"Grnnngh..."
Seraphimus stirred.
"Mrmmffnngh..."
Seraphimus winced.
The wagon wobbled around her, accompanied by the low buzz of active manastones.
The griffin's beak muscles clenched and unclenched. She tried to sit up—only to feel a wave of dizziness and nausea.
"Grnnnnghhhh... Verlaxionnnn..."
"Yeahhhhhhh..." A feminine voice breathily squeaked. Seraphimus felt an ice-cold cloth being pressed to her feathery crown. "You might wanna lie still. That bump's starting to look like a second beak at this point."
Undoubtedly the soul in question meant to soothe the former Talon Commander with the icy press. To Seraphimus, however, it felt like a wave of hot needles being pressed into her sensitive skin.
"Rrrrgh!" She sat up with a thrashing moment, only to be yanked into a permanent squatting position thanks to an array of heavy chains binding her to the wagon. "Leave itttt!" She hissed.
Ariel jerked back, nearly pratfalling off the wagon. She blinked at the griffin. "Fine. Yeesh." She wrung the moisture out of the cloth and placed it back in a sopping wet barrel before slapping the lid back in place. "Guess that'll be the last time I try doing you any favors."
"The only favor I need from you is a crossbolt to the skull!" Seraphimus sneered, wincing from the throbbing pain.
"Nnnghhh..." Ariel sighed, folding her forelimbs. "Y'know... as far as I can see... there are no crackers to feed you here on the Dark Side. So how come you're still repeating yourself?"
"Undo these chains and I will teach you a new language," Seraphimus droned. "I shall teach all of you."
Ariel snorted. "Yeah. That's not happening." She gulped. "At least... not at this point."
"Hrmmmmmmmmfff..."
"Er... for what it's worth..." Ariel drew a bang of mane hair over her left ear. "I wasn't the one who royally whalloped you."
"I know who hit me," Seraphimus grunted. A pair of charcoal brown eyes sliced across the wagon.
A fat figure sat beside Kepler and Wildcard. As Kepler guided the cart along and Wildcard provided extra steering with his wings, Logan continued to scrape the edge of his axe with a sharpening stone. Tiny showers of spark danced in the twilight. As Seraphimus' eyes dug into Logan, the stallion's neck hairs rose on edge. He looked lethargically over his shoulder.
"Morning, sunshine," he murmured. "Dream well?"
"The dead don't dream," Seraphimus slurred.
"Spoken like a true cadaver." Logan scraped and scraped his stone. "Were you always so stiff? I bet your late husband just needed something to help iron his shirts."
"You can insult me as much as you wound me," Seraphimus said. "Your daughter is still a lowly bastard."
"Hmmmmff..." Logan's lips curved ever so slightly. "Good to know I didn't lobotomize you."
Silence.
"Okay...!" Ariel clapped her hooves together. "Now that that's been addressed, I'm going to... uh... go and help Rainbow Dash with reconaissance!" She blinked. "...because Rainbow!" FWOOOOSH! She soared skyward, heading Curveside.
Logan's gaze craned to follow her. "I wonder if her mother would smile or cry to know that she's begotten a one-trick-pegasus?"
Seraphimus wasn't finished staring daggers into his skull. "You could have permanently damaged my skull."
Logan shrugged. "So I had to get a few hits in. Y'know... for practice. Hate to do it wrong when the real moment comes."
"I had assumed that you and I had developed a degree of common respect."
"The word you're looking for is 'familiarity.'" Logan shook his head. "Oh no, lady. You don't ever get that mixed up with respect. One is a life-bond between brothers and sisters foaled in battle. The other is a horribly smelly neighbor you invite over to a feast just because it's Unification Day."
"I was instrumental in getting your foolish leader and this putrid wagon to safety," Seraphimus insisted. "If you did not respect the extent of my contribution, then why did you and Jordan release my wings to begin with?"
"You had exhausted your usefulness for the time being," Logan said, calmly examining the sharp edge of his blade. "I couldn't risk jeopardizing the team."
