied. Did you steal? You’d work to pay for it. Did you get a beef with someone? You’d better work it out, fight each other if you must; figure it out or the others would. If the city’s lord, or their guard, felt the need to get involved, you messed up. Did you murder someone? You forfeited your own life.

In some ways, death sentences apart, it was refreshing. Compared to the absolute stuffiness of unicorns where words meant what they needed at the moment. Or the prideful pegasi and earth ponies proud of being apathetic to anything outside their immediate sphere of interest. The griffons in the south too. Some years into the past, they left their cities almost abandoned to an indifferent public power. They settled into passive complaining and complacency. Unicorns could be the worst, though. In how they would suck up to Discord to get on the Princess’ good side. Ironically, it never worked, but they never learned. Discord had lost count of how many times any marginally successful hedge knight would put a huge smile on their faces and propose to Luna. And not just unicorns, but the original idea came from them.

He chuckled to himself. He’d like to see a northerner griffon pulling that. They learned early that one was only as useful as how good their work was. Sure, they were all fluffed up about honor and remembering deeds. But killing a big rat was only the beginning. So, one would not find a griffon monster hunter asking to see the available noble maidens just because they got the job done. Privilege came from the top, much as it did anywhere. The difference was one word which defined all the complex dynamics of deserving and obligations: honor. It included their behavior, their loyalty, their prowess, the things they said and did. Either they were honorable, or not.

Maybe that was why they liked it simple. Honor was simple. Politics were complicated and easy to mess up.

Such was the background of life while the day started before Celestia raised the Sun. Early rising servants started on the house’s chores before their lords and ladies woke up. Smoke rose from chimneys and lights leaked out the windows. It happened every morning, all days of the week without fail as the sun would raise. That day was different though. The sun didn’t rise. Griffons walked outside their mansions and humbler homes down the mountain. They looked at the sky, exchanging confused stares and hushed comments.

Discord felt it too. Something was wrong. Celestia’s magic which showered from the sky, much like the sunlight banishes darkness away, never came. The moon had left the sky with Luna’s magic, but the sun had not come out. Only the eventual lightning lit the storm clouds above.

Discord looked at his right wrist and his sun clock showed a whole hour past six. Celestia had been late some five minutes, maybe six. But never a whole hour. The Canterlot Astronomy Guild must be soiling their tails by now.

“Damn lazy grassbreath…” The sky Sentry next to Discord complained, sitting on his haunches, and holding his halberd straight. Other sentries talked among themselves along the battlements.

Discord walked down the stairs and the sentries by the mansion’s doors opened them for him. The warmth greeted him with the thick smell of burning birch. Inside, the perpetual flames of the hearth at the center of the main hall had already been fed and raised higher. The caribou was already roasting, and the table had been prepared for breakfast. The maids hurried every which way, making sure every cup, plate, and pillow were perfectly in place.

Discord rolled his eyes. Nobody wished to incur Lady Gwendolen’s wrath so early in the morning. He found it absolutely hilarious that the entirety of the world lost their cool over the Northerner King. The northerners feared her more than him.

Although, perhaps that was not as funny as he thought.

One such maid, deep gray all over her body except for the silver tips of her feathers, approached him with a friendly smile. “We will be serving breakfast soon. Would you like something special, Lord of Chaos?”

Very young, very cute, staring up at him with warm blue eyes and wagging the tufted tip of her tail. He smiled at her. “No, thank you my dear. I will be having the same as the others.”

After she acknowledged and busied herself with something else, Discord sat at the table. He chose a place next to Gwendolen’s and Gilad’s and waited. It would probably ruin Gwendolen’s day if he told her griffon sitting pillows happened to be as comfy as the pony ones. Despite his lone chuckle, that was the sort of thing to keep to himself.

Soon enough, Lord Gilad arrived, talking to his friend from Frozenlake. He took his place at the head of the table and Lord Graham sat across from Discord. They greeted each other and the two griffons kept talking. Something about the differences between oil-quenched and water-quenched steel for magical blades.

“Of course, oil-quenched steel is more malleable and less likely to break.” Gilad argued. “But magical blades will not break either way. And I have heard blacksmiths saying water-quenching gives the sword a sharper edge. Since they are harder to sharpen after the tempering process.”

“True that.” Graham nodded. “If the twin astrani blacksmiths at Frozenlake are to be trusted, astrani steel is meant to be snow-quenched.”

“I am not a blacksmith, nor a physicist. But I am pretty sure snow is water…” Discord cleared his throat and cocked an eyebrow. “Although I am entirely convinced astrani steel is likely edgier than most magical alloys.”

The two griffons laughed, and Gilad tapped the table a few times while at it. “If Gwendolen catches you talking like that, she is going to hang your ears above the mantelpiece.”

Meanwhile other guests arrived. Griffons Discord didn’t know, but who bowed politely to him. Certainly, noblegriffons from the city who had business to conduct with the Lord of the Black Gates or his mate. Discord appreciated that they were treated to breakfast too, simply because they had arrived and were Gilad’s and Gwendolen’s guests.

As fast as any Canterlot Palace servant, the mansion’s maids delivered the food and beverages to the table. Small fruits griffons were supposed to break with their beaks. Discord munched on them. Bread with different jams, butter, and pates. Mead, spiced wines, juices too, and water, different from the one meant to wash their paws. Someone had thought of Discord, and they served him a helping of iron forks.

Sometimes he wondered if his habits were too random. Also, considering the northerner griffons didn’t use such tableware, he had no idea where they had come from. They were delicious and nutritious, though. He slurped a few into his mouth, and chewed the crunchy irony-y delicacy, making sure to show his satisfactory appraisal. Although he stopped with the slurping because it seemed rude.

Griffons eating and talking at the table became a merry breakfast. Despite the obvious importance of the sitting order, with the ‘welcomed uninvited’ politely sitting at the end of the table. A couple of ladies talked as loudly as the males and it soon became a noisy banter. Comments, jokes, and a few playful challenges were casually thrown around. Like friends at a meeting. Except one was to be the king of all griffons eventually, and that was not something Discord could see in all places of Equestria. Even little Gilberta, Gwendolen’s captive cub, and her friends joined the table and ate, listening to the adults. Eventually, even the pretty yellow griffoness with the flower tattoos showed up. Nobody asked about the whipping marks on her back, but they made Discord wince. Only the southerner soldier Discord wanted to meet was missing, as well as Lady Gwendolen.

If only these griffons didn’t have such disregard for the hippogriffs. Every second he spent in that place convinced Discord further ponies and griffons should work together. Maybe bash heads until they flattened their edges a little. Celestia’s and Gwendolen’s combined power, with their subjects, could make short work of anything. Even the Windigos wouldn’t be able to stand against them.

Speaking of Windigos, Discord could only hope they delivered the message he sent to Twilight. With luck, the Windigos would be none the wiser.

Nonetheless…

“Milord, where is Lady Gwendolen?” One of the boisterous, older griffons, asked Gilad. “I like you a lot, but her face is prettier.”

Right. She usually was up earlier than anyone and ominously watching the maids working. Maybe she slept late that morning? Right on cue, she walked from the door leading further inside the mansion.

“Worry not, Lord Gabe.” All feline grace despite her tired eyes. She kept her majesty with her sheer size and confidence. She had even taken the time to preen her feathers. Even then, something was not as it used to be. “I shall grace your breakfast with my pretty visage.”

The sun finally came up outside, just as Gwendolen sat at the table next to Lord Gilad and griffons silenced. Immediately, the maids offered Lady Gwendolen all the food and the bloodwine she liked so much while she washed her paws. She took a sip of it before she took the caribou rib in her paws to cleanly tear a piece off with her beak. Her tiredness was blatant. The graceful, fluid movements were there, but they lacked their usual snappiness. Her crown of black feathers rested flatter than her usual glorious crest. Most importantly, she was simply minding her food instead of constantly judging everyone.

Gwendolen must have been busy with the dying griffons and whatever had happened at Griffonstone. She might be an ancient and ridiculously powerful being, but the flesh needed sleep, regardless of how powerful the soul.

“Is everything alright, Lady Gwendolen?” The same griffon, Gabe, shifted from his jocose tone.

“No.” She complained with her unique ‘you have failed me’ disappointed way of speaking, and a frown at her food. “This rib was roasted past medium rare.”

The headmaid immediately went to her. “I am sorry, Lady Gwendolen. I will get you another.”

“It is not necessary.” She smiled at the older griffoness, still minding her meat.

Oh. She was in a good and forgiving mood, after all. Just tired. Discord was not the only one to notice and griffons returned to their food and mindless banter. Finally, Gilad let go of the bone he was pecking and washed down his beak with a good gulp of mead.

“Any news from Griffonstone, Gwendolen?” He held his flagon, turning to her to broach the obvious subject.

“Northerner griffons and our southerner supporters have completely left the city.” She looked down at the meaty bone in her paws. “Celestia ordered the loyalist forces to allow them to leave. Along the way southerner supporters destroyed vital intelligence the Griffonian Government had on us. Several important griffons in the government have been slain and Griffonia should soon fall into chaos. The way to Griffonstone is nigh open. All we need is for Grigory to return to Griffindell with the pony princesses and the evidence of Celestia’s wrongdoing to reach us. I would also prefer if my new Swordmaiden had time to acclimate and develop her skills, but we may be in a rush after all. It will depend on how Celestia reacts.”

“That sounds like a particularly dishonorable thing to do…” Discord put down a fork. He should have kept his mouth shut, but it seemed like something Chrysalis would do. “If Celestia offered the northerner supporters succor to leave, they should have left. Not exploited an act of goodwill. One shouldn’t ever punish chivalry in their opponent. Celestia gave you a chance to withdraw, and you punished it. Harshly.”

Gwendolen’s smile changed. It was friendly, inviting and calm. It shifted into a predatory grin. “This is the curious thing, Lord of Chaos. The northerners left. With the exception of Gwineth. You see… Griffonstone is full of griffons who believe they will earn a place among the nobility of the New Empire if they make a display of fervorous loyalty. They fool themselves believing they suddenly are noble defenders of the northerner customs and culture after a lifetime of sin.”

She let the picked-clean bone to rest on her plate. “Most of them will come to the North believing they have earned comfortable places. They will look at the northerner lords and ladies and think of themselves as their equals. They are, in the sense they are griffons, but honor cannot be bought as government positions can. Some of them will change. They will take after the example of the northerner heroes, and they will carve legacies and honored tales for themselves. That is, however, due of any griffon with the tenacity to try. Most will soon find at the chopping block, that their new lieges cannot be bought. And that the easy life of exploitation they led in the south happened to be their doom. It is a harsh lesson to learn, but one the others will not forget. Ultimately, they will grow, and their kind will grow stronger. Hopefully, a lesson they will learn and bring back with their souls when they are ready to return to the land of the living.”

Discord didn’t answer. He worried about griffons, but it was easier to worry about his friend than crooked, flag-swapping griffons. Celestia being late was a sign something had gone wrong. Now he knew.

“Additionally,” Lady Gwendolen spoke again, holding her glass of bloodwine. “Lady Gladys and Lady Guella were murdered by a cowardly mercenary in the employ of the southerners. Colonel Gustav and Colonel Gast died trying to assassinate the Chancellor. But one of our spies is on her way with details of Griffonian troop movements. We should expect an attack against Thunderpeak. But we knew that already.”

Gilad hummed and waved his flagon at Lord Graham next to him, who nodded respectfully. “That is already being taken care of, Milord, Milady. Between the local populace, the Stormrend Manor’s griffons at arms, the detachment from Griffindell’s Sky Sentry and Madam Gaetana’s leadership, I can foresee no issues.”

The large griffoness smiled, letting her glass of wine rest on the table. “But, above all… Gwineth has slain Chocolate Velvet in combat.”

Eyes raised from their plates and a few beaks hung open. Gilad let his flagon fall to the table and mead spilled all over before it clanged to the floor. The color drained from his eyes and Discord could practically read his thoughts… They were supposed to find a way to ease Celestia and Gwendolen into some sort of truce. It seemed near impossible now.

Discord cleared his throat and crossed his fingers, letting his elbows rest on the table. His eyes closed and the only thing on his mind were recollections of him shunning Celestia’s heartfelt knight and then his hilariously pathetic attempt at downing Twilight’s airship with his sword and magic.

His calm expression turned into a frown he aimed at Gwendolen. “He was my friend.”

“You should have a better taste in friends.” Her words would have infuriated Discord if she had said it sarcastically. While gears spun in Gilad’s head and other griffons cheered a victory, her mixed tone of ‘I told you so’ and genuine empathy made him lid his eyes. It somehow hurt even more because it meant she was genuinely so convinced of her misguided beliefs. It would have been much easier if Discord hadn’t liked her. If the griffons hadn’t become so dependent and enamored with her. “Ultimately, he was an enemy fighting at the behest of my greatest enemy.”

“If this loss hurts you.” He almost begged her to stop feeling sorry for him. “You should come closer to Lord Gabe. Not that I would ever compare him to an alicorn abomination. One made at a laboratory, no less. Lord Gabe however was once enamored with the vapid and superfluous, frilly ideals held by the Equestrian Vagrant Knights. He saw that true monster hunters are bred and forged in the cold of Snow Mountains.”

“I’ll drink to that, m’lady.” The griffon in question, dark gray and white raised his flagon with a laugh. He turned to the others with another raucous laugh. “I bet none of you milk drinkers even knew this, but I was born in Canterlot. I joined the Chivalry Society, or whatever it was called, and tracked monsters to slay. Until I came here and Lord Gorsand of Stormvalley hammered my sorry ass into an actual monster hunter! I haven’t looked back since!”

He concluded with a large gulp of his mead. The female next to him said something, but Discord’s mind was far from there. It dwelled on how that was exactly what made Chocolate unique. He actually followed those knightly precepts. It is what really made Celestia and Luna fall in love with him. His sincerity and his loyalty that many seemed to never have noticed because they were too busy trying to get closer to the princesses.

Still, another thing wrenched at Discord’s thoughts. “Celestia was late with the sun, and that bodes badly. Let me go see Celestia.”

Gwendolen responded with her austere tone. “After you give me the key to the Throne of Life.”

“You know I can’t.”

“You worry for her.” Gwendolen relaxed a little, again showing that infuriating domineering empathy of hers. “In reality, so do I, in my own way. She is a misguided rebel who must be reined-in and brought back to her place. We are fighting a war and mortals are our weapons. Give me the key to the Throne of Life and I will end this litany of pain she has created.”

Discord again closed his eyes. His heart, quite literally trespassed with a sword, hurt more than most pains he had endured. “You are playing with fire. She can’t reach Twilight and Cadance. She can’t reach me, and I am sure Luna won’t react well either. Don’t put Celestia against a corner. You will not like what you will see.”

Gwendolen smiled, back with the predatorial, eagle-like grin. “You will learn that as the cycles of Creation ended and began anew, I have become exceedingly good at cornering her.”

***

Eventually the flashes from outside stopped. Thunder no longer rumbled in the sky and the light of the moon reigned above the lightless city. The pops and bangs of gunpowder ceased. The rain relented, and an eventual whoop of celebration could be heard along the now silent buildings. The incessant dripping from the destroyed ceiling, with its broken and charred, planks remained. The pooled water, stained with blood, soaked into the carpet and the wooden floor. Still chilly, despite the humid and hot air after the storm, the smell of blood inflamed Celestia’s nose.

The body under the blood-stained sheet remained as unmoving as it was when Celestia arrived at the library. She hadn’t moved either since she sat next to it and her back ached. Her eyes kept fixated on it, but her thoughts barely registered the images they generated in her mind. It drifted aimlessly, empty as the magic that should radiate from underneath that red and white tarp.

How did this happen? She had explicitly ordered the northerner supporters to be allowed through the teleporter. They exploited her goodwill; that was what happened. Traitors within the military turned on the city and attacked loyalist Griffonian elements. Then they used it as cover to try and destroy evidence of their wrongdoing. More than that, a criminal living outside the system, sponsored by Lord Gilad, attacked a hospital. She freed a northerner supporter under investigation and caused so much chaos the city turned to a battlefield. The law-enforcement stretched thin to protect innocent lives. Amid all that Celestia had left her Consort to guard a Royal Justiciar and a dangerous magical weapon.

As the curtains closed, Miss Mallet obtained useful information and the local militia gained the upper hoof against the northerner supporters. The Royal Guard assisted them in restoring peace and seemed to be the only thing which worked as intended. Celestia herself helped. In the chaos and conflicting information, the northerners still escaped through the teleporter. In their territory, they would disappear. The wanted criminal recovered her sword, and she too disappeared.

A frown crept into Celestia’s brow; her head pulsated like it wanted to burst apart. Funny how the teleporter couldn’t connect to any other facilities, except for the one on Thunderpeak. Celestia understood teleportation, but admittedly, the artificial magic of the teleporters confused her. Maybe it was possible because both cities were under the storm? Either way, she wouldn’t be surprised if the teleporter on Thunderpeak suddenly ‘broke down’ as soon as authorities tried to chase the northerners.

An ancient evil had returned and that was almost like a joke in itself. The newspapers would once again say Celestia failed to properly deal with something in the past. That it fell to the Bearers of The Elements of Harmony to fix it. Like Nightmare Moon, Tirek, Discord, King Sombra…

And then, Chocolate Velvet was dead, and that too would make it to the newspapers. Some might even celebrate. Would they mention it was Celestia who left him to take care of the Justiciar while she helped the griffons? That he took the brunt of the traitorous military subterfuge while she was out there, helping griffons? Griffons who pointed at her and said she was the problem because she didn’t fix their crooked political system. What would Griffonstone’s newspapers say?

The northerner hen killed him. The criminal sponsored by Lord Gilad. The Lion. That honorable and distinct leader who had, years ago, filled Celestia with hope for his race and the future of his nation. She killed Chocolate Velvet. Celestia couldn’t seem to convince herself of that. The words didn’t seem to fit together.

Meanwhile, The Harpy pulled strings, hiding in that cursed city. The same city where ages ago Celestia had chosen to respect the northerner griffons at the end of the bloodiest war in the entirety of history. Because Celestia had believed them to be honored. Millenia later, they harbored criminals.

The white alicorn shook her head softly. Her mane was soaked with dirty water and her tiara missing because she had given it to help the griffons. Her pelt covered in grit, cold and aching as much as her heart. Wasn’t there someone who said doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting different results defined insanity? Another wicked monster from the distant past returned. Over and over, it went… The Harpy. The Lion. The Griffonian Standing Army. Time and again, she had believed the problem solved, only for it to return and take her loving knight away.

She sighed and shook her head again, shooing away the thoughts of doom. Most griffons just wanted to live in peace. Gilmara never betrayed her. That nice griffon lady put her life in danger to protect company bonds from those thugs. No… Griffons as a race were not the problem. It was The Harpy. Gilad changed. Celestia didn’t know how, but The Harpy was responsible for what happened.

Celestia shook her head again. No… It wasn’t The Harpy. It was herself. She seemed to not learn that lesson. But what was she supposed to do? Celestia trusted them, and they betrayed her. They abused her tendency to see the good in creatures. Her head hurt so much. Thinking became hard as navigating in a forest through a fog. When she tried to silence her thoughts all that remained were feelings and guilt hounded her like a timberwolf.

Her throat tied into a knot and her eyes burned, glistening with tears. The only creature she should have protected laid motionless before her. No more bad jokes. No more senseless expressions. No more smiles or hopeful enthusiasm. No more insecure rants about his inability to please the Chivalric Society nor silly frustration with the Mayor’s wife trying to buy him with too modest a sum. Should she have plainly sided with him more often? Celestia thought she was helping him become more secure in his skills.

A sobbing whinny escaped, and her legs reached for the bloody tarp. It would’ve been better not to, as it was so cold, but she couldn’t find the strength to let go. He should have reached back to hug her, but he wouldn’t ever again. No more caring embraces, no more kisses and no more passionate antics seasoned with his immature sense of humor.

It was not fair. Good deeds were supposed to be rewarded! That was how Equestria worked! Or was it just her kindergarten of failed magical constructs… Sarcasm did little to alleviate the pain.

The royal guards came into the broken library with Crucible Wings when they heard her cry. It filled her with shame, but how to stop? All her power, all her innate knowledge about how the flesh and arcane energies of her world worked; none of it helped her. The three ponies, two pegasi and a unicorn simply stared at her, as powerless as she was. She knew they missed him too.

Then a familiar and intrusive feeling tugged at the back of her mind. Not now! She ignored it. She had been ignoring it for some time. Chocolate’s body was cold and lifeless, but she wanted to stay with him. Again, it tugged at her mind, insistently as a spoiled foal who wouldn’t hear ‘no’ for an answer. She ignored it yet again, clinging to the body beneath the thick tarp. Couldn’t she even mourn in peace?

It insisted. It pulled constantly like a full bladder about to burst. Finally, she let go and screamed. “Fine! I’m going!”

Her outburst startled the guards, but they kept their confusion to themselves as she marched to the broken wall. Darkness greeted her, after Luna’s Moon had already been retrieved by her sister. Wherever she was. Celestia’s horn filled with golden light, washing over the broken pieces of bricks and gypsum. Instants later the sun mimicked her and washed the city with its glory.

Few isolated clouds remained and cast negligible shadows over the griffon city. The sun’s light washed the gloom away. The capital of Griffonia was reborn under a blue sky and comforting warmth. From her vantage point Celestia could see a couple of colorful griffons working to fix the city’s damaged infrastructure. They stared at the sky. Others already collected the debris and one griffon carted supplies somewhere. They too welcomed the sun. One or two gave happy hops and flaps of their wings, welcoming the new day with renewed hope.

A much better sunrise than that cursed city deserved. A much better sunrise than that unfair world deserved, where Lady Gwendolen would wake up and meet with her Lord Gilad. He would kiss her, and they would go about her day of ruining Celestia’s. A new day for the filthy, rot smelling, murderous hen who had killed Chocolate Velvet to frolic under her sun’s light.

A frown made into her brow when Celestia reminded herself dwelling in anger wouldn’t help. She directed her attention from the griffons to the sky. Her horn shone a second time as she spoke. “Luna?”

“Luna, answer me!” The three ponies kept staring at her. Little birds started their morning routine, chirping their songs as though nothing had happened. “Discord? Are you there? Please answer me!”

Her teeth ground together. Now the accursed storm had cleared, a divination mirror would allow her to speak to Admiral Gloria. Despite that, Celestia’s headache returned with a vengeance, and she tired of staring at the griffon city. Turning around, she saw two ponies had arrived. An unarmored royal guard Celestia recognized because the pony often ran messages between guards. A cyan and gray Cloudsdale pegasus, always so proud of serving in a humble yet so important role. With her came one of the Royal Guard’s field doctors, patiently waiting to have Celestia’s attention.

Celestia truly wished she had a better mood to smile and patiently wait until the pony stopped treating her like a religious icon. Not this morning. Her voice came dry and her frown cruel above her still glistening eyes. “What?”

The cute little pony winced, and her ears perked. She initially struggled with words as Celestia’s headache brought her to a hair’s width of ordering the pony to speak already. Finally, the guard managed to report. “We have several messengers which have just arrived. Ah… Through the teleporter. They… They managed to get it to connect with teleporters across the ocean, you know. And, uh… there is a griffon. You should talk to him.”

“What griffon?” Celestia’s frown softened a touch. “Why should I talk to him?”

The doctor whose name Celestia couldn’t remember started talking in the messenger’s stead. “During the assault. We detained a griffon. He didn’t want to retreat or surrender, even as the others called a retreat. We managed to subdue him on the lower levels. We have other prisoners, but he seemed different.”

“I do not have the patience for this, and I already have enough of a headache.” She spoke plainly. And a griffon. About the last species she wanted to see. She wanted an herbal tea, not to look at one of those murderous cartbirds. “What is special about this griffon?”

“He seems to be suffering from some sort of delusion…” The pony medic started but failed to soften Celestia’s stare over him. “He believes his wife and unborn cub are waiting for him after death… He was prepared to fight us to death because of that. He believes that dying fighting us would have granted him such benefit.”

“Take me to him. I will see the messengers next.” She started walking, but as she walked around the table where Chocolate Velvet was, she stopped. Her eyes refused to shift away. She closed them and forced her legs to walk. “Chaser, come.”

Celestia thanked the heavens she managed to remember the messenger’s name. She didn’t deserve to suffer for Celestia’s misfortunes. She also thanked the pony doctor who obeyed without the usual frills of bowing. As she was about to leave the room before the pair, Crucible talked to her. His voice mimicked much of her sadness and marred his usually secure voice. “I’ll prepare Prince Chocolate Velvet for transport to Canterlot… For his burial.”

“Please do.” She finally managed to soften her crumpled brow, but never looked at him. She also turned back to the door before she allowed herself to stare too long at the white and red tarp covering Chocolate’s body.

Thankfully the doctor took the lead, guiding Celestia toward the place her guards had secured their special detainee while the messenger pegasus followed behind her. A mercifully short and eventless trip took them down the stairs to the second floor. They reached a series of rooms, some sort of lodging for agents. Celestia lacked the mental fortitude to try and decipher what the corridor was used for and accepted the first theory to pop into her mind.

After the fight, royal guards turned the rooms into cells. They patrolled the windowless corridor with the standard issue gas lamps providing light. In the first room her guards had started to sort the griffons’ weapons and she stopped at the door for a moment to see.

Standing Army Standard Issue wheellock muskets and pistols, some grenades, and bayonets. Also, a collection of northerner-produced weapons. Rifles and stubby firearms. Celestia recognized the magazines with multiple bullets to be fired sequentially. And more advanced grenades, she supposed. Leave it to a griffon to make killing more efficient.

They had progressed much faster than Celestia anticipated with their tools for killing. In retrospect, her preparedness might have been much more advanced had Celestia known what she now knew. Fortunately, the research on the ponies’ own advanced weapons progressed rapidly. The prototypes onboard the Break of Dawn would serve them well, and maybe mass production could be rushed after the tests. If only for the Royal Guard. The Standing Armies would certainly not be getting magical weapons capable of disintegrating bodies and damaging souls.

Her guards had also begun disassembling the weapons to be sent to Canterlot for analysis, but she didn’t tarry. She followed the doctor and passed several doors. Many open, she could see injured griffons receiving medical treatment or food. Many of them had their paws shackled, mostly the northerner griffons who had been captured. Celestia could see their fiercer northerner visage plainly. Even through the shame and dejection of having been captured. They wouldn’t look her in the eyes and remained silent.

Unfortunately, none of them was the northerner hen who had stolen Chocolate Velvet from her.

They finally reached the final door in the corridor. It ended on a white wall with a lone artificial light fixture which had no power. An open door into an emptied closet with a single griffon sitting on the wooden floor. A pair of guards at the door with another looking directly at him. The procedure for prisoners who could not be left alone and must absolutely not have access to any sort of potential tool or weapon. It prompted Celestia to look at the doctor.

“I feared he would try to kill himself. His name is Garon.”

“Ah… I’ve heard of him.” Celestia immediately chastised herself for the cynical tone, which caused the griffon to close his eyes. “I apologize, Mister Garon. I am not myself right now. I didn’t mean to single you out.”

He started, but stopped, then started talking again. Softly and directing his eyes to the floor. “I don’t blame you.”

Celestia might not be as good reading griffons as she was reading ponies, but he didn’t mean to be confrontational. Garon was a big and strong griffon that seemed to lack social polish. The kind that liked to deal with absolutes and simplified the world around him to fit into his simplistic dogmas. The kind of creature who would endear themselves with a lady with too high an opinion of her skills and a penchant for spectacle.

Both the kind of creature an insidious and manipulative authority figure would cater to.

Celestia knew him to be a local militagriffon. Also, the kind to benefit from Gilmara’s no-nonsense, unostentatious leadership. His physique beneath his Griffonstone tan and white colors fit. Strong muscles, quite a beautiful creature. At some point a griffon lady had found some beauty hidden beneath his boorish exterior and decided she wanted to live her life with him and have a cub. Now he was a broken creature. All the pride usually found on his kind had drained from his eyes. Celestia chose to feel for his loss of wife and cub, rather than allow her vengeful thoughts to color her opinion of him.

“I am sorry for your loss, Mister Garon. I have not reviewed any files, but I know that Gilmara would not work with any griffon less dedicated than she.”

He closed his eyes again and took his paws to them. His shoulders jumped with sobbing followed by a shrill breathless whine. Wailing crying, a dejected griffon abandoned by both sides inside his one-dimensional vision of the world.

In her heart of hearts Celestia cursed her sympathetic pony brain which forbade her finding pleasure in the pain of one who took part in the death of her consort. Nonetheless, she waited for the griffon to compose himself after a couple of minutes. He stared at her again, red-eyed, and rattling breath. “I will tell you everything you want to know, Princess.”

“Help me understand this idea that you might see your wife and cub who passed away.” Truthfully, schools didn’t approach the subject, but it was part of the folklore. The souls of creatures which passed away were carried in the flux of magical energy back to the Pool of Souls. They lost most of their individuality and ‘rested’, waiting to be summoned back to the world of the living. Celestia knew it to be true. It was the normal functioning of the world.

The griffon, Garon, stared at his yellow, leathery open paws, shackled together before he spoke. “Genie was at the hospital… She went in for one of those periodical motherhood exams. When they attacked. Panicked citizens ran to the HQ and we hooked up with the grunts at the Chancellor’s palace. They covered us when we went into the hospital… I wasn’t with the first group, but on the clean-up. I found her body… Genie… Dead on the floor, covered in blood and debris from the explosion.”

He crumbled again, closing his fist close to his chest, whining, and closing his eyes so tight. But he sucked it up and sighed at Celestia, speaking through his sorrow. “I am sorry. I… We picked up the northerner hen… Gwineth after your highness was done with her. I wanted to murder her, and when the Lord Protector told us of your plan, I signed up. I was hoping she would create problems, just so I could beat the snot out of her.”

He took a moment to reorient his thoughts, staring at the floor then at Celestia. He shrugged. “She lost it. We tried taking her out and she freaking lost it. I tried hitting her with my baton… I wanted to beat her into a pulp until she was as dead as Genie.”

He let his voice trail into silence as though he too had trouble believing what he was about to say. Initially, he struggled with the words. Then he finally spit them out, putting his paws down as if the gesture made it easier. “She appeared. And She held my paw with the baton. I don’t know how else to say it.”

“She told Gwineth some words. Something about a prophecy. I didn’t understand. But… It hit hard; you know?” He spoke in a lower tone, knowing full well he wasn’t making sense. “I… We… All. Everyone realized there was something extraordinary going on. Then Miss Gwineth forgave me. She said she granted me the Allmother’s forgiveness. And that I might see Genie and our cub again if I worked with her.”

So, he did. Celestia said nothing, and neither did the royal guards. He went on after a couple of seconds of awkward silence. “She said that if I died an honorable death the northerners would bury me as a brother and my soul would have a chance of reaching the Stormy Eyrie. That I would find them there.”

Celestia frowned and stared at him in silence, despite the obvious sensation he was done telling his story.

Something weird was going on. Could Gwineth merely be making up stories to get him to work with her? No, that was not it. She didn’t need to if Catbird Supreme arrived with smoke and mirrors to dazzle them straight from the start. That poor griffon. A victim first and foremost, turned into a pawn in a cruel game that ultimately had nothing to do with him, his wife, or their unborn cub.

The same could be said of Gwineth. A child abandoned with her brother. He lost himself to gambling. She lost herself into prostitution because of a brother that used her to pay his debts. How did that escape Celestia’s notice? Strangely, they didn’t really. A local welfare agent tried to help them, but they slipped between the cracks. In the end they fell prey to The Harpy.

The Harpy probably revealed herself to a dejected and young Gwineth and lifted her up into her champion. Celestia’s expression changed into a frown. That hen was a terrible fighter. She lacked proper edge alignment on most of her cuts. She telegraphed her moves because of all the fancy theatrics, and she followed basic sequences. She was a dancer, not a fighter. Chocolate Velvet should have wiped the floor with her. The only probable reason she defeated him was because she had help. From the traitorous griffons. And because Chocolate focused on protecting Miss Mallet. None of that mess was even remotely fair.

Given a few more years, Chocolate Velvet would have become an unstoppable force. Even with Celestia enabling his knightly pursuits of humble, slow personal growth as a champion and protector of the little folk. Now he laid lifeless. He gave his life to protect Miss Mallet, and left Celestia behind. The Harpy killed him. She sacrificed him to Gwineth’s ego. Had it been a fair fight, he would likely have subdued Gwineth and restrained her.

Fortunately, The Harpy likely didn’t know Celestia had examined her spell in the storm; she had time to react. If anything, Celestia had the element of surprise. But what about Luna? Why didn’t she answer? Did something happen to Luna? Dwelling on it wouldn’t help and would only make Celestia paranoid.

More importantly, in the present cycle Hairball seems to have changed strategy. In the past she remained hidden, and only after Celestia retired did she try anything. She grew closer to the disenfranchised, preying on their weaknesses. Perhaps a young lord who lost his father to the monsters. Maybe it was Discord’s interference at the end of the Republic that caused her to attempt something different. Yes, that must be it, it was the great difference between the cycles.

Celestia frowned. The Harpy was attempting to garner numbers, much like she did with the Empire. She sought more power, which she would gain through worship, which was the point of all the insanity of the Empire. But why?

Celestia’s jaw hung open. For a brief instant, she wished the answer had not come to her. The Harpy meant to kill her. Destroy Celestia’s soul with superior ancestral magic powered by the worship of millions upon millions of fanatical griffons. Suddenly, Emperor Grigor’s insanity made sense. He had been promised to be The Harpy’s sword with which to destroy Celestia.

Celestia’s body tensed. Sweet Harmony! Creator of Worlds and Master of Destinies… The Harpy meant to destroy her soul. And with Discord’s interference, which caused all of them to be trapped in the realm of the mortals, The Harpy had a perfect opportunity. Especially after Celestia ended the cult of the Alicorn Goddesses. Once again, Celestia’s proclivity for good doomed her.

Her eyes found the griffon staring up at her. Her royal guards, also staring up at her, expectantly waiting for her to say something. None had even a shred of a chance to understand the terror that had gripped her stomach. Especially with Twilight and Cadance, so confused, walking right into her talons. What if Luna did betray Celestia? What about Discord? What did she promise them? Celestia’s legs grew weaker, and she thanked Harmony that her stomach was empty.

“Princess.” The small messenger pegasus called her sheepishly but drew her out of her thoughts. Celestia gathered her jaw and turned to her. “The ponies from the heartland. They said their messages are terribly important.”

She nodded mindlessly before she turned to Garon. “Thank you, Mister Garon. I am sorry for your loss.”

She spoke, but the words really meant nothing. The simple attempt at organizing her thoughts taxed her. Words came only after seconds of wait. “Crucible, please have these griffons transferred to the local militia as soon as Lord Protector Gilmara is ready to receive them.”

The armored pony blinked thrice, as though he tried to clear his thoughts of interfering which made him hear something wrong. “Your highness. Is that wise?”

“They are not. Prisoners. Of war.” Celestia turned to leave, then turned again to him. The right words came slowly and, curse it all, they noticed it. She turned again and walked off from the open door and the other guards, not to let them see her distraught expression. “They are not in Royal Guard jurisdiction in this situation. They are criminals and… And Griffonia’s legal system must deal with them.”

To be honest, Celestia wasn’t entirely sure she cared anymore. A hole gaped in her chest and her job didn’t seem to fit in it. On top of that, there was a murderous griffoness intent on killing her. It seemed as though she should have worried more about that griffon thoroughly believing he was to see his wife after death. But her mind wouldn’t focus… She saw the world through a fog of fear and loneliness.

As she wandered aimlessly past the staircase, Miss Chaser rushed ahead of her and did that pesky hum that insecure ponies did before they talked to her. “Princess… They are waiting for you at the entrance lobby.”

Celestia quickly apologized and turned around with both guards in tow. Down the stairs she walked into the entrance lobby which also showed signs of fighting, but someone had cleaned the blood and debris away. A spartan room with a reception desk and several sitting pillows. An access to the staircases in the back and nothing more but the open doors.

As her pegasus messenger royal guard had told her, quite a few ponies sat around the room, patiently waiting. A unicorn from Canterlot wearing the red and gold frills uniform of the hall of Friendship’s helping staff. The others were Royal Guard recruits wearing the light version of the golden armor reserved for non-combat functions. All of them stared at her like they expected something out of her.

Celestia would’ve found it endearing on another day. She stopped by the pillows and waited while they stared at her like lost puppies. What was she supposed to tell them? Words refused to form inside her head. Crucible rescued her, stepping forward and addressing them. “Which one of you arrived first?”

The colorful ponies exchanged stares, each expecting the other to claim they were the first. Finally, one of the recruits shrugged. A pink and wine earth pony. “We all arrived at the same time as soon as the teleporter connected to the network. Actually, the teleporter had some trouble-”

“Please.” Celestia interrupted her curtly. “You speak first.”

The messenger pony put up her hooves. “Well, I am here to tell Your Highness that the detachment from the First Fleet arrived at Shallow Valley base.”

Celestia shook her head and frowned, letting her ears droop. “I am sorry, what?”

“The escort frigates… The Competent and the Honorable. They have arrived at Shallow Valley, as per your orders.”

Celestia immediately frowned and pulled back her ears. “I did not order any ships to part from the First Fleet.”

“Well…” A gray griffon male under an adapted Royal Guard armor spoke next. “The Manticore, the Formidable, and the Swift have all arrived at High Rock Point.”

“What is this madness? I never ordered any ship to split from the fleet!” She cried and scowled. A thousand possibilities jumped to her mind. A coup. The Harpy already unleashing whatever end-game plan she had before Celestia had even prepared. Miscommunication. Treason.

The other ponies started talking over each other, flooding her ears with useless information and pushed her deeper into the fog. “Silence! Who ordered the ships to split from the fleet? Where is the Break of Dawn?”

Her reaction scared the ponies into submission. They silenced with scared eyes and folded ears. They again shared stares between themselves until one of them, a small purple and indigo unicorn raised his hoof. “Their orders… Once the Unshattered and the Phenomenal arrived in Baltimare, were to wait. They were signed by Admiral Gloria. She explicitly included that by your personal and direct command the fleet was to split into individual groups and head to different docks.”

“I did not! I ordered the entirety of the armada to travel to Baltimare! How did this happen?” Celestia let her wings flare open and her voice raised enough that it drew the nearby royal guards further inside the building and griffon rescue workers from outside. Her large and elegant body tensed; a hoof struck the wooden floor.

“Where is the Break of Dawn now?” She yelled, ignoring the panicked stares and shivering ponies. One of them, a white and blonde earth pony, barely managed to string the words together into a coherent phrase at first.

Only at a third try she managed to speak. “It’s… It’s been downed!”

Celestia heard the words, but the sounds refused to connect into sensible ideas inside her head. “What do you mean she’s been downed?”

“There was a mutiny aboard and she was lost.” The pony yelled and hid behind her hooves. “Reports from survivors say there was an explosion and then the griffons rebelled. With the support ships far from the fleet…”

“What of Twilight Sparkle? And Cadance? Shining Armor, Flurry Heart? What of the Bearers and what of the griffons?! Grigory and his friends? What of Admiral Gloria?! Where are they?”

“The princesses have escaped on the Magic of Friendship with the griffons, princess!” The pony blurted out and hesitated before she spoke again. “Admiral Gloria has been killed in the mutiny. I… I am sorry.”

Celestia sat on the floor and coughed when her stomach tried to empty its already empty self. She swallowed bile, if only not to let them see her like that. Her head spun again, and her muscles failed to respond to her commands. The large and majestic creature opened her wings as pegasi do when they lose their sense of spatial orientation. Her horn swayed from one side to the other as her large frame collapsed. Ponies and griffons cried and jumped to help her. Crucible Wings held her as much as he could.

When she remembered to breathe again, he helped her sit straight, but her eyes remained unfocused, and her mouth hung open. Admiral Gloria? Dead?! Their largest warship, with the prototype weapons! At the doors of war! All those ponies from the Ponyville Local Militia! She didn’t know what questions to ask first. Celestia’s legs weakened, and her head spun, but her forelegs kept her steady this time, spreading apart. The griffons had another of those metal monstrosities ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. Twilight and Cadance have abandoned her, and she couldn’t contact Luna for whatever Harmony forsaken reason.

Chocolate Velvet was dead. It would be him holding her so that she didn’t fall. She could have trusted him to do anything in that cursed situation, but she had lost him. Images of his smile kept forcing themselves into her mind. Celestia was alone, her thoughts screamed at her.

The Harpy was loose and Celestia was alone. Twilight and Cadance… Even Luna may have joined The Harpy. Why? How? Answers didn’t come to her. All was a fog of desperate thoughts and premonitions of doom. How did it get this bad? Was it Grigory who poisoned Twilight’s mind? Was it Luna? Did she help The Harpy?

Celestia lost control of her breathing and it came out in short gasps. Why didn’t Luna answer her calls? She coughed again. She could hear Crucible’s voice, distant past the haze surrounding her head. A griffon lady in the firefighters’ garment offered her something to drink and ponies pleaded for her to calm down.

Luna. Twilight… Cadance. They abandoned her for the griffons. Even Discord. They abandoned her for The Harpy! Celestia could see her conceited smile pulling at her black beak and her gray eyes, terrifyingly focused on her. She came within a heartbeat of calling Chocolate Velvet to her before the memory of his cold body covered in the bloody white tarp caught up to her.

“I don’t understand! How did she do this? Was Gloria working for her all along? Sweet Harmony, how did she manage to split the fleet to let Grigory escape with Twilight?” Suddenly Celestia grimaced. The headache had never stopped, it drilled into her head with a piercing whine she could not stop hearing. But the answer came to her. Her brow pursed into a fierce scowl not usual on the soft and amicable face of The Princess. Her eyes focused and a single name escaped her throat, covered in flames of wrath. “Chrysalis!”

Her eyes scanned the room. Suddenly a swarm of shapeshifting magical predators surrounded her. They hid behind every corner. Behind every pillar. Under every carpet and pillow. Inside every pony and griffon. She raised from her flanks and took a step back. Her wings raised defensively. Her horn flared with golden light, and her breathing came in shallow, quick bursts.

Crucible Wings watched her distance herself and stood too. He raised a hoof with a confused frown. “Celestia? Are you okay?”

“Back!” She commanded with a high-pitched neigh, tossing her head, and flaying her mane. Her ears flattened back, and she distanced herself with slow, heavy steps on the wood. “Stay back!”

They did exactly what she commanded and stepped back. Crucible did too, letting his wings sag from his sides. “Princess Celestia, you need to stop and rest for a bit. This is too much. You’ve been through too much. Please, calm down.”

She still took backward steps. Nervous eyes shifting, head swiveling. Heavy, fast breathing. Her nares were flared open. Her eyes wide beneath a deep scowl. She could see his fangs and black carapace hiding beneath her sergeant’s pelt. “Silence!”

She turned on a nervous jump and the ponies at the stairs distanced themselves. One of them watched from the top of the first flight of stairs, hiding behind the wall, trembling enough to make his armor clink. But she could see them. She could hear them. Their tense clicking noises. She could smell their caustic magic, like bleach, burning her throat, washing over her like prickly little legs, chittering all over her. Forked tongues and fangs, mocking her.

They sided with the griffons and Chrysalis has betrayed Celestia for The Harpy. Grigory… That entitled hairball dragged Twilight and Cadance away from her. She put all of them against Celestia and Chrysalis’ minions swarmed around her. Hiding behind worried eyes and sympathetic stares. But she could see them all! Not again! She would not be fooled again!

Her head snapped to the side at the slightest movement, but she chuckled. Her breath came out noisy with a barrage of poundings inside her chest. She talked to them with a low and threatening tone. “I see you… I see all of you. How foolish of me. I should never have trusted you so openly.”

She gave a threatening grin with a long exclamation. “She thinks she’s won, but she hasn’t. She doesn’t know yet, but she hasn’t won. I will scorch this world barren and lifeless, but I will not let her take it. I will not submit to her again.”

“Celestia…” Crucible Wings whispered with a deathly worried frown. “It’s me. Crucible Wings. Your sergeant. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you’re scaring us. And more importantly, you’re not well. Please, calme yourself.”

“Silence! Changeling! Shapeshifter… Cursed abomination! I should have ended you!” She coughed again. “I should have ended your race when I banished Farfalla! You think I have gone soft, don’t you? You forgot what I can do!”

“Do you hear me?!” She cried to the ceiling. Her hindlegs buckled and she almost fell out of balance, but hooves skipping on the floor, she stood again. Where was the white gypsum ceiling, dark clouds covered the sky, teeming with Her abhorrent power, rumbling with thunder. But Celestia didn’t fear it. She laughed.

“You forgot something! You arrogant demon. Your filthy assassin failed. The ignorant hen. You can’t take my Chocolate Velvet from me! I will show you!” She laughed, as arrogantly as she dared. “I have means. I will show you! I will show all of you!”

Two royal guards approached her with Crucible Wings between them. She laughed. She could hear the chittering language they talked to each other with. But before she could smite them with righteous might, the magnificent black and white griffoness imposed her size before Celestia.

She came out of nowhere and her black talons stroked Celestia’s mane. Under Her stare, the Princess forgot to breathe. Her gray eyes had locked on Celestia’s and she smiled a conceited smile. It pulled at the corners of her obsidian beak. Time stopped. The Black Sun roared above, stealing life and color from the world. An unending thunder roared inside her head, louder, and louder. It became her existence as she lost herself on those gray eyes. She fell and fell, through the Black Sun, again and again as everything that existed was warped around her, becoming strings of magic. The Harpy smiled down at little Celestia, black talons stroking her mane. The softest satin for voice. Love like hate only She could dispense.

“Your fairy tale breaks apart again…”

Celestia’s scream tore through the deafening thunder.

An inferno of sweltering flames and wind roared around the lobby. The Harpy was gone, the Black Sun was gone. Creatures cried and fled around her, hiding behind furniture and pillars. Majestic, Celestia’s immaculate white body reared and jumped into the air, opening her wings, feathers aflame like a phoenix. And then she was gone, leaving the flame-licked room behind with distraught and confused ponies and griffons.

Past Sins

It was a mediocre building in an average neighborhood of Manehattan. It had a central glorified corridor which looked like it should be an open space. Much too wide, and ending in a small, pedestrian garden which barely received any sunlight from an opening above it. The corridor transmitted the impression someone had slapped a roof over the whole thing to make a single building.

Twilight was not an architect, much less an engineer. But she saw they made some eclectic decisions. Probably something to do with taxes. Maybe the rooms used to be one-room homes cramped together. Like bungalows. With their windows open inward into the corridor, that seemed likely. A small condominium turned into a hotel. It was not something she would outright condemn, but it seemed sketchy and strange. However, none of the rooms seemed to have remnants of kitchens. Maybe Twilight was just wrong. Go figure.

The lobby was the least confusing room in the hotel. It almost had the entrance. The door connected to a small foyer, which was a bend in the corridor. The lobby itself had a check-in desk, almost hidden behind a wall following from the entrance. Four square tables, which ponies and griffons joined to share breakfast, and a tacky brown carpet made the dining room behind the sofas by the desk. Plenty of light would liven up the room if they hadn’t curtained the large windows to prevent passersby from seeing the wanted ponies and griffons inside. It was serviceable as a dining room with a bar-like kitchen, thrown together with a living room. And as a lobby, supposedly.

The hotel was satisfactory. The place lacked some of the luxury Twilight had grown accustomed to, having lived most of her life in Canterlot and then at her palace. While the rustic nature reminded her of her old library, the hotel lacked its small-town charm. It was obviously a dry business. And a front for griffon operations, supported by ponies, no less.

In the end, it was a low-tier hotel in a big pony city. The owner had tried her best to make it amenable, with all the pony-like cute decorations. Ultimately, the hotel was meant for lower paying customers. Combined with Manehattan’s less opulent, more practical architecture and decoration, it made for a lackluster pony edifice. Maybe that was why the griffons used it. It lacked the ‘ponyness’ the northerner griffons found so aggravating.

As with any other hotel in the business, theirs provided breakfast in a self-service manner, set on a table apart. A selection of fruits, coffee, milk, juices, tea, and, curiously, spiced wine. Probably a northerner thing. Workers also provided toasts, breads, cookies, butter, jams, oats, and yogurt to the ponies. Strawberry yogurt, or so it seemed, given the flavor and rosy color. Ponies also had fried eggs and omelets, filled with additional tasty ingredients. They had bought accessible products, not exactly cheap, but far from the quality usually found at Canterlot or Ponyville. For the griffons, the hotel served strips of chicken and bacon with their spiced wine, but also a few fruits.

One griffon was missing from the table. Grigory’s friend who had organized the whole thing. The big griffon. He had left in the morning before Twilight had awakened. The others, missing Flurry Heart and Miss Calcite, gathered in the lobby for breakfast. Ponies and griffons talked in mostly discreet voices, still fighting off the sleepiness of the early morning. The predominant noises were of food and tableware.

“Hey…” Rainbow broke the silence under all the munching and clinking, an elbow on the table and her hoof holding her cheek. She stared at the white and caramel griffoness. Gracielle, the sharpshooter with a flat face and amenable humors on the griffon side of temperament. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You just did.” The catbird mumbled mindlessly, distracted with her bowl of strawberries, before she blinked and straightened to stare at Rainbow Dash. “I mean. Sure. What’s up?”

“Why did you quit the Wonderbolts?” The pony rested her hooves on the table and clopped them softly. “Was it some spy thing? To learn about how we do stuff? You were in the scout team… Sure, the acrobatics team gets a lot more attention, but the scouts are… You know…”

Gracielle let go of a deep sigh. “It’s difficult to explain.”

