Author's Note

Sorry for the delay on this one, folks, but it gave me fits as I tried to feel out its proper scope, determining whose perspectives should be included and whose to discard. Also not helping was a massive push being put on by my job to get a software release done, which (I hope) is finally over and done as of today.

This chapter does contain some sexual content, including a couple R-rated moments as certain scenes from the past day’s events are replayed. It’s not prevalent, but it is there. So if you want the T-rated version of this chapter, go here:

33: Through the Eyes of Another (T-rated)

Chapter contains: Giraldi and Optio Virgo vividly fantasizing about males in general and Ebon Umbreon/Tribune Cipio in particular. Also shows Giraldi popping a boner over getting to fire the fifty from his perspective, which is then shared by Gilda and the others through the memory magic.

As always, I thank my superb prereading crew of Silentwoodfire, AJ_Aficionado, ASF, Wechsel and Silverblade5. They gave the chapter rave reviews, and hopefully readers will as well. Have at it just as soon as I post the standard boilerplate:

This chapter is brand new content, taking place not long after chapter 9 of the original story. You are not only invited but strongly encouraged to check out the original Feathered Heart if you haven’t already, as it inspired many of my own works.

—Firesight

35: Through the Eyes of Another (R-rated)

Gilda glanced at Giraldi and Fortrakt again, earning a sharp nod from each. “Fine. If that’s what it takes to show him what a crow-damned fool he is, we’ll do it.”

But instead of immediately accepting, Queen Lepidoptes turned her gaze on Gilda again. “Before you agree, think carefully if you wish to participate, Grizelda Behertz,” the Changeling monarch admonished her. “For I cannot censor or edit the experiences. By sharing your memories, you will show not just the Tribune but all your comrades who take part in this everything that happened to you in the past day.”

Gilda mentally froze. She picked up on the hidden meaning of the Queen’s words immediately, her mind racing.

“Is there an issue, Centurion?” Tribune Cipio asked icily as he saw her hesitate. “Perhaps something you don’t want me to see? Like a failure of leadership that cost lives? Or a lie you’ve been telling this whole time?”

She looked up sharply at the insult to honor. “I haven’t lied about anything, Tribune.”

“Then there should be no issue with acceding to the Queen’s request,” he said with a sneer, and Gilda realized that Giraldi and Fortrakt were now giving her questioning looks as well. “I have nothing to hide. Or are you afraid of learning that I haven’t lied? That everything I did was not only justified, but necessary?”

She ground the halves of her beak together as her mind raced, trying not to look at Karin Kazal behind her. She could feel his gaze on her, but whatever he was thinking, he gave no indication, leaving Gilda guessing that he feared speaking up might give himself away.

What should I do? she wondered half-frantically. I might be willing if it was just me, but there’s the Starshina to consider, too...

But before she could form a reply, an uncomfortable Imlay cleared his throat. “With greatest respect, ma’am, I would rather not have my mind scanned,” the Marine Corporal said. “You’ll understand that we’re still trying to keep our full capabilities secret. If my memories are shared, then the Cloven might gain the ability to use or counter our weapons by corrupting whoever they were shared with.”

Queen Lepidoptes nodded. “I see. A sensible precaution. In that case, I must ask that you leave the room, Corporal Imlay, as I cannot exclude you from the spell’s effects if you remain. Be assured that you will be safe from it outside these walls.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said with a nod, turning to leave.

“I must decline as well,” Miles Fortuna added as he exited between her two sentries. “No offense, Your Highness, but even if they are currently helping us, Raven capabilities and tactics must be kept from the ibex. And even yourselves.”

“We already know them, Senior Scimitar,” Karin Kazal said in some annoyance, and Gilda could pick out the tension in his voice as all three Ravens left the room. “That said, I admit to having the same reservations, given there are… certain things I would not wish to share.”

“Like an attempt at betrayal?” The Tribune suggested, earning a glare from Gilda and a growl-like bleat from the ibex buck. “Fine, leave if you must. I have no wish to see what lies inside the mind of a crow-damned goat anyway. So what will it be, Centurion?”

She closed her eyes and nodded slowly as she reached her decision. “I will respectfully decline to take part as well, Queen Lepidoptes. But not because I have lied about human weapons!” she immediately added to an angry glare from Cipio and at least a slight exhalation from Karin Kazal. “It is only because there are some… private experiences I wish to protect.” She allowed herself to blush slightly, hoping it would simply be assumed she was talking about an encounter with Marco.

“How convenient,” Cipio said with a second sneer. “Well, if you’re not going to participate, then I fail to see why I should.”

Giraldi gave him a cool look. “I would think that she’s trying to protect you, sir. Unless despite claiming the idea to be appalling, you truly wish to experience her laying with an ‘alien ape’?” he suggested mildly, causing the Tribune to make a face and his uncertain aide to give another barely audible squeak.

Gilda bared her throat to him, trying to hide her relief. Thank you, Giraldi! she mentally told her quick-thinking second. “Even if he does, I wouldn’t share it. As both my subordinates saw human weapons in action, and even used them in the case of the Optio, I see no reason to stay and indulge the Tribune’s voyeuristic tendencies. So, I will step out as well.” She rose to leave after one final wingslap at him, but she couldn’t quite force herself to meet his probing gaze.

“In that case, we’re done here, Behertz,” the Tribune said after studying her for a moment. “I won’t take part in this, either. And I will be telling Queen Molyneux that you’re lying.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you are lying! Between your tension and your posturing, you’re acting just like my daughter does when she’s done something wrong!” he shot back, pointing a metal-clad talon at her. “I’m not sure what you’re hiding, but it isn’t just rutting a human, is it? There’s something you don’t want me to know, which means that I need to know it!”

Gilda froze, her eyes going furtive. “I…” She shot a pleading look to Queen Lepidoptes, realizing too late that her reaction had only confirmed his suspicions.

To her relief, the Changeling monarch came quickly to her defense. “Your parental perception does you great credit, Tribune. But in this case, you are jumping to an incorrect conclusion. I am aware of what she wishes to keep private, and I agree that she has good reason to do so. So if you will not believe her, then please believe me when I say it is irrelevant to this discussion.”

“And you’ll forgive me if I cannot take your word for it, Queen Lepidoptes, given her grandiose claims and the repeated assaults on my honor that the Centurion has made,” he replied, his glare never leaving Gilda even as the Queen’s eyes narrowed at having her word questioned. But the Tribune took no notice.

“She demands that I trust her while clearly withholding information under the cover of rutting her human lover? I will no more allow that than I would allow my inebriated sixteen-year-old son to avoid admitting he ate an entire rum cake by confessing to snacking on a dessert scone. Which he tried last week, by the way.”

Gilda stifled an urge to swallow, suddenly feeling for a moment like she was a cub being interrogated on one of her many Equestrian misdeeds by her long-absent sire. But she forcibly purged it, willing herself to meet his gaze and put some steel in her spine. “I am not your son, sir.”

“No. You’re my subordinate, which means I tolerate lying to me even less!” he instantly retorted. “So out with it, Behertz! Tell me what you’re hiding, or we’re finished here! And between that and your obvious emotional compromise, I will convince the Queen that your judgment cannot be trusted!”

As she sensed all eyes turning on her, Gilda felt trapped. She considered asking Queen Lepidoptes to explain it but quickly realized that would come across as being ashamed or embarrassed of her actions, which would itself be a lie and would dishonor the Starshina still sitting silently behind her. “Even if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me,” the Tribune said in some contempt, drumming his talons on the table again while his aide kept glancing between him and Gilda. To her credit, she was still trying to take the minutes of the meeting despite her distraction and the ink-stained mess she’d made of her parchment; Gilda might have been amused by the young eagless’s obvious interest in her relationship with Marco if the situation wasn’t so serious.

“You must see our memories of the human weapons, sir. You can’t leave until you do,” she told him again, if far more wanly.

“I can and I will,” he replied instantly and quite hotly. “I still have a city to save and a great deal of work to do before the Cloven come again. Last chance, Behertz. You’ve taken enough of my time and attention today, so if you want me to stay and take part in this, then I suggest you start talking. Now.”

Realizing she was trapped, she looked back at Karin Kazal, who closed his eyes and nodded slowly. “The protection of the humans is paramount,” he reminded her in a quiet voice. “And privacy concerns do not override it.”

“You’re right, Starshina,” she admitted in an equally subdued tone, recognizing he was giving her permission to reveal what happened. “Very well, Tribune. Though it may still cost me my post, I’ll do it. But I won’t tell you, since I think you’d use it as an excuse to leave anyway. I’ll show you. I’m in, Queen Lepidoptes.” She bared her throat, praying a confused Giraldi and Fortrakt wouldn’t take what they learned too badly. There’s no question the Tribune will, though…

“Cost your post? But what could possibly—” Fortrakt started to ask before Karin Kazal cut him off, speaking in a resigned tone.

“I must say, you very neatly trapped her, Tribune. You would make a good interrogator for the Capricorn Conclave. Very well, then. If the Centurion is staying, then I’m staying, Queen Lepidoptes,” he announced. “But I still decline to participate directly. I have mental magic of my own and can use it to protect my memory.”

“Though I’m sure you do, it will not suffice here, Starshina. The spell is two-way and cannot be overridden. Given your well-disciplined mind and experience with memory magic, I will not object if you wish to take part. But I must ask you not to resist or interfere, given it will disrupt the greater spellwork and potentially cause severe pain to all present,” Queen Lepidoptes told him. “I know what you fear, and why you feel you should stay. Though unquestionably honorable, it is also unnecessary. Not when I am here and can deal with any… issues that may arise.”

Gilda heard him exhale softly. “Understood,” he finally said, then addressed the Queen in his native tongue: “Мне можно просить убежище для себя, центуриона, и своих товарищей, если бы дела происходили ужасно?”

“Да, хоть, не думаю, что нам нужно будет. Лишь Трибун плохо отреагировать таким. Мне можно выдержать.” Whatever he asked, the Changeling monarch answered in fluent Ibexian, leaving Gilda no idea what they were saying.

But Karin Kazal seemed at least somewhat mollified by her statement, standing up to take his leave with a final magical squeeze of Gilda’s foretalons. “Thank you, Queen Lepidoptes. Then for the same reasons as the Ravens, I feel it best to not participate.”

“Well, then. As I have no interest in reliving another creature’s rutting, I will also leave,” Obsidian Ire decided before the Queen or Tribune could reply. “I trust that the experience of the Centurion and her subordinates will be illuminating enough with regards to human weapons.”

“As you wish.” The Queen closed her eyes briefly before turning her gaze on Fortrakt, whose head was visibly drooping. “But upon reflection, I must ask that you leave as well, Decurion Fortrakt Gletscher.”

He looked up at her, but only after an uncharacteristic delay as it took him longer than usual to process her words. “Me? Why?”

“Because with greatest respect, your lack of sleep and accumulated battle stress is telling, as your focus is slipping and emotions remain quite roiled. I fear that in your weakened state, you will lack the discipline and dispassion to take part in this properly. In contrast, Galen Giraldi remains calm and alert. Am I wrong in believing that the Optio has seen more than enough of human weapons to make up for the Decurion’s absence, Centurion?”

Gilda exchanged a look with Giraldi, recalling all he had seen and done over the past day. “He has. By my order, please leave and look after yourself, Decurion. I release you from duty now, so get yourself some sleep and a meal.” The Changelings had opened the ship’s galley to their visitors, having brought along a surprisingly voluminous and varied stock of food.

He exhaled slowly and nodded. “By your command. But please call me if you need me,” he requested with a bared throat and slightly clumsy salute, pulling himself up to shuffle tiredly out the door.

“Very well, then. As a smaller roster is preferred, I also request that you dismiss your guards, Tribune,” the Queen addressed Cipio next. “They are not needed here, and their presence will only complicate the spell. The more minds and memories there are, the harder they are to pull and assimilate at once. Especially for those inexperienced with this form of magic.”

