“Stop!” Gallus screamed. “Harvest!”
Harvest didn’t listen. She ran through the fields of twisted grapevines, towards the burning barn in the distance.
Gallus’s broken wings, tucked close to his body, reminded him of just how useless they were. A memory flashed through his mind: that night in Griffonstone, frantically searching for Gabby after she disappeared. If he could even just flap like Scootaloo could, chasing Harvest down would have been much easier..
Harvest sped up, her hooves blurring as she ran through the scorching wind. It was like something had possessed her. The barn was all but collapsed now—melting into itself like a pile of burning leaves—but she didn’t halt her steps, even as planks of wood came crashing down in front of her.
What was she remembering? Was there someone she cared about inside that barn? Was she in there?
“This is a memory!” Gallus called again, hopelessness beginning to set in. “You’ve seen it for yourself!”
She disappeared into the yellow barn, swallowed up by the smoke and the shadows of what lay within. Gallus charged after her, the grass and dirt underneath his feet turning into soft sand and hay.
He tried to track her steps, but the acrid stench of smoke made him cough hard. The ceiling was crumbling, and the sounds of its destruction made it hard for him to stay focused on finding Harvest. He went from looking into the wavering streaks of light and shadows that enveloped the barn to anxiously glancingat the ceiling, then back again. His gaze never seemed to settle.
He found Harvest in an obscure, hall-like structure at the side of the barn, looking up at a door that stood at the end of it, likely leading to the farmhouse. Her posture was tight. Alert. As Gallus came closer, he could see sweat ruffling the fur on the back of her neck.
Heavy machinery surrounded them: big iron apparatuses that sparkled magnificently in the light.
Gallus ran up beside her. He spoke loud, over the din of the fire.
“Harvest,” he said. “It’s an illusion, remember? Some kelpie plucked all this bad shit out of your head. It’s not real. Whoever you’re looking for...they’re not actually here.”
“I know,” said Harvest. Her voice sounded vacant. “He’s not here,” she said. “Where is he? I wanted—I didn’t care if it wasn’t him—I just wanted to see him. I didn’t take any photos with me when I left.”
“I want to ask who you’re talking about,” said Gallus, “but first I want the both of us to—Shit!” he squawked, leaping out of the way of a falling piece of wood. His head snapped back to Harvest. “Stop screwing around, alright? We need to leave or we’re gonna die.”
“I’m…” Harvest shook her head.
“Now,” Gallus said.
She stepped away, only tearing her eyes off the door when Gallus grabbed her shoulder. They spun around and ran, Gallus keeping his focus on the decaying ceiling and guiding them both around the falling debris. They made it outside, stopping at a safe distance away from the barn, next to the grapevines.
Gallus was content to lie down and catch his breath, but Harvest did not stay where they had stopped. She started to wander the perimeter of the burning barn.
Gallus had the urge to follow her, but he had a bigger urge to just watch her first. She was so...apathetic towards the burning barn—completely opposite of how he felt. He was flinching at every crackle from the fire, every gargantuan crash from the burning machines.
Harvest stalked about the disaster with familiarity. Gallus wondered how many times she had replayed this memory in her mind, searching for whoever was supposed to be in there. A pitying sadness stroked the back of his heart.
Was this what he looked like whenever a kelpie recreated an event from his own past? Was this how Harvest felt, traipsing around inside his memories?
Harvest left his line of sight. Gallus stood and followed. She was searching for something. No, someone. She said something about a ‘him’, didn’t she? Whoever it was, they’d better find him if they wanted to leave this place.
With a bit of effort, he caught up to her just as she stopped in front of an outdoor shower. Her ears had flattened against her skull. As he sidled up next to her, he saw the expression on her face: utter confusion.
“Hey,” Gallus said. He waited for her to look at him, but she didn’t. “Harvest,” he said, dampening his voice. “You gotta tell me sometime. I have to get out of this, too. Who are you looking for? What is this place?”
She didn’t answer right away. Gallus didn’t push her. He merely listened to the sound of the burning barn, popping as the flames consumed the wood, flaring when it found knots in the wood’s flesh. He kept a lookout for anything that could sneak up on them.
There was nothing, though. Gallus’s memories had been so crowded. So filled with the possibility of anyone in sight being a kelpie. Harvest’s memory was desolate.
“This is the day that I cut ties with them,” said Harvest.
“...The fire?” Gallus asked.
“My fault.”
“What happened?”
