The Gray Dames

“For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”

Celestia never lost her bad habit of hoping for the best after each battle. In the chaos of machine gun fire and destructive spells, she had already seen that the griffon weapons had claimed the lives of at least a couple of battlehorns. Later, she saw them injured and witnessed the Royal Guards assisting one of the first to be recovered by her sisters. Experience told her that for each initial one, she could expect at least two or three more. But the night had a more capricious punishment for her hopefulness.

Soon after she had settled with allowing ponies to do their job and distanced herself, one of her warrior mares came to her. It was a good thing, as Celestia caught herself feeling sorry for herself, despite her privileged position. That was never good.

They had found seven battlehorns so injured they needed urgent medical assistance. Thirteen had already passed away when their sisters found them on the red grass and dirt. Twice more had lesser injuries. Among the former was an old veteran, even among the mares of the Prima Cohors. She laid on a congealed pool of bloody grass, dirty with soot and soil and a line of blood crept down her muzzle. Her sisters urged the Royal Guard’s medical officers to assist, but the sorrow in the old mare’s eyes, those beautiful Fellbane purple eyes, showed she knew it was pointless. She called instead for Celestia.

The white alicorn closed her eyes and rested beside the warrior mare, allowing the battlehorn to hold her hoof. There was no knowing how many bullets her Leaf Plate had warded off, but Celestia found gnarly dents and in the chest plate and pauldrons. Five went through the green and gold work of art that was the armor. Blood had clotted around the holes and pieces of gore stuck out. The veteran rested on her side with shallow, quick breathes, and a distant stare. Her purple eyes focused and her silver-specked, pearly gray muzzle made a tired smile when she noticed Celestia had arrived. A normal pony would not have a shred of consciousness anymore, but the battlehorn held on to life for just a little longer. Perhaps it would have hurt less if she had begged Celestia to save her. She did not. She simply wanted to see the alicorn of the Sun one last time.

The biological processes of her body had deteriorated too far, and she would not survive teleportation. Somehow, the mare knew that. Even before Celestia had found her, she knew she would not be returning alive to their compound, and that was why she called for her. How did she know? She simply knew and the others respected it.

And then her magic was gone. Washed away in the cosmic flow of mana, the last smoke out of a snuffing candle. Behind remained a broken body. Organic machinery no longer fit to perform its purpose. A little piece of Harmony started on its final journey. The others would survive. The legion’s healers would take care of them. They never let go, as though they knew it was not their time yet. Domina Panacea’s physicians would find ways to heal them and replace what they couldn’t fix.

They put fourteen of the Zeroth Legion’s First Cohort Battlehorns to rest in the Mausoleum. It was a somber room, covered in the same luxurious marble and gold as the rest, but the magical lights were sparse. So large it could easily and comfortably hold a hundred ponies, enough to hold the closest sisters of a fallen battlehorn. The air smelled of myrrh, dense from the censers and statues of old battlehorns crowded the walls, solemnly casting their eyes over the deceased. The ceiling showed the moon, glorious against the velvety black and the shimmering of the stars, each one of them a rare gem incrusted into the ceiling.

Their sisters covered the fallen with luxurious sheets made of silk. One blue, another black, and a third made of weaved silver. They covered faces and hid the grievous wounds left behind by the griffon firearms, but also meant so much more than that. A final honor, wearing the colors meant only for the Goddess. A caring gesture meant to deliver them into Her care, even if their souls were long gone. No matter how late, they would perform the ritual. Nopony wished to imagine their loved ones had lost themselves on their way or had fallen prey to the Nightmares in the sea of stars.

Celestia was the first in a line walking among the funeral tables, and Matriarch Radiance Fellbane followed. The white alicorn, covered in gold, purple, and red, silently led the procession. Nopony would know what their sisters told the fallen battlehorns in their last goodbye, and all of them knew that those battlehorns had died already, but meeting them one last time, even if late, calmed their hearts. In a way, they had died the ‘right way’ for a soldier to die, but to Celestia, those were souls scattered from the world because of the griffons. Because of that unnecessary conflict. Because of the Harpy. More ponies that did not need to die, gone.

Soldiers often lacked the luxury of meetings and peaceful partings. Their friends too often died amid pain, despair, and noise. Watching the powerful battlehorns saying their goodbyes, Celestia sighed and closed her eyes, reminded that some died in burning libraries.

She had spent the last millennia teaching creatures that, once separated from their bodies, souls traveled the ethereal flow of magical energies back to the source. A few pressed her further to tell them such a source was the Pool of Souls, and the truly inquisitive ones would hear that it is the sun’s equivalent of a soul. As everything in Equestria carried Magic with it and they called ‘soul’ the Magic of Life. A little piece of Harmony each creature, plant and little pebble carried into the world.

Among the civilians, family and friends would gather. They offered somber refreshments, often things the pony on the deathbed liked. Everycreature would greet their dying friend and share a few words. Once they were gone, a solemn vigil would watch over until daybreak when, the folklore went, they completed their journey.

And the damnedest thing was that it required some knowledge. They knew their bodies were failing and their souls were preparing to leave. But how did they know? Sick ponies recovered from diseases, but some did not, despite receiving help, and they knew it was time to say goodbye. Old ponies at the end of their natural life just knew, and the old, undying Celestia was left baffled.

It bewildered her. She knew all there was to know of souls and the workings of the Cosmos, and despite that, it nagged at her in the countless times she’d attended a friend’s funeral. Just as it did during the funeral of her Battlehorns. Celestia had asked Luna once, and she was just as clueless. Both had studied the phenomenon and found no answers. Their minds had no process, their souls no mechanism which could communicate that it was helpless. That they should tie any loose ends as the clock was ticking.

Maybe it was simply something her old soul was not meant to know. One final grand mystery Harmony reserved for itself and wouldn’t share even with the Matriarch of the Great Herd.

Ponies cared little about what happened to their own bodies or those of their deceased friends and family once they were gone. Quick burials sufficed in cemeteries filled with trees and greeneries, where remains would follow the normal course of biology.

Different races developed different funeral rites. Diamond Dogs would bury their own in crypts, and then families would gather over paintings or photographs in the family’s home to remember. Zebras followed similar rituals, but replaced the solemn atmosphere with festivities, plenty of spicy food and remembrance of the best moments of one’s life after burial in respectful, but sullen cemeteries. The yaks would combine overt displays of sorrow during burial. Then followed with copious amounts of alcohol and true, heartfelt celebrations of the life of their loved ones that had gone away. And then they would nearly destroy the mourning hall with festivities in honor of the dead. The more damage, the better the party, the Yak saying went.

Changelings liquefied their dead in a practical and quick ceremony. The hive was more important and each changeling merely a piece of it: their nutrients would feed the eggs on the Queen’s Chamber. It was a comforting thought for them that the Swarm would live on. It was their last contribution.

The Dragon Lord presided over sky burials, leaving the bodies exposed to the environment and carrion-eaters after decorations and donations of gems. The great wyrms who could not care less about the Dragon Lord passed away surrounded by their mountains of gold. Their loved ones would garnish their bones with their loot, to become their most valuable items.

In the Gray Dames’ underground fort, they lacked such a place for interring. All must return to Harmony, but they lacked a place for their bodies to undo itself into nourishment for plants. Their Matriarch performed a spell which released the magical energies of matter into the Aether. Their bodies undid themselves into motes of multicolored magic. They shone like the stars above and vanished. No better analogy possible. In the end, it was all Magic.

Once the ceremony was over, Domina Hammer added salt upon the wounds. She had deemed half of their suits of armor irreparable with the resources inside the bunker. Unless they reactivated the thaumatonite mines and solar forges, they had lost those suits forever. Celestia dizzied once she calculated the damage the griffon machine guns had inflicted, even in defeat. But she also lacked the luxury of free time, and she ought to be with Radiance to receive Farseer’s report.

She had returned from the operation in Manehattan and the news was grim with a silver lining: none had died. What followed was probably the biggest dressing-down those underground halls had ever witnessed. The loudest and most vociferous reprimand a centurion ever received. Ironically, that sort of verbal scolding was relatively new within the ranks of the Battlehorn legions. Before Farseer was born and, while Radiance’s grandmother was still the Gray Dames’ matriarch, their scout’s failure would have been handled differently.