“If the Tribune’s staying, then I’m staying!” the eagless Magus replied before he could answer. “By all our Ancestors, I don’t trust this… situation!”

“That is not advisable, Senior Stave,” the Queen warned. “Because it is possible you will react instinctively to what you are experiencing and lash out with your magic. If you wish to stay, you must leave your casting staff outside.”

“But that would leave me unable to properly defend the Tribune! And if that’s a danger, why was he allowed to stay?” she leveled her staff at the Starshina still standing just outside the room.

“Because she knows that unlike you, I have some self-control, Magus,” Karin Kazal told her irritably through the open door, ignoring the stave pointed at him. “As the Queen stated, I have experience with shared memories since the Capricorn Conclave occasionally employs them to impart knowledge of locations or other information. And thus, I would know that what I’m seeing and feeling isn’t happening no matter how vivid or immersive it is. Can you say the same?”

“Karin Kazal speaks true,” Queen Lepidoptes said before the blue-eyed eagless could retort. “Allow me to put your worries at ease, Senior Stave—the Tribune is safe in my presence. Indeed, everycreature here is.” She cast her gaze at Gilda briefly, who took it as reassurance.

“Leave us,” Cipio said at length to the two Paladins behind him. “The Queen is not going to hurt me. And you, too, Magus. Wait outside. I will summon you when needed.”

“By your command,” they reluctantly chorused, turning to leave. Once they had, Karin Kazal waited until Fortrakt had exited the open door before closing it behind him, saying something under his breath in his native tongue.

“And me, sir?” Optio Virgo asked in what Gilda interpreted as a tentative but half-hopeful tone as the doors closed. “Should I stay?”

“That, too, is inadvisable,” the Queen warned. “Given her youth, obvious unfamiliarity with combat and lack of mental discipline—no offense, Optio—she is likely to react… unpredictably to what she sees.”

“I have seen combat!” the eagless spoke up in her own defense, though her voice sounded slightly shaky to Gilda. “Just this morning, defending my own family and later fighting at the Tribune’s side! And though I may not be much of a warrior, I am a scholar, Queen Lepidoptes. I can study and focus as well as any griffon.”

The Tribune glanced at the Queen, then over at the young eagless, frowning at the messy state of her writing. “She speaks true. She is a soldier of the Kingdom, and by my order, she will conduct herself as one. I made you my adjutant, Optio, and in that capacity, you will stay since you’re going to be writing a report on this for Queen Molyneux. But I do suggest you cap your inkwell to prevent any more spills,” he pointed out in some annoyance, causing her to cringe. “And kindly control your wings around me. Sorry if this disappoints you, but I do not fraternize with subordinates.”

“By your command,” she said slightly weakly, putting down her quill and fumbling the cap of the bottle before finally sealing it and setting it aside.

“Very well. I will hold you to your word, Optio Rubens Virgo. Then as our roster is set, let me make it clear what is going to happen,” Queen Lepidoptes said once the doors were shut, and they were alone. “This spell will open your minds and memories over the past day to everycreature present in this room. It is normally a simultaneous sharing, but to keep it from being too overwhelming given your inexperience with it, I will only share one individual’s recollections at a time,” she told them.

“To avoid any impression of favoritism, I will alternate sharing memories from individuals from each side of the room, starting with those of the Tribune since he bears the highest rank. I will then replay Optio Galen Giraldi’s memories, followed by those of Optio Rubens Virgo. And finally, those of Centurion Behertz will play.”

“Saving her for last? Why not first?” Tribune Cipio asked, to which the Queen gave him another cool and what Gilda took to be a slightly annoyed look.

“Because I don’t want what she reveals to overshadow the experience of human ‘firearms’,” the Changeling monarch answered evenly. “That is what they term their cannons.”

“And it is a term well-earned, given it can be justly claimed that their weapons are fire-based. As you are taking part yourself, will your memories play as well, your Highness?” Giraldi inquired.

“No. Not because I am unwilling, but because the nature of the spell is that the caster’s memories do not play, in order to facilitate the transfer. Were it otherwise, I could not perform this incantation. Given my near-total awareness of my hive and all activity within it, the experience would be so overwhelming that your minds would simply not be able to assimilate it,” she explained.

“And though such an ability may sound desirable, trust me—even limited forms of omnipotence can be both the greatest of gifts and the gravest of curses. To be connected to my drones at all times means I feel everything from their births to their deaths; from their joys to their fears and sorrows. That is the burden I bear as Queen.” Her eyes turned very old for a moment, earning a concerned glance from Archex and the other large drone.

“I do not envy you that burden. But I do not seek to add to it here. Before we begin, is there anything else you need from us, Queen Lepidoptes?” Giraldi asked politely, looking to Gilda far more at ease than she felt.

“Nothing except your presence, and a willingness to open your minds to me, Galen Giraldi,” the Changeling monarch replied evenly, glancing at her two large guard drones, who bowed low and departed. Once the doors were sealed behind them, she nodded.

“Now, then. My first instruction is that all of you should sit down and relax. I will make this process as gentle as I can, but I warn you again that it may be overwhelming at times. I also remind you that despite how intense or real it may seem, always keep in mind that everything you experience is a memory and not happening now…”

Unsung Heroes
UNSUNG HERO | Best Epic Heroic Orchestral Music | Epic Music Mix by @ThomasJCurran

Gilda felt her heart begin to race as the Changeling Queen ignited her long, hole-filled horn, which began to glow with a soft orange aura that shortly expanded outwards to envelop the entire room.

As it bathed them all in a magical field that caused an odd prickly sensation while it quickly collected around her head, Gilda sensed it soaking into not just her mind but her very soul, seeking access to the memories within. She reflexively tried to fight it for a moment only to feel the pressure recede in response, letting her get used to the odd and unquestionably alien intrusion before pushing deeper. It took a few tries for her to finally accept the friendly but still-foreign presence, but after a minute, her body relaxed and her mind relented, her head lolling forward as her eyes shut.

For an uncertain amount of time, she was aware of nothing else but her own slowing heartbeat and breathing, feeling as if she was entering a trance. But suddenly a series of other presences registered on her mind, appearing almost ghostlike behind her eyelids. She didn’t know what to call the odd effect, but she quickly recognized the ethereal forms of the Queen followed by Giraldi, then those of the Tribune and his aide, leaving her the impression that those more distant to her entered her awareness last.

Nothing more happened for several minutes—or at least, that’s how long it felt to her, though she dimly realized that she didn’t have any real sense of the passage of time while under the slowly deepening spell. She wasn’t sure why the delay until she picked up a stray thought from Giraldi that the Queen was trying to make sure they were as calm and relaxed as possible before proceeding.

Wait—how had she read his mind?

You are correct, Galen Giraldi, the Queen’s voice suddenly sounded directly in Gilda’s head, momentarily startling her. I do not wish you to be agitated, especially at the start of the process. So as much as possible, empty your minds of fears and worries. I promise this will not hurt you. Nor will anything you see.

Her voice was both soothing and commanding. Despite how dweeby it made her feel, Gilda clung to the Queen’s words like a lifeline, trying to obey as best she could despite her lingering anxiety. She reminded herself that whatever happened, she was doing this for her human mate as well as the Kingdom.

That even if everything went to the crows over it, she could still find friendship and love with Marco and his friends. And serve the Kingdom through Queen Lepidoptes if she wished.

That is correct, Centurion. So fear not what may come of this, the Queen’s thoughts answered Gilda’s unspoken worries again. It is time. I remind all of you again that this will enable you to not just see, but experience all that your comrades did, she told them yet again, to which Gilda inwardly swallowed even though she knew that Giraldi and the Tribune could sense her anxiety. It is an intense process even for those familiar with it, and thus, we must move slowly. And I cannot emphasize enough that nothing that you may see, hear, smell or feel in these next few minutes is real…

She didn’t give them a chance to respond before Gilda suddenly felt a fresh magical effect wash over her, settling on her head.

And then abruptly, she wasn’t inside of her own.

* * * * *

She suddenly found herself in what looked like a well-appointed military office, face-to-face and beak-to-beak with a civilian eagless she was arguing angrily with.

But she was seeing things from a higher height, and the weight and heft of her body was also much different than what she was used to. She felt far stronger and swifter than she had ever been, her body and mind honed by countless duels and battles with everycreature from the Harpies and Minotaurian mercenaries to Ibexian irregulars.

By the Ancestors… she heard Optio Virgo think in astonishment, and Gilda was hard pressed to disagree with the sentiment as she found herself not just seeing but experiencing everything through the eyes and ears of a different griffon, even able to register the scent of the eagless opposite him to the trill building deep in his own throat as he exchanged insults with her.

His feathers ruffling as his thoughts were bleak and bitter, he found himself with a strong desire to duel the other eagless for ownership of their home and custody of their cubs, who Gilda somehow knew was his… wife?

Stunned by the intensity of the aggrievement and pure rage she felt, it took a moment before Gilda realized she was now seeing through the thoughts and senses of Tribune Cipio, who she only then recalled that Queen Lepidoptes had said would be the first individual to have their memories replayed. Ignoring the faint smell of smoke in the air, the two griffons were on the verge of not just declaring their marital bonds sundered but outright battle, as each accused the other of infidelity and putting their career above their cubs.

The former was an accusation the Tribune knew himself to be guilty of, justifying it in his mind by the certainty that his wife had done it first. But even as he readied himself to issue a ritual challenge to his Uxor, a former Magus Knight who had retired from active service to run a healer house and always kept her stave on her back, a shrill shriek of violently vibrating crystal suddenly sounded over the base which immediately got their attention—a rarely-used alarm that Gilda recognized from Gauntlet training indicated a dragon attack on a base or city.

Startled, the Tribune and his Uxor rushed out onto the balcony to see a badly burned and visibly wounded adult dragon to which a collection of smaller figures clung, flying low over the city trailing blood as it was chased by startled sentries. But instead of turning on them or breathing fire, the large creature crashed hard into the parade grounds almost directly in front of his headquarters building, skidding to a stop on its belly as it was unable to land properly with three of its four limbs visibly broken and hanging limp.

Shocked, Cipio grabbed a communication gem, shouting for reinforcements and ordering every available Magus to converge on the threat. But instead of attacking, the exhausted and equally injured adolescents on the adult’s back spilled off and held up their talons in a gesture of surrender. Battle-scarred and wearing battered armor, they openly pleaded for help from the century of soldiers surrounding them with crossbows leveled, claiming their clan was conquered and Isle had been overrun… by the Cloven of the Sun!

Their fight forgotten; the Tribune ordered his shocked wife to secure their cubs in an underground bunker beneath the headquarters building while he went outside to meet the invaders. In a show of courage that left Gilda admiring the size of his figurative sac, he fearlessly flew up to the adult dragon and spoke to him despite the faint glow still in its throat. It warned him that the Cloven had corrupted almost every adult of his clan and were now coming for the Kingdom, intending to use his former brethren in a devastating first strike as they invaded.

The dying drake then begged him in a weak and raspy voice to save his remaining children before succumbing to his visibly gruesome wounds, including severe scorches, bites and slashes from other adult dragons. His passing elicited sounds of wailing from the adolescents as their final uncorrupted adult fell; in all his wildest dreams, Tribune Cipio never imagined he’d see dragons cry!

Neither did Gilda as she witnessed the affair through his senses. But there was no time to ponder it as his own adjutant suddenly tried to kill him, pulling a blade and leaping onto him to slash his throat. Shocked, he only barely parried the attack, performing a well-practiced midair flip to slam the eagless onto her back. Her ribs were broken from the hard impact but she still staggered after him after he rolled off her, seemingly unaffected by her injuries.

