I didn’t belong here. I knew that getting an interview with the emperor wouldn’t be easy—but I thought that might mean having to talk to lots of stuffy people in closed rooms, impressing or them into admitting that a few minutes of the emperor’s time would have returns for them, if only because it meant the authoritative history I would write would more favorably capture the griffon perspective. In some of my nightmares I had imagined having to bribe my way through, or perform some strange griffon ritual in order to have access.
Then again, this probably counted.
Through the open sections of the hull flew a creature of incredible size—a dragon, unmistakably. Or more accurately, what had once been a dragon. Now it was dead, and yet somehow it still flew through the skies. Its scales were missing, there were no organs under its belly, yet still it flew on.
“How in… Celestia’s name is that thing in the air?” I asked, following Radiant Dawn over to one of the huge guns.
“Ears!” the emperor called, taking one of the others in both claws. He pressed the trigger down, and there was a bang so loud I felt like it physically threw me against the wall. It didn’t, obviously, but my head felt like it had. It was a good thing I’d already put away my notes, or I was sure they would’ve been picked up into the air too, and thrown around so violently that I wouldn’t be getting them back.
By the time I regained my senses, I saw a wraith no longer gliding eerily through the air on torn and broken wings, but a monster bearing straight down on us. I had a few seconds to brace against the wall before the Hammer of Gaius shook from one end to the other. Sirens began blaring, but they were washed-out and distant to my ears. I didn’t know if I was deaf, didn’t know anything. Then Radiant Dawn got her claws ready on the gun. I pressed my ears down, and that helped a little—but the shockwave passed through my whole body, then through the floor.
Outside, shards of broken bone rained down from nowhere, filling the air in a cloud. But the wraith wasn’t dead. The ship overhead shook, and metal screeched as it tore.
I lowered my head, moving up to Dawn as the gun automatically reloaded. I had to scream at the top of my lungs to be heard over the terrible noise. “WHY ARE WE EVEN DOING THIS?”
She glanced back at me, grinning wildly. “THEY MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO CLEAR OUT THE ASH. WE HAVE TO KILL THEM IF WE WANT OUR LAND BACK! WELL NOT KILL, OBVIOUSLY, SINCE THEY’RE DEAD, BUT—”
This time the sound of metal tearing came from closer—much closer. The metal cover over the guns came ripping off, as a gigantic dragon claw went straight for the guns. For our gun, specifically.
I didn’t move as the empty-eyed skull looked down on me from high above. Its hatred radiated like a physical force.
I swear it saw both of us, and one of its half-shattered claws gripped the barrel of the gun. Dawn started fighting with the straps holding her with the gun, but I wasn’t smart enough to know what would happen next. I just held on to the back of the seat as the wraith tore the gun right out of the Gaius’s hull, tossing us out into open air.
I screamed—that was definitely the first thing I did. My wings spread by instinct, but that almost took me off the gun, and I didn’t want to do that. Dawn fought with the straps for a few seconds more, before just cutting through them with her claws. She got ready to jump—then she saw me.
I thought in that moment I was dead for sure. Radiant Dawn was falling, I was falling, but I knew what would happen to us when we hit the ground. The gun itself was starting to spin end-over-end, and I was losing sight of the horizon. But I still clung onto the back of the seat, the only solid thing in the world.
Instead of jumping to safety, Dawn grabbed onto my foreleg. “We have to fly!” she called. “Let go!”
It was the first authoritative command I’d received, and I obeyed. I pushed off with her, letting the long gun spin faster and faster as it left us behind. Dawn’s wings were spread, slowing us, her expression agonized. It must’ve taken her enormous effort to hold them open with both our weight.
“Glide!” she screamed. “Glide you stupid horse! Do you want to live or not?”
I opened my wings, and it was like smacking them out into a wall. They bent vertically against the air almost instantly. It was a good thing that was a natural position, or I would’ve broken them.
“Hold them open!” she screamed, her beak an inch from my neck. “Don’t tell me you’re smart enough to read but not smart enough to use you own bucking body!”
Her gliding hadn’t slowed us enough, I could feel that—but at least we weren’t spinning. Far below us was another rocky peak, that might’ve looked identical to Caesarea except that it was buried in an ocean of ash. I only assumed it was a peak thanks to the sharp rocky bits emerging above the ash.
“Maybe we’ll land soft? Aim for a huge ash flow!”
“If I do, we’ll drown!” she countered. “I’m going for the city! Now help me!”
I’ve read before that creatures in terrible danger sometimes show incredible abilities right before the end—mothers that lift broken carts from their foals, weather ponies fighting off a hurricane on their own. Incredible things. I felt in that moment I knew what those ponies felt, only selfish. I just didn’t want to die.