“Yeah…” Rainbow Dash made a frown. “I know the guys didn’t treat you very well in the hospital airship. But you shot Spitfire. You could have killed her. Or crippled her for life. Sounds like evil spy stuff to me.”

“Oh, my feathers.” The griffoness massaged her lores before she stared at the pony glaring at her from across the table. All the others listened but offered no comments. “Look… I… We… It’s complicated, and it’s all because… We were very little when Lady Gwendolen picked us up to be Grigory’s friends.”

“What does that have to do with the Wonderbolts?” Rainbow’s lips twisted and she blinked a confounded stare. Curiosity won, though. “What? Like, he didn’t have any friends or something?”

“No, not like that.” Gracielle rubbed the ruffling feathers behind her neck and her eyes shifted between Grigory to her right and then to Rainbow Dash. “I don’t even remember how many years I had. It’s weird and I’m not sure you’d be interested in it.”

“Well, I’m asking.” The pony shot her a deadpan stare with a raised hoof.

“If she doesn’t want to talk, just leave her alone, for pony’s sake.” Applejack mumbled in between bites at her apple. Surely from Sweet Apple Acres.

“Darling, you just said you leaving the Wonderbolts related to the way you grew up.” Rarity left her fork on her plate with the omelet and her shining horn fizzled out. “You have made us curious, and that was entirely your fault. Besides, I see no more interesting conversations happening right now.”

“Fine.” Gracielle huffed and took a breath in. “We lived almost isolated from the other noble cubs in Griffindell. Lady Gwendolen made us stay with Grigory and… I don’t want to get into details, but she wasn’t the nicest mom to him. Some weird things happened and we, well, I think she wanted us to comfort him. Or something. I’m not sure to this day. But we spent most of our time learning things, studying and then some more. Together. While the other cubs, even the ones born from nobility, spent most of their time playing and having fun.”

“On my feathers, Gracielle…” One of the smaller griffons, Gewehr was brown, with a darker chest and head, much lankier than the others. He did have the same unnerving, stern stare. Twilight knew him to be the gunsmith responsible for the creation of their most advanced firearms, and Gracielle’s mate. Or lover. Or something. Those griffons were weird. “One would think you resent Lady Gwendolen.”

“Well, I didn’t say that!” She made a funny face and mumbled a couple of unintelligible words, fidgeting with her fingers before speaking again. “I just think it would’ve been nice to date a little, like the other cubs.”

“The entirety of Griffindell knew you and Gewehr were fooling around, Gracielle.” The other lanky griffon, but in shades of gray and white, casually ripped apart pieces of chicken with his talons and drew some chuckles from the others. “It is what made you, maybe, the best sharpshooter in the world.”

“While you were partying, I studied the blade…” Pinkie made a serious frown and spoke with an ominous tone that belonged on Manehattan’s Grand Theater while she waved her hooves. “While you wasted your days playing, I cultivated my strength. Ooh… Uuh... Aaah… I am the edgelord catbird of the North.”

“Darling…” Rarity did her best, but she ended up losing her composure and snerking at Pinkie’s joke.

“I find that comment to be unnecessarily provocative. If not offensive.” Twilight grumbled while Cadance giggled, and the griffons laughed or chuckled. Finally,. Rainbow Dash straight out snorted the yogurt out of her nostrils. “And I’m not even a griffon.”

“Well, yeah. I’m just saying it would’ve been nice to do that without having to hide from the Loremasters.” Gracielle got her raspy chuckling under control, softened her stare and her voice.

If anything, Twilight noted, the griffons understood their culture often seemed to try too hard. Maybe it stemmed from a combination of ancient customs and modernized sensibilities conflicting with them. Or maybe it was a way to cope with the fact they spent their lives fighting monsters for the sake of griffons that didn’t understand what they did. With a pinch of still being bitter with the end of the Empire and the territory they lost. Sprinkled with their beliefs about their origins. Probably a combination of those. A dangerous blend. Hence, the present situation. But Twilight kept such thoughts to herself.

“Right.” Rainbow snickered at Pinkie’s antics. “But I still don’t get how that landed you with the Wonderbolts, only to leave us all of a sudden. You know… Most creatures that get invited stay until they retire. It’s a big deal!”

“I had to.” The griffoness reigned in her cheeky mood and her frown turned sad, which surprised Twilight. And since the pegasus nodded her to go on, Gracielle did. “My papa taught me how to shoot. It’s about the first thing I remember, and it was my life. He was an important hunter under the Master Hunter of Griffindell… Being noble-born and showing prowess at a young age, Lady Gwendolen took notice of me.”

The griffoness lady clicked her talons at the table. “One day she introduced all of us to Grigory. We used to play together all the time since then until one day it changed. I can’t tell you exactly, but like I said, she wasn’t the nicest mamma to Grigory. And we were always there with him.”

“What?” Pinkie Pie’s ears perked despite being told the griffoness wouldn’t go into details. Twilight came to a hair’s width of telling the mare to stop prodding, and AJ’s glare didn’t dissuade Pinkie either. “Did she beat him or something?”

“It was part of a training regime.” Gracielle again strummed her talons on the table. “She demanded a lot of him. And we stayed with him. We grew up together, and she made us focus on our studies and training routines. We barely had any time for ourselves and what time we had, we spent together. Almost always under supervision.”

“Bummer!” Pinkie grimaced.

“Do you guys realize he’s sitting right there?!” Applejack came short of yelling at them, but Grigory paid it all no mind. He silently popped grapes into his beak and left the conversation to others. Twilight knew that low-browed, distant stare. He was thinking.

“That’s weird.” Pinkie Pie came out from under the table next to Gracielle, gone from her place. The poor griffoness almost jumped and her feathers stood. Pinkie gave Gracielle an inquisitive stare, speaking in a distrusting tone. Just Pinkie Pie being her ‘Pinkie Pie’ self. “It’s like she has some complex and evil plan, and you are all pawns that she moves around with little regard to your dreams and hopes.”

Twilight let her ears fold back while she stared intensely at her oats and yogurt. The entire conversation had become tiresome and rude. Not to mention too close to home for her tastes. Gracielle deadpanned at the pink pony and shoved her away with all the niceness she could afford. “You know, it’s not really funny when you state the obvious like that. Especially when it is regarding my life.”

“Dreams and hopes are flights of fancy.” Grigory finally spoke, although still staring at the purple grapes in the white bowl before him. “We make the best we can with what opportunities are given to us. It is something young northerner griffons understand early on. This is particularly true of noble-born cubs. I do not resent Lady Gwendolen and neither does Gracielle. She has made us be best we could be.”

Pinkie remained unfazed, taking notes on a little cupcake shaped notepad. “So, Lady Gwendolen did the evil laughter. Then what?”

“You ponies don’t understand.” The purple and gold griffon went on, staring at Pinkie as only someone who didn’t know seriousness didn’t work on the mare would. “I owe to her what I am. Was I born in Griffonstone, I cannot even imagine what sort of life I would have led to this point, much less what future I would have. It is thanks to her I am prepared to, one day, rule the New Empire.”

Twilight kept her thoughts inside her head. Mindlessly stirring the oats and yogurt in her bowl, carefully listening. Grigory almost spoke too much. He shut his beak before, but almost. Regardles, Harmony forbid he grew up happy, and unworried with prophecies and future. Like a little griffon just enjoying life while they prepared themselves for a future that didn’t involve enslaving or murdering others. With a mentor that actually guided him towards reaching his potential, without using him as a pawn in a godly chess. Despite what some of the ponies Twilight knew would say about Princess Celestia, she saw that was exactly what Celestia wanted to avoid when she ended the Cult of the Alicorn Sisters.

Twilight understood she didn’t even know the half of Celestia’s lie about the past. The point was that Twilight grew up happy, with a teacher that challenged her, and it led to her understanding why shunning the hippogriffs for being half-pony, half-griffons was bad. But she kept that to herself too. They had enough problems without her accusing their allies of things they didn’t couldn’t change. For now.

Gracielle sighed and rinsed her eyes. “Look. What I’m trying to say is that one day she shooed us away from Griffindell. She gave us some Bits, our things, and orders to perfect our skills. So, that is what I did. I took mercenary jobs in Thunderpeak. Did private jobs for the Griffonian Standing Army. I joined monster hunts. I took part in marksmanship tournaments and one day I got invited to a Wonderbolt scout tryout.”

“I joined the academy and then the scouting team. I liked it there. Except for Spitfire, that is. One day, I got a letter from Lady Gwendolen. I had to leave everything and return to Griffindell. And that is it.” She opened her forelimbs in conclusion. She only neglected their ‘evil plan’ to conquer Saddle Arabia and Hippogriffia, and do Harmony knew what to hippogriffs. Did she even process what she was a part of? But again, Twilight kept such thoughts to age inside her head.

Pinkie returned to her place, and that would have ended the already too annoying conversation. Until Gallensa, Grigory’s alluring yellow and white mate, murmured from behind her mug. “See in on the bright side.”

She held it with both delicate paws and a contemptuous glare from behind it. “The Mare didn’t forbid you work, nor shut down your research. You didn’t have to leave your documents behind for some crystal-y equine to find and invent magic induction engines in your place. Much less had your brilliant achievements ignored and your skills reduced to gold-soldering airship thaumatic circuits. Or had…”

“We understand, Gallensa.” Grigory finally growled at her. Which silenced the griffoness, but Twilight could see the covert, contemptuous smile she had.

Back at the center of attention, Gracielle let out an exhausted sigh. “And that was it. The others did similar things. I mean, Gewehr worked on his weapon making skills, Gallensa got enrolled into Bay County University…”

“Gallensa became the foremost researcher in thaumatengineering. Despite not having a horn. Specifically, in thaumatophysics. Gallensa is actually a genius.” The former complained again. “Who’s been forced to sit with ponies at her table in a dump of a hotel in a pony city.

“And!” Gracielle insisted. “Garvie went to Canterlot medical school while Gray got into the criminal underworld…”

“How unorthodox…” Rarity raised an eyebrow, but then her eyes shone, and her grin brightened. “Goodness! Like a dangerous and efficient killer? A spy? Or maybe a cloak and dagger free agent?”

“Like bribing law agents and smuggling things into otherwise safe pony towns.” Shining Armor barely more than mumbled over his oats and milk, pouting like a colt with an injured ego. “When this is over, there are gonna be bucks all over. The painful kind.”

“Uh-huh…” Pinkie murmured inquisitively, turning from the unicorn back to the griffoness. “What about Grigory? What happened next?”

“Grigory stayed in Grifindell.” The mostly unseen and, until then, unnoticed elderly griffon lady spoke. Twilight had even forgotten she was there. Madam Gehenna, all silvery and white under her blue satin cape, sat at the table, but was too easy to ignore, so subtle she was. She and a cup of steaming tea. When she spoke, though, her tone properly killed the conversation. “And he learned things such as not talking too much or nosing into the matters of others.”

A couple of minutes passed as the group finished their breakfast in silence when the main door to the hotel lobby opened. The entrance was on the side of the building, after a soft ramp crammed between the wall of the hotel itself and a low-level tourism company. The rare movement in their neighbors and the hidden nature of the hotel’s entrance made it a good place to hide. So, they knew not to worry.

Who entered was Grigory’s missing friend. The big soldier type, all gray and seriousness, gazing stoically at the assembled creatures as his tail closed the door behind him. Grigory greeted him. “Welcome back, Gray.”

“Hi. I have news from Griffonstone and from Canterlot.” Gray declared in his soldier-like posture. He pawed the dirt off his fluffy chest, climbing down a couple of steps into the lobby. “The dust seems to have finally settled at Griffonstone. Celestia’s arrival during our escape caused a mess. We finally have confirmation that all our supporters have left. Including elements in the Griffonian Standing Army. Not all though. We lost a few key elements.”

What a way to mention their friends who had died, but Twilight said nothing. She knew that the reason was that the griffon wanted to avoid mentioning names. Rainbow growled at the big griffon. From afar. “I still can’t believe you guys tried to stage a… Uh. Twilight, what’s the word?”

“Coup d’état.” Twilight obliged, unamused . “The exact word in Common Equestrian being ‘coup’, an attempt to forcibly switch the government or policies. It was something bad.”

“Yeah! That!” Rainbow waved a wing at Twilight’s explanation.

“These things happen.” Rarity added from her place at the table, holding her cup of orange juice in her telekinetic grasp. “Why, it could have avoided an all-out war had they succeeded. Especially since everypony knows The Lion is to be the Griffon King.”

“This is not a thriller novel, Rarity.” Twilight sighed. “Griffons suffered and died. Along with all the creatures who also lived in Griffonstone. Please go on, Mister Gray.”

“There were some elements in the criminal underworld who attempted to gain some traction, but the Local Militia has them reigned in.” The griffon sat by the table, next to Gallensa, with the other gray griffon, Garvie, giving him space. “We have confirmation that a caravan left Wayfarer’s Rest with the majority of our griffons. Another is on the way too. The important thing is that Griffonstone is safe once again, if still under loyalist control. Celestia had summoned the Royal Guard, but they withdrew as soon as the bulk of the fighting ended, and relinquished law enforcement back to the locals.”

Twilight appreciated his respectful silence and tone once he resumed telling them the news, given the content which followed. “I have some bad news for you ponies. Relating to your princess and her consort… There is never any easy way of saying this, so I’ll say it as plain as it can be. One of our agents, Lady Gwineth of Thunderpeak, killed Chocolate Velvet during a raid at the GSA intelligence branch headquarters. I don’t know the details.”

Ponies gasped. Tableware clinked, and even Shining Armor’s moody brooding over the past couple of days ended with an exasperated gasp. “What do you mean, killed?!”

Since the answer was obvious, the big griffon just offered his respectful silence again until Gallensa spoke to him. “What of Gwineth?”

“She seems to have escaped unharmed and is on her way to Griffindell.”

“Shame. I would have preferred that she died instead of the Prince-Consort. Even if he was a pony.”

Whether it was from humor or pure lack of empathy, her comment shocked Cadance out of her stupor and she banged her hoof at the table. “Well, what about Princess Celestia?!”

“The Royal House’s spokespony says she and Luna have taken a few days of rest to mourn.” Gray stared at her while he spoke. “But there are some apocryphal accounts that attest to the contrary. It seems Celestia could not contact Luna, and that she has taken the events poorly after she heard of our escape and the Break of Dawn’s destruction. No one’s seen Luna since she went to sleep a few nights ago, and Celestia has disappeared.”

“We have to go see her!” Twilight blurted out. Ears hanging and frowning. Luna’s words from her nightmare came back to her like a condescending ‘I told you so’. Many creatures had died in the events following their escape from the Break of Dawn. Things may have permanently changed. But it would never change enough that Twilight would not worry about Celestia. While they were not responsible for what happened, the guilt of her participation had been gnawing at Twilight’s mind for some time. It became impossible to ignore. “She’s not well right now.”

“We can’t, Twilight.” Spike grimaced and strummed his claws together.

“Spike is correct.” Rarity nodded with an equally grim tone. “If we turn back now, we will have nothing to show for all the trouble we caused. Not that I am trying to skirt the consequences, but we did it believing something important.”

“This is terrible!” Twilight covered her eyes with her hooves. “I can’t even imagine how she is feeling right now! And poor Chocolate Velvet!”

“I don’t think terrible even begins to describe it, Twilight.” Spike could have afforded not to throw his sarcasm around, but he wasn’t entirely wrong either.

Applejack cleared her throat intrusively, to speak in an angry tone along with her usual drawl. “Excuse my ignorance, but I don’t think we are responsible for that whole griffon fuss. In fact, given the relations between our quest and their legends, we’re bound to fix everything.”

Maybe Applejack had it right. A better interpretation would be that the griffons used Princesses Celestia’s and Luna’s absence from the fleet to facilitate their escape. But Twilight should still be there to help Celestia. She would be hurting without her friends and her sister. Without her consort. The silly alicorn… Even Twilight would miss him. She loved talking to him about the things in his original world. Even if he hated it, he would still oblige Twilight out of his friendly desire to help. And even then, guilt still wracked at Twilight’s thoughts. Even if she never caused the problem to begin with, she was a part of it.

“That was not intended.” Grigory said plainly, cutting Twilight from her thoughts.

The griffon’s tone was grim and unironic in the silence the others made to let him talk. “My mother may not be disappointed at his death, nor at the news of Celestia’s plight, but that was not intended. Our plan included you and your friends because we needed reasons for the public to distrust Celestia’s leadership. The change in government was supposed to be mostly peaceful. Celestia’s presence in Griffonstone triggered this. Things ran out of control and escalated much faster than I and my father had intended. Any war was to come only after we had secured the throne and the Hader. Mother would need it to further convince griffons to side with us.”

The only noise came from outside. Horseshoes against the stone and wheels rolling against it, a whistle. Distant music, little birds. Ponies, griffons, and dragon silenced inside the hotel’s lobby, each looking inside, alone with their own thoughts. To Twilight, his admission brought no respite. But worst of all, the griffon never seemed to tell the complete story whenever they said anything. At least he sounded sincere, but that would be little consolation to Celestia, and would not bring Chocolate Velvet back. Or whoever creatures lost their lives because of the situation.

“Do you know what it is that ponies did in the past that convinced the princess to alter our historical records, Grigory?” Fluttershy’s soft words broke the silence. It caused Twilight to raise her gaze from the table and turned all eyes to the purple and gold griffon.

After an instant of hesitation, he shook his head softly, inhaling deeply before releasing a sigh. “All I really know are our legends. As they were told to me.”

Rarity cleaned her throat this time, although in a contained and more delicate manner than Applejack. She raised her hoof, her tone showing the obvious as she directed her gesture to Madam Gehenna. The old griffoness sat right next to them at the table, quietly tasting a piece of a grilled chicken filet.

“Ponies and griffons,” Gehenna started with a petulant tone after half a minute of intense staring from all directions. “You have already been told. You have simply not looked beyond the words. At their meaning.”

Twilight frowned, distracted from her previous thoughts. Why did she have to be like that? “Ponies summoned the Windigos as weapons to take over the griffon lands. If I recall correctly, that is what your legends say. Although there is more: that the world has existed many times over and that every time it reaches a certain point, it goes back to the beginning. That ponies rebelled, at some point very early on. Rightfully, or no, that is not the point. If I correctly remember our conversation from that dinner.”

“It is not so much that ponies rebelled, princess.” Grigory spoke again. “They turned nature against their masters.”

Of course, he would believe that. Or, rather, would say that. It was what the northerners told the others and themselves. Layers upon layers of half-meanings and incomplete truths.

Twilight nodded and her thoughtful frown turned confused when her eyes aimed at the table under the plain white sheet. There was still something she didn’t understand, and that prevented all the pieces from falling into place. She still didn’t know what it was that made the Princess take such drastic measures. The Cult of The Harpy was a part of it. The fact that ponies worshiped the alicorns was too. But Discord said something was wrong with the ponies. Had they actually used the Windigos as weapons? Was it the fact that they worshiped the alicorns that he meant? Is any of that something that warranted changing their past? Something more happened and Grigory either didn’t know or would not say.

Curiously, after a moment of pensive silence, Grigory spoke again. “Do you remember I told you and Luna about the Gathering Storm?”

Twilight nodded at him. “Back when we were talking about the traitor soldier with Luna and Chrysalis? Does it have anything to do with our situation?”

“No. Not really.” His eyes shifted from hers, aiming at the curtains before the windows. Pulling her ears back, Twilight hummed an angry murmur. Again, hiding information. His eyes avoided hers. Did he want to tell her something but refrained? How much of that was because of the old Loremaster griffoness being there, Twilight wondered. Pressuring him would be a bad idea, and Twilight let it go for the moment.

“Hey! What is up with that?” Rainbow flared her wings in the confined space and raised her voice. Her glare at the griffons would have been enough. “If you have something to say, say it!”

Rather than ignoring her, Grigory avoided Rainbow. Applejack spoke in his place, giving the griffon the evil eye treatment. “Leave him, Dash. These griffons don’t wanna talk to us ponies. They’re like them Canterlot nobles, full of their secrets and secretive, self-important nonsense.”

The griffon frowned, sighed, and made an apologetic gesture. Opening his beak again, he meant to say something, maybe some platitude excuse that would just make Applejack angrier, but something cut him short by banging against a window. It ruffled griffon feathers and made pony hairs stand along with a few yelps. After a tense moment of suspense, it sounded again, but instead of banging, it was a clicking sound of glass striking glass.

“Be quiet!” Grigory’s big soldier friend whispered with a sweeping gesture. “Remember, we are hiding.”

Silly. Anyone looking for them would already know they were there and wouldn’t be playing games at the window. Twilight stood, and hoof after hoof, started on her way to the window. Rarity whispered her name as loud as she would dare, but Twilight didn’t care. Reaching the beige curtain, instead of grabbing it with her telekinetic magic, her hoof pulled it to uncover the window. Slowly, still taking care not to be seen by any passerby.

The glass had cracked but didn’t shatter. A magical beast stood on the other side of the window, standing on the sill, and looking at Twilight with empty crystal eyes. Twisting its head like only a bird would. A strange, parrot-sized hawk hopped twice and poked at the window again with the glass-on-glass sound they had heard.

“Twilight, get your royal flank back here!” Applejack too whispered as though she were in a silly spy novel. “They’ll see you! You kinda stand out from the curtain!”

“Wait…” Twilight ignored Applejack. Her tone was non-committing, and curiosity moved her hoof as if it had a will of its own. Her eyes remained glued to the thing on the other side of the window. A small hawk made of pure crystal ice. Maybe an infant? It was unlike any magical beast in any encyclopedia she had read. A strange magic radiated from it, like swirls of disease the eye could not see, but that Twilight could feel through her magical senses. The strange bird pecked at the glass again and Twilight moved slowly not to scare it off.

The glass fogged up with her proximity and a magical cold touched Twilight’s hoof. She finally reached the little clasp that locked the window and flipped it. A cold air seeped into the room and, once the window was open enough, the strange bird flew into it.

Twilight shrieked at the sudden movement and the others inside screeched and cried. The glass-like bird flew circles close to the ceiling and around the walls as Twilight quickly closed the window. Gallensa cried and hid under the table along with Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Applejack. The latter looked up from it, wearing the tablecloth over her hat. “What in tarnation is this weird thing?!”

“It’s a frostwing!” Grigory ducked and protected his face with his wings needlessly as the bird flew overhead. He then raised slowly and frowned at the bird circling above. “It’s small. But it certainly feels like a frostwing.”

Cadance hugged herself with her wings as did Rainbow Dash. “Is it making the temperature drop?”

The old griffon lady, Madam Gehenna, scowled at her now not-steaming tea and sighed. “It is a frostwing. Yes. It is diminished, though.”

“Did this thing fly all the way from Snow Mountains?!” Applejack hid under the table as the bird passed closer to her in one of its rounds. Meanwhile, Fluttershy kept staring at the thing, flying round and round near the ceiling.

“Is it native only to Snow Mountains?” Twilight came closer to the table. “I’m sure I have read nothing about it.”

“It is native to the Whitescape!” Grigory’s words came out with a mist as he spoke, and so did Twilight’s breath. “They usually stay there. Entire flights of these things can end even resilient plantations like broccoli during summer. They are harbingers of the Windigos’ magic and often prelude the approach of monstrous hordes!”

“They rarely fly alone. This is exceptional.” Gehenna’s feathers gathered frost crystals shining under the light filtering from the curtains. “Someone should capture and deal with it before it freezes us in this confined space.”

First Twilight made a mental note that the northerner griffons ate broccoli. Meanwhile, Cadance and herself, along with Starlight Glimmer, reached for the swift creature. It slipped from their telekinetic grasp like slippery wet ice. But then it did a sharp turn and flew buzzing over the table, barely avoiding the frost-covered jars with juices, straight at Twilight. She gasped, but before she could properly shield herself, the bird flew into her chest and exploded into a million shards.

Cold. Unimaginable cold. Closing her wings barely helped at all. It was within her, not outside. Darkness surrounded Twilight from one side to the other. Snow-covered plains, a white desert at night, had replaced the hotel’s lobby. No moon, no nothing. Only the purple light from her horn tinted the snow with her color about five hooves from her. She turned on her legs, nothing but the dark beyond the circle of magenta snow surrounding her. She shivered, despite the nervous fretting.

“Girls?” Her voice came out broken. Cold tremors weakened her legs as much as the realization that no one answered. Her heart began thumping in her chest and her voice broke further. Her breath and words made a thick mist before her. “Shining?”

Her ears perked up. She heard someone. As absurd as it would be. “Discord?”

He materialized before her, but he didn’t focus on her. He spoke, his arms opened, and he spoke to the sky.

“I will prove you are wrong!” He pointed a claw at the circling wind above. Snaking shapes made circling clouds like a tornado. The cold stole away Twilight’s will to speak to him again. “Take a message to Twilight Sparkle! Tell her that Lady Gwendolen is the Harpy and that she must find a way to destroy her and the northerner griffons. Or they will destroy Celestia and all Ponykind will be enslaved again!”

“What?” Her face contorted into a confused grimace while her body rattled with cold. That didn’t sound like Discord at all. Was the magical bird meant to deliver a message to her? From Discord? “Discord? What do you mean??”

He faded, losing his substance, as if he shifted in and out of existence. “I will prove you are wrong!”

He repeated his movements as much as his words, pointing a claw at the circling wind above. Everything was fading more and more, like a memory of a dream that refused to return once she had woken, but his voice came clear to her one more time. “Take a message to Twilight Sparkle! Tell her that Lady Gwendolen is the Harpy and that she must find a way to destroy her and the northerner griffons. Or they will destroy Celestia and all Ponykind will be enslaved again!”

“Twilight!” Fluttershy called to her, and a warmness oozed into the oppressive cold. Darkness surrounded Twilight and Discord was gone, but her friend’s voice softened her grimace of cold.

“Twilight!” Rarity’s voice too reached her from the darkness, sobbing and wailing in the distance. “Please wake up!”

The cold left her, more and more, replaced with the bodily warmth of another pony. Someone hugged her and the snow faded more and more, replaced with a welcoming light. She couldn’t see anything anymore, but she heard a river. She saw the sun above, and its light showered her, washing away the cold.

“Twilight! Wake up! Come on!” Her body shook, aggressively shoved around by a pair of hooves while Rainbow Dash yelled at her.

“You know it is hard to feel her pulse with you shaking like that, don’t you?” A male griffon voice spoke in the northerner accent. His fingers held her neck.

Jostled from one side to the other, the princess alicorn opened her eyes to see Cadance right in front of her, worried as Twilight seldom saw her before. Coming to her senses, Twilight found herself on her back against Shining Armor, on his lap. On one side were Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash while Starlight Glimmer and Pinkie consoled Rarity. On the other side was the lanky, light gray and white griffon doctor with focused blue eyes and Applejack behind him.

“Twily! Are you alright? Twily?!” Her brother held her tighter.

“I’m okay. I’m okay.” Her eyes went from one side to the other and then focused on Cadance’s. She lacked the strength to move her head and her voice slurred, just like her thoughts. “What happened?”

“The frostwing crashed into your chest!” Cadance gasped. “Please, are you hurt?”

Her sister-in-law didn’t wait for her answer and had already begun casting a spell over Twilight. The small alicorn’s legs wouldn’t move, too heavy for her to touch her chest. She tried moving her head again, but her neck too lacked strength. “I… I think it brought me a message from Discord.”

Recalling the vision, the dream… Whatever it was, a frown wrinkled her brow. “I never saw Discord talking like that before. I… It was so strange.”

Cadance’s magical aura brought Twilight a steaming hot cup of milk and chocolate, but it had gone cold before it even reached Twilight’s lips. Fluttershy covered Twilight with a blanket from a room. The cyan unicorn mare who owned the hotel brought it and watched from afar with a couple of her employees.

“No.” Twilight drank the lukewarm drink, still sweet and tasty. It livened her up a touch and she shook her head. “I was in a snowfield, and I saw Discord. He talked to something stirring in the clouds.”

Her frown deepened, and his words repeated themselves, echoing inside her head.

I will prove you are wrong! Take a message to Twilight Sparkle! Tell her that Lady Gwendolen is the Harpy and that she must find a way to destroy her and the northerner griffons. Or they will destroy Celestia and all Ponykind will be enslaved again!

“I think he was talking to the Windigos.” Twilight grimaced at her own words. Could one even talk to the Windigos? The realization that ponies actually knew next to nothing about the Windigos made the hairs in her mane stand. “Is it possible? Are they intelligent?”

“I can guarantee you, Princess. The Windigos are not only intelligent, but incredibly malevolent and cruel.” Madam Gehenna approached Twilight too, with an inquisitive stare. “Those are, after all, the tools they were given to destroy and kill. Born out of hatred, what else could they wield? What did the vision tell you? Was it the Lord of Chaos talking to them?”

“I think he was…” Twilight’s words trailed off. No. Something was wrong. Something didn’t fit.

“What did he say, Twilight?” Cadance’s worried gaze matched Twilight’s.

“He said.” The smaller alicorn hesitated and her eyes drifted lower. Her eyes avoided Gehenna’s. Luna feared the old griffoness. She had strange powers Twilight didn’t understand. Grigory and the griffons were there, too. Every care should be taken with what she disclosed about Discord’s message. “He said Lady Gwendolen is The Harpy.”

Ponies gasped, and the griffons exchanged worried stares. Gehenna glared at Twilight. “Did he now?”

“He did. Word for word.” Twilight stood wobbly and almost immediately lost her balance. She remained on her hooves, spreading her forelegs and her ears pulled back flat at her head. “And I know Princess Celestia sent Discord to Griffindell. As do you all. So, there.”

“Suddenly,” Cadance started with a fiery scowl, “some things make more sense, don’t they?”

The old griffoness allayed, Twilight held a relaxing breath with all her willpower not to alert Gehenna she had not entirely said the truth. Thank Harmony, Cadance distracted the loremaster. But an awkward silence formed afterward. One of their biggest secrets had finally come into the open.

The room temperature started going back to normal. Twilight groaned and shook a small headache from her. She felt better, but her limbs still failed her, and she collapsed back into Shining Armor after sitting on her haunches. “I got you. Try to rest for a bit, Twily.”

Fluttershy squeaked and jumped a couple of hooves in the air when someone pounded on the door. The cyan mare in a blue suit who owned the hotel coughed and walked to the door. “This must be one of the northerner agents. We put up the ‘no vacancy sign’, and they are the only ones who know you are here.”

The door was a simple wooden door framed by thin glass panes just outside the lobby. While the mare was away, Cadance glared at the griffons across from the ponies. Like she was someone’s angry mom. “This conversation isn’t over yet.”

She received no answer, but things happened fast as the owner brought a griffon into the lobby. Thank Harmony he never questioned what had happened there. Why was there heavy condensation on the walls, Twilight laid on the floor with her brother holding her, and why were there angry stares all over?

He was a normal griffon, as normal as they came, darker shade of tan than the usual ‘Griffonstone tan’, and white. Maybe that was the Manehattan tan for griffons because he spoke Common Equestrian without the northerner accent, but with the Manehattan inflection. And he talked fast.

“Cats in the alley sent me to give you a message. Two, actually.” He wore a green and white shirt, a brown duster, and a black beret he removed while he spoke. Kept it by his chest, giving Gallensa a respectful nod. Then he showed one finger while holding the beret. “First, we caught wind of a smuggler with the magitech you need for your fancy airship. He wants to meet the princesses at twenty-one hundred hours by the docks. Not the airfield, the docks.”

“Not shady at all…” Shining rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, well… You deal with bandits, that is what you get.” The griffon then showed a second finger. “Got one of Naminé’s weirdos willing to meet you on neutral ground. Wasn’t easy ‘cause they won’t talk to griffons, but once the news that the Princesses were in town came up, they changed their minds. They won’t see any griffons, though.”

“That was supposed to be a secret!” Rarity whined at him like he had stolen her fun.

He laughed. “Secret. You ponies really are funny. The damn princesses showed up… Everyone in the streets knew the in the next day and the local militia in the following. Seriously, though. They wanna meet. Today, midday. Clock Plaza. No griffons.”

“It can’t be helped.” Twilight tried standing up, but her limbs failed her again. “Oh, no…”

“You are not in condition, Twilight.” Cadance put a hoof on her chest. “I should go.”

“But we both need to be at the docks at night!” Twilight complained. “We don’t know how things will go with Naminé’s friend and we can’t take chances.”

“Yeah… Someone they would recognize would be better, but… Nope. No offense, but even if you cover your wings and horn, you’re not the normal size. I don’t want nobody asking questions about why a freaking princess is skulking around our turf wearing a cape or some shit.” He made a rude, dismissive gesture. “All of you are trouble magnets bound to be recognized just as soon as some random pony stares you in the face. None of us need the Local Militia scoping us out. So, you better start feeling better, Princess. We really want you gone.”

“There’s a big dragon community here. I could go!” Spike put forward his chest. “I could go and not draw too much attention. Starlight Glimmer could go with me.”

“I’m pretty sure they’d recognize me too, Spike.” Starlight scrunched her nose. “Wait. Did you mean I’m not very well known?”

The young dragon started counting on his fingers. “Well, griffons are a no. Twilight can’t go now and needs to rest until night. Our friends can’t go. Too con… Cons… Uh. Obvious. Twilight’s guards stayed at the Break of Dawn, and her airship’s crewponies are busy. Shining is just as likely to draw attention. We can’t ask Miss Calcite. It’s on us.”

A cold rope of sorrow tied around Twilight’s throat at the mention of the two loyal mares who served as her Royal Guards. So much had already gone wrong. Hopefully, they would be alright, but Spike was right even if both he and Starlight would be in danger. “Fine. Just be careful. Please.”

The griffon would take Spike and Starlight Glimmer to meet Naminé’s friend, hopefully to arrange an actual meeting with her. At night, Twilight and Cadance would go to the meeting at the docks.

Somehow, the whole thing seemed too easy, and too hard at the same time. And to top it all off, there was Discord’s strange message. If time spells were easier Twilight would be going back in time and telling Cadance to burn that letter.

Anamnesis

Starlight Glimmer was happy to be outside their mediocre hotel. The sun shone above Manehattan, dominating the blue sky. Only a few cottony clouds shared it, breaking the monotony. The air seemed heavier than in the country cities, but far from unpleasant. It smelled of a large city, and it sounded like it, too. The air seemed stale and heavy with the smell of ponies. Not unpleasant, just filled with peppy talking and carts. Different from the smells and sounds of Ponyville.

Pony-pulled carts hauled cargo and other ponies around the liveliest city in the world. The streets were noisy and crowded compared to the small town Starlight Glimmer took to liking so much. And not only the thick flow of creatures crowded the streets, but the air too. Flying creatures streamed past them, zipping above the street. Pegasi, griffons, hippogriffs and even an odd thestral or dragon. Starlight was sure she saw a changeling at some point. How they never crashed into each other, she did not know. There seemed to be an etiquette everycreature followed, or even a set of laws. Ponyville had nothing like that. Pegasi just flew around at their leisure.

Manehattan hit her with an air of endless opportunities. An earth pony city, it didn’t have cloud mansions or white and gold spires, but it had skyscrapers and all manner of creatures lived there. Countless shops for everything she could ever need. Storefronts lined the walkways as far as the eyes could see, while buildings rose to the sky with apartments or offices. Everypony seemed busy with something. While polite to each other, they didn’t have time to stop and grab her for a conversation in the middle of walking. All professions had a place in the quintessential earth pony city. Artisan studios where ponies displayed their wares to small delicatessens. Massive manufactories to offices where ponies worked on the job of keeping jobs organized.

On the other side, all those ponies made the unicorn constantly shift her eyes. How easy was it for someone to hide in the middle of all that? She constantly avoided somepony else’s stare. Grinning awkwardly at their wishes of a good day and seeing someone staring at her from every shadow. Behind every corner and post. She could swear she heard her name a few times in the conversations of ponies passing by.

“Will you relax?” Spike said next to her. He shrugged and threw his hands. “You know, I’m kinda freaked out too, but you’re just drawing more attention to us.”

“I know! I know! Keep your voice down!” She grimaced and whispered, eyeing a couple of mares talking and staring at them from a magazine selling shop. They were merely looking at the news and innocently commented on something while they looked their way. Or had they? “I just can’t help it! It was just so much easier when I was spying on Twilight and you guys. I had nobody looking for me! Don’t you feel like somepony is watching you?”

“Actually, you were under watch by the Royal Guard. Princess Celestia had you on the dangerous unicorn watchlist even before the whole Our Town incident.” He spoke casually, grinning at the comic books on display before he resumed walking. “But yeah… I don’t really feel like that. No. But I didn’t feel that while you were spying on us. So…”

While the unicorn mare gave him an annoyed, frowny stare, the young dragon chuckled and pointed. “Hey! We’re here! The Clock Plaza! Sweet!”

The aptly named Clock Plaza was the center of a park. An area of paved spaces and walkways among the lush, earth pony-tended grass. Carvings filled with gold on the concreted ground helped read the time of day. Or at least the gold covered whatever filled them. The ‘gnomon’, the golden blade which provided the shadow and showed the time of day, was a stylish image of Princess Celestia. She was rearing on her hindlegs so her horn’s shadow would show the time.

The purple dragon and unicorn stood near the center of the plaza. Right next to the sundial, by the rail that kept ponies from stepping on it. Starlight raised an eyebrow at the thing. It was probably ancient and useful at some point. Its well-kept state spoke highly of how esteemed it was, especially if it was as old as the time ponies still used those things. As she was scrutinizing the sun clock, Spike unceremoniously climbed onto her back.

“What are you doing? Spike!” She said with angry grunts and a yelp because of his sharp claws on her rump.

Her companion, standing on her back, covered his eyes with a hand and frowned. Fortunately, nopony seemed to mind the two weirdos. The city must be full of strange creatures doing strange things. Regardless, Spike scanned the plaza from one side to the other. “Sorry. I got so used to doing this with Twilight I didn’t even think. This place is packed, though! I can’t see anything from the ground!”

Starlight fared little better, stretching her neck while trying not to drop the small dragon on her back. She could see a good deal, though. Various vendors set up stands in the paved areas. They sold hayburgers, carrot dogs, popcorn, and sweets. Others even hosted fair games like horseshoes and darts. A gazebo protected a small earth pony band from the sun, and a collection of merry ponies danced before them. Other such buildings sheltered ponies who just wanted to enjoy a relaxing time.

A small amphitheater could accommodate a hundred ponies and whoever wanted to use the space. All the hurry and rush stayed outside of the park, and Starlight could see ponies walking by on the sidewalk. Like two different dimensions.

The smell of green grass rose from the ground and mixed with cotton sugar and popcorn. Colorful islands of flowers here and there brought little insects. Some ponies had taken their pets to play, and foals ran every which way, joining playful barks with delighted laughter.

Ponies everywhere. Walking around. Talking. Flying lazily or trotting to and from all sides of the park. Foals laughed, danced, and sang at a small birthday party. In the amphitheater, a blue earth pony held a fake skull and recited something.

But no ponies seemed to search for them. Whatever that would look like. In reality, Starlight wasn’t even sure of what she should look for.

“Do you see anything?” Starlight turned her head back to look at Spike, despite her annoyance with his weight.

“Nah. Not yet…” He said with a distracted tone, still scanning the plaza with his hand covering his eyes. “Keep acting natural.”

“We couldn’t look less natural.” The unicorn rolled her eyes, grabbing him with her telekinetic magic and landing him on the concrete. “I mean, we’re a pony with a dragon on her back, looking for something in the most obnoxious way possible.”

Spike agreed with a nod and a quizzical frown. “I suppose you’re right. Ah. We don’t even know what our pony is supposed to look like. I mean, are they even a pony?”

“Keep your voice down. They must be ponies. They didn’t want to meet with griffons. If that means anything.” Starlight’s brow wrinkled while she too scanned the place as best as she could, sitting to stretch her neck as long as she could. Finally, she let her ears drop and let out a heavy sigh. “This isn’t working. It sounded much easier talking in the hotel.”

Spike held his jaw with an inquisitive frown and a deep hum before Starlight spoke again. “I suppose they would rather find us than let us find them.”

Her words caused Spike to light up and raise a finger. “They’re probably looking around for us.”

Starlight nodded and looked around the plaza for a second before she nodded again, with a grin, for Spike to follow. A quick walk took both to the amphitheater where the earth pony had just finished his presentation. His audience clopped their hooves on the concrete unenthusiastically and a dozen ponies streamed out of the seatings.

When Starlight Glimmer approached, they politely gave way for her and Spike to walk up the stairs in the opposite direction. Upon reaching the highest seats, Starlight sat down and patted the place next to her.

“This is your plan? Just sitting here?”

She shushed him. “They’re looking for us. This is the best we can do to not draw attention and let them see us! Try to pretend you like whatever is coming now.”

It all seemed tacked on. No proper planning, no setup. It would have helped if the griffons had been more friendly, or if Naminé wasn’t so spooked and secretive. But there was no helping it. Her idea seemed to be the best one, given the circumstances. Thus, Starlight simply stayed put with the dragon next to her.

A white unicorn mare with a red mane and a graduate’s hat for cutie mark walked into the stage. Followed by a couple of floating stands and rolled up sheets of paper, her magic commanded them to place themselves down. Spike groaned again but took his place next to his unicorn friend.

Elbows on his knees and an angry pout on his snout, Spike watched as the pony finished setting up her stands. She unfurled sheets of paper, and they showed bold lined drawings of tadpoles. After she cleared her throat, she started explaining the differences between the tadpoles of different species.

Starlight Glimmer made herself comfortable and paid attention. Spike caught himself wondering who, in their right mind, would go to a public park to attend a presentation about tadpoles. Who, for Harmony’s sake, would make a presentation about tadpoles out of the city’s university campus?

There was a friendly looking griffon making balloon animals. They could have gone to watch him. Spike could be at the small birthday party or playing with the ponies and their pets. He was sure he could find one of those comic-reading clubs. Watching the sun spin the princess’ shadow around the sundial was probably more fun than watching a pony go on and on about tadpoles.

Time crawled at a snail’s pace, but the presentation ended eventually. Just as Spike had had enough, the unicorn thanked her audience. He almost thanked her back. Next to him, Starlight Glimmer had fallen asleep and didn’t see his baleful glare at her. Spike meant to wake her up, preferably with a loud noise for making him sit through that. Glowering at her, it took all his self-control not to shout her name.

An approaching pair of earth ponies distracted him. A couple of smiling and friendly mares with luscious silvery-gray coats and manes in different shades of purple. Let free, their manes moved with the bopping of their gait and the breeze like the images on Rarity’s shampoos. They were probably sisters and even wore cute, white, and blue matching dresses. One of them took a step forward and grinned at Spike like she knew him, and then some more.

“Oh, my! Hello! Would you happen to be Spike of Ponyville? Great and Honorable Spike the Brave and Glorious?” The mare said as she grinned at him. Starlight Glimmer woke up with a start and some incoherent mumbling.

“Well, that depends on who wants to know.” The cocky little dragon put his hands on his waist, pushing chest forward.

The earth pony couple shared a small grin and one of them smiled at him. “Our boss would like to meet you, Spike. What say you to that?”

“Hold up.” Starlight Glimmer’s voice made Spike turn to her. The unicorn’s unhappy glare turned the smiles right around. “Does your boss have a name?”

“We’ll take you to Naminé. You know she can’t come out in the open.” The mare on the right matched Starlight’s unfriendly glare. “We don’t have time. The local militia is looking for her. You must come with us. Now!”

Spike blinked, staring at Starlight with a wince. Her eyes, though, shifted fast, and her head went from one side and the other. A pair of unicorns stood by the entrance. Above, a trio of pegasi rudely hovered above the open amphitheater. Other ponies seemed to not have noticed, but the other entrance too had a pair of ponies, a unicorn, and an earth pony. Both males wore gentlemanly attire, which was not wrong, but something about them rubbed Starlight the wrong way. They all looked too similar, but more than that, they had a posture that normal ponies just didn’t have. They looked more like Royal Guards than common ponies.

“So, are you taking us to meet Naminé?” Spike opened his arms earnestly, turning back to the ponies.

“Or you should just tell us where the princesses are, and she will meet them there.” The other mare added.

Starlight pulled Spike closer to her with a hoof around his shoulder and her ears folded back. A challenging frown formed on her brow. “I don’t think they work with Naminé, Spike.”

Hard eyes under a threatening frown, Starlight Glimmer knew very well she was not any random unicorn to be trifled with. But she took a step back again. Her horn filled with magic in an instant as her mind went through the arcane formula of a teleportation spell. Nothing too fancy, just something quick to get them from the middle of the oblivious audience and put some distance between them and those mares.

None of the excitement of magic flowing through her came. Focused magical energy exploded from her horn, and she winced back with the shock of a failed spell. She screamed, her stomach turned, and a spark of pain flashed behind her eyes. Before she understood her spell had failed, Spike yelped and one of the earth ponies pounced at her. She slipped behind Starlight and held her neck in a chokehold, pulling back and forcing her forelegs off the floor. The commotion caused the surrounding ponies to yelp and jump away.

Starlight’s legs thrashed in the air, and she found the other earth pony holding the growling dragon to the polished concrete. “Spike!”

Her body filled with furious energy, and she threw herself in the direction her opponent tried to throw her, but her horn shone again. It hurt, as it was sore from the botched spell, but her telekinetic magic added to her strength. She dropped herself on top of the earth pony on the level below of the stands. Scared, yet unaware, ponies shrieked and jumped out of the way just as Starlight Glimmer threw her head at the earth pony mare’s chin.

Once free, Starlight Glimmer quickly found Spike. He, perhaps a bit more flexible than the earth pony mare thought, sunk his teeth into her leg. She jumped back and screamed, giving him enough space that he squirreled away from her.

“Behind you!” He yelled at Starlight, and she reacted out of pure reflex.

A lightning fast and practiced kick connected solidly, and a pained grunt came behind her. Starlight’s intentions were to teleport herself and Spike away, but her eyes blurred, and the world spun around her in the same second she tried. She shook her head, confused and with a nauseated huff. When she found Spike again, he was on his back, fending for himself, swiping his talons at a pegasus stallion with enough viciousness that his aggressor backed off.

Before Starlight could do anything about the pegasus, the unicorn she had seen earlier teleported closer to her. His top hat flew from his head as he waved his horn forward and yelled at her. “Stand down, ma’am! We don’t want to hurt either of you!”

The bastard was probably messing with her spells! It might be silly, but in the heat of the moment, she felt so offended at the fact she almost shot him with a magical beam. But as his horn filled with magical flux, she came to her senses. In an instant, all the boring and repetitive training with Twilight and her friends came to fruition. If a unicorn mugger ever attacked you, follow ‘One, two, three’. Identify, counter-spell, riposte. Preferably with a spell that won’t land you in jail.

It took a heartbeat, but Starlight controlled her impulses and let him cast his spell. A zap of lightning magic, no doubt meant to shock her into submission. Starlight cast a simple bubble shield spell. Even through it, his magic tingled her hooves and made her mane stand up. Then she cast one of the simple self-defense spells she had learned, and the unicorn found legs tied with an obnoxiously large ribbon tied in a bow.

The purple-maned unicorn screamed with his eyes going wide in shock and toppled. Dropped like a sack of potatoes to the stand beneath them. One of their assailant earth pony mares laughed at the scene, but a pegasus landed on the seating above. “Get this gecko under control already! And you!”

He never finished. While Spike screamed something improper at being called a gecko, the pegasus drew a baton from inside his stylish tan jacket. Unfortunately for him, Starlight thought faster. A quick spell turned it into a bouquet of daisies. Angry at her smug smile, he let go of it and readied to pounce at her. She almost zapped him with another spell. A whistle overcame all the screaming. Between panicked ponies trying to flee the commotion and the shouting from the fight, someone else ordered everypony to stop. A pair of earth ponies stood by the entrance to the amphitheater, one brown and another cyan, both wearing the leather barding of the local militias.

The brown mare, with the angry scowl of a teacher catching her students making a mess in her absence, spit the whistle from her mouth. “Quit it and get here right now! Everypony is going to meet the Lord Protector!”

Her companion, the cyan stallion, pointed with a hoof and gasped. “It’s Spike! And Starlight Glimmer!”

The silver lining in that mess was that he had recognized her.

Flintlock pistols showed up. Even worse, more whistles sounded in the distance. Ponies had cleared the grandstands, and that turned Starlight and the others into prominent targets. Something more important presented itself, though. Starlight Glimmer felt it before she looked at the unicorn with the tied legs. She realized too late he didn’t need his hooves to fight her. The white magical aura around his horn undid itself before she could react. A chilling cold gripped her core and shuddered her entire body. All her energy vanished from her, and her gasp blew a cloud of cold air from her.

“Disengage!” a pegasus still in the air cried amid the whistles. “Disengage!”

Gunshots started ringing and another pegasi landed on top of Spike just after he cried for Starlight, reaching for her. She cried back to him, best as she could, getting down on her knees with the heaviness that took over her legs. Meanwhile, the unicorn burned her ribbon to cinders and jumped to his hooves.

The pegasi cried his orders one last time before he bolted, and the unicorn teleported away to leave Starlight alone. She tried to stand, but her legs were just too weak. One of the silvery earth ponies wrestled with a local militia as another tried to reach the stairs up to the stands. One of the strange silvery ponies tackled him, but gave up the fight, looking at Starlight and running off after the others.

Spike’s voice made Starlight look at him while the pegasus held him under his shoulders and lifted off with him. From somewhere, a unicorn cast a spell on the dragon and suddenly the pegasus held him easily in the air. Spike never stropped thrashing and shouted at Starlight. “Get to Twilight! Tell her what happened!”

