Ponyville was a strange place, even at the best of times. One day, a pony might journey through a perilous forest to the home of a forgotten archmage, to battle an ancient evil for the fate of all Equestria.
On another day, the same mare could be helping ducks cross a street.
“Right this way, little ones,” said Fluttershy, patiently and gently making a path through Ponyville for mama duck and papa duck and a whole row of precious, adorable ducklings. She turned around backwards, still walking as she encouraged them. “Oh yes, I know it seems like an awfully long way, but the pond is just a little further, so…”
Unexpectedly, she backed right into someone. “Please excuse me…” Fluttershy turned her head, and stiffened in fright. “G- Gilda?!”
Gilda spread her wings in an intimidating display, glaring down her beak at the smaller pegasus… and then she grinned and winked. “All right, ponies, you heard her! Make way, coming through!”
The griffon took a Columbian military-issue baton out of her camouflage-patterned travel bag, and walked ahead of Fluttershy and the ducklings, directing traffic. “You, yeah, you there with the cart! Sit tight for a minute. Can’t you see there’s ducklings walking here?” Gilda glanced back and saw Fluttershy still frozen in place, astonished. “Well, come on, Flutters, I don’t have all day.”
“R- Right!” Fluttershy hurried along, making sure no duckling was left behind. Then she gasped and blushed mildly. “Oh my. I hope you’re not offended, Gilda, but Fluttercruel is sulking because she didn’t get to roar back at you.”
Gilda smirked. “Oh, she thinks she can yell louder than a griffon, huh? Maybe we’ll just have to see about that.”
“Whaaaaat!?” roared Gilda, scaring sleeping birds off of rooftops blocks away. The television studio was closed and locked up, and the windows were all dusty with shades drawn. “Closed forever? No way!”
“That’s what the sign says.” Rainbow Dash glided down to land right by her side. “Hey, G! Good to see you again!”
“Good to see you too, buddy!” echoed Gilda, ruffling Rainbow’s mane with her claws, which got her a giggle and a mild hoof to the ribs in return. Gilda frowned at the sign again. Literally, it read, “Pinkie Pie’s Variety Show studio is closed… FOREVER!” with an apologetic cartoon of Pinkie Pie at the bottom. “So you guys never made another one of those crazy shows? Really?”
Rainbow winced. “Well… technically, there was one more.”
Gilda lashed her tail. “And I wasn’t invited. No, no, it’s okay. I’m a marine now. I probably couldn’t have gotten leave anyway.”
“Actually, nobody was invited,” said Dash. “The Cutie Mark Crusaders… you remember them, right? They went off and explored the Everfree Forest with their coltfriend, and they filmed the whole thing!”
Gilda blinked, tilting her head to one side. “Filmed? Like in the studio? You just said they were in the forest.”
Dash shrugged. “I don’t really understand it myself, but they made a video all by themselves, and it’s awesome! You’ve gotta see it!”
“Really, Dash? Some little girls’ sleepover thing?” Gilda couldn’t keep the smirk off her face. “I gotta see that?”
“Hey, it’s cooler than it sounds. Come on, we can watch it at Sugarcube Corner!” Dash beckoned and started trotting, and Gilda shrugged, following her. “We just need to borrow the tape from… Pinkie Pie.” Dash hesitated. “Say, G? … I should warn you now, there’s been some big changes around Ponyville. I mean, really big changes!”
“Is that so?” Gilda glanced around as they walked, seeing only plain old same as always Ponyville. The damage from those Tartarus jerks had long since been repaired, and it wasn’t as if somebody had blown up the library, or trashed that crazy carousel store, or erected a giant new castle while she’d been away.
Rainbow nodded. “I’m actually kinda surprised that *He* hasn’t popped in on you yet.”
Gilda groaned. “What are you hiding, Dash? Don’t pay the pronoun game with me.”