Recognizing her lifeless and emotionless eyes, to say nothing of her bloodless wounds and a slight scent of decay, he effortlessly parried the thrust of the crippled griffon, knocked the blade out of her talons and then stabbed her in the skull through an eye before his aghast staff. A series of screams were then heard around them as several more assassination attempts were made; another minute passed before the assailants were put down and he was satisfied there were no more immediate threats.

It was then, under the protection of a dozen Paladins, that he opened his aide’s head up… to find a cleaved Cloven parasite inside.

A moment of utter dread filled him to see it, causing him to stumble back in shock. But to the Tribune’s credit, he shook himself out of it swiftly as his equally shocked subordinates requested instructions. Realizing that he had to act quickly as the surviving score of adolescent dragons claimed again that their corrupted brethren were invading the Kingdom, he ordered alarms and a call to arms to be sounded across all Aricia just as a dark cloud of bat-like creatures started to descend on the city.

They overwhelmed his available airborne patrols with sheer numbers, killing and corrupting entire decades of soldiers while causing terror among the populace of Aricia, strafing the streets with spikes as they attempted to kill as many civilians as they could. Worse, they were each carrying several spider-like Cloven parasites which rained down onto wounded and panicked civilians and—he quickly learned from watching it happen—they didn’t have to wait until you were dead before burrowing into the brain. Far from a passive threat, they attacked with venomous bites that would paralyze and cause excruciating pain until their victims died, allowing them to take over the newly created corpse.

There was soon carnage in the streets as injured griffons and Caleponians alike were felled in such a manner and turned into Cloven killing machines; mindless corrupted creatures who felt no pain and didn’t stop coming until their spine was severed or the parasite within them was slain.

Still, despite the havoc they caused over the next hour, they could not by themselves fell the city. As his stunned soldiers organized and began to sweep the skies of the flyers, that fact alone made him strongly suspect it was a diversion even as the Aricia Maior begged him to send his Auxilia into the streets to assist the overwhelmed Peacekeepers.

But he did not, instructing civilians to barricade themselves inside. He instead placed priority on securing his base and solidifying the city’s outermost defenses, ordering his on-duty Magus to abandon healer duty. He told them to concentrate on shielding vital facilities and to charge up the inactive lightning orbs studding the fortress city’s ramparts and towers, and then join the soldiers flocking to the battlements to repulse the ground attack he was certain would come quickly.

He was not disappointed as a veritable wave of pure Cloven crashed against the city’s western walls mid-afternoon, attempting to surmount the formidable obstacle by building an enormous ramp with their bodies. And they nearly succeeded before massed volleys of crossbow and lightning bolts along with great gouts of adolescent dragonfire brought them down, leaving a massive pile of smoking and stinking Cloven corpses at the outer wall’s base as the initial assault was repulsed.

But it was not without loss as the Cloven had new forms that had not been seen or described in the previous war, including a porkupike-based one that could provide accurate fire on the battlements. They succeeded in picking off scores of soldiers while their innumerable razorbat forms could also attack from above; they swiftly proved that they could easily overwhelm any airborne force smaller than a Turma that wasn’t ready for them.

The Tribune—and Gilda along with him—knew that the situation was grim as the opening attack had cost him a third of his available garrison while centuries of previously off-duty soldiers were still staggering in or remained trapped in the city, fighting desperately to defend their friends and families or even strangers from the claws of the corrupted. He received reports that the latter were being steadily ground down by civilians alone, thankfully, as griffons and ponies alike learned quickly to stab skulls and stomp or slash any parasites they saw before they could find a new host.

Struggling to reconstitute his already-battered Auxilia into a mobile defensive force and find a way to counter the unexpectedly potent Cloven airborne threat, what followed over the next several hours was a desperate series of attempts to stave off not just an invasion but outright annihilation of the city’s population. As Gilda watched, the Tribune continually and quite skillfully shifted his ragged and reeling forces from one crisis to the next, including repulsing several surface attacks and at least one Diamond Dog attempt to breach the city’s walls by burrowing under them.

Despite his best efforts, which Gilda grudgingly admitted were performed well under severe pressure, the latter produced the first of two crises that left the Tribune certain Aricia would fall as the canine creatures succeeded in tunneling under the city’s defenses.

They sent century after century of pure Cloven forms backed by a veritable flood of parasites swarming into the city. With no other option, Cipio threw himself into the struggle directly along with his headquarters Paladins and the adolescent dragons who incinerated innumerable Cloven; they fought superbly along with countless civilians who battled with personal blades and just their bare talons to stem the tide of pure and corrupted Cloven alike.

Just as Cipio had told Fortrakt, they succeeded but only at horrific cost, sacrificing a full millennium of griffon soldiers and civilians along with several centuries of Caleponian ponies, many of whom suicidally charged the enemy to break up their formations and stomp parasites underhoof.

Their combined efforts along with the fiery breath of the dragons were able to hold the line before his harried Magus finally succeeded in collapsing the tunnels on top of the remaining Cloven, sealing the breach. But they had little chance to celebrate as late afternoon came and the first refugees from fallen bases further west arrived, including two damaged airships with hundreds of fleeing soldiers and civilians but less than half their crew aboard, and the ragged remnants of a Talon legion that had barely escaped their base at Boardeux as it was immolated by at least six adult dragons.

There was little of it left but a few battered centuries of soldiers exhausted from the flight. Only sky griffons had been able to fly that far, meaning that the more numerous earth griffons had fallen en route to not just death but corruption.

Expecting the worst, Cipio ordered civilians into basements and bunkers as the captured Talons attacked on the ground with siege engines taken from Tierra just a few hours later, succeeding in bringing down a section of the outer wall. The effective assault forced him to order the dragons to head out and destroy them under Magus protection, who stealthed them as they flew in at low altitude. To their credit, the drakes and drakinas succeeded despite the loss of another six of their number, saving the city and removing all doubts in Cipio’s mind about their courage or combat ability.

The attacks on the city finally slackened somewhat as evening was reached, allowing his exhausted forces to catch their breath and his Magus to attempt at least rudimentary treatment of the wounded. It was only then, when he found a moment to collapse in his office and allow his wife to treat his wounds, that he received a surprise message.

It was from Queen Lepidoptes, who Gilda gathered had been his lover; she had given him a special gem some time earlier that enabled direct communication for arranging liaisons.

Initially appearing through the magical projection as a striking tiger-striped and orange-eyed goshawk-headed eagless wearing finery, she announced that she was in fact a Changeling Queen, revealing her true form with a flare of green fire.

Though the Tribune was as shocked as his Uxor—who said nothing even as his infidelity was laid bare before her—he grasped at the lifeline the alicorn-like ruler offered to provide him intelligence and outside help, starting by giving him the location of a massive Cloven factory at Harness and information of where they were massing to strike next.

Forewarned, he was able to defeat another millennium-sized assault on the north side of the city by mostly pure Cloven creatures. Able to shift his defenses in time, he broke up the attack using his own long-range ballistae that had finally been pulled out of underground armories along with pounding them with cannon fire from his two available airships, who continued to operate with only very limited crews and half their guns available.

But they weren’t able to incinerate most of the bodies, meaning they would probably be recycled into new soldier forms within hours, and worse, his beleaguered defenders reported that more advanced Cloven forms with enhanced abilities were starting to enter the fight.

For reasons he didn’t understand, the Cloven didn’t attack again right away as darkness fell. The rest of the evening was spent in an Ancestor-blessed lull that allowed him to try to reorganize his dazed and depleted garrison into an actual army using not just his Guard soldiers along with the city’s Peacekeepers and his own Paladin contingent, but the surviving Knights and Talons he had recovered from further west.

They collectively lacked any officer over the rank of Optio, meaning he was only able to lead them on an informal basis since the Auxiliary Guard was not normally able to command regular military forces. But that situation was resolved when, after hours of trying, the Council of Crows was able to overcome magical interference to break through on the communication gems to Arnau, leaving him relieved to learn it was still standing and Queen Molyneux was safe.

Told in turn that he was alive and the ancient fortress city of Aricia had held fast against the Cloven onslaught, they immediately named the Tribune commander of all Kingdom military forces in the Aricia district. The Queen herself authorized him to wear a gold chain that gave him the authority to command the Knights and all lesser service branches, ordering him to hold the city and tie up all the Cloven he could while the Kingdom cleaned out the forces to their rear. They would then solidify their defenses further east, forming an impenetrable wall along the west-facing slopes of the Falcine range.

Left unstated was that he was being asked to potentially sacrifice the city for the sake of buying time, but he accepted his orders without hesitation, asking only for the possibility of evacuation or relief later if the Kingdom could spare sufficient forces. To be sure, the news was not all bad—scores of elite Ravens were entering the fray courtesy of the Council of Crows labs in the city he hadn’t even been aware were there. It was only then he learned of their new bowcasters, but also that there weren’t enough of them to affect anything except isolated engagements.

Through it all, Gilda began to grudgingly marvel at everything Tribune Cipio had been through and accomplished in those eleven hours since the Cloven initially invaded, and he wasn’t done yet. Finally able to turn his attention back to the city itself, he dealt with disorder in the streets as pubs and homes were broken into, with drinks and various illicit substances flowing freely. To his great disgust—and Gilda’s as well—a few dishonorable griffons decided that if they were going to die and the Kingdom was crumbling, then they would drink and loot, or even rape and kill to their heart’s content.

Declaring martial law, Cipio ordered several centuries of soldiers into the streets along with all his Peacekeeper patrols, instructing them to come down hard on any rioters and even kill them if that’s what it took to restore order. Faced with one particularly large upheaval in the center of the city where the Maior lived, he went to the scene himself, personally putting down the ringleader of the riot in a duel that made Gilda very glad she hadn’t challenged him herself.

Having cowed the mob by crushing their commander and brutally breaking both his wings, he ordered the other offenders thrown in irons and sent down to the mines for badly needed gems and ore. He then issued a proclamation through Optio Virgo warning that ‘those that would betray their Ancestors and honor’ would be not just killed, but publicly executed using ancient Imperial methods that maximized pain as their limbs and wings were torn from their bodies one by one.

Gilda could tell that the Tribune meant it from his thoughts and anger, furious at the far-too-many culprits for thinking only of themselves when the griffon race required unity now more than ever.

By the Ancestors… and I thought I was being brutal when I threatened the ibex with being eaten! The thought crossed her mind, to which she sensed agreement from Giraldi, followed by an admonition from the Queen to stay silent and simply watch.

Nothing more was said or thought by them after that. The streets more or less secure, the Cloven resumed small probing attacks again as midnight passed. Their limited nature gave Cipio the distinct impression that the Cloven were simply trying to weaken resolve and keep Aricia’s defenders from sleeping as they massed for a future assault, shrugging off the multiple millennia of forces they’d already lost attempting to storm the city.

For what did losses matter to a foe who could recycle their dead and those of the Kingdom into new and deadlier forms in mere hours? And what did all his efforts and defensive measures mean when each of those same hours meant that his forces grew weaker while the Cloven grew stronger?

Realizing then that simple attrition meant their end was assured unless he could somehow destroy the large Cloven factory that Queen Lepidoptes had reported at Harness—and just how had he been so easily taken in by the Empire’s ancient foe? How had he allowed himself to become her lover? —he weighed his offensive options with his Talon and Knight advisors along with the ranking naval officer present, who had previously been chief engineer of an escort airship.

Cipio wanted to use the two airships to destroy the factory, only to be told that they could not do so on their own. That to attempt it would likely get them swarmed by vast numbers of spike-firing flyers they could not fend off or worse, corrupted adult dragons, against which their smaller escort ballistae were only marginally effective without heavy Magus help. They were also severely short of trained gunnery teams, given they had been forced to cut their anchors and flee for their lives minus most of their crew.