Seraphimus' eyes narrowed. "I was not prepared to do so. A life-threatening event had just come to a conclusion. What would I have had to gain from betraying your trust then and there?"
Logan gave her a tired look. "Now what experience have we all gone through to make me believe that you're completely full of shit?" His nostrils flared. "Would you not have done the same if you were in my position?"
Silence.
Wildcard glanced nervously over his shoulder. A pair of dark goggles reflected Seraphimus' blank face.
At last, she exhaled through her beak. "Alright. You make a fair point." Seraphimus rested on all fours, wincing as she felt the weight of the chains over her wings once again. "Although... my method of silencing would have been—"
"Lemme guess, 'more efficient.'"
She hummed. "Fatal."
"Heh..." Logan returned to sharpening his blade. "Good thing we still know each other."
Seraphimus winced as another throb of pain rolled through her avian skull. "Of that—I am not entirely certain."
"We dragged you from the edge—screaming and drooling and threatening to eviscerate the Austraeoh."
"To be fair, she's given me plenty of valid reasons."
"Uh huh..."
"But that was not the imminent necessity when you insisted on bludgeoning me from behind like a coward."
"There was no telling what you wanted."
"No. There wasn't. You didn't give me a chance."
Logan's sharp eyes flashed to her. "Then just what do you want?"
She frowned. "Respect." She raised her bound limbs and rattled the chains where he could see them. "Does this look like respect? Has it ever even remotely looked like respect since we arrived here?"
"Rrespect worrks both ways, my frriend."
Seraphimus glanced at the front of the wagon.
Kepler calmly guided the craft through a narrow canyon of erratic limestone formations. He continued without looking: "Therre arre farr grreaterr lengths to trravel than the extent of the plane." His scorpion tail flexed and unflexed. "Much larrgerr hurrdles, as well."
Seraphimus took a fuming breath. She glared back at Logan. "You really... really should have given me the benefit of a doubt."
"Yeah? Why?"
She was silent.
Logan scratched his scruffy chin. "You wanna know why I really hit you?" He shook his head. "Because I still don't trust you."
Her response was quieter than even she expected. "I was beginning to think you and I had something in common."
"Me too." Logan nodded warily. "Which is precisely the point."
She exhaled in a huff. "Then we are back to the beginning."
"Maybe." Logan stretched his crackling joints. "Grnnngh... maybe not. Either way..." He leaned back, sighing. A beat. "... ... ...I'm still not the reason why you're with us."
"... ... ..."
"She's mad at me, y'know." Logan smiled crookedly. "Over the clobbering. She understands why it had to be done, of course, but... she gets mad over you more than she gets mad at you." Logan raised an eyebrow. "Now when was the last time you experienced that? Huh?" A narrow stare. "Before your family was frozen?"
Seraphimus stared past him.
"Hmmm... you're lucky, in a way. Y'know that?" Logan finally placed his axe away and reclined against a crate of supplies as the wagon glided along. "That 'bastard' you talked about? She's blissfully ignorant of my fat ass... and I hardly know her either. The day I finally die, I'll barely have had a taste of what I'm fighting for. But you? You had that groundwork laid out. Sure, it might be gone now... but at least you had a foundation. For all your feathers and claws you've familiarized yourself with the shoreline. Too bad you've got to flail like a rabid puppy when everything sinks."
Seraphimus took a shuddering breath. "That 'taste' you envy is quite bitter."
"Then spit it out already," Logan grunted. "And maybe next time—just maybe—I won't have to smack you over the head like the psychopathic parrot you've proven to us all to be."
"... ... ..."
"And—by the way..." Logan tilted his head lazily towards her. "...snazzy job saving the wagon."
She snorted. "Hollow praise."
"For a hollow head."
Seraphimus nodded with her skull towards the landscape ahead. "Where in blazes are we even going, pray tell?"
"Toots, are you seriously asking me? Hell, I don't even know." Logan then proceeded to wave a limp hoof towards the bent, dark horizon. "Curveside..."
Seraphimus looked up... and up and up and up and...