Right about then, a tall human with mint-green skin came around a street corner, wearing strange clothes and chatting happily with an earth pony mare. Gilda nearly turned her head all the way around, staring as the odd couple trotted past them.
Dash grinned and rushed back, urging Gilda to hurry along. “It’ll make more sense if you see the video first! Just, whatever you see around town, don’t freak out.” They’d reached Sugarcube Corner, and Dash got the door, holding it open for her. “Unless, of course, you see me freaking out first! Then, you can panic all you want!”
“Pfft. As if!” Gilda padded through the door, and immediately stopped in her tracks.
There was another Gilda and another Rainbow Dash already inside Sugarcube Corner, sitting at a table right in front of her. They were faintly transparent with faded colors, but there was no mistaking that pair.
At another table, Gilda sat alone, tapping her claws impatiently. There was more, too.
A Gilda laughing and joking with a rainbow-crested griffon Dash.
Two unfamiliar earth pony mares that could have been the sisters of Aloe and Lotus Blossom.
Yet another Gilda sitting at a long table with Rainbow Dash and all her friends, wearing a party hat and eating cake.
The Gilda standing in the doorway face-clawed. “Ugh, real cute, Dash. Let me guess, you put one of your unicorn friends up to this?”
Dash ignored her completely, walking straight through her like she wasn’t there.
A chill went down Gilda’s spine. “Come on, Dash! This isn’t funny! I mean, it’s not like I’m scared or anything, but you’re kinda creeping me out here!” She watched her Dash sit down with the phantom Gilda who had been sitting alone. “Hey, what the buck? I’m over here, Dash!” Everything was getting all gray and sluggish… the floor was a black morass, ready to swallow her up. “I’m the real me, not her! I… I’m…”
An orange hoof seized her outstretched claws. “You’re Gilda,” said a firm voice with a strong country accent. “You exist. Ah see ya right here in front of me.”
Gilda gasped for air suddenly, unaware than she’d been holding her breath. A little of her color came back, and her claws and paws found solid ground once again. “What the hay was that!?” she squawked. “That was so not... cool?”
She gawked at the orange-coated, golden-maned mare who’d rescued her. Green pony eyes looked evenly back at her.
“Wait, hold on a sec… I remember you! Yeah… Yeah, you were at the variety show thing.” Gilda snapped her claws. “You’re one of Dash’s pony friends! Snapplejack… I mean, Appleslap! Something like that...”
“Applejack,” said the mare, just a mite testy.
“You’re the apple farmer!” exclaimed Gilda, pointing at her. “So why…” The griffon smirked and started snickering. It was too much, too many shocks one after another, and then this weird gray place, with an apple farming pony… who now had mirror-feathered wings, and a horn! Applejack even still had her lame-o hat, somehow staying on her head even though it was awkwardly perched behind the horn.
Gilda covered her beak with her claws and still couldn’t keep the giggles in. When Applejack twitched an eyebrow upwards, Gilda lost it entirely, busting out laughing and rolling on the foggy ground. “I’m sorry! I just can’t take you seriously like that. Bwa-haha!”
Applejack’s horn flared to life. The cherry-red glow crackled and exploded around the Alicorn, like some Dragon Egg fighter powering up to super whatever mode, but instead of scary eyebrows and a bad hairdo… Gilda shaded her eyes, watching the dust clear, and then she screeched in fright, fur and feathers fluffing up, limbs shaking till she fell to the ground…
“Do I have your attention now?” growled Applejack’s voice, big and deep and entirely without the farm drawl… coming from a giant, muscular griffon hen half-again Gilda’s size. She had bronze fur, golden feathers, and sharp green eyes surrounded by dark jade markings. Stars twinkled in her crest, and flowing rainbow colors trailed from her outstretched wings. Her tail tuft was like a comet, leaving an afterimage wherever she twitched it.
Gilda looked up at her, gaping in awe, and something finally clicked. She stumbled upright and saluted. “Ma’am! Yes, ma’am!”
