Author's Note

As the title implies, and as has long been promised, it’s time to bring our favorite but previously unseen race of Russian mountain goats into the story. But before that, an advisory:

Content Warning: Be advised there is a fair amount of suggestive content in this chapter, especially in the opening section. None of it exceeds PG-13, and it only involves thought or dialog, not any actual adult moments. Some of it is hinting at or calling back to latest chapter of Eros released this past week; some of it is simply discussing the previous chapter’s close call between Gilda and our three favorites civvies. But there’s nothing even remotely reaching an R-rating.

Thanks as always go to my excellent prereading team of AJ_Aficionado, Silentwoodfire, Silverblade5, ASF and Wechsel, who generally seemed to be over the moon regarding the introduction of the Ibex; they clogged the google doc with comments and observations and even suggestions for how they might be used later in Eros! But you be the judge, and do enjoy the reveal of the first brand new race I’ve ever created in this verse or any other.

Hope you like! Nothing else to say, except the boilerplate:

This chapter is a heavily rewritten version of the first half of Feathered Heart: Chapter 8, borrowing a couple chunks of dialog and detail modified to accommodate the updated story, particularly in the opening section. Regardless, you are not only invited but strongly encouraged to check out the original if you haven’t already, as it inspired many of my own works.

—Firesight

23: Enter the Ibex

“I hate you,” Fortrakt muttered again as they scouted the roads and paths towards Bale, looking for possible flanking forces while the Ravens checked further ahead. Gilda wasn’t sure how many times he’d said it, given she lost count after the fourth. “May your talons dull and your beak go so soft it can no longer tear meat from bone.”

She rolled her eyes, not certain where his hostility was coming from; he’d been acting this way ever since she told him about her talk and near-sex experience with Chris, Tara and Marco. She wasn’t sure why she mentioned the latter, except it didn’t feel right to withhold it from him or Giraldi. “Don’t you have anything else to say, Fortrakt?”

“If you survive this war, may the Ancestors cause all your feathers to fall out and your wings to never take flight again,” he continued, steadily flapping his wings to maintain his height and position beside her, “and may you be infested with a stench so foul that no bath may cleanse you of it!”

“Okay, that’s new,” she said with a snort, stifling an urge to laugh given she sensed his anger was real. “You know, I can see you being jealous of me with Marco, given how much time you were spending with him. And I can certainly understand you being upset over Chris and Tara being interested in me. But maybe you missed the part where I said it was completely unplanned, or that we pulled back at the last second? That we didn’t do anything because I stopped it?”

Despite her words, his golden eagle feathers only ruffled harder. “May the Ancestors speed your aging so that you’ll be left incapable of rutting, unable to do anything but lie down on a bed, eat soup and suck on soft-boiled eggs.”

With effort, she held her temper in check. “You wanted to be with them too; I respected that. I knew it wouldn’t have been fair to you or Giraldi. So I really don’t see why you’re acting this way,” Gilda told him. “Or is this not about that at all?”

“And those soft-boiled eggs? May the Ancestors make them overcooked and leave the soup unsalted.”

She stared at him. “Are you angry because they told me about their guns instead of you? You had other duties to perform, and you’ll learn about them soon enough anyway. So why are you still whining?” she asked as they checked a small depression that might conceal an ambush, but saw nocreature present, dead or alive.

“May you never enjoy sex again, and may you turn into an old crow so fast that both human and griffon spears shrink from view at the very sight of you!”

Her feathers ruffled as his barbs got steadily more inventive and personal. “What did you want me to do, Fortrakt? Go through with it? Let them all have me right there out in the open? Be with all three of them at once in front of everyone?” she challenged him as they swept another ditch with their crossbows, increasingly annoyed at his unending stream of insults.

A stream he then added to with the most mortal insult of all. “May the Ibex find you irresistible, and may your beak and tail be a magnet for their spears!”

Her tail lashed and she flushed bright red; had it been anycreature but him, she would have challenged the griffon in question to a duel on the spot for making such an obscene suggestion. It’ll be a cold day in the human Hell or Tartarus that I let an IBEX rut me!

“Enough, cub! If I’d let it happen, there would have been no way to hide it from you or anybody else! Everyone would have seen us going at it, including you! And how would you have felt then?” She only realized after she’d spoken that she’d resorted to the human words for everycreature and anycreature.

“Then Ancestors above, why didn’t you?” he all but exploded; his headcrest flaring hard in anger even though he managed to keep his voice a harsh whisper. “Crows only know if the opportunity will ever come again, or if we’ll even live to see another sunrise! I declined my one chance to be with Chris and Tara willingly, and I deeply regret it now! So by all our Ancestors, why didn’t you take this one?” he demanded to know, striking Gilda speechless.

His eyes flashed, but then he deflated, hard. “Yes, I would have seen you. And yes, I would have been a bit jealous to see them with you. But I also wouldn’t have interfered. I might even have encouraged it, just thankful that those three got one last chance to enjoy our company by choice, even if it wasn’t with me.”

For one of a very few times, Gilda found herself taken aback. “I had no idea that’s how you felt.” And what does he mean, he might have ‘encouraged it’?

“Well, now you do,” he said shortly, not looking at her as they flew towards the next search area. “If this whole wretched day has taught me nothing else, it’s how fleeting and fragile our lives are, and how much we all take for granted. How we never know what chances—or day—might be our last. I wouldn’t deny you or any of them the opportunity to have one last moment of friendship and intimacy as our Kingdom crumbles around us, even if I couldn’t be part of it.” He hung his head for a moment.

She glared at him as they flew forward again, her ire growing. “Our Kingdom is not crumbling! And It will not fall—not even to the crow-cursed Cloven of the Sun! Insult me all you want, but I will not act with wanton abandon as though it is, and I expect far better behavior from you than a defeatist attitude or indulging selfish sexual desires in the middle of a war, Decurion!” she sharply rebuked him.

