The First Republic

by Starscribe

Rating: teen
Tags: Violence, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Drama, Original Character, Adventure
Length: 45064

One generation ago, a volcanic eruption nearly smothered all life on Equus. Ponies and griffons ended up deciding not to kill each other. Contrail is going to set down the history of the Migration War, if it doesn't kill him first.

Accipio was once the largest and mightiest empire in all the world, with ten birds to every pony in Equestria. They swept from one side of Equus to the other, conquering and enslaving all that they found. But Equestria held, held even when Mons Ignis rose from its ancient slumber and drowned Accipio in ash. A terrible war was nearly the result, as ponies and griffons struggled for what little resources they could. Were it not for the desperate struggles of a few brave souls, surely civilization itself would've ended.

But the next generation of both nations rise with no knowledge of the past, and that's something that Equestria's Princess Twilight Sparkle cannot abide. The Migration War is transforming into myth right before her eyes. She can't stop the flow of time, but she can send a historian, to take down an accurate record of what happened while the players still live.

But as Contrail will soon discover, history isn't just in the past. Whether he likes it or not, he's about to be part of the story.

Updates daily for the first week while it catches up to my Patreon, then on Mondays thereafter.

This story was commissioned by Vilken666, feel free to PM me if you'd like one of your own. Editing by Two Bit and Sparktail, my enablers. Cover by Zutcha.

Published 2019-06-17 17:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-09-30 12:00:02 UTC

Chapter 1

I paced back and forth in front of the entrance to the massive throne room doors, conscious of the grinning guards watching me whenever I turned my back. Ideally I would’ve come during the Eventide court and petitioned with everypony else—but Twilight had specifically intercepted my letter, and told me to arrive now.

The sun was already down, casting a diffuse orange glow through the window and across Canterlot. But the city wasn’t nearly as dark as the old pictures I’d seen. Everyone had electricity now, and so every building glowed. Even the spectacular chandeliers in gold and mother-of-pearl had electric fixtures.

“First time?” asked one of the guards from beside me—a fellow pegasus, at least twice my age and with a form grizzled by a long and difficult career. He hadn’t drawn his rifle once since I saw him, or made any other threatening gestures. Several of the others had insisted on showing off.

“First time,” I admitted. “I’ve been putting this off all summer—but if I’m going to have a chance of getting into the academy, this is it.”

“It’s a little late for admissions,” he said, sympathetic. “Maybe you could try again next year. Oh, I’m Flash by the way. Flash Sentry.”

“Contrail,” I answered, taking the offered hoof. “Just Contrail. From Manehattan. I should be on your…”

He nodded, interrupting. “On the visitor list for tonight, you are. You don’t think my friends would let you wear trails in the castle floor if you weren’t supposed to be here, right? Between you and me, lots of new recruits get guard duty. It’s a great way for them to be close to the princess for evaluation, without actually doing anything too important.”

“This isn’t an admission application. I’m already a student there. I’d like to do my Masters application in the form of a book.” But then I stopped, taken aback by something the guard had said. “You don’t feel like guarding the ruler of all Equestria is important?”

He smiled weakly, tapping me on the shoulder with a wing. “Kid, you just answered your own question. She’s the ruler of all Equestria. If something is dangerous to her, what do you think we’re going to do about it? She basically guards us.”

The door rumbled suddenly, and just one half of it rotated slowly inwards. A unicorn wearing a tight white suit and levitating a board in front of him was on the other side, waiting to announce for me. “Academy Scholar Contrail, formerly of Manehattan,” he said, marching right up to me without much politeness. He glanced down at his clipboard, eyes narrowing for a second, before staring at my flank. “Cutie mark of… overlapping cloud writing, yes.”

He held out the pad, and I quickly signed where he indicated. “There we are. Now, explain the purpose of your visit for the record.”

“Historical interview,” I answered.

“Subject?”

Do I really need to tell him all this? The princess already responded to my letter. But from the way his expression grew darker, I could see that arguing with him would be unwise. “The destruction of Accipio, the griffon migration, and the eventual founding of their new kingdom.”

“Hmm. Hardly seems… very well. The princess’s time is valuable, so you’ll only get twenty minutes with her. Use that time however you see fit. Now, with me.” He turned and started walking.

I could only shrug and follow. I probably shouldn’t write about this stallion’s behavior in the book.

I’d never been to Canterlot before, never seen the spectacular stained-glass exhibits depicting various important events in our recent past. Without sunlight behind them, many had gone dark, while a few were lit unevenly by the spotty electric lights of the city below. They cast strange multicolored shadows on the marble, following me up to the dais.

There at the end of the throne room was the Alicorn Twilight Sparkle herself, ruler of all Equestria ever since the abdication of sisters Celestia and Luna. A reptilian figure lounged somewhere behind the throne, reclining on some cushions there. But despite the apparently docile state of the creature, I kept my steps slow. There were rumors of enemies of the crown being devoured by her dragon, and I wasn’t planning on testing any of them today.

“Pegasus Contrail of Manehattan,” the unicorn called, sounding exceptionally bored. “For an interview about Accipio.”

The ruler of Equestria—of the sun and moon and seasons themselves—looked up from what she was doing. Is that Daring Do she’s reading?

I wouldn’t put that in my record either.

Princess Twilight Sparkle still looked every bit the ruler her power implied. Her mane waved about in the air, so large it filled the empty throne behind where she sat. She was the tallest pony I’d ever seen, one of the few ponies who would rival a griffon. She wore white gold around her head and hooves, with purple gemstones—not very much wealth, considering the power she represented.

There were several chairs arranged around her, but all were empty. Twilight was supposedly even less ostentatious and ceremonial than the Alicorns she had replaced. I could see now that there was truth to that rumor.

“Contrail, right? I remember your letter!” There was a flash of magic from above me, and a slight distortion of the air in front of me. Twilight was suddenly only inches away, towering over me. She was so tall… “You’re the one who wants to compile a comprehensive history of the Griffon Migration. Fascinating subject, I’m honestly a little surprised there are any ponies brave enough to attempt it. I hope you realize the difficulty that task will entail. Traveling all the way to the Accipian Republic, even in these times of peace… it isn’t always safe. Why aren’t you afraid? Wait, let me guess, you grew up with some. Manehattan still has griffons living in it, right? It’s the… bronze district. They do have the best sushi. Nowhere fresher anywhere in Equestria.”

She probably said a great deal more, but Twilight spoke so fast that at first I didn’t even know how to respond. She was downright overwhelming, and for a long moment my mouth just hung open. Eventually she stopped, panting with the effort of whatever she’d just said.

“Princess Twilight, I—”

“No need for that,” she waved a wing dismissively. “Formality is a distraction from scholarship, and that’s obviously what this is. I see you’ve got a case with you, that will be your interview, right? I’m sure the questions are fascinating.”

If I didn’t speak up, this Alicorn was going to run me over completely. “Twilight, then. I hadn’t… I hadn’t intended to actually travel the world and collect this information. I was just going to mail questionnaires to the relevant creatures and hope they respond. I would only be interviewing the ponies I can get to by train.”

“Really?” She sat back on her haunches, dropping the case where it had been and looking dejected. “That doesn’t sound like it will be as interesting. Without you there, how will you know if creatures are being truthful with you? If you don’t actually visit some of these places, how are you going to record the true feeling left behind? This history won’t be alive forever.”

“I know,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound hurt by her accusations. I retreated a few steps, retaking as much of my personal space as I dared. Ordinarily it didn’t matter to me much, but this was the princess of the entire country. This was the pony whose horn raised the sun in the morning! “But I don’t come from a family of means. I’m studying at the academy thanks to one of your scholarship programs. I could never afford passage all over the world. To be honest with you, I can barely afford postage.”

“Go easy on him Twilight,” rumbled a voice from behind the throne, almost in time with my thought. It was deeper than any pony’s voice I’d ever heard. Her dragon. “He’s obviously terrified. Listen to his heartbeat.”

Buck that’s creepy.

“Oh, is that it?” Twilight rolled her eyes. “You’re not seriously thinking I’m going to let a project as important as this not happen because you didn’t have enough bits, do you? Every nation is built on its scholarship, and some of the most important scholarship of all is the historical. Ponies today weren’t alive during the migration. Looking at you… yes, you weren’t either, were you?”

I nodded.

“Well, that’s probably even better. Everypony who was around back then is going to have compromised subjectivity. We all thought the world was going to end, we were afraid we might starve, or that the invasion would kill everypony. A pony like you should be able to cut through all that to the truth. If you’re brave enough.”

I was stunned speechless. I’d been overwhelmed before, but now… it seemed too good to be true. “Princess, I—”

“Twilight,” she said, with just a hint of sternness in her voice. “You aren’t here as a petitioner, you’re here for research. Titles are for nobles and businessponies trying to squeeze bits out of the royal coffers.”

Isn’t that what you’re about to do? “Twilight,” I corrected. “The offer is amazing, but… I think I’ve failed to convey the scale of what this would take.”

“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow. From somewhere I couldn’t see, she produced an old-fashioned quill and scroll, holding them in the air beside her without even looking at them. “What would it take?”

“Well, I would have to charter an airship,” I began. “For about… three months? If we were really trying to make this complete, I’d have to visit the Shell States, tour New Scythia. Fly to the Accipian Republic, and live in the city for a few weeks while I find and arrange time with everypony. I’d need to see Griffonstone too, probably. Not necessarily in that order. A whole ship, a whole crew, just for one pony? That would probably cost…”

“Thirteen thousand, eight hundred bits,” Twilight said. “Plus or minus five percent. One of my accountants would have to get back to you on the specifics. But I’m not feeling terribly patient about all this, so…” She scribbled something on her scroll. “Let’s just make it for twenty thousand, eliminate any chance of not having enough. I’ll give this to you if I’m satisfied with our interview right now. If not, I’ll save this assignment for somepony else. Sound fair?”

I swallowed. My whole body buzzed with energy—I might actually see all the places I’d imagined. My grocery list of impossible dreams could become real just because I asked.

If I could impress the princess again, somehow.

“Princess Twilight, that’s the end of the time we allotted in your schedule for this pony,” said a voice from behind. The same stallion who had led me in. “I can see him out now.”

Twilight looked up and laughed. “You can’t be serious. Err… no, you’re serious. Sturdy Pen, whatever’s next on my schedule, you can cross it out. And… for that matter, clear out the next hour. I’m prepared to be very impressed by what Contrail has for me.”

“Princess, you really shouldn’t make such alterations so last-minute! There are—”

Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “There are no more important visits tonight, that’s why I called Contrail here now in the first place. And while you’re at it… I’d like a chair brought for him, and a table. He’s a pegasus, so I’m sure he’d be more comfortable that way. As soon as you can, please.”

It was actually happening! Sturdy Pen backed away, lowering his head submissively to the princess. There was obvious disdain in his eyes for me, but I could live with that. Who cared what the servant thought so long as Princess Twilight liked me?

A few minutes later, and servants arrived with a simple table and cushion. It seemed Sturdy Pen had found the hardest, most uncomfortable stool he could in the whole castle. But I didn’t care. I opened up my case, dislodging an explosion of maps, notes, and charts.

Most of it was in a state of maximum entropy, except for the few sheets on top. Twilight’s interview was ready to go.

“Alright, Pri—Twilight. Let’s step back twenty-eight years…”

Chapter 2

I knew that getting the princess of all Equestria alone for an interview like this was a rare opportunity. It can take weeks to make it to the front of the queue for the Eventide Court.

But for all that, her appearance across the table from me was not that different from many of the other scholars I’ve spoken to about this matter. She fidgeted, glancing over at my various notes. It was no wonder Equestria had done so well in my lifetime, with a princess who cared so much about every miniscule detail. Even a single historian’s book was worth her time.

“So the way I’m planning to conduct these interviews…” I began, settling my ballpoint pen onto the page. I could write with a wing, a skill few pegasus ponies mastered. But while they were busy doing loops in the sky, I would be preserving the past. “I’m going to be going through in order. Particularly now that I might actually visit some of the creatures involved. We’ll be speaking mostly about your initial involvement with the migration today, if that’s alright. I know you also had a hoof in the, uh… the close of hostilities. But those parts felt better saved for the end.”

Twilight shrugged. “Far be it from me to interfere with the scholarship of another pony. If that’s your approach when doing the interviews… no, wait, I won’t say anything.”

I shifted nervously in my seat, looking down at my list of questions again. I could feel Twilight’s attention on me, the way I never had with any other pony. Alicorn magic really is unlike anything else. It’s no wonder that the old princesses were always so well respected.

What was Accipio to you growing up? Did you know anything at all?

Everypony knew about it—it was the part of the world we couldn’t visit. The place where airships stopped, and sane ponies turned around. I couldn’t tell you much about what it was like, except that I knew you weren’t supposed to go.

A little later, when I became one of the Elements of Harmony, I could’ve gone anywhere I wanted. But my friends and I never did. We were afraid of it, maybe even more than we were of the monsters we sometimes fought.

Why do you think that was?

Because in some ways, Accipio was worse than any monster. All those ancient creatures Grogar filled our world with, it’s not surprising when some giant bear/bee/walrus attacks a town and hurts anypony it can. It can’t really help it.

But griffons were something different. They could think like us—mortal like us, with the same basic needs. They had a history and culture as long as Equestria’s. But they still did things that are hard for a pony to imagine.

Slavery.

Princess Twilight nods. It’s probably hard for somepony as young as you to even understand how terrifying that is. The stories of ships going missing, of tourists who went anyway never coming back—they were true. Even worse, there was a whole population of ponies in Accipio who had lived for generations without their freedom. And for every one of them, there were ten other creatures, all descendants of creatures whose nations had been conquered long ago.

Accipio controlled the entire world.

Except for Equestria.

Right. Were you afraid they would invade again?

Lots of ponies were. It was all over the worst newspapers. Whenever some noble or another wanted public support, they would try to rile up everypony and make them afraid. When I asked Celestia about them, she was never afraid. She always said that Accipio knew who controlled the sun, and they knew she’d never allow them to hurt her ponies without retaliating.

But that didn’t work.

It did for almost two centuries. Until Mons Ignis erupted.

You got involved before that happened though, didn’t you?

Yes. There’s a group of ponies who do nothing but monitor the world for existential threats. They’re called—well, I won’t tell you that part. But they were the ones who first let us know. There are signs you can read about a volcano to know that it’s getting unhappy. Pressure lifts up the land above it, that kind of thing. And if there aren’t any little openings to relieve that pressure… something big will.

Did we know before the griffons did?

I think both sides will say they knew first. But we were the first ones to contact the other, that’s all recorded. The emperor at the time, Gaius, he was more cooperative than anypony thought he would be. He let us send a team of scientists to the volcano, and they cooperated with some griffon scholars for a few weeks. Their findings were… grim.

How did Equestria react to finding out that the climate was about to collapse?

Twilight laughs, pushing briefly away from the table and gesturing up at the stained-glass image above my head. It shows the defeat of Nightmare Moon, with Twilight herself featured prominently in the center. Nopony knew. Equestria has always had great respect for its leaders. Ponies live their lives, and trust their rulers to deal with things like this. When Celestia found out, she didn’t tell anypony. Nopony here knew about it for another month at least. She probably would’ve kept making plans in the background for six months more if information wasn’t starting to leak from Accipio.

That they might be planning to invade.

What other choice did they have? Equestria might’ve done the same thing, if we didn’t have friendship. You can’t just close your eyes and wait to die. I wasn’t there, but I know Celestia was shocked when Gaius’s request finally came.

An invasion would’ve been bad.

Devastating. Equestria is on the other side of the world from Ignis, but the ash from an eruption like that was going to lower global temperatures for years. Paleontologists tell me that at least one of the previous mass extinctions on Equus was caused by an eruption like this. We needed all our pony magic to stop that from happening here. But if we were fighting off an invasion, we wouldn’t have it.

Celestia must have been eager to accept Gaius’s terms.

Yes and no. Back then we didn’t know how much we could trust them. You probably know their reputation for honor today.

I nod in response to this. It’s hard to imagine a bird breaking their word.

It wasn’t back then. You can’t think of Accipio as one nation, not really. It was four, or three, or… however many Noble Clans they had at the time. They were hundreds centuries ago, but they’d all killed and absorbed each other. We couldn’t be sure who was in control. And we didn’t really understand any of their internal politics. All we knew was what the science team had told us.

This is exactly the opportunity I am looking for. I’m not here to collect trivia. I have one other subject I need her to address.

That’s where the expedition came into play. Starlight Glimmer’s enforcement ship.

Twilight seems to think this suggestion is amusing. She laughs for several seconds before finally answering. You probably shouldn’t call it that in front of any birds. Yes, Starlight was our key to accepting their peace. We needed to know if they really meant it. Starlight was one of the few ponies out there who was competent enough to send into danger like that.

She was your personal student, wasn’t she? The understanding was that you were grooming her to be a princess one day. Did you realize she might not come back?

For the first time, Twilight seems reticent to answer. She looks away, straightens some of my papers for me, shuffles them so that all the maps are on the top of their piles.

One of the first things you have to learn in a position of leadership is that you can’t protect everypony. You can’t, and they usually don’t want you too. A pony like Starlight wanted to help Equestria, make up for all the guilt she had. She was the perfect pony for the job, and she did it well.

Even though they managed to bring weapons back with them?

No spell is perfect. I don’t resent the ways Starlight failed, I’m grateful she was as successful as she was. Imagine an Accipian invasion fleet landing on our shores. You don’t know how close we came.

But I might find out.

That was the end of my interview. I closed the pad, finishing my last few notes. “Thank you, Twilight. I hope none of those questions were… inappropriate.”

She grinned in response, rising from the other side of the table and shaking out her wings. “Not at all, Contrail. I’m impressed with your historical insight. I think this project will be more than worth the investment to Equestria. My kingdom will not have a population of ponies ignorant to the trials we have overcome.”

She levitated something down onto the table in front of me—the scroll she’d written on. Her horn flashed, and her royal seal burned into the parchment, smoking briefly. “There are conditions. You are as of this moment an official scholar of my court. You will represent the Crown everywhere you go. And when your work is published, I wish for the original for my personal collection.”

That was basically what she’d written on the form—it was a contract, waiting for my signature. Promising me everything I’d asked. Official diplomatic status to travel the world under the Equestrian banner, enough bits to visit anyone I wanted. A ship. She’s basically not asking anything. Act correctly, give her the first book. So what?

I took my pen in my mouth and signed at the bottom of the contract. “I can do that, Princess. It will be an honor.”

She didn’t correct me this time. “Then go with Spike. He guards the, uh… hoard, I suppose.”

“That’s what I call it.” Spike the dragon rose from behind the throne, standing fully upright on just two legs. Now I saw a creature that was larger than a princess. He was still a young dragon; in that he was small enough to fit in the building without too much difficulty. His spines were wicked sharp along his back, his wings wide and with a few scars.

“Come with me, pony. We will take you to the treasury.”

I gathered my papers in a rush, snapping the case closed and bowing haphazardly to Twilight. “Th-thank you, Princess! For… being so generous. I promise to give you an addition to the library to be proud of.”

“I’m sure you will,” she answered, smiling ruefully. “Oh, and Spike. Take care of the ship for him—give him whatever’s left after their three-month commission. You were listening well enough to know which one to charter?”

He nodded back. “I might be slower than I used to be, but I can still listen. I’ll call ahead to make sure they don’t go anywhere.”

A royal airship? She cares about my mission that much? Maybe I had overestimated my own competence. But Twilight had apparently approved of my questions. So long as I could use the same historical neutrality with the others I needed to interview, I should be able to keep my promise.

It’s only the single most important event of recent history. How hard can it be to summarize the whole thing in one book?

Chapter 3

I had a few days to prepare, rushing around the city to arrange my affairs. Needless to say, the dean of Twilight’s own school was more than accepting of my absence under the circumstances, and wished me good luck. I didn’t really own much, so it wasn’t hard to gather all I had into a single set of saddlebags to wear up to the dock.

Canterlot’s drydock has remained an important place for innovation ever since the Migration War, with much of it sealed from civilian ponies like me. Not that Canterlot would put up anything as tacky as high walls when a good third of the population could just fly over to take a look anyway. But the areas not populated with uniformed military or the Crown’s engineers were small.

One of those was at the end of the north dock, where an older but respectable-looking airship was waiting for me. She was recent enough to have thaumic impeller engines, though the metal cylinders on her flanks were larger than the rowboats and other pleasure-craft docked nearby. Thin lines of rust traced along the edge of the shell, and I guessed the propeller inside would not be the kind to accelerate us near to the rainbow barrier.

The crew already expected me—not a military crew, as I’d initially expected. There were few weapons among them at all—a handful of six-shooters and a rifle worn by a brawny earth pony. The majority of these ponies carried none. Strange choice for where we’re going. Unless those are my biases talking. I’m not really any better than the princess about that.

A pony wearing a large hat and a coat waited for me at the bridge, settling his tea back onto a table and rising as I approached. “Contrail, if I’m not mistaken?”

I nodded. “And you must be Captain Bluejacket. This is the Daughter of Wintergreen, isn’t she?”

“As proud and true as the day she first sailed from Port Jouster,” Bluejacket agreed. “We took delivery of some crates in your name early this morning, and I’ve seen to the supplies for our voyage. Is there anything else you need from land before we leave it behind?”

I hesitated. Despite my tribe, I was not a strong flyer. Growing up in Manehattan had given me little reason to practice, and an academic pursuit had given me even less. Few birds there knew more than how to get down from buildings, or fly over obstructions in the street. I’d never even been to Cloudsdale.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said, crossing the short wooden bridge onto the Daughter of Wintergreen. She rocked slightly from one side to another as I stepped aboard, and never truly stopped moving. The wooden deck wasn’t the ground.

“I’m sorry to say that I’m the only member of the original crew left for any of your…” Bluejacket waved a hoof through the air. “Talking to. Twilight said you might be asking questions, but there aren’t any others here who know.”

“But we’re loyal to the Wintergreen, same as anypony who served on her before,” said a young griffon, with brown and off-white feathers. Even with her age, she was approaching the size of the stallions around her. “Even if we have only stories for her legacy.”

Nopony seemed afraid of her—she was even one of those who carried a weapon.

I opened my mouth to ask why this pony might think I had questions for him—but then I remembered. The reason the name of this ship had seemed so familiar had been staring me in the face the whole time: it was the same one Starlight Glimmer had taken to Accipio, twenty-four years before me. Now it would take me to the kingdom that she herself helped rule.

“I’m sure you are,” I said, the only thing I could think of. “And yes, Captain Bluejacket. I would love an opportunity to talk to you about your experiences. But perhaps I could get settled first, and we could get underway. I’m told that the only way to adjust my legs to an airship is to walk one for a while while she flies.”

“True enough,” Bluejacket said, to nods from some of the other creatures around him. All non-winged creatures. Pegasi, thestrals, and other creatures with wings were supposed to be much better at this. I would test that hypothesis for myself very soon. “I’ll take you below myself. Officer Gerta, heave to and raise anchor!”

I didn’t listen to the crew much as they hurried about preparing for takeoff. I didn’t really need to understand the nitty-gritty of how this all worked, at least I didn’t think so.

“This was her room, best as I can recollect,” Bluejacket said, once we were belowdecks. It wasn’t much, maybe two ponies across and four long. But it had a bed and a desk and a window, which seemed to mean it was luxurious. “I’d lend you the captain’s quarters, but the Crown didn’t pay me enough for that. Think of this as part of the experience.”

I hurried inside, settling my saddlebags on a latched hook by the wall. Everything in the room had some way to secure it in place—the sheets were tucked in tight on the bed, the chair had little straps holding it to the desk, and the furniture was all nailed down.

“What kind of work do you do these days, Captain?” I asked, retrieving my writing case from the saddlebags and buttoning them up securely behind me. “Do you take eccentric scholars around the world very often?”

He laughed, turning back towards the deck. “Let’s just say that ponies don’t change as fast as the world does. Used to be they were afraid of the world beyond Equestria for good reason. Now most of it is our friends, but still they’re afraid. The Wintergreen is one of the few ships that routinely travels outside our borders. Mount Aris, Zebrica, Saddle Arabia, Yakyakistan, Irkalla… and Accipio. All perfectly friendly creatures, but you wouldn’t know that from talking to half the captains down in Canterlot right now.”

By the time we made it back to the deck, Canterlot was already falling behind us. Maybe there was some truth to the natural airworthiness of pegasi after all, because I’d hardly noticed the thrust. Or maybe the airship was the one doing all the work. Wind blew briskly about the top deck, but nowhere near as harsh as I expected. It was more like a windy day than the blasting air as we left the city behind.

It seemed so small from up here. I might’ve been afraid of heights if I didn’t have the deck beneath me. “Would you like to ask your questions now, scholar? My memory won’t be any worse if you wait, but I would prefer to have our conversation in friendlier skies.”

“Accipio isn’t—”

He led me up the deck of the Wintergreen, to where the griffon from earlier was now standing at the helm. She saluted the captain as we approached, though the gesture was more informal than military.

“The nation is friendly to us, aye,” he said. “But there are pirates. Accipio doesn’t have the same sense of order that we Equestrians do.”

We settled down into comfortable chairs near the side of the deck, where we could watch the land below blur past. I removed my things, glancing over my notes. I hadn’t been planning on this interview, so I would have to think on my hooves. What historically relevant information would a crewman on the first official Equestrian ship know that I could record?

“Even with such good creatures on the throne? I’m told that our relationship with the emperor and his wife is excellent.”

Bluejacket nodded. “Again, you’re failing to see the horizon past the clouds. The kingdom is friendly, but not every creature in it is. Not just to us—Accipio has its own problems with piracy. There are corridors of sky patrolled by their fleet, and those are the ones we’ll have to use. The Wintergreen is a good ship, but she’s too slow to outrun their new gas-burning interceptors. But we haven’t had a problem in a few years, so don’t you worry yourself.”

