“Do we really just… follow some stranger?” I asked, staring down through the empty tunnel where the bird had vanished seconds before. It seemed incredibly stupid to me—we didn’t even know this creature’s name, we knew nothing except that he didn’t seem to want us in one of the buildings, and yet here we were considering following him. True, he didn’t have skulls or anything hanging from his saddlebags, but I hadn’t so much as seen his face.
I looked up at the sky, but couldn’t make out any trace of the Hammer of Gaius fading into the distance. It was long gone now, apparently.
“You’re asking if we should trust a vulture who lives here over… who, exactly?” Dawn asked. “Seriously, of course we trust him. Why is this even a question?” She hurried after him, slipping over the lip of the building and down into the gloom. I didn’t much want to go down into this dead place—but I wasn’t going to leave Radiant Dawn to wander off and have who knew what happen to her in the presence of some stranger.
She’s the heir of the second biggest empire in the world. If something bad happened to her and I was around her, what would happen to Equestria? Velar seemed like a reasonable emperor, but I’d seen enough fathers to know just how he would think of any threat to his daughter. I hurried off behind her.
The tunnel was steep, but apparently packed in tight enough that it held up. Something damp held it around me. After sliding down a little ash on the side of the fortification, we reached what I took to be the original trail far below, where Dawn waited for me. She rolled her eyes. “I thought you were the brave one,” she whispered. “You aren’t afraid of ghosts, but you’re afraid of meeting new friends?”
I just nodded. There was no sense arguing the point with her.
The Vulture’s voice called from up ahead, as raspy as before and remarkably distant. “Better hurry! Passage like this lasts ten minutes at best, and I spent half of that getting to you. If you get separated in the ashfall, those masks won’t help you.”
We ran. Well, I galloped, and Dawn flew. She was smaller than a griffon too, and apparently just small enough to fly through the tunnel. She passed over my head, then down the slope until we caught up with where the strange bird moved.
It was dark enough that we might’ve been in total darkness by then, if it wasn’t for the lantern hanging from his saddlebags. It was old, lit with a pitch-like oil that sparked and hissed at random. He wore a massive set of saddlebags, with only narrow slits for his wings, which had returned to the protection of his robes. Every exposed surface was scoured smooth, even reflective in places.
“Are there many Vultures here, stranger?” Dawn asked, her voice returning to the formal politeness I’d heard from her in the capital.
“No,” he said. “Abdera is too dangerous. Couldn’t say why—best guess is, some shriveled old bird practiced in the Old Magic commanded the soldiers here. Souls twisted up inside like that rarely feel content to just settle down to sleep, as they say. Otherwise fortification so close to the capital would’ve been cleared and taken by now.”
“But you’re here,” Dawn pointed out. “There must be a way around them. Offerings, or conditions, or… something.”
“They have patrols,” he answered, turning his head back towards the path. “So long as you know where they are, you’re safe. I know. You follow.”
We followed. I wasn’t sure exactly where we were going, but I couldn’t help but think any request for more information would be answered with a threat. Down this far—surrounded by blackness on every side, without an apparent escape—what would we do if he left us here? The tunnels would collapse, and we’d be crushed down here, nevermind any ghosts.
“The Hammer of Gaius was passing overhead,” Dawn went on, in the same formal tone as before. “Maybe you saw us. There was a battle against a wraith, and…”
“And you dropped a two-ton gun on Abdera,” the Vulture finished for her. “I wouldn’t give them salt, much less weapons they might figure out how to fire. But who am I to tell the emperor how to run his country?” He stopped again, tiny lenses lingering on Radiant Dawn. “You’re his daughter by the sorceress, I’ve heard of you. We’re almost to the bottom, Princess. From there, it’s only a two-day trip to Carrion. Regular airships travel there, to and from the capital.”
“We’ll pay,” Radiant Dawn said, without even hesitating. “For your time, and your assistance, Mr… I don’t believe we have your name.”
“Cyrus,” he said, voice low. “Ranks don’t mean anything anymore, so you can just call me Cyrus. I… might be persuaded to help you to Carrion. The subterranean highways are unfriendly to outsiders, and dangerous to traverse. But I would not advise trying to fly away from Abdera. There are archers below, archers whose aim is true even when shooting through ash.”
“I hope you’ll let us persuade you,” I finally said, the first thing I’d dared during the entire conversation. “We don’t mean to anger the dead, if, uh…” I probably shouldn’t question the superstition in front of someone who lived around it. Even if the ghosts weren’t real, they were still part of the realities of his world. “Please.”
He led us into a shelter, a space that had clearly been one home among many in the city of Abdera. Ash packed in thick around the windows, and every opening was boarded except for the front and back. Everything inside looked like it had been salvaged from the ruins, or traded from somewhere so similar that there was no meaningful difference.
But after a few minutes spent gathering supplies—old cans, water drawn from an ancient well, rolls of white cloth—we set off out another entrance and down even lower into the ash.