He immediately promised to assign them Guard soldiers or even civilian volunteers to take their place, but his hope for a quick and decisive strike was dashed when he was told that bringing them up to cannon competency would take days when they had only hours. “We could probably teach them to hit stationary targets, but not moving ones,” the airship’s eagless officer said in a resigned tone, saying she would nonetheless start training new gun crews upon receiving them.

Feeling trapped and increasingly besieged as he ordered Optio Virgo to write out a missive requesting volunteers, he had then received a new message from Arnau, saying that a diplomatic convoy carrying human soldiers and civilians had been forced down some thirty leagues west of Aricia and needed rescue. He was strongly advised—but not ordered—to locate and extract them, with the Council of Crows informing him that human soldiers had portable cannons that could greatly assist the city’s defense.

To Gilda’s disgust, he glanced at the report and dismissed a rescue attempt out of wing. But as much as she had initially thought otherwise, he was not being callous. His reasons were practical, as he knew immediately that he could not send a rescue force of air carriages or airships over such a long distance, especially not knowing exactly where they were.

And from his perspective, what was the point of saving them, anyway? From what he knew, the humans couldn’t fly and could barely run, and so what if they had a few single-shot cannons designed for individual soldier use? The Kingdom had tried those some eight decades earlier and found them completely impractical, but he supposed that if you were flightless, they might be less so.

In any event, he couldn’t see that the alien apes would be much help or much of a threat if captured, so he mentally wrote them off with an apology to their Ancestors, making Gilda’s beak clench.

But this time, it was Giraldi whose calming presence stayed her angry reaction. He made the proper military decision based on what little he knew at the time, he told her with his thoughts. To attempt a rescue over that distance would have been to potentially sacrifice centuries of soldiers and worse, his sorely-needed airships with success highly unlikely at best. And even were it otherwise, there is no point in holding his ignorance against him when he had no way to know differently.

His mental words only slightly mollified her. But Gilda still allowed her temper to cool, noting that Optio Virgo seemed afraid of its intensity, sensing from her thoughts that she had almost no temper to speak of and was in fact frightened by highly emotional displays. She was certainly an unusual griffon, Gilda granted, wondering what the Tribune saw in her.

That earned at least some mild indignation from the eagless Optio, but as she didn’t like provoking other griffons, she didn’t push it as the Tribune’s memories continued along with the lull in battle. It allowed him the chance to fully restore order to Aricia’s streets and complete the reorganization of his forces, giving him just over a millennium and a half of effectives—which he found only barely enough to hold the city against the intensity of the attacks they’d faced thus far.

As the night wore on, sentries on the outer and inner battlements reported hearing odd noises far off to the west. They were described as ‘very weak pops’ at the furthest edge of their hearing, punctuated by sharper booms that sounded like very distant explosions.

Though he didn’t know what to make of them as he inspected his still-shaky defenses, hearing a few such sounds himself as the early morning hours were reached, enemy activity remained low, and patrols were also reporting seeing both fewer flyers and lesser numbers of pure and Corrupted Cloven.

Though instantly suspicious that the Cloven were trying to induce an escape attempt or tempt him to lash out at their factory where his airships could be ambushed—to say nothing of starting to feel tired after scrambling from crisis to military crisis over the past day—he found the lack of further attacks odd given all the efforts they’d made to crack Aricia’s defenses since the invasion started.

Why were they now allowing the city the chance to catch its collective breath?

Though tempted to send the Ravens out for reconnaissance, he refrained, not wanting to remove his best soldiers and weapons from his mobile defense, which required him to shift forces rapidly by air to deal with various threats.

As the night wore on further, the Cloven still failed to strike again. Though thankful for the continued reprieve, he knew it was only temporary, guessing the large Cloven factory at Harness could be churning out five or more millennia of soldiers for their next attack on the city. The certainty left him wracking his mind to find a way to destroy it with his available forces, before they could overwhelm the city’s defenders with sheer numbers.

And then fresh word was received from Queen Lepidoptes over her personal communications crystal that griffon-escorted humans had somehow arrived at Lake Languid, requesting their immediate evacuation.

Stunned by the report—how had they possibly gotten that far through hostile territory, given that was well over twenty leagues away from where they’d been reportedly shot down? —she said they numbered a mixed force of nearly fifty soldiers and civilians, and from what her drones overheard, the Cloven had been concentrating centuries and then a full millennium of pure and corrupted forms against them. That though they had repeatedly emerged victorious, she could tell from their emotions alone that they were exhausted with many wounded, desperate to reach the relative safety of the city.

Cipio knew that the Lake—which he had occasionally taken his family to when they were younger and he wasn’t so estranged from his Uxor—was only twelve leagues away from the southwestern edge of the city walls, putting them in reach of a fast-flying column that could include earth griffons. He wasn’t sure why their hated foe would be so interested in the bipedal creatures who he had never laid eyes on before, but he also recognized that their obsession with the alien apes might explain the dearth of Cloven activity against the city.

Turning the situation over in his tired mind, he listened as his acting second—a Talon Centurion he’d hastily promoted to sub-Tribune to bear the proper rank—offered to piece together a rescue force and personally command it. But another of his senior officers, this one a wounded Knight eagless Optio he’d promoted to Centurion, disagreed. She said that saving such a small number of soldiers wasn’t worth the risk regardless of whatever exotic weapons the humans had.

“It could easily cost us more than we would gain,” she said coldly, claiming that if the humans were there, then the Changelings should rescue and hide them instead.

He didn’t answer right away, though her words left Gilda wanting to throttle the obtuse and ignorant aide even worse than the Tribune. But she was also having a hard time staying angry with him as she got the full sense of the enormous burden he bore and the innumerable attacks he’d already fought off that day, sensing him hiding his fears from his subordinates while weighing the pros and cons of an intervention.

He stared at the map, his eyes shifting from the location of the lake to where the Cloven factory had been marked at Harness with what looked like small blue gemstones, then back to his own forces ensconced in the city, which included wooden tokens that represented his two borrowed escort airships.

As an idea occurred to him—he still didn’t know why the Cloven so badly wanted the humans, but perhaps he could use it to his advantage—he ordered everyone out of his office as he picked up a quill and began to write orders, telling Optio Virgo to summon several individuals in turn.

What followed over the next hour was a series of one-on-one meetings with the ranking Raven, wingpicked Knight and Talon commanders, and the senior airship officer, where he gave them sealed orders that only contained their immediate instructions. Terrified of what would happen if his plans fell into Cloven hooves from a captured soldier, he directed them to share nothing with their subordinates and to destroy the missives after committing them to memory. And to fire an electrical bolt into their own brain if they were in danger of being captured.

They didn’t understand their orders, which he deliberately didn’t explain. But he told his underlings in no uncertain terms to obey them, saying only that all would be revealed later. He reserved his final set of instructions for the Changeling Queen, telling her what she needed to do and then blocking communication before she could reply, saying he would only reopen contact when the climactic battle began.

He felt at least some mild guilt over what he was doing, recognizing that he was likely sacrificing foreign guests of Queen Molyneux while forcing the Changelings to reveal themselves and likely lose their home. But as the survival of not just Aricia but the entire griffon race was at stake, he spared it no more than a moment’s thought as he allowed himself a sparse meal and a single drink of rum, recognizing that there was nothing left to do but wait.

The die cast, he finally had an overdue audience with his Uxor as dawn neared, who had kept their family in the headquarters bunker all day while occasionally lending her services as healer to help wounded soldiers. They were far more subdued after their earlier confrontation, recognizing how meaningless their squabbles and longtime estrangement now were.

She asked him for orders like she was in active service again, to which he told her to keep their cubs safe and continue to help the wounded they were treating in the bunker. She agreed but then asked if the city stood any chance against the Cloven, isolated and besieged as they were.

His initial silence spoke for him, and Gilda couldn’t help but feel a moment of sympathy for Cipio as the pair discussed what was to become of their family. They debated allowing her to try to evacuate their cubs to the east with the aid of her magic to reach friendly lines, only to conclude that their odds of survival out there alone against Cloven-corrupted mages were nil. It was also grotesquely unfair—to say nothing of outright dishonorable—to do so when many more could not.

Agreeing that if it was their fate to fall, they would do so as the family they were supposed to be, his final instructions to his wife before they parted were to not let herself or their cubs be taken. A badly subdued Gilda didn’t need to read his thoughts to know what he meant as the two parted with not a hug but a respectful exchange of salutes. When she departed, the Tribune retook his place in his bunker to await word, trying to sleep but finding himself unable to.

Nothing happened for another hour until the west suddenly lit up with fiery flashes and an endless series of sharp pops—were they the human cannons? Their soldiers must have been armed with many of them for that volume of fire—that flared up and died down repeatedly.

His sentries on the outer wall reported seeing a corrupted adult dragon approach the lake, release a few gouts of flame and then disappear in a fiery flash, which led him to guess that its body had simply been so damaged that its flame had finally burst its chest. But beyond that, there was little indication of what was happening except the fact that the battle continued as dawn approached. Reactivating his communication crystal to Queen Lepidotpes, he found it contained a single coded message:

ATTACK NOW!

Offering a final prayer to the Ancestors, he ordered the airships with adolescent drakes and all his available Knights into the air. They sped west for the Cloven factory at full throttle just as he received additional word from the Queen that the Cloven Overlord was slain and the bulk of the humans were safe. The announcement was swiftly followed by the distinct booms of naval ballistae being heard over the horizon, and for the first time since the previous day had broken, Tribune Cipio allowed himself to feel a small measure of hope.

A hope that shortly turned to triumph as additional reports flooded in of uncoordinated Cloven attacks on the city walls by small groups of soldier forms and corrupted that were easily repulsed. Standing on his balcony, he watched as the sun rose on a scene of destruction to the west and his returning airships, as well as reports that the Changelings were on their way with the rescued humans.

Dispatching soldiers to escort them and directing an awestruck Optio Virgo to put together a small honor guard to greet the Queen, he hoped the revealed Changeling ruler wouldn’t take offense at his absence. But as he wasn’t about to meet her directly given the two of them together would make a very tempting target, he allowed himself to relax briefly and pour himself another drink, thinking he might even try to sleep soon with the city at least temporarily secure.

He resolved to himself that he would do so after finding and hugging his cubs. Once he’d debriefed the unexpected leader of the human escort force, that was—a recently promoted Centurion Grizelda Behertz, who he was surprised to learn held such a lofty rank after being a mere Gladio under his command but three short years earlier.

He couldn’t help but marvel that she had somehow survived all the attacks on her command, leaving him to guess that for as much combat as her force had endured, she’d just stepped back and let her more experienced subordinates fight for her.

All of Gilda’s newly gained sympathy for him evaporated in an instant as his aide returned to report that she had defied his orders, drawing on the authority of her diplomatic command chain—which he wasn’t even aware she bore—to issue her own. In them, she directed him in no uncertain terms to greet Queen Lepidoptes with a proper honor guard while insulting him heavily in the process, calling him a fool for issuing the orders that had crushed the Cloven and saved the city.

Gilda had barely begun to feel his rage at having his authority and command questioned by an eagless nearly thirty years his junior—especially after all he had accomplished in the past day! —before a wave of near-nausea washed over her and her perspective shifted.

* * * * *

No longer seeing things through Cipio’s senses, Gilda found herself back outside Arnau beside the human encampment, awaiting the departure of their convoy.

But the height and heft of her body once again felt off and she spoke with a voice she didn’t immediately recognize. She also didn’t recall informing Raleigh directly that his demands for a human-only carriage were denied, watching as he stalked over with his disgracefully obese form to confront Gilda about it.