I was, but I would try not to show it.

Tell me about your first trip, twenty-four years ago. We weren’t allies with Accipio then, were you nervous?

He laughs. Back then, no. Those engines under our hull, they were brand new. Fastest things in the sky. A griffon soldier might be able to catch up using a high-altitude dive, but that was it. Besides, Accipio knew we were coming.

But you weren’t sure if they were really going to accept our terms. Sometimes our envoys didn’t come back.

Sometimes. I don’t know what the captain thought, but I wasn’t afraid. It just didn’t make sense for Accipio to betray us by killing the ship we sent. That would make it obvious to all Equestria what they planned. Their best bet would be to send us back content and safe. Exactly like they did.

Tricking Equestria in the process. Making them think they intended to be peaceful when they wouldn’t.

Not our problem. We were all patriotic ponies, but figuring out which creatures are good and evil is a question for princesses. We just had to get Starlight there and keep her safe. We did that.

How were you treated once you arrived?

Well enough. Turns out there were plenty of birds who were as afraid of us as we were of them. Unicorns in particular—they don’t have anything like that. No way to stop it.

Except for the Old Magic. Isn’t that more powerful?

Bluejacket looks away, and doesn’t answer for a long time. Eventually he nods. We’d be in trouble if every bird knew it. Might not have an Equestria left standing today. But it was rare. Most birds thought that only Zebras could learn it. Bet you half the bits on board that a Zebra came up with that myth.

What about while you were in port. Did you ever run into trouble?

We caught birds trying to sneak aboard a few times. Fairly certain they were industrial spies, trying to get a good look inside our engines. We sent them away, and the harbor authorities apologized, but there’s no way those birds got punished. Nothing we could do.

But no crewpony ever went missing.

You mean the slavers? Foalnapping us?

There are stories.

Maybe there are. But it wasn’t a problem for the Wintergreen. Emperor Gaius kept the law in his capital. The Wintergreen had made trips there before, that’s why we were chosen for the mission.

I shuffle around in my papers for a moment, then settle on my last question. You were there during the eruption, weren’t you? The Wintergreen had a shield, so you could watch.

More laughter. We had a Starlight, I guess that’s the same thing. Yeah, we watched. Pray you never see anything like it, kid. Really brings things into perspective. Even the old Princesses Celestia and Luna seem small compared to the whole earth just… ripping up. Billowing clouds of ash rising up, bigger than Canterlot and all the mountains around it. Then the fire starts raining down, chunks big enough to crush your whole ship all at once if you’re unlucky.

He’s silent for a long time, apparently remembering all this. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. Not to mention having the emperor aboard.

Now this is something new, and I pick my pen back up again, eagerly. That wasn’t in any of the official records.

Officially, it didn’t happen. The Republic doesn’t want to admit looking weak, but the truth is they didn’t have a ship that could be close enough to the eruption to see. No unicorns, no shields. But the old emperor wanted to be close for some… religious reason. Couldn’t tell you what that was.

I would have to carefully consider including that in the record. Do you know how many died?

I’m sure you historians have other ideas, but to me: everyone who died during the Migration War was killed by Ignis. Worst part is: nopony knows if she’ll ever wake up again.

Chapter 4

The trip to New Accipio was uneventful, at least so compared to everything I’d been led to expect. There were no pirate attacks, though I did see plenty of other traffic along the route. We saw the Royal Navy more than once, patrolling our most important trade-route.

I had plenty of opportunity to ask follow-up questions to Bluejacket, though there wasn’t all that much to ask. He didn’t remember any specifics about the religious service, or know very much about the new griffon religion.

Beyond that, the trip took about a week. Bluejacket insisted we could’ve arrived in half that much time, but that would be bad for the engines and we weren’t in much of a rush. We would want the Wintergreen to be in good shape in case something did happen when we left the safer parts of the world.

Even someone with no navigational experience whatsoever would realize they were crossing into Accipian territory. Ponies spend so much time looking at our little part of the map, they forget we don’t even control a fourth of Equus’s land. Once, Accipio did.

It didn’t anymore. Mons Ignis produced a thick white ash, often mistaken for snow at a distance. I’m told by farmers the ash is great for the soil, but that’s about the only thing it’s good for. It will scrape and cut anypony who touches it, particularly if it touches skin. It burns the lungs, causing permanent damage if too much is inhaled. Those who spent too much time living in it often go blind from microscopic scratches against their eyes.

Along the coast, there were once great cities. We passed over one of them, a fortress of stone perched high in the mountains. It was all white now, lifeless even after all these years. No birds fly over the city, either animal or griffon. No plants can penetrate the shell, and the ash clumps together to resist being blown away. In places it seemed that the ash had buried whole buildings, with only their balconies emerging from the deadly sea.

I could hear strange sounds coming from the city below as we flew overhead, and I went to Bluejacket for his input. “Do you hear… howling?” I asked, camera hanging from around my neck. If I was coming all the way out here anyway, there was no way my book wouldn’t contain photographs.

“It’s nothing,” he said, unable to meet my eyes. “Don’t think about it. If the crew is telling you superstitions, ignore them. They speak when they shouldn’t.”

Yet Bluejacket refused to step away from the helm, guiding us well above the dead city below. I left him to it, returning to the lower deck. Gerta the griffon was waiting there, her feathers all flat and her eyes on the city below.

“You can hear them too,” she whispered. “Not many ponies can.”

I wanted to deny it, but she wasn’t wrong. I nodded. “What is it?”

“Ghosts,” she said, with complete sincerity. “Accipio was supposed to be evacuated, but… birds are stubborn. An entire clan refused the emperor’s orders. They had birds in every city. Their slaves, and loyal freemen too. All… down there. In the ash.”

It sounded like it might be the wind whistling through mountainous rocks. “No settlers wanted to take the city back. There must be… valuables down there, right? Accipio was a rich nation.”

She nodded. “The vultures. You’ll know them when you see them. Cursed by the ash… or the ones who live in it. Don’t fly there, pony. My dead will do worse to you than them.”

I nodded my appreciation, going belowdecks. But I could still hear the miserable howling until we had left the dead city behind. Needless to say, I didn’t plan on returning for interviews.

The land wasn’t an ashy wasteland from shore to shore, at least. Far from the mountain, there were signs that wind and rain had washed it all away, and that the wildlife was returning. Young forests sprouted in valleys that had once been farms, some already towering to fifty feet or more. I took a few more pictures of the natural recovery for the book, but generally did as much as possible to not think about the dead.

Another day later, and we were finally getting close to Caesarea. Like all bird cities, it had been built in the mountains, though this capital was missing much that had made the old one a part of their empire. A huge stone palace rose in the very center, much closer to Canterlot than the empty fortresses of war that I’d seen covered in ash. The city spread out around it along both sides of the mountain, the same way as the Crystal Empire.

“It’s the farms,” said a voice from beside me—Bluejacket rarely guided the helm himself, and apparently didn’t think he needed to right now. “That’s how you can tell if a city is friendly to ponies or not. It’s against their customs, but… Equestrian cities like to be more self-sufficient. A few hundred earth ponies can feed a place like this, done right. Starlight Glimmer makes judicious use of the serf population.

There were hundreds of airships in the sky above it, many moored to cloud platforms obviously built by pegasus hooves. A few even used metal, like modern Equestrian warships. Starlight Glimmer was certainly not sabotaging the kingdom from within in the interests of Equestria, that was clear.

“It’s bigger than Canterlot,” I muttered, taking a photo with as much of the slope in view as possible. “How?”

Bluejacket shrugged. “Question for a scholar. Caesarea is the friendliest part of their whole kingdom. A pony can be out there and walk around like they belong. Just don’t get tricked out of the city, or think that everywhere is like this. Further out we go, the… weaker the emperor’s power becomes.”

We landed just outside the city, at a dock so large it looked like it could hold a thousand ships. But for our visit there were few other vessels in our section, all flying Equestrian flags.

The docks were at the bottom of Caesarea, so that as we touched down the stone buildings rose like an aerie. Most impressive of all, I could see no ash anywhere, not even blown specks on nearby buildings.

The Wintergreen’s crew rushed around me, several pegasi flying around the edge to secure docking lines to the deck far below. But I barely even saw any of them—there was a bird on the dock, watching us.

Not a bird, not quite. A hippogriff, mixed pink coat and white feathers. I’d never seen such a beautiful creature in my whole life—not the models that performed in Manehattan shows, not the posters put up in seedy districts. I couldn’t tell what she was doing here at such a distance, or who she might be.

I might’ve taken her picture, if it wasn’t for Bluejacket behind me, clearing his throat. “I can see you’re appreciating Caesarea, kid. I’ll let you get back to it, soon as you tell me what your plans are. Need to know how long you plan to stay, so I can know how much leave to give the crew.”

“At least…” Was something wrong with my words? I turned away from the railing, and my head began to clear. I could still feel my heart racing, even so. “At least two weeks, possibly as long as a month. I sent formal telegrams to all the creatures here in the city, so they should be expecting me. Hopefully one of them will be able to point me towards the ones who aren’t local.”

“The crew will be pleased to hear it,” Bluejacket said. “Keep me informed—the crew will need a full day to return from leave if something comes up suddenly. Keep that in mind with any plans you make.”

A few minutes later and we settled into the berth, bumping lightly as lines were drawn tight. I went belowdecks to gather my meager possessions, fully intending to make this trip as authentic as I could. By the time I made it up again, a sturdy bridge had been set down and Bluejacket was speaking to a few dock officials in black and gold uniforms.

I walked past them all, content that the crew would take care of this. I was here for research, not to deal with the bureaucracy.

I was so distracted by my own thoughts I didn’t see the creature at the bottom of the bridge until I walked right into her. She squeaked in surprise right as I did, taking off into the air with a scattering of white feathers. I gasped, lowering my head awkwardly. Why was somepony at the bottom of the ramp?

“I’m sorry!” I called apologetically. “I’ve got my head in the clouds since—” Words failed me as I looked up and realized just who I’d hit.

It was the creature I’d been staring at from the railing. She wasn’t quite so graceful now, her chest puffed out and wings spread. But she landed again on the deck a moment later, grinning. “That’s okay, I know what that’s like. Your mind starts to wander and suddenly you’re somewhere else, and the world in front of you is barely even there. I get it!”

She grinned, sticking out a claw. A little like a griffon claw, though the talons weren’t nearly as long or sharp. Pony-griffon hybrids. Makes sense they aren’t as dangerous. “I’m Radiant Dawn, by the way. I watched you fly in—Wintergreen, just like my mother said. I’m supposed to take you to the castle. It’s… family tradition or something? Mostly I think she’s bored and wants a pony from her old home to talk to.” She sat back on her haunches, puffing out her chest again and tilting her head slightly to the side. “Who are you?”

“Contrail,” I answered, only just managing to say anything at all. Those eyes weren’t as large as ponies’, but sharper and incredibly focused. Otherwise she looked halfway between a pony and a bird, since that was exactly what she was. “Scholar for… guess the rest doesn’t matter. Your mother is…”

Now I felt like an idiot. Her mother had heard I was coming, and wanted her to take me to the castle. Radiant Dawn was… “Your mother is the queen,” I stammered, eyes widening in horror. My wings were probably puffing out too, the way they always did when I was nervous. I could never quite get them to stop. “And your father…”

Buck me. “You’re the princess. The heir to the throne, the…”

“Yeah, I guess.” Whatever she wanted me to say, that wasn’t it. “Please don’t get boring, Contrail. Everyone I meet gets boring as soon as they find that out. Suddenly they’re all stuffy and they tell me about their noble lineage and how loyal their families are to the state. Ugh.”

She grinned, reaching down and taking my hoof with a claw. Her grip didn’t press hard enough to hurt, but it was also too strong to escape. “Come on! I’ll show you the way!”

There was no chance I’d be able to get away from Radiant Dawn, not with how determined she was to bring me to wherever she was going.

More than that, I found I didn’t want to be. Sorry Twilight, I think I found something that isn’t going into the book.

“What brings you all the way to the Accipian Republic?” she asked, taking me to a set of switchback stairs carved in the cliff. This wasn’t where the other creatures were going, and as we approached we passed a few birds with weapons emerging from their clothes. Hidden guards, for a hidden path. “It must be really interesting! Mother says the Equestrian princess sent you!”

There was a stone door in the rock, concealed to look like just more stone. Radiant Dawn finally let go as she opened it, heaving with one shoulder. “She did,” I admitted. “Though I’m not sure if you’d be interested.”

How I was going to get anything done in the city now, with a creature like this nearby… I had no idea.

Chapter 5

Through the maze of rock and stone we climbed. Though I had little in common with many other pegasus ponies, I did share one particular discomfort: being trapped indoors. I kept adjusting my wings in agitation as we walked, glancing up as though by doing so I might be able to lift the ceiling from over my head.

“It’s not much further,” Radiant Dawn said, her voice sympathetic. Did she understand what bothered me, or just think I was bored? At least the latter would mean she didn’t think I was a foal who couldn’t handle some time underground.

It was dark and cramped, the stairs cut by hoof and only a few electric bulbs that flickered and dimmed at random.

The stairwell ended with a heavy vault door, its steel knob unyielding. One of the house guards began to work it, while Radiant Dawn herself turned back to face me. “What do you think of Equestria, Contrail? Do you like living there?”

What kind of question is that? I nodded feebly, unable to entirely hide my confusion. “Of course I do. It’s a great place to live. I don’t spend much time outside of Manehattan myself, there’s just so much work to do and so little time to get it all done.”

“Manehattan,” she repeated. “How many birds live in that territory? Two million? Three?”

The vault door clicked open, and the griffons on her either side began pushing against it. It took both of them working to get it to slowly swing open, revealing the merciful sunlight waiting for us on the other side.

“Almost a million ponies in all,” I answered. “But it’s not a territory, it’s a city. Everypony lives inside it. There are lots of suburbs out around it, and towns out past those, but those aren’t in Manehattan.”

“I think…” Dawn made a face. “My mother told me about some of it. You don’t have city lords, and you don’t have noble families. I think they’re called… mayors?”

Finally the door was open. She took me to another corridor through the rock, but this time there was sunlight to lead us forward. I emerged into the light, blinking away the disorientation of our trip through the gloom and looking up at the palace.

This was the capital of the Republic, a civic center for ten times as many creatures as all the ponies who lived in Equestria.

The griffons certainly had a different sensibility in the way they built things. Everything had been cut from the same huge stone blocks, assembled together with much more attention to strength than to the way they looked. A low outer wall surrounded a towering inner structure, at least twice as high as Canterlot Castle, and with several smaller sections that obviously weren’t physically connected at all. A creature would have to fly to reach some of those upper buildings, there were no walkways for anypony who was trapped on the ground.

“I, uh…” I winced, but there was no way I could successfully pretend to have powers I didn’t. “This might be a bad time to mention that I can’t actually fly.”

Radiant Dawn stopped dead on the path ahead of me, turning to gawk. Even showing her disbelief, that little beak somehow made her look charming. “You have wings,” she said. “I know ponies can fly. We have a weather team and everything!”

“Ponies can fly,” I agreed. “But I never learned how. I was…” I turned away. “More of a scholar. Time spent in the air was time away from my books.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “I don’t know how you got down from your nest every morning, but…” She leaned forward, gripping one of my forelegs with both claws and yanking me. “How long are you going to be in Caesarea, Contrail?”

“A few weeks, probably,” I answered. “Long enough to conduct all the—”

“Long enough to learn how to fly,” she responded. “Don’t even say a word. My mother will know some bird or other who can teach you. She’s very well connected, you’ll see.”

She dragged me up the switchbacks, which were built unevenly and sculpted into the rock. A casual observer would not have seen anything other than more rock if they looked down, weathered and occasionally covered with patches of ash.

We reached the low gate, which opened for us as we approached. The guards didn’t even inquire about who I was, they just saluted with their sturdy metal rifles and got out of our way.

There were hundreds of birds moving in and out of the wide palace steps. I stopped suddenly enough that Radiant Dawn lost her grip on my leg, staring at the flow of creatures in and out of the building.

There were far more than I’d seen at Canterlot Castle during my single visit there. I couldn’t forget that the Republic was an entirely different form of government. Their emperor and empress weren’t absolute the way Celestia and Luna were, but they relied on an assembly.

Apparently an assembly meant constant traffic in and out of their capital building, full of creatures wearing ceremonial robes in several colors. There were so many of them here that at least they didn’t stare at me too long. I was just another creature in a crowd of many.

Dawn, on the other hoof, attracted more than her fair share of eyes. Whispers too, though I couldn’t tell if they were talking about something official, or noticing her same traits that I had.

“Something wrong?” she asked, tilting her head to one side. “The Assembly will still be in session until evening, if you’re—”

“It’s fine,” I answered reflexively. Though what I could’ve said to her even if I had been genuinely disturbed, I didn’t know. “You said… Empress Starlight Glimmer is expecting us, right? I shouldn’t keep her waiting.”

The griffons didn’t hide their assembly hall behind many doors and security areas. Instead, we just had to go right through the huge double doors, to where a set of tiered steps looked down on the assembly hall from above.

There looked to be fifty of them on each side of the room, each one wearing one of a few colors and basically shouting at each other.

Did they really think democracy was a good idea? That looks like a nightmare.

“This way,” Radiant Dawn urged, pointing towards a stairwell in the back. I followed her to the door, then squeezed through just behind another few house guards.

I followed Radiant Dawn into the throne room, feeling the relief as my ears were no longer assaulted with the clamor of the assembly hall.

It had obviously been modeled on Canterlot Castle, with a long hallway and stained glass on either side. But the ceiling was higher here, with several doors flush with the wall above some of the windows. Most were blank, though there were scenes on the first few.

An erupting Mons Ignis, thousands of retreating ships, and a fierce battle over Canterlot. The defense of New Scythia, and the triumph of the current Emperor. One thing I didn’t see was any record of Starlight Glimmer’s own… involvement.

What records I had found about her before now were exceptionally vague. They didn’t even agree on what spells she had used to save the city as Vengeance tried to burn it. The Old magic, or something learned from Sombra. It was one of the things I most wanted to accurately record.

The throne at the far end was even more luxurious than Canterlot Castle—not just gemstones, but apparently made from solid gold, with a smaller seat beside a taller one. Only the smaller seat was occupied, by the pony I’d hoped to meet.

Starlight Glimmer wore the same robes as the griffons did, at least from afar. But where theirs came in many colors, hers was white, with diamonds along the collar and a hood she wore down, exposing her mane. She’d taken to wearing it short and wild, with thick strands poking out from behind her head like the feathers from a griffon. But no griffon came in pink, or would fill the space with so much magic.

There were half a dozen others here too—an older bird with white feathers, a zebra with a chain necklace of gold, and numerous birds flapping around them with bookbags, easels, and pens. All female. Interesting.

“Mom, I got him!” Radiant Dawn called, bounding up into the air and quickly crossing the distance to the throne. She landed at the base, not crossing the edge of the gold. “This is Contrail, from Equestria! He’s here to learn about us!”

“I know.” I half-expected Starlight Glimmer to sound more like a bird, but she spoke no differently than any other pony. She wasn’t old, but her voice was still profoundly weary. Her eyes on me had none of the supernatural piercing quality that Twilight had. But she also wasn’t trying to talk past me so fast I blew away.

She waited for me to reach the throne, where I stopped and bowed. I didn’t really know what they expected, so I had to hope that the respect I would’ve shown to Twilight Sparkle would be enough here. The soldiers to either side of the throne didn’t move, so I had to assume I’d done something right.

“Rise, Equestrian. Long trip all the way out to the Accipian Republic. You must be a very determined scholar.”

“I am,” I answered. “Though to be honest with you, uh… Empress… Princess Twilight made this trip possible. I was just going to send my questions by mail and hope you decided to answer.”

“But she made you an envoy of the court,” Starlight said. She sat up, looking down on me from ten feet or so high. I couldn’t quite tell what that expression meant. Was it annoyance? Skepticism? “And so we’re forced to receive you or else give the appearance of dissatisfaction towards our Equestrian allies. It is just like Twilight to make such a big deal over a book.”

“I’m sorry if I’m intruding here,” I answered, head still down. I dared a glance to one side, at the older bird watching me from the wall. At least the emperor isn’t here. He’d probably make this even worse.

I wanted to see Emperor Velar of course, but not meeting two of the most important creatures in the world at once would do wonders for my stress-level.

Starlight almost seemed able to hear my thoughts, because she nodded suddenly. “My honored husband will be supervising the Assembly until today’s session is concluded. You’ll have to arrange a meeting with him on your own, if you can somehow manage to do it without frightening him into flight.”

“Uh…” I dared to raise my head. “I’m not very frightening, Empress. I’m just here to ask questions. This case is only full of paper.”

“Precisely,” Starlight said, with just the hint of a smile. “A male scholar. I don’t know how much you know about the cultural aspects of the Republic—I suggest beginning a practical crash course. If you don’t know what’s frightening about that, you don’t know enough to write about our motivations accurately.”

Our, I noted. I guess getting banished didn’t help her loyalty to Equestria much.

“I would be honored if you would give me the chance for an interview,” I said. “I have some questions about the Migration War, and a first hoof perspective to those events would—”

Starlight raised a hoof, waiting for me to fall silent. “Now isn’t the time, scholar Contrail. It’s possible I’ll be able to find time in my schedule, stars permitting. But even if I don’t, you have the run of the palace while you’re here. My daughter has little exposure to ponies outside of Equestria’s formal ambassadors, and I have no doubt she’ll harass you endlessly for information. Consider it my special pleasure to grant her full permission to do so as long as you’re in the capital.”

She leaned in, just over the edge of the throne. “You’re not in Equestria anymore, Contrail. Learn quickly, or this trip might get you killed.”

She sat back, turning her head away. Just like that the guards emerged, pointing towards a side door. “The empress is done with you,” one said. Not rudely, but absolutely confident. I wandered out, stunned and confused with every step.

I thought she wanted to see ponies.

Chapter 6

I clutched my pack close as I wandered out of the throne room, taking one last glance at the imperious Empress on her throne before turning around the corner and out of sight.

She invited me here. She accepted the interview. But now Starlight was rejecting me, tossing me back into the city with what was either callous advice or thinly veiled threats. I couldn’t tell which, but either way didn’t bode well for the success of my project.

I didn’t make it very far, maybe a few steps, before Radiant Dawn caught up from behind. To my surprise, she seemed almost as horrified as I felt. “I had no idea she was going to—” she stammered. “My mother is usually so welcoming to ponies who visit. I was sure she—”

I stopped, letting her finish. But she didn’t seem to have anything else to say. “There’s something else going on here,” I said, and for the first time I hardly even noticed how attractive she was. Hardly—I wasn’t blind, and she was right there. But at this rate, anything I said would probably end up with me getting strung up. I would have to remember Starlight’s disapproving face before I said or did anything. “She barely even mentioned me. It was all about Princess Twilight, and the diplomatic situation between Equestria and here. It must mean something to her, something… political.”

“Ugh,” Dawn groaned. “I hate politics. The only thing more boring is sitting through an entire session of the Assembly. But…” She brightened, turning away. “I’ll make it up to you, Contrail. I promise. You wanted an… interview, you said? I’ll get it, promise.”

“Maybe don’t pressure her right now,” I said. This side-passage was totally unremarkable, just a dark stone room with electric lights on the ceiling. There was no telling that it connected with the throne room, or any defensive measures I could see. “I think the best thing for me to do is stay out of her mane. And maybe… maybe try to follow her instructions. She doesn’t think I understand the Republic very well. I wonder where I could go for a crash course.”

“Oh, I know!” Radiant Dawn recovered quickly, yanking me forward by the leg again and taking a sudden right. “We should go to the city lord, Gina! She knows ponies and birds, she could explain it so it makes sense!”

“City lord,” I repeated. I wasn’t resisting her, though I still felt profoundly nervous. “Are you sure that’s, uh…” How could I even ask? “Are you sure the city lord will want to deal with me any more than the empress does? City lord sounds important.” She’d compared them to mayors—if this was the capital city, then there was little chance she’d have time to talk to some random scholar here on a diplomatic trip.

“Oh, she’ll be fine with it. She always has time for me. So long as I take you, we can flap right in!” She took off into the air, pulling me up towards a door that was several stories up. I spread my wings instinctively, but flapping them did basically nothing.

“Oh, right.” She slumped to the ground. “We’ll have to walk. That’s… not a big deal! We can walk. Ponies love walking! It’s… part of my culture too or whatever!”

Walking is part of your culture? I raised an eyebrow, but didn’t question her. We wound our way through the palace for a few more minutes, until we emerged out in front again through a lower door. A pair of house guards appeared from nowhere as we walked out, surrounding us on either side.

“We’re just going into the city,” Radiant Dawn said, glaring at them both. “I don’t need you.”

“Emperor says you always need us,” said one. I knew the bird’s face, since he was the only black-feathered raven I’d seen since arriving. He’d been with Radiant Dawn on the dock. Yet somehow he’d been waiting out here when we made it out of the palace. Did he know I was going to get refused, or just always wait here when he didn’t have a charge to watch?

“You’re the heir, Radiant Dawn,” said the other. Male too, like every single guard I’d seen so far. This one wasn’t one of the two who had walked with us up the secret trail, but they all looked basically the same anyway. “Even if you weren’t making the trip with an outsider, your safety would still be a concern.”

“Outsider, please,” Radiant Dawn muttered, exasperated. “He lives in books and can’t even fly. He’s more dangerous to papyrus than he is to me.”

Why did that cut so deeply? It wasn’t like I was dangerous to her. I certainly wanted nothing other than a professional relationship between the two of us. And I was grateful she’d taken so much of her time to show me around. I certainly wasn’t puffing out my chest to look bigger, or trying to turn sideways to hide my bookbag. I’d never do that.