Applejack’s stern expression slipped. “Gilda… Why, in all the times we’ve ever met, I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you acting respectful to anybody.”
Gilda scoffed, rolling her eyes. “W- What? I’m in the military now! You think I can just smart off at my sergeant whenever I want?” She coughed, glancing aside. “Course, you know me, I had to learn the hard way. That was not a good day.” She gave the celestial griffon an earnest look. “But, you…were you really Boreas the whole time? Or Astra?”
AJ shook her head slowly. “Neither one, sugarcube. Being a goddess, a Concept… that’s bigger than any one species. What Ah look like doesn't change what Ah am, and Ah’m Veritas, the Honest Truth, now.”
She padded closer. “Gilda… when Rainbow Dash told you that there’d been some big changes, even she didn’t know the half of it. A lot of what’s about to happen, you won’t understand, or even remember, so Ah’ll try and be as quick and gentle about this as Ah can.”
“That’s what he said.” Gilda sniggered, then caught herself, quickly snapping to attention again. “Sorry! Sorry about that, ma’am! Shut up and listen up. I can do that!”
Veritas smiled. “Actually, Ah want to sit and listen to you for a spell. Tell me, have you ever heard of a place called Griffonstone?”
Gilda blinked several times. “Griffonstone? What’s that got to do with anything?” She waited for a punchline, but the griffon goddess only looked at her expectantly. “Well, duh, every griffon knows about Griffonstone!” Gilda waved her claws dramatically. “My mom told me the whole story. She said that Griffonstone griffons were tougher, braver, and more badflank than every soldier in Columbia put together!”
“Is that so?” mused Veritas.
Gilda jabbed a claw towards her. “You bet your tail feathers. You don’t have tail feathers either, do you? Never mind... I mean, they built a whole kingdom! Bringing all the griffon clans together, conquering dweebs left and right…”
Gilda started throwing mock punches with her fisted claws, getting into the story. “They even took on Equestria! There was this huge awesome battle, and airships blowing each other up for days, and we totally would have won the war too… if Celestia hadn’t gotten over Nightmare Moon, gotten up off her cake-stuffed flank, and, well… kinda threatened to drop the sun on us. Is that lame or what?
“Anyway, after that? The griffon nobles decided it’d be safer to expand the kingdom in the other direction. Eventually, a bunch of the outer territories split off to form a republic, and that’s how Columbia got started.”
Veritas nodded to herself, seeming oddly melancholy about something. “So… How about we go and take a look at Griffonstone for ourselves? Come, fly with me.”
Gilda’s flicking tail froze. “Wait, I get to fly with a goddess?” She grinned sharply. “You think you can fly better than me after two minutes in a griffon body, huh? Well, br-”
Veritas spread her wings and flapped them once. It was like she stood still and blew the entire world around them away, and Gilda came tumbling along after her, like a leaf in a dragon’s wake. Veritas touched down lightly on a cloud high over a mighty city.
Gilda face-planted next to her. “...bring it…” She coughed, hacking up bits of cloud, but soon she was back on her feet and peering over the side. “So, that’s Griffonstone?” The cliffside buildings, the mighty gates and bridges, the sky towers and their massive airships, flying the colors of the Griffon Kingdom… all of them were flickering and turning gray, just like back at Sugarcube Corner. “What’s going on?” She looked to Veritas, alarmed, eyes narrowing. “What did you do?!”
Veritas sighed. “An offer was made, by somepony Ah trust like mah own flesh and blood. Ah accepted.” She gestured with glowing red claws. Gilda watched, dumbfounded, as black metal parts floated out of her travel bag, snapping together into her service rifle.