Starlight barely put her legs straight under her when more of the leather-barded ponies started arriving at both entrances to the amphitheater. They wasted time taking stock of the chaotic situation, but one of the first to arrive had already ordered her to not move. When a unicorn mare saw her and drew the magical stun baton from her barding, Starlight summoned sufficient willpower to do something about it.

She quickly cast the teleportation spell and materialized only a hundred hooves from the white walls of the amphitheater. Her legs failed again, and she crashed against a hay dog stand. A couple of scared ponies hid behind it and shrieked. One of them, a lime-green mare with a pink mane in a yellow dress, raised her hooves.

“She’s here! Officer! She’s here!” The damnable mare shouted, as though the toppled cart and screeching ponies weren’t enough of a mess already.

Starlight didn’t look to see if any of the local militias had heard. Her legs still responded sluggishly and stiffly. She tried to teleport again, but the proper formula never came to her mind, too drained by the cold, the tiredness, and her sore horn. The unicorn let escape a scared gasp and did the best she could with her heavy legs. Her intended gallop barely reached a trotting gait, but it would have to do when whistles sounded behind her.

The chaos which took over the entire park at least provided some cover before the pegasi finally spotted her. When they did, she was already turning into the first alley between the buildings. Out of the blue, a bout of magic grasped her. Her stomach sank. They caught her! But, instead of pulling her back, the magic dragged her out of the alley and into a yard walled by planks.

Cranes, concrete mixers, steel beams, assorted construction equipment, and materials everywhere. Strewn around the yard surrounding the husk of a building under construction. A skeleton of one of the many tall buildings, a structure of reinforced concrete beams still to be built upon. Only then she noticed a pony wearing a green cloak, just as they pushed her toward the edifice to be. Starlight’s strained legs almost caused her to trip and fall face first, but the pony was gentle.

“Hurry! They’ll look for you here!” A snappy feminine voice urged as she shoved Starlight again towards the building. “You have to hide!”

Whistles drew closer, and a dog was barking. Starlight didn’t think twice. As her strength was barely coming back, Starlight clumsily climbed over a pile of steel beams before the edifice’s future entrance. It seemed sketchy, going into an unfinished and dark building, but Starlight followed the other, who ran around the steel beams. Several hooves under the unpolished reinforced concrete, the cloaked pony magicked open a pair of crude metal trapdoors. The hinges screeched, but she kept them under control while her hoof ushered Starlight Glimmer through it. Her yellow muzzle poked from under the hood with a distressed grimace.

A dark hole. Starlight couldn’t think of a better definition for that place. “This doesn’t look like a good idea!”

The barking and whistles convinced her before the cloaked pony even needed to say anything. Hopping into the dark, she lit her way with her horn while the unicorn outside closed the doors. Trotting down dusty, concrete stairs, she mostly focused on walking so her numb legs wouldn’t cause her to trip and just kill herself already. Going down seemed like a better idea than staying within sight if the doors opened, anyway.

The faint lavender shine from her horn bathed the way as the doors creaked closed behind her. Soon enough, she found another floor of reinforced concrete. Rough pillars, more construction materials, unlit improvised light fixtures made most of the objects she found in the dark. A cellar? Basement? She didn’t know enough big city skyscrapers to understand what such a room was for. But she found some space to hide behind a cart filled with debris and discarded materials. The coarse dust scraped her legs as the unfinished cement wall scratched her coat, but she was out of sight as soon as she extinguished the light from her horn.

Once settled in the absolute dark, she noticed how fast her breathing had become and how stuffy her joints felt. She closed her eyes and did her best to control her panting, lest someone could hear her. Her chest lacked the thumping she expected, though. It finally dawned on her that the unicorn had hit her with an ice elemental spell. Her ears, perked at high alert, dropped at the realization of just how close that unicorn had come to killing her.

She doubted it was his intention, though. He had used it to subdue her, but Starlight would never do that. It was a crime; simply too dangerous. It would have worked too, had the local militia ponies not arrived when they did. Her teeth chattered with the cold and she let out a tired sigh.

“They better not hurt Spike!” She whispered to herself in the dark.

The words came out uneven, and she gasped again, hearing voices from upstairs. She tried reigning her breath again. For better or worse, the cold elemental magic had a calming effect on her.

She couldn’t make out the words. They were not as angry as she had expected. A female seemed to talk about how they were concerned and that they wanted to help the Princess’ friend. That they didn’t know who those ponies attacking them were, and that they were looking for Spike, too. Finally, that Twilight and her friends were in danger and that the cloaked pony would better assist them. Starlight’s savior talked softly, and Starlight barely heard her voice whenever she talked to them.

Little noises here and there in the absolute dark made her wince, but she resisted shuffling around. Strange smells she never identified made her nervous, but her state made it easier for her to ignore it all. Her sluggish mind slowly convinced her there was likely nothing to fear in this place. It was just a dusty construction site, and the militiaponies were more dangerous than anything in there.

No yelling, no sounds of fighting or struggle reached her. After a couple of minutes passed, the metallic doors opened. One of the barded unicorns shone a magical light down the stairs and another came down. His ears kept swiveling from side to side as he reached the bottom. The dogs never came, though. One of them yelled that somepony had seen Starlight Glimmer further down. The policeponies excused themselves and left in a hurry, without further bothering the cloaked unicorn or properly searching the basement.

Starlight Glimmer sighed with relief but remained hidden. She lost track of time as she waited for the unicorn to call her up again. Enough light entered that the objects in the basement cast shadows, but seeing the scurrying rats made their noises less nerve-racking. Meanwhile, her body seemed to have regained its heat as the unicorn’s magic waned off. She welcomed the warm touch of her own legs and hoped she’ll never have to go through that again. And just as her legs felt strong to stand again, she heard the unicorn calling her from the top of the stairs. The artificial lighting made her into a cloaked shade, but her welcoming hoof beckoned Starlight back up.

Standing and climbing the stairs easily, Starlight met the grinning unicorn, who had lowered her hood. And… “Wow.”

Her yellow coat and platinum-blonde mane took warm shades under the weak, yellow light. It was clear enough that Starlight could see her pink eyes full of life, matching her cute and endearing grin. But more than that, her face showed a flaking white paint. It made an open pair of alicorn wings around her eyes and combined with her horn. Crummy, long fetlocks, mostly unkempt, were a mess challenged only by her long mane. And only then Starlight Glimmer noticed the unicorn didn’t wear a green cloak, but a cloak made with a tight mesh of grass. All the dirt dulled her coat’s shine, but paying closer attention, the painting on her body became clearer. Parallel lines came down her neck and her forelegs, while also seemed to go to her back.

None of that diminished the sheer joy the pony radiated. She reminded Starlight of Pinkie Pie in a weird but pleasant way. Grinning like the pink mare herself. Waiting for Starlight Glimmer to be done gawking at her.

What broke the spell was when a plank in the wall surrounding the construction site raised outside. Starlight startled at the creaking noise from the planks, and a pony strutted in from beneath it. And then another, and then a few others. The plank finally banged back into place after a dozen ponies passed beneath. They hopped over the steel beams by the entrance or walked around it, chatting happily. Some even did little dances, coming into the future lobby of the skyscraper. Stopping, the first to enter flashed a radiant grin at Starlight and the grass-cloaked pony.

“The silly guardsponies will be all the way to the Scrapyard by now!” She said in a fit of giggles.

She wore a green-brown-gray-ish… Thing. A coarse blanket of undefined colors over her back, but she had the body build of a pegasus. Her mane looked like it would be puffy as an icy-gray cloud if it wasn’t so tangled. Her blue eyes and properly kept fetlocks made up for her dirty mane. The blanket also had straps hanging from it, like she could wrap herself in it when the weather was cold. The others all looked too different. Some wore old and tattered clothes, or none at all. They looked dirtier than ponies should be, but mostly healthy and well-fed. Some also had some painting on their coats, but only small decorations like flowers or butterflies. Nothing like the unicorn’s.

“Sorry!” Starlight said and shook her head after she gawked at the collection of eclectic ponies. Then she offered the yellow unicorn a hoof which the grass-wearing pony gave a hearty bump and smiled even wider with a little hop. “Thank you for saving me. I don’t know if I could get away without help!”

“It’s alright!” A handsome stallion came closer with excited gestures and a wide grin. “What kind of ponies would we be if we didn’t help?”

Starlight’s eyes swept over the place. It was a construction yard, alright, but the inside of the unfinished building seemed like a cozy home. Not only with magical lights, but also with a pile of stuff covered in a tablecloth to make a sofa. A large table with a little vase and a single white flower stood in the center. An old and damaged refrigerator unit used a small mana battery, and a barrel held burnt wood. No flames burned at the stereotypical poor pony’s heater, but it was there. Several improvised beds made of straw and pieces of cloth occupied out of the way corners. Starlight spoke again before the silence became too awkward.

“Do you guys live here?” Starlight let her ears flop. Only then she noticed it might have sounded rude and that she pitied them.

“She does!” The yellow, painted unicorn grinned, hoofing at the pegasus under the blanket before pointing at the others. “Cloud Nine was the first to make a home here. Some of them too. I live in a grove outside of town. I like the forest more than the concrete jungle!”

“Is that a problem?” Cloud Nine let her head tilt and gave Starlight a quizzical stare.

“Ah… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend!” Starlight put forward her hooves and winced. There were no homeless ponies in Ponyville and, try as she might, she didn’t know how to process that. She knew the cities had shelters for the homeless, but she felt like prodding would be offensive. She stopped talking but couldn’t stop shuffling her hooves or shifting her eyes away.

“She thinks you are poor, Cloud Nine.” The painted unicorn smiled. “I mean… I live in the grove and you in an abandoned construction site, while she lives in a palace with a Princess.”

Starlight’s face became so red she might as well help provide light to the room. She put her hooves up again and waved them frantically. “I’m sorry! I really didn’t mean it like that!”

“It’s alright, silly!” Another stallion chuckled and waved a hoof at her. His smile shifted into a smarmy, knowing grin. “You were in the park looking for somepony, weren’t you?”

“Oh! Yes!” Starlight grinned again, and her ears perked back up. “I fear we made a mess, though.”

“You were looking for us! We’re Namine’s Herd” Another mare, an earth pony mare with a once fancy, tall, and complex blonde mane-do stepped forward. She pointed at a stallion with a dusty black top hat with more holes than hat. “Dusty Hooves was supposed to meet you near the sundial!”

He bowed at Starlight Glimmer and made an apologetic frown. “I am sorry. Those peculiar ponies made things complicated. They are far more tenacious than the locals.”

Starlight raised an eyebrow at his way of speaking, but that sounded fair. Anyway, she laughed apologetically. “I guess we didn’t make your job any easier.”

“Everything is as it was supposed to be, silly pony.” The grass wearing unicorn simply kept grinning until it became a reassuring smile she complemented with a sweeping gesture of her hoof. “Even when everything seems borked beyond unborking. Harmony doesn’t throw dice.”

Starlight’s smile turned to a perplexed frown. After blinking a couple of times, she smiled again, confused more than happy. “What?”

“Even to this day you are still guiding ponies, helping them find their way. Even if you mess up sometimes. It is how it works; perfection is fake and the promise of a phony goddess of pain and sorrow. A goal none will ever reach. That is why Harmony loves Kindness and Loyalty more than duty. Generosity and Laughter will rule the land once again, and Honesty is the biggest power of the Magic of Friendship that Amicizia bestowed upon us.”

“Ah, you lost me.” Starlight Glimmer gave an awkward grin with a curt laugh. What the fudge? She sounded like Twilight, but crazier.

The unicorn raised a leg with a giggly laugh and a snort, shedding some blades of grass from her cape. “You guided us from the Green Harbor to the Moon Lagoon. Ah… Not them, but I was one of those ponies that followed you when Harmony called us. Along the way, we called you a bunch of ugly names, like Arrowbutt. I thought you had gotten yourself lost, but silly me. Everything happens the way it is supposed to. Even our present situation. It is all as it should be.”

“What are you talking about?” Starlight frowned and lowered her voice.

“It would be better if I showed you.” The yellow unicorn gave Starlight a mischievous grin. Not a dangerous one, but one like Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie might give her before inviting her to shift all the books in Twilight’s library out of place.

Starlight Glimmer took a step back with a gasp. The flowing magical energies charged the air with wind and sparks as the streetpony’s horn filled to the brim with magic. It felt like powerful magic, but not otherworldly powerful. Different. In such a way Starlight felt she could barely comprehend. The unicorn’s pink eye looked up to her own horn as swirls of white energy spiraled around it and a dot of light grew from the tip. It grew into a little star and exploded with a flash.

The last thing she saw was the stallion with the top hat. He grinned at Starlight. “Buckle your seatbelt, Starlight Glimmer, ‘cause Manehattan is going bye-bye!”

She wanted to scream, so garish the feeling was, but she couldn’t. In the next moment, Starlight walked against a furious storm of sparkling rain and howling winds. Thick raindrops exploded at the naked stone with sparks of chaotic magic.

Her hooves struck coarse, hard dirt, dark under the missing sun. Her small herd of forty-one ponies followed with determined stares even as the wind flailed their wet manes around. The oldest one, a large gray unicorn, carried a hollowed-out horn closed with moss. It hung in front of his chest, shining with the embers inside. The others carried supplies, and a bloated pregnant mare led a goat pulling a rope. Others led sheep, cows, and llamas behind them. Some even carried small cages made of twigs with chicken hidden from the storm under wraps made of stitched together leaves.

Was it fear or excitement that quickened her breath? Before them spread a desolate wasteland of jagged rocks and mad colors in the sky. Diluvial rain pelted them and howling winds screamed in their ears. To her left, many hundreds of hooves away, another group also braved the storm. Their guide started on a narrow path up a hill. The first of his forty-one ponies snaked their way around the protruding rocks while the others waited for their turn to start up too. To her right, a third group followed their guide down a slope and into a wide ravine. Her way would lead them straight through the badlands castigated by the storm and winds.

She stopped at the top of a soft mound and looked back. A soft, insecure little neigh escaped her, and her ears perked forward. Behind them was the vast forest which protected the meadow where they lived, showered by sunlight through a hole in the sky. Tall trees with deeply brown and bulky trunks topped by flame-shaped, impossibly green leaves. It was an island of calm and serenity. Safety in the middle of the dead, dark and gray wasteland stretching in every direction. Other groups had left too, taking every route possible from Green Harbor. Each group of forty-two colorful ponies taking a direction, their leaders simply knew where to go. One led, a unicorn showing the way, and the others followed.

Part of her screamed and cried for her to just walk between those ponies following her and go back. Green Harbor was safe and comfortable, but looking back at the trees bloomed a sadness which tugged at her throat beyond that. Her ears relaxed with a gentle nicker and her vibrant, alert eyes softened. They had left somepony behind. But she couldn’t go back. Her ponies counted on her.

Yes, the way forward was scary and ugly, but she was their guide. She was the one who knew the way to the place they were supposed to reach. She couldn’t stop. What would the others do without her? They needed her. They must reach their destination. That they did was the most important thing in existence. More important than any single one of them. Even more important than that pony they had left behind. Her parting words returned to Starlight’s mind and her ears perked again, as though she could hear it again.

Go now. March onward and do not look back. You must reach your destination. We have prepared you as best as we could, and you must prevail over the challenges ahead. Take care of each other and do not allow the coming hardships to dishearten you. I promise you it will become easier. That it will all be worth it. This is all for you. From the littlest insect to the greatest beast you meet, you must care for it. It could be no other way; this is the dream Harmony has dreamed for you. Now go and forget us. Forget this place. You do not need us. You do not need this place. All you need is each other. And if it gets too hard, remember that this is what you were made to do. Heed the Ancient Pact and hold it in your hearts. Look to the skies and remember we will always watch over you. Look at each other and see us within the pony next to you.

Another soft, sad neigh escaped her. A sorrowful, silent goodbye. Then Starlight turned to face the badlands again and resumed her walk. All of her forty-one followers too resumed their peregrination, following her. She was still sad, but it was what she must do. One hoof after the other, until they reached their destination.

And then she was back at Manehattan. Starlight screamed, pulling herself away from the strange unicorn. She sat on the floor and winced. The noise of the chaotic rain stayed in her ears. Her chest ached and tears streamed from her wide, shocked eyes. The two ponies sat before her, and the others watched from behind them. The pegasus in a blanket gave a curious stare while the unicorn smiled at her.

Images of little huts made of grass haunted her and the flame-shaped leaves of the tall trees forced themselves into the foreground of her thoughts. The magical tingling of the magical storm tickled her back, like waking up from a dream that refused to leave her. The Goddess’ parting words echoed in between her confused thoughts as they struggled to bring her back to the present. Slowly, the noises of the modern city returned. The sight of the unfinished building and the smells of concrete and dust won, eventually.

Starlight gasped. A sense of pride welled in her chest. She did it! They reached their destination ages ago. Or at least a pony who lived ages ago had, and she shared her soul with them. Such was the first explanation that came to her mind, but it had all been so real. The conversation with the Princesses about how souls came and went returned to Starlight. Of how they lived, died, rested, and lived again. She remembered how the princesses disagreed on whether the ponies who shared the same soul were indeed different versions of the same pony.

Princess Luna’s argument that death destroys the mind, and the creature ceases to be, seemed more reasonable. That feeling, though. It was so powerful. She knew, rationally, she had never been there. But her emotions… In a way, she was there. She had led a group of herself and forty-one ponies across a chaos-stricken world and settled near a lagoon. It kept coming back to her, and she held a hoof to her mouth. They made a fire with the embers the big unicorn carried and called that place home. Then the magic of Harmony did its thing. It became a beautiful meadow with a lagoon. The Moon Mirror. She lived there until the last of her days.

What was the meaning of all that? She still suffered from that terrible longing until she remembered she didn’t have to feel like they had left somepony behind anymore. The four great ponies, with their elegant horns and powerful wings, filled her head with a comforting sense of homeliness. It was a bizarre sensation. Starlight had known Princess Celestia almost from the day she was born. She knew Luna and Cadance too, and Twilight Sparkle. She talked to Twilight almost daily, and she often met the other princesses after she joined Twilight’s friends.

She knew those ponies, but whatever the unicorn’s magic did, it awakened something in her. She realized she knew them much more than she ever imagined. It was like meeting somepony and then remembering they had been best friends a long time ago. She simply had no words for that feeling.

She knew the unicorn, too. She had followed Starlight out of Green Harbor and shared the cave with her once they arrived at their destination. Starlight remembered the distressed, crying unicorn drawing on the walls. Drawing the image of the ponies-they-should-have-forgotten.

“What was that?” Starlight gasped, and her jaw dropped open. The yellow unicorn smiled and held Starlight’s hooves.

“That was us. We did it. The Mother of Storms said we couldn’t do it. That life was not possible without her. That our Matriarch couldn’t do it. But we did it. More than once! No matter how monumental our task was, we did it. We brought Harmony to the world. And now the Harpy hates us because of that. She wants to destroy us. But she can’t. She’s not powerful enough, and the world doesn’t belong to the griffons anymore. Our Mothers gave it to us, and we made beautiful things with it.”

Starlight pulled her hooves away from the unicorn’s. She knew that way of speaking. The tone and words of a pony who knew all the answers. Of the one who led others into the way she thought was right. Because she could not possibly be wrong. And that was a path Starlight had walked before. What was it that Discord had told them?

I simply want to make sure that you ponies don’t hurt yourselves along the way and that you don’t come out of it with the wrong ideas. What I mean is... Careful with Naminé. She is dangerous because she doesn’t understand the things that she knows, and knowledge without wisdom... Well... It defines me when I was created.

Starlight frowned. Then she let her jaw hang open for a moment, softening her frown. She frowned again. “Who are you?”

“Princess Luna named me after the ebbs and flows of time in the cycles of creation and annihilation. She said I am the Living Harmony’s response to something she called the ‘Mortality Anomaly’. I carry the memories of all souls and I preserve them into the beginning of Creation.”

“I am Discord’s madness that tried to destroy the world. I am the alicorn goddess who remembers her godhood. The turning point. The standard-bearer of the Luminary. I am the fulcrum in the War Older Than Time; the Mother’s promise of a happy world. I am the harbinger of the Harpy’s destruction.”

“You’re doing it again.” The pegasus let her ears flop with a pained whine. “It’s kinda cringe…”

“Oh! Sorry!” The yellow unicorn giggle-snorted. “Ah… The fact I was born is a sign that Harmony is ready for us to kill all the evil griffons and claim the world for Our Mothers. So that it can be what it was always meant to be. But you can just call me Naminé.”

Harbouring Criminals and Princesses

Discord was present, but it seemed breakfast happened around him like he wasn’t there. Griffons ate their food and drank their drinks. They talked and chirped about their recent victory. Maids served them. Lady Gwendolen talked to the guests, and those cheered and drank their spiced wine.

Gilad never brought it up, but he and Gwendolen fought practically the entire previous day and night. Discord could hear their shouts from his room. And that disturbed Lady Gwendolen greatly. Discord could see in the way she stared at him. Guilty, but above that guilt. As if only Gilad would be more reasonable, they wouldn’t be fighting. Obviously. But she remained the ‘noble lady hostess’, all pleasantness to their guests after Gilad’s aloofness. Making up for his lack of courtesy.

Discord went through the motions and politely accepted any food the griffons offered him. Even the ones he wasn’t fond of. But he didn’t feel like eating the plates or slurping the forks like tagliarini. He merely pretended to listen to Lady Gwendolen talking to their guests while Lord Gilad talked to no one. It was dreadful. Griffons noticed something was wrong, but the guests couldn’t understand it and the maids knew better than to try and help.

It was a shame, really. The Lord of Chaos had plans for the day. Things he wanted to see in the city. Maybe meet some more griffons. Talk to Lord Graham about that problem with the dissidents in his slice of Snow Mountains. Perhaps meet some more of the maids in the mansion and, through them, learn a little more about Lady Gwendolen. Maybe go see Lord Gilad with his soldiers. Mingle around and get a feel of what was in those griffons’ headspace.

The news of Chocolate Velvet’s death and Celestia’s situation spoiled his enjoyment of that place. He needed some space, peace, and quiet to think, and the mansion’s gatehouse was a perfect place for that. In the open air of the mountain, just outside the mansion and looking down on the city of Griffindell. Technically inside the mansion, so Discord didn’t feel under the eyes of some loremaster spying on him.

Then a guardsgriffon came inside, covered in snow and complaining his mug of spiced wine had frozen while he listened to the night’s report. No. Discord didn’t like the gatehouse that much. He didn’t need to go outside and suffer such cold. A large, round window on the loft was more than enough to see outside. The cross-iron frame and the thick, double-layered glass intruded on his view, but the window kept the cold outside. It also put his eyes above the gatehouse, adding the griffons in armor and fur, patrolling the walls like they were too awesome to mind that unholy cold.

With the mansion perched at the top, Discord could see the entire city. From the stone mansions courting the Griffinsky mansion near the summit, to the wooden houses at the base of the mountain. As the terrain sloped down, the ground became fields of grains covered in snow. Glassy greenhouses mingled in between them, and griffons cleaned the snow from their roofs. A military camp snuggled closer to the immense black walls. Watching the griffons shoveling the snow out of the way eased the tension in his neck.

Undisturbed snow covered the valley and the towering mountains past the great black walls. An impenetrable white mist hid anything past a couple of miles beyond the entrance to the Valley of Griffons. Like an ominous barrier keeping mortal eyes from peering into the realm of the Windigos. Moving and twisting whiteness, curtaining the monstrosities trying to find a way through.

Inside the mansion, the day proceeded normally, if slightly chirpier than usual. Discord had discovered a ‘thing’ about griffons. That when they were really happy, thrilled, they would sing. Although not ‘sing’, like in an opera. They just made happy bird noises. And Lady Gwendolen’s spontaneous chirping seemed to have infected the mansion’s maids. At any moment, spontaneous, joyous chirruping arose from the corridors further into the mansion. In any other situation, Discord would be both amused and delighted. But every time Gwendolen cruised through the hall below, piping like a finch, he’d refrain from the urge to go down there and smack some sense into her.

Discord's plan of thinking was not going to come through. His thoughts kept returning to that day he watched Chocolate Velvet trying to down Twilight’s airship. He had poured magic into his sword and then threw it at the vessel. The last Discord had seen of him was magicking an anvil around his neck. Twilight wouldn’t call that ‘very friendly’, but it wasn’t supposed to be the last time Discord would see the alicorn. They were supposed to meet again later, when that whole affair was done, and laugh it up with some cupcakes and a milkshake.

Celestia was probably in a lot of pain. Probably frustrated and angry at the situation, and Discord didn’t even know how much of it she understood. It was chaos, but not the good kind he liked, where everypony would laugh in the end. What about Luna? How was she dealing with that situation? They needed their friends, and Discord wanted to leave and go see them.

Perhaps that was what he ought to do. Celestia had sent him there to understand the northerners. To help her help them. But they didn’t want her help, and he failed on his mission. Meanwhile, he was sending Windigos to deliver foolhardy messages to Twilight and goofing around with the locals. He couldn’t even be sure the Windigos delivered his message to Twilight, much less that they did so in good faith.

He sighed a foggy smudge into the window, just as a griffon approached him. Silent as a predator, gloomy as Pinkie Pie after the confetti was over. But in a serious and actually sad way. He greeted Discord with a fraction of his usual assertiveness, and the draconequus nodded at Gilad’s words. He never turned to look at him, though. Regardless, the griffon sat, and he too looked through the window.

A couple of minutes passed before Lady Gwendolen’s happy warbling obnoxiously barged into their silence. Gilad radiated embarrassment. When she was gone, and closed a door behind her, his wings sagged from his side.

His voice lacked all its usual power. “I have never apologized on anyone’s behalf… But I am sorry. I fear the situation is partially my fault, as I was the one that found her in her tower. Who became infatuated with her and this romantic notion of fixing Griffonia.”

Discord let escape a long sigh and bumped his forehead on the window. The cold threatened to further his headache. “You had good intentions, Gilad. I suppose that is more than I can say for most evil doers that threaten the world.”

“I need to talk to you,” Discord added somberly, turning to face the griffon before Gilad could broach another subject. He stared at the griffon with a heavy heart and Gilad pursed his eyes. Pained like Discord had punched him in the gut.

Discord said nothing for a while. He couldn’t find the right words to tell the noble griffon. Even if he didn’t really need to, as Gilad already knew what Discord meant to tell him. The clicky tip-taps of an approaching griffon interrupted their awkward silence. Discord gave it little regard, imagining it was one of the mansion maids trying to get them to cheer up. The tinkling of coins and calmer-than-usual gait made Discord look. Instead of a cute and young griffon lady wearing the black and white maid uniform, a young tom approached them.

He had a vibrant tan for coat. Sumptuous compared to the usual ‘Griffonstone tan’ Discord was used to. More like bronze, almost with the same metallic sheen the northerner griffons had when their coats presented in the brighter colors. It was a sign of the Astrani line, the Harpy had said. Golden eyes fixated on Discord from the white plumage in his head, and golden accents at his feathers made him look like a gilded, gold and silver statue.

As though unsatisfied with his natural colors and youth, white-yellow coins covered him, blinking under the torchlight. A series of loose collars, a headdress of metallic feathers, wristbands, tail rings, hanging garments covered him. It was like his reason for existing was showing someone’s wealth. His facial lines jumped at Discord with liners in gold and shades of blue for eyeliners. Even though he had the build of an adult, he was a small one.

Discord raised an eyebrow. Celestia had one of those too, but hers was a cork mannequin to hold her jewels. Not a living creature.

The griffon looked up at Discord with a goofy grin and amazed eyes before he noticed his own silliness. Donning a terrible mask of seriousness, he finally spoke. “Geez… I’m sorry. I just never thought I’d meet Lord Discord in person. Like, ever in my life!”

“Hey. Hello. I’m actually more accessible than most creatures would give me credit for. Say, that is… Uh… A lot of gold.”

“It is not gold!” The young griffon raised his voice and pouted like Discord had called his mom bad names. It never ceased to amuse him when they puffed their feathers like an angry parrot. “It is electrum!”

Gilad seemed tired. He smiled anyway and walked to the other griffon. The Lord of the Black Gate stood about twice the small griffon’s height and rested a friendly paw on his back. “I’m glad Gwendolen let you off the tower, Geordi.”

“Oh! You’re the soldier that Lady Geena brought from Frozenlake!” Discord declared. His ears perked up, and he offered the griffon his paw to shake with a smile. “Nice to finally meet you.”

“Well, you saved my life!” Geordi grinned like he had won a million Bits and stood on his hindlegs, tinkling, and pealing like a wind chime to shake Discord’s paw. “I’m sure Lord Graham would’ve killed me along with the others if you hadn’t shown up. Thank you. For real.”

Geordi sat back on his haunches, tinkling all over again, and Discord told him to not mention it. But then the Lord of Chaos crossed his arms. “I don’t mean you’re not worth it, but I’m curious that Lady Gwendolen and Lady Geena singled you out among the others.”

“Gwendolen is dismayed at the small number of griffons which remained pure in the Griffonland region.” Gilad said with a shrug. “And the desert griffons are all but gone, but Geordi here is as pure a Haderani as griffons can get today. She has really come to like Geordi.”

When Discord gave Gilad a curious stare, the Lion explained with a gesture of his paw. “What you will find more interesting is that Geordi exchanged himself for the other soldiers.”

“You traded yourself for your comrades in arms?” The amazement raised Discord’s voice from its dullness. Then he frowned and raised a lion-fingered hand. “Please tell me she expects more from you than making cubs…”

“Actually!” Geordi made an indignant frown. “My job is to help repopulate the Haderani line!”

“It is important, and not just ‘making cubs’!” The young griffon made air quotes with his paws. “I’m a symbol! Also, she has treated me better than any other griffon lady in my life!”

Discord raised an eyebrow, but also rubbed his chin. He stared at the angry short griffon glaring up at him. Magic. Pony and griffon magic didn’t seem to like each other quite naturally. Pure griffons, free of the ‘ponyness’ from the hippogriffs, became more powerful. Griffindell’s ancient walls were a testament to what the magic of ancient griffons could do. On the other side, Discord was there to see what the ponies did with their magic. He found neither ponies nor griffons, or hippogriffs, for that matter, lacking.

However, it wasn’t really about magic, was it? The Harpy wanted, above all, control. For things to go back the way they were before she lost control of the world. Maybe those things, magic and control, walked hand in hand in their world. The powerful magic of the ancient griffons and the glory of their race could attest to that. The problem was that Celestia would say that griffons don’t need any of that past glory to be happy. Much less the ‘purity’. Of course, some griffons might disagree. After all, does she have the standing to say such a thing? When ponies are the dominant culture in their world? In no small part because of the fall of the old system put in place by the Harpy.

Discord kept his eyes on the short griffon. His angry glare had turned to curiosity, and Gilad remained silent by their side, letting Discord think. And he kept thinking, because, when it came to what they wanted, Celestia and the Harpy were not that different. While both preached diametrically opposing ways of living, both wanted their ‘children’ to be happy.

“And you’re okay with that?” Discord finally asked Geordi. “Is that enough for you?”

“I used to live in a small town. Whitelake. I was a knitter, and I used to make scarves so beautiful creatures would visit my hometown to buy my work. Then the politicians messed it all up.” Geordi let his eyes aim at Discord’s feet. “Griffonia turned into a time bomb and the economy went to the gutter. Nocreature buys scarves when they’re worrying about their next dinner.”

“Funny… Princess Celestia once praised and bought my scarves. But she never cared enough to do anything about Griffonia. Nobody cared. All those creatures praising my work just vanished. Then the Chancellor shoved our income under his tail and Celestia did nothing about that either. I lost my home. Then I joined the army because it was better than starving and sleeping on the street.”

Discord said nothing. He simply stared at Geordi and lent the short griffon his ear.

“But then they sent me here to Snow Mountains.” Geordi shrugged. “I supposed it helped me in the end. Just another meaningless grunt to the big names. Just a griffon to hold a gun. Now, at least my friends can go home, and here I am wanted and important. Lady Gwendolen cares about me and she will take care of me.”

“Just like that?” Discord urged the griffon on with a frustrated frown. “The entire world out there and you’ll be satisfied, living like Lady Gwendolen’s prized pet?”

“You don’t understand. I get to live in Lord Gilad’s mansion and griffons look at me like I’m made of gold. And… Lady Gwendolen… She… She’s special. Lady Gwendolen cares about me like nobody else ever did! And when they move to Griffonstone, I’ll go with them.”

“And is that all you want?” Geordi was right. That equation didn’t add up inside his head. Discord opened his arms and let his voice raise. “What about going back home? Seeing your family again? Friends? Going back to your job? Following your calling in life? Maybe moving to Equestria heartland?”

“I don’t have any friends, alright? I mean, there are the guys in my unit, but they’re not really friends. They’re like coworkers.” The short griffon took offense with Discord’s words, and his similarly raised tone showed it. “None of them cared about me when I needed their help. Only Lady Gwendolen cared about me. Only she helped me.”

Geordi’s voice turned frantic. Trembly and anxious. “She was the only one there. Not even Princess Luna showed up when I had nightmares about dying in a trench! Only the Harpy! And I’ll do everything in my power to get all the griffons to join just because she’d like that. It’s also the least I can do for all the other idiots stuck in that mess that is Griffonia.”

How would one tell an angry and disenfranchised young creature that Celestia cared about him, too? That she just also had to care about all Equestria, too. That she was doing her best to let griffons keep their sovereignty and help them at the same time. It was a losing proposition for her and impossible to explain for Discord. Especially when the griffons’ own leadership bungled everything so badly. But Celestia remained true to the tenets which made the Federation.

It seemed creatures like she and Discord were cursed with long memories. Celestia had a consciousness which bound her to the old agreements. Meanwhile, the world forgot, moved on, and blamed her for things they didn’t understand. The Harpy understood that. She understood it all too well. And she used it ruthlessly.

“Is that why she gave you all this…” Discord gestured to all the shiny metal covering Geordi. “This glittery gloire?”

“This is how the young griffons dressed in the Haderani parts of the Empire.” Gilad said, waving a gesture toward Geordi. Despite his diplomatic tone, the young griffon in question filled his chest with pride. “Especially the noble-born. Lord Geordi is the young head of a whole new Haderani bloodline. And Gwendolen has requested that he is trained to that standard.”

Maybe Discord was just callous, but it sounded as though they dressed like that because the Harpy liked it. They wanted to make her happy, too. ‘Happiness’ probably wasn’t the right word. Instead, ‘fulfillment’ would fit better. The Harpy believed conflict drives all. It was literally how she made griffons to tick. She wanted them to yearn, maybe even to suffer, and to achieve. To overcome through pain and hardship, and to reap rewards.

Celestia wanted the same thing for all creatures. But she believed the way to achieve ‘fulfillment’ was to provide them with what they needed. That way, undistracted by precisely, pain and hardship, they could reach their full potential. While griffons had to fight out of the mud and up the castle walls, ponies had a platform leveling everypony out of the mud.

Maybe a common ground didn’t exist. Maybe griffons and ponies were made for different ways of life that did not mesh. If they were to coexist peacefully, then they must round the edges, respect the differences, and fit around each other. If Discord had learned anything, it was that Harmony, in all things, lied in balance.

Of course, talking was easy. That implied making Lady Gwendolen accept that some of her children would simply choose the other side. Not only that, but also getting Celestia to accept the Harpy was going to stay. Because if the Windigos were right, and Discord suspected they were, Celestia would not like that. Especially after the recent events.

What a mess. Discord of the past would hop and giggle at all the chaos. But he had learned a few things along the way. And if he learned, couldn’t Lady Gwendolen learn too? Even if for no other reason than securing her survival? Selfish and petty as a reason could be, it was still valid. She could stay with her children. They could stay with her. And then, couldn’t they help Celestia agree on the same terms? So that all could live in peace? Not having existence yanked back to the beginning and condemning them to try again at the cost of a few adjustments. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Maybe Discord was an old fool. But that sounded right inside his head. The problem was going from hatred and discrimination to coexistence and respect. The northerner griffons had a long way to meet the ponies in the middle. Celestia and the Harpy themselves would be a monumental task by any metric. Fortunately, Discord knew a pony used to succeeding in monumental tasks. Two, actually. If only one of them wasn’t part of the problem.

In the end, Discord couldn’t leave Griffindell. If he did, he might never reach the Harpy again. He might take with him Gilad’s last hope of fixing that mess. And Twilight would need all the help to sort that one out. Discord sighed again, looking at the shiny griffon before him. Slumping his shoulders, but breathing easier, with a renewed resolve.

“I suppose they didn’t go out under the desert sun and do a lot of work, did they?” Notably, his bad mood may have soured his side of the conversation. It amused Gilad, and Geordi seemed immune to his callous opinion.

The tom raised his beak arrogantly. “There is nothing wrong with it. Young, noblegriffons were supposed to learn how to command soldiers and to study. To become good leaders. To help the Emperor rule the empire. The northerners like armor and fur. The desert griffons liked shiny metals. And I quite like it too!”

The image inside Discord’s head was of some high-ranking griffon salivating over their subordinates. Like they were some ornate pieces of ostentatious furniture. Or a pet. A trophy spouse. Most likely, the Harpy salivating over a cute tom like he is a piece of beef. Baby beef.

“As long as you are happy.” The draconequus resigned with a sigh. “Just wink twice if you need help.”

While Gilad chuckled and patted Geordi’s back, the younger griffon gave Discord a confused glare. Discord hoped Twilight received his message. They’d really need some of that magic of friendship. Preferably backed by a lot of ready-to-cast spells. Just in case.

***

When night fell, unlike Ponyville, Manehattan barely put hooves on the brake. A city that never sleeps fit it as perfectly as it fit Canterlot during Twilight’s younger years. Not that she’d know much about that. Nighttime was ‘study time’, not ‘party time’ for her. At least before she became a princess. Then nighttime became ‘dodge-the-suitors time’ and ‘do-princess-stuff time’. Recently, nighttime also became ‘sneak-around-town-in-a-crumbling-stagecoach time’.

The good news was that Twilight felt much better after the encounter with the frostwing. She felt no more confident about Discord’s message, but at least she didn’t feel like she was going to die. The pervading cold was gone, and the thoughts of doom had left her head to more present-focused thoughts.

The problem was that the present wasn’t much nicer. Somewhere between leaving the others at the hotel and traveling like an outlaw, things started looking frightening. Maybe it was the decrepit stagecoach, with its benches full of holes and smelling funny. The closed windows behind the curtains, perhaps? Twilight was never one to mind practicality over luxury, but the moth holes in the ancient silk finish were a step beyond. Was it Bordeaux or indigo? Maybe she should be thankful the inside was so dark she couldn’t be sure. It smelled like something was growing in there and she rather not see it.

Maybe she only really felt better because the squeaking from their pony-pulled vehicle didn’t let her hear her thoughts. She would feel better if the others had come along, but they needed to stay. Spike and Starlight Glimmer never came back from their meeting. Twilight had decided it would be better for them to stay and wait for the two. If they contacted Naminé’s ponies and returned, that needed taking care of. Inside the coach, Twilight had started second guessing her decision, but it was too late.

Cadance’s presence warmed her some. They sat in a corner of the stagecoach while their griffon companion sat on the opposite bench. In the middle of it, staring blankly at the back wall where its window too was closed and covered by a discolored blue curtain. At least it seemed to be blue.

Twilight had expected Master Gray’s eyes to glow in the dark, like a cat. Then she remembered the cat part of griffons was the rear one. That meant that Grigory’s big soldier friend could see about four times farther than the average pony. With a wider range of colors, too. That meant he could better appreciate how disgraceful that coach’s interior was. Or maybe not, because it was dark, and he couldn’t see any better in the dark than she could.

Although griffon feathers were an often-used ingredient in magical healing potions for blindness.

Twilight closed her eyes in the dark and tried to calm her overactive mind. But instead of calmly stopping at a safe station, her train of thoughts derailed. She could barely see the griffon’s moving chest in the dark and it bothered her. He just stood there, staring at the back wall of their coach. Or at her. How could she know? The dark shrouded him like an invisibility cloak. Or the shadowy foliage of a bush, moving in the wind ever so slightly so she couldn’t see there was something dangerous on the other side. Like a griffon about to jump and tear her to shreds! A couple of bumps on the road stopped her wayward thoughts, and she sighed to herself in the silence.

The squeaks from their carriage’s suspension polluted the silence with a lulling monotony for most of their journey. They kept the princess on edge, but Twilight almost jumped when the griffon broke the constant squeaks. His tone was somber, while Cadance glared, and Twilight’s heart slowed back to normal. “I have something to tell you, but I wanted to be away from the others. And for you to be ready to hear it.”

Another second spent in silence gave Twilight a shiver, almost as worrying as his next words. “I have information about your friend. Rainbow Dash’s griffoness friend, I mean.”

“Gilda?” Twilight perked her ears. All the background noise became insignificant.

“I believe it would be beneficial for everyone if you prepared your friend not to expect a very thrilled meeting.” The griffon spoke slowly. Did he think they were stupid or did the matter actually concern him? Maybe both?

“She is Grigory’s friend now. Like me and the others.” He was silent for a second. “I thought it would be ‘friendly’ to give you a fair warning. If we are all going to Griffindell, that is. Even if Gilda still had any embers of a friendship, she’ll feel very discouraged from being friends with a pony. Such an important pony, no less.”

Twilight simply frowned, and Cadance shifted on her seat next to her. “Twi, what is the deal between Rainbow Dash and this griffon friend of hers?”

Twilight hesitated, but she spent the next couple of minutes recounting Gilda’s relationship with Rainbow Dash. Starting with the possibility that Gilda and Rainbow were a couple for a while before they split apart. Then, during a visit to Ponyville, Pinkie’s Pinkie-ness collided with Gilda’s griffon-ness. A misunderstanding made Gilda think Pinkie was picking on her with her pranks. In the end, it was Dash’s doing, and they ended up fighting because common sense was typically in short supply between Rainbow Dash and that griffon hen.

Then, Gilda supposedly had overcome her problems with Rainbow and Pinkie. One day, Griffonstone called for help. Some random monster had made away with the Idol of Boreas and the griffons did as they were supposed. For once. Maybe it fit the narrative some politician was trying to push.

“That blasphemous piece of guano…” the griffon mumbled but pretended not to notice when their attention shifted to him.

“So, anyway, the idol is in Griffonstone now.” Twilight rolled her eyes at the northerner having issues with everything the southerner griffons did. “I think it is in a museum.”

Both ponies stared at Gray, expecting him to explain his grievance with the poor statuette. If memory served, it was rather pleasant to the eyes. A griffon’s paw for base and a symbolic representation of the wind. All in gold and it even had a nice, fiery gem. When did griffons start not liking gold and gems? Twilight rolled her eyes. With all that nonsense of a repeating universe, maybe things should have happened differently.

But instead of indulging them, Gray remained his introverted self. After the two ponies resigned and the renewed silence became uncomfortable, the coach slowed and then stopped. Its old suspension bar springs squealed despite the softness. When one of the ponies working at their hotel opened the door, Twilight could see they were in a dark alley surrounded by tall brick walls. No windows for anyone to look outside, wondering who was murdering a pig.

“There is a guard by the entrance of the harbor!” The pony barely controlled his hushing voice and his eyes seemed ready to pop out of his skull. “We came as close as we could without being seen!”

“Of course, there is a guard, grassbreath.” Gray walked out first, into the pony and shoving him out of the way with his bulk. “Did you think we’d go inside with the feathering coach?”

The pony, a mid-aged cream and caramel earth pony, was so scared he didn’t even react to being shoved to his haunches. As Twilight and Cadance too disembarked, the latter helped him stand. Gray walked to the corner of the alley, hiding behind the brick wall. It surrounded a warehouse and a stockpile yard of some sort. Watching from behind the griffon, Twilight could see the harbor. Mostly shrouded in darkness, in contrast to the street before it. The sea sloshed somewhere in the dark and its briny tang reached well into their corner.

A six-lane street stretched before the chain-link fence. Nouveau style magical lamplights, lined across the center, made Twilight feel like they might have better cover under Celestia’s sun. Not even a few bushes or trees to help them cross it unseen. And if that wasn’t enough, a thestral walked right beyond the fence, holding a big orthrus by a double leash. One of the two dog heads dutifully sniffed at the ground while the other scanned the dark, deeper into the harbor.

The entrance was there, though. A checkpoint. A watch-house with a pony inside, peering out the window to the street and guarding a closed gate. So simple and yet so hard. It would be near impossible to make it inside because they would have unicorns ‘listening’ for magic, too. Next to Twilight, their griffon companion mumbled his assessment of the situation and she grumbled. Nothing was ever easy on that stupid quest of theirs. While the griffon was still thinking, Twilight fixated on the fact that the street alone could handle all the hoof traffic in Ponyville.

“That dog could kill a pony!” The mid-aged pony whined and kept waving his hooves nervously. Tinkling his iron chain bracelet. “And the guards! They probably have batons and and… There is a thestral! And magic stun batons! And they could even have guns!”

“Of course.” Gray groused like an angry chicken, shoving the pony away. “This isn’t Griffonstone where every security guard is a step away from a Draugr with insomnia.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. Speaking of undead creatures, their transportation was so decrepit they could use it for an out of season Nightmare Night disguise. Thestrals liked Nightmare Night. But Twilight kept her sarcasm to herself. Meanwhile, the pony stared up at the griffon with his ears hanging and an apprehensive quiver on his lips.

“What are we supposed to do?” He whined again.

“We will do nothing, grassbreath.” The griffon poked his chest with a talon. “I and the princesses will infiltrate the harbor and come back here once we’re done. You and your friend will wait inside the coach, pretending not to exist.”

That seemed to have calmed the nervous pony, but Cadance didn’t seem convinced. She stole a glance at the harbor’s entrance and then turned to the griffon as he walked to the back of the coach. “I still don’t know how we’re going to enter.”

“Ah… We could fly over the fence?” She offered.

“Flying is often a bad idea.” The griffon told her. “We’ll bribe the guard.”

Gray retrieved a pouch from the chest behind the coach and jingled it at Twilight and Cadance. “With some luck, a few Bits and a pleading stare from the princesses ought to work.”

The pouch with ‘a few’ Bits looked like it held a considerable sum, judging by the size. Twilight didn’t know how much money security ponies made per hour, but the pouch probably held enough to be tempting. She just couldn’t get out of her head how much of a bad idea that struck her as. But she admitted that her own morals didn’t necessarily apply to everypony. Cadance examined the leather pouch too and poked it with a tentative hoof.

She frowned at the griffon, agreeing with Twilight. “I’m not so sure about that.”

“We really should have planned this better.” Twilight sighed, drooping her head and her ears.

“We should have. Too late now. We’re dancing to their tune.” The griffon tossed the pouch to Cadance, who grabbed it in her magical telekinesis in a display of quick reflexes. Then he pointed at the sentry house. “Lean on those princess vibes of yours.”

While the griffon leaned against the corner and held Cadance with a paw on her chest, Cadance gave him an offended stare. The griffon either didn’t notice or ignored her. Then Cadance turned to Twilight and shared her worried frown. How were they going to convince the pony to let them pass? The local militia was probably hunting them. Twilight didn’t know, and Cadance said she had no idea. They had no other ideas either. So, they were going to try and bribe the pony in the gatehouse.

Once the griffon told them to be quiet, they obeyed. They waited until the thestral and the orthrus turned the other way on their patrol. Waited for Gray to signal them. Which he did once the pony in the watch-house distracted himself with something inside. Once he urged them on, they awkwardly sprinted across the six lanes and central island. They had, at least the composure not to flare their wings like panicked chicken. Even though Twilight felt like one, crossing a freeway.

Twilight counted at least two-hundred heartbeats in the time it took them to cross the street. Two-hundred opportunities for anything that could go bad in a heartbeat to happen. Cadance seemed so much calmer after stashing the coins under her wing, Twilight envied her.

Reaching their destination, Twilight stepped cautiously on the stone bricks. She grimaced at the obnoxiously loud clops their hooves made against the stone. Wincing, they turned to Gray. The griffon still hid at his corner, judging them like a Royal Guard sergeant during their fitness and readiness training at Canterlot. He pointed at the gate. Angrily. Twice.

Tentatively approaching it, Twilight walked first, and Cadance followed almost on top of her. At the tip of her hooves, Cadance stared at her and then magicked the gate open. The pony inside complained of the absurdly loud rattling and screeching, and exiting his shelter, he walked into them by the door.

“What the fudge?” He said and gawked at them, wide-eyed.

Twilight had never been to a watch-house, or the entrance to a massive port like Manehattan’s. And it turned out that the Canterlot Archives were not as protected as she had thought way back when. But after all the magical security and surveillance she had found at Queen Chrysalis’ nursery, she expected more. If nothing else, at least a couple of floating magical images showing important places within the port.

Disappointingly, the watch-house was a cubicle with a sitting pillow. All they found in there was the single, caramel earth pony, with his quite obese self bursting out of his cyan uniform jacket. Why he wore it buttoned up, Twilight ignored, and his expression matched her own, with a mix of amusement and surprise. But Twilight didn’t have a whistle hanging from her neck like he did. After an instant of intense, bated staring, he earth-pony-hoof-grabbed said whistle, ready to take it to his mouth.

“Wait!” she wailed at him, both as loud as she dared, and as softly as she could. “Just let us explain!”

He let go of his whistle and smirked at the princess. Twilight supposed that a ‘humor me’ smile really was not among the worst outcomes. Thus, she kept her voice low, while still transmitting the proper urgency. “We are on a quest to save the world!”

He glared at her like she had just called him stupid. “For real?”

“Well, I do it quite often…” she retorted with a similar glower. “More often than I would like, actually.”

“Yes, that is actually true, isn’t it?” The pony rubbed his hoof under his chin. Then he raised his hoof. “But the local militia is looking for you and also for Princess Celestia. Things are weird, and I don’t want to lose my job!”