The sight of herself speaking with Imlay’s squad caused her to mentally start—by the Ancestors, she looked and sounded so different from seeing herself in a mirror or hearing herself speak! —but the body she was in took no notice of her surprise. It was quite large and strong, to say nothing of very well-practiced in combat, but its owner felt no need to flaunt it. And unlike her own typically hot-tempered thoughts, her mind and emotions were quite level; her voice deep and clear as she—no, he—stood to Gilda’s left and slightly behind her as she met the escorting human Marines.

This is Giraldi! She finally realized simultaneously with an equally startled thought from the Tribune, who she sensed was even more shocked to feel himself in another body for the first time. But as her second’s memories hadn’t opened in the middle of an attack or any other crisis, Gilda was given a chance to more fully appreciate what she was experiencing through his senses, from the feel of the breeze against his face to the smell of the grass around them to a twinge in his hip from an old injury he’d suffered fighting ibexian irregulars as he moved.

His tiercel form felt alien and yet perfectly normal to her as the discussion that preceded their departure and then the flight to Catlais were replayed in quick succession, ending with their convoy being shot down by the Cloven-employed lightning trap.

It allowed her the chance to perceive what had happened from inside an air carriage to suddenly hear a massive crash of thunder and feel the carriage shake, causing severe consternation among Chris and the wingless Marines inside. But their coach was unharmed and able to land safely; to Giraldi’s credit, he commanded the situation well, opening the door and ordering the other earth griffon present to be ready to fly the seven humans aboard to ground.

At one point, he glanced outside to see the previously insulting Paladin commander throw himself in front of Marco’s crippled coach to block another lightning bolt, leaving Giraldi deciding that perhaps he wasn’t dishonorable after all. He could only briefly see Gilda and Fortrakt trying to save the stricken carriage before his view of them was blocked, offering up a prayer to the Ancestors that they would be able to do so.

His own carriage alit somewhat roughly in a clearing a minute later, coming in sharply for a very hard landing as the Marines spilled out and took a defensive formation with their cannons pointed outwards, relieved to be on solid ground again. He admired their practiced efforts and the discipline of their soldiers in shaking off the sudden attack, though he could all but smell the sweat on them and hear their pounding hearts as the adrenaline rush coursed through them.

Their male human scent was pleasing to him, and he had the passing thought that he might enjoy being more immersed in it. But he could give it no mind as he hurried to help the stricken coach, praying again that all inside had survived the crash.

To his great relief, they had, though Marco and the overweight human named Raleigh—and how could a human who couldn’t hunt possibly get so heavy? —needed healing. Gilda then saw their discussions and Nydia tending the wounded, including what happened during the two hours she’d been sleeping after being healed.

But little occurred of note except for Giraldi taking the time to try to steady a badly shaken Chris as he sat on a stump, rubbing his lower back like a father would a frightened cub. As he did so, he found at least one stray memory from what he guessed was the night of the cider trying to rise up within him, finding a focus in the human tiercel’s voice and scent.

Wait—did this mean he had been with not just Tara, but Chris that night?

A sudden swelling sensation in his loins told him that he had. Putting the question aside no matter how much he suddenly wanted to stay in the other male’s presence and comfort him further, he busied himself with setting their defense and seeing to the treatment of the wounded.

When told Gilda was asleep, he glanced over at her and said to let her rest, recalling from an earlier conversation with Fortrakt that she had gotten very little the previous night. Though he might have teased Fortrakt and Gilda over the fact that they’d technically slept with each other, he had not, knowing it might not be appreciated given the seriousness of the situation and how much losing Marco had hurt his new commander.

Once everycreature was healed and Gilda herself was up again, they finally set off, letting the newly revealed Ravens guide them—and Giraldi found himself both relieved and disappointed to learn their true identity, given he’d fully intended to fight the obtuse and insulting Paladin commander later for slurring their human friends. They headed for the food-filled cart, to which Gilda sensed some disfavor from the Tribune, over her having not detected what he found from the available information alone to be an obvious trap.

But his smug sense of superiority vanished as the ambush itself was replayed, and with it, the first demonstration of human weapons. She picked up what she could only describe as a stunned sensation from the Tribune and his eagless aide as the exotic Marine cannons opened up on the charging force of corrupted griffons and large animals; their metal tubes mowing down an attack that initially looked overwhelming with terrifying speed and lethality.

Giraldi himself was barely able to register the individual cracks of human cannon fire as a near-deafening cacophony of it erupted, hurting his ears but leaving him in awe as he watched the massive Cloven assault on their rear crumble before them.

Though Gilda took great satisfaction at Tribune Cipio’s shock to see the human soldiers lay waste to what initially appeared to be an unstoppable assault, she—and Optio Virgo—couldn’t help but be mesmerized as they saw the battle unfold through Giraldi’s eyes. He fought to defend the fore almost by himself from the attack of corrupted Caleponians but kept stealing repeated looks at the humans, watching as their long tubes belched short blasts of fire and the air around him soon smelled of an acrid smoke that he guessed belonged to some form of explosive powder.

Gilda also couldn’t help but admire her second for how easily he engaged in combat without panicking or losing awareness of his surroundings, which was something she had severe trouble with at first. At various points, he glanced up to note that Fortrakt was commanding his sky griffons against their airborne enemies surprisingly well, and also saw how effective the Ravens were in dealing with the threat to the front.

As he put down a mere six corrupted corpses around the cart—he had an inkling even then of what they were facing but couldn’t consider it just then—they cut down a score of corrupted creatures with their blades and buzzing repeaters, though the sound of the latter was dwarfed by human cannons.

He further noted with great satisfaction how the human civilians and especially Tara held their ground—except for a sobbing Raleigh—and dealt with the forces charging them from the flanks, leaving only one final corrupted Talon for him to kill once he’d put the attacking Caleponians down. He did so promptly, though he was given severe pause when he saw a panicked Tara briefly level her weapon at him when he appeared before her.

Thankfully, she recognized him in time and did not fire; Gilda felt her heart race—or was it Giraldi’s? —as the events of the battle unfolded anew. But she also beheld her own shocked and dumbfounded expression as she found there was little she could do, able to fire exactly one bolt in the ground battle that felled a captured Talon Centurion and take out a single corrupted when she took flight to join the airborne battle.

The ambush was smashed in under a minute, ending with another demonstration of human firepower when they were able to kill a shielded griffon mage with what Gilda now knew was a grenade. That caused a mental cringing sensation she could sense from the Tribune, as he realized that human weapons in the hooves of the Cloven could take down magic shields as well as punch through metal armor.

So, still think we were exaggerating about human cannons, Tribune? Gilda asked after the combat replay was fully concluded. As you saw, they had ‘rounds’ that could easily punch through Paladin armor as well!

Please be silent, Grizelda Behertz, Queen Lepidoptes interjected as she paused the playback. I remind you that a cacophony of mental conversation is not conducive to this process. You are taking part in this to share and learn, not accuse and argue. Once she was satisfied that her instruction had been obeyed, she resumed replaying Giraldi’s memories.

The next hour was spent destroying their dead and planning their next steps, while also attending to the wounded bodies and psyches that the battle had left behind. Giraldi found himself shaken by the certainty that they were facing the Cloven, though he carefully hid it, knowing from long experience that commanders had to project confidence at all times. At Gilda’s direction, they taught the humans about the Cloven and succeeded in getting through to Arnau at least briefly on a Marine communication device, leaving the Tribune and his aide impressed by its range and clarity.

They marched to Bale soon after, but not before capturing the ibex, causing Gilda to grimace to see their wounds and severely damaged antlers. Though she felt no sympathy for them then—and neither did Giraldi—she did now after all they’d been through, recognizing from the ragged and desperate look on Karin Kazal’s face when he materialized from out of the summon dome that the three ibex had been through ‘Hell’. It left her guessing that he was the only one still even partially battleworthy by then, trying to protect his two remaining teammates for just a few seconds more.

But yet again, she couldn’t linger on the thought as they were captured and put in the cart under the guard of a single Raven. Stopping half a league out from Bale to receive the reports of Ebon Umbreon and Occulta Bellator, Gilda was given severe pause as she saw those events through Giraldi’s eyes, and not for battle.

It was only as the memory replayed that she recalled something sexual had nearly happened then, with Giraldi himself feeling a sudden rush of what he knew was the cider effect through him. For a long and lingering moment, he felt strangely compelled to kiss and caress Ebon Umbreon, not only greatly admiring his lithe form but his unquestioned honor and warrior ability.

Against all odds and their still-dire situation, he found himself suddenly and quite sorely wanting to sample the Shadow Decurion’s tiercel body right then and there with tongue and talons, and worse, found himself willing to do so regardless of danger or anycreature watching. He knew the idea was ridiculous and wrong—never mind the poor timing, but why, by the Ancestors themselves, would he be interested in rutting a male he’d only barely met?

And yet, he couldn’t help it just then, feeling his fur and feathers start to tingle fiercely. The pink around the edges of his vision only grew as it seemed to form an inviting halo around the other tiercel, leaving him aware of little else but his scent and sleek form. A sudden and severe tightness in his loins told Gilda he was starting to get aroused, and the odor of the other male said that he was as well, their beaks beginning to drift closer and wings starting to rise.

Her nearly forgotten body suddenly sitting bolt upright to feel her first hint of male arousal—so different from her own form of it! —Gilda found herself urging it to happen along with an equally enticed Optio Virgo, though she knew perfectly well that they couldn’t affect events that had already occurred. Even the Tribune seemed both stunned and enrapt to feel it, and his eagless aide was suddenly filled with lurid fantasies that seemed more suited for a Neighponese comic than a report-writing adjutant.

And then, to Gilda’s great annoyance, she intervened to stop it in Giraldi’s memory, ordering them back to business while barking out orders. Snapped out of his unlikely reverie, it left Giraldi feeling light-headed and a bit dizzy, wondering where such strong urges had come from while barely daring to hope that his interest in the other tiercel might be mutual.

Crows take it… Gilda then heard Optio Virgo’s almost forlorn thought, leaving her wondering why she wanted to see it so badly. Tribune Cipio clearly agreed, giving his new aide what she could only describe as an askance mental look.

But Gilda also couldn’t help but note that he hadn’t objected to it or expressed any sort of disapproval, even though it had unquestionably been at a very bad time. She might have teased him over it despite the Queen’s admonition to remain silent, if she didn’t know how badly it could backfire on her when it was time for her memories to replay.

Once again, her thoughts couldn’t linger on such subjects as they entered the steadholt and set their defense within it. For the first time, she felt an element of approval from not just Giraldi in his memory, but the Tribune regarding her actions as she intimidated Karin Kazal into giving up more of his magic, and then went down into the spell-sealed cellar herself not knowing if she would ever be able to escape it.

He also mentally acknowledged the devotion of her human mate and equally honorable bravery of the accompanying Marine, granting briefly with his thoughts that for a race so different from griffons, they showed a very griffon-like sense of honor and duty.

Watching from outside the cellar’s entrance as she was, Gilda then got to witness the sudden explosion of Decanus Nydia’s stave as the shelter spell was brought down, sending wooden shards into her face with the magical backlash knocking her out. She was immediately attended by Chief Jacobs, but Giraldi himself couldn’t spare her much attention as Marco came running out to explain the situation, already looking a little pale from the stale air.

They got the mothers and cubs out promptly, though Giraldi spared a moment of concern for Gilda when he saw her standing over the fallen Magus, who had a crossbow bolt she had fired in his head. Guessing she was having trouble accepting the act, he judged it best to let her be for a bit, resolving to only pull her out if she lingered.

When the mothers and their offspring were then revived by the human healer, Gilda got to experience Giraldi’s paternal side for the first time. She quickly came to appreciate how he was instinctively able to calm and reassure the cubs, speaking to them softly not as a soldier, but as a sire. They took to him readily—Ancestors knew she’d never been good with cubs herself—to another strong sense of approval from the Tribune, leaving him noting that thus far, Giraldi had impressed him far more than Gilda.

