“Let’s see, here… there’s a small village called New Lapiz on the way to Shimmervale,” Scarlet said absently, her eyes studying a map of New Equestria floating before her in her magic. “We could probably stop there for a day, rest at the inn, and learn if there’s anything we need to worry about going forward.”
She lifted her eyes from the map to scan the environment ahead of her. She and Primrose were back on the galloping road, the main highway that cut through the heart of New Equestria. It was a wide and neatly paved stone path, although this stretch looked like it was in need of some repairs. Tufts of grass poked up through numerous cracks in the stone, as were far more unseemly tendrils and weeds.
To the south, the larger of the Twin Forests was plainly visible, stretching on for miles and miles, blanketing the hills in lush green. On the other side of the road, it was largely open grasslands and rolling hills with only a few smatterings of trees here and there, growing less common the further north one looked.
They had been walking for about an hour, and the sun was starting to make its gradual descent towards the horizon. They had a fair few hours of light left, though. Primrose trotted by Scarlet's side, looking to be in higher spirits after they left the village. Perhaps she was just eager to get back on the road.
The foal in question glanced up at Scarlet and, more specifically, her map. She drifted a little closer and stretched her neck to try and see. Her face scrunched up a bit with the effort before she relaxed and huffed indignantly.
Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “...What? What was that?”
Primrose nodded towards the map. “Can I see the map?” she asked curiously. “I wanna know where we are.”
Scarlet slowed to a stop at that, one brow arching to vanish under her mane. Primrose looked back up at her, her eyes wide and hopeful. It was almost as if she was trying to look cute to get what she wanted.
A trick that Scarlet was, sadly, only all too susceptible to. With a roll of her eyes and a quiet sigh, she lowered the map to Primrose’s eye level and sat down beside her. “Oh, very well. But only for a moment; we need to keep moving,” she instructed firmly before looking at the map herself.
Primrose gave her a thankful smile before looking down at the map herself. “So… where are we?”
Scarlet lifted a hoof and pointed right where a smaller path branched off from the galloping road, heading south. “We are a little to the east of this spot here,” she said before moving her hoof to point at Shimmervale’s icon. “And we’re trying to get here. It’s going to take us a few weeks to make the trip on hoof.”
Primrose let out a slow breath, her eyes soaking in every little detail on the rolled-up parchment with fascination and wonder.
“Has she never seen a map before?” Scarlet pondered idly, observing the foal’s fascination with some of her own. Considering the state she had found Primrose in, it didn’t seem to be too much of a stretch that she was very uneducated and had missed out on many things. Scarlet’s heart withered with sympathy for the little thing at that thought, and she looked at the map again in hopes of finding a distraction. “...Do you see where you come from on here?” she asked after a moment.
Primrose glanced up at her for a moment, then studied the map again. “Uuuuhhh… no, I don’t,” she answered a few seconds later, disappointment in her voice.
“Where did you come from, anyway?”
Primrose was quiet for several seconds, her ears drooping. “Uh… I dunno where I was born. My mom and dad wandered around a lot, and so we were always traveling. But when Silent killed them, I found a little village called Stonethrow...” she answered slowly, her eyes going distant. “I lived there for about a year before he found me again...”
Scarlet gave a quiet hum, studying the map again. “Stonethrow… Stonethrow… I think I’ve heard of that village. It’s surrounded by foothills and gets plenty of heavy snow in the winter, right? Stone buildings, thatch rooves, and it has a chapel of Cadance, right?”
Primrose perked up and looked up at Scarlet in surprise.”Yeah! How did you know?”
The unicorn laughed and shook her head before pointing to a spot on the map southeast of Newcanter. “I was there, briefly, during the war. My unit was passing through the area while en route to the border. It’s right here, at the foot of these mountains,” she explained before rolling up the map and depositing it back in her saddlebags. “Anyways, we need to keep moving. Come on-”
Thunk.