“Why are they targeting me now?” Harvest asked, turning to look at him. She maintained his gaze for only a second before looking back to the barn. “Why am I here, Gallus?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You’ve known everything there is to know about those fucking things. You have to!”
“I don’t!” Gallus barked. “I—maybe it was because you helped me. Against that one that looked like Sandbar. That might have gotten you on their shitlist. But honestly? I have no idea. The Royal Guard trained us to fight monsters, but we didn’t spend a lot of time on the sea-based ones. Can you answer me a question? Why are there no kelpies here?”
“Because no one was home,” said Harvest, her voice growing quieter. “I mean, my brother was. But he’s not here.”
The barn faltered. The ceiling crashed like a wave over the machinery inside, which cried and creaked loudly under the assault until it let out a final, prolonged metallic scream, and the barn completely collapsed.
Gallus swallowed. “Was he in there?”
Harvest’s eyes widened. Then she laughed dryly, once. “No. You’ve still got me beat when it comes to personal tragedies.”
Gallus snorted. “Right. Well, where is he? Was he, I mean?”
“He was right outside when I set the place on fire,” said Harvest. “When I didn’t see him, I figured that if the kelpie behind this is appearing like him, then it must have wandered inside.” Her brows furrowed. She stared at the scorched wreckage and the fire devouring the barn’s remains. “I only saw it fall when I was on the road with my friends, running away. I never saw it up close like this.”
“The kelpie’s altering your memory,” said Gallus.
Harvest looked away from the wreckage, to the rows of grapevines. “Then where—”
“Late,” came a young, male voice, from somewhere inside the vines.
Harvest’s ears perked. Gallus looked for whoever the voice had come from. “Was that him?”
“It sounded like him,” said Harvest. “It—it’s just a kelpie, though.”
“Yeah. But it’s going to look like him.” Gallus asked.
“I haven’t seen him in years.”
“Are you ready to?”
The voice came drifting through again, from the middle of the field. Gallus and Harvest shared a look, and began to walk towards it.
“Earl?” Harvest called, unsure. “...Early?”
The voice called again, incomprehensible this time. They stepped between two rows of grapevines and ventured inside.
Gallus kept his guard up. He was reminded of the occasional Nightmare Night corn mazes from his youth in Ponyville, and all the times he had completed them alone to prove his courage. Where was his bravado now? Now, he only felt tired, and underneath that tiredness was a soft despair.
He felt like he was counting down the seconds on a clock.
Harvest continued to call every so often for her brother, but there was no reply. Eventually the grapevines ended, and they entered a clearing.
There was a set of stairs in the middle of nothing. They should have been able to see it from the barn, but they hadn’t. It looked as if someone had built a staircase leading to the top of a tower, and then melted the tower away, leaving behind only the steel stairs and, at the top, a lone door that led to nowhere.
“We’re being let out already?” Gallus asked. “What was the point of saying your name all creepy like that?”
“Bullshit.” Harvest narrowed her eyes. She spun back towards the grapevines, to the burnt pieces of the barn in the distance, and she began to yell loud enough to rasp her voice. “Early? Where are you? Coward! You talk in my brother’s voice and then you don’t even show yourself? Come the fuck out!”
She waited a moment. Gallus’s breath had hitched at some point. He exhaled and realized that waiting was no longer worth it.
“Harvest,” he said. “I think we need to go through that door.”
“Why?” she asked. “Why—why fuck with me like this? I haven’t—” She put a hoof to her mouth, stifling her next words.
“I know,” said Gallus. “Whatever it is, I know. But if they’re letting us out now then we need to cross that door. I don’t think anything’s gonna show itself here.”
“I know,” Harvest replied. Her voice was distant.
Gallus looked down at the beige soil rustling slightly in a breeze. “I get that whatever happened here—and I don’t need details—it hurt you, but it’s done. You’re here, but you’re not here anymore. You’re far away, in the middle of the sea on a hippogriff ship. Whatever you might have found here would have been fake. And it would’ve hurt you. It wants to hurt you.”
He looked up to see her staring at him, eyes wet.
He nodded. “Let’s get out of here, alright?”
She nodded. “I’ll lead the way.”
The stairs were rickety—shaking like they’d give out at any moment—and there was a mildew-y stink to them that made Gallus want to dry heave. Behind the door at the very top, he could hear voices. Loud and urgent.
When they were close to the top, Harvest began to slow down for him, and Gallus heard something faint ringing in the field they had left behind. A noise like tempered glass cooling in a bucket of water. He turned over his shoulder.
