The tawny griffon looks shocked at the blue pegasus calling her out in front of the other nearby ponies, whose confusion up until this point had been steadily increasing at her behavior.
"Y-you, you are such ab- au- a-" She stutters, before finding her words "A flip-flop! Cool one minute, and lame the next!"
Walking towards the door, she turns back with a scowl and continues. "When you decide not to be lame anymore, gimme a call." she snarls, slamming the door shut behind her as she leaves with a loud rattle and a shaking window pane as her final punctuation.
"...Not cool." The poly-chromatic maned pegasus says with a frown to the closed door.
The short, stout dragon next to her pipes up at this point, splaying his arms akimbo and turning to face her with a befuddled blink.
"Wow, what a party-pooper!" he says, prompting the other ponies at the party to begin questioningly mumbling among themselves about what had just happened.
"I'm sorry everypony, for bringing Gilda here. I didn't realize how rude she was." Rainbow Dash says, her eyes downcast.
In an old ruined section of park often frequented by apathetic-looking griffons, an older and worn-looking statue stands impassively over the loud racket happening under its hooves. The marble statue depicts a pony standing at attention, their muzzle pointed upwards ever so slightly with a covetous and satisfied expression as they gaze into an ancient copper oil lamp clutched protectively in draconic claws. The statue further depicts the pony as having six scaled limbs attached to it, socketed around the pony's own shoulders and neck. Five of the limbs are folded behind its back, while the sixth reaches out and holds the lamp firmly, clamping the lamp's copper wick cover closed as if to admire it.
A worn, gold plaque at the bottom once read "The Adversary", and it might still have said that to this day if it hadn't been stolen days after the statue was delivered there.
The statue itself, however, resolutely ignores the borderline ranting occurring at its feet.
"Stupid ponies. Stupid Ponyville!" Gilda hisses, stomping back and forth in front of the statue with her tail whipping violently side to side.
"I hate them, I hate them all, and I hate Rainbow Dash too!" she shouts, trying her hardest to hold back bitter tears. Ones she failed to hold back the day before.
The moon shining overhead almost seems to acquire a colder tint to its shine for Gilda alone as she glares at the statue, hating the fact that not even Griffonstone is 100% pony free.
Her glare rapidly fades as something tickles the sides of her head near her ears, and a chill runs up and down her spine.
"Hate is such a strong word, dear." she hears whispered right next to her, the chill from before intensifying as she scrambles away from the statue backwards.
"What the flock, who said that?!" The griffon shouts, head darting from side to side as her pupils dilate to spot the hidden offender.
"Why, Gilda, just your biggest fan." The voice whispers smugly.
"How do you know my name, freak-o!" she squawks. "Show yourself!"
"Oh I have an approximate knowledge of many things. For example, I know you don't really hate Rainbow Dash." The voice says, ignoring her second demand.
Gilda, by this point becomes incensed as her anger overrides her fear.
"Uh, yeah, I'm pretty sure I do, creep! You don't know anything!"
The voice puts on airs and simply responds condescendingly. "If you hated her dear, then why does the way she treated you hurt so badly?"
Gilda bristles at this even more, but doesn't have an answer.
"I'm not going to beat around the bush, Gilda. I'm here to help you." The voice continues hesitantly, after a moment.
"I can teach you tricks so awesome, Dash will be all over you. I know her nearly as well as I know you, in fact. You help me to help you, and..."
The voice chuckles "Well, her true nature won't let her abandon you again after that." The voice croons sweetly.
Gilda is frozen with indecision, the emotional roller-coaster she has been stumbling off of for the past day leaving her unsure. "Y-yeah?"
"Yeah." The voice confirms. "Just imagine it, it would be like your first day of Junior Speedsters again. My payment is thus. Become my apprentice until I feel you've learned my lessons, and I'll put you right back in Dashie's good graces."
Despite the eerie feeling Gilda had felt up until this point, she can't help but remember the good times she had with her best friend, and her resolve becomes galvanized.
"It's a deal!"
The voice chuckles again, much more darkly this time. Smoke begins wafting down from the almost completely sealed wick-cover of the lamp.
"Good, good! Now you just have to do one simple thing."