His beak fell open and his eyes went wide as her words registered; his jaw moved like he was going to speak again but snapped shut as he seemed to realize that everything she said was true. “My most fervent apologies, Centurion.” He finally offered with a salute and deeply bared neck.

“You’re absolutely right, and I’m way out of line again. I spoke out of fear and frustration, projecting my own desires and regrets onto you. My insults were inexcusable, and on my sacred honor as a griffon, it will not happen again. We will win this war, and I swear by the blood of my most revered Ancestors that I will do everything in my power to bring that victory about.”

Her anger ebbed instantly at Fortrakt’s contrition. His admission of a mistake was far more than many griffons his age would grant, even in the Kingdom’s military, so she returned the honor crisply. “Apology accepted. And I will hold you to your oath.”

They stayed silent after that as they continued to scan their surroundings. Her ears heard no movement in the brush over the sound of evening animals, and their presence alone should have meant no Cloven were nearby. They couldn’t assume that, though, and she wasn’t going to order her force forward out of the woods into the open without first scouting the flanks along the road to Bale with her remaining sky griffons, leaving the main force under the control of Giraldi.

A glance towards a silent Fortrakt showed that he looked deflated and chagrined, so she decided her message had been received. You tore him down, now build him up again. That’s what a leader does, right? “You know, for what it’s worth, cub, you weren’t the only one with regrets. Right before our rutting nearly happened, both Chris and Tara said they wished they’d been with you again.”

He started and looked at her, half-hopefully. “Really?”

“Really. So Ancestors willing, you may yet get your chance. But on a more serious note, you should also know that there’s definitely some of that cider still in us,” she quickly added before he could start getting too excited. “We all started smelling it and seeing pink again when we got turned on. I think that’s why we got so ready to rut so fast.”

“That’s… interesting,” was all a clearly distracted Fortrakt could say at first as they scanned a treeline in the evening light, but neither their ears nor noses could detect anything out of the ordinary; the animals remained active and the breeze blowing out of the west carried plenty of smoke, but no spoor of decay that could indicate corrupted creatures were present. “Then it’s not just me.”

She blinked. “You’ve felt it too?”

“Maybe,” he hedged. “I thought I might have smelled cider when I told Tara and Chris about what I remembered from that night. That’s part of why I pulled back; I didn’t want us to be together just because of that crow-cursed magical concoction again,” he explained, causing her to blink anew—as she thought about it, that was a very good reason not to do it; she didn’t want to be a slave to her cider-boosted passions, either!

Her thoughts were lost as Fortrakt went on. “And though I didn’t think of it at the time, the same thing might have happened when I was with Kesi. Each time I came, I thought my vision was going pink, but it was so brief and my eyes were shut tight so it was hard to say. In fact, looking back, I might even have—” he began to say but caught himself.

“Even what?” It took Gilda a moment to recall the name, but she quickly remembered he was talking about Decanus Kesi Tralia, the sky griffon eagless he’d had his first-ever round with just a week or two earlier.

Fortrakt’s green eyes turned evasive for a moment. “Nothing. Never mind. The point is, even if we know we’ll win this war, I don’t think you should turn down those chances, because there’s no guarantee that any of us will survive it. Given that each day and hour might be our last now, I say spend as much time with them as you can. For them, as much as you.”

She stared at him, feeling her cheeks warm. “You really care for them, cub.” Gilda felt touched despite her earlier ire.

“More than anything,” he said softly as they moved to the next ditch. He visibly hesitated, then spoke again. “And after all we’ve been through and done together, please forgive me for saying that I care for you, too, Centurion.”

“Oh. Uh… thanks.” She wasn’t sure how else she could answer, and she wasn’t even sure where it came from. But he didn’t elaborate on his statement, and she didn’t press the subject even though she sensed there was more he wasn’t saying. Not the time to ask, she knew as they continued to scout the area, looking for anything from corpses to potential sources of shelter or concealment. But all they found were a few razed storage sheds and several fields of dragon-burned crops and orchards.

Ancestors above… they’re trying to destroy our harvest! Maybe so they can starve us to death this winter? She wondered again what the Cloven actually were, given they showed both cunning and cruelty that went far beyond simple animal instinct, including an ability to make long-term strategies.

Gilda covered her suddenly worried thoughts by going back to the earlier topic. “Well, if we do survive this, I think we should get ourselves magically cleansed of that cider. We really don’t want to get aroused right in the middle of a battle.”

“I don’t think that’s a danger,” Fortrakt replied carefully as they checked another low area. “That’s not the way the stuff works. From what I understand, Zap Apple Cider heightens what we’re feeling and what we wish to do at that moment. So if it’s a battle rush we’re feeling…” The rest went unsaid.

She blinked again. “You’re right,” she realized, wondering if the crow-accursed Ibexian attack and all the potion-spiked cider they imbibed might yet be turned to their advantage. Her eyes then fell on his sewn-up flank, seeing that one of the ‘stitches’ Chief Jacobs had used to seal the slashes he’d received seemed to be loose against it. “How’s your wound?” she suddenly asked.

“Huh? Oh. I forgot I had it,” he said absently, glancing down the right side of his body, then experimentally flexing his hindquarters. The motion caused another of the loosened stitches to fall out, but the steel claw gashes they had closed looked like little more than a series of shallow scrapes now. “It feels fine. No pain. Even the stiffness is almost gone.”

“Odd…” She wondered how it had healed so fast without Nydia’s help. She couldn’t worry about it then, though. “This area is clear. If the others are as well, we can safely advance.”

“Right,” he said as they flew for their final search area near a burned-out Caleponian farmhouse. “But promise me this, Centurion—if you get the chance to be with Chris, Tara and Marco again, then by all our most revered and sacred Ancestors, take it! I’ll even help arrange it if I can.”

Though Gilda had no idea how he thought he could help ‘arrange it’ other than ensuring they had some privacy, she nodded, at least noting he wasn’t being selfish given he hadn’t once requested the right to be with them himself. “I appreciate the offer, cub. But I won’t do so until we reach safety. And if at all possible, not until the war is won.”