Primrose cried out, and Scarlet immediately sprang back up to her hooves in a battle stance when an arrow pierced the earth a mere few inches in front of them. “Shit! Come on!’ she shouted before grabbing Primrose in her magic and breaking into a mad gallop down the road. Her horn lit up with magic, and a dome barrier formed around her just in time to stop another arrow from piercing her throat from the side.
She glanced in the direction the assault was coming from and saw a large patch of trees. She could just see figures moving in the darkness with agile swiftness. However, any fears she had that they were Nightblades were summarily put down when she realized how clumsy these creatures were. Not to mention the fact that the first arrow had missed its mark. If it had been a Nightblade, either she or Primrose would be dead already.
Her assumption was only proven to be correct when one of the figures came darting from the shadows, revealing itself to be a griffin. He was dressed in thick leathers that had been slapped together in something that could loosely be defined as armor. He eyed her and Primrose hungrily, his beak curling into a sadistic snarl. With a deafening eagle screech, he slammed into the ground right in front of Scarlet, stopping her dead in her tracks.
“Surround ‘em!” a familiar voice called out. Scarlet turned to face it and saw four more griffins emerging from the treeline, two of them armed with crossbows while the other two had swords clutched in their talons. Scarlet growled when she saw the leader of the group was the same one that had approached her back in Twinwood.
In short order, she and Primrose were surrounded by the five hostile creatures. With slow, deliberate movements, she removed Primrose from her back and set her down on the ground. “If this becomes a fight, I want you to run and hide, do you understand?” Scarlet whispered back to the filly, never taking her eyes off the enemy.
“B-but… what about you?” Primrose whimpered, backing away despite her protests.
Scarlet drew herself straight and set her jaw. “...I can take care of myself. I’ll come find you,” she stated firmly, hoping that the confidence she had just conveyed was believable.
Primrose eyes her skeptically but did not otherwise argue any further.
“Well, well, lookit who it is!” The lead griffin cackled as he approached the barrier, casually resting the blunt side of his sword on his shoulder while tilting his head to one side. “The rude unicorn bitch and her neglected foal.”
“Rude?” Scarlet spat incredulously. “So says the griffin bandit that just tried to kill a couple of innocent travelers. What the buck is your problem?!”
The griffin’s entertained demeanor immediately faded away, replaced with a bitter scowl. “Watch it, pony! In case ye missed it, yer surrounded and outnumbered!” he snapped angrily, his pupils dilating. After a moment, he drew back and took a deep breath.
Scarlet took that as her cue to try a more diplomatic approach. “Well, I hope you can forgive me being a touch cross at the moment. You and your friends did just shoot at me and my charge. What do you want from us?”
The griffin’s eyes narrowed, and his beak again curled into an ugly grin. “Well, first of all, we want anythin’ and everythin’ ye have that’s valuable.”
“Yer bits, especially!” another one piped up, his voice broken and hoarse.
Scarlet looked at him out of the corner of her eye for a moment before focusing on the leader again. “You’re robbing us, then,” she deduced the obvious with a slow nod of her head. “...If I may ask a question before this proceeds?”
The leader scoffed, looking up and to the side in dismissal. “Pfft. Fine. What?”
“...Why are you doing this?”
The leader blinked and looked at her in bewilderment. “Why are we doing this? Why?” he echoed, no emotion in his voice.
Primrose shrank back even further with a quiet whimper, her pupils dilating. “I think you made him mad…” she whispered.
The griffin, as if to prove her point, snarled and brought his sword down on Scarlet’s barrier. It wasn’t quite enough to cut through, but it did create a spiderweb crack pattern across the front of it. “Ye wanna know why we’re attackin’ ye?! HA! As if ye don’t fuckin’ know already!” he shouted, his eyes going wide with fury. “All ye ponies, constantly lookin’ down on us, spittin’ on us! We never fought in the war, ye bloody bastards! But do ye care?! Of course not! None of ye care! We’re all just the evil griffins to ye!”