"And what's that?" Gilda snarks.
For a moment, Gilda nearly mistakes her surroundings for some sort of icy blizzard as the voice says in a soft, terrifyingly dark tone, emitted from the statue's lamp. "Free Me."
"This can't be that complicated, it's just a hunk of rock, right?" The voice says with a nonexistent raised eyebrow and exasperated tone.
"Look man, I don't know what to tell you, It's coming off when I get it off, now shut up for a second, I think I've got it this time." Gilda retorts, making her fifth attempt in as many minutes to pull the lamp out of the statue's grip.
"Grrr-whoooOof!" Gilda shouts, flopping to the ground when her violent tug fails to pull it free from the marble pony.
"Just use a crowbar or something. It'll be faster, Christ-" The voice attempts, before Gilda interrupts.
"Faster? I'll show you faster, and I don't need no stinkin' crowbar to do it!"
With an Eagle-like screech, Gilda leaps into the air, and crashes into the statue claws-first after building up speed high in the air above it. The impact immediately cracks the stone arm off, sending it tumbling to the ground with a rousing "Crack!".
Gilda brushes herself off with a beaky grin, before yanking up the stone arm and hefting it over her head in both talons.
"And my name's not Christ." she finishes, slamming it down and crushing the carefully carved claws around the lamp into the statue's base.
The lamp tumbles free, clanking several times with a series of "Ow"s, before halting in midair and righting itself.
Twisted, delighted laughter fills the air as the lamp rattles, unleashing a torrent of black smoke that swirls around it, matched only by the blazing pillar of flame that erupts from it's center.
The smoke is blown away to reveal the very pony that the statue had been clearly modeled after, one whose size is average, whose coat is white, and whose mane is a maelstrom of black fire. A pristine, ivory horn juts from their head, and their purple eyes bore into Gilda as his draconic arms fold behind him onto his back. The limbs, bent as they are, transition from dragon to pony with some sort of glittering grey metal between them.
Spotting the lamp he had been trapped in, he lazily picks it up in his magical aura, examining it before his eyes light up with amusement. "One thousand years..!"
"Will give you such a pain in the neck!" he smiles to himself, looking to see Gilda's reaction.
"I thought you were like, a genie or something." Gilda says skeptically, crushing the stallion's expression into mock disappointment.
"So you're saying you don't recognize the Illustrious Sage of Darkness, Weiss Noir!?" The pony preens, puffing up his chest and pouting.
"The master of The Shadow Realm, the creator of over one hundred black magic spells? No spooky campfire stories or claims that I come after bad little griffons?"
Gilda's expression becomes no less sour. "And why would I know some dumb old pony from like, a thousand years ago?"
Weiss's expression turns curious, and his eyes obtain a hard, unknown glint. "You're serious, aren't you?"
After a moment, his expression softens, and he closes his eyes with a shrug. "Well, far be it from me to hold it against you."
"Let's hash out business elsewhere. I'm not certain that I'll remain unrecognized if enough griffons see me." And with that, Weiss begins walking off in a random direction.
"And uhh, where exactly do you think you're going, gramps?" Gilda retorts, prompting him to stop.
"I was going to go somewhere and summon up a quick castle, why do you ask?" He responds with a raised eyebrow.
"I'm pretty sure plenty of griffons will see you if you do that, dweeb. We'll do this thing at my place." She says, jerking her thumb back towards where her hut is.
Weiss looks surprised, before nodding. "Right, right... I'm used to a bit more isolation, I'm afraid." He explains sheepishly.
"Silver wolf's fame, no. Joke'd Luna's mane, no." Weiss mumbles, tossing summoned bottles of mercurial metal and cotton-candy colored stardust behind him as he draws purple circles in the air with his horn to summon up more.
"So you're some kind of pony wizard, gramps?" Gilda says, munching on a scone while reclining near her crackling firepit, watching his frustration mount with no shortage of amusement on her part.
"Expired aspira, aspired ex-pyre, no..." He grumbles, before jolting. "Er, yes, basically. My special talent is dark magic, which everyone else is either too crazy or too dumb to study properly." He says ironically.