“Even still,” said the raven. “We’re going. Where are we going, anyway?”

“City hall,” she said. “We’re walking, since my pony friend Contrail can’t fly. You still want to come?”

“Yes,” the raven said, a little exasperated. “We’d come even if you were just going over the wall to stare at it for a few hours.”

“Fine!” Radiant Dawn rose into the air, letting go of me for a few seconds and doing a quick loop. She moved so gracefully and quickly that I could only stare, amazed. “Fine, you win! We get babysitters, Contrail. Even though I’ve been of age for two years now and I’m a better shot than half the birds in this city.”

She landed beside me, gesturing ahead. “Lead the way, Giorgio, oh loyal escort. However would we find our way to city hall without you?”

We passed back through the gate—but not down to the docks again. Now the city was before us, and I got my first good look at the rebuilt capital.

Like everything else I’d seen so far, it was both similar to the way ponies built and simultaneously distinct. The street level just outside the palace was packed with carriages and servants, probably waiting to attend on the diplomats that were working further in.

Further away from the palace and its surrounding diplomatic buildings, the city spread out as a series of closely packed towers. There weren’t actually routes between the levels, no stairwells I could see. I might’ve thought that most of them were just internal like pony buildings, except for the mostly identical front doors facing the street.

“You, uh… really built the city around flying, didn’t you?”

“I guess.” Dawn still sounded distant, and a little annoyed. Not with me, I hoped. “That right there is the citizen’s district, and they can all fly. In the old days they used to be on the ground, because most households had slaves. But we don’t do that anymore, so…”

Slaves. The word was still a nerve for griffons on both sides of the issue, and it was so unpleasant that most ponies didn’t think about it at all. But I had to—slavery went right to the core of the entire Migration War. Ending it had crushed the Empire, and formed the fertilizer that the Republic grew in.

“I guess you never, uh… you don’t know much about that, do you? You were born after the war. Your father is…”

“Emperor Velar,” she finished for me. “Yeah, I was. Born in Equestria, though. My mother and father didn’t want to wait until… well, I guess I can’t blame them for that.”

That was a subject I didn’t want to explore, so I stayed quiet as we walked. We weren’t heading out into the city, not to the unreachable roosts of the citizens tucked into the rock. The civic buildings around the capital were built more traditionally, and it didn’t look like I would have trouble getting in.

“You lived in New Scythia?” I asked. “Do you remember what it was like?”

“No,” she said, ears flat. “I know it was hard—even after the war killed so many birds, we had trouble feeding everyone. But I was too young to remember when it was hard. The first things I can remember were living in the palace during the excavations. Lots of digging and repairs and construction.”

I turned, watching her more closely. There was something here I hadn’t thought about yet. She did know some useful things. There were some questions I’d hoped to ask her mother that I might be able to learn from her instead.

“Why didn’t the Republic rebuild in Scythia? This city was…” I didn’t even know. “Somewhere else. Why here?”

“Caesarea,” she supplied. “I know ponies don’t have houses and stuff. Caesarea was the fortress aerie of house Virtue—my house. It’s further from Mons Ignis, so the damage was less severe. And there aren’t as many ghosts.”

But I didn’t get a chance to ask about what that might mean, because we reached our destination: a black stone building made to resemble the palace, but with much smaller pillars and without the fortress walls around it. There were also far fewer birds inside, most looking like functionaries to my eyes. Not the diverse representation of a massive empire.

Up the steps we went, past guards that wore blue and carried clubs instead of rifles. They parted around Dawn like we weren’t even there. “Here to see the lord?” one of them asked. “Don’t you have places to be, Radiant Dawn?”

“Nope,” she answered, grinning honestly. “I have a pony with me from Equestria! He wants to ask her some questions!”

“Really?” Suddenly I felt their skeptical eyes turn on me. Where before I’d just been background, now they closed in around us, subtly blocking the steps so that I couldn’t pass. “Has he forgotten we’re not in Equestria? We don’t care what ponies want here.”

“I’m not like that,” I said, not looking them in the eye. I didn’t know much about bird custom, but I had heard that could make them angry. “I’m a scholar, doing research for a book. I’m not a diplomat, or an interrogator.”

“Male scholar,” said another. Several other birds laughed. “Just because you could didn’t mean you should.”

What does that mean? I didn’t think it wise to ask him. “Please,” I said again. “It’s just an interview. I’m not here to try to enforce Equestrian law.”

“We’ll see.” One of them got out of our way. “One thing not many ponies know is honor. Your word mean anything, horse?”

I nodded. “I’m being honest. I could show you the proof if you needed to see it.”

He laughed. “It wouldn’t be proper to have the Emperor’s daughter read for me. Stars you’re insane, stallion.”

“Leave him alone,” Dawn said, raising her voice as she shoved through. She grabbed me by the leg again, and soon we were passing inside. The guards didn’t protest, though I could feel them watching me all the way up. Not nearly as well-behaved as the ones guarding the capitol. And those well-trained guards, who had treated me so well during my visit, they just stood beside and watched.

A large empty passage was open in the center, around a set of stairs that led up the building. I walked, while the birds flew around me, watching and grinning. “You’re almost there!” Dawn called, gesturing up. “Just two more flights!”

After what felt like an hour of walking, I finally reached the top. Past a floor of frantically writing scribes and packed records was another single guard, watching the stairwell. At least he didn’t harass me as we passed him, through the open door to the city lord’s office.

Chapter 7

All this talk of noble houses and city lords was hard for me to wrap my head around—but as we walked into her office, I found myself finally relaxing in the presence of something familiar. Even on the other end of the world, in a civilization of birds that had once kept slaves, some things never changed.

Gina herself was an older bird, though like many of the griffons I’d met so far it was hard to tell her age with the signs that might work well for ponies. Most birds didn’t lose their feathers as they aged, and those tended to cover up the wrinkles.

I could see the signs of weariness on this bird. One of her eyes was white, and some of the scars in her coat ran so deep that the fur hadn’t ever grown back. Instantly I found myself grateful that I had brought my bookbag. This wasn’t just a bird I could learn the basics of griffon culture from, it was a bird who had probably seen the Migration War first hoof, while standing in a position important enough to have a useful perspective.

She was precisely the sort of bird I was looking for.

“Radiant Dawn,” she said, sitting back from behind piles of papers. She pushed them aside, knocking several identical telegram printouts into a waste bin. “What would your father say if he found out you were in my office?”

“I dunno.” She waved one wing dismissively, bouncing up to the desk and looking down at it. “Probably he’d say I was wasting my effort not learning poetry or history or science. Boring, lame, and ugh.” She shook her head, then seemed to remember I was there.

“But I’ve got a pony with me who wanted to ask about some of that stuff. I’m not very good at answering his questions, but I’m hoping you can.”

“You have a pony,” she said, finally seeming to notice me. There was some sympathy in her expression, as though she thought I’d been kidnapped. And maybe I had, I still wasn’t sure about that.

I could’ve done my interviews without involving the royal family at all. If they weren’t going to help me anyway...

I banished that thought, true though it was. Radiant Dawn might be getting me into more trouble than I would’ve faced otherwise, but she was still the prettiest creature I’d ever seen. I could put up with a little inconvenience if it meant I got to see her smile.

“A pony clipper arrived today, I remember. Did you find him there?”

“Yeah!” she said. “He’s here, uh… writing a book? Yeah, I know how weird it sounds, but it’s real. He’s got a bag with papers in it and everything.”

“I know stallions can often write, I won’t be disturbed.” She rose from her desk, turning aside to throw open the curtains behind her. The view of the city below, even in late afternoon, briefly floored me. It was so totally alien from anything I’d seen—all the verticality of Manehattan, but without any of the rigid structure. It was an organic thing, something that had grown by one nest at a time over many years.

“I’m here researching for a book,” I explained, before Radiant Dawn could twist my mission even further. “On the Migration War. I was hoping I might be able to learn a little from you. About Accipian customs, and… your memories of the war, if you have any.”

“I should think I do.” The bird slumped back into her chair. Her one good eye seemed to glaze over, looking at something that I couldn’t see. “I was an Officer of Imperial Enforcement, servant of Emperor Gaius himself. My claws enforced his will, so I was there to see the surrender to Equestria carried out. And I watched each house rebel against it in their own ways.”

“Surrender?” I hadn’t been invited, but I could see no reason not to sit. I pulled over one of the chairs, and nopony stopped me. Of course, there were no guards in here. Radiant Dawn’s own personal servants were waiting at the door. Maybe they aren’t suspicious of me after all. “You didn’t surrender to Equestria.”

Gina laughed, looking sidelong at Dawn. “He does need cultural lessons. Did he talk like this to your father?”

“Hasn’t met him yet,” Dawn said, matching her amusement. “But I would’ve told him not to.”

“I don’t understand.” I opened my case, removing a pad of paper and a fresh ballpoint pen. There were still some scribes who insisted on the old quills and bottles of ink—but I’d left those tools back in Equestria. There was no room for frivolities on a trip like this.

Just like that, my interview had begun.

I thought it was a matter of historical record that Accipio hadn’t surrendered. You would keep your autonomy in Equestria, rule your own land until Ignis’s wrath had passed and the climate was safe again.

That’s what all the paper said. But just because you write it on paper doesn’t mean that a bird believes she’s free. You know what else the histories record? We gave up all our weapons. We stripped the cannons from our warships and threw them into the sea. We wouldn’t even get to keep our fancy thrones to sit on, since the evacuation meant we had to leave most of our history behind. We were traveling against our will to the worst land in a country that wasn’t ours, to work under laws we didn’t like without weapons or representation. How is that not a surrender?

I don’t have an answer to that. I shuffle through some of my questions, trying to find anything I’d planned for Starlight that this bird might be able to answer for me. I can’t find anything, but something she just said strikes me. You worked for Emperor Gaius, didn’t you? Why accept the agreement if you saw it as a surrender?

She removes a gold coin from the table in front of her, flipping it up and down once before she answers. There’s a face stamped into the opposite side.

Gaius was not learned in letters like his wife, but he saw further than any bird that has ever lived—possibly further than any bird who will ever live again. He hated the surrender, hated the terms of the agreement. But Accipio had gone to war with Equestria before, and we never won. He thought it was better to submit to unconscionable terms for a little while than to risk extinction. That’s something else you need to understand about griffons—we’re proud, but we can be practical too. Gaius was.

Would you mind explaining the difference in behavior between your mares and stallions? I know that probably sounds disconnected, but I think it’s becoming critical to understand this story.

You ponies have your immortal alicorns to rule over you. We don’t, so we had to create something else. The Rex Imperium—our immortal laws. When followed, they create a society that is stable and peaceful.

While you ponies allow yourselves to follow any task you wish, we’re more… structured. Birds of both sexes have a place in our flocks. Our laws outline the boundaries, and give birds confidence.

Since the Republic, our restrictions have slackened. It would’ve been inconceivable for Radiant Dawn to learn to fight as she has in her father’s time. It would be unimaginable for males to study to become scribes.

I believe the trend is doomed to eventual failure. There are already some cities in the north formalizing sections of the Imperium again. I look forward to the Assembly making this trend national in the next few years.

I don’t know if it’s as bad as you think. It works for us ponies.

Exactly. It works for ponies. She flexes her claws, digging a deep gouge into the surface of her old wooden desk. We’re not ponies, if you couldn’t tell. We can learn from you, but we shouldn’t try to be you.

Even now, it’s clear this is a sensitive subject. If I don’t change it, I risk losing a source that’s highly informed about the things that actually matter.

Were you close enough to the last emperor to see any of the diplomacy between Equestria and Accipio?

All of it. I wasn’t part of the negotiation directly, that was mostly the emperor and empress. But he consulted with me a few times about certain administrative details.

I know there were other important houses at the time, besides the emperor’s own family. Invasion of Equestria was more popular than diplomacy, wasn’t it?

That’s right. Gaius decided from the first that he wanted an arrangement that would spare both sides from bloodshed. I remember him saying that Mons Ignis would take enough lives, we didn’t need to give him one more. That’s why he accepted your terms, even if they amounted to a surrender.

Do you think an invasion was possible? How close did history come to seeing a different kind of Migration War?

A knife’s edge. Or… a hammer’s edge. At the last, Emperor Gaius and one of his high lords took the dispute to trial by combat. If Gaius had lost that fight and house Virtue the emperorship, there would have been an invasion. Even Virtue would’ve supported it then, according to sacred tradition.

Many ponies wonder about the role of the empress, even back then.

Because you’re a matriarchy, and you think a stable government should look like yours. She doesn’t give me a chance to argue the point. And on some level, I’m not sure if I should.

I’m momentarily distracted watching my companion, who has begun stalking a mouse that somehow got into the room. She’s completely uninterested in the interview, and hasn’t said a word since it started.

Back then, the office held no formal authority. Historically, our empresses create their own authority. Guinevere did so by founding the Ordo Lexigraphica.

I know her name. Her work on the mathematical modeling of three suspended bodies was fascinating, even if the math was beyond me. I take it the Lexigraphica were involved in your research of Ignis.

I’m sure they were. But I wasn’t, so I can’t tell you anything useful there. Talk to Guinevere yourself. I’m sure she’d be thrilled to entertain a scholar who read her work.

Even a stallion?

I’m sure she would find it even more satisfying, for reasons you can’t properly grasp.

Last question. I’m sorry to take so much of your time. I can’t imagine how hard it is to run a city. But I have to ask—what about the slaves? Even Virtue kept them, despite its reputation for honor and respect. The emperor kept slaves in his own palace, didn’t he? How did you reconcile that?

Ponies always want to know about that. I don’t know if you can understand. It’s the same as the way we see males and females. Every creature has a place in our society, and that was even more true back then.

The noble houses have the power to protect their citizen members. Freemen formed links of employment and association with those houses. But fortunes were not always kind, and wars were constant. Before the innovation of slavery, the losing side of any conflict were summarily executed—often to fuel the creation of empowered artifacts that remain in use today.

Voidsteel. I intend to find out more about this object, but not from her.

If you study our history, you will see that war threatened to drive us to extinction. But then a bird—probably a clever female—figured that there was a way to stop her males from killing everyone. The losing side could be woven back into society in a way that left the victor rewarded and the loser’s children able to escape the shadow of their birth.

I’m not sure I’m comfortable putting any of that in the book, particularly calling slavery an “innovation.” You aren’t enslaving creatures anymore; you don’t seem to be going extinct.

Give it time. Birds don’t really change just because customs weaken and dull. You ponies took away our awful solution for an awful problem, but haven’t replaced it for us.

You should try friendship—it seems to work great for us.

Chapter 8

We left Gina’s office behind shortly after that. I wouldn’t say I wasn’t eager to leave, though I’d certainly gathered some useful information. Maybe not quite as much as I would’ve if Starlight Glimmer had been willing to talk to me…

“Did you find out what you wanted to know for your book yet?” Radiant Dawn asked, bouncing along beside me. “It felt like you were going to be in there asking questions for hours.”

For the heir of the largest empire in the world, I wasn’t sure if I should be relieved at her casual attitude, or frightened. One thing was for sure: I wasn’t going to question her on it. She’d done nothing but help me since I arrived.

“The questions I wanted to ask her,” I answered. “Everypony has a different perspective. That’s why I had to come all the way out here. Why Twilight wanted me to, rather.”

We stood in a corner of city hall’s upper floor, within a few feet of guards just watching from her door. But they hadn’t interfered yet, and there was no reason to suspect that would change.

“You mean there’s more,” she said. “You came to the other side of the world, where you could do all sorts of amazing things… like learn to fly. But you’re just going to talk and write things in books?” The disappointment in her voice certainly only bothered me because of the fear that I would lose an advocate. It wasn’t at all because I was afraid this creature would lose interest in me.

“I don’t have to do them all at once,” I said hastily, walking past her towards the stairs. Maybe if I got her moving again, she would forget. “I expected to be here for a few weeks. I’d never be able to interview everyone that quickly, and I’m not in a rush to go back to Equestria.”

“Good,” Dawn proclaimed. “Maybe you aren’t completely crazy. Still, you should, uh… tell me who else you want to talk to while you’re here. If I know who they are, I might be able to help you get more. On other days.”

“I think you can guess two of them,” I said. “The emperor and empress have some of the most direct accounts of events that are poorly recorded by historians. Equestria was part of the biggest battles, so I have their perspective on those… but a captain or above who fought in the Migration War would be great to talk to. Then if I can… and I know it might not be possible—I’d like to find someone who stayed behind in Accipio and survived.

“And that’s the interviews I planned. I’d also like to tour your civic buildings, read your legal code…” I was losing her rapidly. “And then travel to New Scythia. There are a few birds still living there I know will have perspective to contribute to the book.”

It worked. Radiant Dawn stopped looking like I was force-feeding her sleeping pills. “New Scythia’s on the other side of the ocean, south of Equestria. With your airship?”

I nodded in agreement. “The captain is prepared to go everywhere there’s information, for as long as it takes.”

“I wanna come,” she said, as we made it back out onto the street. “I’ve never been to the colony before. Are you going to go to the north too? You’ve got to write about the snowbirds too, right?”

Are you asking because you want to go there, or because you think the book actually needs it? But I didn’t actually care about the answer to that question. I could only imagine the headache I would cause for creatures on both sides of the border if I let Radiant Dawn come with me on the expedition. Somehow I didn’t care.

So I nodded. “You’re probably right. They’re in close contact with the Empire, but I should still get them in for completeness. House Vengeance's birds are as much a part of the story as anypony else.”

Dawn nodded approvingly. “I think I can probably… yeah, I can get you in to meet with my father. But you should know—he gets bored easily, way more than Gina does. And he’s also really traditional. You’re never going to get straight answers from him if you’re the one writing them down. You need a scribe.”

And you know one you want to give a job.

“Velar is always reminding me to practice my letters. If I go with you, he’ll think I’m doing what he wants, and he’ll be more willing to listen to your questions. Oh, and if you don’t ask him about war and the military for most of it, you’re going to lose him. Most males don’t care too much about… bureaucracy.” She said the word like it was cursed.

“Sure,” I agreed. I planned on asking him those questions anyway, mostly because I hadn’t expected him to be informed about those other topics as much. “I can do that.”

“My mom is the tricky one,” she went on. “I’m not sure why she got so upset about you, so I don’t know when she’ll stop. Getting a military bird is easy, I know lots of those. A creature who stayed behind…” She trailed off, her tail suddenly hanging flat. She stopped bouncing, speaking low. “You’ll want the vultures. Are you willing to go somewhere a little dangerous? There aren’t any in the city.”

“How dangerous?” I asked reflexively. I would probably have denied the request completely, if I couldn’t see the disappointment on her face again. I couldn’t tell if it was because she wanted to go, or because she thought I was a coward. Right, birds are all brave and confident. She’ll want a creature like that, not like a pony. “I mean… my airship didn’t bring a crew for war. He wouldn’t take us if there was a chance of battle.”

Maybe I wasn’t so ignorant about their customs after all, because that seemed to make her relax. “Not war,” she said. “Ghosts. Every creature knows not to go too close—except the vultures. Are you afraid of ghosts, Contrail?”

“Nope,” I answer, and this time I don’t even need to pretend. Because they don’t exist.

The next few hours passed without much incident. I made an attempt to return to the Daughter of Wintergreen for the evening, but Radiant Dawn refused to hear of it. “You’re staying in the palace,” she said. “If you’re on that ship, they can get rid of you. You need to be in their face. Besides, she already promised. You don’t get to take that back.”

I didn’t actually see her again once we finished arrangements for my stay in the castle—wherever she lived with the royal family required flight to enter, so I wouldn’t be able to join her.

There’s no way that time for flight lessons fits into all this.

The accommodations Dawn got for me were spacious and comfortable, likely meant for visiting diplomats. I hardly enjoyed them though—as soon as I was alone, I went back to writing. There was much to record about my initial impressions of the city. At the rate things were going, this book would turn out to include almost as much about griffons as it did about the Migration War. How could I have gone my whole life without knowing any of this?

I took one glimpse outside my door at night, but I found no guards there. Apparently I wasn’t considered a threat to the castle.

I dozed off late into the night, sketching Radiant Dawn from memory. Strange hybrids of one creature and another ought to look unappealing, right? She had no right to be so pretty.

I woke the next morning to knocking at my door, and a delivery of a simple breakfast. I ate, idly planning my next few days. If there was any confirmation that Dawn had lost interest in me, this was apparently it. I knew it was only a matter of time.

But she arrived as I was finishing up, wearing a strange vest and a military-style cap. “Good news!” she said, tossing a vest and cap onto my desk and scatting papers everywhere. “Father is going hunting, and he’s invited you. We’ll get a whole day around the emperor and his most trusted military birds!”

Hunting? I felt a wave of involuntary disgust, but that feeling only made it as far as seeing her face. Radiant Dawn looked so proud, so eager. And just a little tired. How much planning behind the scenes had it taken to make this happen?

I pulled on the vest and cap, unable to keep from smiling in return. “What are we hunting?”

“Wraiths,” she answered, twisting to one side to expose the silvery gun she was wearing there. Not the bulky rifles that most of the guards carried—this one was slender, and intricately engraved. I was fairly certain I knew the make—that was an Equestrian gun.

“Wraiths are… real?” I tried not to sound too skeptical. But at least this time I wouldn’t be disrespecting the memory of her dead cities. The vest fit a little loosely, even with the buttons up as tight as they would go. But it had to do. I hurried to pack all my military questions away, leaving everything else behind in the bedroom.

“Sometimes they are,” she said, tossing something else onto the desk in front of me. Another gun, without the fancy engraving. This was clearly an Equestrian weapon, with a glowing green crystal instead of a firing pin. “Pretty sure this one is. Can you shoot straight?”

No. I took the gun anyway, lifting it in my wings like some dangerous animal that might attack if I jostled it too much. A unicorn rifle, with a clear plastic magazine. The bullets inside were polished silver instead of copper. Silver for the undead.

The gun slid into its holster pointing up, where it wouldn’t accidentally shoot me in the hooves even when I inevitably screwed this up somehow.

“How often do you go hunting?”

“Never,” she answered, beaming. “But you needed a scribe, so…” She reached across, taking my writing case from over my shoulder. “I’ll need that. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it safe for you.”

If it were any other creature, I would’ve refused. But she was so close, close enough for me to smell the honeysuckle scents she wore. So maybe she was a little like a pony in that way—none of the other griffons smelled like anything more than grease and sweat.

“Hunting wraiths,” I said again, hoping it would sound less insane the second time. I thought about bringing my camera—but decided against it. I wasn’t here as a cryptozoologist. Some other pony could prove this was real. “Where do we go for that?”

“The skydock!” she exclaimed. Apparently that was the signal, because she turned to leave. I followed, only just managing to keep up with her enthusiastic bouncing. “There’s a cargo lift to get you up there. Slow as the melting snows of winter, but… it’ll get there.”

We wandered through the palace, up many flights of stairs, until we emerged onto a huge flat space lined with storage shelves on one side. And on the other, a huge flat bit of wood, kept that way with counterweights on either side. Ropes led up, along a complex pulley system to a dock perched high on the peak above us.

There was a single airship up there, one even I recognized. The Dieus Irae, a warship with bright golden sides and spectacular cannons along its length. There was no gasbag, yet still it hovered in the air, as fearsome as a griffon ship but as graceful as one built by ponies. It was the union of Equestria and Accipio, given form.

A heavy wooden platform thumped onto the ground in front of us, making me jump slightly. There were no railings, no safeties of any kind. Radiant Dawn climbed aboard, grinning at me. “I hope we catch it this time!”

I had no choice but to follow.

Chapter 9

I didn’t fall off during the trip into the sky.

There was more than a little reason to be afraid—with no walls and only a thin wooden platform to separate me from certain death by falling, I wasn’t exactly confident. But despite her protests of its speed, Radiant Dawn seemed to know exactly where to stand so it wouldn’t tilt too far.

Lifting up gave me a great view of the city, one that made me wish I’d brought more than my notebook and questions for the emperor. Seeing everything from so high—well, I know it’s a view that shouldn’t be strange for a pegasus. But it certainly was for one like me who never bothered to learn to fly.

There were more than just birds living here, that much was obvious. The further from the aerie district I looked, the more friendly to land-creatures the city became. There must’ve been hundreds of ponies living here, maybe thousands.

They weren’t like Equestrian ponies, though. Those creatures that lived in ancient servitude to the empire, who refused to leave to Equestria when given their freedom, and who returned to their ancestral lands—I could see a distant square filled with ponies. Their coloration reminded me of Saddle Arabians, much more subdued and natural. Maybe it would help them blend into the environment, and avoid getting foalnapped into servitude?

“Hey, Dawn, how much do you know about them?” I asked, pointing out with one wing. I didn’t move, not even an inch. If this thing tilted too far, I’d slide right off, and I didn’t know enough to land in one piece.

“Serfs?” she asked, tilting her head slightly to the side. She was criminally adorable when she did that. “Enough. But why would you care? You know more about ponies than I do.”

“I thought I did,” I admitted. “But looking at them, there are… so many differences. I know they have cutie marks like we do. Do you know anything about the history?”

She winced, glancing up over our heads to see if we would soon be arriving. The ship was close, but the loading platform moved so slowly that it might as well be miles away. “Only what every bird learns in school. They probably came to live with us the same way Griffionstone came to be in Equestria—our long history of wars against each other. The noble families liked earth ponies—unicorn magic was too hard to control, and I don’t think they understood the benefits of weather magic very well. Earth ponies like them grew food and did lots of other boring stuff. And since most birds didn’t like living in the valleys, they had their own space. So long as they delivered the food on time.”

Even that much looked like it was pulling teeth for her. When we finally slid into an opening in the bottom of the ship a few seconds later, Dawn hopped off with relief. That made the platform start to swing, and I wrapped both forelegs around the rope, holding desperately to it until it slid into place.