Physical punishments had been falling out of fashion for a couple of decades as some matriarchs noticed they diminished morale and did little to correct the problem. In retrospect, when your soldiers were the toughest, meanest, and strongest equines to have ever existed, trained to endure the pain, physical punishments really sounded rather silly. Thus, matriarchs took to hurting their sense of honor, conformity, and their ego.

Celestia still found it mildly amusing to see how many ways Radiance could tell Farseer she had failed. All she was supposed to do was collect two ponies and bring them in. How could she fail? Angry explanations of how much of a disgrace her performance was, and how disappointed their ancestors and Celestia herself were at her followed. Sitting next to the two mares, before Celestia’s throne, Domina Panacea let escape a yawn while Radiance went on and on, waiting for Celestia to tell her it was enough.

The chief physician of the legion was supposed to take Farseer to get a replacement for her destroyed artificial eye. The fight at the harbor had escaped control, it seemed. A youthful face with such a bloody injury was grueling to look at, and the doctor was right in wanting to take her to the valetudinarium. But Farseer had not only failed in her mission, but she had also hurt Twilight and Cadance. Celestia felt she could afford to think about her actions a little more.

Eventually, a guard entered the throne room. Celestia wondered for how long she had waited, but it seemed she just couldn’t afford to stay the whole day watching Radiance discipline her soldier just because she had hurt Twilight. After Panacea cleared away with Farseer, the mare reported.

“The griffon prisoners are restless. They insist they must bury their fallen in a specific manner they do not trust us with. We have assured them you instructed us, but they refuse to settle down. They insist on seeing you about this matter.” The mare explained. “The Claustritumus has asked that Your Radiant Grace intervene, fearing a rebellion and loss of the prisoners.”

Unlike most positions in the Legion, the keeper of the prisoners was not a specific pony, but a position high-ranking officers rotated in and out of. The prisoners usually were Battlehorns in need of a timeout and a conversation. Most enemies of the Battlehorn Legions would not survive long enough to be put under arrest. Those mares really did not know how to handle prisoners and Celestia decided she should see to it as morale would be lowered as news of the confrontation spread. They did not need a prisoner revolt.

In stark contrast to the rest of their hibernation bunker, the Carcer had simple brick walls painted white under dim illumination. There were no smells, though, and the food was of decent quality. Much better than what Celestia had endured in her youth, and better than the murderous catbirds deserved. They even had bathrooms.

As she entered the hall with the cells, Celestia and Matriarch Radiance drew all the aquiline eyes behind the bars. Four of five griffons in the closest cell, and three more in the next one glared at the princess like her very presence was an offense against their kind. The fifth prisoner showed a more diplomatic stance, with a greeting nod and holding the bars in her paws. Not friendly, but not openly hostile.

“Greetings.” Celestia stood before the bars, watching the three griffons behind her, none particularly interesting, before fixating on their representative. “My mare tells me you have requests.”

“I appeal to you as someone responsible for the welfare of my people. Our dead have not received the proper funeral rites.” The griffonness, an older, but vibrant blue with black and white natural markings and fierce yellow eyes, told her while her blue paws held the bars. “I am sorry to bother you, but it is an important part of our culture, and you must let me care for them.”

Celestia’s sagacity, which kept her in power for as long as Equestria has existed in its present form, did not fold easily. Sometimes, though, she needed more than shrewdness to navigate the wickedness her opponents threw her way. Sometimes it was easily noticeable, a bare suggestion and an obnoxious wink, or the blunt magic of a suggestion spell. Other times, it came in poison-laced honeyed words or devilish charms woven into the spell matrix of a gifted item.

Once in a lifetime, it came in the shape of subliminal manipulation. In a particular way that worked despite all the pseudoscientific ‘win your crush’ charlatanism of modern days. Celestia had witnessed nothing like that in literal ages.

It differed from anything a pony would normally experience. The griffoness’ words were present and Celestia heard the sound of her voice, but there was more. One of those things which one could not truly explain to another, like a unicorn’s ability to sense magic at work, or her own unique sense of perceiving the magic of Life. Or even the subtle magic she had dispelled in the thunderstorm over Griffonstone. For one, it explained why the Claustritimus cared about the griffons’ request to begin with.

‘Submit.’ The griffoness commanded under her voice like she could speak twice at the same time. ‘Yield’, she whispered to the inner parts of Celestia’s mind, commanding her to acquiesce. Her efforts not only fell in infertile grounds, but Celestia detected her use of the specific ancient discipline of subliminal manipulation. Instead of opening her mind to obey, the griffoness enraged Celestia like Canterlot’s nobility had failed to anger her in a thousand years.

The alicorn felt touched against her will. Like the griffoness had prodded her despite her attempts to cover herself. Rather than a finger between the feathers, words and magic reached into her mind. ‘Violated’ barely described the convulsing disgust and searing anger.

“What exactly do you need?” the alicorn kept her blank expression. Celestia’s voice came out the same as it did when she talked to her little ponies: soft, caring. “We will respect and accommodate any reasonable requests.”

“Three of our brethren have expired while in the care of your ponies. We must cremate our dead in the open air, and we must sing our funeral songs. Preferably in private, if that is acceptable.” The griffoness said calmly and straight, hiding her powers of manipulation beneath civilized words.

Thousands of years ago, during the war, Celestia and her friends dealt with many Loremasters of the Harpy. She never truly understood where their uncommon power came from. Now Celestia knew the Harpy had returned and she was the source of it. She probably had been before the times of the Griffon Empire and taught that odious art to her chosen. In retrospect, all the trouble the northerners had been giving Celestia’s Justiciars and officials seemed explained.

Griffons, like the other races, too had their funeral rites. They divided the inheritance. During funeral vigils, they were often too busy calculating how much they could steal from one another. After sharing half-hearted praises about the deceased, they would politely fly at each other’s throats. Family members who had not been seen for decades popped from behind the tables and readily defended their right to infinitesimal increases on their part of the inheritance. Griffons built entire schools of lawyers out of the need for law-savvy griffons offering their services to the highest bidder. Griffons simply did not care what happened to the dead, only to what they left behind.

Except the griffons of Snow Mountains hold. They burned their dead in stone funeral pyres and sang. For centuries Celestia had accepted they were simply different. More honored, she had foolishly imagined. Any sane creature would expect such worries to be purely cultural. Folklore that remained in the ancient land of the northerner griffons, customs older than the Windigos.

Now one of the Harpy’s loremasters had just attempted to use her power of worming words into another’s mind so Celestia would agree to their unique funeral rites. One did not need lifetimes’ worth of political sagacity and experience to know something was up.

Wrath was not something Celestia was used to experiencing, but it came with the fury of the sun in her veins. Her expression showed absolutely no changes as she nodded at the griffoness’ words. “Granted.”

With no further words, the alicorn turned from the bars and addressed both the battlehorn officer escorting her and the legion’s matriarch. “Note all this one asks and prepare an escort. Have the cartographii find a secluded location where the griffons can perform their funeral rites. Take all of them.”

“Your Radiant Grace,” Radiance whispered with a frown, “is this wise?”

Celestia’s expression remained blank. “Do as I say. Make sure all battlehorns understand they are to leave the griffons alone to perform their rituals. And do not wait for me.”

Still frowning, the mare nodded and simply watched as the alicorn walked down the corridor in between the cells. Radiance would follow her command, but needed time to prepare and distribute orders to the battlehorns who would be involved. Celestia had preparations of her own to mind, and time would be limited.

Her apartment was vast as the accommodations for an entire centuria. Never one to mind the luxury, or lack of it, Celestia simply accepted it. It also had her own alchemy laboratory for personal use, and it would come to be very handy. Thank Harmony for Star Swirl’s forethought that she might need to do things without her battlehorns’ scrutiny. Maybe he had thought of healing potions or items and concoctions for personal use, but it was a well-equipped and stocked laboratory. It smelled of cleanliness, an obvious testament that the preservation spells had kept everything from spoiling.