Before he reached his whistle, Cadance magicked the coin pouch from under her wing and held it inside her telekinetic magic. She jiggled it at the guardspony while wearing the worst excuse for a smile Twilight had ever seen. Unfazed, perhaps angrier, the guard took the whistle to his mouth, but Cadance whacked him upside the head with the coins before he could blow.

The two alicorn princesses stared at the unconscious pony on the ground next to the pouch of coins. Twilight conceded that they were terrible at infiltrating places. Also, that the pouch was particularly resistant to bursting. Turning back to the outside, Gray was nowhere to be seen. Cadance called for ‘Master Gray’ while Twilight looked around, both with a similar lack of results.

While Twilight frowned into the dark interior of the harbor, the big and dark-gray griffon jumped down from the watch-house’s ceiling. He landed with the softest of taps on the stone, and all the nervous anxiety the ponies had been accumulating was released with a scared ‘eep’.

“What were you doing?” Cadance asked, trying not to yell.

“Dealing with the thestral and the orthrus. It wouldn’t do if they came up here and found the guard like this, would it?”

“You used us for a distraction!” Twilight gasped and yelled at him. Secrecy, and that dumb griffon, be damned!

“I never once doubted you, princess.” He responded drily. Gentlemanly waving his paw across his chest, and with an irreproachable professional expression. “Shall we go? The meeting is shady enough without your highnesses being late. Not to mention security is bound to check this entrance eventually.”

As they walked through the drab streets inside the port, Twilight completely lost her bearings. Too many dark alleys and twisting turns. Where were they supposed to meet, anyway? It was not like Twilight would know where to go even if she could see where she was going.

Cadance seemed unfazed by that. She simply followed the griffon, much as Twilight, without a complaint, but she would be damned if her sister-in-law wasn’t, somehow, having fun. Regardless of Twilight’s grievances, time passed, and they walked and walked around and around. The griffon seemed to not really know where he was going, either. Far from the water, the harbor was a maze of buildings of different sizes and shapes in the dark. The presence of dark-seeing thestrals patrolling the place didn’t help ease Twilight’s anxiety.

Maybe there was some kind of code. Some hermeneutical knowledge that criminals and covert agents shared, and that Twilight wasn’t privy to. Herself being a princess and not a criminal, even when the lines had blurred as of late. She wanted to mention their situation to Cadance, but the other princess seemed busy searching for something. Maybe she knew what Gray was looking for after all. Pulling her ears back and suppressing an urge to complain, Twilight just followed the two. She kept her eyes open and her head moving, but it felt futile.

Whenever they came across some better illuminated corner, they’d sneak around in the dark, go around the other side. Coming across a thestral accompanied by an orthrus, the griffon put a wall between them and made sure the alicorns remained quiet. Cadance seemed annoyed at being treated like a foal, but Twilight didn’t mind. She was busy wondering what the point of the huge two-headed dogs was if all they did was parade about with the ponies who could actually see in the dark. Fluttershy might know the answer.

The trio kept scurrying their way around the buildings. Peeking their way around corners and sneaking past big two-headed dogs. Until eventually Twilight spotted a coffee-colored earth pony waving at them. He stood at the back door of a warehouse they were about to skim past. After their griffon escort ensured they wouldn’t be spotted darting across the road, they rushed to the pony.

“What took you so long?” The pony with two toasted coffee beans for cutie mark growled at Twilight who arrived first. He kept his voice low, but also transmitted his annoyance.

“I’m sorry.” Cadance stood next to Twilight and shared her glower. “It would have been helpful to know where exactly we were supposed to meet you.”

“What are you talking about?” The pony’s nose scrunched with his frown. “Everypony knows it’s always warehouse 3-B this day of the week. Sheesh! Come on inside, already! The boss is getting antsy!”

The pony turned to enter, and Gray approached the alicorns. Under Twilight’s accusing glare, he shrugged. “Of course, I knew. I was trying to throw off the patrols. The dogs can catch your scent if you’re not careful.”

Walking past the two princesses and their smug ‘of course you did’ grins, Gray followed the pony through the door. Cadance followed immediately, and Twilight right after. Just in case, she closed the door. Their earth pony guide weaved around stacks of crates and Twilight caught up to them soon enough not to get lost. The salty smells of the sea changed to mold and stale water and aggravated Twilight. Her hooves felt awful on the concrete, and the crate labyrinth seemed to close around her in the dark. She kept close to Cadance.

Soon, they reached the heart of the warehouse. Someone pushed the crates out of the way and opened a large enough space Twilight’s airship could fit without her masts. Steel rafters held magical lighting fixtures and the support structure of the roof. The former were all dark. Artificial light from the external fixtures entered through the thin and elongated windows near the top of the brick walls. But it was enough to see once in the open.

The whole setup bothered Twilight. The criminal environment didn’t come easy to her, and she wondered why Cadance seemed so comfortable in that place. Remaining close to the other alicorn and the griffon, Twilight was happy to find her airship’s friendly resident unicorn and one of her pegasus crewponies. Both spared her a curt greeting nod before they turned their attention to the others again.

The unicorn squinted, caramel eyes shifting from one side to the other. His pegasus crewmate held a threatening frown. Across the space, in front of more stacked crates, five other ponies held similar attitudes. One griffon sat on the floor, looking bored. Black like charcoal and with white plumes on his birdy half. He remained bored, while waving a paw and cawing a greeting to Gray.

No other greetings after Gray responded followed. The large griffon sat on the floor next to Twilight, Cadance and the crewponies. A combination of the three tribes composed the other ponies in the warehouse. From grouchy pegasi to smug unicorns, and an earth pony meanly munching on a straw stalk. It was like merely munching on a stalk of straw. But meanly. The secret, Twilight concluded, was the unfriendly stare and deliberate jaw movements.

Another unicorn pony was probably the boss because he wore a fancy garment. A white faux-leather jacket adjusted to Rarity standards of primness. A large gray unicorn with a graying-out black mane that Twilight had to admit gave him a strapping look. Especially with the prudish bad pony attire.

Guns seemed to be everywhere, too. Pistols and a pair of revolvers with the unicorns across the room from Twilight. The black griffon had one of the latter, and Twilight wouldn’t bet on Gray not having one. Worryingly enough, her airship’s unicorn had no firearm, and neither did the pegasus.

The most important item in sight, however, was a briefcase. Because, of course, it had to be a briefcase. Spotless caramel leather with a proper mouth-hold handle. Securely sitting under the hunky unicorn’s hoof while he stared at Twilight and Cadance like they owed him something.

Twilight mumbled to herself and grinned as best as she could while she noticed her hooves trembling. She coughed a couple of inane syllables before Gray grabbed her snout and kept it shut.

“Here are the princesses.” The griffon growled.

“Aye. And I got the control board for your fancy airship right ’ere.” The bulky unicorn tapped his hoof on the briefcase. “And I see the princesses. What I don’t see is the money.”

Twilight’s eyes went from one to the other and the more she thought about it, the less she liked the situation. The black griffon next to the unicorn sighed, squinted his eyes and joined his paws patiently. Like a patient friend explaining things to their dumb friends. Twilight sympathized.

“I told you, Brash. I told you. It is coming from Thunderpeak. Via teleporter. You can’t get it through without some fees and then the ‘other kind’ of fees. That takes some time, but your money is gonna be here tomorrow. Don’t be an ass.”

“Yah, yah. For sure is. But, ah… The pony I represent was thinking, you see. And the princesses are here. In the flesh. You know?”

The black griffon hushed him. Put a finger before his beak and changed his friendly tone to a threatening mutter. “Don’t do this, Brash. Don’t smear my reputation with my good friend, Gray. We have mutual friends you don’t want to mess with, remember? Mister Cuppa Joe does not want to mess with Lady Gwendolen, now does he?”

“What is going on?” Twilight asked, looking to one side and the other. Cadance said nothing, but Twilight could feel her tenseness.

“Aw, no. No. It’s nuthing much, really. The boss just thinks that since the princesses are here, they could spend a couple of minutes.” The unicorn said around his yellow smile. “Ah, in reality, no more than a few seconds, you see. We gots’ome documents that could really, really benefit from their… Ah, particular hornmanship...”

“Do you want us to sign documents for you?!” Cadance gasped and Twilight rolled her eyes on the poorly disguised grin. “Are you trying to get us to cover for some crime?”

“Now, now…” The large unicorn made a suave smile and waved his hoof with calming gestures. “It’s nuthing extreme. Just a few… Eh, let’s call them ‘grants’. The royal kind. That is well within your power to grace us with.”

Another unicorn walked up to the princesses, careful not to anger the big griffon next to them and holding another briefcase. A black one. As he opened it, Twilight and Cadance craned their necks to peek inside. Next to a feather pen and an inkwell was a small pile of paper. Twilight took the first. It was the high-quality parchment used for official documents and communication. She frowned and quickly scanned the document before raising her eyes with the annoyed frown of a lifetime.

“Tax exemption? Really?!”

“What?” the unicorn cried and defended himself with a flustered toss of his hooves. “The boss already pays for all sorts of benefits to our employ… Ah… Supporters. Vouchers for this and vouchers for that for all our collaborators! Come on, princess! Do you royals want progress or not? Factories and machinery. They don’t come cheap. Especially with the big Ol’ Mare pulling us down. Holding us back. A few privileges here ’n there are gonna trickle down to the hardworking ponies, you know.”

It was probably for the better that Twilight didn’t have the time to lecture him on tax laws or civics. Cadance yanked the paper from her telekinetic magic and grumbled that she’d do it. Simultaneously, she took the inked feather from the well and the first paper. Before Cadance could write anything, a hoof rapped on the concrete and a pony with the large unicorn raised his hoof above his head. Others nodded their agreement next to him.

“We also want to know the truth about the Crystal Empire popping out of nowhere.”

“Now, listen here…” Cadance started, but barking dogs and the trill of a whistle interrupted her. Still with her mouth hanging open and her hoof accusingly pointing at the offending earth pony, she looked one way and the other, as did all the others.

A sharp bang startled Twilight and made her squeak and flare her wings. Whistles and barking broke the ephemeral silence that followed. More shots rang, just a few buildings away. Hooves striking the stone and angry shouting created a cacophony outside their walls.

“They set us up, boss!” The ponies across the room backpedaled. Panic set in, and unicorns waved their telekinetically held weapons around.

Cadance let the paper drop to the floor and the unicorn next to her let the briefcase go too. She bunched up with Twilight and her crewponies. Ponies and griffons started flinging accusations and swearwords around. Twilight made a note that griffons tended to be harsher and more creative.

The flowing energies of spells being cast roused Twilight’s magical senses, and she felt it before it happened. The brick wall behind the large unicorn and his friends collapsed. But it didn’t crumble like its foundations had given up. A magical force ripped the bricks apart, tearing their cohesion with the mortar that held them together.

The crushing noise was the same. Ponies ducked, and griffons and Cadance leaped into the air. Twilight coughed with all the dust in the air. When she saw her unicorn again, the pegasus had shot the well-dressed unicorn and he had yanked the briefcase away. He immediately bolted between the crates. Vanished, followed by the pegasus, amid the chaos of shouting and coughing fits.

“Wow… I wonder if that is going to create problems for me in a week or so.” Twilight grumbled with a frown.

Cadance yelled at Twilight for her to run just as her horn unleashed pink light upon the room and a pile of crates avalanched into the dust. Twilight didn’t wait a second, jumping to her hooves, turning around, and backpedaling from crashing crates just to see them floating out of the dust.

Magic flowed just as the crates went flying in all directions. One exploded against the black griffon and sent a shower of metallic tubes bouncing and clanging everywhere. Another crate almost hit Gray, and the third hit Cadance squarely. It didn’t break apart because she stopped it with her telekinetic magic. The wood cracked, and the tubes inside rattled and clashed while the weight brought Cadance down to the concrete floor anyway. Twilight cried for her, jumping her way, and a quick inspection showed Cadance had no injuries. She was furious, however. The pink alicorn tossed the crate away with her magic and jumped to her hooves, grimacing hard.

A shade walked through the dust with a confident gait. For a horrifying second, Twilight thought she saw Princess Celestia. The unicorn which came out was a dull gray in the dark, with a proper long and elegant horn, but without the princess’ mighty alicorn wings. Instead, she wore what to Twilight was an ostentatious magical armor. A cuirass of green metal, shimmering with magic and inlaid with golden arabesques. Greaves of the same materials on all four legs made the dust swirl as she walked and tossed her purple mane.

Her most distinctive characteristic, however, was her left eye. A silver frame held a purple, glass-like crystal where the eye should be. Her magical aura flooded the warehouse with the warmth of powerful magic, not too unlike Princess Celestia’s own. But Twilight had her shock replaced by curiosity at the magical device grafted where her eye should be.

“As I live and breathe… You truly look like Matriarch Grimoire.” The elegant and haughty mare declared. She stared down at Twilight with a frown most reminiscing of Rarity and her sophisticated superiority. Cadance gasped at her words but didn’t have time to say anything.

“That is not important.” The mare glared at Cadance and her defiant fighting pose. Outside, shots kept ringing in the dark and angry shouting seemed to come from everywhere. Inside the warehouse, ponies scampered every which way in between the crates. Someone dragged the well-dressed unicorn to safety as the mare spoke again. “What matters is that you are both coming with me under Her Radiance’s orders.”

What happened to the griffon she had smashed the crate against, or where Gray had gone to? Twilight banished such worries before stepping away from Cadance, keeping her eyes on the large mare. Her wings opened and her eyes squinted into a frown. The unicorn shifted her hooves, disturbing the settling dust and assuming a fighting position. Cadance too flared her wings, but hoofed at the floor and flared her nostrils with a snort.

A magical beam shot from Cadance’s horn, but the unicorn skipped to the side with practiced ease. Her own horn filled up with purple magic and, in a display of strength and skill, she telekinetically tossed Cadance to the side. Unable to break away and surprised, Cadance yelped and crashed against a pile of crates. More wood and metal tubes flew and made a racket.

Focused on her own magic, Twilight heard a dry bang through the noise. The large mare reeled and screamed while magical protections flashed on her armor. Raging, she reared again and her horn burst with magical energy. Luminous projectiles showered purple light on the concrete. They spread in all directions before training on the griffon from every direction.

Twilight wasted not even a second, casting her own spell against the large unicorn mare. It didn’t look like her usual Gifting Pony’s Gift-Wrap, or Cherry Pop’s Bubblegum restraining spells would work. Her opponent wore heavily enchanted armor. Nothing too mundane would work. The formula for a sleep spell rushed past Twilight’s thoughts while her hooves took her out of the distracted mare’s line of sight.

Even if she could not entirely render the mare unconscious, her spell might disorient her long enough for a second plan to bloom. Maybe a hasty escape? But as the magical energies snapped into reality, they rendered no discernible effect on their target. Instead, the mare turned her attention to Twilight. A trained combat spellcaster, her horn had already charged with magic just as soon as her eyes landed on Twilight.

In the next instant, before Twilight could even prepare a counter spell, the mare’s horn unleashed purple light. Any immediate effects went unnoticed before the concrete cracked beneath her hooves. She screamed and jumped back, but the thorny vines reached and wrapped around her legs. Then Twilight immediately regretted trying to pull when barbs, sharp as a griffon’s talon, dug into her skin and held her. She screamed again and her eyes bulged at the red oozing from beneath the vines. They constricted her legs and dug even deeper, discouraging any further movement. She resigned to searching for a better plan.

Of course, if she ever cast such a spell on anyone, there would be a book and a half worth of legal actions. What was that spell, though? She couldn’t remember seeing it in any books. Even books on combat spellcasting. More important than that, the large mare turned her attention from Twilight.

It was both a blessing and an infuriating insult, but it allowed Twilight a moment to understand how to deal with the magical vines. If only the pain would let her think straight. Every fleeting twitch caused that cursed thing to bite deeper. She decided not to fight it, in fear it might damage tendons or rupture blood vessels. A shame Twilight had barely even glimpsed the spell as it was being cast.

A barrage of dark-gray metal tubes, each a fourth of a hoof in diameter, whistled through the air. They crashed with the noise of an exploding pipe organ, undoing itself against the armored mare. Cadance flew overhead and the black griffon, Gray’s friend, flew at the unicorn, swinging one of the metal tubes like a baseball bat.

Twilight expected the griffon to hit the large mare squarely on the side of her head, but she reacted too fast for him. The mare reared again and deflected the pipe with her armored shin and a resounding clang. Then she kicked the griffon with the other leg. Her agility and grace, even with her massive size, brought back memories of Princess Celestia in their training sessions. But the sheer power of her kick and the sickening crack resonated inside Twilight’s head. She watched in shock the griffon fly on his back at least a hoof from the floor.

It happened so fast Twilight barely understood she had watched someone die. Only when one of the pipes flew in purple telekinetic magic and aimed down at the griffon’s head… Twilight turned away and closed her eyes so tight they hurt. Her stomach still churned at the noise. Cadance shrieked and more pipes clanged to the concrete.

“Are you mad?!” the pink princess cried but received no answer.

Only when Twilight heard the bang of a firearm, she looked again. Cadance was nowhere to be seen while Gray hovered above the crates. The griffon shot a black revolver at the monstrous mare. Once, twice, thrice, and even a fourth time in rapid succession. Like before, the bullets did no more harm than pinging her magical defenses and causing white flashes skimming her head. She didn’t even flinch this time. The fifth shot went to the steel beams above.

The griffon screamed with his paw enveloped in purple light. He cried again when she flung his body against a stack of crates. He squirmed and his renewed cry of pain twisted Twilight’s gut. The revolver slowly turned in his paw, aiming at his jaw. At the same time, the vines held Twilight tighter, like they could read her thoughts.

“You forget your place, filthy hairball.” The mare’s voice dripped with loathing as she walked slowly, eyes fixated on the large gray griffon. What was that mare? Ponies didn’t act like that!

The vines tightened further around Twilight’s legs and the smell of blood made her horror all the worse. Her horn lit with magic and caused the vines to convulse like a furious, thorny boa until she cast her spell. It sent a firestorm of pain up her legs, but Twilight unleashed an actual flash of searing flames upon the magical plant. Undone to cinders in a second, the vines released her bloodied legs. Rearing in the same second, rather than casting a spell on the mare, Twilight cast it on the floor. A relatively harmless pranking spell called Slick’s Slippery Puddle.

The large mare’s focus broke with her hooves slipping on the yellow oil. The revolver still shot, but the bullet just barely missed Gray’s head. By the time their opponent recovered her balance, Cadance came out of nowhere. She lunged from a leaping start, with a metallic tube charged with so much magical energy it turned to a spear, bright hot out of a forge.

All the magic Cadance’s improvised weapon contained exploded on impact. Arcs of magical energy connected to the steel beams above and filled the air with caustic ozone. Spots of concrete and steel turned to crystal and Cadance reeled. The unleashed magical energy tossed Cadance and forced her to sit next to Twilight, mostly unharmed but shocked out of her wits. The large mare too sat on her haunches but screamed, holding her face with her hooves.

Twilight tried to exploit the advantage against the murderous mare, but her horn refused to channel magic. Everything happened too fast, and she never understood what exactly happened, but Gray landed next to her. With an awkward limp and a paw held to his chest, staring frantically at her.

“Let’s go! Your ponies made away with the control board. We’ve done what we came here to do!”

Cadance gasped. “Your paw! Mister Gray…”

“I’ll live! Move!” He roared.

The large mare howled with fury. She glared at the three with an anger Twilight didn’t think a pony would be capable of. If that monster even was a pony. The glass-like crystal had disappeared. Left broken, the silver frame covering her eye revealed a magical-mechanical contraption too hard to make out in the dark and blood.

Her horn flared with purple light, and her good eye filled with malice and wrath. “You little lupa!”

Charging at them, she covered the distance so fast she might as well have teleported. All her momentum transferred into a spell. A simple spell, easily fueled with a raw emotion as anger. Her horn unleashed a magical wave and filled the air with pure energy. The only thing Twilight saw was the purple flash. On the edge of her thoughts, she noted Cadance joined her defense, but it was more like a knee-jerk reaction than a proper counter spell. All the magical force resonated in her bones when their shield buckled, and the attack hit them like a train.

Twilight came to her senses with her back to the concrete beneath her and her eyes to the rafters above. Hopefully, the stupid control board was worth all the pain she was in right now. In the next second, she heard Cadance screaming and remembered there was a murderous monster-mare inside the warehouse with them.

Her muscles hurt and her bones even more. Her horn was sore at the magical straining and casting magic was harder than it should’ve been. But Twilight jerked into movement and, with practiced ease, teleported herself upright into a fighting stance. Her horn shone again, and the formulae of half a dozen defensive spells streamed past her thoughts.

Not ten hooves away, Cadance dodged a magical projectile by hopping into the air. Their griffon friend Twilight found lying against a depression in the warehouse’s metallic door. A flash drew her eyes back to the two fighting mares.

Cadance let fly a series of magical bolts, but they avoided the large mare. They flowed around her armor to make a series of potholes on the concrete. Twilight discarded her plan of hitting their enemy with similar straightforward magical attacks. No point in wasting time trying to counter her wards. Twilight didn’t understand them. Too complex to unravel, too powerful to overcome. If only Twilight’s magical focus or her Element of Magic hadn’t stayed on the doomed airship… She frowned and waited for a better opportunity and her eyes followed the two mares.

Even with her grievous wound, the mare didn’t slow down. Cadance dove into what Twilight considered a risky move, kicking at the armored mare. Larger than Cadance, the other mare followed her reeling dodge with a quick one-two pair of jabs at Cadance. Painful as those seemed, Twilight didn’t allow her empathy to cloud her judgment. Only when the larger mare ignited her horn again, Twilight put all her might into a spell.

The magical light around Twilight’s horn went out with the satisfying pop of a successful spell. Lightning arced among the rafters and down at the unicorn’s shining horn. The resulting blast sent both her and Cadance crying from each other. The alicorn rolled on the concrete floor and whimpered, struggling to stand.

The other mare grunted and glared at Twilight. Bloody magical device instead of left eye and charred horn. Faster than the eye could see, telekinetic magic tried grabbing Twilight, but her own countered it. Defense, riposte. A few spells flashed through Twilight’s thoughts, but she deemed them foalish pranks. Nothing like the combat spells that mare was prepared to defend against.

Time ran out. Her opponent was about to attack.

Instead, the mare shifted her weight on her hooves and relaxed her fighting stance into a leisure stroll. The broken gizmo on her face kept drawing Twilight’s eyes, but neither of their scowls ever relaxed. How could she just stand all the pain that thing must cause her?

“Celestia spoke highly of you, but I find your combat spellcasting skills sorely lacking in depth. Especially for one of your pedigree.”

“Says the mare who allowed an elemental invocation to misfire her spell.” The princess allowed herself a cocky grin before she began sidestepping, not letting the mare come too close. “Besides, I’m not used to going around murdering creatures! You’ll pay for that!”

“I admit the magical hibernation has dulled my mind a touch.” The mare shifted her steps, circling around with Twilight.

What was she talking about? That was neither the time nor the place to wonder. A fire had started somewhere and spread through the crates. Smoke started spreading among the rafters. A dry heat suddenly surrounded Twilight, but she worried more about the noises outside. Gunshots and noisy, destructive spells came from all directions.

Cadance still laid on the floor, with her messy mane, struggling to keep awake. The bloodied nose worried Twilight almost as much as the fact she hadn’t stood yet. When Cadence cried and her eyes widened, Twilight didn't even have time to chastise herself properly. She barely had time to project a magical shield around herself.

Hooves thundered on the concrete and an ethereal blade of magical force glanced off the magical bubble around Twilight. Her shield popped like Twilight had used a filly’s toy to fight, but it also redirected the jabbing blade to the side.

She yelped; magical feedback threatened to split her horn open. The huge mare pressed on. Already next to her, Twilight barely had time to avoid the shoe of a spear-like weapon of solid magical energy. The thing kept spinning on the mare’s magical grasp and hit Twilight on the side of her head at a second strike. The warehouse and the terrifying mare vanished in the darkness. When her eyes cleared, the mare reared above her, and the butt of her weapon arced down at Twilight.

In a panic, Twilight cast a spell. She was herself not sure what it was. Screaming, she mimicked her enemy’s spell and a bar of purple magical energy materialized in the weapon’s path. Magical sparks flew and her protection undid itself in a blast of freed magical energies. But it also redirected her opponent’s weapon.

“Twilight!” Starlight Glimmer’s scared cry came to her just before the mare threw herself on top of her with a magical shield of her own. Coming for another strike, the magical weapon made the shield collapse, but also glanced off again to clang like metal on concrete.

Their enemy let out a frustrated growl and threw Starlight aside with a well-placed kick to her side. It bought Twilight enough time to reorganize her thoughts, and she was ready to dispel the magical weapon as soon as the mare brought it to bear again. But it never happened. A unicorn jumped in front of her. The only thing Twilight was sure of was that she wore a green cape.

“Welcome to the memory lane express!” Her cheery voice declared with a Rainbow Dash’s worth of mischief before her horn flashed like a photographer’s lamp.

The large mare shrieked and reeled back. Her mouth hung open while she pursed her eyes. She shook her head but couldn’t seem to come out of her daze. What even was that? Twilight accepted the rescue without questions, though.

“Let’s not tarry, your highness.” A male unicorn, wearing a ridiculous tattered top hat, said while he helped her stand on her hooves. Another pony, with the messiest mane ever, helped Starlight Glimmer. “Apologies for the hastiness, but we’re not fighting ponies and I would rather not be here when the big girl there comes to her senses!”

Others helped Cadance and griffon Gray, and Twilight’s helper didn’t need to tell her again. Who were those ponies, Twilight had no ideal. Stumbling through the pain, she let him support her in their hurried dash out of the warehouse. The smoke had increased to alarming volumes, and she didn’t like the idea of leaving with creatures in there. But she didn’t want to fight that mare again, and they had what they had come for. Hopefully, with her and Cadance gone, that mare would leave, and the city’s emergency services would help anycreature still in there.

Out of Time

Princess Twilight whined in the groaning dark of their wobbling wagon. An oil lamp hanging from the roof barely allowed her to see the ponies taking care of her. Hooves held her still, soft, and caring, while a female voice soothed her with the experience of a healer used to taking care of others. The sudden fright vanished, and she let herself relax. Her foggy thoughts and a slurred voice followed the medications they had given her as soon as they fled from the warehouse. It was a bit of a blur, but they carried her and put her on soft straw bedding covered by a fine cloth. Such was the extent of what she remembered after the fight. She probably dozed off at some point, as the smells of salt and fish were gone.

“Please, don’t move, princess. This could have been serious,” the pony with the messy, gray mane told her while her hooves applied a greasy and acrid-smelling ointment to Twilight’s tortured forelegs. “This could have been much worse! The thorns missed large vessels by a hair’s breadth. You’d think that monster was trying to kill you!”

“That may not be too far from the truth…” Twilight said with a tired whimper and the smell of her own blood in the nearby wet rags infesting her nares.

Cadance had collapsed the moment they helped her into the vehicle and didn’t wake up again. Twilight wished she hadn’t either. Her legs were killing her and the medicine they gave her was worse than death. She muttered harsh and unfriendly words about that pony under her breath and she wondered if her clouded mind was not also the product of blood loss, too.

“Where is Naminé? She was there, wasn’t she?” Twilight asked the funny pony with the messy mane.

The pony wearing the tattered business suit responded instead. “She went ahead. Naminé needs to get things ready at the Grotto for the ritual. It’s ah… her home. She doesn’t live in the city, but in a nearby grove.”

“Ah, Naminé is eccentric. She is older than she seems, and she is also quite wise. You would not notice it at first. There is no way of explaining this other than showing it. So, I urge you to be patient.”

“I see. Where are you taking us now? Not the hotel. It would be too conspicuous.” Twilight’s voice strained. Talking was difficult. Her breath was too short and the words wouldn’t come to her.

“Indeed,” the pony agreed with a courteous nod. “We are taking you to reunite with the others in a house outside of the city. Don’t worry yourself, princess. We took care of everything.”

Rarity had gone ahead with Naminé, and Twilight would see her soon enough. The pegasus mare with the messy gray mane offered a comforting smile and a bowl of liquid that smelled of grass. It would help with the pain. It tasted like a sweet lemon balm tea and Twilight needed a second before she realized she had just accepted something to drink without knowing what it was from a pony she didn’t know. Regardless, a comforting cold spread through her like a wave of numbing tenderness. The tightness of pain and the constant dulled stings under the ointment fell into a void. Twilight knew of medications that synergized with each other for potent effects, but there was more than the usual everyday magic involved in that. Her eyelids felt like heavy stone, and she convinced herself she was among friendly creatures before she surrendered to sleep.

Twilight woke up. Her legs were still hot with soreness, and the thousand prickling punctures still stung, but the sleep had reinvigorated her mind and had done away with the fog. It was not what had woken her up; it was Rainbow Dash’s racket and Fluttershy trying to calm her down.

They had laid Twilight down on a rustic, but comfy bed of raw wool and white cotton sheets over straw, for some unfathomable reason, surrounded by a thousand petals of lavender. The smell intruded on the scene of Fluttershy standing in front of their friend, open wings and a meek voice, trying to stop the pegasus. Standing up, surprisingly easily, Twilight told them she was fine.

The surrounding ponies practically pounced on her and caused Twilight to take a step back, looking at her frantic friends talking over each other. About the griffons, about Naminé’s ponies. About the food, and weird smells. They gotta do something about the griffons, and about Spike, too. The weird ponies were creeping them out, and they had offered them fruitcakes without frosting—Pinkie Pie’s priorities—and somepony offered Rainbow Dash a freaky doll of herself.

“Everypony! This isn’t helping!” Twilight yelled. “Where are we?!”

Exchanging guilty glances, the others stopped talking and gave Twilight and Fluttershy space as the yellow pegasus approached and spoke softly again. “Naminé’s ponies took care of you, Cadance, and Gray. They were already up, but you needed some rest. Are you feeling well? They said it was a tough fight.”

While her thoughts were still spinning up to speed, Shining Armor stepped closer with a worried smile. “How do you feel?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m really glad you and Cadie are okay, Twily, but I don’t like any of this. They are also very aggressive to the griffons… It’s gonna turn into a problem. We gotta deal with Naminé’s ponies or…”

“They got Spike!” the cyan pegasus yelled above all the others.

“What do you mean, ‘they got Spike’? Who are they?” All the serenity was gone, as was Spike. He was supposed to have returned with Starlight Glimmer after meeting Naminé’s ponies at the sundial. “And where is Rarity? And Cadance?”

“Now, calm down, Twilight. There is no need for all this fuss.” Applejack said with patient annoyance. “Rarity has gotten herself infatuated with this Naminé feller. Real piece of work, that pony… you better see for yourself. And Spike… well, they got him. And by ‘they’, I mean whoever attacked her and Spike while they were looking for Naminé’s ponies by the sundial.”

The orange pony’s hoof directed Twilight’s eyes to the approaching Starlight Glimmer and her sheepish frown, despite all the surrounding agitation. “I’m sorry… They were too strong and almost caught me as well. I only got away because Naminé’s ponies helped me, but Spike was not so lucky. Nopony knows who they are, but the big griffon soldier guy said it’s too much of a coincidence, and that they must be working with that monster that attacked you in the harbor.”

Only one thing kept Twilight from imploding into a nervous breakdown. She remembered the warrior mare from the harbor mentioning Celestia.

Twilight nodded, looking back at the straw and wool bed she had gotten up from. A ring of tiny purple petals surrounded the shape of a sleeping pony and some of them had gotten stuck to her mane. The smell was nice, though. Was it part of some sort of healing magic? Shining Armor spoke again while she examined a fresh and very much alive petal in her telekinetic magic.

“These ponies are kinda creepy, Twilight.” He talked behind his hoof in a secretive tone. “They got really clingy to you and got way too excited to meet us. Only when Naminé told them to leave us alone, they let go. But, uh… they showered you with flower petals.”

“She is…” Starlight added with a frown. “She has this power of immersing you on what I believe are the soul memories the princesses mentioned during that dinner and that Cadance saw in her dream. It is shockingly convincing, and I think it is kind of dangerous. But more than that, she is very charismatic and compelling. I believe she uses the shock and power behind these memories to convince others of her interpretation of their meaning. This must be why Discord sent us to her, but told us to be aware.”

“They’re waiting for us in the main room,” Applejack drawled with a worried frown. “Just brace yourself, sugarcube… They’re a mighty strange bunch. And I reckon that Naminé feller’s the one pulling their strings, based on what Starlight here has told us. Not to mention, Princess Cadance ain’t acting like herself neither. All their pampering got to her, I’m afraid.”

Twilight nodded, and for the first time, paid attention to the room she was in. It had no door and no windows. A green and grass-smelling plant fiber mat covered the circular wall and a curtain of beads replaced the door. The little beads, seeds, shells and even some crystals clicked and rattled with Shining Armor’s hoof pulling the threads for her to pass and reflected the dim light from the other side. A discreet, soothing interior lighting immersed the whole place, and it conflicted with the bright interiors Twilight was used to.

The lack of a door separating the environments, windows, and the peculiar interior lighting were the same throughout the entire building. The house was not dirty or in disrepair; it defied the definition of rustic. Piled stone with a caked combination of moss and mud, held in place with a grid of bamboo, made up the walls while smooth stone and beaten dirt served as floor. Colorful rugs made of dyed materials and plant fiber covered most of the floor for ponies to sit on. A soft breeze carried the smoky smells out through a covered opening in the ceiling. Further away in the wide hall, a small dais supported Cadance, laying on a mountain of pillows, while a gathering of ponies listened to her talk.

Paradoxically, it was all as clean and well-cared for as a Canterlot mansion. The dim light—sufficient—came from shiny crystals, and not only torches, as Twilight had assumed. They stood at the top of little cones of wax, like rustic candles, which were also present in their traditional form and reinforced each other. All clustered on small tables or embedded into the walls, with the most careful and delicate craft, while some crystals even hung from the ceiling. The smoky smell came from the hearth in the center, right under the opening in the ceiling, which was itself a combination of a hardened resin and thatch. Several earthenware pots cooked what smelled of fruits and others dotted the hall as storage, along with neat piles of stuff. They ranged from consumable supplies to utensils and tools. It all straddled a line between chaotic and organized that only the shared resources of a living and active community could achieve.

The hall was a shared living space that connected all the individual rooms. Like a house for multiple families, several rooms connected into the wider area and stone and moss pillars held several abodes fused together. They were not in a building in the common sense of the word; it was a hole in the ground, which was later covered with a ceiling, which was itself a fusion of several ceilings. But not only that, none of the machined metals or treated wood was apparent. In their place existed only hoof-made items. Bone, cast iron, which were magically shaped, twines and wood.

Twilight also saw shells, animal materials other than bone too. Those ponies lived before the magical-industrial revolution that borne places like Manehattan and Fillydelphia. Mana batteries didn’t seem to exist to them, much less a mana connection to the city’s grid.

The residents did household chores that ranged from cleaning to maintenance and restocking. Like a normal house, but with several families, and it was easy to tell because ponies gravitated together, like foals and mothers, husbands, and wives. Although most of them were busy fawning over Cadance, even if they noticed Twilight and her friends. Others smiled and cheered at their arrival.

Starlight Glimmer smiled and came closer. “It is like a Neolithic community, Twilight. They all came from nearby places, drawn by Naminé’s teachings. None of them want anything with banks, streets, high-rising buildings, much less anything related to modern industries. They make everything they need by themselves. It is like the town you found me, but we did this sort of thing out of necessity. We were living off the grid. Here it is a choice.”

While she found Starlight Glimmer’s enthusiasm endearing, Twilight saw ponies lacking vaccinations, preventable stillbirths, rampant communicable diseases and parasitosis, congenital defects, and premature deaths or misaligned bones at every accident. Such notions might come from her histrionic nature, if she considered what they did for her legs after the grievous wound the warrior mare had given her. Progress had happened, though. If prehistoric practices were sufficient, ponies would not have progressed to modern magic and technology.

In the end, it was a similar feeling to traveling to the Crystal Empire. Different ponies, using different things and living in different homes, but all ponies underneath once you spent some time with them. It would be pointless to complain to Starlight Glimmer, her friends, or to those ponies. Twilight needed to talk to Naminé. She had one more reason to talk to the pony, and finding her would be a better investment of her time.

She could not simply go, however. An eclectic combination of earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns greeted her and friends with unrestrained enthusiasm. Among them were also the occasional kirin, crystal ponies, and thestrals, and all of them stared at Twilight. Egregiously, intrusively. Like ponies often did to Princess Celestia, or Luna, when they arrived somewhere. She immediately turned into the centerpiece of the room, drawing adults and foals that all wanted her attention. They greeted her, expressing their unbridled happiness at her presence. They missed the sophisticated words one would hear in Canterlot, or the endless babbling of Ponyville, but they made it up with fervor. It quickened Twilight’s heart, and she suppressed a grimace. The others, following her and practically hiding behind her, didn’t help.

It was even worse, though. Twilight missed something other than the regional oddities. It was not because she had ‘power’, the ears of the Mare or a title. Twilight found the bowing and reverent, adoring stares hard to ignore. It was not like ponies usually did, like before they left Ponyville. Those ponies didn’t see a royal, special pony in her. Not even her powerful magic or the avatar of Friendship. They saw something else. Something that scared Twilight, even if she was not entirely sure why. It filled her with a strange eagerness she didn’t know what to do with.

The princess stumbled on words, never truly having gotten used to being treated like royalty, much less whatever that was. “Hello, everypony.”

The way they exploded in cheers with clopping hooves, squealing foals, pirouetting pegasi, and magical fireworks in the confined hall startled her even more. With a hoof raised from the floor and flopped ears, Twilight smiled the best she could and thanked everypony a few times before they finally settled down again. Not because of Twilight’s thanks and pleas for calm, but because Cadance told them to calm down. It was like she spoke their language and Twilight did not.

“Everypony, please contain your enthusiasm and settle down. Twilight is not quite used to this manner of furor,” she called majestically, raising her hoof and mimicking Celestia’s ‘regal tone number 1, variation B,’.

The purple princess’ eyebrow cocked. Cadance was lying on her belly, on a small pool of pink and white pillows on a raised dais made of wood and covered with white and yellow petals. Delicate things with curly and soft edges, like someone had carefully harvested and exceedingly dead-headed a thousand daffodils just to shower her with. The worrying thing was that Celestia used that tone because the pompous and exceedingly fancy ponies of Canterlot expected it of her. Cadance, while Twilight tried to make sense of the scene before her, rejected a platter filled with grapes.

“Dates,” she said. “I would greatly appreciate some dates, please!”

“Right away, Amore!” the blond earth pony grinned at her before she dashed away with the rejected grapes.

“Ah… Are you okay in there, Amore?” Twilight asked with an accusing frown.

“Yes, quite. But you shouldn’t worry about me! Worry about your legs,” Cadance missed her sarcasm and brought Twilight’s attention to her own injuries. “We must hold Princess Celestia responsible for what that mare did to you!”

Before Twilight could respond, the pony in the tattered business suit came out of the gathering of adoring ponies and gave her a polite bow. “Please, make yourselves at home while we prepare the meeting. Naminé has asked for certain things, but the ritual should start soon.”

“Ritual?” Rainbow asked. “What ritual? I thought we were going to have a conversation. Aren’t things going a bit too fast?”

And when Rainbow Dash said things were too fast, Twilight knew things were, indeed, too fast.

“Whoa. Hold your horses, mister. What ritual? What in tarnation is actually going on here?”

Their host chuckled. “Lady Applejack, with all due respect, there is only one reason ponies come to see Naminé, and it is to steal a glimpse into the past. Reasons vary, but given who you are, your company, and the quite important happenings around the world… This is a turning point and we are very excited. But that is not for me to babble about. You are here to see Naminé. And that is exactly what is going to happen, but there is no rush. Preparations are in order, and you are our guests. Distinguished guests of honor. Please allow us to take care of you properly. Let Naminé do her thing.”

Applejack huffed and adjusted her hat. Twilight’s lips tightened. It would be rude to reject their hospitality. Just because they were weird and different didn’t mean they were bad ponies. They had just saved her and the griffon, after all. Which reminded the princess…

“Where are Grigory and his friends?” she asked the pony in the ragged suit.

“Well, princess… they are not really welcome here.” He let his voice take a sad but honest tone. “The only reason we didn’t shun them away is that you are friendly with them… and one of them needed help. They tried, but we didn’t let them see you. We were very accommodating, but there are limits. They are griffons, not ponies.”

Twilight could not complain. Especially after they had taken care of her injuries and brought her friends by their own initiative. It bothered her more that all the graciousness they had showered her with did not extend to other creatures. A moment of sarcasm made Twilight wish she had a hippogriff around to gauge their reaction…

He differed from almost every single pony Twilight had ever seen. Except for the Flim Flam Brothers, and that was an inauspicious start. Like somepony had smashed Mister Filthy Rich with Fluttershy’s friend, Tree Hugger, into a dirty and dynamic pony that could sell her anything. It was the business suit that stood out the most, an old thing, but legitimate. A Giddy-o Armane suit, to be specific, the kind one could not find in a random store and would likely not fit anyone else other than the original owner. It was the mane-do that looked intentionally messy, and the charismatic, commandeering attitude that made him seem in charge. He was a lot more likable than the brothers, though.

“Do I know you, mister?” Twilight frowned. “You look curiously out of your element.”

“Well, I would proudly say that I found my element, Princess.” He put a hoof on his chest, speaking through a proud grin. “I… ah… I left my business under my foal’s administration because I found a higher calling. I can be more useful by assisting Naminé than filling the land with mines and refineries.”

“And they just went with that?” Rainbow asked.

“It meant they could have my fortune if they just catered to a few old pony eccentricities.” He waved a playful hoof at the two. “They expect me to go back any day. They, ah… lack my business instinct. Which is precisely what landed me here.”

“It’s alright. Just remember, the griffons are our friends too.” Twilight said but groaned internally at how trite her words resonated even with her. Starlight Glimmer was right that she was often too moronic with the whole friendship thing. She just couldn’t help it, and she was right anyway! “We appreciate it, we truly do, but I would like to see Grigory and his kin. As you said, one of theirs fought at our side and suffered injuries trying to help us.”

Her words gave the pony pause, and he took a hoof to his chin. “Yes. That is true. Well, it is not like you are prisoners—or they, for that matter. Naminé just doesn’t want them inside the grotto.”

“What is her problem with them griffons, anyway?” Applejack rolled her eyes.

Rainbow responded with a cocked eyebrow and a groan. “Maybe it is the fact that they want Griffonia to separate from the rest of the confederation? That they want to start a war? Or maybe that they openly hate us and the hippogriffs?”

“Oh, it is worse than that, Lady Dash.” Suit inhaled to go on, pleased at her introduction, but Rainbow interrupted him.

“Don’t call me Lady-anything…”

“Right.” The pony coughed into his hoof. “Sorry. So, it is a much more ancient and deep-rooted problem than that!”

“Oh, I wonder who told you so,” Applejack said with the powerful sarcasm of her farm-pony wit.

Before Twilight could intervene, their host rose a paw defensively. “Now, now, I know this could be considered a form of conflict of interest, but… but… Miss Naminé is special. Just like our beloved princesses. Singled out by Harmony to perform a duty which requires her to have certain privileges. Privileges that fill ponies with a sense of reverence. Which is completely deserved and commensurate, mind you. But the griffons, they are dangerous.”

Twilight cleared her throat. Obnoxiously loudly before anypony could further the drama. Which Cadance did anyway from her petal-covered dais, like she was the beacon of reason in that room. “I would appreciate it if my little ponies would remember that we are in this situation solely because of the actions of our dastard leader, Princess Celestia. This situation is her responsibility, and our station has saddled us with tending to it.”

Twilight probably ground a millimeter off her teeth just listening to her.

“Therefore,” Cadance went on, spinning her hoof slowly, “we should welcome the griffons’ willingness to assist us. As long as their objectives align with ours. We are not traitorous savages, after all. And as far as Princess Celestia is concerned, whatever comes will be well deserved for her ploys. More importantly, it is up to us to remedy the situation properly. She is one of us. That said, if the griffons wish to assist, we have the obligation to allow them. It would be folly to disregard such assistance in the face of the hardships we are still to face. Please, I urge you to grant Princess Twilight swift access to the griffon guests.”

“Princess, are you feeling alright? Do you want some water?” Pinkie asked with a worrisome grin.

“Oh, no. I have never been as lucid before as I am right now,” Cadance replied, all pomp and sophistication. Including a small, condescending smile.

Their host coughed into his hoof again. “Ah, I understand. Well, the griffons are in the guest room, by the entrance. I doubt the guards will stop you, but I urge you to be careful, princess.”

“Right,” Twilight said through her teeth. “Shining, you stay here and… ah… help Cadance. I’ll be seeing the griffons with the girls.”

“Exactly!” Applejack and Rainbow Dash agreed at the same time.

“Have fun!” Pinkie added, already bouncing away and closely followed by Fluttershy.

He said something, but Twilight blocked it out, squirreling away with Starlight chasing after her. Once out of earshot, the group of friends spread around Twilight while Shining talked to Cadance and the surrounding ponies.

“That was weird.” Pinkie said. “And a bit worrying.”

Twilight rubbed her forehead with a hoof and let go a deep, dramatic sigh, with her eyes at the thatched roof above. “Cadance’s been cross at something. I’m not sure what it is. Something about this goddess nonsense got to her, and she thinks Princess Celestia held her back. Or something. It all makes no sense to me!”

“Well, maybe she is right.” Rainbow shrugged, half avoiding Twilight’s stare, half grimacing. “I mean, with all the stuff she’s told us. About the last stand against Discord and her dream about the past… I don’t like this crazy stuff anymore than you do, but… Maybe she’s right.”

Twilight shook her head. “We’ll figure this out later. I just want to talk to the griffons and make sure Gray is alright.”

“These ponies would never treat the griffons poorly, Twilight.” Fluttershy said. “Even if they seem to really dislike them. I don’t think they have it in them.”

‘Ideology has a tendency to make otherwise moral creatures do immoral things.’ Twilight thought, but never allowed the words out of her mouth. The worry in her eyes seemed enough to convince the others they needed to see if the griffons were alright instead. The local ponies had surrounded them again, and the group navigated among the greetings and requests for ‘blessings’. What was she supposed to tell them? She simply said, ‘bless you’ without thinking about it, and it was sufficient for them. Fortunately, they moved along before the whole thing became too overwhelming.

Once the ponies understood Twilight and her friends were busy with something, they turned their attention back to Cadance. A short walk later, following directions, took Twilight to her destination. It seemed to be the same as where Twilight had woken up, with a curtain of plant fiber and clicky, shiny doodads for a door. Different from the other rooms, three burly earth ponies and a trio of unicorns sat there. With weapons. Modern weapons too, that screamed in the face of the rustic ambience; Short swords and heater shields for the unicorns, hoof-mounted spring-blades and leg-strapped bucklers for the earth ponies. Expensive quality stuff too; the sort of gear used by mercenaries and bounty hunters. Their reverent greetings and cheery manners didn’t fool the princess: they were guards, and the griffons were prisoners, no matter how they put it.

A sigh escaped Twilight, then she donned a smile and greeted the taller unicorn mare. She was pink and blonde, and almost as tall as Princess Luna. Very physical for a unicorn, but her red eyes shone with an adoring spark. The mare seemed to be the leader of their little detachment, and the biggest sign of that was her white-painted horn.

“I need to talk to the griffons,” Twilight said and received no arguing, but the unicorn mare was not happy.

“I don’t like the idea of all of you going inside together, princess. If you will allow me an opinion,” she pouted like a slighted foal.

Twilight expected something like that, and showed no reaction, saying she understood, and exchanged a stare with the others. Everypony silently agreed, and thinking fast, Twilight reminded herself the griffons had their own doctor. A quick glance and a nod of the head was all it took for everypony to understand she wanted Starlight Glimmer to come, and before long, she was on the other side of the door with her friend.

The griffon accommodation was nice, even if Twilight could not shake the feeling that they were prisoners. Had Twilight not seen the room they gave her, the griffon accommodations would be so squalid she’d consider the griffons at the right to sue for imprisonment. They had enough beds, one for each and even a couple’s bed for Grigory and Gallensa, at least. The food was another matter: jugs of water, roasted nuts, dried berries, several fresh fruits and jams, and a fruitcake. They seemed to have enjoyed the fruits, as several remains sat on a trash pile, and the fruitcake missed a few slices. Go figure.

If the ponies had ill intentions, the griffons didn’t seem to care much. Grigory and his wife, Gallensa, sat at one of the hide-and-straw beds and she showed a deeper scowl than usual. Grigory looked at Twilight, completely ignoring Gallensa. The caramel sharpshooter griffoness on the other side let escape a relieved sigh at seeing Twilight. The hanging impression was that Twilight and Starlight had walked into an argument, and the former already knew Gallensa enough to guess what it was about. Other than that, Madam Gehenna, the old griffon lady, claimed a place for her and just sat there with her eyes serenely closed. Like she could make herself invisible. To be fair, Twilight didn’t doubt she could. Their soldier friend was sleeping on his bed under watch from their doctor.

Grigory welcomed the ponies and waved that they sit closer to him. “I suppose you’re here to see if we are alright. We are. Thank you.”

Twilight nodded and stared at the big soldier griffon lying on his side, with their lanky doctor sitting by him. Grigory spoke again. “They gave Gray one of their pain-numbing medications that made him sleep. We don’t do this, but I appreciate they were genuinely trying to help.”

The princess thanked him like he had done her a favor by not fussing over that, and he talked yet again. “Before they put him to sleep, Gray spoke of your fighting prowess. He used words such as ‘tactical’ and ‘cool-headed’.”