He stared at her again and shook his head. “You wouldn’t even take the chance to be with them in private if it was offered? You really are a stubborn Old Crow.”

“And proud of it, cub,” she told him unrepentantly. “Even aside from that, as your older and most definitely wiser partner, let me give you a very helpful piece of advice, Fortrakt: don’t try playing matchmaker for other griffons. Especially not with multiple partners! Not even Equestrians do that—well, not outside of the bat-ponies and maybe a few notable earth pony clans in New Neighico, that is,” she belatedly amended her words, remembering what she’d heard of the thestrals for the former and the ponies who lived in that desert area for the latter. “We’re griffons; we don’t woo more than a single partner at a time.”

He gave her a disbelieving look. “Says the eagless who was nearly with three human partners at once?”

Gilda grimaced and her cheeks flushed. “You’ve got me there, but given I didn’t mean to do it or go through with it, the point holds: We aren’t ponies or Saddle Arabians. We don’t form herds or harems.”

She had barely voiced the thought before she had a sudden image of Giraldi at the head of one of the latter in a Saddle Arabian setting. But in her vision, he was surrounded not with amorous eaglesses in Mareabian finery, but human and griffon tiercels in various states of undress and intimacy around him!

She blinked hard, her beak falling open. By all the crows, where did THAT come from? She shook her head to try to dispel the oddly titillating and persistent image, wondering if whatever remained of the cider within her was somehow altering her very thoughts and fantasies, just as it had when she was still being weaned off it in the aftermath of the Ibex operation.

Unaware of where her mind had gone, Fortrakt briefly grumbled under his breath; she just caught him saying something about ‘stupid rules’ and ‘useless taboos’, swearing to his Ancestors that when the war was over, he would change them all.

Though she had no idea how he thought he could do that, she stayed silent, letting him get it out of his system. “You know, now that I think about it, it’s also a bit unfair that they only talked to you about their weapons,” he noted a few minutes later. “I would have liked to have been there to hear it, too.”

“You were busy with your duties. I’m sure they’d be happy to tell you later,” Gilda reminded him as they checked their final area; a small copse of trees that passed near the path they’d be taking to the Steadholt of Bale. “They seemed to enjoy talking about them. It even seemed to make them feel better after the battle.” Almost as much as getting to be with me…

“Really?”

“Really,” she replied easily, suddenly wondering if Fortrakt was right that she should have taken the chance to be with them. If not then, when? She suddenly worried that there wouldn’t be another opportunity even if they reached safety, when she would likely have to leave them behind in Aricia in order to fight the Cloven with the rest of the Kingdom’s military.

There might not be another chance until the war is over. And who’s to say that any of us will survive…? “They told me that they trust us and want to help us, so I don’t see why they wouldn’t share the same information with you,” she told him to cover her own brooding thoughts.

“In that case, I’ll ask them later.” He looked contemplative for a few moments more before he turned back to Gilda. “Now that we know about their cannons, do you think the Marines will let us try them for ourselves?”

“Nope. Not a chance,” she immediately declared, causing his feathers to droop. “Would you, in their place, without a great deal of trust or training? Even if they were willing, I’m not even sure that we could use them. They’re designed for human hands, not griffon talons.”

“Maybe. But it couldn’t hurt to ask Imlay…” he mused half-hopefully.

“Don’t,” she told him sternly. “You weren’t there, but the Corporal was mad enough that Chris, Tara, and Marco had their own personal weapons when they weren’t supposed to—even though they did have training. But we don’t have any, and both Imlay and Marco said their weapons were dangerous to those untrained in their use. That being the case, what do you think Imlay’s going to say if we asked to use them?”

“I know. But—”

“But nothing,” she cut him off quickly. “I wouldn’t do it, and neither will they. I have no idea why you’re being such a stupid cub about it.”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s what I’m best at,” he said slightly sullenly. “I just hope the human weapons are enough to help us. By which I mean the Kingdom,” he quickly clarified. “We have less than two centuries of Marines present. Given likely Cloven numbers, it seems like barely a drop in the rum barrel.”

“And three of their civilians, who can use their weapons as well,” she reminded him.

“Maybe, but… as much as I know Chris, Tara and Marco want to help us, I also don’t want them in combat. They’re not soldiers, and they took their first battle really hard.”

“Wishful thinking,” Gilda knew, scanning forward but still not seeing any threats. “Not that I don’t wish for it, too. If we could get to Arnau and keep them safe behind her walls, I’d be all for it. But they want to help, and it’s not our place to deny them if they wish to risk their lives in service to the Kingdom—especially when we need every human weapon we can get,” she reasoned. But when he still seemed uncertain, she went on.

“Think of it this way, Fortrakt—the more these guns are used, the better our chances are. And for serving the Kingdom willingly and risking their lives in its defense, the Queen would almost certainly allow all of them to stay here after. She might even grant them citizenship on the spot.” Gilda had to restrain a sudden giddy hope that would occur, reminding herself that they had a long way to go before they could even begin to think about such things.

He considered that, then nodded slowly. “True, I guess. May the Ancestors grant such a thing. But when all is said and done, where does that leave us?”

“What do you mean by ‘us’?” Her mind already awhirl with thoughts of Marco and memories of her near-sex encounter with him and his friends once more; Gilda’s first thought was that he was asking about relationships among them and wanted his own turn. If he was, she was going to sharply reprimand him again for allowing his desires to cloud his judgment and dictate his actions, and then have Giraldi do it as well for additional emphasis.

“I mean, how are we going to mesh our forces and tactics with those of the Marines?” he clarified quickly. “I know how to command a decade or two of sky griffons at this point, but I have no idea how to incorporate human cannons into our formations when the Marines that hold them can’t fly. Unless we can wield them ourselves, I don’t think they can help us in aerial combat.”