By the mass off in the distance, the blackened pile of wood and metal that was the barn, he could see a shape. It was...what was that? He could see wings, and something red. No. Brown? A creature that was wearing some kind of coat—
“Hey,” Harvest said. “Are you gonna make me face the next one by myself?”
Gallus’s vision must have been damaged by the smoke. The shape was gone. He didn’t even remember blinking.
If he so wished, Terramar could have changed into a seapony and remained on deck. That was how hard it was raining. He was at the bow of the ship, looking over the crew of The Coralvreckan like his sister loved to when the ship was sailing smooth.
It wasn’t sailing smooth right now, though. The rain sloshed across the floor in thick sheets, and Terramar watched even the saltiest sailors on his crew take moments to steady themselves. They had weathered storms before, and it wasn’t often that he felt as if the crew was in danger of falling off of the deck, but this was one of those times.
Silverstream had been gone for at least half an hour. Or was it reaching an hour, now? He wasn’t sure anymore. He had been counting so diligently, but there was something else occupying his thoughts now.
Around him, the crew worked on, with Brine flying between them all, giving orders and commanding the more tired sailors to perk up. Terramar had never seen the lieutenant so animated.
Silverstream had clawpicked her fresh out of officer school after walking in on a lecture she was teaching. They assumed she was a senior member of the military, but it turned out that her professor had simply let her take over for a few minutes.
Whenever Silverstream needed anything—anything at all—Brine was there, but as Terramar watched the light blue hippogriff zipping around the busy deck, and the expressions on her fellow crew members fall deeper into the bog of exhaustion with every order, he realized something. The one thing that Brine couldn’t be was Silverstream, and without their captain, sailing totally blind and being worked to the bone? The crew was losing hope.
Terramar couldn’t fault them. They had weathered storms before, of course, but nothing quite like this.
“Crew!” came Brine’s voice, which sounded like a jingling bag of pearls. Terramar tilted his head upwards and saw the lieutenant hanging off the side of a mast. Her beak was set, and she had confidence in her posture. Stable and strong, despite the coat of water over the wood. “I know it looks bad right now—I will not lie to you. But Captain Silverstream is coming with help. We need to trust her if we’re going to make it through this. Our captain’s never led us astray before.”
The crew’s spirits raised slightly. Terramar could feel it in the air. Brine couldn’t be Silverstream, but maybe she didn’t need to be. Terramar looked through the expanse of fog rolling on for countless miles in front of the ship. They only needed to get home. That was it. That was all they needed to do.
A shift—something that he couldn’t explain—made him look to the far end of the ship. There was an extra set of vibrations on the surface. Something more than the pitter-patter of the rain, and the burdened, struggling steps of the crew. Something multitudinous.
Across the ship, a door opened. The other members of the crew stopped what they were doing.
Terramar’s heart stuttered. It rose in joy and fell as soon as he saw the group of creatures stepping through.
There were griffons. Familiar ones. Terramar squinted, prying into his memory in hopes of remembering, before he caught sight of their sea-salted, matted feathers, as well as the look in their eyes. They were the crew of the ship that Gallus had been on. The ones Terramar and his team had rescued from drowning.
Beside them were ponies, mean-looking ponies with coats in different tones of the earth—greens and browns and beiges—marching tensely out from the lower decks. Most of them were pegasi, though a few were unicorns.
And for every few pairs of ponies and griffons there was a diamond dog. Terramar had encountered their kind before. The diamond dogs of Black Skull Island were a thieving tribe that, for the most part, lived lives of crime; they were much different from their gem-obsessed cousins that lived in the cave systems near Ponyville. These diamond dogs were big, hulking beasts with moon yellow eyes and dark, steel blue fur, and the way that they carried themselves made it clear that they were the ones in charge of the group.
A coup. That was the only explanation. The ponies and the dogs were most definitely from the ship of smugglers and criminals that The Coralvreckan had apprehended before the Amulet of Aurora prompted Silverstream to find Gallus. The griffons must have helped them escape.
Terramar did a hurried count of their numbers as they spilled out from the lower decks. When it looked like the majority of them were out, it seemed that they were in the fifties—about a third of The Coralvreckan’s crew, though only about thirty of them were on the upper deck.
What happened to those down below? Were they okay?
All of Terramar’s thoughts of the rest of the crew were frozen cold when he saw a final diamond dog step onto the deck. She was bigger than the rest, with scars riddling her muscular arms, wearing a tattered viscose tunic that was presumably hiding more.