The Hammer of Gaius—Celestia this was an impressive ship. Most of it was made of metal, the silvery reflection of aluminum finished with rivets instead of nails. Wood had only been used on railings, or anywhere else where looks were more important than strength. Not so much on the open deck.

There wasn’t a single other pony up here—just an annoyed pair of griffons who had been working the winch. As the larger of the two slotted the wheel back into place, the smaller one ignored all semblance of personal space, walked right up to me, and pulled my left wing open roughly. “Hold up. Why did we do all that work if you’ve got these?”

“Look perfectly good to me,” said the other bird, his voice even slower and lower. It would be the lowest I’d ever heard, if I hadn’t met minotaurs before.

“He can’t fly,” Dawn said, sympathetic. “I signed him up for lessons tomorrow, don’t worry. We’ll teach him.”

“Toying with another one, princess?” The first bird turned away. “Don’t seem right from where I’m flying.”

“I am not!” Dawn landed beside me, gripping my foreleg. “Come on. My father will be near the helm. He never flies these himself, but he likes to be there.” I followed along beside her, hopping up uneven steps and into the airship’s interior. This external loading deck proved to be unremarkable—the ship barely had enough room for the few of us out here without passing through a metal door into spacious hallways. It was hard forgetting just how huge griffons could be when walking inside their airships. Hallways obviously built just large enough for one of them could easily fit two ponies walking abreast.

We traveled through the strange interior of the vessel, past tubes and pipes and other things I couldn’t name. Are Equestrian ships this advanced?

Eventually we reached the bridge—a massive space near the front of the ship, with huge glass windows around three sides. The inside had five stations for controlling the Hammer of Gaius’s mostly automated functions, though I didn’t care enough to investigate any of those. I was here to see the emperor.

Velar wasn’t old as birds got, though he was distinctly into middle age now. But where I’d seen plenty of portraits of birds that got fat and slow and lost most of their flight-feathers with indolence and alcohol, he apparently wasn’t the type. He wore a military uniform not that different from the officers around him, except that the trim was gold instead of black.

I expected all the birds on this bridge to get indignant as we wandered in, but it was exactly the opposite. None of them so much as turned in our direction. A few looked briefly towards Radiant Dawn, saw her, then returned to their work.

But she didn’t slow down, dragging me past all stations to where Velar stood over a tactical map.

This time the map wasn’t covered with dozens of enemy airships, but instead a recent map of Caesarea and all the surrounding settlements and farms. Most prominent on the map was the section on the upper left, holding what I could only guess was once a city prior to Ignis’s eruption. The former capital, maybe?

“Father, this is the one I told you about. He’s the male scholar from Equestria, who came to make a record of the Migration War.”

“And also the expert wraith-hunter who can’t fly.” Velar looked up, his eyes narrowing. But he wasn’t even looking at me, thank Celestia. “Honestly Radiant Dawn, you should be kinder to your guests. He has no idea what you’ve brought him here for. Just look at his face.”

The emperor wasn’t wrong, though I didn’t feel afraid until he said it that way. My eyes widened, and I bowed suddenly. “Emperor Velar, It’s a privilege to—”

He cleared his throat. “That’s enough, pony. I’m not an immortal princess, I don’t need you bowing and scraping for me the way you would to them.”

I rose quickly, though I wasn’t able to meet him in the eye. This bird was everything I’d heard about griffons and more—towering, mighty, and intimidating. I could see at least one jagged scar in the soft feathers on his face, and I knew there were probably more. This bird’s own claws had fought in that war. “You’re right that I’m not a hunter, of… any level of expertise,” I said. “I’ve never even heard of wraiths before. But I assume hunting them must not be too dangerous, if the emperor himself is up here.”

Velar laughed, loud enough that it boomed through the bridge. A few of the other officers joined him, though I had no way of knowing if it was out of loyalty, or something more sincere. “You haven’t been here long, I take it?”

I nodded. “A day, Emperor.”

“I can tell.” He patted me on the shoulder with one massive claw, then pointed out the window. “Look out there, at my palace. Tell me what you see.”

I obeyed, walking to the massive sheet of glass and looking out. This alone was an accomplishment—a single perfectly clear sheet, strong enough to survive the rigors of flight.

From above, the strength of the castle was even easier to see. The exterior walls, even those high on the mountain, were several feet thick. Though the gates were wide, the castle’s actual entrances were all thin. The windows were thin too, so much so that even a pony wouldn’t have been able to fit inside. Slits more than anything. There were no balconies, though I knew birds enjoyed views as much as ponies do. Just apparently not from inside their own homes.

“A fortress,” I called back, lowering my head to the emperor. “I’m not a military pony, but it looks strong.”

“Military pony,” someone whispered from behind me. “Any other jokes for us, male scholar?” I ignored the cruel chuckling. I wasn’t here for their approval. I didn’t really care what the emperor’s other officers’ thought.

“It is,” Velar said, a few traces of annoyance entering his voice. He glowered at the creatures beside me, and they quickly fell silent. “If you’ve seen Canterlot Castle lately, you’ll know it isn’t. That is a palace of comfort, built by a creature who is secure in her superiority. She has no need of little defenses, no need to fear an invading army. In the earlier ages of your civilization, power constantly turned from one family to another just as with ours. But the princess herself was sacrosanct. And why shouldn’t she be? What madman would raise a blade to the one who raised the sun?

“I have no such protection. I am not immortal, or even ageless. My family is not sacred and immune from danger. In the Republic, we continue to lead from the front. Such as in hunting down wraiths, which make taking and maintaining Accipian land a nuisance. Few other creatures are brave enough to fight them, and I have my father’s Voidsteel.”

He pointed at the map with one wing, apparently for the benefit of the bird beside him. “This sighting seems the most credible. It’s the only one with a death attached, so this monster is most worthy of our cannons. Set a course.”

The bird—covered with almost as many medals and fancy patches as the emperor himself—nodded, then hurried over to the helm. From behind, engines began to roar, and the ground outside began to fall away. We angled upward as well as forward, and soon even the outskirts of Caesarea were long gone. I could already feel myself missing the smooth, comfortable Daughter of Wintergreen.

The Hammer of Gaius was neither, but a warship. It ripped up the air in front of her, its engines so loud that they shook the ship. Not thaumic impellers, as in pony vessels. But I wouldn’t be asking about how they worked.

“Father, I didn’t know you knew about pony history.” Dawn settled in beside him on the comfortable couch. Sitting there, it wasn’t just the family resemblance that was obvious, but her choice in outfit. It was tailored like a military uniform, with the same buttons and frills and places for patches. But while it looked like a uniform, there wasn’t any ranking insignia to be seen, not even a private’s pin.

“Military history,” Emperor Velar corrected. He nodded towards a chair to one side of him, where I would have a good view outside the side window, as well as be able to see the map. “I don’t think I ever studied it in the same way our guest probably did. But knowing how your enemy fights is the most important part of any war. Accipio has been planning an Equestrian invasion since before Virtue took the throne.”

“I was hoping…” It was either now or never. An opportunity to be near the emperor like this probably wouldn’t come again. “I was hoping you might be able to answer a few questions for me, Emperor Velar. I promise to be brief, but I want this book to be—thorough, complete, honest. Ponies have a tendency to… sugarcoat. But I don’t think you will.”

“I will not,” Velar said solemnly. “But I will answer your questions—anything you ask before we see a wraith flying outside that window, anyway. How quickly can you write without claws?”

Chapter 10

I knew I wouldn’t have much time for this interview. The Hammer of Gaius was fast, and the emperor didn’t seem patient. I glanced around the bridge to see if any of the other birds here would be disruptive, but so far I could see no sign of their intention to interfere. I reached into my pack, and nearly took the pad myself when I remembered what Radiant Dawn had said. Velar would be too uncomfortable with a male writing to give me anything like honest answers. I passed her the pad, along with my ballpoint pen. Hopefully birds knew how to use them, because I hadn’t seen any yet in the Republic.

Before I asked you anything, I just wanted to make it clear that I’m asking for the purpose of the publication. I’m not on Equestrian business, and I’m not making accusations. I’m hoping to make the account as accurate as I can.

Someone’s been thinking about this for a while. You think I’m going to declare war on Equestria because of something you ask? Laughter, from him and several of his officers. You don’t have to say it, I can see what you’re thinking. No, I’m not. But I’m afraid you aren’t going to get anything more from me than you have from any of the other questions I’ve answered over the years. I’ll assume you’ve read those. My house has many virtues, but truth and honor are both at the top. If I said something, I meant it.

Velar instantly strikes me as the sort of creature who knows how to deal with interviews. He might mock me for having my remarks ready, but he does too. At least Radiant Dawn is keeping up with us, though her claw writing is so bad I’ll have to go back and re-transcribe everything she’s scrawling.

Not every question is the kind that you would’ve been asked. For instance, were you in favor of your father’s peaceful solution for Equestria?

Not when he first told me. Every bird in Accipio has a chip in their beak over what happened in the Sky Crusade. Losing a whole house—everybird thought their generation would be the one to make things right, to liberate Griffionstone and take some of your land for a change, instead of the other way around.

He was right about being honest. I can’t imagine him saying these things around the princesses, but he doesn’t even hesitate. Then again, he is the emperor of the second-greatest nation in the world, and by far the largest by area.

Something made you change your mind.

My wife. Well—wasn’t my wife then, but that’s history you can look up for yourself. I supported my father at the beginning, but I didn’t agree with him. But then the Equestrian envoy arrived, and I saw what unicorns could do. The Old Magic is powerful stuff, greater in many ways than what you ponies do. But it takes preparation, and time. Starlight didn’t need either one—she could vanish from one place and reappear in another.

I was younger, and stupider. I thought that she was what every pony soldier would be like. Maybe even less, since I expected Equestria to send an expendable messenger.

You were supportive of the peace agreement from then on?

Rut no. But Starlight stayed in Accipio to supervise—just one pony, as insane as that seemed. On her first day inspecting ships, she finished one ship all day. But she did a dozen ships on her second day, and had random crewmen from her ship helping by the third day. I’m not ashamed to say that I was grateful we weren’t fighting. Not because I didn’t think we would win—I knew we would. But the stronger our enemy, the more terrible the losses. I don’t want to think about how many birds would’ve died if we had a real war.

I don’t know where we’ve flown to. We’re high in the air, so high I can’t even see the ground from the horizontal angles through the window. The ship has begun to jostle slightly, as though we were riding the currents of something larger. But there’s nothing out there but clouds.

What were your first signs there might be rebellion from the other clans?

You mean before or after Gabriel dueled my father to the death? More laughter. They weren’t called house Vengeance because they enjoyed making chamber pots. It didn’t matter that their duel was perfectly fair, we’d taken Vengeance blood and they would want blood in exchange.

Gabriel’s son Santiago was even less supportive of the whole peace thing than his father had been—some part of me wonders if we would’ve been better off just refusing the duel. Gabriel would’ve been bitter and annoying at every turn, but the family wouldn’t have been willing to sacrifice everything to get their way. Guess we’ll never know.

They tried to kill you, didn’t they?

Yes. On one of your state visits, thankfully for me. Tournament of Freedom was more than just ceremonial back then, it was a real chance for the ones who lived their lives in service, maybe the only one they’d ever have. If you ask Starlight about it, she’ll say I let my virtue get the better of me twice. First by fighting beside a stranger because I felt sorry for him—the stranger who shot me—and then the second time by refusing the Old Magic.

We had the means to heal anything, even wounds that Equestria’s most talented surgeons can’t do a rutting thing about. But that magic takes another life, and… It never sat right with me. I refused it, and the rest is history.

Starlight Glimmer saving your life…

She nursed me back to health, which certainly didn’t have anything to do with my falling for her—forgive my frankness, but I’ve never found another pony interesting before. You’re all just too small, too weak, too… undeveloped. She was the first, and the last.

I’m not actually interested in his romantic life, and Radiant Dawn looks like she’s going to get sick if I let him keep going on about it much longer. So I try to take the conversation a different direction with the rest of my questions.

That put you in the right place to fight in the Battle Above Canterlot, didn’t it?

Velar laughed again, though this time he was the only one who seemed to know what was so funny. I suppose Equestrian history would record it that way. I go from one of your hospitals right onto the bridge of an airship fighting against the evil house Vengeance. But no, that wasn’t it.

They brought me in because I was a hostage they could use against my father. At that point, Equestria didn’t know that the rebellion wasn’t a coordinated effort by all of us. I don’t think you could get over your biases—you see each other as one nation, so you thought we would be too.

Problem was, my father hadn’t gone back on the deal. He really did believe in the alliance, and more importantly he would happily let Equestria execute me rather than subject the empire to danger or disgrace. Virtue doesn’t take the threat of hostages very well. Let them use it against you once, and they’ll keep doing it until the end of time.

This is all news to me—Velar is right, Princess Celesta’s own historians have neglected all this. I make sure Radiant Dawn has it all down before moving on.

I can see Equestria didn’t hurt you once they realized you wouldn’t be valuable to them.

You’re not very good about using hostages either. Or maybe it was just that my father was innocent, and we were happy to work alongside Equestria to stop the invasion. Fighting two houses is easier than fighting all four.

You look young—were you born after the war?

Yes.

Thought so. You younger creatures just can’t understand the fear we felt—all of us. Even birds can feel fear when their whole world ends. You spent lifetimes building up something you think is invincible, and suddenly forces so much bigger and stronger than you rip it right out from under your claws. Gaius and I both understood that a war with Equestria would mean starvation, even if we won. We were employing weather ponies to help manage the land around New Scythia, before the invasion. And after. Life is easier with magic.

We’re interrupted by the shout from one of his nearby officers. He says the sonar has picked up something large moving away from us.

Better hurry it up with your questions, male scholar. We’ve found our quarry, and I can’t let it get away. You’re welcome to help hunt it, though. That was why my daughter said you were joining us.

He says some other things, directly to Radiant Dawn. I can tell she isn’t writing them down, but I don’t correct her. I wouldn’t want those things written down either.

After the Battle Above Canterlot, you went with Starlight and some others to New Scythia. You knew you’d be outnumbered and unprepared, since Vengeance and their allies had been making illegal firearms for months. Why’d you go?

Because it was the right thing. That’s what House Virtue is about. Our birds and friends didn’t deserve to be burned so some fledgling who thought he should be king could sit on the biggest nest. Besides, I know it probably isn’t this way for ponies, but the houses—we’re extended families, huge ones. New Scythia was mostly populated with Virtue birds. And any of the creatures who weren’t directly related to us through some cousin or other distant relative had sworn their loyalty and friendship to us. Wouldn’t you die to protect your friends?

I suppose I’m glad I’ve never been asked to.

That’s peacetime for you. While you’re in Equestria, tell them to make it last. I don’t want to kill creatures again if I can avoid it.

We’re killing something now.

No. Wraiths died a long time ago.

I can tell that Velar doesn’t want to talk to me for much longer. He gets up from his couch, stretching and adjusting the rifle on his shoulder. Maybe he expects to be using it soon. But there’s one more question I’m dying to ask, one that’s so poorly recorded that I have no idea what he might say when I ask it.

I’ve spent a long time trying to find out how you took back New Scythia. The best I’ve learned, there was some kind of… curse, that afflicted the Vengeance army. What can you tell me about it?

That it was cruel… and necessary. I don’t judge my wife for her magic, the way some others do. A bird would never fight the way she fought, but she wasn’t a bird. You can ask her more about it if you’re feeling brave. It’s her truth to share with you, or to die with at her leisure.

That was the moment he turned, running for the door. “Stay on its tail, Captain Anthony! I’m headed to the cannons!”

“Good shooting, Emperor!” one of the other birds said. I would’ve been perfectly happy sitting on the bridge to watch whatever was about to happen—but Dawn passed me my pen and paper roughly and hurried after her father so fast I didn’t have a chance to protest.

I galloped after them. The close quarters of the Hammer of Gaius worked to my advantage here, since I was free to gallop but the emperor could only move so fast.

We didn’t go far anyway, just down a deck and around the corner to a room with a soldier waiting outside, already armed.

“Officer Gallus is waiting for your order, Emperor!”

He nodded, darting past him into the cannons.

Here an opening in the side of the Hammer of Gaius had been created, filling the room with a roaring wind and steady thrum of engines.

A set of two gigantic long-guns were set into the deck, with hydraulic stands and manual claw-targeting for their automatic reloading.

The ship had a cannon crew, but they got out of the way for their emperor, lowering their heads respectfully.

Through the opening to the outside, I got my first look at a wraith.

It was a dragon, or what was left of one. A dragon made of bones and wisps of ghostly magic, its eyes burning red. Ash trailed behind it through the air, lighting under the force of its tail and leaving embers to rain down through the air behind it.

“Celestia above… we’re fighting that?”

Chapter 11

I didn’t belong here. I knew that getting an interview with the emperor wouldn’t be easy—but I thought that might mean having to talk to lots of stuffy people in closed rooms, impressing or them into admitting that a few minutes of the emperor’s time would have returns for them, if only because it meant the authoritative history I would write would more favorably capture the griffon perspective. In some of my nightmares I had imagined having to bribe my way through, or perform some strange griffon ritual in order to have access.

Then again, this probably counted.

Through the open sections of the hull flew a creature of incredible size—a dragon, unmistakably. Or more accurately, what had once been a dragon. Now it was dead, and yet somehow it still flew through the skies. Its scales were missing, there were no organs under its belly, yet still it flew on.

“How in… Celestia’s name is that thing in the air?” I asked, following Radiant Dawn over to one of the huge guns.

“Ears!” the emperor called, taking one of the others in both claws. He pressed the trigger down, and there was a bang so loud I felt like it physically threw me against the wall. It didn’t, obviously, but my head felt like it had. It was a good thing I’d already put away my notes, or I was sure they would’ve been picked up into the air too, and thrown around so violently that I wouldn’t be getting them back.

By the time I regained my senses, I saw a wraith no longer gliding eerily through the air on torn and broken wings, but a monster bearing straight down on us. I had a few seconds to brace against the wall before the Hammer of Gaius shook from one end to the other. Sirens began blaring, but they were washed-out and distant to my ears. I didn’t know if I was deaf, didn’t know anything. Then Radiant Dawn got her claws ready on the gun. I pressed my ears down, and that helped a little—but the shockwave passed through my whole body, then through the floor.

Outside, shards of broken bone rained down from nowhere, filling the air in a cloud. But the wraith wasn’t dead. The ship overhead shook, and metal screeched as it tore.

I lowered my head, moving up to Dawn as the gun automatically reloaded. I had to scream at the top of my lungs to be heard over the terrible noise. “WHY ARE WE EVEN DOING THIS?”

She glanced back at me, grinning wildly. “THEY MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO CLEAR OUT THE ASH. WE HAVE TO KILL THEM IF WE WANT OUR LAND BACK! WELL NOT KILL, OBVIOUSLY, SINCE THEY’RE DEAD, BUT—”

This time the sound of metal tearing came from closer—much closer. The metal cover over the guns came ripping off, as a gigantic dragon claw went straight for the guns. For our gun, specifically.

I didn’t move as the empty-eyed skull looked down on me from high above. Its hatred radiated like a physical force.

I swear it saw both of us, and one of its half-shattered claws gripped the barrel of the gun. Dawn started fighting with the straps holding her with the gun, but I wasn’t smart enough to know what would happen next. I just held on to the back of the seat as the wraith tore the gun right out of the Gaius’s hull, tossing us out into open air.

I screamed—that was definitely the first thing I did. My wings spread by instinct, but that almost took me off the gun, and I didn’t want to do that. Dawn fought with the straps for a few seconds more, before just cutting through them with her claws. She got ready to jump—then she saw me.

I thought in that moment I was dead for sure. Radiant Dawn was falling, I was falling, but I knew what would happen to us when we hit the ground. The gun itself was starting to spin end-over-end, and I was losing sight of the horizon. But I still clung onto the back of the seat, the only solid thing in the world.

Instead of jumping to safety, Dawn grabbed onto my foreleg. “We have to fly!” she called. “Let go!”

It was the first authoritative command I’d received, and I obeyed. I pushed off with her, letting the long gun spin faster and faster as it left us behind. Dawn’s wings were spread, slowing us, her expression agonized. It must’ve taken her enormous effort to hold them open with both our weight.

“Glide!” she screamed. “Glide you stupid horse! Do you want to live or not?”

I opened my wings, and it was like smacking them out into a wall. They bent vertically against the air almost instantly. It was a good thing that was a natural position, or I would’ve broken them.

“Hold them open!” she screamed, her beak an inch from my neck. “Don’t tell me you’re smart enough to read but not smart enough to use you own bucking body!”

Her gliding hadn’t slowed us enough, I could feel that—but at least we weren’t spinning. Far below us was another rocky peak, that might’ve looked identical to Caesarea except that it was buried in an ocean of ash. I only assumed it was a peak thanks to the sharp rocky bits emerging above the ash.

“Maybe we’ll land soft? Aim for a huge ash flow!”

“If I do, we’ll drown!” she countered. “I’m going for the city! Now help me!”

I’ve read before that creatures in terrible danger sometimes show incredible abilities right before the end—mothers that lift broken carts from their foals, weather ponies fighting off a hurricane on their own. Incredible things. I felt in that moment I knew what those ponies felt, only selfish. I just didn’t want to die.

I finally got my wings to open. It was a fight every inch, but eventually they were wide enough to catch the air. We jerked, and instead of rocketing straight down, the ground was now approaching slowly enough to see details. Radiant Dawn sighed with relief, her head slumping a little. “That was… the most terrifying trip I’ve ever taken,” she muttered, her voice strained. “Now do you see why I want you to know how to fly?”

I didn’t answer at first, afraid that anything I did to break my concentration might result in my wings going loose, and dropping me right out of the air. But it didn’t. Now that I wasn’t fighting the acceleration of a terminal fall, it wasn’t that hard to keep my wings open. Even if it did feel like my back was going to tear open to hold it like this…

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll learn how to fly.”

Finally I dared to look up, at whatever we were leaving behind. Far far above, there was the faint line of the Gaius, along with two figures fighting alongside it. First was the bony white wraith, so hard to see it was almost lost against the sky. The other was something else, a figure in black armor holding itself in the air with massive wings.

Dawn followed my eyes, making a wistful sound. “Too high up to fly back, even for me. And my father would be furious if I tried while they were fighting. The wraith loves to pick out easy targets.”

Good thing it didn’t go for us then. The ground was coming up fast, or at least the ruined city was. Dawn was directing us towards the top level of a structure, covered in ash several inches deep.

“Hold your breath when we land, if you can. I’ve got emergency stuff in my pack.”

“You don’t think the emperor will be worried about you?”

“You mean would he be worried that his bird daughter couldn’t land? I hope that’s a joke.”

It wasn’t, but I could pretend. But then we landed, and I didn’t have to.

The ash from Mt. Ignis is unique, at least so far as geologists conclude. It’s a fine white ash, fine enough to be used as sandpaper. I’ve written about it a little, about how great it can be for crops, but how in larger amounts the soil can become as sterile as the ash. But its biggest dangers to living creatures aren’t what it does to the soil, at least not right away.

It’s so fine that it makes it all the way down into the lungs, and causes what birds affectionately call “bloodbeak”, since that’s where the mucus usually dries. But it doesn’t kill instantly, and the initial damage can be healed.

It’s almost as hostile to the eyes, scratching the lenses and turning a pony or a bird blind in just a few weeks. Both are notoriously difficult to treat with magic, though the science is always advancing. But mostly it advances by better protecting the creatures who go here.

We smacked down into the ash a second later. It exploded around us, making the impact almost painless. Where it took to the air overhead, it turned the sky an angry amber, rolling in billowing clouds that swept down on us from above. I covered my face with one leg, holding my breath as long as I could. Unlike flying, I’ve spent a fair amount of time in city pools, enough that I could manage a minute without too much strain.

My companion let go almost instantly, fumbling around with something I couldn’t see. I could hear her unzipping something, swearing under her breath. But I didn’t see what she was doing. My lungs began to burn, and I chanced lifting my leg slightly to see what had happened, if only for a moment.

The ash was still overhead, though all the thicker pieces had fallen around us. Only the finest, most dangerous cloud remained, practically clinging to the space around us. Almost as though it were specifically targeting us.

“Here, you dumb horse. Take this mask and put it on.” Her voice was muffled by cloth, but still easy enough to understand.

I had no choice but to open my eyes all the way, taking one stinging breath. It burned my throat on its way down, and was probably doing worse inside my chest. But I worked quickly, taking the cloth mask and tying off the straps. It hung out in front in an obvious beak-shape, but it still attached to the bottom of the face. I might look a little like a bird while I wore this, but… at least I would breathe.

“Goggles,” she said. “Hold still, I got you.” Her claws were on both sides of my face for a second, settling something weighty onto my muzzle. I held still, waiting until she finally let go. “There. You’re safe.”

I opened my eyes all the way. Sure enough there were thick glass lenses in front of each eye, with just a little dust inside that had managed to worm its way in before the glass was on securely. The mask looked tight enough.

It looked like an alien world had eaten the one we knew so completely that only a few sparse signs of reality could poke through. We stood on the roof of a building, and the ash beneath us had cleared in a little crater of impact. Enough to see the crenulations on the wall—a castle then, or some other fortification.

“I might not be able to scholar as well as you, but I’m prepared,” Dawn said proudly, tapping her chest with a claw. Her own mask and goggles fit much better than mine did—actually, they seemed identical. She’d just carried extras, and because of that I wouldn’t be losing my lungs today.

“Does this kind of thing… happen often?” I asked, adjusting my saddlebags. Against all odds, the straps had stayed closed, meaning all my notes and work weren’t scattered to the sky. Not that I had very much that was useful in a situation like this. The closest thing I had to practical supplies was a pocketknife I used for opening tins of snacks.

