I came to the conclusion that Martial Cadence was a little on the mentally unstable side. As she continued to try and run me through with her weapon, she seemed to relax and start having fun. Strange, right? She even started carrying on a conversation with me between swipes at my head, heart, and stomach. Something about not having an excuse to really go all out. I don't know, I was a little busy trying to stay alive.
The good news was that my luck held out for the duration. Of course, I wasn't able to avoid a few nicks and cuts, but they weren't life threatening. It gave us a bit of a frame of reference that while my talent helped me in avoiding lethal damage, it didn't cover everything and I was probably as good as dead if I took too many hits. The medics were horrified by the state my body was in when she finally limped me in to them.
Thankfully, they discouraged any further attempts on my life and ordered me to take it easy until I healed up. I was fine with that, considering that I was looking a bit like a mummy when they were done. The HERD agents currently in the castle reconvened later in the day to hear my report on Sunslayer.
All of them were stoked to learn Sunslayer's species and sent that information out to their various spies. Snow white griffons were a bit on the rarer side, so hopefully he'd stick out like a sore hoof. In the meantime, they were eager to puzzle out the rest of what I'd told them.
“The Cinder Run? I've never heard of a place like that in Equestria...” Glass pondered.
“Then we assume that it's not in Equestria,” Martial countered, “send out messages to our ponies in the other nations. Any hint of this place is to be given top priority. We have Sunslayer by the wings and I want him clipped as soon as possible.”
“Easy to say, hard to do,” Silent chimed in, “smart bird. Avoided detection until now. Easier to do if objective is known.”
“I agree with Silent,” Dawn, having joined us, said, “chasing after Sunslayer is only going to end in failure. What we need is to know what he wants and why he wants it. If we do that, we can be a step ahead of him for once.”
“Any suggestions?” Glass asked and received a nod from Dawn.
“We get our prisoner to talk.”
**
Feral Storm was not a happy mare. Anypony could tell that from the look on her face as she stared impassively at the one-way glass. She'd recovered from the wendigo attack easily enough, but any attempt to get her to open up had been met with silence. It was shocking to see the difference between the mare who'd been scared for her life and the one before me.
Glass had given me the rundown. After the two of us had been retrieved from the cavern, Storm had been treated and moved to solitary confinement. Periodically, somepony would bring her into the small interrogation room with its single table and two chairs to coax her into divulging information. She had remained resolute and defiant.
Standing there in the relative safety of the observation room, I frowned. Something felt off about the entire thing, but I couldn't put my hoof on it. The birth certificate that had been dug up for Storm put her at being a fairly young mare, barely out of her fillyhood, but she had been an orphan for some time.
She'd run away from the orphanage in Cloudsdale and vanished off the face of the planet. Presumably Sunslayer had found her at some point and taken her in. There was an extreme loyalty to the gryphon in her and... I wanted to know why.
So, against the flurry of protests, I went in.
Storm looked up at me and her scowl deepened as she registered who I was. I said nothing as I moved to take the seat across from her. Silence reigned in a battle of wills as we stared at one another.
Storm broke the silence first, “Sunslayer was right,” she intoned quietly, “I shouldn't have left anything to chance. I should have just dropped you from the top of Canterhorn and been done with it...”
“But you didn't,” I shot back, raising a brow at her, “you answered my challenge and probably would have beaten me to bloody paste in the snow if your last attack hadn't made us fall into the cave.” There it was, a subtle wince as I referenced the cave. Now it made sense.
Feral Storm was repressing her emotions. A tactic I was all to familiar with.
“...Why did you save me?” her question caught me by surprise.
Leaning toward her, I asked, “What do you mean?”
“Don't give me that,” she spat, “you could have saved yourself and run while it was killing me. Why did you intervene? Trying to in-debt me to you so that you could coerce me into doing something for you?! If you think that I'm going to do anything for you, you're wrong! I'll die before I let you control me!”
I blinked. Call it a learned thing, but a delivery pony that paid attention could start to learn things about a pony by the way they reacted. Storm was being aggressive and harping on the idea that somepony was trying to force something on her. Something had happened to her...
“You're wrong,” her eyes narrowed as I spoke, “I'm not that kind of pony. Look at me, Storm. Do I look like the kind of pony that thinks that far ahead? I did what I did because I could. Because I just wanted to. That's what ponies do. We help each other.”
She scoffed, “You say that, but it's just a lie you feed yourself.”
“Speaking from personal experience?” I prodded.
“Of course I am,” she thundered, slamming her hooves in the table, “how could I not!? The princesses couldn't just finish off their enemies and let them come back to hurt us again!? They let Discord come back and instead of putting him down like the monster he is, they offered their hooves in friendship!? Are you kidding me!?”
I was playing with fire now, but she was worked up. Just a little more...
“What does Discord have to do with this?”
“EVERYTHING,” she shouted, “he came back and turned our entire world upside down and my parents died for it! He only deserves a noose or an ax, but the princesses gave him life! They're just as much to blame and Sunslayer is going to bring about a true age of peace when he destroys our enemies!”
“And how does a simple gryphon think he's going do what the immortal alicorns couldn't?” I probed.
“By being willing to do what they could not! Your precious sun princess has all the power she could ever need to wipe out any threat to Equestria, but she's too weak and scared to use it! Once we have the spear, we'll-” she stopped, her eyes widening as she realized what she'd said.
I smiled innocently, “Thank you for your cooperation, Feral Storm.” As I left, she lived up to her name vocally. I don't think any pony should be able to make that noise.
Martial, Glass, and Dawn were looking at me in shock as I re-entered the observation room. I shrugged at their glances, “Hey, she doesn't like me. She was bound to get worked up if I poked at her a little bit.”
**
Some time later, we were in the HERD office, sans one Dawn Breeze who had gone to report to Celestia. Silent and I were standing to the side of the door while the mares were neck deep in various reports. I'd tried to help, but they had told me to stay out of the way. Something about not wanting me to disorganize things.
They'd been at it for at least an hour since moonrise and seemed to be getting more and more frustrated. As I had been expecting, it was Glass that broke first. Throwing down a file, she shouted, “This is bucking pointless! There's at least a thousand different magical spears and none of them even sound remotely like what Storm was describing.”
“Agreed,” Martial said tiredly, “perhaps we should rest and start looking again in the morning. We're not helping anypony doing this right now.” A general noise of agreement sounded through the room and we all began to leave.
I ran face first into an armored chest. Not as fun as it sounds. Pulling back and rubbing my nose with a groan, I looked up at the steel-eyed guard glaring down at me. I wasn't sure what I did, but this guy obviously was not a fan of me.
“Lucky Signs?” he questioned gruffly.
“The one and only.” I said sarcastically, not earning myself any brownie points with him.
“Your presence is requested in the throne room.”
I paused in nursing my nose, looking up at the stallion. Again, what did they put in the water around here to make them get that big? Regardless, I was still processing his statement and the only verbal response I could give was, “Say what now?”
He scowled, “Ears open this time. Princess Celestia has requested your presence in the throne room.”
“Oh. That's what I thought you said...”