But that quickly changed as the Cloven attacked again halfway through the night and they were faced with one crisis after another, starting with an underground assault from the Diamond Dogs. Yet again, the Marines impressed Giraldi with their accurate cannon fire and well-practiced efforts, cutting down the invading Cloven almost as quickly as they appeared. They left him almost forlornly wishing that he could wield their weapons, doubly so as they pulled out their ‘fifty’ from storage gems and used it to kill the final three Elder Ram forms after the first was downed by another launched grenade.

It was all Giraldi could do not to get aroused as he saw the human heavy cannon annihilate the nearly impervious pure Cloven forms. He paid close attention as it was reloaded, noting the placement of the large talon-sized pointed cannonballs and the actions the human Marines took to fire it, reasoning that the lever they pulled was a charging handle not unlike what they used for their crossbows.

He would get his chance to use that knowledge swiftly as another three centuries of pure Cloven arrived, only somewhat whittled down by the larger human ‘rifles’—Ancestors, their range and accuracy were incredible to be able to strike them down so far out! She heard his thought echoed by that of the Tribune—while also feeling a strong sense of pride in Chris that he was getting to take part with his curious wood-wrapped cannon; he couldn’t help but note that it made the loudest boom of all short of the ‘fifty’.

The battle unfolded as Gilda remembered, Except that Giraldi was not able to see much from where he waited inside the main hall with Spear Jade Jumentum; he stood sentry with her while the human fifty covered the courtyard and the open gate. All the combat was erupting behind them out of view as the Cloven tried to come in over the back wall, at least until Giraldi felt an odd sense of foreboding that he had learned from long and bitter experience on the Ibexian border meant to expect an ambush.

Recalling that she had sensed the same thing, Gilda heard herself order ground and aerial reinforcements to the front entrance over the human radios, sending Giraldi and Jade Jumentum to help cover it. But there was nothing he could see or smell in front of them as the human heavy cannon stood silent at the top of the stairs behind a row of curved boxes they had emplaced—’Claymores’, the Marines called them, which was an odd term given he only knew that to be a form of olden earth pony sword; one used historically by the Shetland ponies who lived in the isthmus between the Celestial and Lunar seas.

And then he saw Gilda hovering above the courtyard, screaming into the radio to use them, her eyes wide and fearful. Though confused, the Marines did so, causing a massive series of horrifically strong detonations from the boxes that impossibly leveled the area in only the outward direction. The explosions revealed another century of infiltrating soldier forms advancing under the cover of a corrupted ibex aura, with a third of their number already slain by the brutally effective weapon.

The battle that erupted was sharp and desperate as the startled and sorely endangered Marines swore violently and began mowing the revealed Cloven down. Instantly reading the situation, Giraldi ordered Spear Jumentum into the sky and to load an incendiary bolt to take out the Porkupikes firing on them from the rear.

They succeeded in killing one while a heavy Marine rifle slew the second from the balcony behind them, eliminating the threat. But before Giraldi could turn his attention to the corrupted ibex, he saw his Centurion strike.

Gilda grimaced as she watched herself swoop down on one of the ibex with murder in her eyes, not appreciating how close she’d come to being killed before an airborne Jade Jumentum grabbed her by the collar to pull her up and away, causing a soldier form’s tail-swung spikes to only barely miss her.

Way to keep your head, Grizelda Behertz, she told herself before the Tribune could, grateful he said nothing though she could sense the severe disapproval in his thoughts. But then their attention was grabbed by the big human gun falling silent as it needed a reload.

The Cloven took that as their cue, with their entire remaining force of forty pure and corrupted forms erupting into a full gallop towards the gun while razorbats ignored the airborne griffons to strike from above, their massed spike fire driving the Marines away.

As Gilda scrambled to counter the airborne attack, it fell to Giraldi to stop the ground one. Facing the charging corrupted force, he fired his heavy crossbow once to detonate an explosive bolt in front of the advancing soldier forms to slow them, then leapt on all fours for the abandoned human cannon, recognizing instantly that it was the only way to stop the Cloven assault.

His mind racing and praying to the Ancestors that he remembered the procedure properly, he tore open the top of the metal box by yanking on a large latch to reveal the massive talon-sized bullets, then quickly found the end of the chain—by sheer luck he spotted the end ‘round’ quickly and fed it into the hot and smoking tube, setting it in place as he’d watched the humans do before slamming the top shut.

Once it was closed, he yanked the charging lever—he hadn’t noticed before, but doing so caused the chain of bullets to shift towards the weapon with the closest one disappearing into the cannon barrel—and hefted the heavy weapon, finding it awkward but carriable. But then he wasn’t sure how to fire it until the Marines told him; he glanced over at them to see them making a motion with their thumb talons downwards like he was holding the grips in his fists.

Fumbling with it briefly, the weapon fired once. Gilda could feel everything from the intense and nearly irresistible recoil of the human cannon to its heavy weight in Giraldi’s grasp, which she instantly realized that she could not have hefted. But he had no chance to consider the consequences of his actions as he pointed the weapon downstairs, bracing himself as he used it in earnest for the first time.

It rocked him back again, but the three rounds he fired struck home, taking down one ascending soldier form and even the corrupted griffon behind it. Finding that the cannon tended to kick hard enough to disrupt his aim the more rounds that erupted from it at once, he quickly settled on a strategy of short, controlled bursts that each took down two or three Cloven at a time.

Finally seeing how he could both wield and control it, he began marching forward with it to meet the Cloven attack, feeling indestructible as he watched them crumble before him. He could feel a bruise forming against his side where the weapon was braced against him as the recoil of individual cannon shots struck him repeatedly, but it was dwarfed by the feeling of sheer power and triumph he felt. One that only grew as he advanced, noting briefly the human Marines grabbing their weapons and hurrying out to the sides to support him, trying to keep the remaining Cloven from flanking him.

He paid them little mind except to appreciate their bravery and loyalty, risking themselves alongside him as he used their cannon to swiftly exterminate the Cloven assault force. She could sense the sheer exhilaration he felt to wield such a destructive weapon, including the feeling of utter invincibility it gave him as he advanced with it on two legs like he was a human—even Tribune Cipio noted he was remarkably well-balanced like that! —to mow down the charging Cloven as assuredly as if the entire line of them had been sliced by a scythe like a stand of grain.

Finally taking to the air to target the entire courtyard as he saw Gilda and the Ravens defeating the airborne threat, he obliterated the attack as the chain of cannonballs was swiftly slurped up by the greedy weapon. With each enemy soldier that fell, the pure exultation and elation he felt grew until…

He had just taken down the final corrupted form with a loud and victorious roar when he felt a sudden and quite delectable swelling and throbbing sensation in his crotch. His wings starting to stiffen and suddenly having trouble holding him aloft, he looked down to see he was quite rigidly and exquisitely erect, with his cider-enhanced spear dangling deliciously in front of him.

It was in danger of touching the horrifically hot metal of the cannon’s tube, which he could feel against its sensitive head. But instead of subsiding at the threatened injury, it only engorged further, and he couldn’t help but encourage it, half-hoping the human males would see him in his state.

By the Ancestors… Gilda couldn’t help but shiver to feel the alien but irresistibly good male sensations. She sensed her thigh muscles clenching around the ghost of a foreign phallus and heavy seed-laden sac that felt impossibly attached to her; her real talons dipping low on her body to stroke the erotic object that wasn’t even there.

They closed on only air to her great frustration, but the steady stream of sensations she and an amazed Optio Virgo continued to feel were not to be ignored. So THIS is what it feels like to have a tiercel spear? She heard the other eagless ask for her, equally overcome by the intense pleasure coursing through Giraldi’s fiercely throbbing, tingling organ. He was both embarrassed and delighted to see that in his upright state, he was fully displayed before the awestruck and clearly interested male Marines, who kept trying to steal glances at him.

For a single moment, Gilda—or was it Giraldi? —found himself sorely hoping that they would inspect his stature more closely. And that he could thank them properly later, turning them on as they had him with their Ancestors-blessed cannon, leaving him ready and eager to fire his own.

Despite the just-concluded combat, the tiercel-tucking fantasy he suddenly engaged in with the two male human Marines was fierce as he turned to his memory of Gilda watching him. He apologized for his untoward display even as he was desperate to indulge it; wanting only to bury his suddenly sorely-aroused and eager member in the tail of a human or griffon male.

“Ancestors…” She dimly heard Optio Virgo call out, realizing through their shared minds that the two tiercels in the room were now quite fiercely and painfully erect, with herself and the Tribune’s adjutant likewise groping at the ghost phallus attached to them.

The latter began making light thrusting motions with her hips while Gilda was trying to resist the urge to do so even as her teats went rigid and began to bulge slightly on her belly. Her sensation was promptly echoed by one from the other eagless; Gilda couldn’t see her but could feel her mammaries becoming equally engorged and eager to be touched, surprising her as she’d never thought of them as anything erotic before.

But the moment passed as, perhaps sensing everycreature was getting dangerously aroused and distracted, a startled but otherwise unaffected Queen Lepidoptes proceeded to show them the rest of Giraldi’s memories.

To their equal disappointment and relief—far more the former for Optio Virgo and the latter for the Tribune—Gilda felt her excitement ebb quickly as they discussed their next steps and settled on use of the ibexian summoning gems to escape the steadholt, with Giraldi offering up a silent prayer to the Ancestors for her safety and that of Fortrakt as he took over the defense and watched the pair leave.

She then saw the climactic battle of Bale unfold as well over a full millennium of mixed pure and corrupted Cloven attempted to storm the town. And as she watched through Giraldi’s eyes, she realized that they very nearly succeeded; she felt her guts clench as hard as her second’s did when he saw red flares go up from the Ravens to indicate the approach of adult dragons.

But though suddenly and sorely afraid, swearing silently to the Ancestors that he would not decline the chance to have sex with Ebon Umbreon or any human tiercels if he survived the night, Giraldi calmly directed a retreat into the main hall under the cover of ibexian magic as the Marines hurriedly readied their ‘Stingers’ on the second floor balcony. They did so as he observed from above, taking to the air as Gilda had so he could see everything that was happening around him.

As he watched, storage gems were produced and two large rectangular boxes appeared out of them as a quartet of Marines swarmed over them, readying them for use. Within seconds the Marines had hoisted them to their shoulders, saying their ‘seekers’ were already ‘tracking’ the monstrous creatures as they came in for the first pass.

“Backblast clear!” they warned as one, to which there was a great eruption of smoke and flame out the back of the large, shoulder-hefted tubes that would have severely burned anycreature standing behind them.

Launched one after the other, they rose into the sky on two bright pillars of fire with a sharp whooshing sound, seemingly propelled by the great gouts of flame they emitted from their tails that reminded Gilda briefly of the launch of a ‘rocket’ in Apollo 13. They shot almost straight up at first but then arced over sharply to target the nearest dragon, with the twin trails of light visibly converging on the glowing hole in its chest.

Both hit, and the detonations that followed caused its upper torso to explode with all its contained conflagration, with the edge of it catching Ebon Umbreon to the horror of Giraldi. He had been harassing the drake with his repeater and slashing at its already-ripped wings in an effort to deprive it of flight, heeding the warning to flee a fraction of a second late. But he flew free of the dissipating flame despite being severely singed, diving for the ground to escape the horrific heat.

There was little time to celebrate or for Gilda to note with satisfaction the fresh shock of Tribune Cipio at the feat as the surviving dragon made a pass, but it didn’t assault the Main Hall directly. Instead, it laid a tall curtain of fire just upwind of it so the poisonous smoke and vapors would be carried inside and suffocate all within.