“No,” she answered, glancing up at the Gaius far above as it continued to drift away. “Mom is still trying to come up with some spell that can target the wraiths. But even dead dragons are too resistant to magic for anything to stick.” She turned, though where she would be going in a sea of ash, I couldn’t guess. “Come on—you can’t fly back, that means we need a signal fire. We don’t want to be here when night comes.”

Chapter 12

Whatever we were standing on was impressively strong to survive the overflowing waves of ash and dust that had fallen on it from above. It became clear why as Radiant Dawn reached one of the edges of the building and started clearing away ash with a foreleg. There was stone under there, apparently strong enough to survive a volcanic eruption.

“Help me find the way down,” Dawn called, glancing over her shoulder. She was still cute, even as her bright colors turned to ashy gray. “We need to find something that can burn and start a fire. I have matches, so it won’t be too hard.”

I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I could copy her on another part of the room, shoving away ash with a foreleg and searching for— “What is it we’re looking for? Wouldn’t any wood on top have caught fire?”

“Dunno!” She peeked up from the ash, brushing it away from her goggles. The glass might do well enough for keeping it away from our eyes, but it didn’t actually make it easy to see. “I’ve seen lots of intact wooden stuff from ruins. But we’re probably looking for—here!” She squeaked with joy, yanking on something. “Help me with this!”

I had no idea what she meant, but I hurried over to see. There was a ring in the floor, and a panel of blackened wood around it. It had survived the eruption, and held up besides. Like many fragile objects taken from the Ashlands, it had an old and petrified look to it, the relic of something from a strange and alien place.

Could she really not manage on her own? I’m not sure that wasn’t an act. But I bent down beside her, and together we pulled it off. More ash exploded up around us, from all around the edge of the hatch. Bright sunlight above cast a ring down on the floor below, which lacked anything like stairs or even a ladder. Right, because their militaries are all just birds. Of course they don’t make them accessible to land creatures.

But unlike flying down from an airship, a jump of ten feet or so was more than within my power. Dawn hopped down into the dark, passing right through the obscuring cloud of ash and smoke.

“Are you, uh…” I wasn’t even sure she could hear me down there.

“What are you waiting for?” she called up after me. I couldn’t see her mouth under her dust mask, but it seemed obvious she’d be grinning at me. “Come on!”

“I’m a historian, not an archeologist!” I called back, leaning down. The opening didn’t show much—just a ring of bright light, where thick ash had fallen in around the edges of the hatch. There was a stone fortress beyond, though its outlines were only somewhat visible.

“Time to graduate!” Dawn responded. “You can be both!”

I sighed, spread my wings, and jumped.

Whatever magic they’d been doing during our fall, they didn’t do those things now. It was a good thing pegasus ponies land soft, because otherwise it would’ve hurt.

As it was, the worst part was falling over in front of Radiant Dawn, rolling onto my side and standing quickly as though it was nothing. “This isn’t really… what I had in mind when I wanted to come to the Republic,” I muttered, scanning the room. It was bright right under the opening, so much so that standing here made it difficult to see. “Aren’t you afraid of, uh…” I hesitated.

Dawn turned on me, tilting her head to one side. She was always so damned cute. “Afraid of what?”

“The bodies,” he said. The words sounded childish even before they were out of my mouth. But once they were gone, I couldn’t exactly take them back. “There are your… brothers and sisters dead in places like this, aren’t there? Creatures who starved to death, or—”

“Most of them didn’t starve,” she said. She didn’t sound like she was going to mock me. Her voice was solemn and quiet. “Anyplace close enough to the ashfall to get this much would’ve got the gas as well. Seeps into the cracks, and a mask doesn’t help. Invisible killer. The Vultures tell stories about it.”

She walked forward towards one wall, and I followed. If we were going to find the dead down here, I wanted us to do it together. But I couldn’t see anything here but a gigantic ash flow, filling what I assumed was a window, and covering up the ground all around it. The shelves beside it were heavy wood, sturdy enough that they’d survived even with a mountain of ash pushing down on them.

“Looks like we have the fuel for our signal fire. I don’t think they need these cannonballs anymore.” She hefted one to the side, and it landed on the stone floor with a hollow thump. The whole building seemed to shake, and I swore something moved under us.

Dawn froze herself, looking down. After a few seconds, whatever distorted echo we’d been hearing faded into the background, and silence returned.

Dawn took the next cannonball and lifted it down to the ground carefully, and the next. I wanted to help, but—ponies didn’t have the right tools for work like this. At least I could help break the shelf apart, and move it towards the opening.

“Do you think we’d be better off setting the fire up down here, rather than out in the open? The smoke-signal will make it just as high. If we’re lucky enough to find the right ingredients, I could make it huge. Like if they were mixing gunpowder, maybe they keep their sulfur somewhere we could find it, and—”

She pushed my mouth closed with a claw, silencing me. “I thought you weren’t an archeologist.”

“That’s chemistry. And everypony knows how to mix gunpowder, since we learned from… the war.” I looked away lamely. There were a few other shelves just like this, one beside each of three windows. There was a place furniture might’ve been in the center of the room, though only scraped stone remained. As well as stone steps leading down, not covered with ash. There oppressive shadows gathered, and I couldn’t see more than the first few steps.

“Will you…” Dawn looked away, ears flattening. “Will you laugh if I say something most ponies wouldn’t understand?”

“No,” I answered honestly. “I might not agree with everything you say, but I promise not to laugh. This is your empire, Dawn. Or… it used to be.”

She glanced once at the stairs, then took a step closer to me. “There are ghosts in dead places like this. Caesarean birds laugh and joke about it, making fun of those who still believe in them. But the monasteries know it’s real. And you’ve seen the evidence yourself. The wraiths are the same kind of thing, only… way bigger. But they aren’t the only ones.”

“The ship I took to Accipio, the Daughter of Wintergreen—her crew were afraid of them too. So it’s not just you. But we’re… unless you want to fly off and leave me here, I don’t know how much choice we have. We’ll have to deal with them somehow.”

She nodded gravely, then fumbled with her pack. She shrugged, and the clasp wouldn’t open for her. She twisted towards me. “Can you take a look in there for me? There should be a dagger clipped to the inside.”

We were almost the same height, so it wasn’t hard. I flipped the pack open, and sure enough there was a dull dagger hanging off the inside flap. “This? What kind of metal is this?”

“Silver,” she said quietly. “Just like the grapeshot we were using against the wraith. Nothing else makes a dent, other than Voidsteel. And we don’t have very much of that.

I held the dagger towards her, and Celestia-be-thanked she actually took it. I wasn’t sure what I would’ve done if she didn’t—probably tried to use it anyway. Even wearing a mask and goggles in the dark she was pretty. “In the stories, what angers a ghost?”

“Disturbing them, mostly,” she said, spinning on the stairs and holding up her knife. But there was nothing rising up from below, at least nothing I could see. “The Vultures have to fight them most, since their whole clan is all about salvaging from places like this now. They wouldn’t have a clan if they couldn’t take things from the dead. But taking things is something they really don’t like.”

“We’re not here to take things,” I said flatly. “We don’t have to explore either. I don’t have to come back with an encyclopedia on pre-eruption Accipian military history. We can wait up here until… the Hammer of Gaius finishes with that wraith and comes back for us, I assume?”

She nodded weakly. “We should be okay if we don’t wait until nightfall. It’s way worse at night. Even my father won’t hunt wraiths when it’s dark.”

“You sure that isn’t because griffons don’t see well in the dark?”

She glowered at me. “That problem is more exaggerated than real. If there’s enough light, we can see fine, regardless of how bright it is.”

Something landed on the roof overhead, something heavy enough that chunks of dust tumbled off from above. A second set of feet landed a few seconds later.

Dawn cowered close to me, whimpering. But while she stood closer, she also didn’t let the dagger droop in her grip. She was braver than me—I just started backing away from the opening, gesturing for her to follow. She did, creeping close to me into the shadows.

Something moved up there, something heavy enough to be intimidating. “Maybe that’s our rescue party?” I whispered, as quiet as I possibly could.

Dawn shook her head once. “No fire. No way to find us.”

But someone had found us, and they were getting close. It was probably my imagination, but I could feel something wrapping around my heart in my chest, cutting off my breath. Was this what it felt like when a ghost was about to attack?

I couldn’t get to my pocketknife in time, and it wasn’t silver anyway, so it wouldn’t have made a difference. I didn’t know how to fight, didn’t even know how to hold a weapon. I probably couldn’t use a griffon weapon anyway, not without being a unicorn.

Something went flying down through the opening, something flat and glowing.

Radiant Dawn squealed in fear, slashing out at the empty air in front of her with the dagger. Nothing happened—and a few seconds later, the thing landed motionless on the ground.

It was a cloth.

Then a voice spoke from above, a voice as low and gravely as the desert sand. “Ones below are… alive, yes? Or dead?”

“Alive!” Dawn squealed, exhaling and slumping to the floor. I had felt her heart, beating so fast I was amazed it didn’t burst. But now she apparently relaxed. “We’re alive.”

“You have gone to where you ought not,” said the same voice, low and dangerous. “Abdera does not tolerate outsiders as well as some others. Too many dead.”

Something passed through the air again, trailing down towards them—a ladder, with flat wooden rungs. “Return quickly. Touch nothing more. If you value your lives, you will obey me.”

I didn’t need telling twice. I hurried back into the center of the room, and only once I moved did Dawn follow beside me. She sheathed the silver dagger, clipping it a strap of her saddlebags near her neck. Apparently even griffons didn’t greet strangers with weapons at the ready.

We climbed off the cloth, then up into the sunlight where we had first landed.

A bird waited for us at the top, a griffon wrapped completely in white cloth. I couldn’t even see claws from within his robes. His eyes were reflective specks emerging from within many layers that covered his face.

Chapter 13

“Do we really just… follow some stranger?” I asked, staring down through the empty tunnel where the bird had vanished seconds before. It seemed incredibly stupid to me—we didn’t even know this creature’s name, we knew nothing except that he didn’t seem to want us in one of the buildings, and yet here we were considering following him. True, he didn’t have skulls or anything hanging from his saddlebags, but I hadn’t so much as seen his face.

I looked up at the sky, but couldn’t make out any trace of the Hammer of Gaius fading into the distance. It was long gone now, apparently.

“You’re asking if we should trust a vulture who lives here over… who, exactly?” Dawn asked. “Seriously, of course we trust him. Why is this even a question?” She hurried after him, slipping over the lip of the building and down into the gloom. I didn’t much want to go down into this dead place—but I wasn’t going to leave Radiant Dawn to wander off and have who knew what happen to her in the presence of some stranger.

She’s the heir of the second biggest empire in the world. If something bad happened to her and I was around her, what would happen to Equestria? Velar seemed like a reasonable emperor, but I’d seen enough fathers to know just how he would think of any threat to his daughter. I hurried off behind her.

The tunnel was steep, but apparently packed in tight enough that it held up. Something damp held it around me. After sliding down a little ash on the side of the fortification, we reached what I took to be the original trail far below, where Dawn waited for me. She rolled her eyes. “I thought you were the brave one,” she whispered. “You aren’t afraid of ghosts, but you’re afraid of meeting new friends?”

I just nodded. There was no sense arguing the point with her.

The Vulture’s voice called from up ahead, as raspy as before and remarkably distant. “Better hurry! Passage like this lasts ten minutes at best, and I spent half of that getting to you. If you get separated in the ashfall, those masks won’t help you.”

We ran. Well, I galloped, and Dawn flew. She was smaller than a griffon too, and apparently just small enough to fly through the tunnel. She passed over my head, then down the slope until we caught up with where the strange bird moved.

It was dark enough that we might’ve been in total darkness by then, if it wasn’t for the lantern hanging from his saddlebags. It was old, lit with a pitch-like oil that sparked and hissed at random. He wore a massive set of saddlebags, with only narrow slits for his wings, which had returned to the protection of his robes. Every exposed surface was scoured smooth, even reflective in places.

“Are there many Vultures here, stranger?” Dawn asked, her voice returning to the formal politeness I’d heard from her in the capital.

“No,” he said. “Abdera is too dangerous. Couldn’t say why—best guess is, some shriveled old bird practiced in the Old Magic commanded the soldiers here. Souls twisted up inside like that rarely feel content to just settle down to sleep, as they say. Otherwise fortification so close to the capital would’ve been cleared and taken by now.”

“But you’re here,” Dawn pointed out. “There must be a way around them. Offerings, or conditions, or… something.”

“They have patrols,” he answered, turning his head back towards the path. “So long as you know where they are, you’re safe. I know. You follow.”

We followed. I wasn’t sure exactly where we were going, but I couldn’t help but think any request for more information would be answered with a threat. Down this far—surrounded by blackness on every side, without an apparent escape—what would we do if he left us here? The tunnels would collapse, and we’d be crushed down here, nevermind any ghosts.

“The Hammer of Gaius was passing overhead,” Dawn went on, in the same formal tone as before. “Maybe you saw us. There was a battle against a wraith, and…”

“And you dropped a two-ton gun on Abdera,” the Vulture finished for her. “I wouldn’t give them salt, much less weapons they might figure out how to fire. But who am I to tell the emperor how to run his country?” He stopped again, tiny lenses lingering on Radiant Dawn. “You’re his daughter by the sorceress, I’ve heard of you. We’re almost to the bottom, Princess. From there, it’s only a two-day trip to Carrion. Regular airships travel there, to and from the capital.”

“We’ll pay,” Radiant Dawn said, without even hesitating. “For your time, and your assistance, Mr… I don’t believe we have your name.”

“Cyrus,” he said, voice low. “Ranks don’t mean anything anymore, so you can just call me Cyrus. I… might be persuaded to help you to Carrion. The subterranean highways are unfriendly to outsiders, and dangerous to traverse. But I would not advise trying to fly away from Abdera. There are archers below, archers whose aim is true even when shooting through ash.”

“I hope you’ll let us persuade you,” I finally said, the first thing I’d dared during the entire conversation. “We don’t mean to anger the dead, if, uh…” I probably shouldn’t question the superstition in front of someone who lived around it. Even if the ghosts weren’t real, they were still part of the realities of his world. “Please.”

He led us into a shelter, a space that had clearly been one home among many in the city of Abdera. Ash packed in thick around the windows, and every opening was boarded except for the front and back. Everything inside looked like it had been salvaged from the ruins, or traded from somewhere so similar that there was no meaningful difference.

But after a few minutes spent gathering supplies—old cans, water drawn from an ancient well, rolls of white cloth—we set off out another entrance and down even lower into the ash.

Here it was sturdier than the clouds up-above, compacted into something like an unmelting snowdrift. We got to see the way Cyrus made the tunnels—with a cleverly shaped metal wedge, which split the ash apart while simultaneously moistening it with a thick mucus stored on a tank inside. He pushed it along ahead of him on rugged wheels, and we could go nowhere that the mechanism didn’t first lead.

“The highway will be safer” he said. “But the bottom of the mountain is in our way, and it is the best patrolled. You must not step away from me, or they will see you.”

I wasn’t exactly excited about this—particularly because it made less sense the more I thought about it. How exactly were the ghosts supposed to see us if we moved on our own, but not with our guide? How were we supposed to go anywhere without him, without this strange mechanism for making roads?

Too bad I was writing a history book, because all this clearly invited further scrutiny. Someone could write an encyclopedia on the Republic post-Migration-War. Somepony braver than I was, and more eager to get their hooves dirty.

There was sound from up ahead, off to the right through the layers of impermeable ash. I wanted to ask how our tunnel was strong enough to keep its shape with who knew how many feet of ash above us—but now didn’t seem like the best time.

There was more than one sort of magic at work here, and all of them might be hostile to outsiders. I lowered my head, and tried to listen as closely as possible to whatever might be happening through the ash. But there was no light outside the lantern, only the rustle of claws on stone. Rough scraping sounds, something wooden rolling along through the ash.

Radiant Dawn cowered suddenly close to me, wrapping a wing around my shoulder. It was a good thing I was so similar in size, because otherwise I’m not sure I would’ve had much to offer her. I held her as best I could, grateful there was something positive about being ripped out of an aircraft.

Cyrus, our guide, stopped in his motion, and we instantly followed him. He didn’t say a word, though from the way he glanced back at us over his shoulder, I could tell that he didn’t want us to make a sound.

Something rolled closer to us, scraping on the rock. I saw shapes rustle through the ash, on the other side of our tunnel, though how they could move through it I could only guess.

A few tense seconds passed as they converged on Cyrus. But I couldn’t hear words, not requests, not confusion, not even ghostly moans.

Then as quickly as they’d come, the sounds began to move away. I remained quiet and absolutely still, feeling Dawn’s racing heart so close to my own. She was brave enough to fearlessly hunt dragons passing through the sky, but not so much with her own dead under the ash.

Cyrus started moving again, and we hastily followed. Past an ancient gate with its mechanisms clogged with ash, and onto a wide stony path stretching down into the ashy abyss. Down the mountain, from the look of it.

“It’s a long way down,” Cyrus said, his voice matter of fact. “I hope you’re strong. Not much worried about the princess, but a pony… you may not make the trip.”

“Oh, I think you’ll find my endurance isn’t in doubt,” I said, though it was very much in doubt.

Dawn still hadn’t let go of me. “We’re going together,” she said, her voice imperious and absolute. “My family will reward you handsomely for rescuing me. But part of that rescue in my mind is preserving the Equestrian diplomat. Save us as a unit or not at all.”

I winced at the boldness—a challenge like that was practically begging Cyrus to leave us to the ghosts. But he just sighed, turning away. “Come on then. Just because we’re out of Abdera doesn’t mean we’re out of danger. That won’t change until there are skies overhead.”

We walked behind him. I quickly lost track of time—there was only his gently swinging lantern, and the precarious stony path. At least there was nowhere large enough to fly, so nowhere for me to get left behind and not cross. The ash filled in every valley and canyon, and where we could travel was dictated solely by where it was the thickest, and where our guide could push his strange machine.

“So,” I said, after a length of time I couldn’t be quite sure of. “I’m preparing a history on the Migration War—and part of that history involves the background that led to it. What happened with Mons Ignis… all of that?”

“Fascinating,” Cyrus said, with a tone that suggested I couldn’t present him with something more dull if I tried. He said nothing further, and the awkward silence returned.

“I was hoping I might be able to… ask you a few questions, about life after the war. I didn’t think I’d get the chance to talk to a… is it offensive to call you a Vulture? Or is that just the name?”

“It’s what the clan is called,” he said gruffly. “The ones who didn’t suffocate or burn to death or starve or melt or… we’re the Vultures. The magic of Mons Ignis runs in our blood now. We nest it in, our young will die in it. If anything, the name is generous, since most of the new generation can’t even fly. I can, but… I was raised in the sky. I can do what they cannot.”

“Birds who can’t fly…” Dawn muttered, either amazed or horrified. Probably both. “You don’t have to stay here, you know. My father would find room for you in the republic. It doesn’t matter if you disobeyed his father long ago—Gaius is dead. You won’t be punished.”

“It isn’t about that,” Cyrus said, his voice distant. “It’s quite a long story—but we have a long journey. Very well, I’ll tell it, if you can listen.”

Chapter 14

We couldn’t exactly go anywhere to escape the presence of our rescuer—his strange device was the only reason we were still alive, slicing through the ash and somehow leaving an intact trail behind. I couldn’t begin to imagine how it could actually work, or how it could produce traversable paths without having them collapse on us. But that also mattered far less to me.

I had a captive subject for an interview, so long as he didn’t leave us behind. So under the increasing weight of ash over our heads, with the trail collapsing behind us almost as fast as we made it, I began my interview.

Did you stay behind when Mons Ignis erupted?

Yes.

Why?

Accipio was ours. I wasn’t going to leave it because of an angry mountain.

How many birds did you know who felt that way?

Almost everyone. If I belonged to a clan who left, I would know birds who wanted to leave. I stayed, and my friends wanted to stay too.

I feel the resentment from my subject building already. I can’t push him too far, or else risk him abandoning us to this strange place. I have to be careful.

What was it like?

Bad.

What did you see?

Ash. We’re far from the eruption, you can see. No lava flow here. But the worst killers are unseen. While the ash smothers everything, there is a… poison smoke, that comes with it. It hangs heavy, clinging to the ground. Doesn’t blow away.

This is new information to me. I’ve heard from volcanologists about the gas that would’ve been released from Ignis. It certainly would’ve been toxic, but also would’ve been somewhat limited in range. It shouldn’t have reached out his far. I note it anyway, attracting a little more annoyance. I suspect it’s because I’m male, but he doesn’t call it out specifically.

This is the point that Radiant Dawn finally joins in, her voice tentative in the darkness and cold. She is clearly afraid to be down here, and never gets too far from me. Even now, she stays beside me at all times, matching my pace. She’s already saved my life twice today.

Why didn’t you want to leave when the ash started falling?

He laughs at the question, bitter and distant. Fly where, little princess? The sky was filled with burning ash for weeks. The winds that carried it could scour the feathers from your body. Down here, it looked like the whole world was dying. Where could we go? At least here we had shelter, and food, and water. While it lasted. But where Ignis took, the stuff of Ignis fills in the gaps. Seeps between the stones and the windows. You saw them. The watch goes on below the ash.

I had seen, or at least seen signs of activity. I will have to take that knowledge back to Equestria, and possibly face the ridicule of Princess Twilight when I finally deliver it. But I can’t deny how right he was. I heard their claws marching along the rocky trail even down here.

But some of you made it.

It isn’t a question, but he treats it like one, once he’s finished laughing.

Every vulture has a little of Ignis in their blood. It changes them—they look like they should be circling over the dead. White feathers, long neck—you know the look. I think maybe the dead recognize them too, since it’s the same power in them.

As he says this, I’m struck with a sudden realization. Cyrus doesn’t look like a vulture, not the parts of him I can see. His feathers remind me a little of an oceangoing hawk, at least where a few peek out of his protective clothing. I assume he must be telling the truth because of Radiant Dawn’s reaction, though. She never questions him.

My father really does want to help you. He wants to reunite Accipio, the way it was before Mons Ignis erupted. He wants to repair the climate and clear away the ash.

Again it isn’t a question, and again he doesn’t seem to care. Your father has no idea what he’s getting into. It’s not my place to question Accipio’s emperor, but he’s going to find more trouble before he succeeds. The dead will not wither when the ash is taken—they will rise to anger. You can’t reason with the corpses of ash. Their minds are filled with the hatred Mons Ignis felt for all life. Does your father realize he is provoking a war against the dead?

Radiant Dawn doesn’t answer, though I can see her shock at the response. Clearly she doesn’t think it’s much more plausible than I do. But at least it’s a chance to get some control of the situation back.

How did you survive?

Every vulture has their own story. Usually it’s a combination of good luck and preparation. It wasn’t hard to stockpile supplies before the end, with so many birds flying west to Equestria. They couldn’t take it with them, but we could store it. Some used the Old Magic to protect themselves from types of harm. Our trails were all bought with the blood of vultures, you will see. The stones are red for a reason.

We’ve been walking down the mountain for some time, and we don’t have very far at all to go before we see some of these stones for ourselves. Cyrus is right, the cobblestone path does look red. Like the red rock of the deserts south of Appleloosa, except that I know full well the rock here is mostly black.

The highway forms a dreary backdrop for our discussion, with a ceiling vaulted high overhead. The ash seems pressed hard to something unseen, a ceiling I can’t clearly make out. Sunlight stains it red, or at least I assume it must be sunlight. It might be blood too for all I can tell.

What do you think the Emperor should do?

Maybe too bold, but for once Cyrus seems eager to answer. I think he should stick to his own sky and leave the dead to theirs. Accipio is massive, and there is plenty of good land that never had the ash. Just because Ignis was in the core of the old empire doesn’t mean he has to reclaim that land first.

Our interview ended with a whimper of indifference, not because I was out of questions to ask, but because I wasn’t brave enough to keep interrogating a bird who had wanted to leave me to die in the ash. Dawn’s encouragement bought me leeway I didn’t want to waste.

Dawn moved a little closer in the silence, retreating some distance behind Cyrus with me. At least there we didn’t have his eyes on us. There was no sign of life down here, but at least there didn’t seem to be any dead down here either. Just the road, and the strange magic that protected it. A subterranean world that wasn’t even properly underground.

“I’m going to your flying lessons when we get back,” Dawn said. “If I hear you complain even one time, I’m going to make you eat a bowl of ash.”

“I won’t complain,” I answered, with complete sincerity. “I wish it hadn’t been so easy to ignore in Equestria. I never thought I would need to fly.”

Even Cyrus laughed at that, though he didn’t speak further. He had left the strange machine, and now he had only his heavy pack worn threadbare rubbing against the ash, and his jacket. Even with the ash and the ceiling so high above us, he didn’t remove them. I wanted to pull down the mask, but at this rate having a silly thing on my face was probably safer than attracting their attention.

We made camp when it got dark, there on the side of the path. We made no fire, but Cyrus had his lantern we could use as a makeshift campfire, and a bundle of cloth for each of us to sleep on. He offered a can of foul-smelling fish to the princess to eat, which she offered to share. But even if it hadn’t smelled like it had gone off before I was born, I wouldn’t have tried it. Better to go hungry for a bit.

Dawn curled up beside me in her shabby cloth, her voice low and frightened. “You think we’ll get to see the sun again?” she asked, several hours after Cyrus had gone off to bed. He wasn’t sleeping anywhere near us. But I didn’t mind the privacy. “It’s so… strange. Like there should be stars overhead. You think I could fly through all that to the surface?”

I shook my head vigorously. “Don’t even think about it, Dawn. If you drown in ash, I’ll—” I hesitated, swallowing something stupid. “Your father would probably blame me for it, declare war on Equestria or something. Can’t have that.”

“Oh, yeah.” She rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t serious. I’m just thinking about it. Maybe there’s a spell we could use. Do you think a unicorn could get through that?”