“Those are words I seldom see him use for our own fighters.” The brown griffon sitting by their sharpshooter, the gunsmith called Gewehr, added with a note of admiration in his words.

“He also told us of the mare that attacked you, calling her a battlehorn,” Grigory added.

Somehow, Twilight knew it. Maybe it was Cadance’s description of the warrior mares from her dream, or just how dangerous that monster was. She stole another glance at the big soldier griffon to see him sleeping peacefully and a set of splinters and bandages around his right foreleg.

“So, that was a battlehorn…” Sour thoughts hounded Twilight that Cadance and her merely romantic interest in history had gotten that dream. That said, she’d trust the griffon with anything he said in that regard. Gray did not seem to be the lying type, so serious and no-nonsense, like the model soldier he was. In other circumstances, he could be AJ’s friend or a trusted royal guard. The issue, however, was not his reputation. “How would he know that?”

“Most of this is information from Lady Gwendolen. Ah… my mother. She secured a vast library of knowledge from the Holy Griffon Empire, and she herself knows much. She made us memorize everything there was to know about the Battlehorn Legions. Not because Celestia might bring them back, somehow, but because she imagined it would be invaluable knowledge that would apply to any modern takes on similar ideas. She supposed Celestia, once cornered, challenged in her supremacy, might appeal to old ideas.”

What followed was a series of details about formation, gear, and tactics. Mostly outdated things, as Twilight knew details about the Royal Guard armor which had more modern enchantments, compared to what Grigory told her. Things that seemed like a natural progression with the passing of time and a shift in purpose. It didn’t really help a whole lot as Twilight would rather know why a soldier from a unit that should not exist anymore attacked them. At least she now knew to ask Grigory for information if needed. How to feel about that was another matter. At worst, in the absolute lack of information she found herself in, it told Twilight the Princess was doing something.

Then Twilight chuckled at the griffon, remembering how her own mother would read cute fantasies to her rather than lecture on soldiers of the past. But her words held a hidden edge as she uttered them. “Honestly, I don’t envy your relationship with your mother.”

The griffon avoided her gaze for a second. “This is a malicious interpretation, princess. She is… She wanted all of us to be the best in our fields.

“For the greater good, right?” Twilight asked with a degree of sarcasm reaching stratospheric levels. “So that you can make the world a better place for everycreature with all your knowledge and resources. Right?”

“In a way, I suppose.” The griffon grinned at her. “That is what our lives will require of us. She has raised me to be an emperor. Like the old ones, supposed to know things. She could not afford to raise us like normal cubs. None of us could have afforded to be nothing less than perfect.”

Twilight frowned, despite her jest. Perfection was challenging to achieve. She would know, especially because she was the one demanding it from herself. Since a young age, she had struggled with her inability to live up to her own expectations. Her own demands. Her mother’s role had been the exact opposite, teaching a young filly that she didn’t need to suffer so much because she could not achieve something which was not achievable. Not to mention Princess Celestia, who taught her to set reasonable goals and break monumental tasks into manageable challenges.

“Grigory, if I assisted you and your father in ruling Griffonia, what would you do with it?” Twilight sat on the rug over the beaten dirt floor and her eyes aimed squarely at his. “That is what you want from me, right? To discredit the Equestrian Confederation, to question Princess Celestia’s rule, and to support a new griffon nation away from the icky ponies and hippogriffs. Right? But there is more. I doubt Lady Gwendolen wants you to stop there. She… You want, at the least, the old lands of the empire.”

Grigory sighed. “Most of Saddle Arabia. Yes. The Hader.”

Starlight frowned. “But you will not stop there. She’s not gonna stop there.”

“I am not an idiot, Grigory.” Twilight frowned too. “Lady Gwendolen is a lot more than a local, influential leader that wants to keep me from teaching Common Equestrian to the northerner griffons. And I find it peculiar how it is you she trained the perfect friends for, and not the Lion himself. She’s using him. To give you a stepping stone into becoming the Emperor because uniting Griffonia is only the first step, isn’t it?”

“What is going on?” she frowned.

“With all due respect, princess…” Grigory replied slowly. “You would not reveal any plans Princess Celestia has just because I asked.”

“I actually did a lot more than that, didn’t I?” she groaned at him before she sighed and took a deep breath. Discord’s strange message came back to her, in which he called his mother the Harpy, and that Twilight must stop her. Although not only was it a strange message to be coming from Discord, the Windigos and their minion relayed it. But she still would rather not reveal the actual message to Discord. “And that is just it. She is more than a queen or a respected leader. She is the Griffons’ Celestia.”

“Whatever that means…” the griffon prince shrugged.

“I am going to talk to Naminé, and she is going to show me something.” Twilight hardened her stare at the griffon, but he reacted none. “Given what you have been telling me, what our adventure has been showing me, the conversation we had with Princess Celestia. Especially with the message the Windigos sent me, the one from Discord… I think we should level with each other before I go meet Naminé.”

“Princess Twilight Sparkle, I have told you everything you needed to know to perform your duty and help us rid ourselves of the binds your beloved teacher has chained my race with and bring her to justice for her lies and machinations. There end our dealings.”

“Fine.” Twilight allowed herself a sigh and changed the subject. “Are these ponies treating you poorly?”

“Other than putting my friend to sleep and disregarding our complaints, I don’t think they could be cruel or inhospitable if they wanted.”

“Well, they have put royalty to wait in this dump.” Gallensa added in an acid tone. “I had thought the hotel would be the lowest for a while.”

“Gallensa is having trouble understanding they are treating us like guests, and this is where they house their guests.” Grigory explained quickly.

“One can see ponies are not very good at this…” the griffoness added with more vitriol. “We cannot leave, either. So, ‘guests’ is how you say ‘prisoners’ in Common Equestrian now?”

“Naminé doesn’t want you getting involved, does she?” Twilight ignored Gallensa and talked to Grigory. “I’m trying to build a bridge, but I don’t think she’ll cooperate.”

Or Grigory, for that matter, but that was another beast altogether. “I’ll try to get it over with Naminé as quickly as I can. We need to wait while the airship gets repaired anyway, and we will probably need their help to get it through the teleporter. Let’s hope there is nothing too damning in her message that is going to break our cooperation.”

“That sounded like a threat. Do not threaten me, Princess. We’ll be here, waiting. Do whatever you must. I doubt there is much we can do, anyway. You know very well that if it was up to me, we would already be in Snow Mountains. Probably arriving at Griffindell. But I suppose you are right, and as the situation stands, we will need their help. I am worried about the mare that attacked you, though. More than the ramblings of a pawful of dirty ponies.”

Twilight nodded. She was worried too, but neither of them could do anything about her. “She’s bound to show up again.”

“Whatever that mare was, I don’t like it. She spooked Gray.” Grigory said. “Just get your business with this Naminé done so we can move on, Twilight. Quickly.”

She could not have agreed more, but Twilight also remembered Discord had told her that Naminé could give them some important context. She was never sure of what he meant, but if Discord said it, then it was important. There was also his bizarre message, delivered by the Windigos’ minion. There was something terribly important going on that Twilight was missing. It reminded her of the dream and the conversation she had with Luna after they left Ponyville. Someone held a picture before her eyes, and she could hear it clicking and whirring behind, like it was a veil meant to keep her from seeing the truth. Whatever it might be.

And that was why they had sought Naminé. She was supposed to lift that veil, and it would probably be better if she stopped stalling. She excused herself, walked out, and away from the guards to a secluded spot with Starlight Glimmer. “What do you think of all this?”

Starlight Glimmer simply shook her head and let her ears hang, but Rainbow Dash approached them before she could say anything. “Twi, they’re ready to take us to Naminé. The others are getting Cadance and your brother. Rarity is already outside.”

Twilight looked at Starlight again. “Let’s go. One step closer to ending this adventure, and hopefully, saving the world again.”

The others waited for them by the exit, and it was the only proper door in the house. Soon Cadance and Shining Armor joined them under a luscious sea of twinkling stars in the velvety black above. Swaying trees on one side, and open hills on the other, Twilight found herself in an open field. It gave her a perspective of how big the communal house was and other structures, only large enough to be some sort of storage. Ponies worked on flat stones, cutting fruits and plants for the food and minded the ovens: two made of stone with chimneys and a few earthen ovens—literally holes in the ground. The food went in, protected by a layer of strings and leaves.

The city was somewhere past the hills, so far away its light didn’t interfere with the stars. The only noises were of the ponies working and celebrating by the torchlight. They talked like excited foals before a party, and the smells of roasted nuts and cooking fruit jams filled the breeze with smoky sugars. The sight of their guests of honor excited the locals even more, and they found time in between their chores to give Twilight that uncanny stare amid celebrations for the Princess of Friendship and her friends. Only when Rarity arrived from within those ponies that they relented.

“Oh, finally. Whatever took you ponies so long? Naminé’s community has been waiting since we arrived to meet the princesses.” She urged them onward, while shushing the locals back to work. “The sooner we are done with the meeting, the better!”

Twilight did not move. Instead, she cast a disbelieving stare at Rarity and her ‘attire’. “What in Equestria are you wearing?”

“Oh! It is a skirt of various vegetal fibers, and this is a delightful netting of weaved gossamer with the seeds of…” Rarity started.

“It looks like grass,” Rainbow Dash voiced Twilight’s thoughts. “And cobwebs stuck to glow sticks.”

Rarity cleared her throat. “Vegetal fibers, and gossamer. Weaved by local tapestry spiders and adorned with the blinking seeds of fruits from the forest! The skirt is hoof-made by these ponies with proper fibers from the forest too! They can even make raincoats with different weaves!”

Dash was right, though. Twilight understood Rarity saw the finer details of their craft, but her skirt looked like Rarity was wearing grass. And while the gossamer netting on her neck and chest looked like shining drops of light with the multicolored glowing seeds, it also looked like those things the younger ponies would wear in the noisy parties. The crown of flowers looked delicate with the pastel petals and interwoven branches, though.

“It looks really pretty!” Cadance squealed.

“Oh, but don’t mind any of this!” Rarity grinned and her eyes sparkled like the stars. “Naminé is waiting for us. I was just helping her ponies put the final touches on the decoration. We’ll dine under the stars after the meeting, like our ancestors, thousands upon thousands of years ago!”

“Like caveponies?” Rainbow Dash lacked Rarity’s enthusiasm and matched Twilight’s lack of amusement.

“Yes, Rainbow Dash.” Rarity inhaled profoundly. “Like our ancestors, who were caveponies… I suppose.”

“Before the times of sugar, creams, chocolate, cakes…” Pinkie listed the items one after another, with a growing frown and while Rarity again inhaled and sighed, “candies, pies, cookies…”

“Yes, Pinkie Pie!” Rarity’s impatient yell finally interrupted her. “But I can guarantee you that these ponies are every bit the same as we are, with some added rustic charm. Their food is delicious, and they lack for nothing. Even in the sweetness department.”

“Should I start listing things that we use on a daily basis which would be missing from our lives if we lived with Namine’s rocks-for-brains ponies?” Applejack glared. “Things like doors in our rooms, floors and ceilings, and not treating Twilight like she’s the town’s goose of the golden eggs?”

Rarity groaned, unladylike and angry, rolling her eyes and hoofing at her brow. “Where is your sense of adventure? These ponies aren’t wrong. Not entirely. Twilight is special. They just show it differently from all the ponies that call her ‘your highness’. Is that so bad? It’s just awkward, but it is so honest and…”

“Creepy?” Pinkie offered with a confused frown.

“Yes!” Rarity admitted. “But also, so heartfelt. They don’t expect Twilight to sign their documents. They see her as important, and not because she could ‘princess away’ their taxes!”

“Just take us to Naminé, Rarity.” Twilight asked, trying to keep the argument from escalating. “I don’t like the way these ponies think of me, but I can put up with it while we sort this out. Just don’t let it get to your head.”

Twilight then turned to Cadance with a glare. “Either of you.”

“Yeah, did you forget Spike is gone?” Rainbow accused with a raised hoof.

“Not at all!” Rarity shook her head vigorously. “But I will have you know that Naminé’s supporters in Manehattan are looking for him as we speak!”

“Does it bother anypony else that ‌Naminé has some weird sort of parallel power?” Starlight Glimmer twisted her lips. “Like, ponies are a touch too reverential of her and her ideas. Kinda like she knows all the answers and teaches ponies things that are not taught anywhere else.”

“Well, it is not like Naminé is telling her ponies to do anything wrong.” Cadance spoke this time. “I can see why some ponies might be a touch too attached to the idea of how important the Princesses are, but given what we have learned on our quest… Is it not a tiny bit reasonable? Isn’t Twilight important? Am I not important?”

“We are important, Cadance!” Twilight blushed. “But not so important that ponies need to… Not so important that I can tell my hosts that I don’t want grapes, but dates instead! Or that they need to ask me to bless them, or… Any of these creepy things. I don’t even know how to ‘bless’ anypony. Is that even a real thing that alicorns can do? What does it even mean?”

“You are just overwhelmed, Twilight.” Cadance rolled her eyes with a waving hoof. “We can come up with something for them. If Princess Luna and Celestia did it however many years ago, we can figure this out!”

“Well, simmer down.” Applejack entered between the two with appeasing hoof gestures before Twilight could launch the tirade she had just brewed inside her head. “We can work this out whenever we’re not so strung up on important business. We ought to see Naminé and get this quest of ours sorted out. Then we can worry about this nonsense. There ain’t much we can do about any of that while we’re at odds with Princess Celestia anyhow.”

They all agreed on that, and with a nod Rarity pointed the way. They walked as a group, following Twilight’s lead and Rarity’s directions as the unicorn talked. She explained Naminé and her ponies had occupied a protected area of original vegetation near Manehattan. Was that legal? Twilight wanted to know and all ponies other than Rarity understood her question was rhetorical. Rarity’s superior grin came up with something even more bombastic.

“Naminé is an original inhabitant of the region,” the white unicorn grinned even wider. “She was living here before ponies founded the city.”

Twilight’s first reaction was to claim it was impossible, but the truth of the matter was that the impossible was almost trivial whenever she got herself involved in the world-saving business. Rarity’s follow-up explanation proved weirder.

“Naminé is the oldest pony alive. She is immortal, and she was one of the original ponies created by…” she stopped walking and grimaced at Twilight. “Well… You.”

“Rarity, this is nonsense.” Twilight glared at her. “Even if what she claims is true, I am not… definitively not one of the Goddesses.”

“Well, that actually depends.” Cadance rested a wing over Twilight’s shoulder. “If you will remember our conversation back at the airship, Princesses Luna and Celestia disagree on whether we are the same beings. I would not believe it myself without that dream.”

Their arrival cut the conversation short. At Rarity’s sign, they walked out of a beaten path in the woods, surrounded by torches and stones, and came upon a lake. It was not large. Barely the same size as the lake in the park inside the monster of a city that was Manehattan. A rock formation of yellow-brown stone stood on the shore across the lake. Countless cycles of rain and exposure to the sun made jagged edges and rounded shapes, while a pair of torches by the entrance offered all the light they needed under the moonlight.

The lake shimmered softly, and waves lapped the sand Twilight and her friends walked over. It pulsated, like a beating heart, and its water was warm with magic. Alive with fish and miniscule life. Even near the shore, algae danced with the water. Underground caves probably connected it to the ocean, and that would explain a lot. Even if the water didn’t smell of salt, chelating sediments could explain it. It could be a physical manifestation of magic, but those were rare and even more rarely so overt. Twilight preferred to remain skeptical.

She caught herself hoping there was nothing special about Naminé and her ponies. That they were just the usual brand of cuckoo in the head ponies and her thoughts distracted her most of the way. Before she knew it, they stood before the mouth of the cave. It was not scary; it had none of the usual creepy elements like jagged stalagmites and stalactites. No whispering breezes, no dripping or plopping of water, bats or disgusting insects. Just a cave and nothing more.

Pretty crystals caught the moonlight and filled the smooth stone with a delightful kaleidoscope. Hardy plants grew in the damp air, claiming the cracks for themselves and filling it with life. The cave was surprisingly cozy, despite being filled with things that wouldn’t go into someone’s chambers or living room.

It would be alright. If a pony like Princess Celestia considered herself just a piece of something larger, then so was Naminé. She would not be the first haughty, self-important pony that Twilight met. The princess’ eyes hardened with the determination to face whatever their meeting with the pony of the ancestral memories would bring.

Pony OS v1.0 - Hello World!

Author's Note

I broke this one into multiple chapters, but the whole thing should be a single chapter. I will not post them all at once because the site is going to mess notifications up. I’ll post one, then wait a few days (editing), and then post the next. This way, the site’s weirdness with the notifications should not get people into reading the wrong order. More importantly, I'll give myself time not to mess up.

Pony OS v1.0 - Hello World!

As Twilight and her friends walked into the cave, the cold air of the night turned damp and heavy. Breathing came with puffs of mist. The stone became slippery with moss and a fine sheet of wetness, but a line of mats made with rough spun grass helped them walk with confidence. Candles, placed on natural outcroppings and niches on the stone walls, lit the path which winded down a gentle slope. A snaking path between the rocky walls gradually became narrower and forced Twilight to lead the way, with her friends following in a single file, brushing the stone. Cracks sheltered tiny rats that came out to stare at the ponies, and Rarity cried at the tiny eyes reflecting the light from the candles. Despite the upstart reaction, nothing of note happened along the way. It was only a damp cave.

“Is it just me, or is it getting a mite chilly?” Applejack spoke softly, as though she feared disturbing the cave itself. Her head swiveled and her eyes scanned the cracks. Next to her, Rarity’s hooves avoided the dampest mats.

“It is getting colder,” Fluttershy confirmed, while holding her eyes over the tiny creatures scurrying about, followed by an impatient Rainbow Dash.

They walked for a while, and Twilight pressed her steps onward as a soft glow came from behind a bend in the path ahead. She ignored her friends’ banter and Rarity’s complaints. So much for the rustic charm, apparently. The cave opened into a tall and wide gallery. Stalactites reached for their counterparts on the arcing ceiling and little magical beasts flew in between.

“What are those?” Shining Armor turned to Fluttershy as they walked.

“Cave wisps.” She also eyed the creatures above. “They’re like bats, but crystal-y and rainbow colored.”

The tiny creatures chased after each other among the limestones, and below, an internal lake cast a kaleidoscope of wavy light and shadows at the white stone of the ceiling. The magic radiating from it brushed on Twilight’s legs, a wet warmness licking up her limbs. Her horn tingled with the flowing energies.

It was not overwhelming, but it was like entering a room that was too bright after the dulled dark of the cave. Arcane energies came at her from everywhere and clouded her magical senses to the usual background noise of the world. Rarity and Starlight Glimmer, as well as Shining Armor, flinched next to her. Cadance gasped, and the pegasi ruffled their wings like they were itchy while the earth ponies shuffled nervously as they gathered around Twilight, by the opening.

“Oh! It’s prickly!” Rarity complained, shaking her head a couple of times.

“You’ll get used to it!” Naminé’s voice echoed. She sat on an island in the middle of the internal lake. A small stone bridge, too perfect and too smooth to be natural, seemed to have grown to connect the island to the rest of the cave seamlessly. “Come! The night is the best time for this, and we have the festival later. In your honor!”

After exchanging a quick stare with her friends, Twilight took the lead onto the stone bridge. Water so pure surrounded it, her eyes could pierce it all the way to the ragged lakebed. Down there, crystals shone like the moon in a clear night. The limestone above twinkled with the reflecting light, and the little wisps kept chasing each other and casting light in every which way. The air thrummed inside Twilight’s chest, and the chiming of magic filled the air amid their hoof steps on the stone. Rhythmic waves lapped at her hooves and the bridge stirred like a heartbeat. Rarity regained her infatuation with the place, letting her jaw hang while she looked down into the water. The others seemed adequately impressed too, but Cadance strode over the stone like Miss Fleur de Lis on the runway.

At the end of the bridge, the island rose from the depth like the tip of an underwater pillar. A menhir sat in the center, painted green and blue for a meadow and the sky, while also showing the Sun and Moon of Equestria at the top. At another glance, those were Celestia’s and Luna’s cutie marks, and with them were also a large star surrounded by five smaller stars and a heart.

“Subtle.” Shining Armor mumbled only for Cadance to shush him.

“Reminds me of the Tree of Harmony.” Fluttershy added.

“Well, it seems to be intentional… Hum…” Rarity responded. “Let’s call it overt.”

She lacked the reproaching tone that Applejack soon provided. “It’s straight up pandering, is what it is.”

“It is a memento.” Cadence voiced Twilight’s thoughts. “A symbol so that ponies would think of them. I saw it in the cave, back when she painted the sun and the moon on the cave wall to remind ponies of their creators.”

“Was it really Naminé?” Fluttershy gave Twilight a worried frown. “In the story Cadance told us from her dream?”

“Is that like… Possible?” Rainbow added with a worried frown of her own.

“It’s kinda freaky,” Pinkie summed it all better than Twilight ever could.

“We are dealing with powerful magic. Far more powerful than anything we’re used to.” Twilight walked slowly, finally speaking after some thought. “Anything is, I suppose.”

Naminé was waiting for them, sitting before the menhir. She had redone the white paintings over her body like Rarity might have dressed for a social occasion. White lines from her legs to her neck to her horn and to shape white alicorn wings around her eyes. Her smile shone as brightly as the lake while she opened her forelimbs in an unabashedly welcoming gesture.

Naminé sat on the other side of an unlit campfire while Twilight and the others walked closer. The clear light from their hostess’ horn gleamed over the neatly placed logs and piled twigs before a warm light sizzled inside them with a rainbow of sparks. A pleasant flame took hold of the wood and caressed the ponies with warmth in the chill air. Naminé still waited, eyeing the group of ponies with a foalish excitement while they sat themselves on the grass and cotton mats by her fire. River stones ensured it would not touch the comfortable seating, but it seemed terribly unsafe to Twilight’s scrutinizing eyes. More than that, Naminé’s magic parlor trick failed to impress.

Rainbow and Pinkie Pie shared a mixture of confused and bored stares, along with Starlight Glimmer’s and Fluttershy’s curiosity. Rarity and Cadance both grinned like fillies at the fair, drinking in the details such as the paraphernalia of clay pots and a selection of dried herbs next to their host. Applejack and Shining Armor both shared Twilight’s cautious skepticism of it all, and if Spike were there with them, Twilight was sure he would be less than impressed too.

“Don’t worry! I would never hurt anypony! Ponies such as yourselves, least of all.” Naminé, in her enthusiasm, misunderstood Twilight’s indifference for concern. “Just make yourselves comfortable and we’ll begin!”

Twilight claimed a spot for herself on the mats while the others did the same, but she also talked to Naminé, whipping her tail around her hindlegs. “So, ah… What exactly is going to happen?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” their host waved her hoof at them with a dismissing chortle. “It is actually you who are going to tell me that!”

“Quit beating around the bush and tell it to us straight, pardner.” Applejack righted her hat with a piercing stare at Naminé, but Twilight knew she meant it when called their hostess by that word. “We ain’t got time for any fancy dallyin’. We’re on a tight schedule, so spit it out quick.”

Entirely unfazed, Naminé smiled at Applejack and nodded softly before picking one of the little bowls with dust of varied colors and pouring it on the fire. “Ponies come to me looking to know more about themselves.”

“Oh, for pony’s sake!” Rarity and Cadance shushed Applejack at her outburst, even if Naminé barely acknowledged it.

Whatever their host had poured on the fire filled Twilight’s nostrils with a salty smell. Almost like the harbor, without the fish. “We set out to investigate a letter Cadance found and ended up with a griffon emperor that supposedly never existed. The letter mentioned bizarre events regarding the sun, and we figured we could find some evidence with the Changelings. They kept accurate records of the temperature and climate because their spawning process needed it. It was not much, but they had important information.”

“Woo, boy! Did they have information…” Pinkie added in a sarcastic monotone.

“We thought it was about incorrect records. That it was just a silly error. We ended up kicking a hornet’s nest and got ourselves involved in Griffonia’s affairs. Suddenly we were asking Discord about the sun being sick and we learned that something terrible happened to it, and to the world because there is something wrong with ponies. There was an evil griffon emperor and insane ponies taking over the world. The world itself almost ended, and there was a griffon… Goddess?”

“I just… There was a lot of information. Events and creatures that ought to be remembered and honored. A conspiracy to uncover and history to bring to light. Everything seems connected, and I’m not sure how.”

Naminé paid rapt attention to her words and blinked curiously when Twilight refused to elaborate further. Cadance either was not as mindful, or simply had lost her common sense. She didn’t even spare a glance at Twilight before spilling exactly what the other princess was trying to hold.

“Princess Celestia and Princess Luna told us about the creation of the world and our places in it, and how they lied to us all this time. She told us about the multiple cycles of creation and destruction, and about the Cult of the Harpy. Princess Celestia did something so terrible she needed to hide it. What we want was to make other creatures aware of just what happened and bring justice to whoever deserves consequences. To have our places in all this recognized, as is our right.”

Naminé broke her silence with a hum and a calm voice. “I can see all that has happened. It is my talent; the reason Harmony has brought me to existence. But the memories of the souls which I have touched limit my sight. I cannot see before the first ponies left the Green Harbor. I need special souls which can remember the events from before we left. Maybe even past Creation, into the previous cycles.”

“Souls like Twilight’s and Cadance’s?” Applejack deadpanned. “Golly! Ain’t that convenient?”

“Everypony,” Rarity started with an appeasing tone. “Naminé is on our side. That is why we came to her. Even if we disagree on the specifics, all of us agree we need her magic to assist us. No? Our presence here may be dangerous to Naminé and her followers and they are uncomfortable with the griffons. Furthermore, we must also not forget time is of the essence given the international situation that our quest and their involvement have complicated. Not to mention, Princess Celestia is not sitting idle, and Harmony knows what Princess Luna is doing.”

Come to think of it, Harmony knows what Discord is doing and what was that weird message Twilight got from the Windigos’ messenger. She sighed in defeat. “Discord told us to look for you, Naminé. But he told us to be careful. He said we needed to experience, and that knowing things… things you can show us, without the knowledge to understand them, would be dangerous. So, I’m sorry if I seem unfriendly.”

“I understand that perfectly, princess. But I can tell you that the problem is the griffons. I have seen memories of the horrors they wrought upon the world, and of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna dealing with them, and undoing the damage from the biggest evil that has ever existed.”

“The Harpy?” Cadance’s eyes widened. “Princess Celestia told us she destroyed her and, later, her cult.”

“Oh, she is very real, and she is the one pulling the strings. She wants you to go with her little kittens to north Griffonia and I doubt she has good intentions.” Naminé’s otherwise peppy and charming voice changed into revulsion. “I would really recommend you distance yourselves from those griffons. They are not our friends. They are not friends of any other creature but themselves. And even then.”

‘Well, yes, but the idea is to help them with that…’ Twilight told herself with an upset frown. Friendship and all.

“We need them,” the pink alicorn urged. “They are our key to making public all the things Celestia has done wrong. Nopony is going to believe any visions, and the Lion has hard evidence of Celestia’s wrongdoing.”

“A god can do no wrong…” Naminé said, rather sheepishly.

“I could turn that right back at you!” Cadance let her voice grow grim.

Shining Armor winced discreetly, looking at Twilight, and Fluttershy gasped. Rarity and the others did their best not to stare. Through the awkward silence that followed, Twilight restrained herself not to tell Cadance to bring it down a notch, even if she might not be entirely wrong. That was not the way Princess Celestia acted, much less what she had taught them to think about their positions.

Maybe she was naïve, but Twilight didn’t think of her special position in the cosmology of Equestria, the workings of the universe, as much different from her position as a princess. Being a princess was never something to benefit her. Being a goddess, if she was, would not either.

Cadance spoke again with a much smoother and self-conscious tone. “Miss Naminé, this is not the same as ponies coming to you because of the novelty of your power or their curiosity. We must know what happened. I need to understand my place in all this. It can change the way our world works.”

“We should get started then.” Naminé sighed and then smiled. “All I want is to serve.”

“A soul is a piece of Life magic singled out to animate the flesh of a creature, and the only form of individuality they hold is what we call soul memories. Events so significant they caused the creature to create memories so powerful they left an impression in the magical part of their mind. The details are… Well, I’m not sure of anything, but I could never see into the trees of the forest where we were born. I could never see before the goddesses sent us on our way to take over the world. I suspect that with an older soul, which was involved in the events which took place before, I might be able to see.”

Twilight shook her head. “We don’t need to go that far. We just need to see what caused Princess Celestia to lie to everycreature.”

“No.” Cadance cut the air with her hoof. “We need to see everything. This is not just about Princess Celestia. This is also about us understanding what we are.”

“Fine, Cadance,” Twilight sighed. “Fine! Just do your thing, Naminé.”

Naminé grinned and agreed enthusiastically. The mare’s yellow coat and platinum-blonde mane carried an almost ethereal effect. She poured another potful of colorful dust into the fire. The sparkling green gave the flames an emerald hue and softened its brightness. Twilight’s friends glued their eyes to the flames, but she knew a cheap magical trick beneath even Trixie when she saw it. Nevertheless, she let Naminé do her routine, noting the strong salty smells that reached her.

“You will not see it.” Naminé’s cheerful voice turned serious, and her words resonated, popping like the flaming wood.

The crackling of the fire carried every syllable she uttered, and the chiming of her horn evoked a rushing flame claiming the world. Twilight shook her head, but the unicorn’s voice wormed its way inside her ears and her magic filled Twilight’s head with magical formulae. Too fast to examine, too powerful to resist. The vague idea of an illusion spell disappeared just as soon as it formed behind Twilight’s closed eyes. It became a broken dam once Twilight chose to not resist.

Naminé’s voice guided her thoughts and the salty, dry smell from the fire claimed Twilight’s world and filled it with ash and flames. Whatever words the unicorn uttered popped into her head like her own thoughts. “You will experience it. You will be there. Memories will claim your perception and your emotions will scream at you, but you will not be in danger, you will relive the past. Even then, the past is gone. All there is, is you.”

The floor was gone. A rushing river filled Twilight’s ears and dragged her along, flailing and helpless to resist and holding a scream. A star burned before her. It was impossibly loud and impossibly bright, but it did not hurt her. It was gone before she could examine it. Twilight landed with stone under her hooves again. She let go of the scream she was holding, but the thunder drowned it.

Her heart kicked at her chest and throbbed in her ears. It was not thunder she heard; it was her blood rushing inside her. There was no star; she had opened her eyes for the first time, and she didn’t fall, but the stone greeted her hooves like they had just happened upon the world. The shock of the realization gave her pause. Too fast! Twilight stopped her reeling mind and tried organizing her thoughts, taking stock of her surroundings.

A bleak desert of jagged stones spread before her eyes, and the air smelled of ash. Boulders split the land open and undid themselves into black patches of sand with deafening cracks that challenged the booming of thunder in the mightiest storms she had seen. It was not there, though. The sky. Mad colors of every hue claimed its place, but Twilight could not name them before they shifted into another, and another without end in between the dark clouds lit by lightning. Heavy rain plinked at her nose, hot with magic. The garish rain immediately drenched her coat and her mane, sweltering her in the cold, and covered her in magic devoid of purpose. Heavy drops burst at impact and vanished into the Aether with the tingling of magic.

Lightning magic, or at least some component of it, made her horn stuffy and her whole body itchy. She put out her tongue, but that didn’t help against the metallic taste that covered her tongue. It turned into background noise next to the fact that she was alone in a chaotic world. Until she wasn’t anymore, and her friends stood next to her. The mere thought of them had brought them into existence, somehow.

“Whoa! Trippy!” Pinkie Pie giggled along with Fluttershy right next to her. “Like Tree Hugger’s teas.”

As the pink pony spoke, the ground still shifted beneath them. Like a million pebbles accommodating into a bowl. It growled, cracked open, and closed in mere seconds. The group of ponies had to balance themselves on spread hooves and a few complaints.

The farmpony wrung the water out of her mane and adjusted her hat, staring at Twilight like she was to blame for something. Meanwhile, Rarity delicately extracted the water from her mane while summoning an umbrella to cover herself with, as she was missing her garments from moments ago.

Naminé was there too and looked at the horizon with a gaping frown before she turned to Twilight and her friends. “Is everypony alright?”

Her answer took several seconds before it arrived with the others trying to make sense of their surroundings, with not much more success than Twilight. The princess rubbed a hoof at the side of her head. “I suppose this is the beginning. The world just as it was created?”

“I think so.” Naminé looked at the sky and then back at Twilight. “It does look like the world outside of the Green Harbor that I remember. I suppose your souls can give a lot more information than the souls of normal ponies.”

“The spell feels weird, though,” she complained with a pained frown. “We’re not experiencing memories like ourselves… We are detached, watching it. I don’t know what it means.”

“Why does it… uh… Why does it feel like Discord?” Rainbow Dash complained over the rush of rain and broke the awkward silence. Twilight frowned and rubbed her chin. That was an uneducated way of putting it, but she could feel it too. Raw magic, Chaos.

“It’s not ‘Discord’.” Cadance opened her wings, sitting in the rain with her snout up in the air. She closed her eyes and let the rain wash over her. “This is magic in its purest form, lacking purpose. So dense it manifests physically.”

Twilight might be seeing things, and the dark playing tricks with her eyes, but the droplets of rain vanished in between Cadance’s feathers. Never mind that… Twilight just realized she could see when there was no visible source of light. The ground and her friends shone with their own light. The rain, clinging to them, shone with its own light.

“I don’t think this exists in our world,” Starlight Glimmer said, looking at her hoof. “Rather, our time. Not anymore. But it felt like this when I was in the vision Naminé gave me when we first met.”

“This is the world, before we saved it from Chaos and delivered Harmony unto it.” Naminé’s confident words grated at Twilight’s ears like a hammer on glass. She never responded as she saw Cadance walking over to the painted unicorn and ascending with a most regal stare.

Instead of complaining or pointing out to Cadance she was sticking her nose too high up, Twilight noted the lack of rumbling. The ground had become still and silent, as it ought to. She frowned and her eyes moved to one side and the other. Her horn, her feathers, and her hooves were still itching, but she was not the only one that silenced and paid attention to the air. The others quieted their yapping. The air sat still and odorless. Rain no longer poured. Silence reigned. Ponies looked at each other, waiting for something as much as the world itself waited. A heavy cloak of reverence had covered the land.

“Gah! My wings are on fire!” Rainbow Dash again broke the silence, biting at her wing and earning a reproach from Rarity before the unicorn gasped.

“Oh, my gosh! They really are! Twilight! Look at this!”

While saying that they were on fire was a drama-filled exaggeration, it was also not so distant from the truth. Dashie’s wings looked like they were on fire. Her feathers had fluffed up and her wings emanated light. Like an aura. Subtle, but pure light in the shades of the rainbow, easily seen in the dark. And once Twilight saw that, she saw the same in Fluttershy, even if she demurely shuffled her feathers, instead of biting them. Shining Armor’s horn was not behind, nor was Rarity’s or Naminé’s. Although, dignified lady that Rarity was, she refused to hoof at her horn like the other two. Pinkie and Applejack seemed normal, even if their hooves shone and their fidgeting showed the young grass, braving the stone and sand wherever they stood, only to die instants later.

“Oh, my gosh…”

Cadance was literally on fire, if the fire was pink, and it did not consume what it touched. Looking at her hoof, Twilight attested that she, too, looked like she was burning. Her wings itched, and her horn vibrated numbly, like her hooves. Soon it spread to her bones, and it was more pleasant than she imagined. If anything, it gave her warmth and renewed energy like a double dose of coffee.

“What the hay?” Applejack summed up the collective feeling while shaking the numbness out of her hoof and staring at Twilight, then at Naminé.

“Ah… I have no idea!” their guide told them while insistently scratching her horn.

“This is Dainty Mellow’s Fire,” Cadance offered with her higher than thou stare down her dumb snout. Despite her feelings, Twilight’s ears perked up because Cadance was right.

“Oh, my gosh! You’re right! It is Dainty Mellow’s Fire!” the younger princess grinned at her fiery hoof while the stare the others gave them was less enthusiastic.

“Common Equestrian, please!” Rainbow fanned her fiery wings with a frown.

Twilight stood in front of them and showed her hoof. “It’s a magical phenomenon! Certain materials and substances draw magic to them. Here, alicorn.”

“Hum…” Pinkie gave a confused frown, first at her hoof and then at Twilight. “My hoof isn’t an alicorn…”

Cadance chuckled. “Originally, the word had a different meaning, Miss Pie. It was the name of the substance which connected living beings to magic.”

“Correct!” Twilight grinned. “But it’s concentrated on earth pony hooves and bones, pegasus wings and unicorn horns. Apparently, on an alicorn’s entire body, too.”

“We just have more of it,” Cadance added with a shrug. “All ponies have it all over their body. All creatures, really, but it can exist in higher concentrations in certain areas of magical significance.”

“Areas we use for manipulating magic.” Twilight glared at her. “Like hooves, wings, and horns!”

The younger princess cleared her throat, staring back at the various sets of eyes on her. “Now, Dainty Mellow’s Fire is the phenomenon that makes magical objects emit a light of their own, like enchanted swords. There is so much magic focused on them it emits visible light because of the Photothaumatic Effect.”

Her friends’ jaws dropped. Even Candance’s. Twilight didn’t think that it was that impressive knowledge, especially to Cadance, but she could swear the ground seemed slightly brighter. Still, she went on.

“The unusually high coalescence of mana makes this easier to observe in a laboratory. Free mana, as a measure of magical energy, will aggregate and attune to the surrounding mana in motion, which we call magic. The more it collects, the faster it will attune to its specific element until it shifts into a particular magic. Physical manifestations of magic require that it reach attunement into a physical element, such as sunfire. And that is why the sun showers us with physical light coupled with flowing mana. That is why our horns glow when we cast spells.”

“Not to mention that certain materials facilitate its flow, and alicorn is one of them. Gold too. And that is why Royal Guard armor…”

“Twilight!” Applejack cried in shock.

“AJ, this is not that impressive!” she spat back at the interruption.

“Twilight, shut up and look behind you!” Starlight Glimmer screamed at her, pointing desperately.

It seemed odd that the Dainty Mellow’s Fire on her hoof had subsided. She realized the creeping daylight obfuscated it. Twilight turned around and smiled. The mad shades in the sky vanished, replaced with black turning blue while the sun was rising. It was beautiful, but not a reason for all that drama. Then her smile turned into a gasp and her ears fell.

It was not the sun.

It was a great and wondrous creature; unlike anything Twilight had ever seen before. Staring at it was impossible: her eyes stung within the instant she tried. It was a force of nature given flesh rather than a normal creature. It was blazing light, bright as the day made flesh, like the sun had come down from the sky. Its mane was a sprawling flame, like the corona of the sun, pure matter filled with so much raw power it turned to something else Twilight didn’t even know the name of.

A horn shone with pure light condensed into solid form, protruding from its head, but its eyes radiated a fierce energy. Staring at them was like staring at all the light the sun had to shine, condensed into a single instant. It burned to the depths of her soul like Twilight had swallowed incandescent steel.

And it was far away, with such wide wings covering the span of the horizon. The creature was gigantic and majestic, flying overhead with a grace impossible for its magnitude. Wings made of pure brightness, as if the creature carried the day itself beneath them. They flapped, and each time it sounded as though a storm took offense to their existence. Following in its wake, the sky became blue, and covered the land with the day.

Winds blew at hurricane speeds and the ground shook again under a firestorm. Stone cracked and exploded in geysers of boiling mud and vapor while mounds of sparkling crystals erupted from the ground in cracked geodes of magically charged, multicolored crystals. The fire didn’t burn; it filtered into the ground and trees sprouted from the land, growing hundreds of years in mere seconds. Grass spread under their shadow, replacing sand, cracking the stone, greedily taking over the ground and giving it life.

Under the fiery gale in the creature’s wake, ponies trembled, flat against the ground, low as they could to weather the storming wind and the rocking of the ground. As suddenly as it started, it was over. Twilight’s legs trembled, and she still had trouble believing what she had just seen as she raised her head wide eyed. Where there was a lifeless husk of a world, now was a green meadow gated by a lush forest.

Rarity whined, still laying on the ground and hugging herself. “If this is a dream, I would like to wake up now! Pleee-e-e-ease!”

“Is anypony hurt?” Applejack cried while she patted herself down with her hooves and Fluttershy helped Rarity stand.

“We are perfectly safe!” Naminé cried, perhaps trying to convince herself more than anypony else with appeasing gestures and a frantic stare.

It took Twilight longer than she’d like to regain her wits and her breath. The ground caressed her hooves, covered in green grass, but also radiating magic at her. Vibrant Life magic, as though it was trying to heal her. Grass, soft as the most luxurious of mattresses and green as emeralds, swayed in the breeze all around them. A lush meadow with a small lake of fluid mud replaced the dark desert. Storm clouds danced in the sky, and cracked geodes dotted the land. All contained above and inside a clearing guarded by paradoxically new and ancient tall trees. Colorful flowers filled the air with perfume, and tiny insects buzzed everywhere inside their secluded hideout. An entire forest had grown before their eyes. Large, stout trunks with supple green treetops that fused together as though it were a single organism to guard their meadow.

A gust of wind buffeted the princess with the smell of green things and one of the flame shaped leaves slapped Twilight in the face.

“Twilight…” Shining came near her. “What is this? I’m freaking out here!”

“I know about as much as you!” she hoofed the offending green off her face and then, she gasped and pointed at the tree line. “Look!”

The shocked ponies silenced and grouped together. All of them stared at the ominous glow growing behind the trees. Like a fire in the forest, creeping its way towards them and hiding behind the trees. Applejack quietly complained to Naminé she had said they were safe, but Rarity shushed her. Insects buzzed and a bird chirped. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary for a potential fire. Shining Armor bravely stepped in front of them and then gasped as loudly as they did when the underbrush ruffled.

A lithe creature of light and flames hopped into the clearing and brought a squeal to the group of ponies. Once the initial fright passed, jaws dropped, and Rainbow Dash exclaimed what everypony was thinking.

“No way!”

Majestic barely began to describe the creature. Tall and graceful, she was as the sovereign pony of Equestria herself with her creamy white coat changed for an alabastrine light like the purest snow under the sun. Instead of a pastel, multicolored mane, woven flames, like spun daylight, danced in the solar wind, eternally locked in a simultaneous dawn, noon and sunset. For an instant, looking into her purple lights for eyes, Twilight thought the creature had seen them, but it never reacted to their presence. They remained bright wells of magic, and yet they held an innocence behind them, like a foal’s or a doe that does not know a wolf.

The ponies, staring at the creature, expecting her to do anything, remained static and tense. It simply stuffed her head back into the bushes and pulled a large bag of weaved plant fiber from it. The handle of an obnoxiously large wooden ladle stuck out from it.

Ponies still watched in stunned silence as the creature dragged her bag across the clearing. It was not larger than a city block in Ponyville, but there was something patently ridiculous about the majestic creature of magic dragging a bag around with such dedication. When the creature arrived at the edge of the pond, she magically grabbed the ladle and started stirring the mud. Sharing a stare with the others, Twilight led them closer. The pond was no larger than a house, and the way the magical beast kept stirring it with her telekinetically held ladle helped the ridiculous scene none.

When ponies looked at her, Naminé again defended herself with a hoof on her chest. “I told you. I’ve never been this far back. This is the first time I’m seeing Princess Celestia like this.”

“She’s not Celestia!” Twilight cried and earned a long, silent stare from her friends and a roll of eyes from Rarity.

“She does look a lot like her, Twilight. If she was made of fire and light because of arcanobabble. Don’t look at me like that, darling. It is true.”

“Ah… What is she doing?” Rainbow drew their attention back to not-Celestia.

While they were talking, the creature placed a sturdy ‘ring-and-clamp’ stand made of shiny gold on the edge of the puddle. Happy it was firm in place, she fixated a glass dripper which also came from inside the bag. The ring held the thin part of the glass container, and the clamp secured it in place. Squinting, she painstakingly set the device to a slow drip of a rainbow substance into the mud. While the glass itself had a symbol, almost like a cutie mark, of a parchment and a feather pen, the fat and viscous drops it liberated each carried a tiny cutie mark inside.

While the dripper was doing its thing, the magical alicorn poured a bag of sugar, recognizable by the pile of twinkling crystal dust drawn on the package. Once it was empty and she had tossed it aside, she produced another from her large bag. This time the symbol on it was of a selection of leaves. The powdered substance of undefined color went fully into the muddy concoction while Twilight and friends watched in silence. After stirring, stirring, and stirring some more, the fiery white alicorn pecked just a smidgeon from the ladle. She made a grimace and put out her tongue at the awful taste of mud, no matter how much sugar and spices one added.

Eventually, she unfurled a large, rolled-up parchment and stared at it with a critical frown. Unable to resist, Twilight walked around to see that it was a cartoonish drawing of all the organs and bones of a pony. And while she was staring at it, the fiery alicorn frowned and tilted her head in thought. Finally, she made a slight correction with a piece of charcoal. Leaving the parchment on the ground, she grabbed a collection of papers and shuffled them around. They held an unintelligible scrawling, but the magical alicorn squinted at them before shoving her head inside the bag. After some rummaging, she produced a vial of shiny stardust that she held in her mouth. Her telekinetic magic popped the cork from the vial, and she tilted her head to pour it on the mud.

“This can’t be real…” Twilight muttered while the alicorn tested the mud’s consistency by pouring it from the ladle.

Before Twilight could accept what she was seeing, the excited alicorn resumed stirring the mud. A bit too excited, because the ladle smashed against the dripper. She made a distressed whinny and magicked the broken device away, but the damage was done: all the cutie marks had spilled over. The alicorn spent several seconds staring at the rainbow-colored mud before she shrugged and resumed stirring with an eager grin.

“This isn’t funny.” Twilight told Naminé with a straight face.

“But I’m not making any of this!” she promptly defended herself again. “I am as curious as you are! I’d pay a million Bits to be asking her questions right now!”

“It is not her fault, Twilight.” Cadance put a leg over Naminé’s shoulder. “This is what we wanted to see. We simply don’t know enough yet to make complete sense of this.”

“I don’t know about that.” Shining pipped in. “It seems perfectly clear to me.”

“No!” Twilight ignored him. “This is what you wanted to see! All I wanted to see was whatever caused Princess Celestia to hide the griffon empire and that mess with the sun! We are wasting time watching unverifiable nonsense that might as well all be Naminé’s imagination feeding us things that she believes!”

Applejack’s scolding at their bickering went ignored when Rainbow Dash pointed and yelled that someone was approaching. The fiery creature never noticed it, at least not at first, but the ponies with Twilight silenced, staring at the approaching being. The only thing that held Twilight in place was that she remembered they were not really there.

Even if she initially did not seem to have noticed, the fiery alicorn let her flaming ears drop and her eyes hardened with a dangerous increase in the glow of her mane. Even as her fiery mane and tail grew brighter and more violent, the creature herself barely acknowledged the griffoness’ presence as she prowled across the opening.

“Just what do you think you are doing?”

Her size alone chilled Twilight’s guts. She was larger than Grigory, bulkier than his soldier friend, and her stormy gray eyes held more malice than the princess had found in his wife. A massive black and white griffoness, squandering anger in her demeaning tone, she stopped by the muddy pond and glared down at it before turning to the fiery alicorn.

“This is hopeless. Your soul is not functioning properly, and you are not intelligent enough. You will cause these creatures only pain and suffering if you can even animate them.” She growled-screeched at the alicorn, but no response came from the alicorn of untethered magic other than a stubborn frown. She held her ladle with her hooves and stirred harder.

“Fine.” The angry griffoness offered a conceited smile. “I will be here, waiting for you to grow some sense.”

The sloshing sounds of the ladle and the eventual popping from the now tutti-frutti bubbles punctuated the omnipresent whispering of the mighty trees after she silenced. The alicorn’s quiet laboring and the griffoness’ conceited, silent smile complemented the ponies’ bewildered confusion.

“What exactly are we seeing?” Fluttershy asked Naminé, walking closer to her among the watching ponies.

“I… I’m not sure. I can’t know for certain how far in the past this vision is, but this looks like our creation. And it makes sense that the princesses are the only ones that could give access to these memories, as ponies didn’t exist yet. But I don’t see anyone that could be Luna, Cadance, or Twilight. Only Celestia and that monster. The whole spell is weird and not working like I expected.”

“Is this… the Harpy?” Cadance walked closer to the griffoness as Naminé confirmed. She was as tall as princess Celestia and so much bulkier. Cadance held her wings up and grimaced at the creature. She looked like she could snap Cadance’s neck like a twig.

“We know Creation happened in cycles, and that the griffons ruled over the first cycle.” Twilight said with a pensive frown. “By the Harpy. Princess Celestia told us this much, even if she was scarce in the details. There was a conflict, and our… let’s call them creators, wrestled Creation away from the griffons’ creators. Although whatever happened may be more complex than we can imagine.”

“Well, I ain’t ever pictured this!” Applejack pointed at the bubbly, rainbow-stained pond. Pinkie snorted and giggled. The others just watched. Not very helpful either.

“I’m sure we are bound to figure this out if we pay attention.” Cadance added with a waving plea for patience.

Just in time too, as the eager alicorn made of light and fire fished a pony from inside the muddy pond. She scooped them up with her obnoxious ladle and a mirthful, childish glee. Twilight and the others crowded around the scene to look at the adult mare, who seemed different, but a pony nonetheless. As the overeager alicorn brushed away the mud, she revealed the pony’s pink coat, a pair of wings, and a messy purple mane. She even had a cute double lightning cutie mark.

