Prologue
Endless Skies was starting to have serious doubts about his life. Mainly, he was doubting its continued existence. Still, he wasn’t dead yet. Better still, he was still up in the air, and that was a fact that the creature directly in front of him was sorely going to regret.
The dark blue pegasus put on another burst of speed and slammed headfirst into the griffon in front of him. He had aimed low, and while the impact sent bells ringing through his head, his helmet protected him from any serious harm. He even managed to feel a small sense of pride as he felt his blow sink into the griffon’s stomach.
The griffon let out a weak squawking noise as air was forced from its lungs. Endless Skies pulled his head back and immediately brought his front hoof up and connected with the beast’s face. The feathery head whipped to one side, a bit further than was natural, as the hoof slammed against one of the eagle eyes. The fact that Endless Skies was wearing armor on his hooves no doubt made the blow twice as painful.
The griffon hovered in the air for a moment, a dazed and sickly look on its face, before it started to list to one side and begin to fall. But Endless Skies wasn’t done yet. He knew the griffon was out of the immediate fight, but as long as it was still breathing, it was a threat to the few ponies who remained. He was going to make sure that it stopped breathing.
That, and he still needed a weapon.
The pegasus flew behind and below the griffon as it started to fall. He came fast, pushing his two front hooves out in front of him as he soared upward. A moment later, his hooves slammed into the griffon’s back and he was certain he heard the sound of a wing breaking. He pushed the body back up into the sky for a second, then flew up so when he turned he was facing the creature.
To his surprise, the griffon appeared to still be conscious. A look of fear flashed through its eyes, but Endless Skies’ pity for the beings had been spent long ago. He reached out and put his front hooves under the griffon’s forelegs and held it there for a second, then slammed his head into the beast’s face, making sure the brim of his helmet connected solidly with the griffon’s beak. Then he reached down with his mouth, gripped the hilt of the griffon’s sheathed down and pulled it out. Twisting his head, he slashed the blade across the white feathers, then brought it back around and shoved it into his enemy’s neck. He twisted his head slightly, trying to get the blade to sink deeper even though he knew the wound was fatal.
After a moment, he pulled the blade back out with his mouth, then slammed both of his hind legs into the corpse’s stomach and watched as it sailed away and fell into the forest blow, a small spray of red following its descent.
Endless Skies hovered in the air, watching as the body vanished beneath the treetop below. His own body was shaking and anger was clouding his vision. He bit down harder on the sword in his mouth until the sensation of his teeth sinking into the hilt snapped him out of his battle fury.
“You’ll die for that, pony!” a voice shouted at him. Endless Skies didn’t even bother to turn to see who was yelling. Three years of fighting had taught him to act instantly, and never react. He rolled to the side just as a sword swung past his body in an attempt to cleave him in two. He came out of his roll and looked to the left as the griffon’s over-zealous swing sent it tumbling through the air. A rookie mistake to be certain, especially when fighting in the air. On the ground, the griffon could have rolled away and gotten up well outside of Endless Skies’ striking range, but in the air, there was no ground to use. And when another dimension was added to the battlefield, a rookie mistake often proved deadly.
Endless Skies flapped his wings once, shooting forward and aiming for the griffon’s exposed wings. He’d use the sword in his mouth to sever the griffon’s wing and—
Pain exploded through Endless Skies’ head and his vision went dark for a second as the griffon went into a forward roll and brought its hind leg up in a kick that slammed squarely into the pegasus’ exposed chin. His head whipped up, and much to his frustration, his jaw flew open and the sword escaped from his teeth.
“Ha! What are you going to do without a weapon, you filthy—”
Endless Skies used the exact same tactic as his enemy just had, only instead of rolling forward, he flipped backward, using the inertia from blow to accelerate his backflip. He reached out with one of his back legs and smiled as he felt it slam into the griffon just as he was finishing his taunt.
“You forget that I just took out your friend without a weapon,” Endless Skies said as he completed his spin, making sure that he was a safe distance from griffon so that he’d have a split second to recover from the kick to the head. “All you’ve done is made it so I have to beat you to death instead of a quick death by the sword. The only thing that’s different is that your death is going to hurt a lot more now.”
The griffon was cradling its face as it shouted back through its talons. “We’ll see about—”
Endless Skies was already moving though, and he didn’t give the griffon a chance to finish its empty threat. The pony tackled the griffon in air, leaning in with his shoulder as their bodies made contact. He brought his left front hoof forward next, slamming it into the griffon’s stomach and then rushing up to knock the sword out of its talon. As the blade tumbled away to the forest below, Endless Skies reached out with his front hooves, pushing the griffon’s head to one side and part of the armor on its shoulder to the other side, and bit down as hard as he could.