“With a teleport. Princess Twilight can go from one end of Equestria to the other in just a few seconds, that’s what they say. She attends events all over the country, and nopony ever sees her get on the train. But I’m not a unicorn, and neither are you.

“Amazing what they can do,” she whispered. “But they’re not the only ones. I hear there’s a place called, uh… Seaquestria? A whole kingdom of hippogriffs, that hid from the eruption under the ocean? Is that true?”

I nodded. “I don’t know much about them. Only that they spend most of their time underwater. They have cities on land and under the ocean, and each one has a… necklace, I think… that lets them change back and forth.”

“Makes you think how a kingdom like that could get started,” she said, voice distant. “Hybrids like that, enough for a whole country.”

Not really. Thanks to your parents I know pretty well how it started. But that was too crude, I felt myself flush red at the thought. “Guess so.”

She fell asleep soon after that, and I did too. I woke the next morning, hungry and sore, but I still woke up. We’d been shot down by some… undead dragon-thing, and lived. The sky above was faint orange with the diffraction of distant sunlight, along with an even glow of warmth, much weaker than the scorch waiting up there.

There was little to say as we set off again. At least there was water down here, in a series of wells that we accessed with an old-fashioned bucket and rope. The water was acidic and flat, but better than dying. We walked.

For a few days.

Eventually we found ourselves on a widening road, with the sounds of motion coming from all sides. Cyrus stopped us, pointing up a slope to a gradual incline and many distant figures. “That’s it, the way to Carrion. Keep your faces covered until you get to the high city. There’s no hiding what you are, Princess. But if you keep concealed, most will probably not look too closely. Best not to chance it until you’re in the sun again.”

“Wait.” Dawn frowned at him. “You’re… not going with us? Don’t you want your reward?”

He shook his head. “What I need, no living bird can give.” He reached out, patting her once on the shoulder. “Teach your father some wisdom, if you can. And if you can’t… rule with it yourself, when your time comes. Keep the living away from the dead. Don’t force a conflict that neither side wants. In that battle, only Ignis wins. Don’t give it the victory.”

He retreated a few steps, turning to leave. Dawn stared at him, raising a claw in protest. “Wait! It wouldn’t be fair to you, Cyrus! You took us so far!”

He ignored her, turning sharply to one side. Dawn followed, taking to the air. There was enough space in the tunnel for it, though it was a near thing. Ash billowed around her as she closed the distance. “Don’t go!”

Cyrus turned straight into one of the walls. He didn’t have his device, yet—he passed through the ash. A few scraps of cloth caught there, ancient and withered. The bird was gone.

Chapter 15

We didn’t have very far to walk to reach Carrion, so called City of the Dead. Only for these birds, the term wasn’t meant to be literal. When I closed my eyes, I could still see the eyes of Cyrus, who had taken us for days through the dark. He said something about the commander of that outpost, who went too far with the Old Magic even before the world ended. He was talking about himself.

But as we reached the real city, the birds who greeted us were all clearly alive, though that didn’t make them friendly. We dragged ourselves in wearing clothes that hadn’t been scoured white by the ash and goggles that were still clear, and there was no hiding just how out of place we were.

We wouldn’t have been able to hide even if we could’ve looked exactly like them, though. These birds were… different than any I’d met before. Not like Cyrus at all, though they dressed almost the same way. Except that they didn’t bother covering up their whole bodies, not down here where the ash didn’t reach. Carrion itself began at the entrance to an old mine, with a pair of armored vultures waiting outside. Both of them carried old-style bolt-action rifles, of the sort that Accipio’s soldiers had wielded before their world ended. They glowered at us as we walked inside, but at least they didn’t try to send us away. I couldn’t imagine what we would’ve done if they had.

I traded some of my clothes and a few Equestrian trinkets for enough metal for a few meals—even watery gruel obviously imported from friendlier lands was better than fish that I couldn’t have eaten if I wanted to.

Birds watched us wherever we went, birds with long pink necks and beady eyes. Even being near them had a feeling, like the pressure of the ancient mountain was watching me.

Once we ate, we set off for an arduous climb up the city. The whole thing was built into what I took was a single gigantic mine, with every cavern and tunnel furnished into a shop or homestead by some bird or another. The higher we climbed, the more refined the birds became. I saw more clothing, more carpet on the floors, more old-world artifacts in working condition. Eventually we passed out of the realm of faint lantern light and into electric glow. Then came a heavy gate, and suddenly we were standing in the sun.

I stopped there beside Dawn, letting the warmth wash over me. The sun was far too intense to look at, or even towards. But it was still here, still waiting for us.

Up here, Carrion seemed more like a dock in the middle of the sea, with thick wooden supports vanishing into a sea of ash. Structures large and small sprawled in all directions—some shacks, others like castles. All were clearly built of scavenged, second-hand wood, with old bolts rusting away and stretches of beam quietly withering. It looked unsteady, like it might crumble into the ash at any moment. But it was also in the open sky, and that was enough.

There were even a few airships parked far above, their polished skeletons reflecting the sun down towards us.

“I’m going to get us out of here,” she declared, leaving her mask in place. “The capital supplies Carrion. All we have to do is find a Virtue ship, and we’ll be out.”

It took two more hours to hike through the crowds to the sky dock. Up here in the sun was a bizarre and impressive selection, with artifacts of all kinds packed in with barely enough room to navigate between. It wasn’t like the city below—here there were plenty of ordinary-looking birds, and even some ponies like me. Carrion wasn’t an impassable wasteland, even if it was the “City of the Dead.” There were hotels up here that obviously catered to outsiders, restaurants that served normal food, and I was hungry enough for real food that even the oily odor of roasting meat made me slow and take notice.

Eventually we reached the top. We probably wouldn’t have gotten into the sky dock at all, except that Dawn removed her mask. It seemed like everypony in the Republic knew about “the half-breed.” The soldiers scattered before us, though more than a few began to tail us as soon as we started marching through the crowd.

“Is it really that uncommon, Dawn?” I asked, trusting the crowd to conceal my question.

“Is what?” she asked. Though I could tell she probably knew. Her ears were flat, and her whole body was deflated a little. I’d been with Dawn long enough to know how to read her body language. She was upset.

“Accipio had pony slaves for… a long time,” I said. “We’ve been living together for generations. You can’t be the only hippogriff.”

She whimpered, slowing a little more. I was right about what had been bothering her, then. “I’m not the first,” she said. “There have been plenty. They’re always…” She stopped, turning her back on me. “Not here. They’re staring enough as it is.”

She hurried away from me, fast enough that I nearly lost her in the crowd. She seemed even more upset than she’d been in that village full of corpses.

But she still knew what she was doing. Dawn found a Virtue airship without too much search, and introduced us to its captain.

“Girty” wasn’t much of a captain so far as dignity was concerned, not compared to any of the airships I’d ridden so far. His barge wasn’t very impressive either, an old model with a single coal-oil engine that smoked and hissed even while we sat in dock.

“Straight for the capital, aye,” he promised. “For you, Princess, anything. Only have the one cabin aboard, but yer welcome to that as well. And your friend, he can… I’ll find a bunk for him.” He looked me over, and for a moment I wondered if he’d suggest leaving me behind as well.

But Girty was nothing like Cyrus had been. The overweight bird scratched the spot on his chin where feathers would’ve been if they hadn’t fallen out, then turned away.

We followed him aboard his ship, and sure enough he gave up his own quarters as soon as we arrived. “Don’t bother getting Contrail a bunk. This place is big enough for both of us. Thank you for lending us your space, Captain.”

“Nothing to thank me for,” he answered, glancing knowingly between us. “It’s always a pleasure to serve the Emperor. Just remember the Ramshackle when you get there, and Captain Girty.”

“We will,” she promised. “You saved us, Girty. I know the emperor will be grateful.” She shut the door, a grin spreading slowly across her beak. “You know how many times anyone in the royal family has been down below the ash?” She didn’t wait for me to have a chance to answer. “Never! I actually did something Velar and Starlight couldn’t! Take that!”

“I’m sure they’ll be very proud,” I said, slumping to the floor and shoving off my pack. Not much had survived our adventure together, though I now had a mask and goggles that I’d never let leave my sight while we were over the ash. “Though I’ll admit, I’m… eager to conclude my interviews here in Accipio. I think I’m about done with adventures like that.”

“Not before you learn how to fly,” Dawn said sternly, glowering at me. “And didn’t you want to talk to a few more birds? You can’t be done already!”

Even smeared in ash and dirt, even smelling like she hadn’t bathed in days, Dawn was still the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. Moreso really. She’d done things that would’ve chewed up most ponies and spit them back out, and she was excited.

And now I’m stuck in a small space with her for the rest of the flight. Emperor Velar is going to kill me.

“I did want to talk to your mother,” I admitted, focusing on work. Anything I could use to keep from thinking about the creature I was with. “And maybe an administrator. Somepony who would know how you managed to keep everyone fed. That’s the kind of thing that historians want to know, the boring questions that nopony really…”

Dawn was suddenly inches away from me. I looked up, meeting her eyes. She reached out suddenly, resting a claw on my shoulder. “How long are you going to pretend you don’t like me?”

“I…” I stumbled back, or I tried. She wouldn’t let me look away. I couldn’t hide it, anyway. We’d been together for long enough that I was sure she’d be able to tell my scents apart. Griffons could all do it, and she was close enough. “Long enough that I don’t start an international incident, I hope,” I answered. “You’re kinda the heir to the—”

I don’t know what I would’ve said after that, because she didn’t give me the chance. I’d never kissed a creature with a beak before. It didn’t get in the way as much as I would’ve thought it might.

“No creature will think you’re trying to steal the throne,” she said, when we broke apart. I no longer wanted to, but I don’t think I was thinking straight at that point. “I probably won’t get it. I only inherit if my mom doesn’t have any sons, and they’re trying very hard.”

It was a good thing Princess Twilight couldn’t see in here, because I could imagine the checklist of rules I was breaking for a “royal representative.” I would be adding a few more items to her list by saying anything to that. “I thought the Republic was… better than that. Why shouldn’t you be the emperor? I thought it went to the oldest.”

“The oldest male.” She turned away, wandering over to the captain’s windows. They were facing the sky, but even so. She pulled them shut one after another, lighting the chamber in rows of uneven bars. The uneven lighting only made her look better, revealing little bits of her at a time as she crossed the room again. “It’s the way things are, Contrail, you can’t change them. And it has its advantages.”

She kissed me again, and whatever nervousness I might’ve had about being together with her faded. I hadn’t been with a mare since my undergraduate years—certainly nothing like her. A little voice in the back of my mind went from calmly telling me it was time to stop to screaming into my head—then it went quiet.

I don’t know how long we were together. Dawn had the endurance of an earth pony, and the flexibility of a pegasus. But whatever incompatibilities I might’ve had with a griffon were no issue with a hippogriff. We were basically the same species.

Needless to say, I didn’t put anything we did into my journal.

The next morning, we took turns with the ship’s only shower, using the cool water and harsh soap to scrub away the smells of travel. And… some of the other ones. It hadn’t worked—the cook winked at me when he served me the morning’s fish and grain, and added an extra scoop of wheat. “You’ll need it.”

“I hope you meant what you said about this being okay,” I said, once we were alone in the captain’s quarters with our trays of breakfast. “I wouldn’t want to survive an… undead dragon attack, cross the underworld, only to…” I looked away. “Get dueled to the death by the emperor of the Republic because I, uh…”

She settled one claw on my hoof, silencing me. “Velar has been offering me to noble birds for half my life, Contrail. That’s how it works—all the important birds usually arrange their marriages before they’re out of diapers. But they all know they probably won’t get the crown. It’s not worth the disgrace of being with a…” She sniffed, pulling her claw away.

I caught her with my wing before she could leave. “Being with the most beautiful bird in Accipio? They don’t know what they’re missing.”

Chapter 16

We arrived with no more disasters. We weren’t ambushed by the undead, or secretly betrayed by the Virtue crew for some esoteric reward. Instead we pulled into Caesarea after not quite two days in the air. A distance that had taken the Hammer of Gaius only hours. But it didn’t matter, we’d made it.

Whether I would survive what came next, that was the tricky thing. We scrubbed in the cold shower until neither of us smelled like anything but soap and shivering, but would that be enough?

“I’ll go to the Wintergreen,” I said. “We’re at the dock already, so it won’t be hard. That way I’ll be easy to just… make go away. If I’m no longer welcome. I know that’s often the kind of solution politicians want.”

Dawn rolled her eyes, glancing down the ramp. Even she was sly enough to be sure not to touch me here, where so many others would see. She’d done something to swear the crew to secrecy, some secret bird promise. I wasn’t sure how long it would work, or if it would at all. Maybe some bird of these would rather have the favor of their emperor than a princess who owed them an unpayable debt.

“It isn’t the big deal you think it is,” she said. “I’m not going to inherit, and everyone knows it. Every royal bird in history has had… relationships. I know I’m not your first, don’t even try it.”

I blushed, ducking my head and avoiding her eyes. But she was right. “I’m nopony though, Princess Radiant Dawn. When I go back home, I finish my degree, maybe get a little of recognition from historians for my work on this record. In your country, being a male historian makes me more of a joke.”

She didn’t stay to argue. A few royal guards were patrolling down below, and two of them had already noticed us. We were attracting a crowd of birds, pointing and staring. “It won’t be a big deal,” she said again. “I won’t try to keep it secret—I’ll make sure I tell them how you saved me in the ash. However upset they would’ve been, that’s going to make all of it seem unimportant, you’ll see.”

I wasn’t sure I would, but then she vanished.

I backed slowly away, hiding as the royal guards swept her back. Horns blew, shaking the city, and I saw soldiers take off from high roosts on the walls, circling overhead. They’d been on the lookout for her, apparently, all this time. Velar might not be giving her the Republic, but he clearly cares about her.

A few birds in the crowd watched me as I ducked away, heading for the north docks and the Daughter of Wintergreen.

I was not the first to arrive. As I crossed up onto the deck, I found Starlight Glimmer waiting for me, beside an apologetic-looking Captain Bluejacket.

She looked briefly up at me, then back over the edge of the ship. There were no other crew nearby.
She gestured for me to join her, and I had no choice.

I crossed the deck towards where she sat, then bowed. It felt like the proper thing to do, even if it rubbed me a little bit the wrong way to bow for a pony who wasn’t an Alicorn.

But she didn’t respond, only glanced briefly back at me. A few awkward seconds of silence stretched into several minutes, and still I sat, waiting for her. Are they going to kill me? But the emperor would’ve come himself if that was it, right? They could’ve arrested me.

Finally, Starlight sighed and glanced back at me. “Do you know how many times birds fall into the Ashlands, Contrail?”

I shook my head. “No, Empress. I have no idea.”

“Often. Do you know how many of them we get back?” This time she didn’t wait for me to respond. “You’re the first. I sent an apprentice to check with records as we speak, but I believe you might be the only non-vultures who survived by crossing some distance, rather than being located where you fell.”

I froze, my chest going cold. “Really?”

She rose to her hooves, circling around me. “You didn’t strike me as much of an adventurer when we first met, Contrail. But I can see I misjudged you. You’re not one of Twilight’s pawns. You clearly have a mind of your own.”

“I… I do,” I said, as confidently as I could. “And for what it’s worth, getting back was a group effort. Dawn was the one with the tools. And there was this… maybe a ghost, Cyrus? He helped.”

“Certainly a ghost,” Starlight Glimmer said. “Or something like one, anyway. I retrieved that name easily. Cyrus was a banner lord of house Vanquish, a sorcerer of considerable skill. Like so many others, his body was never recovered after the eruption, but… no one from Abdera survived. His bones are down under the ash, like so many others.”

I hesitated for another moment more, then said something incredibly stupid. “What is this about, Empress? Are you here to…?”

“Punish you?” she finished. “Maybe gut you with a spear and hang you from the ramparts? There was a time. But the Republic isn’t the same as the Empire used to be. Honestly, I’m happy that Dawn is happy.” She turned away again, staring off the edge of the dock into the distant blue sky. “Do you know why we haven’t had any children after her?”

Again, she didn’t wait for a response. The question was so unexpected that I never would’ve dared to suggest one, even if I did have some idea. “The Republic is fragile, Contrail. Everything these birds knew, everything they built their lives on—it was all upended. Building a new foundation from scratch takes time, and it’s bound to be unpleasant. For all their strengths, you might’ve noticed they’re a tad, err… socially conservative.”

I couldn’t help myself—I laughed, loud enough that a few nervous crewmembers peeked around to stare. Was I not in trouble after all?

“You could say that.”

She nodded her agreement, though there was no humor on her face. At least she hadn’t shouted for some unseen guards to throw me off the ship. “Dawn almost meant the end of the Republic. The Emperor’s family is meant as a symbol of purity, a religious figure as much as a governmental one. Having something so…” Her face grew dark, her words bitter and angry. “Impure, come from him. It caused an uproar. The outer provinces rose in a rebellion that took six months to quash. Bet you don’t have that in any of your history books.”

I wanted to write it down right then, but I resisted the urge to pull out my battered notebook.

“So you… can’t have any more children?” Every word felt like I might step on a mine, or maybe say whatever forbidden thing got Starlight to finally banish me from her country. But it hadn’t happened yet.

“Dawn represents everything they fear will happen to Accipio. A dilution of their history and culture with Equestrian… well, they see it as weakness. We’re what they want to rise above. I’m working on a future I can give them that won’t fill them with terror. But Dawn won’t be part of that. They’ll want a griffon to inherit.”

“You’re, uh… are you sure you want to be telling all this to me, Empress? I’m a total stranger from Equestria.”

“Exactly!” She reached out, clasping me on the shoulder. “That’s how I know there’s nothing you can do about it. Nopony will believe a word you say. Except maybe my husband. He had an awful lot of time to learn during the Migration War.”

“So, uh… what happens now?” I asked. Again, it was probably bolder than I ought to be. But so far I hadn’t been punished yet. Maybe Starlight wasn’t as unreasonable as I’d previously thought. “You came here to… tell me you knew, I guess?”

“To give you permission,” she said. “Preemptively. Velar never would, but his search party can only fly back so fast. By the time he gets back, you’ll already be gone.”

“I’ll already be…” I began. Then it all clicked. I thought she’d been forgiving at first, but that wasn’t it at all. All that personal information was a pretext for the banishment that it was really about. I needed to be gone before Velar got back. “Oh. You’re saving my life.”

Now it was her turn to laugh. “I’ve heard ponies in love before, but you don’t have to be that dramatic. Letting my daughter come with you is more a political move than it is anything else. I know Equestria will welcome her with open hooves, and that New Scythia will love to have her. She deserves to spend some time with creatures who don’t think she’s…” She trailed off. “A mistake.”

I wanted to argue with her right there. Of course Dawn wasn’t a mistake, she was the bravest, toughest, prettiest creature I’d ever met. A creature whose strange attachment to me upon my arrival I now felt I understood. But I wasn’t quite brave enough to say that. I didn’t want to get thrown off the deck. Would a pony empress do that?

“I don’t understand what you can, uh… I mean, you’re a pony, and the emperor is a griffon. I always thought a hippogriff was kinda… what happened.” There was no way to say that without being awkward, even if I could trust Starlight Glimmer not to be moved by native religion.

“Natural, absolutely,” she said. “Seaquestria proves that, if I needed any more proof. But there’s magic, and I’ve never been afraid to tinker with things I shouldn’t. Dawn’s younger siblings will all be birds. Just wait, you’ll hear about it even in Equestria. The newspapers will wonder if it was even possible for a griffon to be born to a pony, except that it will also happen to be one of the first births ever captured with motion picture.”

My mouth hung open. “You sound like you’re planning tea or something. Does it even matter what you want?”

“Not really,” Starlight Glimmer said. “But I do want this… in the sense that I want Equestria’s neighbor to be stable and prosperous. This Republic is still overflowing with petty scions of dead houses, whispering about the ways they’ll take us back to our pure roots, before the Equestrian corruption. We’re… long overdue for a miracle, one that Equestrian magic is more than happy to furnish.”

One that you apparently want Dawn to be gone for. But there were some things I wasn’t brave enough to voice. I really was just another political pawn in all this. But if it would get me the book in the end, I could live with that. “So I’m leaving. As soon as Dawn gets here, I guess. And the Wintergreen is ready.”

She nodded. “Before Velar returns with the Hammer of Gaius, that’s the important part. But yes.”

“There were a few more interviews I wanted to get done here in the Accipian Republic.”

Starlight raised an eyebrow. “I no longer wonder what my daughter sees in you. I would not suggest talking to many birds that way, though.”

I swallowed, then went on. “I hoped to talk to one of the emperor’s administrators, or at least someone who administrated for him during the war. And… you, Empress.”

“Well, the first of those is easy. I happen to know one of his old administrators is running a large firm down in New Scythia. She’ll happily talk to you. And about me…” She took a step back, then settled on the deck. “When I told your captain to prepare to sail, he said it would take a few hours. By my count, you have less than an hour of that left. So ask your questions, until the Daughter of Wintergreen leaves this port behind.”

It wasn’t much, but I would have to make do. I pulled out my journal and pen, propping them up on the railing.

Chapter 17

What was your first experience with Accipio like? Equestrian records say you were sent in as a negotiator long before any formal agreements were signed.

That’s true. I had a blank canvas to work with when I started.

I was afraid—everypony was afraid of griffons back then. But I wasn’t really worried about my own life. Mons Ignis was going to erupt, and maybe kill everypony. That was the bigger threat. Coming to Accipio could’ve saved everypony.

It looks like it did.

She doesn’t respond to this, only shrugs impatiently. So not the sort of empress who will respond to flattery.

You were there for the battle between Gaius and Gabriel, weren’t you? What was that like?

I knew who I was rooting for, obviously. One side wanted to work with Equestria and maybe survive the end of the world. The other side wanted to invade and make us all die.

Did you think they would turn on you if Gabriel won?

Yes.

I wait for her to elaborate, but again she only stares off into the distance. Starlight Glimmer isn’t the kind of subject who seems interested in helping me.

After everything was signed, you supervised their compliance with the Migration treaty. Do you think they were faithful to it?

She laughs. I did at the time. But history records pretty well how that was manipulated. Their… let’s call it, ‘interpretation’ of what slaves meant was different from ours.

Some ponies were outraged we would deal with them at all. Why do you think Princess Celestia didn’t force them to give up all their slaves?

Because Celestia wanted Equestria to survive. Accipio’s army outnumbered ours ten to one. Their warships outnumbered ours five to one. They lacked most magic, but their conventional weapons were better than ours in every way. Only after seeing examples of their firearms did Equestria ever make any of our own. We never saw the need to improve our ways of killing each other, since for us it’s so uncommon. Most Accipians belong to a militia and own their own weapons, even today. How many ponies do you know with a weapon of their own?

None.

Exactly. It was distasteful, but starting a war over the injustice of their slavery would’ve guaranteed both nations died to Mons Ignis. I knew that better than most ponies, and I put it in every single letter. We couldn’t win a conventional war. Celestia and Luna were immensely powerful, but they couldn’t be everywhere at once. Even the power of the Alicorns is finite. While they won every battle, armies elsewhere would be losing the war. And there was the Voidsteel.

You thought that bringing them to Equestria was the safest option, then.

They were coming either way. At least with the treaty they’d be leaving their warships at home.

That was the idea, anyway. It didn’t work out like that.

From her expression, it seems that Starlight believes I’ve insulted her. No, it did. At first. We were very good about watching the skies for anything that looked like a warship. House Virtue didn’t bring any, or not any that hadn’t been converted into more peaceful vessels. But there were other houses, and Equestria is large. We couldn’t watch the sky everywhere.

Once they came to Equestria, you lived in New Scythia with them. Were they more moderate then?

Less. They were displaced, and most birds thought that we were the ones plotting to enslave them. It is what they’d do. New Scythia was better than most places, it actually tried to be a real city. Hired pegasus weatherponies and everything. I spent most of my time with them, when I wasn’t with Velar.

You saved his life.

We have that in common.

I have no response to that, though I dutifully scribble down her answer, wondering if I’ll survive Twilight’s reading of all this when I finally make it back to her court.

Lots of ponies helped with the battle over Equestria. But you did more than most. What really happened?

For a few moments I wonder if she’s going to answer me at all. Her expression fades to something pained and distant, remembering. Finally she speaks. You’re not the only pony who wants to know about that. But if I tell you, it’ll go in your book. Maybe some things are better off forgotten.”

I’ve had uncooperative witnesses before, particularly when somepony does something they’re guilty about. In every case, I’ve found the best way to get them to change their mind and speak is to return to the same subject less directly than before.

You were a hero. In her only memoirs on the Migration War, Princess Celestia wrote that you ‘saved all Equestria.’ Don’t you think ponies should know how?

They should know better than to replicate the things I did. But maybe it would be better to just tell you, and avoid the information getting diluted too many times. But I’m not going to tell you how, is that clear? Just what I did.

Sure.

I’ve been a student of fringe magic for a long time. I’d done some terrible things, much worse than what I did in New Scythia in the end. But that was behind me then, and I was studying beneath Twilight Sparkle. She and her friends like to ‘reform’ ponies who had made mistakes.

I couldn’t really tell what this had to do with saving a town from an invading army, but I didn’t interrupt her. Presumably if she went on for long enough, it would all make sense. I just listened, making meaningful eye-contact and dutifully scribbling everything down.

I studied magic nopony should’ve known, including ways to manipulate ponies. When we landed in New Scythia, I saw an army that was completely overcome with hatred. They were burning everything, killing mares and children, filling the streets with blood. It was cruelty beyond what I would’ve thought possible. So I… I turned the army on itself. I made them feel all that same hatred for each other.

She shook slightly as she spoke, resting her head on the edge of the railing.

I freeze completely still, pen in my wing as I try to make sense of what she just said. Some kind of… emotional manipulation, or maybe mind control?