When the griffoness walked through them, the ponies backed away with varying levels of fright. To Twilight, it turned into a rightful anger when the griffon monstress shoved the alicorn aside and grabbed the pony by the neck. She was so lethargic she mercifully never even noticed what was happening, but the alicorn’s distress and the griffoness’ dismissal of it infuriated the princess. Rainbow grumbled something too, but the fury in the griffoness’ eyes made Twilight’s back crawl.

She could see it in her eyes, the seething rage. A tense moment passed while Twilight feared the griffoness was going to murder the pony right there. Her eyes hardened with a burning wrath, consuming her, edging her on. Her fingers, crowned with talons as terrible as daggers, pressed on the pony’s neck. They trembled like the battlefield under opposing armies.

After a tense, breathless moment, she let the pony go. Rather than hurting it, the great black and white monster turned to the alicorn, speaking with a derisive tone even as the fury never left her scowling brow. “Well, it seems you are not a complete failure.”

“This thing seems capable of maintaining homeostatic balance, at least. But you will fail, and you could see it, were you sufficiently intelligent.”

Her words went ignored. The alicorn resumed her task of cleaning the pony after making sure she was not hurt. Almost as though she had forgotten the griffoness was there, she busied herself with another pony to scoop up from the pond. And then another. And another. It was a lengthy process, but she picked up all twelve of them, both males and females, in equal numbers and cleaned them. Meanwhile, the griffoness shoved away one of the grazing ponies that had come too close.

Time passed, and Twilight barely noticed it through the lengthy and tense… Minutes? Hours? How long had they been watching the magical alicorn of fire and magic cleaning the ponies under the maleficent stare of the griffoness? Maybe the expectation she might do something vile at any second kept them in rapt attention.

It never happened. The griffoness remained quiet and watchful until the Not-Celestia alicorn herded her ponies along, under the shade of the giant trees. Call it a hunch, but a growing fear grasped Twilight’s gut. Tighter and tighter, with every step they walked on the damp forest floor. The others showed no sign of such apprehension, trying to make sense of it all by talking among themselves instead of Twilight’s thoughtful observation.

The chaotic wasteland, with its sky of mad colors, hazardous magical rain, and unwelcoming emptiness, waited beyond the edge of the forest. Twilight could not know what the others were thinking, but to her, a problem was patently obvious. She was sure the griffoness saw it too, but the not-Celestia alicorn seemed to be none the wiser. And that was important, because the Celestia she knew would be much sharper. Then again, maybe Twilight was misjudging the creature capable of creating ponies out of a pool of mud.

Under Twilight’s apprehensive watch, there she was, the big dumb alicorn urging her little ponies onward out of the island of sanity under the trees. Past the sparse last blades of grass were gray rock, black sand, flashes of unyielding magic rain and desolation. Understandably, the first of the group hesitated even as she gently edged them on.

Twilight’s companions watched in silence while Starlight Glimmer and Naminé both kept shifting their eyes between the unfolding scene and Twilight. Unsecure foals, expecting her to do something about it until Naminé finally voiced her concerns.

“This doesn’t look right,” she grimaced. “Whenever I see this… Every time I’ve seen our ancestors leaving this place, we are much better prepared. When I was here, when I left Green Harbor, we had animals, foaling mares and tools, garments. I don’t understand.”

Starlight Glimmer nodded. Twilight said nothing despite the others expecting her to. She simply watched the ponies taking the first tentative steps into the cracked stone and wet sable sand. Not unlike herself and the two others, Twilight’s remaining friends also seemed apprehensive, done with their chattering and watching in silence. Waiting for something they didn’t know what it was.

When it happened, it came out of nowhere, unannounced, and just as random as the chaos that dominated the landscape. It might as well have been a prank from Discord before Fluttershy, so cruel and capricious it was.

The steady stone shook and fractured like the scales of an awakened dragon. Fissures opened on convulsing rock and the violence threw the jagged black bones of the earth to the sky. The ground broke, and a fissure tore the landscape apart. It happened so fast Twilight barely registered the surprised neighs and shocked whinnies. The smell of a million rotten eggs filled the air and jets of gasses screamed from the fissures. It was probably the incandescent impacts of magical rainfall which caused the explosion. A flashfire scorched the exposed sides of the trees and blazing jets shot from the ground.

They panicked and never found their wits again. Their creator’s desperate brays were powerless before the terror which took them. Instead of running for the safety of the forest, the flames, even if not as destructive or intense, sent them stampeding in the opposite direction. The gut wrenching screams and blood chilling thuds came next as their panic sent them hurling over the ravine, opened by the earthquake.

Twilight and her group of ponies stared dumbfounded at the settling pebbles and fiery streams with the cracked open ground beyond. Other than the shriek of the burning gasses, the prevailing sound was wailing and sobbing while the fiery alicorn paced from one side to the other. Her face of shaped sunlight and flames was not conducive to facial expressions, but Twilight recognized the horror in the purple lights she had for eyes.

Then it was the ruffling feathers and laughter that made the purple alicorn turn back. The giant griffoness hugged her stomach and howled with laughter so hard she lost her breath.

“I knew they would underperform, but I expected a disease. Perhaps a long famine as they failed to infuse the land with the magic of Life. But not even I could have foreseen that they would fail in such a phenomenal way!”

Twilight frowned. Her ears filtered out the indecent guffawing and shocked comments. She reviewed what had happened in her mind’s eyes. Even if they had not made it worse, they simply didn’t know what to do. Maybe she was overthinking, but it was too capricious for pure chance. If there was a point to be made, Fate had delivered it with unmatched bluntness and effectiveness. Too much of a point being made, even if Twilight didn’t know by whom or what. But it delighted the griffoness, and Twilight hated her for it.

Maybe the semblance to Celestia had finally beaten through, but whatever that creature was, her pain hurt Twilight too. And she realized that as her primordial ponies lacked preparation to deal with panic and chaos, neither was their goddess prepared to understand that was not her fault. But that did not stop the griffonness when the mad, twisting colors in the sky vanished and a slithering roar crept through the firmament.

The light was gone and the shimmering wasteland of barely contained magic died as though the very foundations of reality stopped working. The flaming streams of gas dwindled into nothing, and the warm damp of the forest ceased. Cold crept into her legs, like the vanishing magic took it along with the life of the trees. They withered and died as fast as they had grown, like the magic which had reversed. It felt eerily conspicuous.

Ponies gasped, and the griffoness surveyed the sky, guiding Twilight to the gaping maw of twisting light swallowing almost all the firmament. It cast a ghostly, ominous light over the mighty chimeric creature. Time stopped like it did in the nightmare aboard her airship, but Princess Luna never came to rescue Twilight from the fading whispers of a dying world.

Amid confused and shocked comments from her friends and Naminé, Twilight’s attention remained on the alicorn and the griffoness. Creation slowly undid itself as motes of self-destructing matter shone and floated to the sky. Her fingers with terrible talons rose, and she offered her open paw to the alicorn. But what truly grasped Twilight’s attention and made her exhale a gasp was that the pristine white of sunlight that made the alicorn had turned into an undefinable negative light. Her form swallowed the light like the devouring emptiness above and her flaming mane made from the corona of their sun had turned into a harsh energy of unknowable quality akin to the gaping maw of light from the monstrosity in the sky.

Twilight had to remind herself it was all a dream. A vision. Merely a glimpse into the past of an event she had no control over. The best she could do was learn from it.

The others recanted away on shy steps and flat ears while the griffoness’ voice cried above the weeping of ending magic. “Oh my, creating a world is not as easy as you had thought, is it?”

Her commanding tone fit her fearsome obsidian beak, and her gleeful smile mirrored the mirth in her eyes. “Oh, do not look at me like that. You knew it was going to be like this and could not rule over Creation merely because you understand the intricacies of the flesh. You know nothing of the myriad pieces of the mind. It goes deeper than hormones and feedback loops, you naïve fool.”

“Come.” Her smile twisted dangerously as the fiery hoof approached her paw.

But the alicorn stopped.

“Cease this madness,” the griffoness insisted. “Even if there were two of you, you would fail. You are a malfunctioning piece of wanton magic and cannot do anything by yourself. Once again, at the Edge of Creation, you can fix your misbehaving tantrum. Come with me, and I will allow you to return to your place in the sky. I will not even punish you for what you did.”

But the alicorn never laid her hoof on the griffoness’ paw. Each one’s scowl mirrored in the other’s hardened eyes. But the griffoness pulled the corner of her beak and spoke with a threatening hiss.

“I am not asking.”

She received a petulant neigh for response. A sickly red washed over the world when the alicorn flared her wings and the immense monster in the sky responded with a glare of its own. The ground shook again, but this time it broke apart and undid itself in a last explosion of sparks. It dominated Twilight eyes, and her friends screamed along with the griffoness and the world itself.

Pony OS v2.0 - Development Hell

Twilight barely understood what happened next. An eye-searing flash, quaking ground, and the brightest sunrise against the colors of insanity that once again had claimed the sky. Grass, then bushes, and then trees grew a thousand years in a couple of seconds as sunlight filtered through the canopy of the reborn forest. Before she knew it, chirping birds and the rustling leaves greeted the ponies. The damp warmth of the forest returned. A distant memory of the dead and cold wasteland vanished away like something that never existed to begin with.

“Oh, my gosh! Is everypony alright?” Twilight cried, despite immediately finding them exactly where they stood moments ago. All sat on their haunches and frantically hoofing at themselves before they calmed down.

“I think we’re all fine!” Naminé sighed like she had let go of a burden of straw.

“What the hay was that?” Rainbow yelled at Twilight, just as more complaining arose from the others.

“Girls!” Fluttershy’s cry silenced them, just as she pointed at the black and white griffoness standing with them among the trees.

Her face mirrored the shock and confusion from Twilight’s friends while she, too, sat on her haunches and patted herself several times before her frown shifted into annoyance. Landing one paw on the ground for support, she massaged her brow and let her crown of black feathers fold behind her head with a groan.

Only then, Twilight understood they had skimmed over the initial events of the creation of the world. A new cycle had begun, and they stood before the Harpy. Just as she came to the same conclusion with a proper griffon-like expression.

“Stupid grass-eating nag…”

Starlight yelled at the others to follow as the griffoness started walking. It was a good thing they did because Twilight missed her cue to do so. They followed as the Harpy beelined among the thick trees and scared tiny animals out of her way. She walked with an angry sureness, as though she knew the path by heart. The others followed, but that was a touch scary, and it showed in Twilight’s frown.

“Are you okay, sugarcube?”

A soft grimace escaped, but Twilight smiled and chuckled at her friend. “Yes. Just a little shaken.”

“It sure was something. Just starting over like that.”

Satisfied at the smile and response she got back from Applejack, Twilight focused on not tripping on the roots and soft terrain. At the back of her mind, she kept reminding herself of just how freaky it was that she, too, knew exactly where to go. Even without the Harpy leading the way. But she said nothing, as there was already enough weirdness in that vision of theirs. It was probably some creepy side-effect of Naminé’s spell.

Along the way, Twilight wondered if Naminé’s own perception of the passing of time dragged theirs along. That would explain the initial process rushing past them as a new cycle started. Maybe even their placement in the newly created universe, right by the griffoness. Or maybe Twilight was overthinking. Regardless, she did as the others did and followed the Harpy.

A short walk took the ponies and griffoness to a clearing past the bushes and trees. The Harpy stopped and cocked her head just as the sun gleamed on her scowling visage, which became an angry growl.

“What in the Scorch did she do now?” she cried.

Instead of a meadow, a palace made of milky-white crystal occupied the clearing. It seemed out of place, surrounded by the forest with roots and grass growing through the cracks in the surrounding foundation. Something told Twilight there was more to it than the eye could see. Literally. Like a metaphor, or an allegory. A hunch, or an old memory coming back, she preferred the former. The latter was too scary. Regardless, the palace seemed more ‘magical’ than any usual building in her world already suffused with magic. Almost like it belonged in a dream, or somepony’s imagination. The griffoness didn’t wait for Twilight to examine the place. The Harpy complained under her breath and started following a path of crystal blocks towards the building.

Twilight and the others meant to follow but stopped when Cadance gasped and flared her wings. “I know this place! I mean… Kind of. It is the same palace I saw in my dream!”

“Are you sure?” Twilight turned to her. “Your description of it included a lake of ‘shiny pink stuff’”.

“Yeah… Not exactly. Some details are off,” Cadance responded with a frustrated pout.

“Is it the same or not?” Rainbow frowned.

“I thought the spell was supposed to show us events in the past! Not dreams from the princess’ noggin!” Applejack accused.

“Memories. Recollection.” Naminé raised her snout like the earth pony had criticized her work ethic. “We are witnessing memories of the princesses’ souls. It is just weird that I usually experience these as though I am living them, not watching them. But other than that, the spell is working as it should. And I can say I definitely never saw this place!”

“It’s doing something it never did, but also working as it should?” Pinkie asked with a confused frown while Applejack raised her eyebrow.

“Maybe this is the creation of that place the princess saw?” Rarity offered in a conciliatory, mildly annoyed tone, with Starlight Glimmer following her lead.

“We know it was a mental representation of the self. A place where all the things that made a creature became that creature. It sounds reasonable that we would witness its creation when watching the creation of our kind. Uh… Right?”

While Applejack and Naminé started arguing semantics, Fluttershy kept trying to get them to stop. The argument being ‘this is made-up nonsense’ versus ‘this is an interpretation of something deeper and sacred’, Starlight Glimmer had more useful insight to offer. “I wonder if all we are seeing is actually the goddess’ interpretation of what she was doing.”

“Assuming Naminé can see her memories in you and Cadance, of course. Or, maybe, this is our own interpretation of it. Maybe this is because the spell is working as it should, but Twilight and Cadance have special souls.”

“But they aren’t here!” Rainbow said. “It’s just the evil griffon lady and Princess Celestia.”

“What if it is all a bunch of imaginary cuckoo nonsense?” the farm pony insisted.

“Technically, nothing is real. Everything you see, feel, and touch are your interpretations of what your senses tell you. I can imagine magic to create living creatures, but if this place is supposed to be inside our heads. Maybe this vision is a combination of inside and outside.” Starlight explained, waving her hoof at them. “That we have access to because Twilight and Cadance were part of the process. Somehow. In a way that we just don’t understand yet.”

“Don’t go scientific on me, Counselor Missy!”

“We don’t have time to argue!” Shining Armor pointed at the griffoness walking down the path.

A hasty walk took all of them to the palace’s grand entrance. A gigantic crystal portal mimicking luxurious grand doors of wood and decorative panels. They shone with their own light, which pulsated like a heart. The griffoness sat and looked up while they opened like they recognized her. A comforting warm breeze escaped as the ponies entered after her, and then the doors closed by themselves only after all of them had entered. It put a bug behind Twilight’s ears. A grimace escaped her, but she kept her mouth shut.

Inside, Cadance told them again it differed from her dream. Instead of a corridor leading into a central hall, the latter filled the entire structure. It resulted in an impossibly tall room within impossibly thin walls. It was far from empty. A water mirror took most of the floor, surrounded by white marble and a strand of light rising from it, reaching all the way to a miniature sun at the top. Or a glorious beam of light, not unlike the summer sun peeking through the clouds to shine over a serene lake.

Twilight and her friends stopped by the entrance. There was a granularity, details within the beam of light which escaped a first, non-committing stare. It was so much more than a wobbly ray of luminescence. As her eyes focused, the beam of light bared itself to Twilight. It unfolded before her eyes with a myriad of threads within a thick bundle. They danced with each other, each made of more threads, all connecting and disconnecting on their way down to the water mirror.

Twilight blinked. It was so much more than a pretty light show. Each of the strands of light held a distinct meaning, and her eyes singled out one of them. It rushed to the forefront of her thoughts like curtains opened too fast in the morning. A wave of nausea stole the up and down from her and kicked her in the stomach. Where did the floor go? The knowledge which filled her left no place for it.

That was the Fifth Strand of the Sah. She also knew what the Sah was. More than a strange name, it was the part of the soul which distributed mana to the rest. Why would she know such a thing? That eluded her as much as her heart quickened at the realization that she knew things she should not know. Things like that the Fifth Strand of the Sah connected to several strands in the Sah Cluster, and others, carrying a vital function in regulating all the other clusters.

There were no fields in the formal scientific knowledge which explored such subjects. There were no books which spoke of the connection between the soul and the Pool of Souls and could explain that the Fifth Strand of the Sah was the first to connect as a soul was summoned from the Pool, and the second to last to break when their body died. Much less that the last was the Primary Strand of the Ka, which would tether the soul back to the Pool, only to disconnect when the journey was finished, and the soul would dissolve into the Pool.

Her head throbbed and her jaw hung open, but no air seemed to fill her lungs enough to fill her need for air. The flood of recalled details would not stop!

She also knew necromantic spells would exploit a vulnerability created by the former to penetrate the ‘Sekhem Barrier’, which was supposed to give form to the soul and isolate it from the permeating magical energies, much like the skin of the body. That was what creatures using necromantic spells were doing, even if no such details could be found in the forbidden knowledge once found in King Sombra’s cache. Even Lord Tirek exploited such a mechanism, but he would not know.

Such attacks would damage the Sah, irreparably injure the soul, and disrupt its connection to the Pool of Souls. It was the first step in creating an undead being. Of course, further corruption would follow as such spells found different mechanisms to infiltrate the Akh and destroy the cognitive processes of a now critically damaged soul. Nightmares came to mind, and they employed a similar process, but they were irrational beings and again, no such knowledge should exist.

A scream was the only thing that made it stop. It derailed her train of thoughts. Silenced the voice in her head that summoned facts and presented them like an intrusive butler. When she came to, she was on the floor, breathing so fast her lungs hurt. Shaking so violently, she had pulled her limbs before she even noticed.

That was not real. It could not be real. But it was, and it hit so much harder, that she knew not only it was real, but she understood it. And she understood it was locked away from the mundane, forbidden to the eyes of the mortals. And that was more than insane.

Cadance looked down at her with wide eyes and a hanging jaw, speaking softly, petrified in place, not even daring to lower herself to talk. “You felt it too… It makes sense.”

“What in the flaming haystacks was that?” Applejack cried while Shining helped Twilight stand. Her friends mimicked her shock, except for Naminé and Shining Armor, who showed only confusion.

“Wait!” Cadance cried. “You guys too?”

“What are you talking about?” Worry crept into Shining Armor’s voice.

“There was something in it,” Fluttershy whispered, her wings fluttering with distress as she stepped away from the beam of light. “There is something in it! It told me something, but I didn’t understand what it said!”

While the others agreed with her, and added their own repetitive perspectives, their words merely confused Naminé and her confused wince showed it.

“Oh, my gosh… They can’t see it, Twilight.” Cadance gasped. “Shining Armor and Naminé can’t see it!”

“It’s pretty and kinda inspiring, but it’s just an ol’ beam of light out of the sun,” Naminé moaned. “What’s scaring you ponies so much?”

“Never mind that!” Applejack cried. “What is that weird thing?!”

“What are you talking about?” Shining shook Cadance in his hooves. “You’re freaking me out!”

“It’s a representation of… It’s a pony soul!” Twilight said. “A prototype. I can see all the little threads that make it up and connect to the… To the… The Thing!”

“Wait, that’s what it is?” Pinkie drooped her ears. “Why does it feel so weird to look at it?”

“It is as though I have seen this before.” Rarity examined the beam of light with a quizzical frown. “At the same time, I feel like I’ve never seen it at all!”

“The sun?” Naminé asked, letting her ears flop. “Yeah. It looks like the sun is hanging from the ceiling.”

“Not the sun! The Pool of Souls!” Twilight yelled and turned her eyes from the twirling tendrils of light before she lost herself in it again. “I mean, it is the sun! It is the Pool of Souls! And it is the sun! And it’s all connected! And we can see it! And you can’t! Oh, my gosh!”

“But why can we see it?!” Rainbow Dash hovered in the air, pointing at the ball of light at the top. “I’m not some freaky alicorn weirdo! And how do you just know what it is? What the hay is going on?”

Twilight knew the answer. It burned at her throat and a part of her begged for her to tell them. They had a right to know, but she refrained. It was too weird. Too impossible. Looking back at the strands of light, there it was. The most wondrous magic, the mechanisms, bits and bobs of a soul. It was the framework of Life, and she knew it like it was a summer vacation project. The inner workings in the deepest fathoms of Life, forbidden to mortal eyes. She shook her head and held it in her hooves. It was insane. It was madness.

Regardless of Twilight’s turmoil, Cadance scrutinized the beam of light. Her eyes shifted excitedly. She tilted her head in curiosity. Shining Armor, next to her, looked one way and another in confusion. Twilight wanted to smack her, like just looking at that thing was dangerous. But Cadance didn’t care. A grimace slowly took over Twilight’s expression and a deep breath dragged on. She could not decide what she really wanted to do… Look at that thing, and surrender, or yank Cadance’s eyes from it.

Rarity’s hooves, smelling of orchids, brought Twilight to focus on her eyes. “Calm down, darling. I imagine this is difficult for you. I am a bit freaked out myself. But whatever we are witnessing, whatever the meaning of what we are experiencing… Understanding it can only help us going forward. We came here with a mission, and it has become patently obvious it is important we see it through. What we are witnessing is wondrous. Confusing too, and a touch weird. But it is mostly wondrous. It is the beginning of our kind. Whatever we see here… Our bond can only strengthen.”

No! No! She didn’t understand! But how could Twilight even explain? Letting go and holding her feelings to herself was just easier. Even if she appreciated that Rarity meant to help. In the end, Rarity’s words helped Twilight focus on her friend and not on that… Thing.

Nor on Cadance’s judgmental stare. Her hardened eyes startled Twilight, but she did not judge the other princess herself. Their journey had not been easy on Cadance, and she had voiced her disillusionment with the lack of information from Celestia and Luna since her dream. The pink princess would rather embrace all that and step back into the world, ready to claim a new place and demand just treatment. At least what she believed to be just. Twilight’s ears flopped. Maybe she was a coward, but the title of goddess did not seem to fit little Twilight Sparkle.

“This is not half bad.” The Harpy’s thoughtful chirps distracted them, especially once they turned to a haughty, mocking chuckle.

She pranced around the water mirror, looking up at the beam of light, as absorbed with it as the ponies were, before she finally turned to the alicorn. The magical beast had been standing there, but nocreature had paid her much attention. In fact, only then had Twilight even noticed she was there.

What they saw surprised Twilight, Cadance, their friends, and the Harpy alike. But her cat-like scared jump and raised hackles beat all the half-amazed, half-shocked stares from the others. In retrospect, Twilight kicked herself because of how obvious the changes actually were. She even rolled her eyes at how silly and obnoxious it was.

Instead of white, the magical alicorn showed the oranges and azures of the failing lights from day and night combined in an impossible magical dusk. It was an alicorn alright, and she had two sets of silver-streaked golden wings of flames on display, shedding magic into the air like a mirage, playing tricks with their eyes. And on the matter of eyes, the creature had four of them. Bronze and silver, bright like the distant, unfathomable stars and hot like the sun. Gone were the mellow, innocent eyes of a doe. Those unfathomable wells, overflowing with plumes of magic, held intelligence behind them.

The ponies remained where they stood, awestruck, watching the renewed magical beast. Their amazement turned to grimaces and gasps when it walked with the ungainly steps of a newborn foal. Even the Harpy cringed and retreated a paw from the floor, so ungainly the sight was.

A thick pane of glass covered the surface of the water mirror, and the alicorn walked on it with tottering steps. When she stopped, she let her head hang from the neck, looking down at it. Her horn of magical fire waved and flickered like living flames as the creature directed her magic at the mirror below.

The griffoness was not impressed, much less amused. In fact, her tone reminded Twilight—and Shining too, she was sure—of the tone her mother used when she returned home, and the miscalculating siblings had not cleaned their mess.

Honestly, her reaction was the sanest thing to happen in the last few days.

“What madness is this?” the Harpy yelled. “What have you done?”

“This is the prototype of the Mind Construct!” Not only did the alicorn’s expression and mannerisms fail to meet her peppy tone, but the creature spoke with eerie combined voices. Like two entities sharing a single body. It was so bizarre that the Harpy winced again.

Twilight twisted her muzzle, desperately telling herself those were most certainly not Celestia and Luna mushed up in a single eldritch being. Its mannerisms were completely different, more like an artificial construct. More than a foal, a golem. Even then, the alicorn’s presence was majestic whenever it wasn’t trying to move, and her magical aura was a thing of awe. One that definitely fit, though.

The Harpy cocked her head and stared blankly for a second before she could summon up the words. “I know what this is! What I mean is… this!” the griffoness yelped again. She flared her wings and her crown of black feathers. “Did… did you just talk? How is… How did you do this?”

“We don’t understand you.” The alicorn’s stare turned blank as she awkwardly raised a fiery hoof from the glass floor. “We are sisters. We are Sol. We are Luna.”

The Harpy mumbled a couple of words before she could form her next proper sentence. “You are not a lifeform capable of having a sibling, you bumbling idiot! You do not share parenthood, have no parents! Only rogue magic with delusions of sentience! How did this happen?! How are you talking?! Are you even aware that you are literally two entities in one body?!”

“No,” the weird alicorn said plainly and tilted her head. Twilight had to admit she had a certain creepy charm. “We are Luna. We are Sol. We theorize. It seems the new Cycle of Creation has changed us. Our failure has informed the creation of a new cycle in which we are two parts in one. We are body. And we are mind. We are Sun and Moon. We are instinct and we are reason. We are two halves of self-awareness.”

“Shut up!” the Harpy screeched and held her head. “I am having a headache just listening to you abomination talking! You do not know what you are saying!”

“What are you doing here?” the alicorn let go of her magicking and glared. Or tried to. Her facial expression never met the proper frown and intensity that her tone called for. “Intelligence is heavily taxing on biological systems, and we are busy calibrating the prototype.”

The conversation ceased to be interesting after devolving into accusations and petty bickering. With annoyed frowns, Twilight and the others turned their attention to the water mirror and the rest of the room. An eerie anticipation hit her, just as she looked down at it, but this time, she was ready.

The more Twilight stared at the mirror, the more she saw the depth of the details beneath the glass where they stood. Unsurprisingly, given what she had seen in the beam of light, but also much less traumatic since she expected something similar. The first thing she saw was the double lightning cutie mark emblazoned on the glass, and beneath it was indeed a water mirror. It had a proper curved bottom, and the correct depth, but Twilight didn’t see her reflection looking back at her from the mirror. Even if what she saw never punched her in the same way again, her stomach still dropped at the sight, at the meaning behind what she saw.

Inside the water mirror was a sea of stars, deeper than the Mareana Trench, filled with dancing specks of light. Each shiny dot extended itself and touched another. A complex map of intertwined, connecting, and disconnecting motes of light. Bright specks of radiance reaching, jumping from one another, and another, never stopping.

“Pretty!”, as Pinkie declared, but it was much more than that.

With each passing instant, Twilight found more details to focus on and let her eyes, and who knows what else, guide her on this time. Each dancing light became a collection of glyphs. Luminous, scratchy griffon letters dancing within the specks of light. They changed, connected, and reformed in an ever-changing tapestry of intricately connected units, each with their own collection of symbols and shapes.

Again, a myriad of details came to her thoughts as the symbolic depth and the meaning of it all unveiled itself from the deepest reaches of her own memories. Not unlike what she experienced before, but her calm mind eased the intruding memories into understanding.

The literal train of thoughts revealed its gears and sprockets. Secrets like growing grass: chains of connected roots supporting the blades of grass above ground. The emergent processes of the conscious mind never saw the former. Only the final sparking connections, strong enough to raise, came to fixate themselves above the rest. And with each one, their own tendrils below the threshold reached into the depths and brought other processes. Responding emotions brought forth physical sensations, and then everything began again, in an unending cycle, and that was the mind making itself.

It was like the old crochet art her grandma used to make. A collection of seemingly chaotic and pointless lines underneath became a clear image on the other side. Constantly changing, however. Much like the zoopraxiscope, recently invented by mister Mull Berry, giving the illusion of developing and changing images, while hiding the actual mechanism that made it happen. Presenting the mind with the results as it so cleverly thought itself the agent of such insights.

Rather than an eldritch monstrosity never to be witnessed, it was knowledge to learn. Twilight stared into the abyss, and not only did the abyss stare back at her; it told her everything that she was and that she held no mysteries. The beauty of it never diminished, as to the enlightened mind, understanding made it more real than the fictional creations of, ironically, that very system.

A cycle, intentionally or not, much like Creation itself, always strengthening what worked, learning and refining. The meaning of it all reached her and her jaw hung slack at the imperfect perfection she witnessed.

“We will now succeed where we have failed before.” The dual alicorn declared, both proudly and categorically at the same time.

“Will you now?” The Harpy’s grin failed to get an external reaction from the other, but it gave Twilight chills as the griffoness walked onto the glass and her talons clicked at it. In a moment of panic, it dawned on Twilight just how fragile that system was.

Harsh gray eyes scanned the lights under the glass and Twilight, now joined by Applejack and Rarity, observed the griffoness. It didn’t appear she meant to destroy it, and while the Harpy was busy, Twilight let her eyes wander upward to the surrounding room. Outside the palace, the walls showed nothing but pristine crystal. Inside it was another story, literally.

The walls held colorful and unorthodox murals of multicolored glass. After the familiar pony aesthetic style, each one represented one of the major systems of a pony’s body with archetypal imagery. A skeleton dominated one with images of cut bones filled with red and yellow ligaments. As informative as it was simple. Another showed the trajectory of food once swallowed, complete with all the annexes to the digestive tube and the complex choreography of reflexes and autonomous movements. A rampant pegasus pony with a luscious coat and flowing mane showed off her coat. It was the same pink and purple mare with a double lightning cutie mark.

A triptych showed a pony’s nervous system, with all its ramifications, complete with separate images for each of the three tribes—no alicorns—complete with the specialized structures required by the horn and the wings. Not to mention that the next showed their muscles represented by a proud pony showing its mighty legs with a kick, or the powerful muscles that powered the wings. Genitourinary systems for male and female were two versions of the same pony posed like they were in one of ‘those’ magazines. Twilight doubted the weird dual alicorn meant it in such a way. It was merely a symbol, like a proud representation of her… Their… Of its creation.

But all that was at a first glance, like everything in that place. The most important were not the representations themselves, it was the meaning they held. They morphed and shifted along with strings of magical notations, alluding to all which would be possible. They didn’t show precise ideas, but ranges of possibilities. Impossible images filled with magic and possibility, rather than precise meanings. The bones of a pegasus were lighter, hollower, against the strong hammers that were the earth pony’s limbs, after all.

“What do these weird symbols mean?” Shining mumbled, like the others bending his neck to look upward at the mural with the blood vessels sprouting from the heart. His words came with no surprise at all to her, following all the drama about the pony soul on display.

“It’s just a weird jumble of symbols.” Naminé frowned at them. Twilight merely nodded that it was reasonable.

“I can see a heart and a bunch of veins.” Pinkie frowned at the two. “You know, from school.”

Rainbow pointed at another. “Yeah. This one is about muscles and stuff.”

“You two don’t see it either?” Cadance frowned at the two, and they confirmed it with confused nods. Her hoof clicked twice at the mirror. “What do you see?”

“I see myself…” Shining told her, but Twilight doubted he meant in the profound way she thought.

“Ah… What does this mean?” Pinkie made a worried frown, but the Harpy’s outburst distracted them again.

She sat on her haunches, on the glass above the mirror, so her forelimbs would be free, and she made wild, angry gestures with them. “You are out of your mind! You literally copied my memetic architecture! Even the engram codex is the same!”

“You give yourself far too much merit.” The dual alicorn responded, walking around the mirror with its set of four eyes scanning the sea of stars below. Eventually her magic shot down and changed something so infinitesimally small Twilight could only imagine what she did.

After a short walk, the magical alicorn stopped and glared at the griffoness with her two sets of eyes. “That you have locked the initial parameters of the magic of Life, and those of consciousness, means little. It would have happened one way, or another, given sufficient time.”

The griffoness’ eyes flared with anger. “I created you! Without my work, none of this would exist!”

“False.” The dual alicorn told her coldly. “You have created the need for us. We are the creation of Harmony, and we are the will of Harmony manifested in the world. Much as the laws of physics do not resent the wings which fly, and the bird is free to soar, so were you to create and I am free to give it flesh and mind.”

“I laid the foundation!” The Harpy closed her fists. For a second a sad frown peered through her scowl. “All of this is mine, obnoxious nag!”

“That does not grant you ownership. And even if it did, it was taken from you and given to us. All you created was pain and suffering. We will bring joy and Harmony.”

While Pinkie grimaced with a ‘sheesh’ and most stares judged the griffoness, Twilight found it curious that at no moment she attacked the alicorn or her creation. Was there something keeping her from doing so? Twilight doubted it was out of decency or respect.

“My children will forget me.”

“That is your own fault.” The alicorn held the griffoness in its uncanny four-eyed stare. Her face showed no sympathy, and neither did her tone. “They must distance themselves from us, else their ability to self-determinate will never flourish, for they are drawn to us.”

“You are talking about yourself!” The griffoness opened her forelimbs in frustration. “There was never anything keeping me from living with my children!”

“Your insistent presence on the world has stunted its capacity to fully evolve. Our magic is too powerful. And those are the reasons our Little Ponies must forget us once they are ready, and so should you have done with your children. Free will is their birthright.”

“Free will?” To Twilight’s surprise, the griffoness laughed. First an explosive, stunned guffaw, and then a hearty laughter. “Free will? It is an illusion. Even to my children, it gives them a sense of self, and a motor for their higher reasoning abilities. You are wasting our time. To discourse about it is to delve into the unfathomable intricacies of Chaos.”

“True.” The alicorn agreed. “But then, the same applies to us. You have gifted your griffons that which Harmony has gifted you with. We are saving Creation from your sanctimoniousness.”

They made a moment of silence and Twilight almost felt like congratulating the bizarre alicorn before the griffoness smiled. It was a conceited and arrogant smile. “You lack the understanding to give it to them. I alone know how to bestow it.”

The alicorn had again turned its four-eyed stare to the sea of stars inside the mirror. “You misunderstand us. We cannot give it to them, but we need not. We will give ourselves to them, and enshrine ourselves inside them, and we will guide them from our place in the sky.”

“That makes little sense.” The Harpy frowned like she was staring at a defective machine with a broken gear.

“We will share their first steps, and we will teach them. And once they have learned, we will leave them to think for themselves. We are ‘just a string of magic’, as you have put it. But that shall be sufficient.”

The Harpy almost said something. Then, hiding her face from the alicorn, she turned it to Twilight. A hanging beak, and eyes opened wide. She made silent words, and whatever she was going to say, she restrained herself not to. Those elegant griffon fingers clenched and trembled. Her own talons almost pierced her skin. The subtly quickened breath and her restrained crown of feathers showed more than she wanted to give. Her sagged wings were almost like a pony’s drooped ears. The unfocused stare that refused to stay still. Twilight saw all of those and she knew them very well.

In an instant, and with a gasp, it all shifted back into her arrogant, all-knowing sneer before she turned back to the four-eyed alicorn and declared with triumphant glee. “You are dooming them to failure and wasting time.”

“Fortunately, we believe time is not in any shortage,” the alicorn responded, barely minding the griffoness anymore. “And we disagree with you, anyway. What are you even doing here? We destroyed you.”

The griffoness, sitting on her haunches, folded her forelimbs and raised her beak. “Apparently you cannot do anything right.”

“We don’t believe you did particularly well, either.” The alicorn replied, all cold pettiness.

Their exchange became so childish, Twilight and Applejack both rolled their eyes. The others took the discussion more seriously, which was not to mean Twilight did not. She simply saw needless bickering when they might as well be working together. Twilight sighed: the creation of her world had been reduced to petty drama. Yet, something was missing, and Twilight could not put her hoof on it, and before she could identify it, Applejack approached her.

“This birdbrain don’t know nothing.” They watched the two still arguing back and forth on absurd cosmology and hermeneutical details of the cosmos. “She’s as confused as this goof.”

Twilight nodded in agreement, while Pinkie added her opinion from afar. “She’s a mean-head!”

“As if griffons ever did anything good…” Naminé grumbled, also from afar, amid the others, keeping a safe distance from the griffoness.

“So, what do we do now?” Rainbow flared her wings. “This place is kinda creepy.”

“I suppose we wait,” the princess shrugged and glared at Cadance and her petulant frown upon being glared at. “Somepony wanted us to see all this instead of looking for the things we set out to investigate.”

With no other choice, they waited for what seemed like days, but those bizarrely rushed past them. The argument ceased, with both sides tired of trying to convince the other. The magical alicorn worked diligently, with a focused stare, either at the floor or at the murals on the walls. Twilight blinked and out of nowhere came a small community of what could only be called caveponies.

She and her friends, as well as the griffoness and the alicorn, were back at the meadow with the muddy pond. A village of hundreds of little homes took shape around the pond and a bonfire. To Naminé’s delight, their homes were much like the shared habitation in her village and housed a small community of colorful ponies.

Twilight’s friends quickly understood the new situation and comments were at a minimum, while they watched. At the alicorn’s command and direction, the individual herds of twelve-odd ponies went about their simple lives in their sheltered clearing. Different from the previous cycle, the alicorn made the night and day change regularly and the ponies responded by resting at night and working, teaching the others during the day.

As she sat on the grass to watch, it dawned on Twilight that between the two cycles, the creator—or creators—seemed to have realized the original ponies were too simple. The new ones not only talked amongst themselves and with the alicorn, but they also gained complexity as much as their creator did. They gained experience and learned things. Her friends too noticed it, but there was little else for them to do other than comment and wait. The griffoness… After a few attempts met with harsh rebukes, the ponies stopped trying to engage with her. She seemed satisfied with laying on the grass and seething from a distance.

Twilight and her friends walked amid those ponies, who might as well have been their distant ancestors, watching and commenting among themselves. The alicorn’s little ponies spent their days teaching and building homes. Crafting tools, exploring and returning with fruits and herbs. Others dedicated themselves to welcoming the new ones as the double alicorn pulled them out of the muddy pond. It was a happy, growing little community that endeared itself to Twilight and the others. The alicorn herself never left her wooden mannerisms, but her strange voice filled with joy day after day. And in the distance, the griffoness seethed.

Did they ever notice the alicorn placed carefully designed mundane obstacles? A log here, a hole there. Thick bushes over yonder, on the way to those juicy berries. It seemed they didn’t, and certain ponies, with obvious cutie marks such as a stone and a pestle, took an interest in healing the eventual injuries from those activities. They naturally drifted to certain activities. Some became very good at repairing damaged homes, others had an uncanny sense of where to find the best fruit, even among the bounty of their shielded meadow. Cutie marks, informing ponies of their destinies since the dawn of time. Literally.

While the others spread around, either to watch the alicorn or the other ponies work, or even monitor the evil, bored griffoness, Twilight walked among the working ponies. They were not too different from the ponies of Twilight’s time, but they were.

There were fewer ponies, and they had much simpler jobs to be done; they defined those ponies. Earth ponies took care of the animals and tended the gardens. Pegasi spun clouds and coaxed the rain out of it. Much lower and smaller clouds, though. As to not remind them, there was a dead wasteland on the other side of those mighty perennial trees.

What was it that defined unicorns? Unlike the unicorns in Twilight’s past, those didn’t need to care for the sun and the moon. The Goddess(es) did it. The realization threw a metaphorical wrench in Twilight’s gears, because if the Goddess had planned for that, she ought to be training them already. Was the whole thing a lie? Like Twilight had suspected back in Chrysalis’s library? Back during dinner at the warship, Princesses Celestia and Luna had told them that the unicorns did care for the celestial bodies before they needed to take over. Yet, they could be lying. Why, though? Why was that detail so important? The realization burned like live embers in Twilight’s chest, and she wasn’t sure why.

Twilight followed a unicorn until he settled with a group. They greeted each other, speaking a bizarre ancient Equestrian that Twilight understood. But that barely registered after the previous events. More importantly, the unicorn set to work. He, like the others, magicked plant fiber into comfy beds and sitting pads of straw and soft green grass. They had wool from the random sheep that just showed up when Twilight wasn’t looking, but the grass one seemed to be a favorite.

Those were extremely well-crafted little meshes of plant fiber, well above what the earth ponies and pegasi typically achieved before they got bored and moved on to other tasks. It was their magical telekinesis that helped unicorns distinguish themselves, but it was not a unilateral affair. The earth ponies had their own uncanny skills at making edible things and materials alive. Even things which did not match the climate in the meadow: they used aloe vera for healing plasters.

Pegasi practically controlled the clouds, far above the skill of unicorns who tried their magic at it. And that was a fact all the way to the present day, as was that earth ponies were the best with living green things. But that did not deter the unicorns from trying to do everything with their magic. From manipulating items to eating and meddling in the affairs of other ponies. It all corrected itself, though, as they seemed to prefer jobs they were better at. In fact, unicorns would either excel or not do at all.

Watching from outside of the unicorn’s world, Twilight approached him and stared with no deterrence. There was some hard to pinpoint difference between that pony and the ones Twilight knew. His horn was the right size, his body was the same shape. A blue gray covered his muscles and while Twilight preferred lighter colors, like oranges and gold, he shared a handsomeness with all the surrounding ponies. It went beyond even Shining Armor’s battle-ready fitness. Perhaps the right word was not ‘handsomeness’, but ‘conformity’. There was much less difference between those ponies than there was between what could be called modern ponies. It was the best way she could put it, with a frown and a rubbing hoof at her chin.

Whatever the meaning behind that, his crafting was more interesting. Weaving and interweaving bundles of grass went up and down, one way and another, under the cyan of his telekinetic magic like they were alive. For a pony used to watching Rarity work, that might not seem too amazing, but Twilight was mindful of her own skills and that of others. The level of dexterity that the unicorn showed would give Rarity a run for her money and leave most others in the dirt.

He was far from alone in this. As if guided by an unspoken rule, the unicorns immersed themselves in tasks that demanded great dexterity, and they excelled at each one. Knitting clothing out of plant fiber, for example. Their attention to detail could border on obsession, and the key difference laid in their use of magic. While all ponies wielded magic, it was an integral part of everything unicorns did, amplifying their meticulous nature and channeling their prissiness to an obnoxious degree.

“Hi!” a cute yellow earth pony mare with a pleasant smile said in that weird language of theirs.

She startled the princess before Twilight noticed the pony was talking to her unicorn subject. A little hop threw the neat bundle of fresh grass she carried into the air. Upon landing, the twine broke, and the grass sat neatly right into the dwindling pile the unicorn was using for his craft. “Is that enough?”

“Thank you,” he said enthusiastically while looking at the pile, at the busy, pony-creating alicorn, and then at the houses still being built. “We’ll probably need more. Lots and lots more.”

“You got it!” she chirped before scampering away.

Looking past the hard-working unicorns, Twilight found other groups of ponies building their homes, and it showed her something interesting. Unicorn telekinetic magic was precise rather than strong. They could shape bricks of mud and feed them into the earthen ovens and even cut the wood. But so could the others with stone knives and hatchets, and they were the ones minding those tasks. The unicorns needed sleds tied around their shoulders to pull cargo around, and the earth ponies just hauled much more. Unicorns, working in groups, moved heavy wooden beams, but pegasi extended their flying magic to their sleds and groups of them craned the heavier pieces above. There was no point in unicorns using their magic for such tasks, and the others managed enough precision to assemble the structures with hooves.

What the unicorns then did everywhere was manage. They coordinated efforts to ensure that overeager ponies trying to help didn’t become a hindrance or caused accidents. Trigonometry was instinctual as they told the others where the heavy wooden beams should go. ‘A little to the left! Just a little more! That is it! Down. And… perfect!’ they shouted, and the others did.

Elsewhere, a unicorn’s telekinesis organized all the flowers into baskets so the others would haul them to where needed. Of course, yet another told them where to go. None of that was surprising; what stood out was the trust and immediacy with which the other ponies responded to their requests.

Twilight thought back to the prototype of the pony mind and wondered: could that be an inherent trait? The ponies organized themselves into tasks with minimum involvement from the alicorn or other ponies, almost as though they knew what to do from the start. A myriad of questions popped up inside Twilight’s head and made her think back to Winter Wrap-Up, but there was also the fact that they lived in such a controlled society.

The point remained. Unicorns said, and the others did. They didn’t even seem to disagree amongst themselves. But then again, there was little to disagree about inside their protected little world.

“Huh…” Twilight frowned.

The days passed in a blur, blending together with the rhythm of their routine. Only on a second look did the strangeness of it unfold. Time seemed to flow unevenly in that shared dream, like trying to piece together a story from a book she kept putting down, interrupted by the random distractions. At least now that Twilight convinced herself she’d seen the important bits.

Interesting, and some might even call it important, because all of that–her observations and the events they witnessed—had little value as evidence of their creation. Most reasonable ponies would call it a weird group illusion, or a delusion of Naminé’s own beliefs. The others… well, they’d become Naminé’s followers. How would Princesses Celestia and Luna feel about that? How would other races feel about that? Twilight drew a blank, but knew she was not comfortable.

On the matter of important details, there was more. The others distracted themselves by watching the ponies. The griffoness sat by the sidelines, silently smug, biding her time like the predator she was, appreciative that the ponies had left her alone. After a while, Twilight finally understood what she was so smug about: only adults occupied the clearing.

Twilight sighed and hoofed at her brow before glaring at the magical alicorn Applejack had called a goof. It was so unbelievably foolish, but the bizarre alicorn never noticed it. She probably simply lacked the insight to understand the problem, like in the previous cycle.

After that, waiting, watching her excited laboring, knowing such a simple flaw doomed it all before it even started, was almost painful. Only understanding that it would work out in the end made the powerless monitoring bearable at all.

Years within seconds rushed past their eyes like the fading memory of a dream that insisted on glossing over the details in favor of the juiciest parts. Their host commented on the novelty of it all and how valuable were the memories of the alicorns. Pinkie giggled at ‘the trip’, and others compared it to magic and dreams. Twilight simply waited, steeling herself for when the failure became obvious.

They had witnessed the fiery alicorn teaching her little ponies all she could about the dangers of the world outside the Green Harbor. They watched while the ponies readied themselves for their journey outside. Celestia’s words from their dinner at the warship returned to Twilight with the painstakingness of it all. Curiously, Twilight had no recollection of the princess mentioning the Harpy during the process.

Her back crawled with the realization that Naminé had no way of knowing of her presence, either. Twilight’s prowess at theory crafting had earlier led her to think that Naminé might have been making it all up. The sinister realization that Naminé couldn’t have known of the Harpy’s involvement or the discrepant unicorn’s lack of control over the sun loomed. It chilled like a bucket of snow.

While she was still grimacing, the great day came. Eager colorful eyes and a multitude of different mane styles gathered before the alicorn. Packages, sleds, and little carryalls bursting with supplies stood ready by their sides. Like graduation day, eager anticipation filled the rustling of the leaves with happy neighs and excited clops on the beaten dirt of their sprawling settlement. In their place, Twilight would have been much more nervous. And the Harpy was there. Watching. Seething.

The alicorn raised her hoof and pointed at the unknown beyond the brown and green of the forest. “Go now, my little ponies. The world needs you. We have given you the gift of Life to fill it with its bounty.”

Obediently, determined ponies adjusted the weight on their backs and off they went.

“You absolute buffoon…” the Harpy’s harsh tone swept the smiles from Twilight’s friends while they watched the rainbow congregation of marching ponies. A malcontent, grim scowl had replaced her smug smile. “You have condemned them to dwindle away after you filled them with purpose and joy.”

“You cannot take away from us the sweetness of success,” the alicorn glared at the griffoness like she had dissed her. Twilight noted her emotion showed much more in her countenance. Was she learning?

“Graceless abomination.” The Harpy’s voice filled with disgust, oozing past a grimace of loathing in her beak, blemished only by arrogant mocking. “You will watch them weep and wither into nothing before you put these foolish ambitions to rest. Arrogance makes for a lofty pedestal from which to fall, sun and moon incarnate.”

“Does anypony else want to see her eating a hoofful of comeuppance?” Shining Armor glared at the griffoness that could not see him, but the others all agreed. Twilight grimaced and watched.

“I’ll settle for just a hoof…” Rainbow commented.

“No matter, the die is cast,” the double alicorn declared, oblivious to their conversation. “It is time we occupied our place in the sky.”

The feeling which took Twilight was like teleportation, but it missed the momentary disorientation that followed. Everything vanished, replaced with the destination, when the destination was nowhere. Twilight’s friends screamed again, but the commotion soon subdued, overpowered by the same curiosity which conquered Twilight.

With a blink of their eyes, they had themselves vanished, and they were above Equestria. So far above they could hold the entire world in their eyes with its twin continents and the massive bodies of water framed by the empty and starry specks of light beyond. Amid more oohs and aahs, Naminé and Shining Armor all but freaked out, screaming until Cadance’s voice soothed them.

Twilight was busy. She scoured the stygian wasteland below. Something she failed to fully comprehend drew her attention to the bright dot brimming with the magic of Life. Another glance, and it showed itself to her as the sanctuary of green surrounded by gray chaos. But if she focused, she could see them: the ancestral ponies braving the ashen wasteland against the stormy wind and the hectic magical rain. Just like the descriptions both Cadance and Starlight Glimmer had provided, like tendrils of light conquering the dark.

Thousands of them spread in all directions from the forest. Heroic ponies bringing Harmony beyond their green harbor. They avoided magical monsters, born out of the inherent chaos of magic and fought bravely to defend their own when needed. If the storm became too strong to bear, or its magical effects were too dangerous, they built shelters and hid. They knew what they were doing and eventually the first groups succeeded where their predecessors in the previous cycle failed. They arrived at their destinations.