Feathers filled his mouth, followed quickly by small traces of blood. As a pony, his teeth weren’t meant to tear flesh, and that hadn’t been what he was trying to do. No, he was trying to—
A sickening crack! rang out and Endless Skies felt something pop in his mouth. His teeth certainly weren’t meant for tearing, but the power behind any pony’s jaw was not something to be taken lightly. A fact that this griffon was no doubt realizing as its entire left foreleg became nothing but dead weight.
Endless Skies released his bite and slammed his right front hoof into the griffon’s broken shoulder. The beast screeched in agony and struggled to stay airborne. The pegasus pulled off his helmet with his hooves and swung it as hard as he could. It slammed into the griffon’s head once, twice, three times before the beast fell like a stone, vanishing into the forest below.
“That’s…that’s two,” Endless Skies heaved as he glared at the spot where the creature had fallen. “Only…only a…” he trailed off as the hopelessness of his situation again came crashing down around him. He had no idea how many griffons were left. He knew there were more than these two, and he knew that, no matter how hard he fought, there was no possible way he could best them all. Eventually one of them would get lucky, or he’d get tired and make a mistake. He had been flying as fast as he could for the past five minutes after all. That, combined with the past three days—which had to have been the most trying of his entire life—and he knew that the odds of him surviving much longer were slim at best. He had only been able to win these last two fights because he had caught the first griffon completely off guard and the second had made some serious mistakes.
“If only I still had my lance,” he said as he tried to put his helmet back on his head. The effort was wasted though, as it had been dented too much from being used as a club. He sighed and let it fall to join his lance somewhere in the forest. He had hated to leave his weapon behind, but he took some small comfort in the fact that it was still pinning a griffon’s corpse to a tree somewhere.
A screech echoed through the air and Endless Skies eyes went wide. He’d lingered too long! He needed to move now before any more griffons showed up. The longer they spent chasing him, the further away from the camp they got. He had already flown a fair distance from the rest of his ragtag group, but it wasn’t nearly as far as he liked. It would only take a few minutes of flying and the griffons would be right on top of the camp.
No, he needed to draw them further away but still keep them in the forest. If he went too far, they would no doubt realize what he was trying to do and abandon the pursuit.
But would that be such a bad thing? He would escape with his life and live to fight another day. Besides, he had sacrificed more than enough for this suicide mission. He’d lost two of his closest friends to the dangers of the forest alone, and watched as dozens of other ponies met horrible ends at the tips of griffon claws or weapons. No one would blame him now if he took off as fast as he could for the edge of the forest and left the remaining ponies to their fate. He’d bought them enough time, more than enough time in fact, to set up their defenses, even if it was a lost cause. Six of them against who-knew-how-many griffons? It was going to be a blood bath, and his death wasn’t going to change that. No, he should just leave those foolish earth ponies and stuck up unicorns and—
Endless Skies stopped the thought the second he realized what had gone through his head. That type of thinking had destroyed the ponies’ homeland. The mistrust and contempt among the three tribes had frozen their land in an eternal winter, and had nearly done the same thing to their new home. According to records, it wasn’t until the three tribes had set aside their differences and realized how much they all had in common that Equestria had been saved from the same magic that had destroyed their original home.
And now Equestria was being threatened with destruction, and the only way it would survive would be if the three tribes worked together. He wasn’t going to let his last moments be clouded by the way his grandparents, and to a lesser extent his parents, had spent their lives thinking. Earth, pegasus, or unicorn pony. It didn’t matter. In the end, they were all ponies, and they were all being threatened, which meant they all had to stand together.
Besides, Endless Skies thought with a grin, there’s still a pegasus with them too. Can’t abandon my own tribe.
“There he is!” a voice shouted. Endless Skies looked to his right—berating himself as he did for wasting precious seconds looking instead of moving—and decided that twenty-five years of life was all he was going to get.
Six griffons were flying toward him, their weapons drawn and their eyes narrowed. The sun caught on their armor, sending little flickering lights into Endless Skies’ eyes. He knew he could try to run, but that would only delay the end for a few moments, and he doubted those moments would make a difference to the others now. No, if he was going to die, he was doing it facing the enemy, and he was going to see if he could take at least one more with him.
“Come and get me, you feathered freaks!” the pegasus shouted, tapping his chest armor with his hoof as he hovered, waiting for the griffons to close the gap. As the seconds ticked by, he suddenly became aware of how tired he was and how heavy his armor seemed. He had the sudden urge to take it off, even though the idea was insanity itself.
Without warning, pain unlike anything Endless Skies had ever imagined flood through is body. Air shot from his lungs and he couldn’t get it back no matter how hard his gasped. His eyes bulged and threatened to leap from his skull as they flew open. Sweat instantly broke out across his entire body and his began to shake, and then he felt a sensation that was alien to him, and yet strangely familiar at the same time.
