//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4 
// Story: Magic and Memory 
// by Summer Knight 
//------------------------------//

We'd only gotten a few steps off the docks when two griffons blocked the way. They wore some really strong-looking armor, and carried spears with wicked metal tips. I got a really good look at one of those as a guard pointed it in my face. 
"Who and what in blazes are you two?" the guard on the other end of that spear asked. 
Before I could answer, Grogar's horns started glowing. Suddenly the spearpoint was away from my face; both of them were pressing into his throat. Grogar growled deep in his chest, and his magic turned distinctly redder. 
"Wait, wait!" I shouted, and scrambled to put myself between Grogar and the two griffons. "He won't hurt you," I reassured the guards. 
"Yes I will," Grogar butted in, and I thanked the stars that the griffons couldn't understand him.
"He was just casting a spell so we could all talk to each other," I said over him. "So, to answer your question: My name is Waxing Gibbous. I'm a batpony." 
"Yeah, I know what a batpony is!" the guard in front of me spat. "What the flock is that?" 
I glared back at him. "That is my friend Grogar." Behind me, Grogar gave a surprised grunt. "He's a ram, if you must know."
The guards looked at each other again. 
"And what's a... ram... doin' in my town?" the other griffon asked. 
"Looking for the inn," I replied. I took a deep breath to rein in my temper. "Preferably before the sun comes up."
"Inn. Right." The guard in front of me was talking again. "If you think that freak is setting one mutated hoof in this town, you're nuts."
It was like the guard's words reached inside my body and twisted up my insides. An angry red haze filled my mind and drowned out my thoughts. I'm usually pretty good with words, but there were no words to properly tell this griffon what a vile, hateful, awful creature he was. My body shook with the effort of not throwing myself at the two of them, but I had just enough sense left to know that would only end with me impaled on two spears. 
As I opened my mouth again, still not sure what I was about to say, an orange glow washed over all four of us. The guards squawked and scrambled to point their spears at us again.
"Stop." Grogar commanded, and for a moment the three of us did stop. It wasn't a spell, we were just held in place by the sheer force of his presence. 
"W-w-what did you do?" the guard in front of Grogar demanded, clutching his spear in trembling claws. 
"A translation spell, as Gibbous told you," he replied. "Now drop your weapons and leave."
"W-we can't do that," the other griffon stammered. "We're supposed to guard this town."
Grogar growled, and his horns glowed blood red. 
The griffons screamed, threw down their spears, and scrambled away from us. One clumsily winged into the sky, the other ran down the street as fast as his claws could take him.
Grogar exhaled and the glow faded. "Come," he said.
I barely heard him. My heart was still racing, blood roaring in my ears not from fear, but from anger.
"Waxing Gibbous." Grogar's stern voice cut through the haze. "Leave them."
"But Grogar... you couldn't understand them, but they said such horrible things about you!" I protested. 
"They do not matter," he answered. "Those two were probably just local ruffians turned guards. They hate what they don't understand, which is most things."
I giggled a little at that. 
"Well, it's a good thing you scared them off," I said as we started walking again. "I thought they were about to kill us both."
"They would not have," Grogar answered. "If they had attacked, I would have vaporized them before they touched us."
"O... oh."
Grogar looked around for a moment. "My translation spell does not work on text," he said. "Which of these buildings is the inn?" 
"Are the griffons at the inn going to be any better than those two?" I asked. 
"Hm. Likely not. I will need a disguise." His horns glowed again, and an orange light washed over him. When it faded, a male batpony stood in his place. 
My jaw dropped. "You can turn into other creatures?"
The bat shook his head. "True shapeshifting is changeling magic. This is only an illusion."
"Illusion?" I tried my echolocation on him and found that he was definitely still Grogar, but my eyes were telling me something completely different from my sonar. It was very disorienting. 
"Well," I mumbled as my head spun, "I don't think griffons are supposed to have echolocation, so that should work." 
It took some wandering, and finally asking for directions from one of the few griffons who was awake this early, but we did find the inn. There was a brief snafu when the innkeeper asked for money—which neither of us carried—but a quick flash from Grogar's invisible horns sorted that out. I briefly wondered if hypnotizing the innkeeper counted as stealing, but after that encounter on the docks, I didn't really care. 
"Just in time, too," I noted as I closed the door to our cavern—no, in a building it's called a room. "The sun's coming up." 
I squinted as the first piercing rays crept into the window. Pretty soon the whole room would be flooded with light. Plus, as I looked around, I realized there was no place for me to hang while I slept. The only things in here were a couple of strange, padded platforms whose functions I couldn't begin to guess. "Sheesh, how's anybat supposed to sleep like this?" 
"Hm? Ah, the sun," Grogar said as he noticed me squinting toward the window. The air above his batpony head glowed, and suddenly the window turned pitch-black. Now the room was only lit by what crept in around the door. It was still much brighter than home, but tolerable. Or it would be, if I had someplace to sleep.
"I will be back tonight," Grogar said as he turned back toward the door.
"Wait, what?" I squeaked. "Where are you going?" 
"To learn what the griffons know," he replied as if it should have been obvious. "That is why we're here." 
"Now? It's morning!"
"I am diurnal." 
"Okay, but—" I hadn't considered that, actually, "—but you've still been up all night. You're exhausted!"
"I am fine." Grogar revealed his own lie with another yawn, then reached for the door again.
"Oh no you don't." I caught his foreleg with one of mine and turned him around. "Both of us need to sleep. The griffons will still be there in the evening."
Grogar glared at me, but... I don't know if it was the batpony form, or because he was tired, or what, but it didn't have the same oppressive weight as usual. Then he huffed.
"Perhaps you are right. My research will be much more productive if I am rested." 
"Of course I'm right," I preened. "Though I don't know where we're supposed to—oh."
I watched as Grogar hopped onto one of those strange, padded platforms. He settled his head onto some oddly squishy rectangular rocks and pulled a layer of heavy fabric over himself. His deep, heavy snoring filled the room almost instantly. 
"Well, the innkeeper called this a bedroom," I mumbled to myself. "And the whole thing is the room, so these must be... bed? Beds? Whatever." 
I'd seen bird nests before, and these beds were a bit like that if you looked at them the right way. It made sense that griffons would make nests, too. Did sheep build nests? I supposed they must. 
"Well, here goes nothing." 
It took some doing, but I managed to get myself flat on the bed with my head on those weird, squishy rocks. I tried pulling the fabric over myself, but I immediately panicked at having my legs and wings pinned, so the fabric ended up on the ground. The squishy rocks joined it a moment later. 
Now, lying flat, I could almost imagine that I was hanging in my cave like usual. Except there was this weird pressure on me from the bed. And the light from the door stung my eyes. And no batpony had ever snored as loudly as Grogar. 
"Ugh." It was going to be a long day.