As soon as she dismissed the guards in the throne room, Celestia went to work. First, she needed a sheet wide enough to cover her and preferably made of a noble material. The linen and silk bed sheets more than sufficed. The purple dye and golden inlays added to the magical capacity of the materials, and she smiled as her magical senses scanned the flow of magic while her telekinetic spell held the fabrics for inspection.

Domina Hammer’s eager subordinates promptly delivered several magical components to her quarters. Replacement items meant for repairing the mighty Leaf Plate armor sets of the battlehorns and more specific materials. Including Spike, who romped into the laboratory along with the three fillies tasked with keeping him company. The guards closed the doors to the laboratory as the four tiny creatures ogled at all the shiny metals, crystal devices, and bubbling, boiling liquids. She provided them with a couple of seats so they could share and see what she was doing.

Just as soon as she had their excitement under control, she used a mortar and pestle to mush a few pieces of aloe vera into a paste. Once filtered with a linen cloth, she dropped its syrupy essence into a bowl made of white marble. Freshly distilled water followed and waited while she cut a mesh of her own mane and used it to rinse the bowl. The rest discarded; the bowl waited on a stone table. Celestia’s horn shone with golden light, and the marble gradually became red, then orange, then yellow. A column of sizzling steam rose when the alicorn poured distilled water into the bowl.

Five petals of eyebright enveloped in golden light dropped to the boiling water and undid themselves while the princess grabbed a small box from the shelves on the other side of the room. From it, she added thick gray hair into the liquid, watching as it fizzled into nothing, vanishing into the blend.

“Demiguise hair, harvested with a silver shear. It will add deceiving qualities to the mixture.” She declared to her wowing young audience. A smile pulled at her lips while she opened a crystal vial and its contents sparkled into the bowl. The concoction turned into a milky froth. “Moondust, for its magical conduction and optical properties.”

“And this is a variety of calcite, the ‘griffon spar’ from northern Griffonia.” She spent a moment staring at the clear crystal. “Actually, it is called the ‘sunfinder spar’, but they would not call it sun-anything, anyway…”

She dropped what looked more like a chunk of glass than a glorified rock into the mixture while the fillies giggled, and the dragon chuckled. A small cloud blew from the bowl, and the liquid fizzled for a couple of minutes while Celestia stirred it with a golden spoon. Spike and the three fillies wowed at the completely invisible liquid it all became.

“Now, I need a drop of your blood, Spike.” She said, turning to the little dragon and his immediately souring expression. “Just a drop. I promise.”

The golden dagger, the same Celestia had used to gain entrance to the facility, spun in the air, held in golden magical light by the handle. The adorable pegasus filly cheered Spike onward with all the childish enthusiasm one could summon and the other two followed her lead.

“Come on, Spike! Be brave!” she squealed with a foalish delight not even the life of a battlehorn neophyte could snuff.

How could he not put on a brave face and stick his finger out? A quick poke between two tiny scales with the very tip of the magic infused dagger sufficed for a bud of red blood to sprout. He didn’t even squirm. Without further drama, Celestia held a thin glass slide, typically used for microscopes, and let a trio of drops gather. Working quickly, she grabbed another crystal vial and let a shiny powder sparkle onto it, causing a tiny blue flame and minute sparks to erupt.

“What’s that?” The dragon in question asked, holding his finger while watching curiously what she did.

“Ground diamond.” She said, mixing blood, dust, and fire with the help of a delicate golden spatula before sliding it into the bowl. The liquid became visible again and gained a bluish silver gleam. “Dragon blood is a powerful magical catalyst, and so is diamond dust. It will give the spell a higher potency. Only one thing remains now.”

She smiled, offering Spike the dagger’s handle. The intelligent gentledragon frowned as it reached for it. “I suppose that alicorn blood would be too.”

But still frowning, looking up at her, he held the dagger in both hands. “Can’t you do it yourself? I’m kinda not comfortable doing this sort of thing.”

Celestia hummed. “Being with Twilight Sparkle all the time, I would have assumed you to be comfortable around laboratory work, Spike.”

“Yes!” He cried, “but not with cutting her, much less drawing blood for magical experiments! Or whatever you are doing!”

“Point taken.” Celestia smiled warmly. “Magic is a finicky thing. One’s intentions can influence the outcome of spells and enchantments. Your good intentions, helpfully wishing to assist, ought to do it.”

Unsure, he contemplated the dagger and the hoof Celestia offered before tentatively holding the golden instrument with purpose. She urged him into action, reassuring him it would not hurt her. Finally, he pierced her skin and a bright red bud of gold-speckled blood sprouted.

“Whoa.” The earth pony filly gasped. “I didn’t know that Your Radiant Grace actually had golden blood!”

“This would take a while to explain…” Celestia excused herself out of any clarification with her eyes fixated on the small budding golden rose. “Please, let me be now. This requires focus.”

Spike’s eyes remained on the golden, richly ornate dagger and he seemed to not have heard when the earth pony filly called his name to leave. He eyed Celestia with a confused frown. His lips moved, but he never asked whatever question was on his mind or resisted when the fillies herded him out of the laboratory.

Celestia’s smile melted into a frown as soon as the door closed. Sometimes she would curse all her knowledge, but this time she supposed there was no point. She was changing, and it was necessary. The more ponies turned their devotion and worship to her, the more powerful she would become, and more such physical manifestations would present themselves.

She was taking another step towards a past she would rather not relive, but did she really have a choice? Celestia’s opponent brokered no choice, her Destiny offered no options. She must defeat the Allmother. She must be what Equestria demanded of her, and Creation called for the Matriarch of the Great Herd again. The chants of thousands upon thousands of creatures calling her ‘Sunheart’ reached from across the ages. A crusade of all creatures joined under her wings against the cruelty of the Griffon Scourge. Celestia forbade memories to take her to another time. She had things to do.

The gold-crimson liquid trickled down her limb to the bowl and, upon contact, the liquid ignited with a burst of hot air. Once the flames died, a perfectly transparent liquid filled the bowl. A quick smile soon died on Celestia’s lips again. While such a concoction had an untold potential for fun, the graveness of the situation marred her spirit. Kingdoms rose and fell in the time after she had made it for the last time and thinking of her sister reminded her of the current situation.

In the end, all Celestia hoped was that the addition of her magic and her blood ought to give the concoction an extraordinary potency. Enough to fool the senses of the Raptor Queen herself and that of her servant.

Piece by piece, she drenched the bedsheet in the invisible liquid until it was a knot of nothing she could pull from the bowl. It slipped from her telekinetic grasp and her eyes saw through it. Her magical senses completely ignored the fabric, the quickly drying liquid, and the magic it should be emitting. It was effectively gone, except for her sense of touch as it covered her hoof and made it vanish.

Considering how ungodly silly it would be for her to lose her newly minted Veil of Vanishment, she donned it straight away. The powerful magic the fabric held was barely perceptible, even as it settled against her body. It should work. Thus, Celestia left her quarters with no guards to worry about a door opening and closing by itself.

No sound or even a breeze marked her passing through the white and gold halls of the Gray Dames’ base. It was as if, under her magical cloak, she had completely ceased to exist as far as they were concerned. Matriarch Radiance dutifully commanded a selection of six battlehorns to escort the griffons on their way through the halls, and nobody reacted to her presence. She quietly followed them as the others walked out of their way and provided her with an easy path.

A pair of carts waited in place on the teleportation platform. One carried a pair of amphoras and several logs, the other had three bodies hidden under white sheets. While the battlehorns positioned the griffons on the platform, Celestia stopped and stared helplessly at the massive magical machinery. The Teleportarium would not recognize her under her magical cloak. After a sigh, her ears perked when the magi started chanting and their horns spilled mana into the air.

She closed her eyes and repeated the magical notes in her thoughts. Correlating them to her knowledge of teleportation magic should be enough, even if it required extraordinarily quick thinking and improvisation. A formula drew itself in her mind, likely far from a perfect transliteration, but a usable one of where they were supposed to reemerge into the space-time continuum. She would rather not copy it too perfectly, anyway. She ought to not reveal herself to them at arrival and a teleportation spell was likely to make enough of a racket to the acute senses of a Loremaster of the Harpy.