The whole army at once?

The Vengeance army, and anypony else who didn’t put their weapons down. That kind of magic is more like a sledgehammer than a scalpel. But there’s a reason why Celestia was so eager to see it destroyed, and why Twilight who replaced her is even willing to permit a few book-burnings. It’s all for a good cause.

Was there any other way?

At the time, I didn’t even think there was that way. I had never tried a spell so powerful before, I’d never tried to isolate it so specifically. But the Vengeance army was killing everyone. It couldn’t get much worse.

So you took care of the army, and your husband fought the challenger?

Gabriel’s son? Yes. But not my husband at the time. That was, that came later. Probably best not to get into too much detail about how, unless you’re writing a different kind of history than I thought you were.

Around that moment, Dawn finally arrived, hurrying up the loading ramp to the Daughter of Wintergreen with a set of heavy saddlebags on her back and a traveling cloak on her shoulders. It was totally white, with gold thread along the hem and back, depicting the three pillars of house Virtue. A simple design, but enough that every creature in the crowd got out of her way all the way to the ship.

“You done tormenting him yet, Mother?”

Starlight turned, then gestured at his pad of paper. “You should be able to see it’s the opposite, Dawn. I gave him the interview he wanted.”

“Yay!” Dawn hurried over to her, hugging her tightly. She was taller than Starlight by several inches, as tall as I was and maybe even a little more. But Starlight didn’t seem to mind.

They broke apart after a few seconds, and Dawn glanced back at the city. The sky, specifically—she seemed to be searching for something. When she didn’t find it, she said, “Are you sure it’s a good idea to, uh… rush like this, Mom? I know Dad must’ve been terrified for me…”

She nodded, gesturing vaguely with one hoof. Glowing patterns appeared there, little spheres and flags and lines connecting them all. “This exchange is how power moves through a system, Dawn. What should matter to you is that your, uh… your relationship with your friend here grows more secure the longer it lasts. Unless you don’t want it to continue to exist. Then you should stay.”

For a few seconds, I felt Dawn’s eyes on me, and I shifted uncomfortably, looking away. If she wanted to turn back to her palace, I wouldn’t blame her. How could I judge another for not being willing to give up luxuries I’d never known?

Dawn shook her head. “That makes sense. But what happens when we’re done with the official visit to New Scythia? You wanted to… meet an administrator or something, Contrail?”

I nodded. It didn’t feel like I should have an opinion in this conversation. Twilight is going to kill me for this.

“Visit Griffinstone,” Starlight suggested. “Then make your friend here return your generosity and give you a tour of Equestria. You always wanted a chance to visit, now’s your chance.”

“I, uh…” I hesitated for another second longer, but there were some things that had to be said. “I only have the airship for a few months.”

“Well, that won’t do at all.” Starlight Glimmer turned slightly towards the palace, her horn glowing. “Captain Bluejacket, we should speak further!”

He hurried over, lowering his head respectfully to her. There wasn’t even a hint of fear on that gnarled old face. He did know her. “Yes, Empress?”

“Would your crew be inclined to continue serving my daughter on retainer for, say… eleven months, after your existing contract ends?” Magic flashed, and she held a stack of notes in front of him. Accipian paper money. I didn’t really understand it, but I knew it could be exchanged for real money at their treasury.

He nodded, eyeing the stack. Starlight flipped through it for him, showing him the denominations. “For so much, your daughter could have finer accommodations than mine. We’re… an old, humble ship.”

Starlight shrugged. “Then use some of this to modernize your vessel. Understand, part of what is valuable to me is the convenience of an Equestrian ship already in my port. I trust she won’t ask you to go anywhere too dangerous.”

“Mt. Aris!” she exclaimed, bouncing up and down eagerly. “Father always said there was no reason to go to a single city half-sunk in the ocean, but… I want to see it. You’d go with me, wouldn’t you Contrail?”

I nodded. But I’d already gone with her through the underworld, so it wasn’t like she could ask to go anywhere worse. “I have to finish this book and defend my thesis,” I said. “After that, I’d be free to go… anywhere.”

“Then there’s only one more warning to give.” Starlight leaned in close, lowering her voice to a whisper. We could both still hear her, anyway. “Dawn, if you’re still interested in… if this relationship lasts, write to your father often. Going off on an adventure like this, it’s the kind of decision he will understand.”

She put one hoof on Dawn’s mouth, silencing whatever she was about to say. “But don’t formalize it until you return for his blessing. Your father is one of the most accepting, loving birds I’ve ever met. But he’s still a bird, and they’re proud creatures. Don’t give him a reason to be unhappy with your decisions, and he’ll see the sense in them. Are we clear?”

Dawn nodded reluctantly. “I guess.”

“Then enjoy your trip.” She turned to me. “For your sake, Contrail. I hope you can support that bravery of yours with competence.”

Chapter 18

I sat alone at the prow of the Daughter of Wintergreen, letting the wind lift my wings. Standing there with my eyes closed, I could almost understand why so many ponies liked to fly. They could have this feeling whenever they wanted, and without a machine to restrict their movement. The Daughter of Wintergreen brought with it a noisy thaumic impellor, and a floor that shuddered and listed gently with every passing gasp of wind.

“Didn’t think I’d find you up here!” Dawn said. I didn’t turn around, and wasn’t surprised to feel her sit down beside me a moment later. I moved over, making room at the front of the ship. I still didn’t open my eyes. “Shouldn’t you be in the library, or… doing other scholar things?”

Finally I looked up. Just beside me, Dawn’s face caught the bright orange light of sunset. Behind her the clouds spread like an ocean, more welcoming than the real water far below. I can’t believe I got away with this. Possibly the prettiest creature in the whole world. This was just supposed to be a book.

“Staring at me is not a scholar thing,” she said, reaching over and closing my mouth with a claw. “Though I do like to see a pony appropriately recognizing my majesty.”

That’s right. Better thinking about that than being a half-breed. “You bet,” I said. “I… have a lot of work to do on the book. But I keep expecting the navy to show up and stop us. Or worse… if they’re going to shoot us down, I want to see it coming.”

“Your eyes were closed,” she said, shoving me backward with a claw. Way stronger than a pegasus, though she was no earth pony. “Don’t make stuff up. You like it.”

So much for getting away with it. I nodded weakly. “I didn’t before. It was dangerous and pointless. Pegasus ponies in Equestria work so much harder to live in the clouds, you wouldn’t believe. Cloudsdale has an entire infrastructure of thousands to do what a few hundred and a train could manage on the ground. All for the luxury of living up high.”

“I’ve heard about it!” Dawn bounced around me to the other side, hopping up onto the railing. Her claws dug into the wood, but I didn’t hear anypony try to stop her. Considering what they were being paid, I suspected she could rip off whole sections of the deck without objection. “We should add it to the list! Mom said you should take me on a tour… have you been there before?”

“Nope,” I admitted. “But we can see it together. Hopefully after I finish the book, so Twilight doesn’t come and kill me.”

“The princess?” She tugged on my hoof, dragging me back towards our quarters. I didn’t resist, and not just because of the other things we might do there. My notes were down there, along with the book I was assembling. All my interviews, all the internal sources I’d collected from the Republic. Baring a few gaps we would soon fill, it was shaping up to be quite an academic achievement.

I wonder if I can defend my thesis and get executed by Canterlot at the same time.

We had seen a few griffon ships pass so far, and none had tried to shoot or follow us. Maybe Dawn’s departure was secret. Maybe we’d actually survive to reach Equestria.

Maybe I somehow wouldn’t cause an international incident that would torment both countries for a generation to come.

“Here!” Dawn tugged me all the way over to my massive world map, which was now pinned on one wall. At least the Daughter of Wintergreen had a proper captain’s quarters—now our home, and possibly would be for some time to come.

There was already a clear division between “my” side of the room and “hers,” considering the desk on my side along with reams of notes and papers and piles of books. It was hardly the quiet studio for me to assemble my masterpiece—but it was enough.

The only real question left wasn’t whether we would assemble enough information to complete the book, but whether Dawn would leave me enough free time to do the assembling.

“Right here!” she said, settling my hoof on the Equestrian map, right over Cloudsdale’s spot. “Put a pin there! We’re going!”

I nodded, removing one from the wall and pressing it into the paper. There were only two others so far—Canterlot, and Mt. Aris. At the rate they were being added, we would probably be visiting every city in Equestria by the time we actually got there.

“Cloudsdale isn’t actually here,” I said. “Or, it might be, but it probably isn’t. We’ll have to visit after we’ve been somewhere else, since it moves. The factory goes wherever needs weather the most.”

She shrugged, finally letting go. “That’s for you to figure out. That’s what you’re good for, right? Books and directions and scrolls and… that stuff.”

“Hopefully a few other things.” I leaned in close, kissing her.

After a while, she reluctantly conceded the point.

We faced no obstructions during our departure from Accipian’s waters. The occasional merchant ship hailed us without incident. No armada, no assassins. Each day I felt more amazed, but there it was.

As much as I wanted to visit New Scythia first, captain Bluejacket’s own advice won out in the end. “Still Republic territory down there, in a loose sense. Colony, maybe. But I think you want to stay away until it cools down a little more. The Wintergreen isn’t a fast ship anymore, and there isn’t a ship in the sky faster than the telegraph.”

Griffonstone, on the other hand, was a firmly Equestrian territory, stronger now than it had ever been during the war.

I tried to use our time in transit productively, and sometimes I succeeded. Other times I was with Dawn. It was a good thing I’d finished most of the book before leaving Equestria, or I wouldn’t stand a chance of getting Twilight her draft by the deadline.

Eventually Griffonstone came into view below us, a city as transformed by the Migration War as anywhere in Accipio.

I’d seen images of this place from long before Accipio had influence here, in what one of Twilight’s own papers described as “the total breakdown of a people without an identity.” The griffons who once lived here were severed from Accipio by many generations, though some of the ruins that endured had reminded them of former glories. But friendship and cooperation were pony values, and so indulging them was evil.

The end result had been a city that was more like a hundred thousand little city states. There were no public services, no ruler, no court. The ancient photo pinned in my draft showed buildings collapsing, trash in the streets, and evidence of violence between the birds who once lived there.

Griffonstone didn’t look anything like that anymore. Its construction resembled any other city in Equestria in basic plan, with its central castle forming a city center to be surrounded by other government buildings. The homes spaced around it followed the same model as the ancient ones, and a few looked like they might be the same ones.

But most of this city burned near the end of the war. The details are unclear even to me, though I have some idea. It wouldn’t have taken much to burn it, based on that old photo.

Like Caesarea, more important buildings had been built taller, with balconies and other entries on the top floor. But like most places in Equestria, there were also doors on the ground. This city didn’t ostracize those without wings.

“Not much of a dock in Griffonstone,” Bluejacket called from just beside me, gesturing down over the railing. “It’s a humble place for certain. But the birds are kind enough. Never even hear any horror stories of ponies going missing here.”

“I think I know the truth about those rumors,” Dawn added, landing beside me and draping a wing over my shoulder. “They’re stolen by ruthless birds, never to be released. I know I’m not ready to let go.”

For a bird who had been nervous about what our relationship might do, she was now—flippant, almost. Her joy was one of the things that made her so pretty, so I wasn’t going to complain. I certainly wasn’t embarrassed about our relationship. Worried, maybe… but hiding was out of the question. The emperor already knew. The only one who didn’t yet… Sweet Celestia I need to write to Twilight before she hears rumors about this.

I would send a telegram from Griffonstone, right before we left. That way she couldn’t tell me to come back, or do anything else that might interrupt the research. ‘Sorry, Princess! We’d already left! What, I forgot to say where we were going next? I’m so sorry!’

“You said there was an… administrator we could talk to?” I asked, glancing to one side. “Isn’t that right?”

“Yeah…” Dawn’s ears flattened. “If you want to talk about boring scholar stuff, you want Gabriella. She apparently started off right down at the bottom of the ladder when Vengeance was oppressing griffonstone for their own ends or whatever. But she was just too good at everything, and so she rose through the ranks. Kind of an… icon of sorts for the freedmen. Now she’s retired, and she administers this place to keep her young.

“Can’t we do something fun first? Griffonstone is supposed to be really old… the old Endurance clan has a lot of history. My father said they used to be proud birds.” She lifted into the air, hovering over the railing as the Daughter of Wintergreen drew into dock. Bluejacket returned to the helm, leaving the two of us mostly alone there.

“Sure.” I nodded deferentially. “I wouldn’t mind doing fun things with you. I don’t think we’ll be able to find me flying lessons, though. We can’t stay here that long.”

“Oh, don’t even worry about it.” She grinned mischievously, landing behind me and lifting one of my wings with hers. “They’ve got a monastery here. Some of the birds are loyal to my father’s house. I bet at least one of them is a flight instructor. We’ll bring the teacher with us!”

I rolled my eyes, but mostly for effect. Learning to fly did seem increasingly practical.

We did some fun things first. The city did have a history. There were old trails into the canyon, though we could go only so deep before the natural hazards of the climate forced us up again. I visited the library to purchase a few books, the museum to learn a little about the nightmares of the Migration War.

Then Dawn got bored of “scholar stuff”, and we used gold I never could’ve dreamed of to pay for a dinner from the fanciest restaurant in the city. We ate the finest creation of the resident master, Gustave Le Grand, and spent the night on a rooftop hotel to watch the stars

Dawn’s trip to the monastery—for religious observance as well as recruitment—was the opportunity to finally make my way to the administrator’s office for an interview.

Gabriella’s office wasn’t in the palace, but in a towering building nearby, connected with a huge bridge over the ravine to fields and plantations. A minotaur guard stopped me at the door, wearing metal links around his hands but no chains connecting them.

I winced at the sight, lowering my head apologetically as we made our way up the stairs. “You were a slave,” I said, incredibly awkward. “I’m sorry, but why would you want to wear those anymore?”

The minotaur laughed, loud enough that the whole stairwell seemed to shake. “To remember that no pony needed to set me free. Gina and I together—we achieved this. She set herself free, helped each of us do the same. Of course other slaves wish to forget. Their freedom is nothing to them, if a pony pen gave it. We took ours.”

This was something new to me, but I resisted the urge to try and interview him about it right here.

“Gina…” I repeated. “I think I may’ve spoken to your master. She’s the city lord of Caesarea, I believe. You’ve come a long way.”

He clasped me on the shoulder with one paw, grinning enthusiastically. “Aye, little pony! Far indeed! Worked for many a year for her, out of service for my freedom. But it was too quiet, not enough blood to be shed.”

They reached the top of the stairs, and the office door. The minotaur swung it open for me.

Now all I have to do is somehow get out of this city without the princess coming to kill me.

Chapter 19

Gabriella obviously wasn’t from any of the clans of birds who ruled the Republic now, or even the empire at the time of the Migration War. I might not have an exhaustive knowledge, but I had a fair idea about the distinct physical patterns. This bird was indeed one of the Equestrian variety, with feathers in a simple pidgeon gray.

“I had a visit from Dawn yesterday,” she said, glaring down at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. “She told me you might be coming.” She looked me up and down for a few more moments, predatory eyes stern. “You, really? With the princess?”

“She told you that?” I looked away, though not for long. It was only this pony’s connection to the emperor that made the conversation awkward.

“Her scent did, and yours. You know that everyone can smell it, right?”

Ponies can’t. I shrugged it off as best I could, grinning weakly. “So what? I thought I’d just come back with notes. Guess I brought back something better.”

Gabriella laughed, clasping a claw on my shoulder. Not hard enough to cut into my coat, but certainly hard enough to yank me into her office. “I like you. Questions then, yes? That’s what you do?”

I nodded. “I’ll be brief. Really I’m just trying to fill in the gaps for what I learned while in the Republic. I kinda… didn’t stay as long as I expected to. For… reasons previously discussed.”

She laughed again. “Oh, I bet. Wanted out with your head. Not the dumbest pony in the world, maybe. Still pretty dumb.”

Her office was comfortable, but lacking the usual trophies of wealth I had come to expect from other birds in her position. There were no vast supplies of relics, or artistic recreations of the Empire ruling over the world. Not even an old piece of less than good taste, with birds triumphing over Celestia or similar “art.”

Instead there were cabinets and scrolls, the kind of thing I might’ve had in my own office if I ever had one. A few maps, and a little safe off in one corner. The only expensive object I could see was the mechanical adding machine by the wall, itself hundreds of pounds of metal and glowing faintly with the unicorn magic that powered it.

I’m told you were an administrator for house Vengeance. Is that right?

I didn’t start that way. Honestly it was just bad luck that I was in Griffinstone when the Migration War started in the first place. I’d spent much more of my time with ponies before that.

Did you have anything to do with supplying the city? That’s my main inquiry—I want to know how birds fed themselves, before and after the eruption.

I have some experience with it, more after Ignis than before. But I did speak with several of the old administrators, and I know how they did it. But you’re a pony, so I know you’re not going to like it. Slavery, obviously. They bred their own ponies, with a population in the hundreds of thousands. Many of the citizens of New Scythia were once farmers in the empire. Their pony magic still worked, even if they didn’t understand it.

Why would you want anything to do with the… disgusting institution?

Because I was part of it. I’m not saying ponies are wrong about this—you’re right. It was horrible and I would’ve let them all free right then if I could. But Vengeance would’ve killed me. I couldn’t upend their whole way of doing things just because I hated it. I wasn’t a princess, and there weren’t any to seduce, either. I couldn’t end the practice. If I couldn’t make it stop, I could try to make sure slaves got fair treatment. And… maybe doctor the books so more of them could afford their own freedom.

You probably don’t know the laws, but that’s one of the ways a slave used to be able to get free. Save up enough wages, and they could buy themselves out. Practically, it took way too long for most of them to afford it. What little money they earned, they used for other things. But I could cheat!

This isn’t the subject I’ve come to investigate. Accipian slave practices are too controversial to publish. I’m sure that if I tried to write about this too much, even Twilight wouldn’t want my book printed. A braver scholar than I would have to write about them on some future day.

Before the Migration War, Accipio was self-sufficient, wasn’t it? Did any of the other scholars and administrators you talked to tell you about that?

A little. They told me about Land. Pony farms are better, but the Empire had more of them. And… you look shy about it. But the ponies were all earth. The climate could be unpredictable, there were crop failures from droughts and bad winters. But there were stockpiles so that wouldn’t happen. Not to mention meat. But I didn’t eat any of that, because I grew up with ponies, and… yeah, I can see what you’re thinking. They did it, I didn’t, you get the idea.

I suppress a shudder, but not very well. She can clearly see it.

So griffons kept up agriculture with lots of land. They didn’t have that when they settled in the Badlands. Do you know anything about that?

Only what I learned after the Migration War. The other administrators sounded like they had even less while everything was still happening. When the eruption was new, and the planet was still trying to makes us die and all.

See, ponies gave Accipio desert to support a ton of birds. We had a huge stockpile going in—that kept things off for a while. But the emperor knew that wouldn’t work. Every city did things a little different. Some of the ones in the jungle started hunting and learned to husband the weird plants. The northern ones traded with ponies for… priceless treasures. But food is better than gold.

Griffonstone had things easier than New Scythia, since we already had a good balance between fishing and farming. We did a little more of one when our farms didn’t do as well. Then after the war ended, we got pegasi to help like lots of cities did.

I can sense the resentment there. Gabriella has been more than cooperative so far, so I don’t press on that subject.

But if you worked for the emperor, you must have been in New Scythia, right?

Eventually. I got poached.

And you didn’t have a jungle. You were the southernmost of all the settlements.

We were on the fast-track for starvation, after the war. I’m sure you know earth pony magic as well as I do, but just because it’s magic doesn’t mean it’s magical. You can’t put a seed in sand and have a pony walk in a circle around it. I tried that way back when, trying to get my own Cutie Mark. But intention just doesn’t do it. You’ve either got the magic in you or you don’t.

Crops need the right amount of sun, and we only had a few that could survive heat like that. Crops need water, and water needs to come from somewhere. The current emperor was close with the empress, even then. Something they figured out together made him ask Equestria for help. Instead of trading for food, we hired ponies.

I know there was a settlement of ponies in New Scythia when it fell, and now I know why. I scribble that down eagerly.

And that worked?

You’re a pegasus.

Not much of a pegasus. I can’t even fly.

She laughs. Do you know how your magic works?

Not really. Weather.

Weather. We were close enough to the coast that we could send out huge teams to capture moisture from over the sea and bring it inland. The New Scythia factory wasn’t finished, that was years after the war. But we could get rain simple enough even without machinery. If you’ve been to New Scythia since then, you can see how well it works. Lots of my old construction is still in use today.

I haven’t. We’re planning to go when we’re done in Griffonstone.

Good. Go see what ponies and griffons can accomplish when they’re working together. This place… the resentment goes too deep. The birds here hate Accipio for pressuring them into military service. We hate what Vengeance did to their city. But we remember the stories our grandsires told us, about the ancient Equestrian enemy who wouldn’t let us return home.

Griffonstone is my home. I had to come back when New Accipio didn’t need me anymore. But I know we’ll never be a city like that one. For us, it’s just about keeping some of our old culture alive, and being satisfied with the mixture of pony and griffon that we’ve become.

This is something new, something I hadn’t thought to learn. But Griffonstone is certainly relevant to the war, and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t take advantage of every opportunity to learn more about it.

Why would birds hate what Vengeance did to Griffonstone?

She looks indignant. They built a factory, sure. No bird minded back then, when they knocked down old houses. Griffonstone was a dying city, and any change was for the better. But building factories and a monastery wasn’t all Vengeance did. They needed birds to work in the factory. And when that wasn’t good enough, they wanted birds to hold rifles and fight Equestria. My friends, my family. And me, eventually.

I fell silent for another moment, nodding respectfully.

Thank you for explaining that. Were there any other difficulties facing New Scythia? Other than feeding it?

She laughs again. The better question would be if anything did work in the city. When I took over, the city was struggling. Its farms were drying out, the wells were running out of water. But our… slaves… were strong, and expert builders. No trees, no fuel, nothing but stone houses… I’m amazed Equestria could sleep at night knowing they’d sent birds to live in a barren desert. At least the other Houses had creatures to hunt and firewood to burn.

New Scythia did better than any of the others. It’s the only one still standing.

Gabriella rises from her chair, pacing around to the window and opening it to look out on the city below. They didn’t all have me. And more importantly, none of the other birds were trying to build a city to last. Everyone else thought the eruption wouldn’t keep them out of their old homeland for more than a few years.

But Guinevere and her scientists knew otherwise. Gaius listened to his wife, and so they prepared for the long term. New Scythia looks like a capital now, even if it’s just a colony of outcasts. You’ll see.

“Thanks for answering all my questions,” I said, rolling up my notes and tucking them away into a saddlebag. “I’m sure you’re busy with… another city to administrate.”

She shrugged, gesturing out the window with a wing. “Griffonstone doesn’t take much work, not compared to anywhere in Accipio. It’s really a pony city when you get right down to it, and pony cities are… easier. Interconnected, instead of independent. She doesn’t try to make everything herself.”

Now that made sense to me. And a great deal that I’d seen in Griffonstone, really. I almost said so, until I realized how far I’d already got myself. Deepening tensions with Equestria’s semi-independent griffon state was probably not the way to make Twilight not want to kill me.

“Is there anything else we should see while we’re here?” I asked instead. “Dawn is… not terribly interested in scholarly work. At least not when it isn’t dangerous.”

She nodded. “If you’re up for a flight, there are some excellent hot springs near the peak. But… you said you couldn’t fly.”

“Unfortunately,” I muttered, turning to leave. “I suppose that means we have reason to come back.”

I made it to the door before she stopped me, clearing her throat loudly. “I answered all of your questions. Isn’t it fair you answer one of mine?”

I stopped, turning back around. “Sorry, uh… of course. Anything.”

“Were you serious about your relationship with Princess Radiant Dawn when you started?” She didn’t actually wait for my answer. “Because if I know anything about her father, it’s that he’s bucking serious about protecting his family. She loves you now—good. But you better make sure you don’t end up on bad terms.”

Needless to say, I didn’t think telling her that wasn’t a question was a good idea. “I’m sure,” I said. “And… she seems to be too. I think she was sick of birds who wanted to use her. For some reason, birds seem… disgusted with her. I don’t understand.”

“Purity,” she muttered, voice bitter. “Maybe she is better living with ponies. Just do yourself a favor and treat her like a princess. Because if you don’t, one day her father will hear about it. You don’t want Velar to be your enemy. Assuming he… doesn’t already want your head for the wall.”

I laughed, and she did too. Hopefully that was a joke.

It had to be a joke, right?

Chapter 20

I found Dawn waiting on the Daughter of Wintergreen, along with a half-blind bird with a pink head and a face like he was perpetually smelling sour milk.

“You’re the faulty hatchling, eh?” he said, before even Dawn could greet me. He jerked forward, pulling out a gnarled stick and smacking one of my wings.

I jumped, backing away. “Hey!”

He ignored me. “What, you gonna fly away? Oh wait, you can’t.” He jerked forward again, smacking my other wing just as hard. “Flightless hatchlings like you are supposed to die. Who pretended they didn’t see you climbing down from the aerie?”

“Contrail, I want you to meet Grimsley. He’s one of my father’s oldest monks. Trained… lots of big important war heroes you probably know about.”

“And she doesn’t, because she’s got a brain half pony mush,” he said, still advancing on me. I could guess where he’d come by so many scars if he talked to everypony like that. “Frankly half-breed I’m not sure if there’s much point. Shove him off the side of the ship and call it good.”

I glared past him, meeting her eyes. There was no need to say anything, I was sure she would get my meaning.

“I’m afraid that’s a crime in Equestria,” she said, winking at me from behind him. “You’re going to have to train him instead. I’m sure he’ll need to fly before too long.”