In her arms was a limp, pink hippogriff in a tartan coat.
Terramar breathed his sister’s name, but his own incredulous voice was drowned out by Brine roaring at the top of her lungs.
“Attention, hippogriffs!” roared the diamond dog. “We’ve got your spindly captain over here and we beat down a good number of your mates down below. You are all fucked.”
When Gallus came back into the world, his first thought was that it looked depressing. Rain careened over the deck of The Coralvreckan, surrounding the ship with a thick fog. As thick as he had ever seen.
There couldn’t be more than a few metres of sight past the ship. They were probably sailing blind.
He and Harvest stepped further along the deck to see the crew gathered into a large crowd in the middle of the ship, paying attention to something other than their usual jobs.
“What’s going on?” asked Harvest, sounding like she was talking to herself. “This is the ship. Does that mean we’re back?”
“Looks like it,” Gallus said.
“The kelpie let us go? Just like that? Why?”
“Beats me. Maybe this crowd has something to do with it.”
They moved towards the center of the ship, where it seemed the majority of the crew were congregated. There was something tight about the air. He and Harvest had walked into something bad.
They nodded at each other before walking to one of the hippogriffs who was standing at the edge of the crowd. Gallus tapped her on the leg, making her turn around.
The hippogriff turned towards him, and her eyes widened.
“What’s going on?” Gallus asked.
“I—” The hippogriff glanced to the middle of the crowd for a second before looking back at him. “You should see for yourself.”
The hippogriff then moved to her nearest crewmember and whispered in his ear, and a chain reaction started.
The crowd parted for Gallus and Harvest, and as they moved deeper into it, they soon gained a clear image of what was going on.
A scarred, dark blue diamond dog stood at the very center of the crowd, and in one of her arms was Silverstream. She was limp, but she wasn’t dead. There would be a huge battle on deck, otherwise. Gallus’s gaze lingered on her blank, sleeping face. She looked oddly peaceful. He could hear the voice of her younger self in his mind—he had nearly forgotten she had gotten so big.
Looking at her made him feel…
No. He looked away from Silverstream.
At the dog’s back were what Gallus assumed to be her co-conspirators of the little coup she was staging: more of her own kind, some ponies, and the survivors of The Bloody Herring.
In front of the dog, standing apart from the rest of the terse sailors, were Terramar and Silverstream’s lieutenant—both of their eyes were dilated. Gallus could see Terramar grimacing.
The inside of Gallus’s chest stung. He had spent so long wanting to leave his memories that he had forgotten how the real world wasn’t much better. He sighed. His head felt like it was swelling. It probably was.
The diamond dog was growling demands. Her coarse voice somehow reminded him that he very badly needed a shower. “No fucking around here, hippogriffs. You’re arranging us a ship and agreeing not to follow us back to the Jagged Peaks. When we’re halfway to the Storm King’s old waters, we’ll dump your Captain and let her swim home. If she can go faster than the sharks, of course.”
Silverstream could outswim any shark, but Gallus figured that the sharks living in the Storm King’s realm were probably a different breed than the Seaquestrian kind. She could also fly when she wanted. Evidently they weren’t dealing with the smartest pup in the litter.
Gallus crept closer to the scene, ignoring how Harvest tried to grab at his hind legs, wordlessly asking him to stay. He had to negotiate Silverstream out of this. She was their best way back to Mount Aris, and therefore his best way home.
But for so long he had only ever settled dumb problems between grouchy griffons. When was the last time he had to deal with a ransom? Just after boot camp?
No. There wasn’t a choice. There was still a kelpie on board and Silverstream had somehow gotten herself captured. He needed to fix this before anything else happened.
“We’re not letting her go anywhere with you,” said Silverstream’s lieutenant.
“And besides, we won’t be able to do anything until we get rid of this fog,” Terramar explained, his voice shaky. “Even if we—”
“Shut up! It’s just fog, you idiot! It’ll clear,” yelled the diamond dog, “and then you’ll give us our ship. Now then... Her grip tightened on Silverstream. “This bitch has a fuckton of sleepweed in her system, courtesy of your medical officer—who’s gonna need a doctor of her own, by the way—so you better decide what to do and you better do it quick. Either we get our demands or I’m throwing her overboard right now and me and my buddies are going to die in the best way possible: killing hippogriffs.”
“What?” gasped one of the griffons. “You said that we’d get out of here easy!”
“I lied,” replied the diamond dog, baring her long, white fangs at him. “You guys said you wanted money? Money is risky. You better be prepared to die for it.”