It took his mind a moment to realize that he was falling. Not diving, not dropping under his own will, but falling, tumbling through the air like a rock. He tried to flap his wings, but the same pain flooded his body. He screamed and then felt branches smashing against him and twigs scratching his coat and face.
A particularly solid branch slammed into his back and his body folded around the limb, sending a new definition of pain to his brain. He heard something break and wasn’t sure if it was the branch or him, and then he was falling again for just another second.
Endless Skies didn’t realized he had hit the ground until he opened his green eyes and saw darkness around him, save for the small patch of damaged trees directly above him. Everything hurt in ways he didn’t think were possible. He closed his eyes, trying to get his body to stop screaming at him, and just lay there, struggling to stay conscious for what seemed like an eternity.
It would be so much easier to just slip away…
He fought the thought with every ounce of strength he had left, and when the pain in his body finally faded to a deafening roar instead of blinding, he opened his eyes again. His breath came in short, painful gasps and he could feel tears swelling in his eyes. He winced and forced his head to turn to the side, already suspecting what had been the cause of his crash.
An arrow was lodged in his wing. The back in had snapped off, likely due to the fall, but the majority of it was still stuck in him. That was it then. Unless the griffons thought the fall had killed him—he couldn’t understand why it hadn’t to be honest—there was no way he was going to be able to evade them now. Any minute they would find him and his life would be over.
“I’m…not dying…on my back.” The pegasus moved to sit up and instantly cried out. Pain tore through his body again as broken bones, bruises, gashes, and countless other injuries made themselves known. He nearly collapsed back to the ground, but he forced himself to sit up through the pain.
“Okay…okay,” he heaved as sweat and blood ran down his body. “Now, I just need to…stand up.” He stood and found that his back right leg would not support his weight and the other three were barely managing to keep him up. His breathing became nothing more than shallow, hurried gasps as he looked at the nearest tree and hobbled toward it. Each step was worse than the last, and when he finally reached the base of the tree, he felt as though he had been lit on fire for the past several days.
No longer able to stand, Endlesss Skies fell toward the tree, turning just enough so that it was his back that rested against the truck and not his chest.
Darkness threatened him again, and he was barely able to hold it off a second time. He was dying. He knew that much. And unless this creepy forced produced miracle healing creatures the same way it produced monsters, there was nothing that could save him. Still, the thought of dying alone in such a cursed place, while not frightening, was still a bit depressing. He had hoped to die in battle, not slowly slipping away and in immense pain.
As his life faded, Endless Skies looked around the forest that would be his tomb. It was not a cheerful place by any stretch of the imagination. Darkness hung from every branch and shadows seemed to bleed out of every corner. The trees were twisted, forming eerie imagines that flittered out of sight whenever he tried to focus on one. Sounds were muffled mostly, or perhaps that was just his hearing failing, but every once in a while a low growl or a snapping twig would echo from somewhere close and the pegasus braced himself for one of the creatures of the forest to burst forth and drag him away.
There was magic to this place, magic that was unlike anything Endless Skies had ever seen. Something powerful resided in this forest and gave everything within it an unnatural energy that hung thick in the air. Of course, that was the whole reason he and forty-nine other ponies had dared to venture into the place. That old unicorn had promised that, at the heart of the forest, there was a way to end the griffon threat forever. What that thing was, Endless Skies had no idea and he regretted that he wouldn’t get the chance the find out.
Another twig snapped, followed by the sound of flapping wings and rustling armor and branches. Endless Skies closed his eyes and waited for the killing blow.
“Stay with us, pegasus,” a voice said. “Don’t die just yet.”
Endless Skies opened his eyes and saw several griffons standing around him, many with arrows trained on him. At the front if the group stood a larger one with a black head of feathers instead of the usual white. Endless Skies assumed that griffon was the leader.
“And…I suppose you…feathered freaks…are going to stop that?” Endless Skies asked, doing his best to grin but wincing so bad that the expression completely failed.
“We could,” the lead griffon said. An evil grin crossed the griffon’s beak and Endless Skies knew that whatever the price was that they were going to ask, it was going to be too high.
“I’m…listening,” he replied, then slouched a little lower against the tree, the action not entirely a ploy. “Better…make it fast though. I don’t think I’m…going to be around much longer.”
“Where are the rest of you filthy work horses?” the leader demanded, digging its front talons into the ground. “We’ll find them eventually, but you could save us a lot of trouble. Tell me, and we’ll save you.”
Endless Skies hated himself because for two seconds he contemplated that deal. The verge of death apparently made the brain do crazy things. “And what…will happen to the others?”