Gilda blinked hard at the statement, then reprimanded herself sharply instead for thinking the worst of Fortrakt—this time, she noted ruefully, she had projected her thoughts onto him. She further reminded herself that he’d more than proven his worth during the first Cloven attack, preserving his force of sky griffons against overwhelming numbers. More than that, he’d kept the airborne enemies busy until the human Marines and Ravens could defeat the Cloven surface assault, enabling the Ravens to win the aerial battle in turn.

Even in regards to me being with Chris, Tara and Marco, he’s just trying to be a good soldier and see to the needs of his commander, she then had the thought, and I also can’t begrudge him for trying to look out for them, too.

“It’s an open question,” she agreed, given she hadn’t come up with any answers herself. Giraldi and Imlay said they had a few suggestions, but she hadn’t heard them yet. Other than maintaining the arrangement of letting the humans and Ravens have the lead in ground combat while her sky griffons covered the skies and scouted ahead, that was.

Beyond that, merging human and griffon formations seemed impossible to Gilda, much to her chagrin. She now understood why Chris and Marco had laughed at the idea of old human infantry tactics being used by griffons, given facing each other in grounded battle lines would completely nullify their airborne advantages. That, in turn, gave her a greater understanding of why human projectile weapons had evolved so far, when griffons had given up on personal cannons as a viable warfighting method in the infancy of their design.

From what the two said, even the humans took centuries to come up with their current models of cannon, which could be of great help to griffons. But that just showed how long the Kingdom would have had to be using them exclusively to make the same advances and enhancements.

Refining such deadly weapons would have been for nothing if proper tactics weren’t adapted around them, she also knew. In ancient times, a shield had been nothing but a nearly useless defensive tool that was relegated to the most expendable units; the lowest in a Blessed’s ranks—fledgelings, civil guards, and auxiliary defenders.

When King Fortis had succeeded in winning against the Blessed who ran the Eastern Territories, and his ideas of merit-based living began to spread, most who pledged allegiance to his leadership were just those: the lowest of Blessed ranks, armed with little more than weak shields who were previously only supposed to provide a living wall for the more-valued and better-protected forces, absorbing the arrows aimed their way.

But from those meager beginnings had come the heavy Fortis Knight shield and shieldwall tactics, which had broken the charge of many a foe and become the bedrock of griffon defensive doctrine. The rest was history.

Applying that as an analogy, she could see why human tactics wouldn’t mesh well with Gryphon ones. In each Marine’s hands were very powerful, very advanced versions of repeating crossbows that could easily penetrate armor and shield to cut down grounded and airborne enemies alike.

The last part was particularly important, given it would prevent griffons from closing to melee range. If such weapons existed in the Kingdom, shieldwalls and the phalanx tactics that had sprung up around them would quickly become obsolete. Were they to suddenly acquire human firearms, Gilda was certain that the Kingdom would start forming brand new tactics around such weapons, likely slowly phasing out their existing armor and shields.

If she had to guess, the Kingdom’s military would shift from an emphasis on defensive positioning to maneuvering quickly to use such weapons to maximum advantage, finding the enemy’s weak spots to exploit. Not too dissimilar from how Wind Knights were trained to fight without phalanx or shieldwall support, which reminded her in turn of Chris’s comment on how Marines kept moving in battle.

I sure wish we’d been able to see more of their movies, Gilda thought with a shake of her head, reasoning that they would have provided a lot more information on how modern humans fought their wars and used such powerful weapons. Their scouting circuit completed, she broke squelch four times on her borrowed radio to indicate her particular two-griffon element was returning; anygriffon who appeared without their personal squelch count was to be greeted with guns and crossbows drawn.

When four squelches were heard in return, they banked hard on their wings and headed back to their lines.

* * * * *

A minute later, they had returned to her main force to receive the other scouting reports from the Ravens and sky griffons alike. To her relief, all had returned, and all reported no enemy contact or any further sign of nearby Cloven. Giraldi also reported the wagon wheel was fixed, ordering a clearly unhappy Spear Jade Jumentum to pull it.

“By your command,” she said slightly grudgingly with a glance at her Centurion. Gilda then ordered the civilians, Nydia and Chief Jacobs to walk beside it and protect it, given it contained what might be sorely needed supplies.

It also contained the Ambassador’s aide, as to her great annoyance, Raleigh had simply invited himself to ride within it instead of walk. Though tempted to order him out, she didn’t, given that in his overweight state, there was practically no chance he could make a two-league march on his own. That still left her sole remaining earth griffon Spear in effect carrying him again, but at least this time, he wouldn’t be accidentally groping her shoulders.

Their march order set, they assembled for movement as planned, with the Ravens in the lead and Imlay assigning his three fire teams to cover the flanks and rear. Fortrakt’s aerial group, which he had split into two smaller decades, flew low over the formation to keep below the level of the recently restored area enchantment; Nydia further reported she sensed at least two additional mages in the area.

“If you can sense them, they can sense you,” Giraldi instantly warned her. “Cease all magic use unless we enter battle.”

“By your command,” Nydia replied obediently with a salute. “But before we depart, there’s something else…”

“Something else?” Gilda echoed.

Nydia hesitated for a moment. “I sense another magical signature I can’t identify or pinpoint. It’s weak, but it’s present. And it seems to be moving with us.”

“Is it dangerous?” Gilda immediately asked with a glance at Giraldi. “Another field enchantment or curse?”

“I don’t think so. It feels… passive. Maybe some form of sensory magic.” Nydia’s brow furrowed. “But it’s so weak I can’t tell you more than that.”

“‘Moving with us’ implies we have a spy in our midst,” Ebon Umbreon warned her over the radio. “Whatever it is, I would strongly suggest we find and discard the source of that spell before we set off.”

“Agreed,” Gilda said, even though she didn’t like waiting again given the sun was rapidly heading for the horizon. The sky at sunset was also turning a much more fiery orange hue than usual, which was no surprise to her given all the smoke in the air. “By my order, find it, Decanus.”