Or at least, that was the guess of Giraldi’s thoughts. “Gas!” Gilda heard Imlay shout as the Marines hurriedly donned odd masks and Giraldi ordered his griffons to do the same with their beak-fitting vapor scarves, tossing spare ones to Chris and Marco while recognizing to his great relief that the dragons were not trying to kill them directly. But they were still no less endangered as the Cloven reached the dwelling despite additional Claymore detonations and fire from the balcony just as they slammed the front doors shut and hurriedly barricaded it with benches.

A second series of whooshes and close-range detonations that shook the hall followed as the other dragon was brought down—was that the one Gilda herself had seen slain from a distance in the air near Harness? —but Giraldi did not witness it.

He was instead shouting orders inside the hall as the two Ravens dove through the open skylight to crash to the floor before Karin Kazal slapped a magical shield over the smashed opening. The Marines hurriedly threw up additional barricades on the high ground of the stage where they could target the doors and windows, which were already being pounded on, guarding their final line of retreat to the basement below.

The mothers and their terrified, crying cubs were ushered through along with a freaked and shaking Raleigh, ordered to take refuge in the cellar, but not before a series of shotgun and pistol blasts erupted in the corridor behind them that told both Giraldi and Gilda that Tara was present. Realizing that meant she was protecting the mothers and cubs from pursuing Cloven, the action was over before he could intervene and Tara finally appeared with a badly broken leg, leaning on a Marine who’d been guarding the cubs along with her while clutching her pistol and a borrowed blade as her leg hung at an awkward angle.

Despite her obvious pain and injuries, she limped to the forefront and reloaded her wide-tubed cannon with strange cylindrical rounds, ignoring Imlay’s order to retreat until she was forcibly picked up and carried there, directed to cover the cellar’s ‘back door’.

Her actions earned admiration from Giraldi and the Tribune alike as the cubs and mothers finally made it into the cellar. Gilda couldn’t help but sneer when Raleigh somewhat weakly asked for a weapon, to which a harried Chris told him to “move!” and all but shoved him down the stairs before he took position in a crouch at the edge of the stage behind a stone table, aiming his wood-wrapped rifle at the front doors.

They had little time to prepare themselves before they were smashed in by Elder Ram forms, who acted as a shield before Stavrou’s fifty cut them down again; the noise was painfully loud and close to deafening as it echoed in the closed-in space of the hall. Though he could cover the front door, the windows and the skylights were still available for ingress; the razorbat forms began pouring in while rifle fire from above told Giraldi that the Cloven were also trying to come down the stairwells from the balcony.

He dispatched the Ravens to seal the stairwells with explosives, which they did in just seconds before rejoining the main effort along with the Marines who had been on the balcony. They held fast against the onslaught for another minute, with every Cloven ground soldier who made it through the doors and windows instantly gunned down. But then the ibexian shields faltered from the sheer number of spike hits and the ceiling crumbled around the skylight, to which Giraldi reluctantly ordered two Guardsgriffons to cover the breach from the air while they began an evacuation to the cellar.

They did so, buying a few seconds but also perished to Giraldi’s great regret, wondering if there was anything else he could have done as the Marines and griffons made a staged withdrawal to the basement, team by team and fuga by fuga. They made it but couldn’t recover the bodies of the two brave Guardsgriffons as Giraldi himself grabbed a wounded Chris and ran below. He didn’t see what happened to him, only the spikes sticking out of his back, praying he wasn’t paralyzed as the Ravens brought down the cellar opening behind them, trapping them and all but guaranteeing their death by slow suffocation if not the claws of the Cloven.

They reorganized as best they could despite their shaking forms and smoking gun barrels as more noises were quickly heard above them; a pounding sound was swiftly followed by cracks in the ceiling appearing from heavy impacts against the floor above. Griffon and human alike watched with horror as it began to crumble from repeated hits of Elder Ram forms, threatening to bring it down on their heads.

With no way to stop them except to fire through the floor—which Imlay wisely ordered his Marines not to do given that would only weaken it and hasten its collapse—they had nearly broken through, leaving Giraldi about to accept his death.

His life flashing before his eyes, he thought first of his family, praying to the Ancestors that they were safe in Arnau, with a fleeting vision of his cider-fueled time with Tara then passing through his mind. It was swiftly followed by a surprisingly incestuous fantasy—or was it a memory? —of his last meeting with his two sons when he was teaching them to fight.

But whatever its nature, his thoughts quickly shifted away from it, finding himself regretting only that he hadn’t taken the chance to enjoy the company of Ebon Umbreon. But he’d barely been able to think it when the first summoning gem was activated, and his surroundings suddenly changed—to Gilda’s surprise, for as long as it took for the summoning process to complete on her end, it happened instantaneously to him—to find themselves in a cracked and dragon-scorched depression surrounded by a still-smoldering corn field.

Not knowing why they were there instead of their planned destination of Harness, a quick but very tense discussion with Imlay and Ebon Umbreon followed as the Marines quickly formed a perimeter, just inside the edge of what Giraldi guessed had been a Caleponian irrigation pond.

Surmising that there was a good reason why they’d been summoned to that location instead of the hilltop steadholt, and as they were shrouded from sight by the smoke, Giraldi ordered his remaining forces to stay put. He further directed Decanus Nydia and Chief Jacobs to see to the triage of the wounded, with even the ibex assisting them.

They stayed out there for another hour not knowing when or if they would ever be summoned for a second time, fearing both the coming dawn and the lifting of the smokescreen that hid them as the incinerated corn crop slowly stopped smoldering. They were starting to discuss trying to make a run for an abandoned half-destroyed house they could just see in the distance when they were overtaken by the ibexian summoning magic again, finding themselves in a dark and foreboding forest instead of the village of Yoke.

And this time, to Giraldi’s great relief, Gilda and Fortrakt were present, allowing all to be explained. Gilda was gratified again to sense that both Giraldi and the Tribune were impressed by her improvisation and ability to change plans on the fly, as it became clear to them that she’d made the right choices under severe pressure to abandon the attempt to reach Yoke and head for Lake Languid instead.

The march to the main camp and hill over the hidden Changeling hive followed. Though there was no combat, there were still some severely tense moments when Miles Fortuna had launched a flare to alert the Cloven of their location. Feeling her anger rise anew, Gilda was nevertheless impressed at her former First Spear’s enormous sac as he simply walked between the lines of Marines and Ravens, who had their weapons leveled at each other.

He then talked both sides down, likely saving the situation; she was happy again when she sensed some chagrin from Tribune Cipio at seeing how close they’d come to turning on each other.

Watching herself through Giraldi’s eyes, Gilda couldn’t help but marvel slightly again at how he heard her voice—by the crows, she sounded so different to him! —but also noted that he wasn’t just placating her by saying she’d led them well. He truly believed it and believed in her, even having the passing thought that she was growing into command quickly.

Their reinforcements received, they readied for battle with Gilda impressing the Tribune again by rattling off her orders with surprising speed, setting a solid defense that neatly merged human and griffon capabilities. The battles around the south side of the lake then unfolded as they had before, though Giraldi was not witness to the rescue of the wounded dragon females or the intervention of the human Marines to guard their retreat route across the gorge.

But he did see Gilda successfully commanding the airborne battle and then attempting to escape the sudden appearance of a corrupted adult dragon who targeted her, calling for the Marines to ready more of their ‘heat-seeking sorcery’. They did so swiftly as Giraldi could only watch Gilda’s flight helplessly, certain she had just made a fatal mistake when she dove into the gorge to try to escape the drake.

And you called ME a crow-damned idiot, Behertz? She sensed the Tribune thinking at her, to which her beak clenched but she didn’t otherwise reply. He was right, after all.

Giraldi’s eyes then caught a distant flash just as the corrupted dragon filled the canyon with fire, which he thought might have been an exploding gem. Pulling out his spyglass crystal, it showed that an uninjured but visibly shocked Gilda was present with Karin Kazal, who had teleported out with her to the gorge’s rim but appeared to have no more power.

With his sharp eyes, he could just see the ibex buck motioning at her to flee, but in what he found to be an incredible show of honor, Gilda repaid his rescue by ordering him onto her back and taking off with both of them, trying to flee a fiery death yet again. He heard a call over the communication gems from Miles Fortuna for Gilda to fly out over the lake and turn towards the hill. To his relief, the latter did so as the Marines called ready, though he had to yank a confused Obsidian Ire bodily backwards out of the way as she stood behind the shoulder-hefted weapons.

Yet again, human ‘stingers’ streaked up and then out to intercept the wounded dragon by targeting the flame venting from a hole in its neck, but when they hit, the bright flashes and deafening booms forced everyone to flinch away.

By the time Giraldi’s vision and hearing cleared, Gilda and Karin Kazal were nowhere to be seen as the remains of the twice-dead dragon fell into the lake and produced a large wave that washed over the shoreline, leaving him praying to the Ancestors again that she hadn’t been too close to the blast.

With the dragon defeated, the few remaining airborne Cloven withdrew as their unseen Overlord understood that the grounded ones did not have the numbers to storm the hill. Despite calling repeatedly to Gilda through the human radios and being increasingly certain she was dead, he relaxed when Gilda herself finally replied five minutes later. She said she had been knocked out by the force of the blast and sent skidding across the water into a cove, but that she was now okay and returning with the Starshina.

She arrived soon after with Karin Kazal taking nearly weightless leaps through the trees behind her. Though Giraldi sensed that she wasn’t telling the full truth about what happened out there and wondered why her cheeks were slightly flushed and her focus seemed off, he didn’t press the matter, just happy that she was alive.

The rest of his memory replay was almost anticlimactic after that, as the display of human firepower became something close to routine while Gilda got used to seeing things through her Optio’s senses, marveling at both the great strength of his body and the cool head he always kept.

The skill of the humans in the set-piece battles around the abandoned hive was then demonstrated as they left many centuries of dead Cloven clustered around the hill and up its slopes, even able to slay large carrier forms with their heavier rifles and blast great gaps in ground soldier formations with their grenades.

The final phase of the battle for Lake Languid then unfolded through Giraldi’s eyes as they saw the massive Cloven army arrayed against them and the increasingly awful tactics employed to try to overcome human firearms, beginning with the flood of parasites and ending with the appearance of the dragon-like Cloven Overlord.

Not even Giraldi was immune to the feelings of helplessness and terror it induced, though he alone seemed to muster up enough will to resist the mental onslaught, grabbing a heavy repeater in an action Gilda had not seen to fire it up at the beast. But as great as his despair was, it paled in comparison to the awe and joy he felt to see Queen Lepidoptes and her Changelings appear to turn the tide of battle and bring down the monstrous creature, saving them just as all seemed lost.

He again had hidden it well, but his relief was palpable, and he once more silently swore an oath to the Ancestors that he would find a way to indulge his newly discovered interests and urges before long. But Queen Lepidoptes wisely didn’t linger on that, and Gilda’s mind gave what she could only describe as another slightly nauseating mental lurch as her perspective shifted yet again.

* * * * *

This time, Gilda found herself inside the body of another eagless, reading a news scroll while staring down at the remains of a half-eaten lunch of raw meat and melon. Far from thoughts of humans or Cloven, the off-duty Optio Rubens Virgo was enjoying the final day of her weeklong leave with her parents, wondering what to do with herself until it was time to return to her unit in Tierra.

A staff officer of minor noble lineage assigned to the Talon legion based there, and a rare griffon of her age who was more interested in art and intellectual pursuits than fighting and mating, she thought of going to one of the few museums in Aricia she hadn’t seen yet only to freeze when a shrill sound was heard across the city.

Recognizing it as Gilda had to be a warning of a dragon attack, she ushered her family into the basement and pulled on her Decurion armor, which she wasn’t that good at carrying or fighting in, given she’d only been awarded it a month earlier. It had been a reward less for her combat prowess than her ability to be a good report writer and administrator for one of the legion’s ten cohorts, after all.