He drew back and struck again, causing Scarlet to wince and step back to keep her barrier up. Half of her barrier was cracked, now. The griffin leaned in, glaring daggers into her eyes. “Ye think we want this?! We just wanna make an honest livin’ like everyone fuckin’ else! But a griffin can’t do that anymore, can he! Because you ponies keep kickin’ us out!”
Scarlet cringed, her heart trembling with guilt and remorse. Images of blood-stained, fire-scorched battlefields flashed through her mind, and the memory of a dying griffin with his throat slit bubbled up to the surface. She screwed her eyes shut and clenched her teeth, forcing the memory down so she could focus. “Do not mistake me for a common fool!” she bellowed before focusing on her barrier, causing it to resolidify.
With a shake of her head and a grimace, she opened her eyes and glared up at the griffin leader again. “I am well aware that the way griffins have been treated by ponies since the war is unfair and borderline cruel. But do you honestly believe things will get better for you if you do things like this?!”
“We gotta eat, don’t we!?” The griffin snapped back. “And ye have all already proven yer not gonna bother lightenin’ up! Now shut up and hand over yer things, now! Maybe then ye can get out of this mess alive!”
Scarlet took a step back, glancing back and forth amongst all of his comrades. She took a deep breath and looked into his eyes again. “You’re making a huge mistake. If you keep doing this, you’re all going to suffer for it in the end. Please, I am begging you… stop this. Just walk away now and abandon this violence. It will only bring you misery and an early grave, and it will only make things harder on griffins everywhere else.”
There was a moment of silence before the griffin leader shook his head. “Nah. Sorry, miss. But walkin’ away won’t put coin in our bags or food on the table,” he denied, his voice lower than before. He shifted back and pointed his sword at her. “Last chance. Drop the barrier and give us yer things. Yer nice, so if ye cooperate, we might let ya go unharmed.”
Scarlet was quiet for several seconds before glancing back at Primrose. The filly was looking back up at her with pleading eyes, her body low to the ground. She was so small, fragile, and most of all, scared. Scarlet looked down at the dirt below her hooves, a war briefly waging in her mind. It ended quickly, though, and she set her gaze back on the leader, resolute. “I am afraid I cannot do that. If we’re to finish our journey, we need what we have. I cannot give you anything.”
The bandit growled. “That’s okay. We can kill ye and take it off yer corpse if we must,” he stated before nodding at his friends. “Kill em.”
And with that, chaos erupted. The two other sword-wielding griffins immediately lunged forwards, thrusting at the same time, while their bow-wielding counterparts leaped back and took to the air. Scarlet ducked low, her barrier fading out just before the blades made contact. With the obstruction gone, each griffin overextended, their blades locked together over Scarlet’s head with a spine-tingling scrape.
With a grunt, the unicorn rolled off to one side, her horn igniting with dangerously sparking magic. “PRIMROSE, RUN!” she commanded before turning towards the two recovering griffins, ready to unleash her spell.
She was not able to do so, however, as the leader charged her himself, bringing his sword in an arc for her throat. She reacted quickly, jumping back and avoiding the strike. The moment her hooves touched back onto the soil, the air before her shimmered before her two magical blades snapped into reality.
The griffin’s eyes widened. “What the?!”
Scarlet’s eyes narrowed as she entered a trance-like state. The motions were all coming back to her, the world beyond the immediate battlefield ceasing to exist. With a battle cry, she charged her adversary, her swords blurring into motion. Slash. Thrust. Stab. Parry. Sweep. Block. Repeat.
Her target backed away, barely fending off her offensive push. With a growl, he lifted his sword for an overhead carve.
Opening.
Scarlet lifted one sword to catch his before thrusting the other right under his foreleg. It pierced the flesh with ease, fresh blood squirting out of the wound and across her face. The griffin screamed in pain, his wings flaring open. With a guttural shout, he lifted his hind legs and kicked out, hitting Scarlet in the face and causing her to stumble back. Acting fast, she turned and ripped her sword out of him at a sideways angle, creating a sizable gash in his side. More blood sprayed free, and he crashed to the ground a few feet away in a crumpled, writhing heap.