They built their homes like their creator had taught them, and life flourished around their settlements. The grass sprouted from the soil and the seeds they brought from the Green Harbor took root, strong and fruitful. But even as individual groups made it to their destinations, not too far from their birthplace, the obviousness of impending failure weighed like a cold icicle in Twilight’s stomach. Was it her feeling? Or was it the goddess’ despair reaching across to her through Naminé’s magic now that the magical alicorn understood what it was the Harpy meant?

Hooves tripped on stones, and bones broke. The sharp claws of monsters ripped through the flesh. Injuries happened, and even though their creator had taught them how to help and nurse their friends back to health, sometimes it was too much. They would die and leave sad ponies behind. But the most horrifying of all came with the voice of the griffoness, gloating, shrouded in false sympathy as groups disintegrated along the way.

“You condemned them to dwindle away. The last of your creation will cry, alone in the darkness and chaos of a failed world. They will wonder what they did wrong, but you know it was your fault.” The griffoness’ words echoed as a cruel narration to the images of the last ponies surrounded by dead companions and the shards of broken promises. Shattered sanity was all that remained; broken pieces of the marvelous magic they had witnessed. Sobbing and stomping hooves were the symphony of the collapse once their beloved sun turned inside out. It swallowed the light it once shone upon what lands they had claimed and stygian darkness took everything, and most of all, the hopes of the goddess that sobbed with her children.

“This is not fair!” Rainbow Dash’s disembodied cry echoed in the Aether as though she could bargain with the memories of the past. “They did the best they could!”

While the others discussed and agreed, Twilight’s focus remained on the feelings that inundated her thoughts.

That could not be.

That monster had, somehow, cheated.

They could still fix the problem if Harmony would let them.

Maybe the Harpy was right, and it was never to be. The incompetent goddess who, despite knowing all there was to know about the magic of Life and of the Mind, again failed to foresee their limitations. They stood a chance, but were too few, and incapable of replenishing their numbers. No matter how smart they made their little ponies, they could not make stones softer or gravity kinder. There was no avoiding all accidents, and their little ponies suffered because of their naivety.

They would try again, and next time, they’d get it right.

“You will try nothing, dimwitted clot. You will do what you should have done to begin with and relinquish my world back to me.”

“This would be easier if you helped us,” the goddess’ conjoined duo of voices had unraveled from itself, and now, it was in Luna’s voice, which sounded more like a whimper, a sheepish supplication.

“I deny it. There is no existence in which you will succeed. Even if I gave you the solution, you would remain missing the key to their survival, and I will give you no answer.”

Searing brightness followed, and the surprised group of ponies found themselves, once again, in the forest, next to the shocked, squawking griffoness. Regaining her composure while the witnessing ponies reoriented themselves, she let escape a deep, long-winded sigh along with her sagging wings.

“She will not give up!”

Pony OS v3.0 - The Love Update

Twilight sat on the floor, under the trees, with her friends. Once she processed another cycle had begun, she noticed the Harpy next to her. The griffoness groaned into her paws before she started walking with an additional frustrated sigh. Not to mention a mumbling string of swear words that drew a shocked ‘goodness’ out of Rarity.

Wasting no time, Twilight and her friends followed the griffoness. To their surprise, as much as the Harpy’s, crashing waves reached them through the trees. And as the griffoness still complained under her breath with renewed exasperation, Twilight led the ponies, rushing ahead to the limit of the forest. Trees became thin, the soil sandy. Salty humidity rode a breeze to replace the still warmness of the forest. Before she knew, a deep blue sea sparkled beyond the white sand past the slender trees.

She also found the alicorn. No longer a conjunction of two magical beasts. The fiery alicorn of the day was back to her old self, and with her was another magical creature. While the first was as glorious as before, the other left nothing to be desired on the matter of awe-striking wonder. Black like the night sky, with silver eyes radiating magical energies in the glow of moonlight. A deep blue mane flowed in the sunny day like the night took offense to it. Silver specks of connected dots mimicked constellations in the sky; it was Luna’s mane, nothing more, nothing less.

Like true individuals, each had their own body and moved with as much ease as Twilight herself. The white alicorn still enthusiastically stirred the mud with her ladle, now by the beach. Meanwhile, the other was performing a craniotomy on a pony sitting before her. Twilight and her companions gasped, cried and halted mid gallop.

The alicorn of the night looked down at the pony’s open head, telekinetically fiddling with their brain while sitting on the sand. Her subject was the pink and purple pegasus from before. She simply sat on the sand and held the most bored expression in existence. No blood streamed, and the top of her head sat nearby like the lid of a pot. The alicorn had her silvery tongue showing with a focused frown while the light of the stars danced around her horn.

Overpowered by curiosity, Twilight walked closer while the others balked. What did she really expect to see? It was a brain. Fleshy, pink, and crisscrossed by red, throbbing blood vessels. A cut reached deep, and tiny motes of blue magic poked around. Twilight’s initial shock at the unsanitary meddling inside somepony’s head subdued. It was a precision instrument only magic could make.

“What is so difficult about this?” Fiery White complained with Celestia’s very own voice. She rested her ladle at the edge of the pond and then placed her chin on her hooves on top of it. “I already laid all the underlying physiology.”

Blue mumbled an ill-behaved response under her breath, but it did not keep white from talking more. “They must be missing something.”

Bluey tossed her head with an exasperated sigh. “What could they possibly be missing? Stallion looks at mare, neuron activation, physiological changes happen, behavior follows.”

“Eleven-something moons later, a foal should be born.” Not-Luna grimaced, pulling at something with her magic. “Rinse and repeat after ten moons, and then they should be able to replenish their numbers. Their numbers should increase, in fact.”

Promising. They had figured out they needed ponies to make more ponies, and they were also two separate entities this time. Twilight supposed that was probably what drew a shocked squawk out of the Harpy as she stormed out of the forest.

“What in the blazes of the Scorch are you two doing now?” she cried like they had broken her favorite vase.

However, Twilight made a mental note along with a frown. Their change in physical appearance didn’t surprise her. She reacted much, as though she had already seen both alicorns with that appearance before. Not even the alicorns seemed to have noticed they were different, and that made Twilight tilt her head slightly.

“What the…?”

“Oh… She’s here again.” Not-Celestia groaned while the other alicorn of fiery magic simply focused on her pony.

That the angry griffoness kept meeting with them deepened Twilight’s frown. Wasn’t she defeated? Maybe it was just the cyclical nature of things that made it happen. Maybe the Harpy was simply special. Entitled, even. Or maybe there was a hidden meaning behind it all. If there was one thing Twilight had learned about this crazy world of hers, was that things happened for a reason. Logically, if she had no further purpose, the Harpy should not be showing up at each cycle simply to harass and bother the others. It wetted Twilight’s inquisitive nature.

“Although, why a beach?” The angry griffoness’ expression changed to curiosity, and that was good because Twilight too was curious about that change in scenery.

“Because beaches are romantic!” Blue raised her head and grinned.

That did not help. The griffoness screamed and went back to her habit of accusing the two of stealing her world, demanding they returned it. While Nightly Blue seemed more interested in her open-headed pony, Fiery White entertained the discussion with the Harpy. Although she refused to engage with the same anger. She deflected it with a hefty dose of Celestia-like calm, serenity, and good humor.

“Now, this is not a fair interpretation.” The very Celestia-like alicorn raised her muddy ladle to interrupt the griffoness’ tirade.

Raging, the Harpy yelled and took the ladle from her telekinetic magic. She tossed it away at the sea and grabbed the alicorn by her neck. “Now listen here, you infuriating nag! I have been much more patient than I should, and you have been abusing—”

Whatever she was going to say never left her beak. The ladle plunged into the water and made it fizz and bubble. A dense foam steadily rose and then sprouted from the water. It took tens of hooves from the shoreline and held all the confused stares. Particularly from the griffoness, while she was still holding the alicorn’s neck, and both of them stared slack jawed. A giant pearly shell rose from the foam. It opened with a rose perfume and revealed a velvety red stage adorned with a giant, golden horseshoe as background. A glorious platform for the creature sitting within.

As the alicorns of the sun and the moon, the equine creature inside the shell was made of a passionately fiery magic, but in pink flames. It shared the same gravitas from the other divine creatures, with its wings flared open and a beating heart of deep crimson showing in its chest. A raised hoof greeted the others, and its head remained high with all the pride of a goddess.

“I have arrived!” the pink creature gracefully hopped from her platform with a beat of her flaming wings to stand on the sand with an outstretched leg. “And I have brought my Gift of Love!”

“What the feather is this?” the astonished griffoness gasped, still holding the white alicorn’s neck.

“Now, that is just silly,” Applejack deadpanned at the sight.

“Oh, my!” the white alicorn cheered, despite the fingers and talons around her neck. “Another sister!”

As reactions ranged from stunned silence to giggling euphoria, the pink alicorn paraded about Luna’s ‘prototype pony’. Twilight really hoped she knew what she was doing, because the magical alicorn too started to fiddle with the pony’s brain.

When the blue one complained, she raised her hoof. “Fret not! I will teach them to love. And through the most divine art of lovemaking, our little ponies will strengthen their bonds and bring new ponies to grace the world with Love!”

“Harmony,” Not-Luna grumbled. “They will bring Harmony to the world.”

“Yes, yes…” Not-Cadance waved an absentminded hoof at her. “Same thing.”

“It is not the same thing,” the Harpy grumbled, having let go of the other to watch.

The white alicorn shrugged. “If it works, it works.”

The three magical alicorns and the griffoness all joined around the bored pony. Like they had completely forgotten that one was a murderous monster. The pony herself just stood there, sitting on the sand and looking bored while they peered into her brain. Twilight and the others joined. They crowded under the larger beings to watch.

Instead of seeing the pink, gelatinous brain, the world around them shifted in a snap. They were back inside the crystal palace from before. Ponies jumped, others squealed; Twilight gasped, but she was expecting it.

More important than that, the Alicorn of Love had made changes: she added a pillar next to the water mirror. A typical pegasus column, the kind one could find in almost all pegasus cloud buildings but made of marble. It had a pretty, golden embroidery, a complex and elegant decoration, but the top was missing something and, as all eyes aimed there, Love quickly explained.

“There will be a representation of this pony’s loved one.” She did a little tap-dance of excitement, grinning like a foal with a new toy. “Their soulmate, the one whose Love will tie them with devotion to share their lives and make new ponies. As we envisioned.”

While Twilight raised an eyebrow at the magical alicorn talking as though she was an integral part of the process since the start. While Twilight’s friends shared a prolonged, silent stare, the divine beings which were present when those events failed to react. At best, the Harpy shut her eyes tightly and massaged her temple with a tired sigh.

“You dullards are piling things on top of this poor creature’s self. There won’t be a single sane one left by the time they are done developing into adulthood.”

“You’re just jealous of my brilliance!” Cadence’s ancient version put a hoof on her chest.

“You cannot tell romance from lust.” The griffoness retorted.

“I’m not seeing any problems!” the blue alicorn piped as she looked down, one way and another, at the water mirror beneath their hooves. “Everything is working fine! Good job, Love!”

“We did it!” the white one hopped and flapped her wings. “Let’s get them ready to trot!”

As suddenly as it had happened before, they found themselves back at the beach. The sudden change caused less of a commotion than before, but it was not without complaining.

“You know, I’d mighty appreciate a warning or something before this unicorn nonsense.”

“Oh, this is quite different from teleportation, darling.”

As Rarity went on an extensive declamation about the subjective sensations of teleportation, Twilight was more interested in the alicorns going about their business. The white one worked with absolute zeal and a radiant grin. She pulled pony after pony from her magical pond using a new ladle. Twilight had no idea where it had come from, but that barely deterred the alicorn. Meanwhile, Luna and Cadance’s fiery versions turned their attention to their pony with an open head. All ignored the Harpy’s rant, which also failed to grab Twilight’s attention.

“Is this… Alicorn the same you saw yourself as, Cadie?” Shining asked. “In your dream?”

“It sure is! Isn’t this amazing?” She giggled at him and then put her nose up with a mock conceited grin. “Well, do you believe me now?”

“Ain’t nopony disbelieved you, princess.” Applejack gave Cadance her ‘I’m being dead serious’ stare. “This thing is a mess, is all.”

And speaking of a mess, Luna’s shocked cry stopped them. “Oh, my stars! What are they doing?!”

The ponies had already taken over the beach and the transition into the forest. They had their little homes, their central burning hearth. And they had indeed learned how to make new ponies. Unabashedly and shamelessly so.

“Yes! It worked!” Cadance’s fiery version cheered, flapping her wings up and down.

“Wow! Look at them go!” the flesh and bones Cadance added.

“Wait!” Not-Celestia gasped and immediately magicked her notebook into her telekinetic grasp, frowning at it. “Are you sure that is how those are supposed to work?”

Pinkie frowned at the unfolding scene and grimaced. “Ah… This is kinda…”

“Yeah…” Rainbow Dash added.

“That is a somewhat crude technique, though.” Cadance added with a pensive frown.

The others? They needn’t say anything, Twilight could see in their faces and the only one not about to lose their marbles was Cadance, and the former felt like slapping her silly. Meanwhile, the Harpy had taken flight and nestled herself at the top of a tree. An oneiric version of a coconut tree. Surveying the scene from above with the haughtiness only a cat could muster. Away from the ‘filthy grasseaters’.

“I am not sure you three are old enough to be watching this sort of thing,” the griffoness said from high up. “Can you please cease with this nonsense and give me back my world? This is becoming ridiculous.”

“Neigh!” Not-Celestia stood triumphantly in the middle of the sea of fornicating ponies. “We shall prevail this time!”

“Even with three of you, you are still heading towards a disaster.” She stopped for a second and waved her paw at the impromptu festivity on the ground. “And I don’t even mean this!”

Despite the ridiculous situation, Twilight could see the issue too. But before she could even mention it to her friends, the blue alicorn of flames interjected dramatically, hovering above the mass of shameless ponies.

“Ah, but fear not, I see the issue. They must be made to expire with old age to avoid overcrowding.”

Celestia-Made-of-Flames rubbed her chin with a hoof. “Easy enough to implement, I suppose.”

“No, no.” The pink alicorn of flames shook her head. “All they need is a different ratio between male and female. By my calculations, six females to one male should be sufficient.”

“That makes little sense.” Luna-of-flames glared from the air. “If there were more males than females, then that might make a difference.”

“Yes.” Cadence relented. “But the stallions will love it! Have a look at the—”

“Riveting. One makes their bodies and forgets how sex works, the smart one misses the mortality issue, and the breeding one is wiring them for wanton lust.”

The white alicorn glared at the griffoness up on her perch. “Don’t be hypocritical. Your griffons were like that.”

“Please.” The catbird scoffed. “They learned naturally, unlike this idiot’s cheap knockoff.”

The Harpy’s comment caused the pink alicorn of flames to gasp and throw a little fit of stomping hooves and outraged accusations at the griffoness. Their exchange barely interested Twilight. What caught her attention was that while they exchanged barbs, the fiery alicorn that looked like Celestia casually dropped her new ladle. She was watching the two, but out of nowhere, the alicorn’s gaze snapped to the sky, and her horn flared to life. A whoosh plunged the sun behind the top of the trees. Almost immediately, the other brought the moon up. Twilight barely had time to look at the blue fiery alicorn before she went back to watch the ponies below.

That the alicorns controlled the skies filled Twilight with awkwardness. It shouldn’t, and such thoughts made Twilight twist her muzzle. Sure, the princesses did in her time, but the unicorns were supposed to be doing that during that vision. Right? At least that was how it worked in the history she knew, but that it might have been a lie was the point.

“Maybe I am letting my preconceptions steer my thoughts.” She stared at her hoof.

With a groan, Twilight shifted her attention back to the pink alicorn and the black and white griffoness. Something about the Harpy’s patience and aloofness—even with the ridiculousness of her remaining at the top of a tree—bothered the princess.

She should be angry because they figured it out. They had even understood that they needed ponies to be mortal or they would cause another disaster. But she was just ranting about ‘her world’. Unfortunately, there was nothing Twilight could do other than watch as the griffoness kept criticizing every little detail of biology and psychology that not even Twilight understood. Maybe she was just picking on the pink alicorn.

“But I got it right, didn’t I?” Not-Cadance grinned up from their prototype.

“And it’s called ‘fucking’, not ‘lovemaking’, you glorified estrus.” The Harpy yelled her into cowering. “You don’t even understand the difference between love and arousal, for feather’s sake! Make them stop!”

“Look at this mess! Give me back my world!”

Her words turned into a feral hiss that pushed back the magical alicorns and gave them distressed grimaces. Still, the white one stomped her hoof at the sand, and she stood her ground with a snort.

“You had your chance!”

“So had you… Look around!” the griffoness offered her paw. “Let us avoid another disaster. For the sake of your precious little ponies and all of Creation. You do not understand what you are doing!”

“You’re exaggerating.” The white alicorn looked around at the sea of unabashed ponies. “This will fix itself once we advance to the next phase.”

The griffoness never responded. Instead, she showed an arrogant smile and rested her paws beneath her.

“Fine.” She hissed. “Suit yourself.”

Sitting in front of her palm tree and looking up, Twilight glared like the infuriating chimera could see her. She also silently agreed with her friends’ renewed commentary on the aggressive need for comeuppance. Twilight was also confused. She turned to see Not-Celestia eagerly scooping more ponies out of her muddy pond while the blue and the pink ones disagreed with something. They busied themselves with their prototype pony, even if it was night. Fortunately, all the surrounding furor had subsided. The Harpy, though, remained in her high ground refuge. Seething.

The alicorns completely ignored the griffoness once they got themselves busy with ‘mass producing’ additional ponies. The three of them worked in unison. As though they had known each other for ages. What was inside the Harpy’s head, other than spite and disdain, was hard to fathom.

Twilight’s friends talked to Naminé, and Cadance took further interest in what her ancient version was doing with Luna’s. As before, it happened without warning. Twilight was lying with her back in a pool of serene water. Ghostly flames surrounded her, but they idled. Soft. Soothing. All the others quieted, even though they, too, were there. She couldn’t see her friends, but she felt they were there.

It was so peaceful the alicorn of magic simply accepted it, but soon waved her hooves on the paradoxical watery flames. Looking up was the same as looking down. Somehow. She didn’t understand it, but she saw the landmass, both above and below. Rain fell gently against her face either way. Her thoughts were slow and only after an undefinable long time, she realized the flames were truly a manifestation of magic. Again, Dainty Mellow’s Fire.

It couldn’t truly be fire, because it was raining, and the rain was on fire. A soft drizzle drained from the landmass of Equestria, but the most surprising thing was the voices. They weren’t speaking to her, yet the drops of rain carried words to her. Some sounded shocked. Others were angry. A few exclaimed with surprise, and many were sorrowful. But all of them fell into a serene slumber, dissolving into the lake of magical flames.

“What is this place?” Fluttershy’s disembodied whisper crept into the peaceful stillness and Rarity shushed her softly.

Like Twilight, the others were not ready for the overbearing joy brimming her soul like the flames of the sun itself. Their minds touched the goddess’ like the last time, but this time the sight made Pinkie Pie giggle. Where was the dark land castigated by a rain of chaos? No tormenting sky of mad colors to be seen. The world bristled with light. The magic of Life took over the land. Everywhere. Not a single corner remained dark. From the depths of the Mareana Trenches to the heights of Mount Canterlot, the gleaming magic of Life shone in every recess, nook and cranny.

“Holy guacamole…” Pinkie’s cheerful voice echoed inside Twilight’s thoughts.

Then it was Rarity’s voice among a chorus of amazed exclamations. “They did it! Look.”

Although Shining Armor’s and Naminé’s voices were missing. Even if Twilight felt their presence. But that was barely a distraction.

They really did. Even Twilight could barely hold the excitement. Her metaphorical head would not stand still, and her eyes pierced the distance so easily it shocked her. It was like being anywhere she wanted, immediately. How did that work? She could probably figure out a theory, or Princess Celestia could explain, but it didn’t matter. To all practical effects, she teleported next to a ravine where two groups of ponies met each other. Their hooves clopped together to seal their new friendship.

They traveled from their caves and founded villages, then cities. They found the zebras and the yaks. The buffalos, the griffons, and the dragons. Twilight didn’t truly understand how it worked, but the magic of Life took root and broke through a threshold. All manner of creatures manifested. Simply came into being. The plan went on without a hitch.

“What the fudge?! Where did these griffons come from? There were not supposed to be any griffons! It’s full of predators! It should not be!” Celestia’s voice echoed amid Twilight’s thoughts.

She complained, but as sudden as the outburst was, it softly drifted into compliance. Acceptance. Everything was peaceful, even if carnivores hunted. She was disappointed, but she complied.

Death had become a part of life. It was for the better, as Harmony needed. After all, predators balanced the wild populations. It was reasonable. Not ideal, but reasonable. And so, time flowed, things happened, and Twilight almost slept. Silence reigned in their peaceful pool of resting souls. Until something happened that shocked her into full awareness again. It was so sudden the goddess’ shock and surprise overflowed into Twilight like a bolt of lightning.

A pony murdered another.

It baffled Twilight as much as the goddess’ confusion too filled her. Gasps and cries echoed around her. Murder. Straight out of the blue, and the serene pool of magic rippled with shock and horror. It happened at an outlying colony of the Pegasi. They thought their earth pony associate was withholding food. But then, Twilight had barely understood, and it happened again. An earth pony thought their unicorn partner was stealing gems from their joint venture in mining. And then again. And again, until Twilight gave up trying to count all the times they murdered each other over petty suspicions. Her throat hurt and her head throbbed at the shocking callousness.

They had gone through the entire Stone Age with no trouble. They spread all over the world before they even understood how to build with mortar. Problems started after they organized into the Three Tribes. And that, by itself, baffled the goddess. Twilight again felt her confusion like a creeping shiver. Why did they feel the need to segregate one another like that?

Even if the goddess, which shared Twilight’s thoughts, didn’t understand it, Twilight herself did. There was no real reason, they simply catered to their differences. Pegasi could fly, and it was simply easier to live in the clouds. The others expected them to provide the rain and care for the weather. It was practical. Earth ponies made their food grow and unicorns were good at all the bureaucratic things that made their combined nations work. It was just how ponies worked and not likely to be the reason they became murderous to each other. They were just doing what their cutie marks told them in the best way they could. Fulfilling their destinies.

The Harpy’s laughter didn’t help their confusion at all. Even if Twilight herself and the disembodied alicorns ignored her to the best of their ability. They watched, studied. Wracked their brains, trying to understand what had gone wrong.

The next moment, Twilight felt her body again. She shook her head and found she stood at the surface of the pool of magical fire before she noticed. She gasped at the sudden change, and rather than being lost in its serenity, she was ‘normal’ again. So were all her friends, and along with them were the three alicorns of untethered magic. They looked down at Equestria from their perch in the sky, through the lake of magical flames.

“What is happening?” Not-Cadance paced about and flapped her wings, desperately scrutinizing the landmass beyond their lake. “Why are they hurting each other?”

The other two sat at the surface. Their horns shimmered while they plucked little motes of light from the magical pool. The white alicorn frowned and turned them every way around, pulled and prodded with her magic. Blue even shook one in her magic and held it near her ear, but her confusion only grew. And behind them, Cadance, flesh and bones, was similarly distressed, running around, taking part in the scene as if she were really there. But Twilight had little time to ponder about that other than the emotions really hit her too.

“I think they’re afraid,” Luna’s magical doppelgänger finally told the others. “Oh no! We have made a terrible mistake!”

Her confused frown creeped into sorrow. Her ears flopped while she bit her ethereal lips, and she looked at her older sister. The white one couldn’t offer any comfort.

“What could they possibly be afraid of to the point they will end each other’s lives?” the pink one hurried to Not-Celestia’s side.

“Their lives are now limited.” The alicorn of the night said. “They know their lives will end eventually and… They fear for their descendants and for their loved ones. They see too many creatures, and too few resources.”

“But this is not true!” Pinkie whined like she was part of the discussion.

Rarity too. “They make resources! They literally make food grow from the land. Why are they so afraid? This makes no sense!”

“Have you given up yet?” The griffoness sat a safe distance away from the grass-smelling magical ponies. “This has been another waste. I would rather we resumed our important work. Hopefully, the damage you already caused will not be permanent.”

The white alicorn was ready to unleash some choice words on the odious catbird, but sorrow held her tongue. The magical flames which made her tremble. It grasped Twilight’s spine. A shiver made every hair in her body stand.

Cold. The rain of magical motes turned to a dense snowfall. The chill washed over Twilight and numbed her body. Radiating all the way from the land mass and claiming her heart. Spreading over her limbs like it claimed the mountains and rivers. Groans and shudders replaced shocked gasps from Twilight’s friends. Much like the alicorns made of magic, they instinctively sought proximity to ward off the horrendous cold.

“I fear we failed again.” Not-Celestia said in a trembling whisper.

Her eyes shot from one side to the other with a pained frown. Below, tendrils of unimaginable cold spread over the land, claiming for themselves all they touched. The white from the mountaintops grew and covered land. Rivers and sea froze under a white too beautiful for the unholy cold it carried. Summer storms and peaceful breezes turned into gray, impenetrable blizzards to hide it from their perch in the sky.

“Is that the Windigos, Twilight?” Applejack came closer to Twilight, bringing some more of the metaphorical warmth, while all the princess did was nod an uncertain affirmative.

“This is horrible!” Not-Cadance cried. “These monsters are feeding off their disharmonious psychic energy. The more damage they cause, the more our little ponies feed them! Oh, no—”

Cold. Gruesome cold and hurricane winds. A torrential blizzard washed over their once serene pool. Twilight’s ears filled with screams, weeping, and cold shudders. Rot infested her nose. Twilight’s friends screamed and cowered. Even the magical alicorns did. The white one prostrated herself on the disorderly surface of the pool and covered her ears with hooves and her head with her ethereal wings.

“Why is this happening?” The blood and flesh Cadance cried.

She shouted above the cacophony of suffering, along with the magical version of herself. They mirrored each other in a way Twilight couldn’t decide was meaningful or improperly funny.

“It is their limited life span!” the magical version of Luna shouted too. “I believe it made them selfish and bred contempt. They are afraid, and these monsters are making it all worse. They never had to deal with so many creatures, and they noticed resources are limited.”

“But where did these horrible things come from?”

“You made them, you idiots.” The Harpy all but jammed her talon on the pink one’s muzzle. “Your constructs have the power to move magic, and you gave them reason to create conflict.”

As the winds intensified. The storm of souls upon their disturbed lake became a blizzard.

“But that is a fact of life in any situation.” Twilight told herself.

The Harpy interrupted her thoughts and any response her friends could have produced.

“All of this is your fault!” The griffoness’ stormy eyes hardened under a scowl.

“Nothing happens without Harmony’s consent.” Celestia said, raising from her cowering stance to challenge the griffoness in body and tone. “This is part of the process!”

It was as though everything ceased to be important to her. Only the Harpy bothered her now. And yet, the griffoness closed her wings around herself as well as her forelimbs, ever so slightly shrinking in the cold.

“You were supposed to be a string of magic responsible for the heavens. Nothing more. Every cycle, Creation deteriorates further. The time has come. Admit you know not what you are doing and relinquish it all.”

“Help us make it right, then.” The magical alicorn of the night yelled at her but was ignored.

A burst of fiery magic and a furious ‘neigh’ scared away the blue one. Not-Celestia, once again, turned into an unsettling shape of nothing-magic with a mane made with the sickly light of a dying sun. The others undid themselves into motes of sparkling light. A rational understanding that she was safe kept Twilight from panicking. Barely. The world undid itself and darkness claimed existence around her. Another cycle ended.

A grinding growl, like a crumbling mountain. An all-consuming flash. Twilight stood with her friends, once again witnessing the first moments of creation rushing past them. The grass rose from the dark soil and turned it to a healthy yellow brown. It tunneled and sprouted green blades. Bushes followed, and then the towering giants of the forest. Mighty trees again surrounded them. Instead of the sunny summer day, a drizzling mass of deep gray clouds covered the sky above the clearing. The group of ghostly ponies came closer to Twilight, and among them Rainbow Dash held a not nonplussed expression as though Twilight had any power over their situation.

“That looked bad.”

“Understatement of the age!” Pinkie cried.

“I’m kind of scared!” Naminé whined. “None of this comes even close to what I was expecting!”

Pony OS 4.0 - It's a Feature!

“This has become tiresome.” The Harpy growled, sitting in the middle of a patch of black roses. Her crown of black feathers lowered behind her head while she massaged her brow.

Twilight felt inclined to agree while the griffoness plucked a rose from the ground and smelled it with a creepy griffon smile. It was the way she pulled at the corner of her beak and the stern, filled with a constant, unsettling intensity. It gave her the shivers.

“So, this is it, right? The cycle Twilight is bound to show up. Right?” Rainbow Dash inquired indirectly, talking to the others, as though Twilight was not there. “We’re getting to the end. And she’s going to fix it.”

“I… I suppose so. I don’t know how I feel about this.” The purple alicorn turned from the Harpy to talk to her friends. Despite not being directly addressed, and staring at Rainbow. “I know they look like them, but I don’t believe that they are Princess Celestia, Luna, or Cadance. Or me, for that matter. Even if they carry the same souls as these ‘goddesses’ carried.”

“Why not?!” the pink alicorn flapped her wings, raising her voice. “Isn’t it obvious?!”

‘No! It is not obvious!’ Twilight wanted to say. ‘Nothing about this is obvious!’ she thought.

It was the fact that Naminé nodded with such certainty next to Cadance which gave Twilight pause. She let out a sigh and looked to the side. Knowing what she would invoke with her next words almost hurt her physically. “Princess Luna told us in the dinner, back at the warship, that even if the soul is the same, the individual is not.”

Cadance stared down at Twilight like she had attacked her.

“Hum…. It’s like a ship…” both stared at Starlight Glimmer when she spoke, and under their stare, she winced but continued. “As it gets damaged, sailors replace them off the hull and put new ones. But it is still the same ship.”

“But that is not the same ship! A better analogy would be tearing down a whole ship and rebuilding it. It’s not the same ship. And this is not about ships! Ponies are not ships!” Twilight rolled her eye and yelled.

“That is true, but Princess Celestia said that—”

“I know what she said, Cadance! I was there. We were all there.” Twilight glared back at the pair and stomped a hoof on the grass. But she stared away and let her wings relax. “Sorry. I’m just… not looking forward to what I’m going to see in this cycle. I don’t like what this is doing to us.”

Heavens forbid she let slip that she didn’t like what it was doing to Cadance.

“It is showing us.” The older princess responded with a touch of irritation in her sweet voice. “Things that we should already know. It is our right to know about this past that Naminé’s spell is showing us.”

A thin rain started pattering on the leaves and ponies instinctively tried to cover themselves, only to be reminded they were not really there. If nothing else, the drizzle defused their discussion and left them with awkward stares. Meanwhile, the Harpy brushed her feathers and then looked at her paw with a frown. Her voice was surprisingly soft. “How long have we been doing this?”

She looked at the sky and her frustrated scowl let confusion through. “I am losing my mind because of these damned ponies.”

Twilight’s ears perked. She watched the griffoness, scrutinized her expression and her posture. The stormy gray eyes hid behind her lids. Her voice lacked the same power as before. She missed the gravitas of the griffoness that stared at the fiery alicorn goddess in the eyes and that demanded her world returned. Was it her crown of black feathers that never rose as high and proud as before? Was it merely the rain? Twilight wondered with a perplexed frown.

The surprise came when the griffoness stood to walk. Twilight wasn’t the only one gasping as a patch of velvety black roses followed in her wake. The flowers wilted and sank back into the grass, only for new ones to bloom before and around the Harpy with every step. An earthy and sweet smell followed her because of them.

“Well, now, this is interesting,” Starlight remarked while her eyes lingered on the roses and Applejack mumbled something about ‘wonky magic.’

But what grasped Twilight’s curiosity was that the Harpy saw the roses too, yet barely glanced at them. Twilight knew little about the griffoness, or whatever griffons called deities, but a trail of black roses was certainly something to note. And yet, the Harpy barely minded them at all.

Puddles of warm magical rain formed on the floor and the griffoness stepped on them, not minding her fur or feathers at all, and her roses followed. The following hooves never disturbed the water, but feeling their magical warmth was uncanny at best. The group kept close to the Harpy and let her unwillingly guide them. Although Twilight wouldn’t need her to guide them, she remained silent about it this time, too.

There was no thunder. No sudden flashes of light coming from the clouds. They only rested above the meadow, heavy with water, and let the eventual beam of sunlight filter through. The griffoness didn’t curse or complain to herself while her paws splashed on the puddles and her little army of black roses followed. The smell of wet grass brought a homely feeling, and the sweetness from the roses contrasted with the danger that the creature represented. Only the rain pattered against the leaves and robbed Twilight of her worries. The realization came soon: that place really was a refuge, and it was intentional.

Shining Armor cut the quietness of the rain. Twilight knew him; his relaxed tone betrayed the influence of that place. “I’m not even sure what happened last time! Did you all actually see anything inside that pony’s head? I still can’t wrap my head around the idea.”

“Yeah. I’ve been meaning to ask too!” Naminé’s eyes lit up with hope as she came near Twilight and grinned.

“We went to the crystal-y, freaky palace.” Rainbow flared her wings with a swoosh. “Cadance added a thing that made ponies horny.”

“What Rainbow Dash means is that she taught them how to love,” Rarity’s voice came out laced with annoyance, and Twilight could almost hear the indignant glare behind the words. “It appears as though that caused issues of its own.”

Rarity was not entirely correct, though. Love didn’t ‘teach’ them. She fitted their brains and their minds to understand and feel it. But Twilight decided against speaking, simply closing her eyes and letting the rain filter out their words as best as she could.

“It is not merely about reproduction.” Cadance’s urgent words reached Twilight from behind. “Family is just as important.”

“Says who?” Rainbow asked.

“I do.” Cadance replied with a raised snout and a smile.

“Then why didn’t it work?” Naminé asked sheepishly.

“The problem is free will,” Twilight said absentmindedly with a sigh and still followed the griffoness. Their conversation intruded on the peaceful aura of the place. “Ponies feel compelled to follow their destinies, but their limited lifespan and the ability to reproduce threw a wrench in the original system the alicorns had created. Lacking free-will, they—oh gosh!”

Twilight slapped a hoof at her mouth and her eyes darted from one side to the other while the others surrounded her. Their faces carried a mix of confusion, sympathetic understanding, and amusement. Except Cadance. Cadance had a smug grin that grew shrewder by the second.

“You know, don’t you?” Her golden-shod pink hoof poked at Twilight’s chest, almost as irritating as Cadance’s toothy grin. “You know, because you made it work.”

“I did not!” Twilight glared up at Cadance and defiantly pinned back her ears. “I share a soul with the creature that knew how to fix the problem! I am done talking about this! Honestly, I wish I could go back to the previous cycle and tease you about it too!”

Unfortunately, Cadance’s grin didn’t go away.

“Calm down, everypony.” Shining groaned. “The Harpy is not going to wait for us.”

“I can show you the way.” Cadance snorted petulantly, singing her words before she pranced ahead of the griffoness with a parting flick of her tail.

The others stayed with Twilight and waited for her to resume walking, but an angry snort told them the conversation had ended. Her friends said nothing, but they were certainly thinking about it. The princess’ angry, heavy hoofsteps didn’t keep the girls from talking among themselves.

“Princess Celestia didn’t like that the griffons showed up.” Pinkie said in a secretive tone, and Twilight resisted the urge to tell them it was not their Princess Celestia. It was hopeless and just easier to let them believe whatever they wanted, but she picked up her pace. “Did the meanie catbird make them appear?”

“I reckon they just poofed into existence, magic-like, after the ponies had done their piece. Like the yaks, and diamond dogs, and whatnot. I can’t fathom why griffons, though. Maybe the griffon lady might have done something after the alicorns were gone from Equestria. I suppose. But how are we to know? Magic is all wonky in this vision. There are flowers growing out of this griffoness’ paws, for pony’s sake.”

“Well, the princess mentioned it was simply a trait of these primeval times. Quite intriguing! Certainly, magical phenomena because they are so powerful!”

Twilight tuned out their conversation. She watched the fearsome creature that the griffoness was and saw she couldn’t tear her eyes from her. A mass of muscles pulled her paws back with every step. The elegance of her cat-like gait was mesmerizing. Black talons and a hefty dose of killing instinct hid behind every footfall. That was the general perception of griffons among ponies, too. Also, they were selfish jerks and aggressive bullies. It was easy to see all that in the Harpy. Even more when the princess reminded herself of all the griffoness had caused.

Many griffons challenged that stereotype; it was the point of the conflict between north and south Griffonia. Ages before Twilight was born, King Grover sided with Celestia to challenge the Emperor and the Harpy. They won and tried to destroy the very memory of Aya Harpiya, the empire, and everything that they were. Is that how you kill a god? A creature that simply comes back. You make their supporters forget about them? Was that what the princess had tried to do?

Still, something troubled Twilight. How did it all work? Did the Harpy’s abusive nagging and insults somehow help forge the path ahead? Was that why she kept showing up? She denied the alicorns had bested her. But Twilight remembered the story the Princess had told them in that tense dinner on her airship. The possibility that the Harpy might still have something to do tingled at Twilight’s curiosity. It seemed natural in a world where destinies and talents mingled that the perfect griffoness who had created the world before the alicorns might still have a purpose to fulfill.

To think that Princess Celestia never believed the Harpy still lived… She believed she had destroyed the Harpy when she took over Creation. Poor Grover. It must have been maddening to have lived with her and not have Celestia believe him. And poor Celestia, she must be in a terrible place right now if the news they got from Griffonstone was true.

Behind her, the conversation had gone back to the problem of the previous cycle. Her friends didn’t understand it. It only frustrated Twilight that she did. It was so obvious; how could they not see it? That is right, she didn’t know the answer because of some stupid, dusty ‘soul memories’. She knew because it was obvious, and she refused to tell them.

Rainbow Dash’s voice wavered. She told the others that the alicorns eventually fixed the problem. ‘Right?’. Like a foal seeking reassurance. Twilight almost told her they did, but…

Did they? Twilight wondered. Discord’s words bubbled back to her from their conversation at her airship, the Magic of Friendship. She groaned and rolled her eyes, as proper memories ought to.

“Star Swirl was my friend, at least in the beginning, and the one that figured something was wrong. That I wasn’t supposed to be there. He wanted to study me and he saw there was something weird with the unicorns. They scared me too. The Elements of Magic and of Generosity are supposed to be the strongest in them, but they were different. Generosity was stained black with self-interest.”

Twilight frowned while it was Naminé who responded to Rainbow’s worries. “I suppose that if this is the fourth cycle and there are four alicorns—adult ones, at least—we will find the answers.”

Fluttershy responded with a suppressed whisper. “I can’t imagine the big scary griffon lady liking that.”

Twilight frowned a little more. There was also Discord’s strange message relayed to them by the Windigos. How bizarre had that been?

“I will prove you are wrong!” He told somecreature in the vision the magical creature granted her. Was he talking to the Windigos? To the magical bird-creature? It was a servant of the Windigos anyway, if the griffons were to be believed. “Take a message to Twilight Sparkle! Tell her that Lady Gwendolen is the Harpy and that she must find a way to destroy her and the northerner griffons. Or they will destroy Celestia and all Ponykind will be enslaved again!”

Twilight could see how they might need to remove the Harpy. Until that point, she really was unwilling to compromise or accept that she had failed to create a functional world. Much less give space for another’s approach. In the end, something felt like it didn’t fit. It had been a constant feeling along the way, when things should wrap up already. But Discord, in that message didn’t sound like himself. At all.

Twilight’s attention drifted out of her thoughts. Like every other cycle was different, this one was no exception. It just seemed more different. Yet Twilight couldn’t explain how, if she tried. The Harpy seemed to know where she was going, dragging her tiny garden of black roses around for a quick stroll among the trees. She even relaxed her impatient scowl. Under her breath, wondering what the grassbreath was up to this time.

Eventually, she and Twilight’s group reunited with Cadance up ahead and found the open meadow. It was uninhabited and dimmed under lead-colored clouds. A small mound here, a flower patch there, a funny-looking tree… all seemed out of place. Slight differences seemed more accumulated than the other three cycles, like the round, elongated stones that seemed to have sprouted from the earth. Even from a distance, Twilight could see the broken grass and revolved soil. Like the trees had taught the stones how to sprout from the ground.

The muddy pond was there, too. Unattended under the drizzle. The griffoness walked in no hurry, dragging her roses behind her. She seemed to not notice any difference at all. Bored, going through the motions for yet another cycle, Twilight decided. It simply struck her as strange when all seemed so different.

Was it that the place seemed deserted? Like that creature that felt like she was Celestia had given up? What was it that bothered Twilight and filled her with uncertainty? No. Even the clouds, absent in the other cycles, seemed small compared to the greatest difference.

It was just so subtle; difficult to put her hoof on it. Something hung in the air like a sweet perfume. Except it didn’t reach for the sense of smell. It brushed at Twilight’s being in a deeper way. Like a sweet breeze, as the drizzle itself. It was like a warm summer rain, the weather services provided to beat the heat.

“Can you guys feel this too?” she perked her ears, and her eyes scanned the trees in the distance.

“Yeah… It feels like I’m in an airship.” Twilight nodded at Starlight’s perfect analogy, still eyeing the distant tree lines like they held the answer. “With magical induction engines radiating magic all over.”

Far from abandoned. The very magic of Life inhabited that place. Far from dull, it was simply subtle. Twilight’s coat stood, like a scared cat, when the realization hit her. Life. So powerful it dominated the landscape and filled the background.

“Why is it not all glowy, then?” Rainbow walked closer in between them.

“Because it’s not free mana.” Rarity’s eyes too slowly roved over the distance, speaking like they were in a mystery novel. “It’s attuned magic.”

“I don’t see the difference.” The pegasus shrugged.

All Dash received was a roll of the eyes while Twilight agreed with Rarity. It was magic, like before, but not as raw. A magical presence was in the air. A powerful spell cast from a distance. It was very much a consequence of the flight of the fiery alicorn, spreading the day across the sky like she did in all the previous cycles. Not only mighty, but also refined and mature, like fine calligraphy. It was merely curious she was nowhere to be seen.

Walking along the Harpy, they saw a serene flat film of water covering the muck in the pond. A bubble popped here and there to leave a circular scar on the flat surface. It remained otherwise unmoving. Following the Harpy’s lead, Twilight sniffed at the lake and an earthy smell filled her nostrils. Not entirely unpleasant, but not nice either. It smelled like the mud used by the spa sisters back in Ponyville, with a slightly creamy touch.

“Surprisingly pleasant on the nose, I must say!” Rarity giggled.

While they spent time with idle talk, the Harpy stuck her paw inside the pond and rummaged around for a couple of seconds. Before Twilight even understood what she was doing, she simply pulled out a pony from it. At least, it mostly looked like a pony. While her friends gasped, complained, grimaced, and reeled back, Twilight and the Harpy examined the mud-covered creature.

Its limbs seemed too long because its articulations didn’t connect properly. She even held them by the slack neck, because the pony had no hair. It was fortunate the mud covered them, because they also lacked skin along with the fur and much of the muscles. They barely breathed. Gasped slowly, and Twilight was sure she could see the heart pumping away in between patches of slimy mud and unhardened, transparent bones. It was like an incomplete pony; a bun that still needed more time in the oven.

“Mud pony…” Pinkie snorted, much to everypony’s annoyance, while the Harpy let the pony go back into the pond, surprisingly gentle.

Among complaints and disgusted comments, Twilight was more interested in the Harpy’s reaction. Bored disinterest. Maybe to her, that was not so special. Yet given the screaming differences from the previous cycle, she expected more of a reaction. A word came to Twilight’s mind, and it was ‘grounded’. Practical? Maybe natural. As natural as things go in Equestria, at least. She hadn’t thought of it, but that was more like what a ‘pony creating pool’ should look like. Instead of a ‘cauldron’ where the magical alicorn ‘cooked and stirred’ ponies into being. A magical pond where the magic of the fiery alicorn made them, already adults, from the materials in the mud.

The Harpy turned before Twilight heard anything. “Ah. There you are.”

As confused as Twilight, the others also looked in the same direction. Only after a second did the bushes shift. Twilight’s jaw dropped slack. Instead of a carefree gazelle-like jump, the creature stepped out of the foliage. Flowers, delicate marigolds, sprouted from the grass and opened, each like a glorious sunrise. Tiny, shiny insects scuttered about her hooves and fled into the surrounding foliage.

Not a mass of magical flames, but sturdy white hooves covered by immaculately white long hairs stepped on the grass. A long leg covered in short fur was both elegant and strong, with tensing muscles powering her stride. Speaking of muscles, powerful ones contracted and relaxed under her creamy alabaster chest. Perfection in motion, every inch a dancing choreography of coordination.

Her long neck rippled with tout chords as she moved her head and the silken strands of her mane waved weightlessly behind her, avoiding the branches like they might evade clingy, adoring worshipers. Her coat was not merely impeccably white; it shone with a light of its own, a luminescence as subtle as it was warm. Each step was a strophe in a hymn to elegance. It was not only beauty, but a quality for which Twilight initially lacked a proper word. Power, might. Authority made flesh in motion. Twilight’s heart skipped a beat, and she held her eyes from staring when they found the cutie mark of the sun. Her magical presence remained past Twilight’s focus. A presence like the sun itself, bathing the land awash with its warmth.

A parade for flawlessness in the shape of Celestia of Equestria.

“Dashie,” Pinkie Pie mumbled with a mix of uncharacteristic awe and nervous excitement. “I’m having those colorful feelings again.” Pinkie mumbled behind her and their pegasus friend muttered something else in response, but Twilight couldn’t hear it.

Celestia barely deemed the griffoness worthy of a glance. Not even a disdainful snort. She pranced happily toward the pond with a whip of her tail and the tiny golden garden in her stride. Despite the lack of attention, the Harpy followed with no external signs of offense. Reaching the edge of the pond, Celestia stared down at the mud, frowning while her horn shone with its usual golden light. The griffoness, rather than teasing or accusing, simply sat and watched. Rather than bothering the alicorn, she gently straightened one of her black roses, adjusting its petals that had grown askew.

Twilight and the others mostly mimicked the two and copied each other’s stare of confusion.

“Is she… Is it just me, or is she back to acting the same way she did at the start?” Shining armor scratched the back of his head and shrugged with a frown. “Like… Almost, but not quite intelligent?”

“Why is it all so different?” Naminé asked, followed by a series of agreed statements. “Did something happen? Did we miss something?”

No answers. Twilight had none, her friends even fewer. The Harpy simply laid down by the pond, on her bed of roses and patiently watched. The alicorn worked, reaching inside with a more intense shine in her horn. Ponies watched and waited.

“It’s fine. Take your time. It’s not like you are in a condition to talk, anyway.” The Harpy said casually with a yawn, holding a paw before her beak. “This place gets strangely lonesome when you are like this.”

It wasn’t the shift that unnerved Twilight most, but the Harpy’s nonchalance. Bringing it up to her friends and Naminé yielded no new insights. Ultimately, there was not much they could do. Twilight and the others simply settled and waited, like the Harpy had.

With the strange flow of time in that vision, they didn’t have to wait long before something drew them from their quiet vigil. The surface of the slushy lake stirred. Bubbles popped on the thick mud. The alicorn’s face brightened with one of Celestia’s own radiant smiles. She whinnied and shifted her hooves excitedly. Twilight and her friends all gasped as sludge-covered hooves broke the surface. An astounded gasp escaped Rarity as she wondered aloud what was happening, but it was obvious. The griffoness, while not showing much surprise as the ponies, stood from her resting spot and put some distance between her and the edge, with her flowers following suit.

Ponies broke the surface and started climbing out of the lake. Often dramatically, splashing mud all over and with loud, anxious gasps. Other times dragging themselves out, barely slowing down. Every instinct urged Twilight to jump in that pond and help. At least use her magic and drag them out. Remembering she was witnessing past events barely kept the impulse at bay. And while the others too refrained from their instincts, Celestia’s identical twin did exactly that. She assisted several of them. Only just containing her joy, reaching into the mud with hooves and magic to drag the stragglers out of it. It was a job for alicorn stamina, but she got all one hundred and twenty-six—twenty-one males—out of the lake with a huge smile on her very expressive face.

“You were counting?” Rainbow raised an eyebrow when Twilight mentioned so.

“Uh… Yes?” Twilight craned her neck. “That could be important, you know?”

The activity didn’t stop there. Celestia pranced about and hopped between the ponies. Examining them, planting her ears on their chest, enveloping them in her golden magical aura. Some she poked with her hoof, others she rolled onto their side. One of the muddy ponies earned a frown and a stare from her tilted head. She rested her hooves on their ribcage and pushed, causing the unconscious pony to hack, cough mud out of their nostrils and peacefully snooze again. Celestia perked her ears and gave them a silent, partially confused, partially worried stare, but she was eventually satisfied.

“Will you stop fussing about them? They are fine. They’ve been fine all the other times.” The Harpy said, sitting by a tree and letting out an exasperated groan. “Hurry it up. My patience is already sufficiently tested.”

While she ignored the Harpy, Celestia licked her hoof and put it up in the air. As though she was feeling the breeze with an attentive frown. She smiled again, and her eyes turned up to the gray clouds.

“For feather’s sake. The sooner you are done with this, the sooner we can talk, and you can stop wasting our time.” The Harpy complained like an old lady in a shop. Ignored, she rolled her eyes when the white alicorn hoped and flapped her wings to hover a couple hundred hooves in the air. Her horn shone with the same light as the sun and the clouds responded with lightning and thunder while rays of sunlight pierced in between. The griffoness scoffed. “This is not impressive, either.”