“By your command,” she said again, closing her eyes while pointing her stave to and fro. Her brow furrowed in concentration as she walked in a slow circle around the wagon and the human civilians watching her, but her stave kept drifting as it floated to point inwards, towards the group.

Then she approached the wagon, her stave pointed directly at it. “Is there something in the cart?” Giraldi asked her, which was Gilda’s initial guess as well. But the Decanus shook her head.

“No, sir, it’s…” her voice trailed off again as she took flight briefly into a hover over the cart, letting her staff float freely; Gilda reasoned that she was using it as a magnet of sorts, trying to find the source of the mysterious magic.

Chris had been on the other side of the cart. He began to back away as the staff neared him, but Nydia told him to stay still as the staff floated downwards and then hovered at his left hip. “Whatever it is, it’s coming from your pocket, Mister McLain.”

“My pocket?” Chris blinked in confusion as all eyes turned on him, reaching in to pull out his small portal device. “But I’ve only got my smartphone in there. It’s not even charged.”

She stared at him uncomprehendingly. “I don’t know what that means, but there’s some kind of subtle magic on it,” Nydia warned again, to which Chris just shrugged.

“Of course there is. We had our gear enchanted back in Equestria to protect it from theft or magical scans.”

But Nydia seemed unmollified, floating it up out of his hand to scan it more fully. “But that’s not just unicorn spellcasting I sense,” she said, then her eyes widened in alarm. “Part of it feels… Ibexian!”

“Ibexian?” The word was hissed out by humans and griffons alike as weapons were instantly hefted and heads swiveled around. “Are they here?”

“Impossible,” Ebon Umbreon replied over the radio. “You didn’t see it, but we scanned all the humans and human gear for Ibexian magic before we left Arnau and came up empty.”

“But this item was only returned to Chris while we were in flight,” Gilda abruptly remembered, her guts clenching. “Maybe because they wanted it to…”

“It was? Then by all our Ancestors, back away from it!” Ebon Umbreon ordered, rushing back through the air as Chris dropped it to the ground in alarm. “Let me scan it with our equipment.”

Landing, he swiftly pointed an odd multi-hued crystal at the portal device, which lit up from three of its facets, leaving his beak clenching at what it told him. “It’s an Ibexian anchor beacon,” he confirmed grimly. “It’s used by Capricorn Adepts for two purposes. First, it allows them to track the bearer. And second…”

He pointed his repeating crossbow at it. “When a special spell is transmitted, it also becomes a magical nexus and anchor point to which they can teleport!” he warned as Chris, Tara and Marco all leveled their weapons at the discarded device as it lay on the ground.

But nothing happened; the human ‘smartphone’ continued to sit placidly in the dirt where it fell. “So what do we do? Leave it behind? Smash it?” Marco asked as he continued to aim his cannon.

“I fear that won’t be enough, Marco Lakan,” the Raven leader said. “As Christopher McLain has now held it for an extended period, that means some of its magic has rubbed off on him. That means that he now can act as the nexus, which I’m sure was the intention. And no, Magus, your standard magic dispersal spells will not be effective against it,” he further stated before Nydia could offer.

“Gods above… I feel so tainted! What did they want with this thing?” Chris looked freaked again as he frantically brushed off the area around his pocket like he wanted to rid himself of the magic attached to him.

“I know not their intentions, but it is unlikely to be anything good. I suspect they were planning to use it to cubnap you later, Mister McLain. Perhaps so they could get you to make the device work or explain your weapons.”

“Fuck…” was all a suddenly sweating Chris said as Gilda’s heart went out to him. “Please get this magic off me!”

“We cannot, without triggering the anchor spell,” Ebon Umbreon said in disgust and a strong measure of worry. “I regret that this particular Ibexian spellcasting is such that it cannot be removed. It can only be used up.”

“Then let’s trigger it deliberately,” Decanus Nydia suggested, holding her staff to point at the portal device again. “I have training in countering Ascendency spellwork, including their anchor points. I can force the teleportation part of the spell to activate, and bring the Ibex to us. Once it’s used, the spell will be spent, and then the remaining traces of its magic can be purged from both Mister McLain and his portal device.”

“Bring them to us?” Gilda didn’t like that idea, exchanging an uncomfortable glance with Giraldi.

“We aren’t equipped to take prisoners, sir,” Imlay reminded her over the background muttering of his Marines. “And if they could have grabbed Mister McLain before this, why didn’t they while we were still close to Arnau?”

“Most likely, they couldn’t while we were in flight, given teleportation into a moving and unsteady airborne target is very difficult and dangerous,” Giraldi replied. “But the point still holds, given they could have struck after we landed… and they would have known we had landed when the tracer stopped moving,” he added warily, keeping his war hammer within reach.

“Assuming we do bring them to us, what then?” Fortrakt asked over the radio from overhead. “I say we just kill them!”

“I understand your feelings, Decurion, but I will not kill in cold blood. Perhaps cubnapping was not their intention. But we will not know unless we ask them,” Giraldi replied calmly, leaving Gilda very glad again that his cool head was present.

“We do have spell disruption snares and a few magical restraints available,” Ebon Umbreon said. He grabbed a storage gem from a belt pouch and tossed it on the ground; it turned quickly into a set of short manacles. “Place these on the base of their horns, and they will be unable to cast. A simple sleep spell or a dose of our sleeping powder will keep them quiescent, then.”

“Clever, Shadow Decurion. But I fear they might be less than amenable to accepting such restraints. And their powerful magics will make it very difficult to force it upon them,” Giraldi remarked mildly, to which Ebon Umbreon gave an unpleasant grin.

“Fear not, Optio. We have ways of dealing with that.” He then turned to Gilda. “With the help of Decanus Nydia, we can capture them, and it is my recommendation that we do so, Centurion. We cannot leave this threat unresolved, or an untriggered enchantment on Christopher McLain. And they might know something about what’s happening to the Kingdom as well.”

Gilda had a hard time believing that the Cloven were working with the Ibex given the former hated all life, but nor was she about to leave Chris with a spell that could potentially result in him being snatched up at any time.