Finally going out on their rooftop balcony to take a wary look, she was relieved to see no dragons or fresh-set fires. She had barely started to relax when she spotted a dark cloud of what looked like the nibbler gnats she hated wading through on Gauntlet exercises descending on the city out of the sky. Squinting as they got closer, she realized that they weren’t mere insects, but a far larger swarm of unusually large and lethal-looking razorbats. As she watched, they attacked any and every civilian they saw with wing slashes and spikes, sending them scurrying and shrieking as a series of large and dangerous looking spiders rained down on them.

Certain she was having a nightmare, she watched agape until she felt something hit her left pauldron. Startled, she looked over to see a black, red-eyed arachnid that looked like a poisonous shadow weaver, with a massive and dangerous pair of pincers that dripped something so vile it ate a hole in the metal plate of her shoulder armor, just starting to scuttle towards her head.

Her arachnophobia immediately reasserting itself, Gilda’s guts clenched to see and feel it, so she didn’t blame the other eagless for panicking or emitting a schoolcub shriek. She slapped at it with her opposite talons and threw it to the ground before grabbing a blade off her belt with a fumbling set of talons and stabbing it repeatedly. It was only then as she stumbled back inside her clan’s home and slammed the door shut that she realized a call to arms was sounding across the city, meaning all soldiers—even poor ones like her—had to report to the Auxiliary Guard base and armory immediately.

Still not knowing what was happening, she ordered her frightened family to stay inside and their attendants to take up arms from their private vault, warning them to kill any black bats or spiders they saw. Though nervous, they promised to obey, but then she turned to see her uncle enter the room, his hind leg broken from what appeared to be another griffon’s bite with what little was left of his blood still dripping from a slashed-open throat that had turned his normally white-feathered chest crimson.

She stared in horror as he staggered towards her with lifeless eyes despite his gruesome injuries, more certain than ever that she was having a nightmare. She was only jolted out of her shock by the scream of her younger brother and his plea to their Ancestors to save them, going for an old scimitar mounted on the wall in a display of heirloom weapons her line once wielded.

Though she had no experience with a sword, she grabbed it and swung it towards his head. To her surprise, it sliced right through thanks to its olden but still-active enchantments, severing his spine with ease. He crumpled, but to her renewed horror, she then saw another shadow weaver-like spider emerge from a hole in his head, likely looking for a new host.

It was only then she realized what they were facing; she had to stifle a second urge to scream even as she grabbed an old shield from the wall display and simply pounded the nightmare creature into pulp. Their foe now plain from not just old myths and legends but her studies of history—the Cloven of the Sun! —she recoiled in horror as her younger siblings began to cry, and worse, two of their attendants immediately abandoned her family, saying that they had to defend their own.

Two others remained, but not trusting them, she waited until the outside attack died down before leading her clan to the City’s Main Hall, where her father was friends of the Maior. To her relief, they let them within their hastily established defensive ring after scanning them with mages; she was stunned at the number of wounded, and worse, orphaned cubs and foals crying for their lost parents, brothers and sisters.

She was then reminded that all soldiers regardless of rank or service were to report to the Auxilias base armory, ordered to join the city defense. Though initially torn between her sense of duty to clan and Kingdom—she wasn’t much of a soldier, and her younger siblings were begging her to remain—she decided that she wouldn’t be helping either by staying, hugging her family goodbye before taking flight over the city, heading for the base.

Praying for their safety as she left, she was halted by Peacekeeper patrols who were searching for any more corrupted, who held her at arrowpoint until they were satisfied that she wasn’t one of them. Entering the base itself, she found a chaotic scene of a downed and quite dead dragon with soldiers scrambling to organize for battle, with steel claws, crossbows and quivers being passed out even before armor was offered, or soldiers were assigned to units.

Though she initially thought she’d be ordered to join an aerial group or patrol the perimeter—she could only hope she remembered how to fly in formation—the harried Centurion took note of her Talon armor and higher rank, asking if she could command a Turma. Cringing slightly at the thought, she explained in some embarrassment that she was an administrator, not a combat commander.

Though receiving an odd look—all griffon soldiers were supposed to be combatants first regardless of specialty, but between her organizational ability and noble lineage, they’d been lenient with her—she was then invited to join the Tribune’s staff, given he’d lost several of his officers.

Escorted to his headquarters bunker under guard, she was introduced and a brief interview with him followed. A clearly powerful and battle-tested earth griffon that instantly intimidated her, Tribune Cipio turned out to be a competent and no-nonsense commander, and she realized quickly that she had best give prompt and truthful answers to him.

When asked if she was a good writer, she wrote a few quick lines out on parchment to demonstrate the quality of her script, trying not to let her anxiety cause her claws to shake. When asked about her previous duties and recent promotion, she explained that she was assigned to a sub-Tribune in Tierra as a supply clerk but had ended up over time administrating the entire unit because she was good at requisitions and reports.

It was a talent for which she was promoted to Decurion and made an adjutant, excused from combat training so she could keep the cohort’s paperwork at bay. And, she suspected, allow the sub-Tribune herself more leisure time.

Though the Tribune had a few choice words for the Talons after that—words that for once, a listening Gilda wholeheartedly agreed with—he immediately named her his new adjutant and promoted her to Optio so she would bear proper rank, warning that he would expect her to be a soldier first and not a glorified ‘parchment shuffler’ regardless of her nobility or administrative talents.

Swallowing at the thought, she immediately agreed and set out to work for him, writing and disseminating his orders while attempting to untangle a chaotic supply system. The more she saw of him, the more impressed she was, finding his presence equal parts reassuring and intimidating, commanding and supremely confident despite the dire situation they faced.

As she watched, he rose to meet each crisis and repulsed attack after attack, often fighting at the forefront; she’d even gotten to see him in action directly as they faced down the gravest threat to the city, thwarting a Diamond Dog raid that forced her to take flight with an improvised decade and fire a crossbow for the first time in a year.

Though badly shaken afterwards as she’d somewhat clumsily fought off razorbats and corrupted griffons along with the rest of a mixed decade which took two dead and four wounded, he noted appreciatively after the attack was defeated that she hadn’t shirked her duty, which he said was more than far too many nobles he’d known over the years would do.

Improbably, she even found herself taking a personal interest in the Tribune as she accompanied him to put down a riot, ordering her to take the names of the ringleaders for future punishment and then write out a proclamation declaring martial law on the spot.

By the Ancestors, he was so different from her previous commanders!

It was an odd feeling to find herself with a strong sexual interest in the middle of an existential war, yet here she was, unable to stop fantasizing about him, to a mental groan from the Tribune and the immense amusement of Gilda as she read his thoughts.

Though the young eagless had kept them to herself, her flights of fancy were increasingly blushworthy and lurid as she watched him win battle after battle. And as her fantasies often involved besting and winning him by seduction instead of a mating round, Gilda found them more worthy of a pony mare than a griffon eagless. Not that I’m one to talk at this point…

Those fantasies came to a screeching halt as she met his Uxor early that evening;a civilian Magus who was both protecting cubs and healing soldiers in the deepest recesses of the headquarters building. Forced to remain present as a surprise message was received from what she quickly inferred was the Tribune’s love interest, she was as shocked as Cipio to learn that he had in fact unknowingly been the consort of a Changeling Queen, listening as she offered him the location of a Cloven factory and advance notice of where the Cloven were massing for their next attack.

Forewarned, the final major assault of the day was defeated as darkness fell. Her claws cramping from constant writing, she sent a series of reports to Arnau on their situation and battle actions once communications with the capital city were reestablished.

Though most of the news they received back were military reports, they were also advised that a convoy containing human soldiers and civilians had been shot down by corrupted mages somewhere southeast of Tierra, and as they were still alive as of an hour earlier, it was strongly suggested in the missive that the Tribune extract them in order to gain the protection of human weapons.

She didn’t know what those were, but the Tribune apparently did. He scoffed at what ‘a few small tubes’ might do for them, judging the distance too far to attempt a rescue even if they knew the exact location. Gilda again felt her blood boil at the casual dismissal of what the Marines could offer either side, but Optio Virgo herself remained silent, knowing it wasn’t her place.

She had heard of the humans, of course, finding the pictures of them fascinating—who would have thought that a non-magical race of primates could evolve into sapience like equines, ungulates and predators? —and idly wondering what new knowledge they could offer her after the war. But such purely intellectual pursuits seemed remote at best just then, leaving her wondering if she would ever be able to enjoy them again.

Hearing those thoughts run through the aide’s head, Gilda had the passing thought that the other eagless was incredibly dweeby, but also trying hard to do her part despite her fears and unlikely attraction.

Do not judge her harshly, Tribune, Giraldi’s voice sounded next to sense Cipio’s scowling disapproval. She fought despite being frightened, and she did not let her feelings for you affect the performance of her duties. As you already saw from my memories, she is hardly unique in desiring others at unlikely or awkward times. If you did not hold it against me, then do not hold it against her.

Gilda could only pick up the equivalent of a mental grunt in reply, and a passing thought from Cipio that it was a distraction he categorically did not need just then. But once again, she showed her devotion to duty by obeying him unreservedly, including to talon-deliver orders to a succession of individuals summoning them to the Tribune’s office. Once that was done, she set herself to untangling the severe supply bottleneck at the armory, as most of his regular officers were commanding units to make up for the losses they’d already suffered.

Though that told her that he didn’t think she could command a unit despite her rank of Optio, she let it pass, vowing to serve him however she could. She spent the next three hours establishing a steady flow of supplies and armaments, and it was daybreak when she suddenly heard distant naval cannon fire somewhere off to the west. Summoned back to the bunker by the Tribune, she found the mood one of relief and celebration at the news they had received of a resounding victory that had crushed an Overlord and its entire army.

But even as she tried to offer him her congratulations and found herself fantasizing about him even more fiercely—by all the Ancestors, he had both a brilliant mind and a warrior heart! —she was directed to take on a duty she was in no way ready for; ordered to put together a small honor guard and meet the arriving Changeling Queen.

Trying not to betray her sudden surge of anxiety—did he really trust her to meet and greet the first publicly seen Queen of the secretive insectile equine race since the days of the Gryphon Empire? —she barely squeaked out the ritual response as she could only pray that the Tribune’s instructions to their Queen would be well-received.

To say nothing of her coming in his place. But once again, she tried to carry out her orders to the best of her ability, causing Gilda to feel a moment of guilt at how harshly she had treated Optio Virgo upon their initial meeting.

She saw how afraid the other eagless was to meet the Queen and how panicked she was to receive Gilda’s orders, leaving the latter only then understanding how badly the Optio was being put on the spot and worse, caught between two commanders and two conflicting sets of orders before a foreign royal.

The memory replay ended with Optio Virgo presenting Gilda’s orders to the Tribune with great consternation. She watched as Cipio’s face went red to read it, leaving her praying to the Ancestors that Optio Giraldi was right that his inevitable explosion would not be turned on her.

But the playback ended before Gilda could find out, leaving her deflated. I’m sorry, Optio Virgo. I was aiming for Cipio, but you got caught in the crossfire… she felt compelled to apologize to the other eagless as her vision swam again, but this time, instead of shifting into another new perspective, she sensed the Queen’s connection to her deepen and the recesses of her mind begin to open, knowing it was finally her turn to share her memories.

This is it… Gilda thought, trying not to let her anxiety rise as for the second time in a day, she invoked the ritual griffon prayer. May the Ancestors preserve and protect me!

Fear not, Grizelda Behertz. The Queen’s reassuring voice sounded in her head. You are among friends here, and once they experience events as you did, I truly believe that they will not hold them against you… her voice trailed off as Gilda’s awareness of her surroundings and the others present faded into the far distance, finding herself back in Arnau readying for departure yet again.

But this time, she was in her own body as she began to relive the past day’s events for a second time; a spectator to her own memories that left her unable to do anything but observe.