Here it was sturdier than the clouds up-above, compacted into something like an unmelting snowdrift. We got to see the way Cyrus made the tunnels—with a cleverly shaped metal wedge, which split the ash apart while simultaneously moistening it with a thick mucus stored on a tank inside. He pushed it along ahead of him on rugged wheels, and we could go nowhere that the mechanism didn’t first lead.
“The highway will be safer” he said. “But the bottom of the mountain is in our way, and it is the best patrolled. You must not step away from me, or they will see you.”
I wasn’t exactly excited about this—particularly because it made less sense the more I thought about it. How exactly were the ghosts supposed to see us if we moved on our own, but not with our guide? How were we supposed to go anywhere without him, without this strange mechanism for making roads?
Too bad I was writing a history book, because all this clearly invited further scrutiny. Someone could write an encyclopedia on the Republic post-Migration-War. Somepony braver than I was, and more eager to get their hooves dirty.
There was sound from up ahead, off to the right through the layers of impermeable ash. I wanted to ask how our tunnel was strong enough to keep its shape with who knew how many feet of ash above us—but now didn’t seem like the best time.
There was more than one sort of magic at work here, and all of them might be hostile to outsiders. I lowered my head, and tried to listen as closely as possible to whatever might be happening through the ash. But there was no light outside the lantern, only the rustle of claws on stone. Rough scraping sounds, something wooden rolling along through the ash.
Radiant Dawn cowered suddenly close to me, wrapping a wing around my shoulder. It was a good thing I was so similar in size, because otherwise I’m not sure I would’ve had much to offer her. I held her as best I could, grateful there was something positive about being ripped out of an aircraft.
Cyrus, our guide, stopped in his motion, and we instantly followed him. He didn’t say a word, though from the way he glanced back at us over his shoulder, I could tell that he didn’t want us to make a sound.
Something rolled closer to us, scraping on the rock. I saw shapes rustle through the ash, on the other side of our tunnel, though how they could move through it I could only guess.
A few tense seconds passed as they converged on Cyrus. But I couldn’t hear words, not requests, not confusion, not even ghostly moans.
Then as quickly as they’d come, the sounds began to move away. I remained quiet and absolutely still, feeling Dawn’s racing heart so close to my own. She was brave enough to fearlessly hunt dragons passing through the sky, but not so much with her own dead under the ash.
Cyrus started moving again, and we hastily followed. Past an ancient gate with its mechanisms clogged with ash, and onto a wide stony path stretching down into the ashy abyss. Down the mountain, from the look of it.
“It’s a long way down,” Cyrus said, his voice matter of fact. “I hope you’re strong. Not much worried about the princess, but a pony… you may not make the trip.”
“Oh, I think you’ll find my endurance isn’t in doubt,” I said, though it was very much in doubt.
Dawn still hadn’t let go of me. “We’re going together,” she said, her voice imperious and absolute. “My family will reward you handsomely for rescuing me. But part of that rescue in my mind is preserving the Equestrian diplomat. Save us as a unit or not at all.”
I winced at the boldness—a challenge like that was practically begging Cyrus to leave us to the ghosts. But he just sighed, turning away. “Come on then. Just because we’re out of Abdera doesn’t mean we’re out of danger. That won’t change until there are skies overhead.”
We walked behind him. I quickly lost track of time—there was only his gently swinging lantern, and the precarious stony path. At least there was nowhere large enough to fly, so nowhere for me to get left behind and not cross. The ash filled in every valley and canyon, and where we could travel was dictated solely by where it was the thickest, and where our guide could push his strange machine.
“So,” I said, after a length of time I couldn’t be quite sure of. “I’m preparing a history on the Migration War—and part of that history involves the background that led to it. What happened with Mons Ignis… all of that?”
“Fascinating,” Cyrus said, with a tone that suggested I couldn’t present him with something more dull if I tried. He said nothing further, and the awkward silence returned.
“I was hoping I might be able to… ask you a few questions, about life after the war. I didn’t think I’d get the chance to talk to a… is it offensive to call you a Vulture? Or is that just the name?”
“It’s what the clan is called,” he said gruffly. “The ones who didn’t suffocate or burn to death or starve or melt or… we’re the Vultures. The magic of Mons Ignis runs in our blood now. We nest it in, our young will die in it. If anything, the name is generous, since most of the new generation can’t even fly. I can, but… I was raised in the sky. I can do what they cannot.”
“Birds who can’t fly…” Dawn muttered, either amazed or horrified. Probably both. “You don’t have to stay here, you know. My father would find room for you in the republic. It doesn’t matter if you disobeyed his father long ago—Gaius is dead. You won’t be punished.”
“It isn’t about that,” Cyrus said, his voice distant. “It’s quite a long story—but we have a long journey. Very well, I’ll tell it, if you can listen.”