Those were a lot of new facts. Gallus turned them over in his mind:
Gallus kept them at the forefront of his mind. Diamond dogs appreciated strength. He would have to put up a front. He stepped forward, crossing the unspoken border between spectator and participant, the space that seemed reserved for the diamond dog female, Terramar, and...Brine! That was the lieutenant’s name.
“What a mess,” he said, stopping with the diamond dog and the hippogriffs on either side of him. His feathers ruffled as dozens of eyes focused on him.
“Gallus,” Terramar breathed.
“Who the hell are you?” asked the diamond dog.
“No one important,” said Gallus. He tilted his head at her.
He was so much closer to Silverstream now. Now that he knew she was pumped full of sleepweed, the peace on her face made a lot more sense. There was an underlying construction to it. Something artificial. She was forced to be like this.
One of the griffons backing the diamond dog, an old hen, pointed at him. “That’s the asshole who sunk our ship!”
“A giant squid did that,” Gallus said, moving his focus on the diamond dog. “What’s your name, miss?”
“Miss?” The diamond dog laughed dryly. “I’m no ‘miss’. Call me Basalt.”
“Basalt. I like it. Very dragon.” Gallus forced a smirk. “How long have you been pirating?”
“Did you have a point to make?” Basalt asked, glaring at him.
“Do you know who that is you’re holding?” Gallus nodded to Silverstream. “You know. Other than the captain of this ship? Because that girl right there is a blood relative of Queen Novo, and you’ve hurt her and drugged her up and who knows what else. You’ve screwed yourself.”
Basalt looked at Silverstream, the expression on her face like that of a picky eater examining her food. “So you’re saying that she’ll bring in a nice ransom.”
“Any price you want,” said Gallus. “You know, up until the hippogriff navy hunts you down and tears you a new one. If you knew who she was you’d never have messed around with this stupid plan of yours, which tells me that you’re pretty new to this stuff. Is that right?”
“Fuck you.”
“So I’m right,” said Gallus. “Look, pal, right now, there’s zero way that you get what you want and live to tell the tale. The captain you’re holding is royalty, not to mention personal friends with the Princess of Equestria.”
Basalt's mouth fell open for just a second, but it was long enough for Gallus to know that she had been caught off guard. She had definitely bitten off more than she could chew, and now she was going to panic.
“What you’re saying, then,” she said slowly. “Is that I should snap her neck right now and go to war with these pansies, right?”
Basalt drew Silverstream closer and wrapped a paw tightly around her slender neck, her eyes wide with adrenaline.
“Gallus!” Terramar screamed.
Gallus’s muscles tensed. Wrong angle.
Basalt noticed. A grin split her face. “That’s right. You still gonna sass me?”
Gallus gathered himself quickly and gave her a shrug. “Probably.”
Basalt laughed. “You don’t care if she lives or dies?”
“What I care about,” said Gallus slowly, “is that amulet around her neck.”
Basalt looked to the amulet in question. “Why? Is it expensive?”
“It’s garbage,” Gallus replied. “But I need it. You see, there are kelpies on board. Ever heard of those?”
He heard a buzz of recognition from various hippogriffs, but nothing from the mutinous crowd.
Basalt tilted her head. “Never heard of them.”
“They’re sea monsters,” said Gallus, “Now, I can get rid of them, and then whatever you do after that won’t be a problem to me. I’d even be willing to help you get back home if you gave me a ride where I needed to go. But shrimp over there?” he nodded to Terramar. “He’s actually telling the truth. No one here can do anything in this fog. It’s magical.”
“Again with this shit? It’s fog,” Basalt said with a growl.
“Magical fog,” Gallus said. “You’re in Equestrian waters. Don’t tell me you don’t believe in magic?”
“And what makes you think that I’m going to trust a royal guard?” Basalt sneered. “I can smell it on you. Who’s to say that this pretty necklace around the captain’s neck won’t trigger an alarm or some shit?”
Idiot. If she really knew what she was talking about, she’d know that he was a former captain, and she would be trying to kill him and sell his pelt on the black market for a fortune. Gallus raised a brow at her. “Everyone knows what’s going on already, don’t they? What would an alarm do?”
“An alarm to signal the rest of the navy!” Basalt yelled.
“So you’re scared of the navy?”
“No,” Basalt said, narrowing her eyes.