I finally got my wings to open. It was a fight every inch, but eventually they were wide enough to catch the air. We jerked, and instead of rocketing straight down, the ground was now approaching slowly enough to see details. Radiant Dawn sighed with relief, her head slumping a little. “That was… the most terrifying trip I’ve ever taken,” she muttered, her voice strained. “Now do you see why I want you to know how to fly?”
I didn’t answer at first, afraid that anything I did to break my concentration might result in my wings going loose, and dropping me right out of the air. But it didn’t. Now that I wasn’t fighting the acceleration of a terminal fall, it wasn’t that hard to keep my wings open. Even if it did feel like my back was going to tear open to hold it like this…
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll learn how to fly.”
Finally I dared to look up, at whatever we were leaving behind. Far far above, there was the faint line of the Gaius, along with two figures fighting alongside it. First was the bony white wraith, so hard to see it was almost lost against the sky. The other was something else, a figure in black armor holding itself in the air with massive wings.
Dawn followed my eyes, making a wistful sound. “Too high up to fly back, even for me. And my father would be furious if I tried while they were fighting. The wraith loves to pick out easy targets.”
Good thing it didn’t go for us then. The ground was coming up fast, or at least the ruined city was. Dawn was directing us towards the top level of a structure, covered in ash several inches deep.
“Hold your breath when we land, if you can. I’ve got emergency stuff in my pack.”
“You don’t think the emperor will be worried about you?”
“You mean would he be worried that his bird daughter couldn’t land? I hope that’s a joke.”
It wasn’t, but I could pretend. But then we landed, and I didn’t have to.
The ash from Mt. Ignis is unique, at least so far as geologists conclude. It’s a fine white ash, fine enough to be used as sandpaper. I’ve written about it a little, about how great it can be for crops, but how in larger amounts the soil can become as sterile as the ash. But its biggest dangers to living creatures aren’t what it does to the soil, at least not right away.
It’s so fine that it makes it all the way down into the lungs, and causes what birds affectionately call “bloodbeak”, since that’s where the mucus usually dries. But it doesn’t kill instantly, and the initial damage can be healed.
It’s almost as hostile to the eyes, scratching the lenses and turning a pony or a bird blind in just a few weeks. Both are notoriously difficult to treat with magic, though the science is always advancing. But mostly it advances by better protecting the creatures who go here.
We smacked down into the ash a second later. It exploded around us, making the impact almost painless. Where it took to the air overhead, it turned the sky an angry amber, rolling in billowing clouds that swept down on us from above. I covered my face with one leg, holding my breath as long as I could. Unlike flying, I’ve spent a fair amount of time in city pools, enough that I could manage a minute without too much strain.
My companion let go almost instantly, fumbling around with something I couldn’t see. I could hear her unzipping something, swearing under her breath. But I didn’t see what she was doing. My lungs began to burn, and I chanced lifting my leg slightly to see what had happened, if only for a moment.
The ash was still overhead, though all the thicker pieces had fallen around us. Only the finest, most dangerous cloud remained, practically clinging to the space around us. Almost as though it were specifically targeting us.
“Here, you dumb horse. Take this mask and put it on.” Her voice was muffled by cloth, but still easy enough to understand.
I had no choice but to open my eyes all the way, taking one stinging breath. It burned my throat on its way down, and was probably doing worse inside my chest. But I worked quickly, taking the cloth mask and tying off the straps. It hung out in front in an obvious beak-shape, but it still attached to the bottom of the face. I might look a little like a bird while I wore this, but… at least I would breathe.
“Goggles,” she said. “Hold still, I got you.” Her claws were on both sides of my face for a second, settling something weighty onto my muzzle. I held still, waiting until she finally let go. “There. You’re safe.”
I opened my eyes all the way. Sure enough there were thick glass lenses in front of each eye, with just a little dust inside that had managed to worm its way in before the glass was on securely. The mask looked tight enough.
It looked like an alien world had eaten the one we knew so completely that only a few sparse signs of reality could poke through. We stood on the roof of a building, and the ash beneath us had cleared in a little crater of impact. Enough to see the crenulations on the wall—a castle then, or some other fortification.
“I might not be able to scholar as well as you, but I’m prepared,” Dawn said proudly, tapping her chest with a claw. Her own mask and goggles fit much better than mine did—actually, they seemed identical. She’d just carried extras, and because of that I wouldn’t be losing my lungs today.
“Does this kind of thing… happen often?” I asked, adjusting my saddlebags. Against all odds, the straps had stayed closed, meaning all my notes and work weren’t scattered to the sky. Not that I had very much that was useful in a situation like this. The closest thing I had to practical supplies was a pocketknife I used for opening tins of snacks.
“No,” she answered, glancing up at the Gaius far above as it continued to drift away. “Mom is still trying to come up with some spell that can target the wraiths. But even dead dragons are too resistant to magic for anything to stick.” She turned, though where she would be going in a sea of ash, I couldn’t guess. “Come on—you can’t fly back, that means we need a signal fire. We don’t want to be here when night comes.”