Halfway through casting her own teleportation spell, Celestia realized she had yet another problem. The invisibility cloak would distort the mana flow and her magic would not connect correctly to the magic of space-time. If it didn’t outright fail and the magical feedback didn’t cause her horn to explode, she’d end up miles away from her intended destination.

A silent but frustrated nicker escaped her as the magi concluded their spell and its effects manifested: the griffons, battlehorns, and carts were gone with a flash. Hurrying, Celestia rushed out of the Teleportarium, back into the wide hallway. The princess skipped out of the way of two red robe-wearing blacksmiths on their way somewhere, and quickly trotted along the corridor, searching for an empty room. An out of the way corridor. A service passageway. Anything.

The first open door into a dark room sufficed. She slinked past a half-opened doorway into a spartan room with nothing more than a simple sparring ring. Hastily walking out of the way and from the light pouring from the corridor, she found a corner behind the sand arena. Nothing truly hid her in there, but the out of the way dark ought to be enough.

Her hoof wrapped the cloak around itself and pulled it to reveal the white alicorn wearing her gold and purple toga. She shut her eyes and strained her memory. Phrase after phrase, note for note recounting the Magi spell-song, at the same time translating it into a spell formula she could use. No time for second guesses. The complexity strained her memory and she must meet the immense power of the magical machine, but Celestia was powerful too. Her mind was agile, and none understood magic better than she did.

The mental engrams of the spell streamed through her thoughts as she cast it and her horn filled with the tingling warmth of magic. The flow of ethereal energies coalesced into her will manifested upon the world, space-time stretched and snapped around her. A flash, a bang, and a piercing headache later, the silver light of Luna’s moon bathed her golden and purple garment.

A chill penetrated the metallic weave of her toga. The wet cold at her hooves was worse, and she shuddered at the unpleasant iciness. Voices made her ears perk. A griffon complained of vertigo less than thirty hooves away. The Loremaster-without-her-cape held a young tom by his cheeks and examined him under the attentive eyes of the other griffons and the battlehorns. The golden, stylish carts waited, each with their own patiently waiting mare still hitched.

Celestia squealed to herself. She forgot the cold and the unpleasant wetness in a panic and threw the Veil of Vanishment over herself just in time before an inquisitive battlehorn looked her way. Her lack of reaction, again focusing on watching the griffons, caused a small sigh to escape Celestia.

One griffoness, a large, rugged lady covered in deep gray and silver, snickered, raising her eyes to challenge one of the battlehorns. Her voice, more than the whistly northerner accent, carried disdain. “Feh. Most of our brothers and sisters are beyond our reach. I doubt the equines in the Royal Guard gave them the proper rites, anyway.”

“Quit you whining, hairball.” Matriarch Radiance, not in the mood to entertain complaints, perhaps confused by her orders, brokered no patience. “We buried them in the customs of the Old Griffon Empire, and that is more than what my fallen sisters have received. It is only by Her Radiant Grace’s mercy that we grant you anything other than a crucifixion.”

Hidden under her cloak, Celestia winced at Radiance’s words. The fierce northerner griffoness gave her a cocky smile, but the older griffoness interrupted them. She had finished examining the tom and spoke. “Hush, Gjertrud. Such complaining is for cubs, not mature queens. We appreciate Her Majesty’s grace.”

Her words disarmed any tension and both griffons and battlehorns exchanged austere glances before the Matriarch of the Gray Dames took the word again. “Very well. Our orders are to leave you here. I will not pretend to understand, but heed me. Make whatever good of this you must. I killed enough of your ancestors to not have forgotten the horrors of your late emperor.”

“Move!” she commanded once the others had finished unloading the carts. They turned away from the griffons and walked a dozen steps before the Teleportarium retrieved them back into their underground base along the carts. Left alone, fluttering feathers in the breeze, the griffons exchanged a combination of elated and confused stares, grins, and a few excited hops.

“Uh… What is keeping us from just going back to our cats?” One of them chuckled. An orange and yellow tom with an excited grin and an enthusiastically swaying tail.

“Our duty to our fallen brethren, my prodigal brother.” The older griffoness spoke with the patience of a mother. “There is no time or resources for much. They must forgive us, and we must be glad the equines offered us the supplies. We shall send our dead brethren on their way to the Stormy Eyrie before anything else.”

The alicorn frowned under her magical cloak, but patiently sat and watched as griffons obeyed. The larger hen took the lead and two strong toms helped. They prepared a bed of logs while the others carried their kind. The dead griffons had already gained the rigor mortis, but that didn’t bother them. White sheets, a graceful concession from the warrior mares, covered the three of them and Celestia was happy at their decency while she watched the griffons prepare the pyre. They wrapped their kin with the sheets before pouring oil from the amphoras.

The whole time, Celestia kept frowning. She had wanted to test the griffons, and they really wanted to give their brethren a proper funeral. She had imagined the griffoness used her arts to escape, but no. The funeral really was the important part for her.

The biggest issue, their conversations showed, was that they lacked a proper stone base, and it was a poor practice to burn anything directly on the grass. They concluded they had no other options and that getting their funeral rites going was more important.

Unicorns could have done it trivially, but the large northerner hen left little to be desired in her survival skills starting a fire. Before long, it had grown and started consuming the mortal remains of their friends. The loremaster sat with the others behind and started chanting, but her song had no words. She merely hummed in lugubrious tones that the others mimicked, hanging their heads in deference. The large hen was different. She inhaled profoundly and looked to the sky, murmuring words to herself that Celestia could not understand, but did not dare approach. One griffon threw a trio of improvised spears into the fire, barely more than sharpened sticks.

Rather than trying to understand the song, the alicorn focused on the magical happenings in the environment as something happened and roused her senses. While the more traditional magic barely made it through her cloak to touch her senses, the Magic of Life she was so attuned to made it through.

Something had stayed behind upon their death and only the fire released it. The fire itself changed like a spell had acted on it. Curiosity overpowered Celestia’s near constant angsty anger of the last days. If only the circumstances were different.

During the fight in Griffonstone Celestia had witnessed the death of several griffons, and nothing happened out of the ordinary. What trickery was that? How was it even possible? Death, as she understood, equated to when the stream of consciousness, in all its forms, broke because of damage that overwhelmed the body’s ability to compensate. And yet, she saw with her own eyes as the smoke, charged with ancient magic she barely understood, carried three souls away into the Aether. Then her eyes widened when their souls vanished. Poof. Gone into nothingness. Now, Celestia may be used to advanced thaumatodynamics and slightly out of touch with the basics, but magic simply did not vanish into thin air.

The details went on and on, and she knew them all. The system was designed that way! She took part in designing it that way! There was no place for such deviation; it was an abomination bordering on necromancy and what she had just witnessed challenged all she knew of souls and the workings of the Cosmos! Celestia ground her teeth and her legs shook. The cursed catbirds kept finding novel ways to aggravate her. She could almost hear the Harpy’s odious laughter, mocking her lack of understanding.

Their voices distracted her from the anger. The large hen complained they had no weapons to offer, but the other griffons started discussing whether they should return. Someone laughed, another mentioned they did not even have a way back. The loremaster put a swift end to the conversation with her decisive commands.

“Go.” she said, watching the modest flames slowly consuming away the bodies. “Find our cells in the nearest city and avoid the authorities until you are safe. You know how to take care of yourselves.”

“What about you, Madam Loremaster?” The large gray northerner hen asked.

“I will stay.”

The large female nodded and turned to walk away towards Manehattan without another word or second-guessing the older hen’s decision. There were no city lights visible yet, behind the terrain, but Celestia knew the direction and the northerner hen certainly knew too. The others followed with differing levels of confusion and hesitation, but they all followed. A couple hesitated, not eager to abandon an old lady, but eventually Celestia saw herself alone with the Loremaster.

Time passed, and the mare remained silent, unmoving, waiting for the beautiful blue, white and black griffoness to do something. Anything. It might be some elucidating part of the ritual she ought to keep even from her allies. Maybe some additional incantation? Minutes more passed, and the griffoness said or did nothing. Tired of waiting, Celestia let her eyes drop for an instant, mentally reviewing what had happened, trying to find anything she might have overlooked.