That was the key. She didn’t believe in the fog, and therefore didn’t believe that the ship’s communications were down. He had to “trade” their ability to alert reinforcements for Silverstream and the amulet. But it wouldn’t do to let her think he wanted to keep her alive. Her life was less valuable if he didn’t care for it, and thus wouldn’t be worth taking.
That made sense, right? He hated this. He hoped it did.
“Look, we don’t have to,” Gallus said. He took a step—
“Back the fuck away!”
Gallus grumbled, stepping back. “Look, I just want to help you remove that amulet and—”
“You think I’m stupid, don’t you?” Basalt roared, her paw tightening around Silverstream’s neck. “You think you can get in close and trick me or some stupid shit like that, you coward? You stay right there or I’m snapping her fucking neck.”
Gallus rolled his eyes. His right hind leg had begun to quiver. He slowed his breathing. Stay calm.
Then it hit him. He knew why the kelpie had let them go. He hadn’t been thinking about it or anything, but his subconscious must have been puzzling over it this whole time. What if the kelpie that had started Harvest’s illusion had retreated? At first, Gallus assumed that it was hiding somewhere on board, waiting for the right moment to catch him off guard again, but what if it was gone?
What if it went to gather reinforcements?
He didn’t have time to be playing games.
“Basalt,” Gallus said gravely. “You give me that amulet right now, or we’re all fucked.”
“We’re all fucked anyway,” she answered. “Your point?”
“Now!” Gallus yelled.
The ship rocked suddenly. Most on deck looked to the bow, yelling anxiously, probably worried they had crashed into a column of rocks or something. Gallus, however, turned to the side of the ship.
Silence overtook The Coralvreckan for a brief moment. Then, as crew and criminals alike turned back to carry on the ransom, Gallus saw shapes in the fog. Shadows expanded out of the thick veils, writhing for moments before diving down and disappearing altogether. A pit formed in his stomach.
Someone screamed, and then they were everywhere.
They emerged from the water like spiders crawling out of an agitated egg sac. Kelpies, in their natural, disgusting forms, riding hard, high waves that crashed against the sides of the ship.
A mass of green tackled Gallus, attempting to wrap its tendrils around his limbs. Deftly, he unsheathed the claws in his hindlegs and raked them hard into the kelpie’s lower chest. Green ooze dripped onto his chest in droves, but he didn’t finish the job. He scrambled away once its tendrils loosened their grip and got to his feet.
They were swarming the deck, jumping and grabbing and attacking every creature in sight. The crew and the criminals reacted, attempting to fight the monsters as opposed to fleeing, but the kelpies’ numbers were growing by the second.
Gallus turned to look for Late Harvest, but she was gone.
Harvest was good at surviving. He had to believe she was going to be okay.
He whirled around and spotted Basalt. She was pinned against the ledge of the ship by two kelpies who cooed cruelly to her as she twitched and whined, her eyes rolling back into her head.
Kelpies usually took prisoners, Gallus thought. They whisked their victims away to some sort of strange pocket dimension to carry out their torture. But these ones were torturing where they stood. There was something repulsive in their eyes—something unpolished, warlike.
Then he saw who he was looking for: Silverstream, laying slack across a struggling Terramar’s back. They made their way towards the back half of the ship, where the captain’s cabin was. Gallus pursued. The deck wobbled, making him stop more than once to regain his footing. Somehow, Terramar never stopped moving. Maybe it was the extra weight keeping him stable, or the fact that his big sister was depending on him to stay alive. But his drive filled Gallus with a strange sort of jealousy.
Past struggling ponies, hippogriff sailors, and griffons, all clawing and kicking at the horrifying, muddy formed monstrosities that could just barely pass for former hippogriffs, Gallus chased after Terramar. Screaming and whimpering trailed his side like waves in pursuit. He did his best to stay focused.
Terramar got to the cabin, slamming the door behind him. Gallus leapt onto it a few seconds after, threw the door open with a feral cry...
...And ended up in Canterlot University.
“No!”
Gallus spun around on the door, but it was already gone. He hung his head and groaned.
It was the University, alright. Top floor. Gallus recognized it right away, with its clean winders, Celestia-white walls, floors and chairs, and the lonely air that coiled round his throat like a snake.
One part of him was pissed.
That was why the kelpies weren’t taking anyone. They were there for him. To trap him. And he had fallen right into it.
The other part of him was scared.
No. He wasn’t scared. This wasn’t real and nothing here could hurt him. Except for the kelpie.
Stupid. What a stupid, idiotic fuck-up he was.