"God Damn it, where is the-!" He stutters, before a bottle clocks him in the head from a portal above. He snatches it out of the air with a claw before it can hit the ground.
"Ah! Ok, good, This is what I need." He holds up a bottle filled with a red fluid. The fluid inside thrashes around, occasionally, liquid fangs leap from it's surface to snap at nothing. A label on the bottle simply reads "Haterade".
He waits for Gilda to ask "What's that?", but when she just smirks at him and doesn't, he finally cracks with a grimace.
"Fine. It's a special potion that I've used in the past, to train my guards to harness dark magic spells and keep them hydrated." He says with a tone like a kicked puppy.
"Made from a unique, and highly coveted blend of rage poison, brine, and recently, windego ectoplasm, this version of Haterade is the most potent that my alchemist had learned to produce, and is guaranteed to enhance one's magical potential to staggering new heights while renewing their arcane strength."
"Uhh, I don't know if you hit your head coming out of that lamp, but griffons don't cast spells." She says, staring at it dubiously.
Gilda decides to continue speaking when a glob of it leaps onto the glass and snarls at her before sliding back down into the remainder of it. "I'm not drinking that."
"Good, my potions are too strong for you traveler. I was planning to water it down to almost nothing anyway... As I do for the rabble." he snarks with a smirk.
Gilda frowns angrily. "I am not rabble, and if drinking that junk is how I gotta prove it, then hand it over." She jerks her claw out demanding.
"You can't handle my potions... They're too strong for you!" He recites.
The griffon stands up and stomps over to Weiss until he's shoved into the wall.
"I wasn't asking." She whispers, grabbing it.
"Erm, wait. Jokes aside, you absolutely do not need to drink that in here." Weiss says, a hint of caution entering his previously jovial tone.
She smirks, shaking up the bottle a bit to agitate whatever's inside "And why not?"
"Because it is going to make your temper so short that it would be barred from carnival rides, and I enjoy my head not only having teeth in it, but also lacking fists where they once were." He answers honestly, before realizing that won't dissuade the already short-tempered griffon, and continuing with something more substantial.
"And once you learn what I have to teach you with it, you'll have to pick your friend's jaw off the floor when she sees what you're capable of." He goads Gilda, confident she'll take the bait.
After several long moments, and a suspicious glance between Weiss and his potion, she relents. "Fine, but this stuff better somehow make me Wonderbolt material, gramps. I don't think-"
'Anything less will convince Dash after yesterday.' goes through her mind, but not out of her mouth. She changes topics.
"How do you know so much anyway? Are you a spy?" Gilda interrogates, setting the bottle on a squat table next to her.
"I have the gift of prophesy. Much better than that hack, Tealeaf Pie." Weiss says with a confidence borne of having said it a lot before.
"Then how did you get caught?" she points out, looking at the lamp Weiss had been inhabiting up until an hour ago.
Weiss just smiles sadly. "Everyone makes mistakes, Gilda."
He looks out the window, spotting the moon in transit. "Let's get some rest, hmm? You've got a very busy day tomorrow."
"Whatever gramps. You just hold up your end of the bargain." Gilda rolls her eyes, before plodding off to her room.
Weiss simply trots up to the firepit and stares into it, glitter in his eyes and exhaustion that imprisonment didn't cure in his body. Mindful of the smouldering coals, he collapses into an obsidian smoke and settles among the ashes, having exhausted himself pretending at corporeality. The lamp nearby flickers with black fire at it's wick.
"So me getting mad is going to somehow make me better at flying?" Gilda says skeptically, looking at the sports-drink bottle of Haterade in her hand, which Weiss had painstakingly wheedled her into allowing him to water down.
"No, it's going to make you better at magic." Weiss corrects, stepping over a bush as they make their way into the brush for training.
"The first thing you need to learn is that a horn doesn't make magic possible. It doesn't even make the magic stronger. It just makes it easy."
"How do you think you were able to breathe fire when you ate that spicy candy at Pinkie Pie's party?" He says.
Gilda, ignoring how he knew about that, shrugs and takes a swig of the tainted water. "It was really hot, so I guess it caught fire? I don't know, cut me some slack, gramps, I'm not some dumb egghead."