Especially not when he was ready to have me as his first eagless! the thought came unbidden; for a moment, she could keenly remember his hands roaming her and the stature he displayed.

She purged it as hard as she could, still not understanding how or why she’d been so ready to rut after a fight for their very lives. Was it the cider? Or was it ME? She suddenly worried she was no better than Fortrakt when it came to acting on impulse. “Fine. We’ll take them prisoner and restrain them, then put them in the cart. We ask for information, but if they give us more trouble than they’re worth, then I’ll be with Fortrakt—we just kill them.”

“That’s pretty cold, Gilda. Not that I disagree,” Marco all but growled.

“Can we do it if it comes down to it?” Tara asked, her voice icy and blue eyes as hard as steel. “They tried to kill us before, after all, and God only knows what they would have done with Chris once they got what they needed from him.”

Though Gilda was again hard-pressed to disagree, Giraldi remained the voice of reason. “We don’t know what they want, and we won’t until we ask them. Keep your emotions in check, all of you. A soldier keeps a cool head and does not act on his hatreds or passions.” His orange eyes fell first on the humans, and then on Gilda herself, who did her best to take his advice to heart.

“Well said, Optio,” Imlay agreed as he came over. “To all my Marines, and you three as well—we’re not going to kill them unless we have to.” He shifted his own gaze from Chris to Tara and Marco in turn. “Understood?”

“Understood,” the three humans agreed sullenly, stepping back and lowering their weapons to let the Ravens prepare the scene.

It took them but seconds, starting with the more talkative Raven eagless covering the area from above with her repeating crossbow. She had loaded it with a drum containing a mixture of standard steel bolts mixed with purple amethyst-tipped ones, the latter of which Gilda knew were not meant to penetrate armor but simply disrupt magical barriers and spellcasting.

Her sister Raven, who Gilda had still never heard speak, prepared a series of snares designed to drain magic from clothing and armor while Ebon Umbreon himself brought out two dark agate crystals she’d never seen before, planting one in the dirt right beside the portal device.

Once all was ready, with the three equally spaced Ravens surrounding the human ‘smartphone’ at a respectful distance, Ebon Umbreon turned towards Nydia. “Decanus? Cast the spell!”

Nydia glanced at Gilda before she did so, who nodded. “By your command.”

The end of her stave glowed briefly before a magical beam was emitted, targeting Chris’s portal device, which began to glow with the same light. The glow then rapidly intensified and changed color as its activated spell took over; Gilda could soon feel the non-griffon magic suddenly saturating the air. She’d never sensed Ibexian magic before, but it felt both powerful and slightly unstable to her, like it was straining to be held in the human device.

Nothing more happened for several seconds, and nobody moved until Nydia spoke again. “It has them!” she announced loudly, her eyes squeezed shut and beak clenched with the intensity of her effort. “From the amount of magic they’re putting out, I think they’re fighting a battle, but… I’ve got hold of them! There’s three of them, and the beacon is pulling them all to us!”

“Steady…” Giraldi called out calmly to her forces. “And please lower your weapon, Marco Lakan. Ibexian Adepts are not to be trifled with, and we want them alive. Let the Ravens deal with them.” He reached out to gently push the barrel of Marco’s rifle down.

“Stand down, all of you!” Imlay reiterated. “Anyone who fires answers to me, and I will take your weapons if you don’t follow orders.”

Gilda wasn’t sure how he could carry out that threat if neither she nor they were willing, but the three civilians obeyed, grudgingly returning their rifles to a ready position.

The glow around the device intensified further, and suddenly a circular, rune-etched ring appeared in the air. The runes themselves were not the icons the griffons or ponies would use, but an entirely different alphabet of them—Cryllibex, their written language was called? She had little chance to consider it before the fiery edges of the ring reached upwards with sheets of arcane energy to form a translucent glowing dome over the area, which quickly turned opaque.

“Almost finished…” a clearly straining Nydia said as she continued to clench her beak and struggled to hold her staff steady. “And… done!” she announced as she cut her magic. She collapsed to the ground as the dome began to fade and the Ravens leveled their weapons.

The first thing Gilda saw was a series of three shapes, two in close proximity and one slightly away from them. As the view slowly cleared, their general outlines became visible; two of them appeared to be leaning hard on each other and the third was facing away with his head lowered and long, back-curved horns presented, roughly facing the direction of Nydia. The magical dome then evaporated entirely into wisps to reveal the three Ibexian Adepts fully, all looking haggard, injured and desperate, to say nothing of very disoriented to suddenly find themselves in an entirely different place.

“Now!” Ebon Umbreon shouted as he remotely activated the gem planted by Chris’s phone by triggering the one in his talons. Dark violet sparks then erupted from it and crackled around the three rivals to the Ravens, instantly blocking their magic.

Nullification gems! Gilda finally identified them. She had heard of but never seen them before; they were said to be effective against most magic wielders by eliminating wards and blocking all but the most basic forms of spellcasting. They did so by interfering with magical flow through casting surfaces like horns and staves, but they could also purge existing magic like enchantments and curses.

The final part of the sprung trap were the snares launched by the silent Raven eagless; they instantly wrapped around the Ibexian torsos and limbs, dissipating the remaining protective spells that were channeled by their odd armor and causing the Adepts to topple in a heap.

Within mere moments, their capture was complete as the three Capricorn Adepts lay bound and helpless before them. It was the first time Gilda had ever seen an Ibex except in drawings or rare pony-produced photographs, and she found them almost as alien as she first did humans.

They were quadrupedal like her, midway in size between griffons and ponies, but everything else about them, from the size and blocky shape of their goat-like snouts to their short-shaven beards and deer-like ears; from their large, back-curved antlers to the generally ruddy colors of their coats marked them as neither pony nor griffon.