Why did he let himself follow Terramar instead of doing anything else? He could have checked on Harvest. Ran to the lower decks to find survivors. Hijack a lifeboat and take his chances on the unknown sea.
The amulet. Of course. It was to get the amulet. To use it and the crown in tandem and get rid of the kelpies.
He began to walk. Shredded ribbons of golden metal littered the floor, along with blood. He turned a corner to find more of the same. He didn’t want to be here.
No, he reminded himself. He wasn’t here. This wasn’t real.
Gallus inhaled and held his breath. He released it after a few seconds in a sigh. Wishing he was somewhere else wouldn’t help him now.
He turned another corner. The golden metal on the floor, previously scattered in paper-thin ribbons, was now jagged chunks. More blood appeared, in larger splatters, and in the midst of the blood were feathers. Blue ones.
The weather was wrong. He hadn’t noticed until now, but it wasn’t a sunny day like it should have been. There was a fog outside, as thick as rainclouds. Gallus thought he could see movement in it—small struggling shapes amongst predatory ones—but he had no time to stop and smell the roses. He needed to get out of here as fast as possible.
The amount of gold, blood and feathers increased, covering the floor of the next hallway like unwanted weeds in a fertile field. Gallus found it hard to step around it all.
When he next turned a corner, he found something different. There was his old helmet, torn apart by claws, completely ruined. The gem in the middle of his old chestplate had been ripped out and stomped on until it looked shattered as a fallen beehive.
But, to Gallus’s surprise, there was no copy of him. No crying, slobbering young visage at the mercy of the abyssinian he had locked away in the deepest parts of his mind. On that note, she wasn’t here, either.
So what was?
A rustling from behind made him jump. He glanced over his shoulder: no one there. When he turned back, it was to see that his armor had been cleared out of the way. Lying at the end of the hallway was the Crown of Grover.
“What do you want?” Gallus asked whatever was listening. “You want the crown? You’re not getting it.”
The air gave no answer.
Gallus sighed and walked towards the crown. What was the point of all of this? What were the kelpies up to?
This isn’t real, he reminded himself. Nothing’s here.
But it was real. It happened, didn’t it? That made it as real as anything else that had happened in the history of the world.
He stopped a few metres away from the crown. It couldn’t be this easy.
Could it?
Just as he crouched down to pick it up, he felt her.
Immediately he remembered her slitted eyes, orange like the sunset, against sickly red sclera, damaged by all of the potions she had medicated herself with for years on end. He remembered her fur, off-white and shaggy, and her claws that were eternally unsheathed.
“Griffon,” she whispered. She was right on him. “Did you miss me?”
“Fuck you,” Gallus said. He spoke with half the volume he had meant to.
“What should I break this time?”
“Fuck you!” Gallus yelled, spinning back and—and throwing a punch at the air.
He was alone.
“This is perfect,” said Catrina, the Witch of Abyssinia, the creature who had ruined his life. Her voice came from behind him, sounding like hot coals freshly splashed with water.
“Where are you?” Gallus asked.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” said Catrina.
Gallus felt a paw trail up his back. He looked to the floor. He could see her reflection on the tile—warped and grinning. “Don’t do that.”
“Stop me.”
I can’t. He couldn’t even close his eyes.
He could deal with Smolder and Sandbar. He could deal with anything else.
“No one’s coming for you,” said Catrina.
“I know.”
“You won’t even try to stop me?”
Gallus scratched at the floor. Do something! Anything! His heart was racing. Part of him wondered if it was going to burst.
Catrina’s paw stroked his back in a way that was meant to be calming. And then it travelled to his right wing.
He felt the paw wrap around his feathers, and before he could prepare for it he felt a jolt of pain burn through his wing, right through to his chest. Catrina had ripped out a fistful of his primaries.
Tears made their way down his face. Attack her! She’s not real! She’s a kelpie!
This wasn’t real. This wasn’t real and she wasn’t going to break—
More pain. Gallus shuddered out a groan as she ripped out feathers from his left wing.
“Won’t be using these anyway, will you?”
Agony. Not because of the pain of his feathers being taken from him, but because of the sheer dread that had a vice grip on his body. He couldn’t do anything. There was something primal in him that was holding him back. Something that he had learned over the course of the hour he had spent with her alone, at the top floor of this university.
Gallus sank to the ground, marvelling at how cold it felt, and he waited for her to kill him.
Nothing came.
“You’re no fun,” Catrina said. “But then again, that was why you volunteered for the guard instead of teaching at the school, didn’t you?”