Weiss just shakes his head with a hum "It just tasted really hot. But it made you feel like your mouth was on fire, and it made you want to get it out of your mouth."
"That's the only secret to magic. What you want, and how that makes you feel. Everything else is just, as you might say, egghead hogwash that helps you get there." Weiss says, prompting Gilda to think.
"So I want to fly fast, and that's supposed to make me... mad?" She asks rhetorically as they make it into a small clearing with a burbling river running through it, a rabbit scrambling away at the sight of intruders.
He nods. "A horn makes for easier magic, but that doesn't matter when dark magic is the easiest. If you can get it started, and know what you want to happen, the magic itself will make your emotions strong enough, and of the correct type to do what you need done. Any other kind of magic, and it wouldn't work correctly, or even at all, unless you had the strong, correct emotions in the first place, and the correct mindset to capitalize on it."
He gestures to the bottle, which Gilda had taken the past few minutes to slowly drain down.
"The potion just helps you get that spark. With training, you won't even need that. You'll know what you need to feel and focus on, and the advantage of experience besides."
"But enough theory. It is now time for your first lesson. I want you to punch that tree as hard as you can." Weiss says, summoning a bottle of blue medical liquid and several rolls of bandages.
"Uhh, I'm supposed to be learning to fly better, remember gramps? You going senile on me-ACK!" Gilda quacks when her side gets whipped by a bandage held in a purple glow.
"What the flock was that for?!" Gilda shouts, claws grinding into the dirt as she clenches them.
"You're here to learn to get mad and know what you want out of it." Weiss states.
"Now pretend that that tree is standing between you and not getting another ironic round of 'Gilda gets whipped by a bandage instead of tended to by one'." Weiss says with a faint smirk, already backing up when Gilda shrieks and rushes him.
His attempts to slyly dodge her attack as part of the lesson fail when her rapid movement wins out against his inferior senses, and she pummels his side hard enough to send him to the ground, the scales on his arms scuffed up by the grass, and a nasty purple blooming where the strike landed.
Gilda clenches her teeth as she places her right talons on the disoriented unicorn's head and leans down. "I know what you're doing, and I'm not doing any of this sneaky sensei crap, you teach me right or we're done." she snarls.
Weiss simply laughs, prompting her to shove his head away and back up for his answer.
"Fine, you're obviously too smart for it anyway." He says, standing to his feet and undoing his bruise with a slow, drawn out flash of white magic.
"You're mad at me, so we'll be using that to train you. You're mad at yourself, so we'll use that too." He states simply.
Brushing himself off with his arms, he continues, pointing to the tree he pointed out before. "I'd like you to punch that tree until you can break it. That's the point when I know you can get mad enough to draw power from it, and you'll never get that mad the first time with flying alone. Is that right enough for you?"
"Yeah, it's right enough gramps." She sneers happily, before walking over to begin disturbing the flora.
While the griffon is distracted, Weiss's illusion fails, and the bruise on his side returns to visibility, prompting him to casually cover it with a few of his draconic arms.
'It takes so long to clean grass stains off' he groans internally, resolving to begin constructing new cleaning artifacts as soon as is feasible.
'Thankfully, it shouldn't take nearly as long to make Gilda more dangerous than she thinks she is'
"So what's with these freaky eyes, gramps?" Gilda says with a shallow frown aimed at the river, where her reflection is emitting a hazy green from the corners of it's eyes when she blinks.
"Well, it means you're performing the magic correctly. Don't ask me why, my best theory is that it has something to do with eye boogers. And that can't be right." Weiss jokes, prompting Gilda to chuckle.
Her chuckle turns into a glare after Weiss suddenly clapping briskly startles her from her self-examination "Right! You're ready, then. You've already started using dark magic to enhance most probably every muscle in your body, all you need to do now is acclimate to flying like that." He says in order to dim her violent stare.
"Now we're talking. I already feel great, I can't wait to see what my babies do now that I'm juiced up like this!" she says, hopping from side to side.
Weiss simply smiles fondly, and hands over another sports-drink container in his magical grip.
"Hydration is important." He says.