She just caught a flicker of silver in the corner of her eye. The glow on her horn intensified just in time to halt the arrow from piercing her cheek and invading her mouth. Eyes wide with shock, she looked past the projectile to see one of the ranged griffins already preparing to fire off another shot.
At the same moment, the two other sword-wielding griffins were charging her, blades raised. They had left Primrose alone, thank goodness, though the filly had not run as she had been told. She was rooted to the ground, eyes wide, and full of terror.
Scarlet snarled before using her magic to redirect the arrow she held to fly back at the sender, hoping to at least give herself a moment to breathe. At the same time, her swords vanished and were replaced with half of a dome barrier in front of her, blocking the incoming swords of the griffins. Sparks flew on impact, both of her adversaries snarling viciously at her.
She responded in kind. With a quick push, her barrier became partially immaterial before rapidly expanding out in a magical pressure wave. Both griffins were caught by surprise, and both were sent flailing back. That was until Scarlet’s magic encased the right wing of one of them. With a swift appliance of pressure, the wing was snapped in the middle, drawing an agonized scream from the victim.
Acting purely on autopilot, Scarlet dragged him back to her, one of her swords quickly rematerializing beside her. She just heard the other griffin she had knocked aside calling out a name, though she was too focused to make it out. She hauled the injured griffin up and lifted his writhing form to block the oncoming arrow from his companion.
He cried out again, this time in a weaker voice, when the tip of the projectile just came out of his back, sending another fresh wave of blood across Scarlet’s face. With a grimace, she finished him off by lifting her sword so it was over his head and stabbing it into his skull, embedding it up to the hilt. His body went rigid before falling limp, the life draining out of it.
His friend was crying out in a rage, lunging for her. Scarlet stepped back and hurled the corpse at his friend, and both of them went tumbling to the ground. She took the brief melee respite to look to the skies at her ranged opponent. He was already reloading, albeit now with far more frantic movements than before.
Scarlet narrowed her eyes, realizing that he was far enough away for the most powerful spell she knew. Her horn swelled with energy, her eyes narrowed, and a growl of effort came from her throat. A sphere of unstable, crackling purple magic formed on the tip of her horn, expanding rapidly until it was almost a foot in diameter. Then, with a deafening bang and a shockwave tearing out from Scarlet’s horn, the sphere was launched at the flying griffin.
He looked up to fire, only for the blast to strike him directly. He didn’t even have time to scream. An explosion of purple magic, easily capable of reducing a modest single-story home to dust erupted from the point of impact. From the cloud of smoke, a collection of blackened, smoking limbs and feathers descended along with a fine red powder.
Scarlet let out a huff and returned her eyes to the enemy in front of her, who was back on his feet and eyeing her warily. She met his gaze evenly, narrowed her eyes, and took a threatening step forward. “Are you sure you want to keep this up?” she asked slowly, her horn sparking to life again.
The griffin took a step back, his confidence wavering.
Scarlet matched his retreat with her advance, her swords once again appearing by her sides. “You can still run away.”
Before her opponent could make good on her offer, a heavy weight slammed into her back, forcing the breath from her lungs. Scarlet crumpled under the weight, her blades vanishing as claws tightly encased her horn. She tried to stand, but she was pinned. At that moment, she remembered the second crossbow-wielding griffin and cursed herself for losing sight of him.
“You gods damned son of a…” the griffin on top of her snarled into her ear while placing his other claw on her throat. “You murdered our friends!”
Scarlet shouted at the top of her lungs, pouring more energy into her horn in the hopes of getting around the claw still holding on. Her head began to hurt immensely from the blockage, but luckily her endurance was greater than that of the griffin. She heard him crying out as he yanked his claw back, as if it had been burned, and released her magic. Scarlet quickly encased his other claw in telekinesis and bent.
A sickening series of snaps and cracks filled her ears as each of the griffin’s talons on his left front leg were snapped backward, followed shortly by his breathless scream. She felt his weight on her relax, and she capitalized on it. With a grunt of effort, she forced herself to her hooves and threw him off of her with her magic, sending him crashing to the ground off to one side.