“Stop this game. You are predictable, like a cub.”

The griffoness’ words drew Celestia’s eyes again. She did not speak in the Snow Mountain’s High-Griffonese, but in a heavily accented Common Equestrian, filled with whistles and hisses. A scowl formed on the alicorn’s brow, and she pulled her invisible cloak, tossing it to the side. The hen still sat before the fire, calmly watching it.

“Explain to me what I just witnessed.” Celestia politely asked, approaching, and speaking in the High-Griffonese as perfectly as one could without a beak.

The griffoness never turned to look at her, much less graced her with a response in her natural language. Instead, she still spoke with the Equestrian everyday language. “The Allmother has reserved knowledge about Her craftsmanship for a select few. Even among her Children.”

“Please spare me of your arrogance.” Celestia said, gingerly sitting next to the griffoness to watch the fire. The smells of burning fur, fat, flesh, and waste had lost their impact on her over her ages and didn’t seem to bother the hen, either. But the sheer hubris was both unnecessary and aggravating. Especially after all the deference from the Battlehorns. But why did those words cause such pain in Celestia’s chest?

“You accuse me of arrogance?” The griffoness’ voice filled with amusement. “You are a magical string of instructions meant to move the sun along the sky. You were never meant to have any power over Creation. Much less this sad version of free-will.”

“That is a pauper way of describing a being tasked with creating life and seeding it upon the world.” Celestia tilted her head, looking at the griffoness whose eyes remained on the fire. “We fought the Harpy, and we defeated her. It is why Harmony created us so. To protect the ponies from your excesses. After Creation began anew, we were forced to remake everything, without knowledge, only instinct to guide us. Harmony tasked us with steering Creation, and it worked. If it was not for the Harpy’s meddling, it would have turned out perfectly.”

“Perfect? The world was perfect before. You simply did not understand Mother Harpy’s design. It is a magical system devoid of intelligence which reacts to your actions, and you attribute intention to it. Do you truly believe you have freed creation? You have not. All you did was rob them of their purpose. You took from them the driving force which gave them reason to exist. You wanted a world without conflict, but it is the verb of creation. Birth is a probation, living is a struggle, death is painful. Creation itself rejected your notion, and the perfect world you envisioned is rife with monsters and dangers aplenty.”

“It is because of the inherent chaotic nature of Magic. It needs to be harnessed. Then the Windigos came. Because of the selfishness of some creatures. Harmony only seeks balance.” Celestia retorted, looking down at the griffoness. Why in Tartarus did she even feel the need to defend herself? “In it, all things have the right to exist, but there need be no struggle. There needs to be no suffering. It is selfishness which brings both.”

“Nonsense.” The griffoness chuckled, still staring at the fire. “The very mechanics of life require that one take from another and I am yet to see a creature which will lie down and allow itself to be consumed. Even the plants will defend themselves with poison and thorns. Predation is the defining moment of Life. The greatest honesty in a creature’s existence. One loses all, and the other wins. It is a deadly ballet for which everycreature spends every moment of their life preparing for. To deny it of them is to miss the point of existence.”

Celestia frowned, and her lips twisted a little while she looked at the fire again. “She really has taught you a lot, hasn’t She? All to justify the things she has done. But the Harpy would never let you see I want a world that is better for everycreature. Including your kind. You can create beautiful things if you are not constantly fearing for your life.”

“This is where you fail to understand the beauty of My Mother’s creation.” The griffoness looked up to the clear, starry sky and closed her eyes. “Need is the mother of invention. Therefore, we are the way we are. She made us fierce, vengeful, and cruel. We make each other better, constantly pressuring the other to be faster, stronger, more ruthless. We cannot lay on our victories, we must always improve, or we will lose it all to another. Your vision of the world is a stagnant puddle that only gathers rot and disease.”

Celestia kept an unbroken expression of neutrality and her eyes aimed at the fire. “Hubris so dense you will not see that we find our motivation in the lack of our next. You cannot accept that a different solution exists that is not your own. You truly are Children of the Harpy.”

The princess made a pointed pause, listening to the cracking of the wood. “Much like you, we dislike suffering, but unlike you, we do not take pleasure in the suffering of another. We cannot stand seeing another suffer, and this is why we defeated your dear psychotic mother, your emperor, and your Empire. Because the good creatures of this world will suffer to see another in bonds, starving, or in pain. We cannot stand it and we must fight it.”

Celestia looked to the griffoness and found her staring up at her. “What you have is not strength. It is selfishness. It is the source of evil and She has taught you that because She cannot bear to imagine being wrong. That is why she hates me and my little ponies. We proved a world without her is not only possible, but better. Even for your kind.”

The griffoness looked at the grass with a wrinkle in her brow, and Celestia spoke again. “Such an intelligent creature, such a devoted being, dedicated to teaching those you loved the most the wrong lessons. All your life. You have invested it into being a Loremaster of the Harpy. Intelligent and wise, beautiful, perfect as the Allmother’s creation that you are. All a lie to feed the ego of a failed goddess.”

She was part of those griffons responsible for her lover’s death, and Celestia wanted to relish her pain, but she failed miserably. Instead, her heart ached, and she extended a wing over the old griffoness. Celestia knew Loremasters for being unbreakable, unyielding. The inescapable inquisition of the Harpy. But they still had a heart.

“Please. Tell me about the ritual. I must know. For the good of all creatures, I must stop the Harpy. Why is cremation so important? Is she doing something to your souls? What happened to them?”

“Figure it out on your own.” The griffoness responded noncommittally. “If you are sure you have saved Creation from the Creator.”

“Why must you be so difficult? There is no secret which will withstand scrutiny. If you do not tell me, one of the others will. I will study the phenomenon until I unravel its mystery and then it is going to be worse for everyone.”

“Betraying My Mother is not something I will do. There are fates worse than death and there are boundaries I would not cross.” Celestia turned to the griffoness to see her staring up at her with a mocking grin. “And if I told you, you would not believe it. You might as well try whatever other methods your highness desires.”

In the seconds Celestia spent staring at the griffoness’ mocking and challenging stare, several thoughts passed through her head. It seemed every single villain and aspiring tyrant thought she was available to be teased, but the loremasters of the Harpy… they were different. Celestia had learned thousands of years ago. Their bravado was seldom empty and their threats rarely vapid. Finally, knowing the Harpy was behind them explained a lot of their privileged knowledge, insight, and capacities back when. It also explained a lot in the present, because the Harpy knew what to keep to herself, and what to teach, and whom to teach. It was their sponsor’s understanding of the functioning of the universe, the mind, and magic that made them so dangerous. Ultimately, it made the griffoness a victim. A pawn in a very dangerous game. A pawn who could not see how wrong she was, nor understand how deranged her master was.

The thing was that both understood something about that encounter. The serene silence between them, sprinkled with the sounds of the tiny life around them, hid reflections. Celestia knew that no matter how long the griffoness thought about it, she would find no way to stop her from getting what she wanted. Celestia would examine that ritual. She would extract information from the griffoness. And she knew the griffoness would reach that conclusion too.

A lesser griffon might panic, despair, lose their composure once they realized there was no way out of that silence. No words they could utter, no deception or knowledge which would change their fate. Not a Loremaster of the Harpy. Another thing that Celestia understood was the mind of such a creature and, better than the loremaster, would give her credit. She knew that griffons were petty, greedy, and vengeful creatures, and once all possibility of victory evaporated, they would turn to violence and vengeance. Machinations and plans would bubble up inside her head and she would imagine all the ways she could hurt the alicorn. The Harpy’s lies of how all the sugar and miscellaneous ‘pony food’ dulled the senses and slowed the mind may have had an influence when the griffoness’ powerful muscles tensed. When she jumped at Celestia, fast as lightning, talons aimed at her neck.

The griffoness’ neck snapped like a twig with her head forced backward as soon as Celestia’s telekinetic magic held her. The bones broke apart and her brainstem teared like a ragdoll. Awareness was gone before the griffoness even noticed what had happened. Had she ever had a chance? The point was now moot. Chocolate Velvet and his medical training would probably find better ways to understand, but Celestia shoved thoughts about him to the back of her mind and ignored the nastiness of death in favor of a more clinical analysis. It was no novelty, anyway.