The lead griffon shrugged. “What do you care? We know about the history between your three tribes. You all play at harmony and unity, but the truth is that you ponies were driven into our lands by your petty jealousy and suspicion. So don’t pretend with me that you care what happens to the others.”
That got Endless Skies’ blood to boil and he felt a renewed sense of strength flooding his limbs. Equestria had been uninhabited when the three tribes had settled the land. When the griffons had arrived later, claiming the ponies had invaded their lands, the ponies had apologized and offered to work out a compromise. Equestria was big enough to share, and the ponies weren’t about to ruin their new land by being selfish with it.
The griffons had responded with blood and steel. Ponies that were captured were worked to death and treated as slaves. Those that resisted were killed. It had been like that for four years, with the ponies slowly losing ground. This quest had been their last real chance to turn the tide.
And there was no possible way Endless Skies was going to allow the mission to fail because of something he did.
“You’re right,” he said as he closed his eyes, hoping the hide the anger that was burning in him now. The sheer arrogance that had come from that beast’s beak was almost too much to take. “I don’t care. Help me, and I’ll lead you right to them. I’ll even tell you how many of them are left.”
The leader considered Endless Skies words for a while, then finally nodded to another griffon who had a bow trained squarely on Endless Skies. “Try anything funny or betray us in any way, and you won’t get the chance to regret it,” the leader said as the other griffon slug its bow and walked toward the wounded pony. The pegasus was disappointed that the leader wasn’t the one coming to help him up, but he really hadn’t expected that to happen. To make up for the disappointment, Endless Skies decided that this griffon was probably the one who had shot him, and it was about to pay dearly for that.
Endless Skies counted the seconds as the griffon drew closer. A small part of him—a very small part—felt bad for what he was about to do, but it was quickly buried under all the anger, sadness, and pain that these beasts had caused.
Three seconds left.
He tilted his head slightly to the side, seeing if he could move his neck enough. It burned, but he decided he could.
Two seconds.
He worked his jaw, making sure his mouth could still open and close and his teeth still had some bite.
One second.
He raised both his front hooves out in a gesture that implied that he needed help up. The griffon reached out with its front claws and not-so-gently dug its talons into his forelegs. The last ounce of pity he had felt for what he was about to do vanished as fresh blood flowed from his new wounds.
Zero.
Endless Skies jerked his head to the left and nearly screamed in agony and abandoned his plan as pain shot through his body. He mouth found the arrow lodged in his wing and bit down, his teeth sinking into the shaft. He pulled as hard as he could with his mouth, the pain becoming nearly unbearable as the arrow ripped from his flesh, its tip dripping with his blood.
At the same time as he arrow came free, he pulled back with his hooves, knocking the griffon off balance and sending it tumbling toward him. He twisted his head back and pushed forward with the arrow as the griffon fell. For a brief moment he felt resistance, and then the arrow sank into the feathery white neck.
Endless Skies felt blood spurt across his face. He jerked his head again, making sure the arrow was lodged in the beast’s neck, and then glared up at it. Their eyes met and the pegasus felt a sense of pride as he saw fear swallowing the eagle eyes that looked down at him. The same look he had seen in the eyes of so many ponies of the time of this war. The eyes darted around his face, questions and horror shifting through them so fast that he was having trouble keeping up, and then the light began to fade from them. They dimmed, and then rolled back into the griffon’s skull and the creature became dead weight.
As the griffon fell, Endless Skies pushed it to the side so it wouldn’t fall on top of him. “Oop—”
Pain once againt shot through Endless Skies’ body, only this pain made everything else pale in comparison. His chest felt…he wasn’t sure what it felt like, because he had never felt anything like—
Another bolt of pain canceled out the thought. He tried to scream, tried to throw his head back and cry out, but his entire body was stiff. It refused to listen to him. He lungs refused to bring in air and his eyes refused to stop watering. Something caught in his throat and started to choke the last few seconds of life from him.
Endless Skies’ head sagged forward and came to rest against his chest. As the last light faded from his eyes, he was just conscious enough to register two arrows sticking out of his chest. He coughed one last time, and then the pain began to fade. He closed his eyes as his hearing became dim, only able to pick up his slowing heart. His mouth became too heavy to keep closed and fell open as a vague sense of blood trickled down the corner.
“Stupid workhorse,” a distant voice said.
Kicked…your…flank, his mind shouted back as it crept into darkness.
He felt his body sag as all his weight came to rest on the two arrows pinning him to the tree, and then everything was gone.
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This is neat so far. Noticed two things though.
Were you trying for forest there?
I think slung is the word, I highly doubt that the bow is a relative of a snail. I know these are both a little... late. But, I figured I'd tell you anyways. Until next time,
-Sphinx