They wore thin woven fabric with mithril filaments that covered their torsos and forelegs, with a pack of unknown contents carried on their wingless backs. She knew from briefings of Ibexian soldiers that their armor was not designed to directly protect them so much as to help channel their magic into shrouds or shields or even blade constructs; the latter of which could be just as effective as griffon steel. They also bore no weapons or weapons belt that she could recognize for the same reason, given their auras themselves were their weapons.

Ibexians were very magic-oriented in their arms and warfighting; they tended to turn their powerful auras, which they channeled through their large twin antlers, into both distance and slashing weapons. If they needed physical ones; their horns or sharp hooves would generally suffice; magically boosted, their males were even strong enough to ram right through brick walls when they couldn’t teleport behind them.

But the overabundance of magic their race wielded, along with their enormous antlers that enabled them to tap it, was also their greatest weakness. The former produced a dependence on it while the latter made their large horns an immediate target, for to damage or disrupt them was to limit their ability to cast. When stripped of their magic, which the Raven items were designed specifically to do, they were far easier to deal with and could be quickly restrained or killed.

That said, Capricorn Adepts were not easy to ensnare. They were supposed to be the best and most lethal warriors of shadow the Ascendency had, wielding a wide array of stealth and fighting spells that suited their special craft. And yet, for all their assumed abilities, they looked completely exhausted to Gilda, breathing and shaking heavily, and not just from their new predicament.

Gilda quickly decided that Nydia had been correct—it looked like they’d been pulled right out of a battle. A battle they were losing badly, given all three were battered and bleeding with multiple tears in their armor and cracks in their horns; at least one of them had been wounded severely to judge by a dangling foreleg and the amount of blood running down his side through a tear in his mythril-woven fabric.

He—no, she, since female Ibex had shorter antlers—was being supported by a second female whose left horn had been shorn off halfway up. It left an ugly break through which her magic leaked uselessly away; Gilda knew from her time in Equestria how agonizing those injuries could be to unicorns and how difficult they were to heal. The male was least wounded and appeared to have positioned himself to defend the other two, and after a panicked look around him, the first creature he locked eyes with was Imlay as he realized his magic was blocked and his limbs caught.

“Nyet! Nyet! No shoot! No kill!” he frantically pleaded in broken Equish as he realized human soldiers were pointing their cannons at them with his magic now unusable. “No fight! Need help!” he glanced back over his shoulder at his wounded comrades, who, even before they had fallen in a pile of snare-entangled limbs, looked barely able to stand.

“Only three of you, Starshina Karin Kazal?” Ebon Umbreon asked icily in Equish as well, causing the Ibex’s head to whip around to face him; the trio finally fully noticing all three Ravens and freezing in fear. “Capricorn Adepts operate in teams of eight. Where is the rest of your force?”

The Ibexian’s jaw quivered and tears glimmered in his gold-tinged eyes. “Cloven come! Rest dead!” He fell on his side in defeat, crying softly.

Ebon Umbreon then addressed him in what Gilda could only guess was fluent Ibex, and the Capricorn buck responded in kind. She didn’t know more than a word or two of their tongue, though it appeared he wasn’t fighting the interrogation at all—at least, not after the Shadow Decurion squawked an order in Aeric that resulted in the silent Raven eagless drawing her scimitar and putting the blade to the male’s throat. Another slightly frantic exchange followed, which was joined by the two females; it lasted several minutes before the lethal threat was withdrawn.

She had no idea what was being discussed, but to her surprise, one of the humans did. “What are they saying, Stavrou?” Imlay quietly asked a PFC standing off to his side after a couple minutes of interrogation.

“I’m not sure of all of it. Their accent and the way they speak Russian is really weird. But it turns out the Ravens were right—the cellphone was a lure,” he said quietly but angrily. “They let it return to Chris after we’d taken off and were using it to track us.

“They had orders to grab him after we landed for lunch, and then bring him back to Arnau because they couldn’t get around the enchantments the ponies placed on the stolen civvie equipment without at least one of them there. From the sound of it, they weren’t happy about their orders, and they knew they were taking an enormous risk.”

“They were right,” Gilda growled, feeling her ire rise again along with a hint of pink at the edges of her vision. “If they were caught, they’d be executed, and it’d be war with the Ascendency for certain.”

“Fucking KGB shit…” Marco said yet another phrase she didn’t understand from beside her before he spat on the ground. “Putin would be proud.”

“As you were,” Imlay said shortly as the interrogation finished. The three injured and broken Ibex did not resist as magical restraints were slapped on their horns and legs before the snares were released. “So now that we have them, what do we do with them, Centurion?”

Though she quickly came up with several progressively more evil ideas, Ebon Umbreon walked up before she could voice them. “Sir. Beg to report.” He saluted Gilda as Giraldi ordered the three adepts placed in the large produce cart under guard with Raleigh, sparing the silent Raven eagless and two sky griffons to the task. He then announced he would pull the cart himself, as he was the only griffon strong enough to do so quickly with the added weight, freeing Spear Jumentum to be a soldier and not a beast of burden again.

“At ease. What did he say?” she asked after thumping her chest.

“As our human friends have already overheard—and I will not ask how you know the Ibexian language, Private First Class Stavrou—they were conducting a covert operation whose goal was the capture of Mister McLain there,” he confirmed, causing Chris to break out in a cold sweat.

“They were planning to snatch him when we stopped for our mid-flight meal, and they were following us by transforming themselves temporarily into sky griffons, flying out of sight behind us. They would also have cubnapped him in those forms to make it look like they were griffon mercenaries—yes, such dishonorable griffons exist—who were paid by criminal gangs for their services, seeking to sell human technology on the underground markets of Arnau and other cities.”

“And they actually thought they could get away with it?” Giraldi asked in contempt. “Even if we didn’t stop them, human cannon fire would have.”

“Perhaps, Optio. But I do not blame them for trying. Even as an Ibexian Adept, you do not defy orders from the Capricorn Conclave,” the Shadow Decurion said simply. “As they traveled, they were leaving a series of anchor points behind them, which they could later use to return to Arnau by staged teleportation. But they fell into the same trap we did, losing their lead two Adepts to lightning.