The alicorn squinted, holding the griffoness in her telekinetic magic, letting it transmit to her all the details. The trauma wreaked havoc on her body. Directionless lungs and muscles would fail in their task and starved tissues would die. Actual death should soon follow when her brain no longer received sustenance. It should take a while as another thing the odious catbird goddess did right was ensure her servants were exceptionally physically fit. But this time, that would work for Celestia’s intentions.

With the griffoness alive and well, prodding into her being would prove difficult with all the barriers and fail-safes the Harpy was likely to have put in there, even beyond those of all living creatures. But Celestia’s place in the grand magical machinery of Creation afforded her privileges.

Celestia’s eyes focused after laying the griffoness on the grass and her horn’s golden light again bathed the grass and the twitching griffoness. Nobody else would have noticed it. Her magic prodded and poked, looking for a way in. It was not even a conscious process, more like something the most ancient parts of her magic almost knew how to do by itself. It kept probing, nudging the crumbling barriers here and there, just a little to wiggle inside every crack she could find.

Once inside, her magic ‘connected’ effortlessly and Celestia opened her eyes to find herself on a beach. A lakeside of black, fine sand and golden light made into liquid. It webbed at the sand and receded rhythmically like a breathing animal. Petrichor made Celestia sneeze, and her wings fluffed at the distant thunder. She shivered and shook her head to focus. A black tower occupied a stone outcrop rising from the water, but a hefty part of the battlements at the top fell and crashed at the base before the water swallowed it.

Celestia jumped into the air and flew towards the tower. The golden light from the water lost its shine by the minute and longer cracks appeared in the tower’s foundation, snaking their way up. She flew hastily to a landing before the black tower. Her hooves clopped on smooth black stone polished to a mirror sheen. Black iron doors adorned with matching etchings of griffon wings blocked her entry. They had a handle, a round doorknob that seemed ridiculously small for the fortified doors. Celestia’s magic simply ripped one half from the hinges and tossed it to splash on the water.

Inside, stone walls and a rustic hall met her. Tables covered in white cloth flanked a hearth fire in the center, but the fire was gone. Only the dimming embers remained. Plates on the tables held food, but it had all fallen into disarray, like a cadre of misbehaving foals had gone through the room and left food and sauces everywhere. Celestia paid all that little attention other than a passing glance.

Framed paintings hung from the walls, but their images had darkened or washed away like someone had doused them in water after setting them on fire. The floor of sturdy, well fitted planks shook and one of them snapped under the weight of Celestia’s hoof. Grimacing at the quickly deteriorating scenery, she took the stairs up with celerity. A spiral snaked inside the tower, separating the inner and outer wall, and the alicorn climbed it with a quick trot. The cracking stone competed with her clopping hooves, and she ignored pieces of stone tumbling down after another crack splintered the solid stone. Eventually, she reached the room above and it ought to be called a library.

A dizzyingly tall collection of bookcases took over the walls while the wood floor was empty, except for the ash throne in the center. Griffon glyphs, polished pieces of iron, and black satin decorated it, but it held no importance to the alicorn. Celestia strode into the room, eyeing the bookcases on the walls. Innumerable volumes filled rows upon rows, enough to compare to the Canterlot Archives. The sheer quantity of knowledge a loremaster could fit inside those bird brains of theirs astounded. But when Celestia’s magic reached for one, it simply failed to pull the book out, like it refused to interact with her magic. She huffed impatiently as the white griffon letters on the spines flaked off them at an alarming speed.

The princess grimaced and took the spiral stairs further up with all the celerity she could afford, passing by a gaping hole in the stone wall to the outside. The top room, past a circular wooden wall, had a painting of the Harpy about the size of her ego. It caught the princess’ eyes and made her ears perk. There she stood, just her bust, showing her profile with sharp lines, black beak, gray eyes, silvery-to-jet fluffy chest, and her crown of black feathers.

The room had far more detail in it, illuminated by iron sconces and their dimming torches. Several alarms kept ringing, frantic little bells alongside shining lights everywhere. Panels with black screens showed only one central flickering dot and bizarre anatomical pieces out of Dr. Hoofenstein’s laboratory showed parts of a ‘disassembled’ griffon. Entire systems of organs floated in clear liquid like exposed works of art for inspection. Entire anatomical blocks, like the entire cardiovascular system, a dense mesh of blood vessels with a slowly pulsating heart at the core. The complete dermis of the griffoness was open on a board, complete with all the annexes, from fur to feathers to her beak. A brain with her eyes and then the full tree of nervous ‘wiring’, not to mention the nasty tear and red-stained swelling at the top of the spinal cord.

Celestia bent her muzzle, looking at the collection of meaty tubes and annexed liver and pancreas, from tongue to anus. It squirmed, and Celestia had to control her shivering amid red lights and insistent ringing bells. She had no time for foolery, but why, oh, why did everything the Harpy touched had to be creepy? Doctor Hoofenstein’s laboratory probably would have less obnoxiously medieval surgical instruments laid on a metal table in the center.

The alicorn let out a relieved sigh when she found what she was looking for. Something a common pony might consider an excessively fancy typewriter machine connected to the ceiling by a multitude of cables passing under the painting. But unlike the usual pony typewriters, the one in the condemned tower had no comfortable, large keys meant for hooves and combinations of strikes. The one Celestia sat before was a gloomy, black contraption of metal, wires and hundreds of keys organized seemingly at random upon six lines and at least two dozen staggered columns. Each one with a unique symbol of the High-Griffonese alphabet.

“Stupid, backwards, mouse-guzzling…” she mumbled, glaring at the machine.

Celestia knew the design, but after millennia, it still boggled her mind. A passing thought acknowledged it probably made sense if one typed with thin griffon fingers, but a grumpy groan escaped her, anyway. She had no time to mess with the thing, and a chiming yellow glow enveloped the machine as she sat before it. It was possible her magic would interfere with it and make her job harder, but time was limited. The keys depressed and raised on their own in rapid sequences while the glass screen above the machine turned on with a loud click and a headache inducing buzz. A sequence of griffon characters streamed in green against the black background and a broken disembodied voice of female timbre spoke in High-Griffonese.

“Critical failure: deprecated homeostasis.”

Celestia ignored it, frowning at the streaming characters on the screen, squinting at their enigmatic meaning and the sequence of characters she needed to interact with the machine. She grimaced, giving it commands as strings of symbols. Lists, long streams of griffon characters appeared along images and graphs few other than Celestia could hope to understand.

“Gisla.” The princess whispered to herself, frowning. “It happened too fast. Huh… Of course.”

Her body became tense, and her wings shuffled. Slowly, a grimace formed in her muzzle. Her eyes turned to the keys beneath, and her magic pressed them in quick succession once again. After an angry buzz, and red blinking letters on the screen, she winced and tried something else. After another combination of keystrokes, symbols claimed the glass screen, in a combination of text and images. Celestia’s eyes frantically scanned the screen under the flashing lights and noisy bells.

“Critical failure: decerebration.”

“I know!” She shouted at the room. “I’m sorry, but it’s your fault!”

Shutting down many mental barriers that way was easier than battering them down from the outside with intrusive magic, but that didn’t mean it was actually easy. Especially with all that noise and so little time. Celestia mumbled to herself, but kept trying until she finally gasped and grinned. A few more keystrokes caused the griffoness to materialize into the room next to her, out of thin air. The griffoness flared her wings and her beak hung open. Eyes wide and shifting, she looked around the room in shock, before turning to Celestia.

“What is happening? What did you do to me, abomination?!” she yelled with a raging grimace.

“Tell me what happens to the griffon souls once they disembody.” Celestia urged.

“No!” the griffoness screeched.

The griffoness complained some more that she wanted answers, growing more and more agitated with every word, but Celestia paid her no mind. She turned to the terminal and several keys clicked under her magic.

“What is this place? What are you doing?” The griffoness insisted.

“Tell me.” Celestia turned to her again. “Where do the griffon souls go? What is the Harpy doing to them?”

“I will not tell you! Mother Harpy would loath me.”