As she returned her attention to her sword-wielding enemy, she caught sight of a sword swinging at her, about to connect. Alarmed, she jumped back, barely evading a fatal blow. The sword still created a thin, shallow cut across her chest, and put a small nick in her cloak. The sound of the fabric shredding filled her ears, and a fire began to flood her veins.
“How dare you!” she bellowed, her sword rematerializing on driving into an offensive in an instant. The griffin was quickly put on the defensive, backing away with every strike she made. “This! Was! A! GIFT!”
With one more heavy blow, Scarlet knocked his sword out of his claws, leaving him wide open. His eyes were wide and frantic. “W-wait-!”
Scarlet did not heed his words. She drove both of her blades into his gut before twisting and ripping out. The griffin’s corpse toppled back to the ground with a heavy thud, all but cut in half. She looked down at him for a second, gasping for breath. Had he been about to beg for his life? Was he about to surrender? If so, then…
Scarlet did not get a chance to feel any shame over her actions, as yet again she was tackled, this time from the side. She gasped in pain as the griffin with the broken talons plowed into her and pinned her to the ground again. This time, her efforts at fighting back with magic were ceased not by his claws grasping her horn, but by the blade of a dagger in his uninjured hand stabbing through her cloak and into her side.
White-hot pain exploded around the injury, causing Scarlet to scream and thrash. The griffin was determined, though, and quickly bit down with his beak on her ear. It pierced the skin with ease, and a fresh trickle of blood started to flow down her head. At the same time. The dagger was ripped free.
Scarlet thrashed again when the blade stabbed into her a second time, her vision swimming. She tried to focus on her magic to throw him off, but she was in too much pain, her body starting to go into shock from the suddenness of her new injuries. Another stab wound was made in her side.
Suddenly, the griffin on top of her gave off a yelp, his entire body tensing and lurching back. With his beak free from her ear and his weight on her body decreased, Scarlet turned to look up at him, her horn finally sparking into life again. She only just took note of the dagger that had just been plunged into his shoulder before she unleashed a precise beam of magic at his head, reducing it to cinders.
The headless corpse fell back and off of her, giving Scarlet some room to breathe. She looked around, her horn alight and ready to fight off more enemies. However, after a moment, she realized that, save for the leader, who was seemingly unable to stand, all of the griffins were dead.
With a sigh of relief, Scarlet allowed her head to slump back down into the grass. As she did so, she caught sight of Primrose a few feet away. Her eyes were wide with shock and horror, and a few spots of fresh blood were on her hooves and face. Scarlet briefly glanced down at the corpse beside her, again seeing the dagger in his shoulder.
“...You saved me,” she whispered quietly, her magic idly pulling the dagger free. She slowly levitated it back to Primrose. The filly gingerly took it in her hooves, her eyes not once leaving Scarlet’s.
“Ye bitch…” the leader croaked from his place on the ground, drawing Scarlet’s attention back to him.
He was struggling to pick himself up, but with one of his front legs all but severed, it was all but impossible. The pool of blood beneath him was growing rather large as well. He wouldn’t last much longer without treatment.
He rolled onto his side and gave Scarlet a glare that bespoke a hatred and resentment that defied words. “This is our lot… the only lot we’re ever gonna get again. To be stepped on and killed by ye bloody ponies...” he growled before letting his head come to a rest.
Scarlet, with great strain and effort, hauled herself to her hooves. Moving slowly, she dragged herself over to him, her ears drooping. “...It did not have to come to this,” she muttered to him in sympathy. “You could have walked away, proved you were better than this.”
“Ha. What shit,” The griffin snorted before closing his eyes. “Long as ponies remember that stupid war, we griffins will be less than scum to you…”
“Not to me,” Scarlet countered without missing a beat, drawing a confused glance from the griffin. “I am no fool… The way you have been treated is unjust and undeserved… but striking out in anger and vengeance will only ever make things worse for the griffins that call New Equestria their home.”