The celestial griffon studied the weapon, turning it over in her magic. “A lot of folks have been trying for a long time to recreate all the amazing things that ponies had back in the Age of Wonders. Guns like this, that can shoot accurately as far as a griffon can see.” The rifle flickered and faded, becoming a well-crafted wooden crossbow. Veritas looked down at the city next. “Airships the size of entire buildings. Advanced materials, just as good as they had back in those days. Truth is, someday maybe we’ll have all those things back again, but not today, and definitely not in the days of the Old Kingdom.”
Far below them, Griffonstone was crumbling apart.
“Griffons are tough fighters,” said Veritas somberly, “but they never had a big leap forward in weapons technology to make things easier for them. After they conquered a few soft targets, their neighbors armed up and allied against them. Their ‘war’ with Equestria didn’t last an entire day before Princess Celestia made the consequences of invasion clear. That embarrassed the king, made him and the Old Kingdom look weak. When an enemy of the griffons stole the Idol of Boreas and it was lost, that was the last straw. King Guto was deposed, and nogriffon could agree who should be king after him.
“A lot of griffons left the kingdom after that, reckoning that things had gotten so bad with griffons fighting other griffons, it was better to just go someplace else and start over. Eventually, they settled where Columbia would have been and founded the New Kingdom. The ones who stayed behind to fight over the scraps, well…”
The bridges of Griffonstone collapsed and the towers toppled, leaving no rubble because they’d fallen and weathered away ages ago. The mighty airships blurred and melted into nothing, like sugar cubes in a cup of coffee. Most of the buildings fell into ruin and were replaced with simpler structures, or just left to rot, and yet, griffons continued to live there.
Gilda herself didn’t start fading away again, but a change came over her. “Whoa… that’s Griffonstone?” she asked, as if she was once again seeing it for the first time. “I thought it was supposed to be this amazing, historic place, but it’s a total pile! It’s nearly as bad as that crappy run-down frontier town I grew up in.”
“No, Gilda,” said Veritas. “You can’t have been born in the New Griffon Kingdom. It’s too far away. Griffonstone is the town where you were born and raised.”
Gilda made several odd, clashing facial expressions, before settling on mild annoyance. “So what if I was born in Griffonstone? You want to make something of it?!”
Veritas watched her intently, her expression unreadable. “This is probably the toughest call Ah’ve ever had to make since Ah became the Honest Truth. A huge number of folks lived who would have died, and a lot of centuries-old prejudices between ponies and griffons simply never came to be, but griffons are worse off for it. Even if you’ll never blame me because you don’t remember what you’ve lost in the first place, Ah still want to make it up to ya somehow, if you’ll let me.”
Gilda took a cautious step back. “Okay… You’re not making any sense. Not that I’d turn down free stuff from a goddess who thinks she owes me. Just saying!”
“Well, then…” Veritas spread her wings and reached out with wind magic, drawing a puffy cloud into her grasp. “You’ve had a rough time these past few years, haven’t you? What if, just saying, things could be easier?” Colorful images formed in the cloud, showing… her. Gilda, giving Pinkie Pie a chance instead of immediately blowing off the weird earth pony. Gilda, coming back to Rainbow Dash the very same day after they fought, once she’d calmed down. “Suppose that certain misunderstandings... just never happened? Is that something you’d be interested in?”
The images spiraled out further and further, showing Gilda competing with Dash and Applejack in the Running of the Leaves. Going to the Great Galloping Gala wearing a dress made by Rarity. Romancing Big Macintosh after Miss Cheerilee unknowingly gave her a cup of juice spiked with love poison, and on and on.
Gilda watched the images, her longing plain to see. She squeezed her eyes shut, then glared suddenly at Veritas, claws unsheathed and tail lashing. “Are you bucking kidding me?”
Veritas’ beak dropped in genuine surprise. “I thought…”
“You thought wrong!” roared Gilda. She flapped her wings angrily, breaking up the cloud with the images. “That… that wasn’t me. That was some griffon I don’t even know, with my name and face. Do you know how long it took me to learn to own my mistakes, Miss Fancy Truth Goddess? Huh?!”