Celestia groaned. “She won’t know! You won’t remember! Your bird brain is not even capable of fixating memories anymore, obnoxious hen! You are dying!”

“You killed me!” The other accused, louder than the alarms.

“Tell me, or I will go after the others and one of them will tell me!” The alicorn flared her wide wings and yelled.

Most of her words went unnoticed. The griffoness grimaced with a gasp and her eyes became unfocused. “Critical failure: neuronal decoherence.” The disembodied voice complained.

“Gisla! Tell me!” Celestia scared the griffoness back into consciousness. Shutting down mental barriers, changing subliminal processes, nothing had worked. The princess sighed and her voice softened. “I will… I’ll lay you to rest with the others in the fire. And I will allow the others to go unscathed. I promise, but I must know.”

“Curse it all…” The griffoness’ eyes filled with tears. “The song and the fire. The magic in all griffons… Lighting the fire for the funeral triggers our innate magic to affect the fire and receive the magic in our voices through the song. It changes the fire, and it releases and marks our souls. Mother will capture them and send us on our way to the Stormy Eyrie.”

“The Windigos destroyed the Stormy Eyrie!” Celestia accused with a wrathful scowl amid the alarms, snapping rock and crumbling, breaking glass in a deluge of strong-smelling water. “Even if the new cycle of creation remade it, the Windigos always destroy it in every iteration of the world! Speak the truth, hen!”

“It is the truth, stupid grassbreath!” The griffoness grimaced back at her, putting a paw on her chest. Her grimace turned fierce again in a second. “My mother loves me! She will not allow me to wash away into nothingness! I will live in death to glorify the Mother of Storms and dare the Eternal Winter! I am not livestock to be forgotten once their use is over!”

Her words failed with a grunt. She stared at Celestia, one last time, wrathful and defiant even with her wet eyes. ‘Critical Failure: cessation of consciousness imminent’, the voice declared. The light was gone, and the blaring alarms silenced.

Celestia opened her eyes. The noises of crickets and a small foraging fox accompanied the rustling leaves in the dark. It yapped and wagged her tail once before going about her routine. The princess sat on the cold grass, staring at the lifeless griffoness. A fierce grimace showed her teeth and her brow scowled, but a sigh escaped, and she let go of her wrath. Her golden light enveloped the griffoness and gingerly deposited her amid the flames.

“My ponies do not vanish away into nothingness…” she whispered and lowered her eyes. “We see ourselves as part of the world, not above it. We flow along with it.”

Words lost to the breeze, they failed to fill the hole in her heart. Her throat burned, and she told herself the griffoness might as well be lying. Her brain was not even functioning properly. It was impossible that the Harpy had set up a completely different and clandestine system for griffon souls to rest and recuperate before returning to the realm of the living.

Celestia’s eyes found her hooves, and her ears flopped. The loremaster had to be lying. How would that even work? If they died and then the Harpy sequestered them away, would they simply exist in the Stormy Eyrie until they were ready to return? Consciousness requires both soul and physical body to emerge. Could the Allmother know some secret Celestia did not? Because pony souls not only lost their individuality upon death, but they also fell into a slumber within the Pool of Souls, as souls could not maintain consciousness by themselves. Her thoughts circled around to the same problem. The griffoness had to be lying, like the dishonest, greedy, vile, murderous catbird she was.

Her white ears perked once she noticed the wisp of magic leaving the lifeless body of the griffoness. Celestia glared at the great open black void rather than the stars, like someone had chutzpah-ed their way through the laws of the universe. She would not have it and her horn filled with magic. She ran her thoughts through the formulae of a particular teleportation spell and slipped in between the threads of spacetime again.

The stars no longer twinkled and simply shone. The verdant prairie was gone, along with the sounds of wildlife. All replaced by pealing and a blue steel platform above a sea of glowing, multicolored light. In all directions, far in the distance, rose jagged walls of white and silver, collecting the twinkling, barely perceptible rain that fell from above. The verdant plains, blue seas, and rugged mountain ranges of Equestria replaced the moon in the zenith and eclipsed the sun behind it. Its powerful light washed the stars away.

Before Celestia, the platform stretched for three-hundred hooves. Blue and silver spires surrounded a central crystal tower, eerily reminiscent of the Crystal Empire. It radiated with a vast magical power, and a downdraft made her mane dance. She trotted through the distance; teleporting through the length of the walkway always felt disrespectful. More than that, the place filled her with a reverent peace that eased her breathing and calmed her anxiety.

Massive, crystalized metal doors capable of defending a fortress moved their hulking size, opening for her. Beyond, white lights turned a gloomy corridor into a garish, clinical passageway, but it was short as it opened into a massive internal hall. A crystal floor showed the sun beneath the hall, but it was not the sun creatures saw from the surface of Equestria. It was a gaping void crowned with a bent halo of incandescent matter. It laid silent, like a dormant beast, feeding off what trickled inside. In the opposite direction, above where all the crystal and blue metal met, was glorious Equestria, shedding its drizzle of light upon the vast windows of the palace. Smack in the center of the room was a tall ‘Luna-sized’ chair floating above the floor like it balanced at the tip of a needle-like spike. A long circular table surrounded it with only an entrance that Celestia used.

She pushed the chair to the side as the room acknowledged her presence. Most of the lighting shut off, leaving a calming atmosphere while a magical image manifested over the circular table. It showed a long stream of magical engrams. Notation for visually registering spells, like musical notation. They vanished from the image, and a chime accompanied it. A logo with a crescent moon cradling Luna’s smiling bust manifested along with pony ideograms.

‘Throne of the Mind v4.35’

‘PonyOS 4.2’

‘Mare Serenitatis Soulstice Facility’

‘Likelihood of Systemic Cascade Magical Failure: negligible / Black Sun Event: safe’

‘Aetheric flow – Nominal’

‘Primordial soul detected, M. A. G. I. C. – standing by’

Celestia’s horn filled with golden light, and the magical system recognized it. It filled with more magical notations and a stream of griffon characters. Then pony ideograms again dominated the image, and some would be completely foreign to anyone else.

‘Khet Sah Ib Ka Ba Shut Sekhem Ren Akh - match’

‘Animus Imperative: Sun. Throne of Life authority recognized’

‘Welcome, Matriarch of the Great Herd. Equestria bows before the Firstborn of Harmony’

First, Celestia’s eyebrow rose at the cheesy message, but she had no time to worry about that. Her eyes jumped from image to image as the floating magical windows came to life. Information filled them. Graphs, images, maps. One of them showed the relative position of the rough disc of land which was Equestria, relative to the moon and the sun, while others showed different, detailed maps over a single giant map of the world. The main window showed dots without number over a map of the entire world. Under Celestia’s magical command, it spun to show the landmass on its side, with the moon above and the sun below. A small bar appeared and the name ‘Gisla’ wrote itself in scratchy griffon characters. Once it vanished, three dots blinked in red on the map. Two of them firmly planted on the surface and another soared towards the moon.

‘Tracking – Creature added to watchlist’ the screen wrote in pony ideograms. Several magical windows changed. A portrait of the griffoness in question appeared, smug as a griffon could be, along with information about gender, age, and a blank list of incidents. Another image said ‘Decoupled’. A third showed a little multicolored cloud with several indications and pony ideograms. Many images showed nothing at all and a graph with the different ideograms for the Elements of Harmony showed blank readings. A list of terms for the pieces of one’s soul followed with words denoting a lack of issues to report. A double line of red ideograms blinked, though.

‘Sekhem Class Violation: unexpected decoupling’

‘Ka Class Violation: curse’

Celestia ignored the first. The second was a good sign the griffoness may not have lied after all. If the fire truly did something to their souls, it would read as a curse. Celestia growled at the floating magical image, but after such realization, time passed with no event while the princess waited.

Not one for sitting pretty doing nothing, Celestia again directed a magical command at the system. The black bar appeared again, and the name ‘Twilight Sparkle’ wrote itself in it. The magical images changed to show a portrait of the smiling purple alicorn. Her cutie mark, lines and graphs showing mostly normal values and a graphical representation of the six Elements of Harmony, each one with a different value. The larger map showed her in Manehattan, as well as alerts for diminished blood volume and several minor traumas. The magical system would not show Celestia who she was with, or most details about the surrounding area, but she seemed to be inside a cart with other creatures. Blobs of bound mana M.A.G.I.C. identified as griffons, ponies and another alicorn whose intense pink could only belong to Cadance.