“Considering how you smell, I bucking guess so,” he said. “Assassins, or imperial guard, or just your own stupidity. Hard to say what comes first.” He spun on me again, waving the stick threateningly with one claw. “Can’t be sure I won’t kill him, half-breed. Ponies are softer than down when the gale’s a blowing. He’ll be vulture food in a week.”

I almost wanted to shove him off the ship. Except that his claws were still sharper than knives, and his hooked beak could probably peck out my eyes. He swung that stick like a soldier, and clearly age hadn’t worn him down the way it did to some others. This bird was a survivor.

“You can do it,” Dawn said gently. “We made it through the Ashlands together. You were born to fly. And once you can, we can fly together.

If that wasn’t motivation, I didn’t know what could be. “I’m completing a thesis,” I said, backing away from his stick before he could swing it again. “I’m not going to give it up to study under you, I don’t care how bucking important you are. I only have a few hours a day.”

He did swing at me. But then he stopped chasing. “So there’s a spine in there somewhere after all? Didn’t think I’d find it.” He rapped his stick on the deck. “So be it, half-breed. You’ve got me. Until he flies, or I’m bored of trying, or he’s dead. Whichever comes first.”

I could see the way it wore her down. As soon as we were in our quarters, I embraced her, leaning in close to her ear. “Why do you put up with that from him? You’re a princess! He shouldn’t… talk to you like that.”

“I’m nothing,” she said flatly. At least she didn’t try to push me away. “It’s not… proper… to try and stop a bird from saying something true. And he’s speaking the truth. I am a half-breed. Being a pony does make me soft. Telling birds to stop saying so won’t make me one of them.”

“I wouldn’t want you to be,” I told her. “You’re perfect, Dawn. You don’t have to be like them. You don’t have to be like me, either. You’re supposed to be you. Not just a pony or just a griffon. Something else.”

She chirped in response, a cheerful avian sound I rarely heard from her. “And I wouldn’t want you to put your scrolls away, scholar. Even if they’re feminine.”

“Want to trade? You finish my book, and I’ll, uh… fight with swords?”

“Fight with swords,” she repeated, shoving me playfully. “How would you even swing it, in your dumb mouth?”

Isn’t that how you use a sword? Pointing that out now felt incredibly stupid, so instead of doing that, I did something else with my mouth. She didn’t seem to mind.

We didn’t leave Griffonstone right away. I feared that sticking around would hasten the chance that Twilight or someone else would discover me here, and exact their just vengeance for my crimes. But we didn’t leave right away.

But there were no assassins, and no news stories about war being declared between our two nations. I got my hooves on a copy of the Canterlot Times, and was surprised to hear no mention at all of the missing princess, or my visit, or any diplomatic outrage. The closest I could find was a story on the bottom of the international page about “More outrageous stories of undead monsters from Accipio.” Yeah, outrageous. Too bad I didn’t get a picture of that dragon-thing. Or… any of what we saw under the ash.

There was the flying lessons, which I couldn’t avoid even if Grimsley made it very difficult to want to fly. Only my love for Dawn was enough to return to him on the second day for another few hours of torture. To a bird, flying is about exercise and technique. Since I couldn’t use instinct, he was going to work me until I had the right muscles. Or at least, that was what I assumed. I didn’t think it was a good idea to point out the important role magic plays in flight.

But right before we would’ve left, I received an invitation from the queen of the city. Bit of a pretentious title, given the castle was thousands of years old and Griffonstone was far from rich, but I wasn’t about to say no. In particular, when I saw her signature.

Gilda had turned the palace into everything that the administrator’s office wasn’t. Rich treasures were arranged on prominent displays, along with incredible creations of hoof and hammer. A few murals had been painted on the walls, depicting what was clearly meant to be the former clan that had become Griffonstone, fighting valiantly against ancient ponies. Neither side was depicted as losing, or particularly villainous. Two glorious battle-lines assembled, and clashing. And for every treasure, there was an armed griffon guard, apparently ready to die to protect it. There were so many soldiers packed in that some of them were running out of room to stand.

Gilda herself even had a throne room, and a throne, though she didn’t sit or act much like a queen. She did wear a crown, a band of iron around her head. If anything, the bird in the fancy dress seemed more like royalty. She had Gilda’s eyes, but sandy feathers. The colors of house Vengeance.

“I heard you were writing a book,” she said, from the other side of a feast-table. “I don’t care much about books and that—pony stuff. But I wanted to make sure you weren’t going to lie about my city. Griffonstone is bucking great, yeah? No trash talk in no pony book.”

“I…” I had brought my supplies of course, though I wasn’t wearing my saddlebags or holding a pen at the table. “I would never tell a lie about Griffonstone, Queen Gilda.”

“We love it!” Dawn added, much more enthusiastically. “Before we got here, Contrail said there wouldn’t be much to do. But he was so wrong! It’s way bigger than he said! I could stay another month!”

She didn’t look like she even realized what she’d just done. But Gilda smiled, relaxing back into her oversized chair. “That’s the pony way. Unless they’ve been here, they don’t realize. They still think we’re… broken. Still think we’re small and pathetic. They see our team at the Equestria Games, and they think it’s so brave of us to make it. We’ve really achieved something to overcome our disadvantages.”

She stabbed something on her plate with a fork. There was a little fish here, but nothing… harder for me. Griffonstone birds had been conforming to pony sensibilities for so long that they hadn’t wanted bovine or any of the other prey species any more than we did.

“We’re not a buckin’ charity. We’re not a village. We’re not desperate and struggling, and we don’t need ponies to take care of us. You get all of that in your book, scholar.”

“I will,” I said hastily. “I already did, actually. It’s amazing how well you endured the Migration War.”

“Amazing is right,” Gilda said, cleaning off her plate. “Amazing that Santiago could stick a bloody egg in me and think that’s all it took to get every bird in the city to fight for him. More amazing that it worked.”

The bird on the other side of the table looked away, covering her mouth. From her scent, it seemed she was so embarrassed she was trying to magic herself out of existence. She was the egg, then. Egg of…

No wonder the castle had so many guards. I wasn’t writing my book about individuals too much, so it probably wasn’t worth an interview. I could see how it had happened anyway just from her single response. Santiago had seduced his way into Griffonstone, where he’d made his illegal weapons. The weapons he’d used to invade the rest of the world.

The city didn’t need a reminder of that beyond what was already going into the book. And from the look of her, this bird might tear my throat out if I tried, nevermind growing up in pony territory.

“You had a lot to rebuild after the war,” I said instead, as close to the subject as I dared to get. The ashamed griffon looked visibly relieved that I’d moved on without asking about her. I started to think she was pretty cute too—but banished that thought quickly. What the hell are you doing, Contrail? Don’t even think about it. I didn’t think about it again. “Were you here for all that?”

“Was I here he says?” she muttered, rolling her eyes. “Was I bucking here. I dunno, you tell me. Would Santiago let his bucking bargaining chip out of his sight? I was too young to understand what was going on—but I know now. He didn’t think his marriage to me mattered. He thought he could get away with a political union, probably with house Victory. He couldn’t kill me, or Griffonstone would turn on him. But I couldn’t leave, or his stupid house of cards would come crumbling down.”

“That sounds… like a monumentally stupid plan,” I said, before I could stop myself. “If you were how he got Griffonstone’s loyalty, then thousands of birds knew about you. Word would make it back to Accipio eventually.”

She smiled at me, the first time she’d done anything remotely friendly since we walked in. “Monumentally stupid. I’ll remember that one. Too bad he had to get himself bucking killed so soon, though. I wouldn’t have minded another egg first.”

The princess rose from her seat, swaying on her claws. “May I be excused?” She didn’t wait for an answer, storming off down the hall with an embarrassment thick enough to leave a trail in the air.

“Bah.” Gilda shrugged one wing. “She’s going to be queen someday, she has to learn these things. And you all… you best be learning too, scholar. If I see one lie in your book about my city, I’m going to burn it. And maybe you, we’ll see.”

She smiled when she said it, but she was also eating a fish, so I couldn’t be sure if she was serious. “I’ll send you a draft of the relevant chapter before we go to print,” I said. “You can check it for errors yourself. But I won’t make any, I assure you.”

She laughed, a little louder this time. “Send it to the administrator. Do I look like I care about books?”

Chapter 21

We made the visit to the palace as quick as we could, and not just because every moment seemed like the one where Princess Twilight might finally decide it was time to put an end to my ridiculous adventure. It wasn’t just her daughter who had enough of Gilda’s attitude—at this point, it seemed like only a matter of time before she upset Dawn as well.

I did stop at the telegraph office before we finished with the trip, long enough to transcribe a brief message to the court.

AM RETURNING FROM GRIFFONSTONE WITH RADIANT DAWN STOP. LEFT ON GOOD TERMS STOP. WILL RETURN TO CANTERLOT BY DEADLINE STOP.

Once that was sent, we were on the clock to be out of the city before Princess Twilight decided to teleport there—assuming she would. For all I knew, my worry might be in vain. It could be that she didn’t care, or that she would approve of my path to diplomacy. I didn’t intend to stay long enough to find out.

“All the way to New Scythia,” Dawn said. The Daughter of Wintergreen finally rose above Griffonstone, turning into the wind that would take us to the Badlands, and the little sovereign state of griffon outcasts who hadn’t wanted to go home. “This is all a dream, Contrail. I never thought I’d be out of my father’s sight, and now… now I’m doing everything!”

She wrapped her foreleg around mine, holding close. I didn’t move, letting the blasting winds of high air lift my mane and billow around us.

“We’re still going to see the rest of Equestria, right?” she asked, voice suddenly nervous. “And Mt. Aris, and, uh… anything else I think of?”

“Absolutely,” I answered, without thinking. “I do have to finish the book, it’s my obligation to the Crown. And once I do…” I’d imagined I’d probably take up a tenured teaching position at the university, or maybe attend a few archeological digs. But I wouldn’t be teaching a class with Dawn to keep company for the next… year? And after that, maybe forever. “We can do whatever you want. So long as you don’t mind if I keep collecting information. There are more books to be written, more history that might be forgotten if somepony doesn’t make sure it sticks.”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course, scholar. I don’t want you to change.”

“I do,” Grimsley called from behind us, voice gruff. “This is cute, but I don’t see you scholaring right now, pony. That means you can be working. Get over here for a wing press.”

If my book ever gets printed, I might have a thousand made just for you, to be delivered all at once onto your head. I didn’t argue, though. The only way to get him to stop was to do what he asked.

The trip down to New Scythia took a few days, as much because of the distance as the route. Equestria kept corridors over the major cities, where high winds were channeled by attentive pegasus ponies to speed air traffic. Flying in one of them could cut travel time in half, and make a long trip possible for a naked pony if they were a good flyer.

Trouble was, they were patrolled and maintained by the navy, and all of them ran through Canterlot. If we took them, I would have no excuse not to visit the palace. Once that happened, there was a decent chance I’d never leave again.

So we flew along the coast instead, not avoiding any naval ships, but staying well away from centers of air power.

It worked. On the dawn of the fifth day, the distant borders of New Scythia were finally coming into view below us.

At first I thought we’d gone wildly off-course, and I had to run to the captain. “Hey, Bluejacket!” I called, staggering up to the helm. “Down there… is this right? Did we get blown up towards Baltimare during the night?”

He grinned. “Nothing of the sort, Contrail. That’s New Scythia.”

I stumbled back to the railing, staring down over the side.

A vast green countryside waited down there. Rolling fields of wheat grew in circular plots, with strange metallic watering machines rolling around and around. In the distance I could see the massive weather factory, bigger than Cloudsdale’s by miles. A massive intake current was already pulling at the Daughter of Wintergreen, even though we were coming in from the wrong direction. Moisture from thousands of empty miles, all converged in a factory almost as large as the city below.

“Woah.” Dawn landed beside me, still wearing a nightcap. She stared down at the city, eyes wide. “I wish we never left. This is…”

“A lot like Manehattan,” I finished for her. “Those are modern steel skyscrapers. But we don’t usually connect them so much.” No one building stood alone down there—vast bridges connected them, some wide enough that they’d been built into gardens and parks. The streets below were packed with motor vehicles, all converging on the single gigantic train station near the north end of the city. “It’s like Manehattan if it was… designed in modern day, instead of growing piecemeal for a thousand years. All chosen to match our needs.”

“No ash,” Dawn said. “So many birds down there, but… no masks, no cloaks.” She leaned down over the edge, not seeming to notice when her cap went flying off her head in the wind. I reached for it, but of course I didn’t stand a chance of retrieving it.

She didn’t care. “There are… so many ponies down there too.”

She wasn’t wrong. Actually, of all the creatures I could see, most seemed to be ponies. Earth ponies, of the drab colors that could come from only one place. Accipio’s former slaves. They tended to the fields, they ran the trains, they walked about in the fancy buildings—they ate and joked and talked with griffons in cafes and restaurants.

Bluejacket made his way over from the helm, not looking nearly as blown away by what we saw as we were. “You’ve been here before,” I guessed.

“The route between Caesarea and New Scythia is one of the busiest we fly. Lots of birds fly back and forth. Can’t decide where they want to live, or… want to bring relatives to live with them here. It’s no place for me to say how a bird ought to live, Princess… but I know there are some who don’t much care for the idea of living in ash. But there’s this new place, just waiting for them. Ponies too, but they mostly get here by train. All traffic to Mt. Aris flows through here, and it’s fairly cheap for a seat if you don’t mind riding with cargo.”

I could see where most of the ponies would be working. A weather factory of this size must be employing thousands of us, to say nothing of the teams that went out gathering tropical storms from the ocean and harvesting their water.

“My father always… spoke about how important it was that we were rebuilding the homeland. It was supposed to be our inheritance. The ancestors had lived there for thousands of years, the ground was sacred. We’d fought monsters to take it once. We’ve shed so much blood that it’s in the stones, that’s how he put it.”

Bluejacket bowed deferentially. “As I said, forgive me for speaking of griffon matters. All I know is what I overhear from my passengers. Many of them think there’s a better life waiting for them here. Looks like there is, from how I see it.”

“How is it… run?” I asked. It didn’t seem like a question the captain could answer, but I didn’t have anypony else around who might know. At least he could point me in the right direction for an interview, maybe. “I know it isn’t part of Equestria. I think it’s on the Republic maps as a… colony? Something like that?”

“I don’t know what you scholars would call lit, or what box to put it in,” Bluejacket answered. “I know where to dock, where to pay my duties. I know that it’s some kinda… new thing. Ponies from far away and ponies from Equestria and birds all make decisions together. They’re not Equestria, but they’re bound by a few laws. You can guess the ones.”

About slavery, obviously. Half of Equestria still thought there were secret wings of trafficking and abuse going on just below the surface of Accipio. I hadn’t seen any of that, and I couldn’t imagine it happening here. Maybe my book would clear some of those old rumors away.

“Do we have to rush through New Scythia?” Dawn asked, her voice gentle in my ear. “I grew up here! I… don’t remember any of this. But I didn’t leave the palace much. I wonder if my old room is all still there.”

“It’s still there,” Bluejacket said. “Well, the palace is. Right there.” He pointed towards the center of the city. An impressive stone fortress rose there, every bit as secure as the one now standing in the griffon homeland. This one had most of its fortifications facing north, where an expected pony invasion force would arrive from. It still had soldiers, and as we got closer I could see those soldiers were still wearing Virtue colors. Weird.

“We don’t have to rush,” I said, resigning myself to whatever might happen as a result. “Just so long as you give me time to work on the book. This really is the last thing I wanted to see. There are ponies who think that… griffons and ponies could never do anything together. I want to make sure this makes it in.”

Captain Bluejacket landed the Daughter of Wintergreen in the massive central port, with huge signs proclaiming it “Freedman’s Landing.” Instead of being assaulted with strange smells and skeptical, predatory eyes, I found only smiles waiting for us as we climbed off the dock.

The crowds were mostly Accipian ponies, their coats in browns and creams and tans and their cutie marks only in black. Instead of a fancy restaurant, we stopped for breakfast at the sort of place I’d frequently shopped in school: a street cart.

“Time for your first pony culinary experience,” I said, passing Dawn the paper cone of hay fries. “These are called… well, it doesn’t matter. Eat them before I tell you what they’re made of. And that little red cup, that’s for dipping. If you want.”

She settled down into the chair across from me, looking skeptical. Then she took a bite, and her face twisted into a smile. “They’re so… crispy!”

“It’s called ‘deep fried.’ It’s incredibly bad for you, and we really shouldn’t eat it. But it’s great, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “Is this… grass?” She took another bite. “Is this how ponies make it edible?”

I nodded. “One of the ways. Hay is… pretty awful by itself. You won’t hear any disagreement from me. But there are a couple of ways to fry it. Battered like this, or… mixed with mushrooms for hayburgers. I like the fries a little better.”

New Scythia didn’t exclude its grounded residents, though there were plenty of sky-level exits and entrances to the massive buildings. Those who couldn’t fly could move through the city using a motorized device I’d heard of on the west coast: a trolley.

We clambered into a pair of seats packed in among so many other ponies and birds, and soon we were on our way towards the fortress. Or the “Historic Capital,” as it was described. I bought us a tour, and soon enough we were through the gates.

We clambered up the steps, past a bronze statue of a fallen armored bird and a plaque describing some last stand in the siege.

This was where the war was decided. It seemed only fitting that I would end my book with a visit here.

We slipped away from the group when they were distracted with an old mural, dodging up the stairs. I winced as Dawn’s claws clattered on the stone, expecting soldiers to be right behind us at any moment. But they didn’t come.

Eventually she reached a heavy door, fortified with bars and locks. All empty now. “This was it,” she whispered. “Where I grew up.”

She pushed the door open.

A pony sat on one of the comfortable armchairs just inside, sipping at a lemonade and smiling at us as we entered.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Princess Twilight Sparkle said.

Chapter 22

I froze in the doorway. I wanted to turn and run—though I knew better than to try. Princess Twilight moved the sun.She’d fought creatures with power that I could barely comprehend.

Besides, I didn’t want to look like a coward in front of Dawn. If I could survive flying lessons, I could survive this. Maybe.

“You’re, uh… Princess… something… Princess…”

“Twilight Sparkle,” I finished for her, shutting the door behind us and making my way inside. Nothing left to do now but face the music. I bowed to the princess, which Dawn quickly imitated. “It’s an… unexpected pleasure to see you here.”

“I’m sure it is.” Her horn flashed, and suddenly we were sitting on the chairs across from her. “Highly unexpected I’m sure, considering you accidentally neglected to tell me where you would be traveling next. I’ve come to expect exemplary work from my scholars, yet you made… such a simple mistake.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, though there was no way to sound like I meant it. I couldn’t lie to her face, so I didn’t really try.

“Did we do something wrong?” Dawn asked, glancing sideways at me, then up to the princess. “We didn’t… break the law in Equestria, did we? Velar would be really upset if I—”

“No.” Twilight raised a wing. “You didn’t do anything wrong at all, Princess Radiant Dawn. As a matter of fact, I was wondering—would you kindly give me a moment to discuss something with my scholar in private?”

“Oh.” She got up, leaning sideways and pecking me just behind the ear. Probably not the sort of thing to show to the princess. As though there was any doubt about the two of us. “I’ll be outside.” She never turned her back on the princess, instead backing away one nervous claw step at a time. Not towards the exit from the royal chambers, but the ramp leading to the bedrooms.

Only when she was out of hearing did Twilight finally sit up straight. Her horn glowed, and I could only close my eyes, waiting for whatever spell she was going to use to blast me into paste.

Something clinked onto the table in front of me. I looked down, and there was a glass, frosted with moisture and with a few cubes of ice floating in the lemonade. “You look thirsty. It’s the climate down here—no matter how many pegasus ponies work the sky, it’s hot. Now it’s humid instead of dry, and maybe that’s worse.”

I reached out, taking the glass eagerly. “Th-thank you, Princess.” I took a few sips, feeling the icy liquid against my tongue. This was real stuff, tart enough to hurt on the way down.

“But I suppose you would’ve been thirsty no matter the climate. I can’t think of any other explanation for… what transpired.”

“You heard,” I said flatly, settling the cup down in front of me, half empty.

She laughed, a booming, raucous, and entirely undignified sound. “I found out, he says. Did I find out that the official diplomat I sent to compose a history got lost on an insane hunting trip with the heir to the largest military power in the world, then slept with her?”

She refilled her glass, though half came from a silvery flask instead of the yellow pitcher. “The only question in my mind was what to do about it. It would’ve been rude to ask Celestia or Luna. Interrupting their retirement with something like this. Maybe a thousand years on the moon, or maybe turned to stone, or…”

She gestured with her hoof at each item, checking them off an imaginary list. “Or maybe give you a medal?”

I swallowed, not looking away from her. If I was going to be blasted into ash over this, I wanted to see it coming.

How many ponies has that ever happened to, Contrail? None I could name off the top of my head, but then I couldn’t think of any who had failed so spectacularly. “Wait, what was that last one?”

Twilight rose from her chair, circling slowly around the table. “Oh, it’s a possibility. I’ve already dismissed the chance that you realized what you were doing. Royally upsetting the emperor, that was a given. But also giving him exactly the excuse he needed to let his next child be the heir. Miracles and pure conceptions and… other fiction.” She stopped just beside me, looking down.

“But I need to know something first.” Her horn glowed again, and I could feel the light shining through me. “Was this some… conquest at my expense? Did you trick me into giving you the key into the court of our most important ally, so you could find your way into her bed? Don’t even think about lying to me, Contrail. This spell really doesn’t like liars.”

I looked away from her, shuddering. Her horn wasn’t just bright, but the warmth was far more intense than a desert sun. Maybe it would burn me to ash if I did try to lie. But there was nothing to do but tell the truth.

“No! I went to write a history book. I’m mostly finished with that history, by the way, it’s in my saddlebags now. I just want to add a few chapters of conclusion about New Scythia and it’ll be done. I didn’t even know who Dawn was when I asked for the grant. I never would’ve even asked to be with her.”

Twilight’s horn went out. She looked surprised. She backed up, settling back into her seat. “I’m glad you didn’t lie. That would’ve been awkward to tell the princess…” She shook her head. “Explain.”

That was what he did. Contrail described their first meeting; how beautiful and incredible Dawn had been. But he hadn’t dreamed she’d be interested, or done anything to pursue her. He’d been working, diligently assembling the information for his book.

“It’s wrong how they treat her over there, Princess Twilight. That… damn religion of theirs. Everything has to be pure and perfect and exactly the way the ancestors intended. Where do you think that leaves a hippogriff? With impossible expectations. Of course she wanted to spend time with me. I treated her like a pony and didn’t think she was going to corrupt the nation because she’s half something weak.”

Twilight didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally she glanced over her shoulder, out at one of the expansive picture windows. “I can feel you out there, you know,” she said, more amused than angry. “You should come in.”

Something squeaked from outside, and the window swung outward. Dawn flew in, drifting down behind me and settling onto the floor, looking shy for the first time since I’d seen her.

“It’s good that you’re back,” Twilight went on. “This is more about you than your coltfriend anyway, Dawn. Have a seat.”

She did, completely cowed in a way that she obviously never had been with Velar. Only with her mother had Dawn seemed so respectful and withdrawn.

“Fate is strange,” Twilight went on. “Contrail, I’m still going to hold you to your deadline. And your work, when it’s delivered, will be subjected to the same level of academic scrutiny I’d give to any new addition to my library. That book better be bucking perfect.”

“It… will be, Princess,” I said, still not able to meet her eyes.

I blushed, but made room for Dawn. She’d heard all that. Was she… upset with me? Was it wrong for me to tell Twilight just how awful things had been for her in the Republic?

We didn’t get a chance to discuss it now. “Your story is true, and I’m… happy that you’re happy. You’re welcome in Equestria as long as you wish, Radiant Dawn. But I have a suggestion for you. Once you’re done with your tour, consider this palace. The city holds it still, did you know that? Waiting for the Emperor’s return. That won’t happen, and I don’t think it should. But you…”

She smiled. “Half pony, half griffon. I think they’d be thrilled to have you here. You gave up the Accipian Republic by moving here, but not New Scythia. Being in a relationship with a pony is no disqualifier to rule here, even if you’d probably think their version of your religion is… just a little heretical.”

Dawn finally looked up. She reached sideways, taking one of my legs in her claw. She held on tight, but not tight enough to hurt me. “I’ll have to talk to the birds who live here,” she said. “What do you think, Contrail? Do you think it has a… school or whatever… good enough for you?”

I laughed. The fear was still there, just waiting for Twilight to condemn me for some new crime. But she hadn’t yet, and seemed to be relaxing more and more by the second. “I’m sure it has some great ones,” I admitted. “But so long as you’re here, that’s what matters.”

I sent in my finished draft to Princess Twilight about a month later, right before the deadline finally expired. It wasn’t just that I was trying to make the book as perfect as I could, though I absolutely was. Part of me still had nightmares about what Twilight would do if this book didn’t live up to her expectations.

But spending time with Dawn was important too, and she wasn’t content to sit in a palace and let me work. Even if New Scythia had been thrilled to welcome her, once she’d made it official.

We didn’t charter a new ship, though the Daughter of Wintergreen did get a few upgrades. A royal pony deserved royal quarters, and I wasn’t going to complain about any of the luxuries. Dawn liked traveling, and I knew we’d be doing plenty more of it.

The book wasn’t quite as thick as I’d expected, a little under five hundred pages, a sheaf of parchment attached with rings bound for the printer in Canterlot.

The title was the hardest part. After everything I’d learned, how could I name it something that ponies might be able to find a few hundred years from now?

I played with a dozen different ideas, which Dawn rejected one by one. Eventually I settled on one that we were both happy with, and offered my manuscript to the messenger-bird to fly it north.

“From Ignis to the First Republic”

It never said which nation that republic actually was, though of course I knew. I lived there.

And in a year or so, our first foal would too.