"Yeah, that's probably the only thing about flying you know, gramps, but thanks anyway." she says, snatching it out of the air before guzzling it down.
As she finishes, she tears the bottle in half, lets out a roar, and leaps into the air, which Weiss ignores in favor of the row of trees Gilda had started to fell one after the other.
"I wonder if I should warn her about the dangers of magical exhaustion?" Weiss wonders out loud.
'Eh. She'll learn my lessons better on her own terms.' He ultimately thinks to himself, looking at the aerial fright train that's currently pounding the local cloud population into extinction.
"Ok, the eyes are one thing, but this is kinda ticking me off gramps. I kinda want to know this stuff before it happens, got it?" Gilda says angrily, looking at her wings, which had begun to leave a purple contrail mid-flight after a few days of practice.
Weiss simply shrugs at the now glow-capable appendages. "It means your training is nearing it's completion. You can now consistently cast... Well, by all practical definitions, a spell, albeit not one you can brag about in polite company, dark magic and all."
"I've seen it happen to pegasi, but I've never taught a griffon before. It's perfectly normal, and simply means that you've begun to draw out the anger you need to get what you want, without having to think about it." he says proudly, arms folded behind his back.
"...I mean, I guess it looks pretty cool." She says, looking unequipped to handle the praise.
"But that's not the point, am I going to end up puking pink next or something? I'm going to be very angry if I keep getting new colors and start glowing in weird places." She says, taking a threatening step towards him.
"Look, unless you start casting regular spells, which shouldn't be possible without some work you aren't doing, you've reached the limits of griffon incandescence. Dark magic is pretty universally purple in color, and it's users emit green from their eyes. That's standard, and there's not really any more unexpected side effects from just self-enhancement magic." Weiss says as he backs up, realizing that a female with an unwittingly altered appearance and a magically intensified temper are two things that need not be combined with anything but careful wording and quick speaking.
Gilda levels a stare at him and freezes it there until she feels he's been sufficiently intimidated. His place now having had him put in it to her satisfaction, she grins and ends the tense mood with a simple question.
"What's next?"
"I think I'm ready." Gilda says, flexing her claws with a grin as she lifts a tree with flight alone, having suffered magical exhaustion several times to raise her endurance to this point with the help of watered down tonics and plenty of her "famous" scones.
"You may very well be, Gilda." Weiss frowns, nibbling around the twigs in his own scone.
"Yeah, I've gotten pretty awesomer." she nods, swinging the log slowly back and forth before letting it crash down to the ground, sending birds flying from the trees at the sudden shaking.
Flapping down to the new wooden bottle that Weiss had had to manufacture, she looks down into it with an uncomprehending eye.
"Aww dang, it's empty. Mind giving me a refill?" she complains, shaking the cup from side to side.
"If you're ready, you shouldn't need any." Weiss says with a hidden smile.
Gilda thinks about this for a moment, before scoffing. "Whatever, I might need a little pick-me-up between reps if I'm going to impress Dash. Come on, don't leave me hanging here gramps." She complains with a pout.
Weiss pauses, and looks to the side in contemplation, before floating the mostly-full bottle of concentrated Haterade over to her.
"I'm trusting you to dilute this yourself, Gilda. Just a sip's worth is enough for a whole cup of water." he applies a serious look to his face, and then points it at her.
"What, you're not coming with? And here I thought the Illustrious Weiss Noir, Sage of Dorkness, would want to show off how he just got finished training Equestria's new best flier without so much as a feather of his own?" Gilda poses to Weiss, taking the bottle in claw.
"Well I have no intention of babysitting you, I do have things that need to be done." he says, leading the conversation to the point where he can accept her offer.
Gilda just gives him a blank look, glancing around the clearing. "Yeah, I can see that." she deadpans.
Returning her look with interest, Weiss relents. "Fine, I'll go with you to Ponyville, but no babysitting. I'm there to observe whether you've learned all my lessons yet, and ensure that our debts are squared."
"Sure thing gramps. You'll be singing a different tune when Rainbow Dash is eating my dust." she smirks.
Weiss shrugs with a faint smile "Gilda, our little Dashie isn't going to know what hit her."