The rain picked up in intensity, and pegasi started falling from the clouds. Drops of rain themselves, they popped out of the clouds and plummeted with nothing between them and a sudden, crushing death, tens of thousands of hooves below. Even after what they had just witnessed, a breathless moment had Twilight convinced something horrible was happening. After the collective gasp from the watching ponies, their wings unfurled and caught the wind. They glided down while the white alicorn kept her silly grin and wobbled her head to follow their spiraling descent.

“Whoa! That is awesome!” Rainbow cheered along with Pinkie and the other ponies and their excited hustle.

Even Twilight, taken by the majestic flight of the uncannily unreactive pegasi, almost didn’t see how bored the Harpy was. Or maybe her disdain for ponies kept her from enjoying the magical birth of an entire race. It was hard to truly know what was inside her head.

Twilight’s attention returned to the pegasi when the first thunked into the grass and prompted a bemused ‘ouch’ from Rainbow Dash. Their graceful glide ended with clumsy plants on the grass. One might expect a pony to wake up with a faceful of greenery and dirt after such a graceful descent—albatross-style—but that wasn’t the case. Some flipped over their heads, others bounced and faceplanted again, yet none seemed injured or even woke up. At worst, they rolled into a more comfortable position and snoozed on.

“Erm. It’s probably part of the process that they are so lethargic.” Starlight Glimmer grimaced. “Right?”

“Is this that pegasus flight instinct thing we hear about?” Shining asked, scratching behind his head. Twilight nodded, calling it the Wind-Vestibular Reflex as she watched the clumsy ballet of snoozing spirals and ungainly landings. Followed by limp skids and sprawled heaps of sleeping pegasi. One of them sneezed at the marigolds but kept sleeping.

“Well, it works as intended, I guess.” Starlight mentioned with a grimace and triggered Pinkie’s giggling.

Like she did with the earth ponies, the pony who looked just like Celestia spent a long time examining the snoozing pegasi. She rolled some into more comfortable positions and spent some time magicking over one of them. She tucked some wings into their resting position and flicked her ears at some snoring. Twilight’s friends kept commenting on the situation. It was funny, but there was also something about it that bothered Twilight.

“Why is this so different from the previous cycles?” Twilight looked at Naminé.

The yellow unicorn winced and shrugged. “Beats me! I agree it is different, though. I was hoping you could say why. Is it that different, though? We had a beach in the previous cycle.”

“There’s definitely something out of place here, Twilight.” Applejack agreed with her, but also couldn’t add any further insight. “Maybe it is all this silliness?”

Twilight nodded her agreement but was not satisfied.

Meanwhile, the Harpy followed ‘Celestia’ around as she made her way to the stones. It seemed obvious the unicorns would come out of those, but Twilight had not a clue how. The Harpy, however, urged ‘Celestia’ on, pushing her with her wings.

“Move this along, grasseater. I tire of your sluggish waste of time. The sooner we are done with this, the sooner we can converse like…” She sighed. “Like rational creatures.”

The alicorn stopped and gave the griffoness a petulant stare. She nickered and raised a hoof. Twilight groaned and frowned. She was such a strange creature—both showing and lacking higher intelligence. Uncanny in the way she echoed Celestia, and at the same time, someone’s pet.

Satisfied she had sufficiently chastised the griffoness, the alicorn then planted an ear on the round stone. She squinted her eyes, completely ignoring the Harpy’s bored glower.

Somewhere between the Harpy’s grumbling, the alicorn’s dead-serious stare at the stone, and flowers sprouting from their hooves and paws, Twilight wondered where all the surrounding madness had first gone wrong. Out of the blue, the alicorn’s eyes opened wide, and she showed a radiant grin with a happy whinny. Her horn filled up with the purest of golden lights.

“Wait!” the griffoness cried too late and failed to shield herself with her wings.

The stone exploded with a heavy thud and glittering dust covered the grass and trees, not to mention the excited alicorn and the coughing griffoness. Twilight and the others, too taken by surprise, cried and jumped away. Twilight tried to teleport in her fright, but her magic didn’t work. Instead, she thanked Naminé’s magic that none of the sparkling powder and thick liquid stuck to her.

The stone ‘egg’ didn’t simply explode with a cartful of glitter. The similar stones dotting the meadow exploded too. One by one popped in a glorious show of colorful light, slime, glitter and ponies pouring from inside like the yolk of a cracked egg. The alicorn promptly occupied herself rolling ponies into more comfortable positions, not minding the sticky goo or all the glitter. For better or worse, it added to the mud in her coat, but the rain was taking care of it, anyway. She stopped and stared at a unicorn. For a moment, their coat shimmered with the same Dainty Mellow’s fire as before when it focused on the sleeping unicorn’s horn with a shiny mote of light. Celestia’s lips made an enthralled little ‘o’ before she giggled when it fizzled out of existence.

Meanwhile, the Harpy started on an outraged tirade against all things pony, flapping her wings and muttering imprecations as she clawed at the clumps of goo stuck to her feathers. Every attempt only spread it and covered her further with it and the glittery crystal dust until she resembled a disgruntled, glittery mop.

Twilight caught herself wondering if that icky, colorful slime tasted as colorful as it looked. Inside the stones, surprisingly pointy and sharp crystals lined the interior. Geodes. How they didn’t hurt themselves inside the rock, the pony couldn’t imagine.

“Huh… Earth ponies born from the mud, pegasi from the clouds, and unicorns from crystals.” Twilight didn’t find her observation particularly mindful, but it was certainly an observation on a blatantly meaningful setup.

“We truly are hammering in the stereotypes, aren’t we?” Rarity complained, ears pinned to her head, as though she could read Twilight’s thoughts.

Pinkie and Rainbow practically rolled on the grass, giggling and guffawing like they had just been told a joke. ‘Glitter ponies’, they thought, were particularly funny. The others examined the new unicorns and the alicorn’s festive dance while Twilight pondered. Why did everything feel so different? What of the Harpy’s response? Annoyance rather than surprise. And that still nagged at Twilight’s thoughts.

No answers came to her, but eventually the alicorn finished fussing over her ponies and simply laid down in the middle of all the snoozing ponies and her bed of marigolds. She ‘loafed’, as some younger ponies might have said. Her long—elegant and strong—neck craned above, letting her watch the mass of earth ponies by the lake, but also let her survey the pegasi, strewn around the meadow and the clusters of messy unicorns too. The gentle rain slowly drained all the mud and glittery goo away, almost as part of a plan.

Not to mention the Harpy and her distress, not willing to lick the sticky mess off her and then her mad dash to the nearest body of flowing water. She probably wouldn’t like to know, but she gave the ponies a good laugh too.

As things settled in their little slice of Edenic retreat, the strange flow of time picked up the pace. The clouds mostly opened themselves and lent a soul-filling warmth to the meadow with the glow of the sun. Even the Harpy enjoyed some sunbathing at the top of one of the normal rocky outcrops.

What broke the peace was Celestia’s sudden gasp. The ponies had started waking up. Long stretching sessions helped the blood flow. Grimacing frowns came from unused eyes opened under the glorious sun peeking behind the clouds. The alicorn’s white coat remained an unmarred alabaster after all the mud and goo was gone. Its shine mirrored that of the sun. She stood with an unabashedly thrilled grin, watching as her little ponies came to life around her and did pony things. They grazed on the luscious grass and ate from the little bushes. They socialized, softly butting heads, bumping hooves, and excitedly rearing and neighing. Even more so as the alicorn joined them in rampant, unrepentant horsey jubilation.

“I get it!” The Harpy yelled from her perch like an old lady scolding the foals in her yard. “You are happy! Good! Can we move on?”

Her rant was ignored and for the longest time nothing more exciting than all the greeting and socializing happened. Until the alicorn laid down by a bush and made an awkward frown, poking at a beige earth pony mare trying to nibble at it.

“No. Not the branches. Eat the leaves.” Celestia’s voice coming out of the alicorn almost scared Twilight out of her coat and drew several gasps from her friends. “The leaves. Eat the leaves! It is gonna hurt your tummy! Stop!”

Then the alicorn herself gasped and took a hoof to her muzzle. “Oh, my! I’m talking! Oh, wait! I’m thinking!”

Her shocked expression turned to excitement as she stood. A garden of jasmines, tiny like little stars rose from the grass, and another alicorn literally poofed into existence with a shower of sparkling dust. Unsurprisingly, a deep blue, particularly cute alicorn, with her mane made with a piece of the night sky. Facing the wrong way, she spun around to blink at the white alicorn.

“You’re late!” the white one said, pointing a hoof.

“I am not late!” blue shot back, wings flaring indignantly. “I lost my way in that mess you made inside their heads!”

“It is not ‘a mess’!” White gasped. “It is a complex system of feedback loops!”

The Harpy walked closer to them with a scowl worthy of her storms, glaring so intensely that the two alicorns backpedaled a few steps, each trailed by their flowers like advancing and retreating armies. “You are like a broken artifact instead of a creature. A magical device with switches for turning on or off the individual parts. Do you think you could manage sex without the pink one prancing about? It is ridiculous.”

Luna pouted and was about to say something, but the white one stopped her. “No, no. This is not the time for bickering. We must focus—there is important work ahead of us.”

Blue’s pout turned right around to an excited gasp. “Yes! I, too, have ideas to identify the root of the Mortality Anomaly!”

“The what?” Celestia-from-the-past tilted her head.

“The Mortality Anomaly!” Luna declared proudly. “I have dubbed it so. And I have devised methods to help pinpoint the issue that causes our ponies to turn so vilely upon one another.”

“Instead of meddling with things beyond your control, you should be returning my world to me and apologizing for the damage you’ve caused.”

Celestia smiled gently and waved a hoof at the Harpy. “Don’t worry. We will make this right. You’ll see.”

As they were talking, a unicorn approached. A white stallion with a wild, deep gray mane, still covered in dried blobs of viscous rainbow liquid. He walked to the taller mares and griffoness, raising a hoof and speaking sheepishly. “Ah. Excuse me, ma’ams. But there seems to be a problem with-”

“Ah! You shall be perfect, my fine stallion!” Luna enveloped him in her magical aura, grinning with the excitement of a foal with a new toy. “Now, please, wait but a moment.”

She talked to him as she materialized a tree stump and put him seated on it. Then she materialized a table with a boxy crystal device on it and sat herself across the table from the pony. Her telekinetic magic raised a craning arm from the device. It held a tiny gadget with a lens that she telekinetically adjusted. Finally, she wrapped a band around the pony’s forelimb and stuck him with a helmet of blinking lights and spiraling cables. All connected to the machine.

The pony started with a confused ‘aaah’, but the blue alicorn shushed him. “Have no fears. This shall not hurt in the slightest.”

Finally, she produced a pile of paper, straightened it against the table, and cleared her throat before glaring at the pony. So serious a stare Twilight almost feared he had done something wrong already. “You are standing in a vast desert.”

“What do you hope to accomplish with this?” The Harpy growled.

“Silence, if you please. It is of utmost importance that you do not interfere with Mister Stallion here.” Luna shot her a displeased, petulant stare before she turned back to the pony. “You look down and see a turtle walking towards you.”

“Ah… Okay…” The pony was no less confused than he was a few seconds ago, but he wanted to help.

“What is she doing?” Cadance whispered to Twilight. All of them watched from the sidelines as though they feared interfering with the experiment.

“I have no idea.” Twilight’s bafflement was written all over her furrowed brow.

“You reach and flip the turtle onto its back,” the alicorn of the night told the pony in all seriousness, eventually glancing at the machine between them.

“I don’t… I don’t think that I would do that… But… Uh… Whatever you say, ma’am.” His ears flopped in confusion.

“Please, just focus on what I am telling you.” She gave him a firm glare before leaning down to focus on the machine again with a hum. She stared at him again. “The turtle lies on the sand…”

“Hum… It should be a tortoise.” Fluttershy whispered next to Twilight, but mostly only received a few shushing complaints while the machine started printing a strip of paper.

The blue alicorn went on. “It lies on its back, baking in the sun. It is struggling, but cannot right itself without your aid, Mr. Stallion.”

“Gah! I’ll help it! I’ll help the turtle!” The pony cried. “I’ll carry it on my back!”

“I don’t think this is helping, Night.” Celestia leaned closer with a worried frown while the Harpy complained under her breath. “You’re just distressing this poor pony with a ridiculous hypothetical situation.”

“Ah ha! But I am not!” the blue alicorn triumphantly tore the strip of paper from the machine. “I have been recording the autonomous response of his sympathetic system! I shall now determine what went awry in the last cycle!”

While the blue one carefully held the strip of paper in her hooves, the white alicorn talked to the pony. After a couple of words from him, showing her his hoof, she magicked at his cannon and dismissed him away. Blue’s eyes darted one way and another as her frown intensified, and she mumbled things to herself. Words like ‘reflex this’, ‘response that’ reached Twilight sporadically. Finally, after intense minutes of curious tension as ponies followed Twilight closer to the alicorns and the griffoness, the blue alicorn raised her eyes.

“It’s, uh… Completely within normal parameters. I don’t understand.” She confessed with flopping ears. “Maybe the inherent issue lies deeper than outward signaling from his autonomous nervous system can show. He appeared perfectly empathetic towards the turtle… At least on the outside. The Mortality Anomaly should not be happening. He perfectly understood it was suffering and didn’t want it to suffer.”

“Maybe the problem lies in their internal memetic processing. Maybe it is signaling correctly outwardly, but internally, he may be using incorrect neural glyphs. I just need to pry open somepony’s brain and have a closer look!”

“You are an idiot. The biggest one in existence.” The Harpy told her through a bored frown.

“You are not taking ponies apart!” The alicorn of the day waved her hooves with finality and proper distress. “Once assembled, ponies are not meant to be disassembled!”

“Hold! I have it! Let us create a simulation where we can experiment with the ponies—but with direct access to the discrete processes of their brains! I can make it work in just a few hours!”

“That is not the problem with them, you buffoon.” The Harpy yelled.

Twilight raised an eyebrow, watching the exchange, and her friends agreed collectively. “Now that Luna was about to figure it out, the mean bird decides to be helpful.”

“There is no problem! You backed them into a corner. They must follow their destinies, and you saddled them with emotions and intelligence they need nothing with. Then you put them in a world where they will see resources dwindle before their eyes. Naturally, they will fight over them. This is why your kind was never deemed worthy of free-will. You were meant to spread magic and sustain nature. There is no need for you to burden your brains with intelligence or choice.”

Twilight’s jaw clenched. It was positively infuriating that she was right, and Twilight knew that she was right. But she also never provided them with the answer to that problem, which Twilight also knew. It was one of the few times Twilight felt like she wanted to kick somecreature.

Around her, the others babbled and complained; their voices blended into a background hum. Luna huffed. She wanted to say something, but her words of righteous fury caught in her throat. Her mouth moved, but no words came out. Behind them, Celestia was the image of defiance, but she avoided the griffoness’ eyes. Mother Harpy’s expression softened with a drop of sympathy.

“It is time to let go of this ill-advised quest.” The griffoness spoke uncharacteristically softly, approaching and offering a paw to the white alicorn.

Celestia huffed and hoofed angrily at the ground. She was going to say something too, but an earthquake toppled her and the Harpy from their haunches. Night even flared her wings for balance, too.

The ground trembled, the grass shivered and rose from the ground as the soil beneath pushed. A vibrant pink, red, and yellow tulip sprouted from the ground and its stalk bent over. It was giant. So big it could hold a pony inside its petals. When they opened, it released a shower of pink smoke and deposited the bubblegum-colored alicorn of love safely on the grass.

Eyes stared at her and mouths gaped while Cadance walked out of the mist of pink fumes and tossed her wild, unpreened mane, dragging a garden of tulips in her steps. “We need to talk! I believe I have the solution to our problem!”

“You don’t say?” The Harpy sat again and brushed her feathers at the dirt in her black and white pelt.

Twilight was more stunned at how identical the two versions of Cadance were. One wild and barely ‘produced’ at all, missing all royal regalia. Cadance au natural. The other a proper princess. Both so stunningly beautiful she wanted to bop her upside the head for being so pretty. Every inch, every hair, the same mare. Shining stared, mouth agape in shock, and Twilight dreaded to know the things going through his head while their Cadance cheered like a foal at the fair.

“Watch this!” Cadance from the past grinned despite the other two crying for her to stop.

Her horn shone, enveloped in bright pink. All the ponies, whether walking around, watching from a safe distance, or already busy building their homes, stopped. Little pink hearts popped around their heads, and then they resumed their activities as though they had never stopped.

Luna squeaked, hoofing frantically at the residual magical energy around her head. “What did you do?!”

“I changed some parameters. That is all.” Cadance-from-the-past proudly set a hoof on her chest, sitting regally on her tulips. “I have made them capable of loving their own genders. Now they can love everypony and no longer need to fight each other over resources anymore! Problem solved! We can set them loose in the world.”

While Celestia mumbled awkwardly, not finding the right words to say, the Harpy turned to Luna with deadpan seriousness. “I take back what I said earlier. Clearly, there is an even bigger idiot.”

“What?” Love dragged out the word to match her surprise and her wide eyes.

“It will not work. In a way, you are literally making it worse in the long run.”

Love gasped, pointing a hoof at the Harpy. “That’s homophobic!”

“That is not what I mean, hoof-brain!” the griffoness screeched, tugging at her black crest of feathers. “They cannot simply love every creature they know. You should understand this!”

“This is going to overload their cognitive capacity, Love.” Luna explained, gesturing in the air as if holding a brain. “They simply don’t have the mental cache to process that many relationships. They’ll forget they love somepony, and when they remember, it’ll just make things worse.”

“Can’t we just make them better at remembering who they love?”

Celestia shook her head. “Their higher cortex can’t handle that. It simply doesn’t have enough connections for such powerful emotions over and over. They’d spend all their time processing who they love—and they’d need brains the size of watermelons.”

Watching the scene, Twilight grit her teeth before she yelled at their vision of the past. “This is so obvious!”

“So… We’re back where we started?” Love’s disheartened expression almost made Twilight feel bad for those doofuses. She even ignored her friends’ comments behind her back.

“Are you satisfied?” The Harpy impatiently crossed her forelimbs while sitting on her haunches. “You understand the strict requirements of biological systems. The elegance they require and that your blunt notions simply cannot fulfill. Do you not see it is time you gave up?”

Love had no words for her. She simply let her jaw hang limply, staring at the older alicorns. Night avoided her gaze, focusing instead on her own shifting hooves. Celestia’s closed eyes, under her pained frown, let escape a tear. For an instant, Twilight’s stomach dropped, and she could feel the tension among the ponies with her. Twilight knew she would not give up: they were watching events in the past. But the sadness that claimed the cheery alicorn’s expression punched her stomach as hard as Applejack could kick a tree. Even the flowers surrounding her bent and lost their petals. Even worse, their recently created ponies congregated and watched. Their stares, filled with confusion and hope, seemed no different from those of ponies in the present, fearing their princesses had given up on them.

“You did your best.” The Harpy spoke softly.

“We can’t give up.” Celestia’s frown deepened, and her voice wavered. A dark line of wet fur glistened a path of sorrow down her pony face. Words struggled out of her throat.

The griffoness shook her head and spoke with barely held anger and disbelief, tossing her forelimbs in the air. “You test my patience over and over. Time is not forever. Even the Black Sun cannot hold the Wheel of Time forever. Our cyclical existence will come to an end, eventually. Even the magic you call Harmony will cease to exist one day. Your insistent arrogance quickens the end. We cannot waste time on pointless flights of fancy.”

“It’s not pointless! It is a hope for a dignified existence! They…” The white alicorn’s voice cracked while her tears dropped on her halo of marigolds. Her stare turned to the other alicorns and the congregated ponies. Their creation, watching the scene, powerless to do anything, grouped together as ponies do in fear. In between, Twilight and her friends silently and thoughtfully watched her, even if she didn’t know they were there. The poignant stare straight at her drew a gasp from Twilight. “They mercifully don’t remember.”

Her pained frown twisted into a scowl of righteous fury and unrestrained sorrow while words caught in her throat and sobs escaped instead. “The pain of talons ripping apart the flesh. The dread of screeching griffons and the powerless, cold surrender of death. I hate you. Even if they don’t remember, I hate you and I will hate you until the end of time. We will make it a better world even if we must take a million cycles. All the pain and sorrow will be worth it if we rid the world of the horror you wrought upon Creation. You monster. Vile, devouring monster, hiding hubris behind sympathy when you feel in control. You are not in control. I am not. All that has happened was ordained by Harmony, and it will not let us fail.”

“You fool! Do you believe the clouds will part and the answers to your problems will come down from the sky?!”

A soft chime filled the air. The clouds parted and sunbeams rained on the grass. Flowers emerged from between the emerald blades in response. Puffy dahlias of every color in the rainbow sprouted and exploded in a vibrant show of color. An alicorn glided down from between the clouds and landed in their midst, obfuscated by the light. As it faded, another great pony with wings and a horn stood among the flowers.

Twilight herself was staring and finding it hard to believe. The creature lacked nothing to the others in majesty and awe, but her white coat shimmered with a purple pearlescent sheen. Her rainbow mane flowed with the same grace as that of her sister alicorns, but had distinct shades of pale lavender, buttery yellow, cheery pink, a strong orange, fair purple, and a bold cyan. And those colors repeated themselves in the diamond-shaped gems at the base of her neck, like she wore a natural necklace of clear precious stones.

“I hate you ponies so much…” The Harpy sighed.

“Hello, everycreature!” The new alicorn greeted them with a cheerful grin and a waving hoof.

The Harpy almost retched while the other three alicorns cheered for their new sister.

“Oh, my stars!” Rarity squealed. “She sounds just like our Twilight!”

“I do not sound that cheesy…” Twilight mumbled in the middle of all the excitement.

“She’s kinda different, though.” Rainbow twisted her mouth.

While the others made similar observations, Twilight refrained from commenting and Day approached the new alicorn. “Hello! Have you come with the solution to our problem?”

“No!” the new alicorn beamed. The following silence filled with a stunned confusion and bewildered blinks before she took a deep breath and, with utmost cheerfulness, declared, “We don’t need to!”

Since nopony else smiled and confused stares surrounded her, she spoke again. “Ah… I do have a way for our little ponies to live with the problem and make the best of it!”

“Joyous!” Celestia clopped her hooves together. “Please, show us!”

“With pleasure!” The new alicorn cheered.

While seated on her bed of dahlias, the alicorn’s horn shone with purple magic, summoning an easel that planted itself firmly on the grass. On it was a large sheet of paper bearing a simple drawing of a happy pony in a grassy field, a smiling sun, and trees in the background. The alicorn herself suddenly sported a purple frock coat and a pair of glasses perched on her muzzle, with a pointing stick floating in her telekinetic grasp. She whipped the stick toward the paper, where bold letters across the top read: Your Ponies and Free-Will, by Friendship.

“Ponies are happiest when they can fulfill their Animus Imperative!” she began brightly.

“Oh, no!” Rainbow trembled at the sight. “It’s a lecture!”

Others shushed her, as the other three alicorns gathered to watch. The Harpy was about as unhappy as Rainbow Dash. “What do you think you are doing?”

Celestia, watching with interest, shushed her too. Friendship cleared her throat and flipped the first page to reveal a new drawing: a stick-figure pony, sitting on the grass and with a miserable frown, surrounded by leafless trees and vaguely angry-looking creatures. Twilight squinted. She thought they were supposed to be griffons, but the drawing was so poor they could have been anything.

“Should anything keep ponies from fulfilling their Animus Imperative, they will grow frustrated…” a worried tone crept into her voice. “Then depressed, and finally delusional.” She gave the group a worried stare before flipping to the next page, which showed a meadow with the three elder alicorns and a herd of ponies—including foals—under a sky with happy sun, moon and heart.

“At the present, the ponies fulfill their Animus Imperative through a cognitive framework built on their biological needs. They experience their needs as emotions,” she said, as though reciting a textbook.

The Harpy raised her paw, prompting the purple shaded alicorn to stop before tuning the next page in her presentation. “Yes?”

“Can you move on to the end so that I can explain why you are wrong? Then we can stop this bothersome waste of time, and I can start again?”

Friendship lidded her eyes and tapped the pointer against the current page, where a crude drawing of a pile of apples showed an angry pony at the top and a sad pony at the bottom. “No,” she said flatly. “The problem arose once ponies became mortal. They realized their time was limited, which made it difficult for them to gather enough resources to pursue their Animus Imperative fully.”

On the next page, two ponies and a pair of foals sat atop a pile of apples. Friendship’s expression grew tense, her tone urgent. “With the creation of closely knit families, this problem has intensified. Ponies begun turning on one another, overwhelmed by their emotional distress!”

The following page displayed a cycle: a happy face, a frowning face, and a crying face, each connecting to the next. Her voice now bordered on frantic. “They cycle between states of inability to fulfill their Animus Imperative. They must sustain nature, but they must also care for their families and ensure their own survival! When they reach psychosis, they grow paranoid, fearing their friends are stealing from them!”

Finally, she dispelled the easel, drawings, and her outfit with a flick of magic. Her wings flared wide, large purple eyes trembling with concern. “Without free will, ponies have no choice but to fulfill their Animus Imperative. Once they forget their creators, they will lose their purpose within Creation as a whole! It led them into disaster and will again!”

“So how do we fix it?!” Luna-of-the-Past urged.

“Like I said… We can’t.” The newest alicorn frowned. “But I have a solution.

Before the Harpy could laugh, the alicorn closed her eyes solemnly and purple magic poured from her horn, enveloping the other alicorns and the griffoness. When Twilight and her friends came to themselves, they were inside the crystal hall from the previous cycle, but it was different. And the first to notice it was Cadance, as she looked up to the ceiling and then down.

“Oh, my gosh! It is like my dream now!”

“Ta-da!” cheered the alicorn of friendship with her wings open in all their glory, standing before the others and her creation.

The hall had moved deeper into the building, at the end of a corridor and opposite to the grand crystal doors of the entrance. Five great, tall doors surrounded the room, with the one in the middle leading downstairs. The other four doors each held the cutie mark of an alicorn princess. Equestria’s Sun, Equestria’s Moon, Cadance’s Crystal Heart, and Twilight Sparkle’s six stars. The murals were gone, and so was the eldritch, magical form of the soul.

The center of the room nestled a small garden from which stood a stout crystal tree. Its six limbs each held a string of crystal threads, like the silk of a spider gathering dew, and each string held a single gem with a color from the rainbow. At the top of the tree sat a stick holding a piece of paper that said ‘Cutie Mark here’.

Love’s complaining interrupted the amazed mumbles. “Hey! There is the Throne of Love?!”

“I’m sorry! I had to move everything behind. This needs to be the cornerstone of their minds, or it will not work!” The newest alicorn said with a sheepish wince before she pointed at the crystal floor with a hoof. “It is all connected, though. Under the floor.”

The other two alicorns examined the tree, and their smiles grew by the minute, as did Twilight’s discomfort. Her mind flooded with information. Like the magic of the soul, the tree was made of an untold number of moving parts. Elegant magic moving energy, examining, regulating. Under the crystal tiles, the different threads connected under the doors. Magical energies flowed fast. So fast a normal pony could not see them. But she could. Pulses of light coming and going, spiraling and dancing inside the tree and behind the doors. If she focused, she could see the individual pieces that made it all work interconnected. A symphony of magic that made up the mind of a pony.

It gave her shivers, and she felt again staring into an abyss too deep for any pony to fathom. The white alicorn, when she spoke with Twilight’s own voice, pulled her back.

“I call this the Harmonic Resonance System.” She waved her hoof grandiosely and greatly irritated Twilight.

“That is not what harmonic resonance means.” Luna promptly voiced Twilight’s grudges for her.

“Well… That is what I called it.”

“You have also put a tree inside their heads.”

“It is not a tree…” The alicorn with the gemstones chuckled nervously. “It is a scale.”

“It looks like a tree…” Cadance-of-the-Past frowned at her.

“It’s a scale that looks like a tree!” Friendship stomped a hoof on the crystal floor. “There are only so many ways a pony can make a six-armed scale!”

“What is it measuring, Friendship?” Celestia walked closer to her, an open wing pointing at the scale.

“Right!” The Twilight in their vision cleared her throat again and inhaled. “I have given them six cardinal directives. Moral guidelines, if you will. I have called them Laugher, Loyalty, Honesty, Kindness, Generosity and Magic.”

“They will shape the personality of a pony and change as their experiences shape their sense of self. They will run their Animus Imperative in the light of these six elements of Harmony which I have chosen to guide our little ponies. Each will weight differently and in weighing differently, change as they learn about the world and their own Animus Imperative.”

“Their varying weight will steer their minds. It will not fix the Mortality Anomaly. It cannot be fixed.” She said, looking up at the six gemstones hanging from the crystal limbs. “But it will give them space to choose. It just works!”

A strange, almost solemn silence trailed after Friendship’s words. The other three alicorns of the past circled around the scale and watched it critically. Twilight and her friends too stared, and the princess could only imagine if the others could see the same as her. With how strangely perception and memories worked inside that vision.

“I’ll be…” Luna-of-the-Past said. A grin slowly took over her muzzle.

Her contemporary Cadance giggled, looking at the scale up and down, while Celestia did a little tap dance of joy.

“Does this satisfy you, Mother Harpy?” Day’s cheerful voice directed Twilight’s attention back to the griffoness.

The life had drained from her face. Her beak hung open, and her eyes shifted. Slowly, a grimace took over her visage as the pristine sheen of her feathers dulled. All her bravado and arrogance fled with the red from her conjunctiva. A trembling paw hovered before her slack beak and her majestic black crest of feathers deflated. The imposing stature and powerful frame of the Queen of Talons were replaced by disbelief and a world-shattering shock.

“I’m not sure I understand.” Twilight’s contemporary Cadance inched closer with a frown.

“Free-will is not something you can decide to add or not.” Twilight spoke, back to staring up at the scale and its eerie similarity to the Tree of Harmony. “It is an emergent characteristic of the mind. It is built, layer upon layer. Ponies needed all that came before, so they would understand that there is a choice. It is not a true free-will, like the Harpy said earlier—that may not exist. But this system gives them enough room to navigate their lives, to find their own way within the structure they’ve been given. Like navigating a maze and finding themselves at the center.”

A distant discomfort she couldn’t fully grasp still hovered above her head. It still felt like something a normal pony shouldn’t gaze upon, but Twilight figured she could not protest. A small nod came with a deep breath. In her airship, she had complained that Cadance was the one graced with a vision of the inside of a pony’s mind. In the end, she smiled. It was knowledge and understanding. And it explained the problem with ponies, but she frowned again. There was still something missing. The puzzle felt incomplete, but, as Discord had also mentioned, and the vision had taught, now they had the substrate to understand what they had set out to understand.

They were back ‘outside’, and the ponies had advanced well in the construction of their homes and of their initial little village. They had even found and roped domesticated animals to their village. Cows, chickens, pigs. Like in the previous cycle, they certainly had found them elsewhere in the forest, brought to life by the ever-growing magic of life in that place.

Seeing that, immediately upon returning, the alicorns started minding their tasks. How they knew what to do, Twilight had only one inkling: some sort of instinct. They busied themselves in preparing the place, not unlike they had done in previous cycles, but ever so cleverer. By ensuring their ponies had the best head start possible while still under their guard. Setting up little trials for their ponies. They taught them nothing new compared to the previous cycle.

Meanwhile, Twilight and the others noticed Shining Armor and Naminé sitting next to each other and glaring at them. She blinked and thought for a second before she let out a chuckle. “Oh. You missed all that, didn’t you?”

“Not funny.” Shining grumbled and Naminé snorted angrily.

“You just missed Twilight solving the problem.” Rainbow said nonchalantly.

“This isn’t fair!” The yellow unicorn whined, and Cadance started explaining, but Applejack cut her off.

“Serves you right. I’d bet a bushel of apples you’d be turning everything into another crazy village full of crazy ponies! It’s too soon for another cuckoo unicorn, for pony’s sake!”

“Excuse me?” Starlight glared at the farm pony.

Naminé barely had the time to gasp her outrage. Cadance was already making excuses for her. “Well, it is thanks to her magic and special talent that we even can witness this, Miss Apple.”

“Guys?” Twilight stopped all the bickering, pointing her hoof at the Harpy.

While the conversation entertained Twilight, the Harpy had never moved from where she was. Her eyes were unfocused, staring at nothing amid the trees at the edge of the meadow. One of the curious ponies waved a hoof in front of her and earned an angry screech before she turned to the white alicorn a few hooves away.

“It is not enough!” the griffoness cried. She stood up and stormed towards the other. “You will fail again, and we are wasting time!”

The alicorns and the ponies within earshot stopped what they were doing and looked at her. Skittish as they were, the ponies cowered, but the white alicorn stood her ground. She turned to face the griffoness and kept an unreadable expression until the fierce predator glared with the intensity of a storm at her.

“No.” Friendship trotted closer, keeping a soft tone in her voice. “I am convinced this should work fine.”

“Why don’t you explain why it won’t work, then?” Luna challenged the Harpy from afar, in front of the scared ponies.

“Fine!” the griffoness tossed her black crest. “Their cognitive processes are… Too feeble. They need more robust neurons. And all that because you made them vegetarian. That they can’t get the nutrients they need. Yes. They’d need a carnivore diet. And you don’t want that, do you?”

“Boo!” Cadance-from-the-past, sitting among a group of young mares, held her hooves before her mouth.

While the other three alicorns exchanged uncomfortable stares, the Harpy spoke again. “It’s not my fault you cannot see this simple and easily identifiable issue. I’ll have my world back now, please.”

“That is kinda… hum…” Pinkie winced.

“Foalish.” Rainbow finished for her with pinned ears.

“I was thinking pathetic, but…”

“Aint nopony likes a sore loser.”

While her friends kept shooting barbed comments among themselves—Twilight understood, the Harpy was not popular—she watched Celestia of the past walking to the griffoness. But before she could say anything, the other received with her a hiss and her crest standing angrily.

“I need no sympathy from you, abomination.”

The white alicorn pony first reacted with a gasp, but then her ears hung limp, and she turned away, busy with her things to do. From there, the Harpy secluded herself to the distant edge of the meadow, almost hiding among the trees. While the others dismissed her as a petty loser, Twilight went to her. All she found was the griffoness lying on the grass, under one of the mighty trees. All she did was sulk and stare murder at the distant ponies. For once, Twilight would like to see what went on inside her head.

Disappointed, Twilight decided that watching the ponies and what came out of Friendship’s ideas was a better use of her time. And a lot was happening. The alicorns busied themselves with what Twilight called fine tuning. Day walked around the ponies who lend themselves to foraging, talking to them about all the bad things the wrong herbs and fruits could do to them.

“Hum. Why do poisonous fruits even exist?” asked a small earth pony, looking up at the majestic white alicorn.

“Well, that is because the fruits don’t grow only to feed you. Ponies will not be the only creatures who eat them. They will spread seeds to other areas and the plants will grow beyond immediate proximity. That said, they don’t want the tiny insects to eat their sap, so they will produce substances to keep them away. Those may become dangerous to others—like ponies.”

Meanwhile, Night sat with a couple of ponies and discussed the intriguing relationship between the length and the radius of a circle, and the inherent structural integrity of the triangle. Love, on the other hoof, gathered ponies inside the already built homes and talked to them about the nitty and gritty of lovemaking which promptly sent Twilight fleeing.

Finally, she found Friendship engrossed with her own project. She trotted among the groups of idling ponies and recruited them to follow her. With them arranged in a semicircle, she magicked an easel (again, Twilight noted with annoyance) holding another presentation. She tapped her stick at the wood, urging ponies to settle down, even as others joined upon seeing that the alicorn wanted to tell them something.

“I’m not actually like this!” Twilight snapped.

Next to her, Pinkie and Rainbow Dash laughed. Starlight Glimmer said ‘well…’ and rolled her eyes.

“Certainly not, darling.” Rarity provided some soothing words. “But you are prone to explaining things. If only because you are so smart.”

“Gee. Thanks Rarity.”

Indifferent to their conversation, the white alicorn with the gemstones showed the ponies a drawing with the outline of six pony heads. Two with horns and another pair with the outlines of the wings behind. More eerily, each pony head had a symbol for an Element of Harmony. And each symbol was the same as the cutie marks on Twilight’s own thighs and those of her friends.

“Oh my,” Rarity said. “I don’t even believe they should know what balloons are.”

“Honestly, with all that we’ve seen, this is not even shocking.” Pinkie deadpanned.

Twilight agreed with a silent nod, but her attention was at what the white alicorn was telling the attentive ponies. Even as more kept coming. “I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that you understand this. All ponies must abide by this pact, but specific elements will assist each tribe in your specific tasks. I have attuned earth ponies to Laughter and Honesty because your work shall be hard, and you must endure the hardship.”

“To the pegasi, I have given the elements of Kindness and Loyalty.” The alicorn kept talking, pointing at her drawings. “Your job is paramount and just as indispensable, but also leverageable. Beware that your control over the clouds may cause you to explore your friends. Loyalty and Kindness will steer you to serve them.”

Finally, she turned to the unicorns. “And the unicorns must be mindful of their friends’ needs and the power of their magic. You will yield an unthinkable power. Let Magic guide in your sacred task of commanding the cycles of life itself in the sun and the moon. Most of all, heed Generosity not to abuse your place.”

“The magic of bureaucracy.” Cadance snorted into her hoof and the others laughed, but Twilight and her deadpan stare didn’t think it was that funny. She, instead, thought it was curious, but not at all surprising, how the ponies paid rapt attention.

“You must promise me not to breach this pact.” Friendship urged. “Earth ponies will feed and fill others with joy. Pegasi will offer the waters of the sky with kindness and loyalty. Unicorns will be generous with their gift of Magic. Once you leave, you will forget this place, and you will forget us. But this must remain with you all the way.”

“You know… That doesn’t sound very fair,” Rainbow complained while Pinkie giggled, and Shining Armor shrugged.

“Wouldn’t that mean that pegasi can’t be farmers? Or something?”

Twilight twisted her mouth. “Discord told us that the elements are not meant as strict law. In fact, if they were, the entire system wouldn’t work. More like guidelines. I imagine she is doing her best, but she probably couldn’t imagine how complex the world has become in our time.”

“Yeah.” Starlight grinned. “The important thing is that they don’t mess up.”

“Please, please, please…” Friendship urged the ponies again. “You must uphold this pact. You must promise me you will.”

In a way that reminded Twilight of her own students, the gathered ponies, many more than she had initially herded to her lecture, responded in a choir of obedient little ponies. “We promise.”

“I made a tiny verse to help you remember.” Friendship gave them an awkward smile. One that didn’t fill Twilight with confidence, or that betrayed her own lack of it. She cleared her throat. “Honesty and Laughter to the earth ponies’ toil. Loyalty and Kindness for pegasi’s gift to the soil. And unicorns, with their Magic, Generously share. Binding us all in Harmony’s care.”

The ponies’ stare remained on her. So focused, Twilight almost worried something was wrong as she repeated the little rhyme, but with more rhythm. Her audience didn’t even blink and their mouths moved silently. Word after word, like her voice had seared them in their minds.

The alicorn still stared at them for a couple of seconds before her ears flopped. “I mean… This is serious. Are you absolutely sure you understand? Because this is so important! You will die!” she cried at them.

“I think they understand, Friendship.” The other white alicorn came closer with a smile.

A gasp escaped Twilight. She blamed the weird flow of time, but the alicorn’s audience had grown from a few dozen into many, many more. All of them seemed to have gathered to listen to her, in fact. Even the other alicorns had joined.

“Quite. I’m convinced we understood it.” Night was lying on her belly in front of the audience, right next to the very perplexed Love.

“It is time, now.” Day spoke softly, easing Friendship’s anxious, raised hoof with her own.

“It appears so,” Night added with a deadpan while standing up. “The big and terrible griffoness sulks in the forest. I believe it is reasonable to say that victory is ours.”

“My little ponies,” Day started. “Rest well tonight. Come dawn, we will start the preparations for this most momentous occasion. Let no anxiety mar your mood.”

Nothing too important happened in the evening. Ponies split into groups of forty-two and started on their preparations. Friends and families grouped together, despite Twilight’s logical side struggling with the idea they had families already, and some mares were bloated with foals. She shook her head at the sight. It seemed little more than a couple of hours had passed.

More important than that, the night arrived when Day and Night unanimously decided it was time. One lowered the sun, and the other brought up the moon, but the dark sky bothered her. Night scrunched her muzzle, and her magic reached for the open geodes where the unicorns had been made. The powerful wave of magic washed over Twilight so suddenly she almost yelped and jumped. A warm wind that passed her and retreated so fast she almost wondered if she had imagined it. A giant swirl of twinkling dust followed Night’s command and rose to the heavens, filling it with its light and keeping company to the lonely moon as the ponies retreated inside their homes.

“Good job, Night.” Day said with a smile before she noticed the other alicorn glaring at the sky, her horn shining and the stars changing places while Night mumbled to herself.

Day left the other alicorn to do as she preferred and retreated into one of the houses like the other alicorns. And then the day arrived. And with it came the purposeful preparations.

Unicorns organized a meeting of the three tribes. They joined their heads in a debate about the specifics of their preparations. The obvious was already being covered: food, shelter, protective garments… The gathering ponies discussed routes with the alicorns, but the world outside the Green Harbor was a chaotic wasteland. There were no routes. They were the trailblazers. Barely discouraged, the unicorns decided they should think about protocols for dealing with emergencies. Most of those were common sense musings, practical ideas and barely anything that required noting down. At the end, the unicorns were confident they could guide their friends across the Chaos to their destinations. All the others knew what to do.

Some ideas, they rejected. Such as when a group should give up and return to the Green Harbor. There would be no coming back. The alicorns explained again they would forget about that place, and that should signal that they were ready, and everything worked as it should.

“Once magic stabilizes, we can no longer exist as we do.” The alicorn of the night told them. “We concentrate too much magic within ourselves, and our presence would damage the quantum fabric of reality. This place too will cease to exist as the new, functional, magic you will shed upon the world will reorganize it. Such is expected, and good. It is necessary for the normal functioning of the world.”

“Fear not. You will not be alone.” The alicorn of the day said before any of the frowning ponies could say anything. “You will have each other, and we will be with you. We will always be a part of you. Even if the Green Harbor will be gone, you will find us inside yourselves and every time you look to the sky.”

As the ponies of the past minced their words, Starlight Glimmer took a hoof to her mouth and turned to Twilight and her friends. “Did you guys notice they call this place Green Harbor, but no one seems to have officially named it?”

Twilight nodded silently among the acknowledging mumbles. That could be because of the weird flow of time in that place and Twilight’s friends had just missed it. Or it could be something even weirder, as they spoke a common language no one had taught them. Even worse was that Twilight and her friends all understood them. She had noticed that before but thought little about it. Twilight chalked it up to the wonkiness of the entire vision, but maybe they had ingrained concepts… Who could say? That was not as important. What was, was that Day and Night had changed the sky for another velvety tapestry of stars gleaming through the gaps in the clouds.

Soon, another day arrived, and they were ready. Multiple groups of forty-two ponies. Fourteen of every tribe, every single one wearing a grass cape. Each group with different combinations of animals, from chicken to cows and pigs on leashes or cages made from twine and twigs. The Harpy? Nowhere to be seen, but Twilight would not leave the momentous occasion to look for her.

Naminé came out—through—the crowd of assembled ponies.

“I can’t find myself!” she complained, more than announced. “I should be here. I was present when the goddesses sent us on our way. I can’t even find anypony I know.”

That probably meant something, but Twilight was not sure of what. She had little time to worry about it. As soon as the ponies gathered, the alicorn of the day waved her wing to get everypony’s attention.

“It is time. We have prepared you as best as we can. Now, it is on you.” Day said with a soft hint of melancholy.

Night put on a brave expression and shot her hoof up at the evening sky. “Prepare thyselves, brave mares and stallions, for the hour is neigh! We shall send thee forth into the world, as Harmony so wills it. Beyond these green trees awaits thy destiny, and through thee, shall Harmony’s radiant reign be made eternal!”

“Night? Uh… Pull it back a touch?” Friendship gave her an awkward grin.

“Please don’t do that again…” Day frowned at her. As she turned to address the ponies, the dark alicorn struck her tongue out at her.

“There is no challenge you are not prepared to face. We have suffered much, but we have earned our place. We have earned our right to exist and to be free. Me and my sisters have done all that we can to prepare you for your task. You may not realize it, but much happened before, and you are the culmination of our efforts. Your task is monumental, but we have brought you up to meet your challenges. You are meant to succeed.”

Bold words from someone whose efforts fell apart three times before a fourth, Twilight thought with a pinch of sarcasm. But she could not disagree that something seemed different this time.

“Don’t feel discouraged if things seem difficult.” The Night picked up after the white alicorn. “There is no challenge you are not prepared to face. Learn. Adapt. Succeed.”

“Hold to your passions.” Love told them before she elbowed at the alicorn of Friendship with a teasing grin. “And whatever that watered-down version of Love she gave you.”

The other rolled her eyes and smiled, but her expression turned worried right after, and she flared her wings with a tentative step forward. “Trust yourselves, and your friends. Keep to our pact…”

Like they were the younger students at Twilight’s school, the assembled rainbow army of ponies recited like a memorized axiom.

Honesty and Laughter to the earth ponies’ toil,
Loyalty and Kindness for pegasi’s gift to the soil,
And unicorns, with their Magic, Generously share,
Binding us all in Harmony’s care.

Satisfied, the alicorn smiled with a nod and stowed her wings. And with all that said, while a few ponies exchanged stares like they understood each other beyond words, the first of the groups started walking. The alicorns took the lead and escorted them to the trees, through the forest and out into the chaotic wasteland.

While the alicorns never left the tree line, they watched as the ponies of the first group of forty-two marched on. They covered cages with cotton cloths and encouraged their cows and pigs out from under the cover of the trees. They looked little more confident than their animals, looking up to the streaks and waves of mismatched colors in the sky. But they soldiered on. Under the rain and through the rocky terrain. Until they stopped when their guide, their leading unicorn, halted and looked at the horizon.

A young beige unicorn with a falling star for cutie mark. After half a minute of consideration, she turned to the left and started walking towards the gap between two mounds in the distance. The others didn’t hesitate and followed. The other groups followed soon, and without delay, a stream of colorful ponies came out of the woods. They became multicolored blobs in the distance. Braving the magical storm and the difficult terrain, spreading in all directions, circling around the Green Harbor if not following other groups for the time being.

“Will they be alright?” Fluttershy asked quietly.

“It’s not over yet. Right?” Rainbow said, pointing a hoof up. “We gotta go up there. Right?”

“It should happen at any moment, I suppose,” Applejack added.

“I can’t find myself!” Naminé interjected, running back at them from the crowd of ponies out of the forest. “I was here… Erm… At this time!”

“Twilight, this feels different from the vision Naminé gave me when we met.” Starlight agreed. “It looks the same, but… Feels off.”

“This isn’t our time. This is the fourth cycle.” Twilight finally said, turning to face them with a frown. “I’m not sure what is going on. I assume this is the cycle that first succeeded, but it is not the one we lived our lives. It was a few cycles after this one. Princess Celestia, our Celestia, told us as much in the dinner.”

Twilight nodded, finding it all oddly reasonable, if bogglingly confusing. A sequence of cycles folding on one another. “Princess Celestia told us there were cycles before ours—ones where creation failed. The ones we witnessed. This one, when it all finally worked, but something caused it to fail later on, and time reset. There were even others before our cycle. Celestia used this cycle as the foundation for the story we’ve been told about our own past to cover for the existence of the Griffon Empire in our cycle. I think we are in the last cycle, after a sequence of cycles that should have succeeded and continued onward, but failed for reasons we don’t know yet.”

Naminé craned her head in a silent gasp. “It was my birth, my creation. It marks the cycle where we live. Everything happened the same after it worked for the first time. It kept repeating and repeating until the cycle when I was born.”

“And the differences between what we believed about our past, and the things Princess Celestia tried to hide, are the consequences of Naminé’s creation.” Shining Armor frowned and grimaced. “Is that right?”

“But why did the cycles fail later on, if they had worked out?” Rainbow asked.

“Maybe there was something that needed tweaking later on?” Pinkie suggested.

As they talked, ponies and more ponies walked out of the forest. Only when the last had left, as if on cue, the four alicorns of the past gasped. The alicorn of the day looked at her hoof with a sad frown just as her leg unfurled itself into motes of magic. Little dots, bright tiny suns of magic becoming free and vanishing, like the flowers that followed her, withering and washing away.

“Our job is not done yet,” Night said, maybe more to herself than the others. “One might say it truly begins now. We shall integrate into their minds and help them along in the next steps. Responsibility over the heavens will pass along to them, as will all that we represent. We will not see each other again.”

“Will it hurt?” Love asked.

The other white alicorn, Friendship, was more curious than sad, watching the feathers in her wings undo themselves. “I hope we can see each other again.”

Everything froze in place. From the blades of grass in the harsh, chaotic weather to the motes of magic and flowers that turned to ash. The sadness in the day’s alicorn, the curiosity in the alicorn of friendship, froze in their faces.

***

Naminé’s cave replaced the primeval world. Awakened with a startle, shocked ponies stood from their haunches with jumps and gasps. Pops and bangs filled the air and two of Naminé’s ponies rushed toward them from the cramped entrance.

“What? Is that musketfire?” Shining Armor shook the drowsiness off his eyes.

“What in the hay is going on?!” Rainbow jumped and hovered in the air.

“They found us!” Naminé’s pony screamed. “The entire Local Militia must be here!”

While Naminé still struggled to orient her senses and the others yelled questions back and forth, Fluttershy’s scream made all of them look at her. Twilight was still asleep. Although it would be better said that she was unconscious and that her body convulsed violently like a terrible dream pulled the strings of a marionette.