The griffin stared at her for a second before closing his eyes again. “Humph… whatever ye say…” he mumbled, his voice growing weak.
Scarlet slowly lowered herself onto her haunches, her horn lighting up and reaching into her saddlebags. “Please, let me help you. I have bandages, I can-”
“Don’t you dare!” The griffin snapped at her, his eyes opening again. “Don’t ye dare have the gall to take pity on me after murderin’ all my friends! YE DID THIS! DO YE HEAR ME?! I’d rather die than let myself be helped by you!”
Scarlet fell silent. After a moment, she allowed the light on her horn to fade before closing her eyes. She bowed her head and began to speak in a low whisper. “Five above, I humbly beseech you, please, forgive their wrongdoings and allow this tortured soul and his friends a place in your paradise, that they might be reunited and free of the hell they have already and unfairly been forced to endure.”
With her prayer offered, she opened her eyes and looked down at the griffin. He was staring back at her with wide eyes and a hanging jaw. “...A prayer?” he asked in disbelief.
Scarlet sighed and rose back to her hooves. “I do not know if the Five can work the miracles many say they can… I do not even know if they exist. But if there is a life beyond this one, then I hope it is a happy one for you and your friends.”
The griffin looked at her a moment longer before closing his eyes. “Heh… fate’s a cruel bitch, ain’t she? Killed by the only kind pony I’ve ever met…” he mumbled, barely audible. Then, with one last exhale, he fell completely and utterly still.
A heavy silence fell over the area, the only sound being a gentle breeze whistling by. Scarlet stared down at the corpse below her for a short while longer before turning and looking at Primrose. The filly was looking back at her, still looking quite shaken.
After a moment, Scarlet began to drag herself over, wincing and hissing in pain as her injuries reminded her of their presence. “Primrose. A-are you alright?” she asked before slumping to her haunches with a heavy sigh.
Primrose rigidly nodded her head in response, the bloodied dagger still clutched in her hooves. She didn’t say anything, though. Scarlet gave her a quizzical glance before using her magic to gingerly pull off her cloak and set it to one side to keep any more blood from getting on it. She reached into her saddlebags, withdrew a few rolls of bandages, and set about binding her injuries. After a while, her eyes glued onto Primrose’s dagger, and she frowned. “Clean the blade, don’t let the blood dry on it.”
Primrose jumped in surprise at the command. She nodded again and quickly set about cleaning the blade off by brushing it on the grass. When that was done, she slipped it back into its sheath under her saddlebags.
Scarlet nodded in satisfaction before glancing down at her bandages. They would hold, and she was already feeling better. “Alright… come on, we need to keep moving,” she stated plainly before putting her cloak back on and rising to her hooves. Primrose, however, did not move to follow her. Scarlet went to leave, but when the foal made no attempt to follow, she turned and looked back at her in confusion. “Primrose?”
For several long seconds, she did not answer. Primrose’s eyes wandered from corpse to corpse, her body shrinking fearfully with each one she saw. “...Y-you killed them,” she finally whimpered.
Scarlet flinched back when Primrose looked up into her eyes, her ears folding back in shame. “...I did, yes,” she acknowledged, nodding her head. “I am sorry if it was disturbing to you, but please understand. They were going to kill us both if I didn’t. I didn’t want to kill them, and if any of them had run, I would have let them. In the end, they left me no choice.”
“I know, I know,” Primrose said with a bit more energy than before. “I’m not stupid. I’ve seen a lot of ponies dying before. But… it was always Silent killing them, and they were always ponies I cared about…” she looked back at the corpses and shuddered. “N-nopony I have ever been with has ever fought like that… Nopony I have ever been with has killed like that.”
Scarlet looked down, not sure of what to say. Eventually, she settled with gently placing her hoof on Primrose’s back and ushering her away from the scene of carnage. “Come on… let’s go.”
Primrose had no argument.
And so the two of them left the bloody scene behind, disappearing into the distance even as scavenger birds began to circle above the collection of corpses.