Directed to focus on Cadance, M.A.G.I.C. informed Celestia of a semi-fracture on her nose and minor brain contusions of no significance. It seemed both had been involved in a fight and Farseer was lucky Celestia had not seen M.A.G.I.C.'s report before letting Radiance scold her. And while both seemed fine, if injured, something in the report bothered Celestia. The window tasked with showing information about the various parts of Cadance’s soul had one warning.

‘Ren Class Violation: Animus Imperative corruption’ the cyan pony ideograms said with cyan in the deep blue background.

Celestia made a mental note of it and added another name for M.A.G.I.C. to seek. ‘Luna’. The map scrolled all the way to the north of Griffonia, but gray clouds and eventual lightning plumes obscured the entire region all the way to the Frozen North. The entire set of magical windows froze for a second, and a message took the larger one. ‘Query failed’.

Before she could command M.A.G.I.C. to look for Luna again, with a most displeased frown, a warning popped up in the center of the window. ‘Watchlisted creature lost – querying’. Following that, the map showed the entire magical storm covering northern Griffonia. The red dot blinked there, and there, all over before the ‘Query failed’ message flashed again. All the information M.A.G.I.C. previously showed Celestia about the griffoness and her soul turned to error messages and vanished.

“What the…” the alicorn whispered to herself. She knew the entire thing was quirky. It was, after all, a magical representation of an unfathomable magical system of immeasurable complexity. Chocolate Velvet’s ideas, along with advances in modern magical studies, plus the Sister’s immense knowledge about magic and the Cosmos had helped Luna remake the magical constructs they used into something more streamlined and autonomous. Error messages were a way M.A.G.I.C. had to tell her that something happened that it was not prepared to understand.

‘Error report filed.’ M.A.G.I.C. declared, showing at the same time a list of error reports, each made of the name of a creature and a date. And that was another useful addition, thanks to Chocolate and his memories of his original world. Almost all of them represented griffons, several in the last few days. The time readings spanned quite a long time. With a frown, and growing worry as her jaw dropped further, Celestia made mental calculations. The system had started logging such errors almost as soon as she and Luna modernized it with Chocolate Velvet’s ideas. All was the same: griffons, which died in the most diverse ways a griffon could die, all with the same notification of ‘Ka violation’.

Why had M.A.G.I.C. never alerted them to those happenings? The shocked alicorn had no idea. It was a thing of moral integrity that Celestia would never use M.A.G.I.C. and her privileges, be they political or supernatural for personal gain. She would refrain from using it even if it could give her an edge for dealing with serious situations, unless it was necessary. Maybe she should have kept closer eyes upon it.

Regardless, Celestia materialized a small notepad and a pencil. She noted down the names and time stamps before commanding M.A.G.I.C. to show her the normal records. And those happened concomitant to other griffons and creatures which simply died away, and their souls followed the normal path back to the Pool of Souls. The detail was that in the northerner lands, where the griffons supposedly performed the burning funeral, and their souls ended in the error report.

Celestia’s hoof slammed at the desk with a furious, frustrated, and almost foalish whinny and a snort.

Behind her anger was fear, and what scared her the most was not that the catbird extraordinaire was slipping away with souls. No. It was worse than that. It was the fact that the Harpy could have been doing that for an immeasurable amount of time. Celestia screamed and slammed her hoof at the console again. It all fit together. Grigor I, the Emperor died, and the Harpy hid away, so Celestia never found her. Now his soul probably returned through means Celestia couldn’t even fathom, and the Harpy put in motion her plan to wedge the Princesses away. She started her campaign of hatred against the hippogriffs and the ponies. Through the Lion she was gathering support and mobilizing an army of weathered monster hunters. She even used the idea of an afterlife to garner griffons to her side, like the boorish local militiagriffon from Griffonstone. The chancellor’s loyalists will stand no chance and she will conquer Griffonia. More and more griffons for her to indoctrinate. A legion of fanatical zealots the Harpy could use to summon all the magical power she would need to destroy Celestia.

What if she could, somehow, summon all the souls back from the Stormy Eyrie and put them to fight too? Old griffons who could have been training for as long as their souls held on just waiting for the gates to open and join the Lion’s revolt against the Griffonian government. But how? They were just souls without bodies. They should not exist anymore. Anyway, the Harpy waited for the last dozen cycles of creation, perfecting her plan, and in the present cycle, she would strike.

And in the middle of all that, Chrysalis had betrayed her and caused the Break of Dawn to be destroyed. Fortunately, it was unlikely the Harpy and Chrysalis were working together. One was too proud and the other too dense. Chrysalis probably meant to gain something for herself and inadvertently helped the Harpy.

Celestia’s muzzle turned into a delighted grin, though. Because Hairball did not expect Celestia to be prepared this time around. The Harpy almost won, but Celestia had reacted in time. The catbird became too cocky and Celestia now had the time to prepare and excise the evil of herself and her little murder kitties from the world. She would have to cleanse the Griffonian government. Celestia could not allow it to fall to the northerner griffons and the Harpy. And then eradicate the northern griffons from existence.

Triumphantly, Celestia stood and turned on her hooves to leave. She stopped and turned to the magical images floating above the circular table. They did as they should, showing what the ‘soul of the universe’ looked like, what it was doing, and helpfully waited for any commands. The princess approached the desk again and sat before the primary image. With her horn lighting up again, she entered another command and M.A.G.I.C. searched for the creature she had asked.

A red blip filled her eyes, hanging just below the moon, an instant before the rest of the information manifested as several magical windows. They showed the brown alicorn of an exuberant dark-chocolate mane and his easy, overconfident smile. All the images meant for bodily functions said ‘Decoupled’, but M.A.G.I.C. made all information about his soul available. Only one relevant red-flashing message appeared, and it said, ‘Ka violation – unknown variable’.

The princess tilted her head, eyes fixated on the red pony ideograms. It meant the connection to the Pool of Souls had a problem, but M.A.G.I.C. did not know what it was. Celestia did. They had created him using her as the model. Therefore, his soul lacked the ‘part’ which would allow him to finish the journey into the Pool of Souls. Measurements of mana levels showed diminished values, and little activity occurred. His soul had decayed from his exposure to the cosmic winds of the Aether and to nightmares, latching on to feed on his life force. It was also natural.

She smiled and her eyes watered. She had not simply dreamed it. It had not been a bizarre, dying hallucination of an alicorn brain. She had indeed talked to him when she first arrived at the doors to the bunker.

Her hoof reached for that little red blip in the magical window. He was so far out of her reach; it was folly to even entertain any silly notions of ever seeing him again. But at least he was not suffering.

That she could intentionally start the process of the Black Sun, restart creation again and see him in a distant future crossed her mind. But that was selfish, and that was not what he would have wanted her to do. In the next cycle, Celestia might also not have the chance to strike the Harpy in time.

Her smile turned into a sour frown, and she closed her eyes. Her throat ached. It was not fair. Star Swirl, all their friends. So many ponies, great and humble. So many lovers and consorts vanished in the winds of the Aether. Their souls laid to rest and made anew as all magic should. They became new beings, and all they were was destroyed. But the Harpy considered herself above that.

Was it to fix something that was broken? Was it justice or petty revenge Celestia wanted, staring at that red, blinking blip in the magical image? She wanted him back and could not have him. All of them, but they were beyond her reach. She had behaved while the Harpy violated the very laws of existence, clinging to her loved ones. Her son. The Lion. She had had her Emperor again.

‘My mother loves me! She will not allow me to wash away into nothingness! I am not livestock to be forgotten once their use is over.’ The loremaster’s dying words haunted the dark recesses of her thoughts and a frown creased her brow.

“I will bring Twilight and Cadance back, Chocolate. I will bring Luna back, and I will wrestle Griffonia from the Harpy and I will take the Gray Dames to Canterlot. We will recover the experimental weapons, and I will end her. I will destroy her hold on griffons, and I will avenge you. I will avenge us.”