Gilda stamped her paws, shaking the cloud beneath them. “I was the real queen lame-o. A jerk, a bully, and a thief! I got jealous of my best friend, and I walked away because I was too proud to apologize.” She jabbed a talon towards her own chest. “Me! I royally bucked up MY life, and it took ME all this time to make it right again, and YOU don’t get to just wave your claws around and fix it.” She turned away and choked back a sob, pointedly not looking at Veritas. “I’m not proud of my amazing colossal screwups, but they made me who I am… you know?”
Out of the blue, Veritas padded over and embraced the smaller griffon, claws grasping her shoulders. “Hold onto that attitude, Gilda. It’ll take you far.” She backed away, taking a deep breath. “You’re right, and Ah apologize. Ah was wrong to suggest taking that away from you.”
“Darn right,” grumbled Gilda, hastily wiping her eyes. She blinked. “Wait, so you CAN be wrong? You... you admit it? And you’re supposed to be the goddess of truth?”
Veritas smirked. “Ah’m still learning. Always will be, maybe. So, you still want to be in the military, too? You know, it’s a hard life, and you do get in harm's way, besides it keeping you away from your pony friends for a while.”
Gilda rolled her eyes. “It was what I needed, wasn’t it? Only…” She trailed off. “Huh, did I have too much cider or something? How am I not remembering what unit I served in?”
Veritas smiled. “Ah’ve got that covered, sugarcube. Truth is, a funny thing happened in the New Griffon Kingdom, not all that long ago. King Griswold went and made a royal proclamation, saying that griffons everywhere should be ashamed of the sorry state that Old Griffonstone was in.
“A dozen kings before him all said ‘Not my problem,’ but Griswold actually sent his army to clear out the ‘Freelance Guard’ that was fleecing Griffonstone griffons for what few bits they could still scrape together. Then he reformed the Royal Griffonstone Guard, and wouldn’t ya know it, you were actually the first griffon to volunteer. You said…”
Gilda lifted a claw, interrupting her. “I said… ‘Heh, why not? It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.’”
Veritas nodded sagely. “This is True.”
Far below, the arched gate of Griffonstone stood whole. Rubble was being cleared, structures were being rebuilt, and the flag of the Griffon Kingdom flew from the highest tower once more...
“Gilda? Hey, Gilda!”
Gilda jumped in place, startled. “Who, what?”
Rainbow Dash smirked and held the door of Sugarcube Corner open for her. “You kinda spaced out there for a second, G. Long flight from Griffonstone?”
Gilda glanced around, then checked her blue travel bag. Her Griffonstone Guard rank sash was in there, with her crossbow and some mid-flight snacks. Everything was where it was supposed to be. “Yeah. Sucks that it’s so far, but what can you do?”
She stepped through the doorway and stopped in her tracks… as the lights inside came on and a whole herd of ponies yelled ‘Surprise!’ Gilda looked up and down the long table, taking in all the familiar pony faces. “You guys! The squawk? It’s not my hatch-day.”
Pinkie Pie giggled. “No, silly! It’s your ‘Sorry you couldn’t be in the show more, but welcome back to Ponyville and we hope you have a wonderful visit’ party!”
Gilda leaned towards Dash and hissed, “Pinkie Pie’s an Alicorn!?”
“Yep,” whispered Dash back.
“How doomed are we?”
“Well… she hasn’t covered all of Ponyville in delicious strawberry frosting yet.”
Pinkie Pie grinned hugely. “Come on, you two!”
Rarity smiled warmly. “We have cake.”
“And no trick candles this time!” said Twilight Sparkle brightly, as she levitated a party hat onto Gilda’s head.
“Pinkie Pie promise,” said Applejack… also an Alicorn, somehow. She winked.
Gilda shrugged, then took a seat, and a paper plate with a slice of cake that Fluttershy offered her. “Heh, cool.”