“They dove for the ground, and not knowing what was happening, they tried to pick up our trail again. But then the Cloven struck, forcing them to engage in a running battle for their very lives,” he detailed. “Perhaps we should thank them, for it would seem they diverted a significant number of corrupted creatures from the attack on us, killing scores.”

“I’ll be sure and put them in for a citation,” Gilda growled. “Anything else?”

“Just the end of their story. On the verge of being overrun, they mustered most of their remaining power to teleport far away and took refuge in a cave. But corrupted mages tracked them down and they were then overwhelmed by sheer numbers despite their skill and spellcasting. They had already lost three other Adepts in battle; they were down to their last dregs of magic and seconds away from death when we pulled them here.”

“They were? Pity,” a glowering Tara said. “Even now, they still won’t leave us the fuck alone.”

Though Gilda agreed with the sentiment, she held her tongue. “Do you believe them? And did they say who sent them?”

“I do believe them, as I see little reason for them to lie about their circumstances, given they are now defenseless and know we could kill them easily. As for who sent them, he claims he does not know who ordered the operation, as his orders were passed to him anonymously by magic message drop. Which is in fact typical for the Capricorn Conclave,” Ebon Umbreon explained calmly.

“He also insists that his team was not the one who poisoned you or the three humans, Centurion. That I know to be true, as those Adepts were identified and flushed from hiding by my brethren. They were then forced to take refuge in the Saddle Arabian Embassy.”

“Oh, like that makes it better?” Chris growled in the direction of the Ibex, who turned nervous eyes upon him, their gazes then falling on the wooden rifle he held loosely in his grasp. “Just following orders, huh? I hope the Kingdom fucking cooks you for dinner!”

“Let me do it. I know a good goat recipe,” Marco sneered, causing the eyes of the two female Adepts to dart back and forth in nervous worry after his words were at least roughly translated by their leader. “I’ll be more than happy to eat them!”

“Save it, both of you!” Imlay said sharply like they were underlings speaking out of turn. “So can they be trusted, Shadow Decurion? Do we have anything to fear from them?”

“I believe they can be. And no. They are wounded and exhausted as you can plainly see, so they pose no immediate threat. Even when healed, their restraints will prevent them from casting and cannot be removed, except by us. Given time, they might even be useful to us.”

“Useful to us?” Gilda couldn’t imagine how that could be the case.

“Indeed, Centurion. For they understand perfectly well the peril the Ascendency is now in, given they know the Cloven will not stop with conquering and corrupting the Kingdom. I’ve crossed blades with their Starshina on a previous occasion, and though he is a skilled and able Adept who does his utmost to carry out even the most difficult of assignments, he is also smart enough to know that his original orders no longer hold sway.”

He turned back towards the three Ibex and raised his voice enough to let them hear it. “For he knows full well we are the only creatures standing between them and certain death, and that his orders are now irrelevant given the existential threat our two Kingdoms face. That we will very likely have to work together as races and nations to defeat and destroy the Cloven of the Sun.”

“All well and good, except for them trying to kidnap Chris,” Tara reminded them.

“For what it’s worth, Tara Fields, he insists they had strict orders not to harm him,” the Shadow Decurion addressed her.

“Like we’d take their word for it?” Marco growled with a fury that Gilda very much felt as well. “After what they did to us? If they try anything, they’re dead!”

“As you were!” Imlay snarled. “I understand how you three feel, but the moment you take matters into your own hands and demonstrate you can’t obey orders is the moment I will strip you of your weapons. I don’t want to do that, but if you force me to, I will. Are we clear?” he asked them again, his voice ice cold.

“You don’t do that without my permission, Corporal,” Gilda felt compelled to remind him, to which he closed his eyes tightly for a moment but nodded. “Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“Good. That said, the Corporal is right, and so is Optio Giraldi—I need you three to keep your heads about you,” she told Chris, Tara and Marco sternly, speaking over the radio to make sure Fortrakt heard her as well. “You have every reason to be angry at them, as do I. But as soldiers, we can’t act on our emotions, and here’s something else to think about—if that cider really is still in us, it will heighten our emotions and intensify our desires to do whatever we’re feeling at a given moment, whether it’s violence or sex. Be aware of it and don’t be a slave to it,” she finished emphatically for herself as much as them, to which they blinked hard, and then visibly relented.

“Shit, you’re right…” Marco admitted in some embarrassment with glances at an equally chagrined Chris and Tara. “Sorry, Corporal. We’re not soldiers, but from here on out, we’ll do our best to act like them. I swear we’ll leave the Ibex alone.”

“Good,” Imlay nodded. “Still, I think it best to keep you three away from them, so I’ll assign one of my fire teams to guard the coach. You three walk ahead and report any movement you see immediately.”

“You really trust us to take point?” Tara asked in amazement, to which the Marine Corporal only raised an eyebrow.

“You’re not—the other two Ravens remain on point. But if another battle erupts, anything that gets past them is yours. Just remember that those two are ahead of you and be damned sure of what you’re shooting. Because if you think I’ll be pissed by friendly fire, just imagine what they’ll do.” He smiled thinly.

Tara and Marco cringed as Chris paled mightily. “We got it,” the latter said in a very weak voice.

“Good. Keep your eyes peeled and report any movement you see. If trouble erupts, fall back towards the cart—I assume from your paintball leagues you know how to cover each other’s movement. And as for you, Chief, we have wounded. Ride in the wagon and try to treat the Ibex.”

Chief Jacobs looked up sharply. “With all due respect, I’m a combat medic, not a veterinarian, Corporal!”

“If you treated a couple mythological creatures for battle wounds, then you can also treat a magical mountain goat,” Imlay said dryly, causing Gilda to blink—what did he mean, ‘mythological’?

“Now get to it. They’re proof that the Ibex are still conducting operations against us, so I want them to make it out of this alive. And if they’re as magically powerful as the griffons say, then we might need them to help fight off the Cloven, too…”