Gallus said something. He wasn’t sure what it was, or if he even managed to speak coherently, but he was sure he said something.
“No one’s coming for you, you know. No one is here for you.”
And she was right. No one was there for him, and no one ever would be. He was alone, and he was hopeless. Any attempt he had ever made at thinking otherwise had always ended terribly. He was a burden. He deserved this. If the world was fair and just, he would be killed right here.
Gallus was scared. He had been scared, this whole time. He had been scared when he first figured out that kelpies were on board and he was scared now.
Prompted by something, Gallus’s eyes lifted from the floor, up to the Crown of Grover. It was close enough to grab, if he moved quickly.
There was no use lying about his hurt, because the hurting was real.
But the memories were just that. They were memories.
Catrina yanked more feathers from his wings, but he barely felt the pain after a few seconds.
“Someone’s here,” said Gallus.
“What?” Catrina snapped.
“Someone came for me. That’s the annoying thing about her, actually. She doesn’t know how to leave.”
Catrina began to respond, and Gallus leapt for the crown. It was so easy. His claws moved towards it like magnets. He grabbed it and held it tight to his chest, and he slid down to the floor.
For a split second he saw Catrina, and then he saw a disgusting, vegetal imitation of a creature looking at him in confused terror.
Gallus put the Crown of Grover on his head.
...
Magic. He was magic, and he could see other kinds of magic contracting, flowing around him in a radiant array of light. It was like being in an ocean of color, all forever changing, over and over, and for a sublime moment Gallus was a part of it all. But he had to let it go. It was almost loathsome of him to let it all turn gray, but he did, and then he concentrated on who he was looking for. She wouldn’t be hard to find. She had never been hard to find.
There was a blue spark amongst the monochrome, as true as an open sky. He drew himself towards it and he embraced it with all four of his limbs.
He breathed, and as he inhaled he felt her connect to him, and when he breathed out, so did Silverstream.
Gallus shivered. Emotions ran through him: Grief. Laughter. Ecstasy. Agony. And through the wave of emotion came knowledge. The knowledge that he was with her, and that he was her, and she was him. He felt her psyche, and her psyche questioned him.
They couldn’t talk through this connection, but he could show her things. And so he showed her exactly what she needed to see.
Silverstream’s mural was nearly impossible to comprehend. There were hardly shapes in the thing, after all. Only colors, blending into other colors and becoming new colors altogether. It was only after taking the time to really look at it that Gallus could see there was a deeper meaning behind it all.
She was hard at work on the mural, located on the wall of the staircase leading to the second floor of the Treehouse, and as such, she hadn’t yet noticed him walk in. She simply worked, humming idly to herself as she painted. Gallus watched her for a while from his seat at the very edge of Yona’s room, where he had the best view of everything.
“What does it all mean?” he eventually asked.
Silverstream froze. She was in the middle of speckling a valley of blue with a bright purple.
“Um.” She coughed. “Well, I wanted to do something about letting life go with the flow, you know? About, like, well...about doing things that don’t make sense and then letting them be, because once the paint’s on the wall there’s no way to erase it except by adding more paint.”
“It’s nice,” Gallus said.
“Yeah.” She set her easel down and sat on the floor. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Ruining graduation.”
Gallus laughed. “That was months ago. You don’t need—”
“Why haven’t we talked at all, then? That’s what you came here for, isn’t it?”
Gallus shut up. All of a sudden, this was ten times harder than he wanted it to be. He examined one of his claws for dirt. It was spotless.
“Well,” he said, putting the claw down, “I think the painting’s pretty.”
“You don’t forgive me, do you?” Silverstream asked. Gallus was still behind her, but he could picture the look on her face. The tears beginning to form at the corners of her eyes.
Gallus crept forward and sat beside her, but he kept his eyes on the painting. “Of course I forgive you.”
He turned and offered her his claw. When she didn’t take it, he placed it on top of hers. “Silverstream,” he said, “do you want to be friends again or not?”
Silverstream was crying.
“Oh…” He sighed, and took his claw off of hers.
“Of course I do!” she said suddenly, and wrapped both of her arms around him.
Gallus laughed, and she began to laugh too, and he hugged her back and dug his face into her neck.
“You’re getting tall,” he said into her feathers.
“You’re just short,” she replied. “...How was boot camp?”
There came a light when the memory faded, but it died out, and Gallus fell from nowhere, landing on his face.
He was on the floor of Silverstream’s cabin.
The kelpie imitating Catrina was gone. So were his injuries. Gallus glanced back out of curiosity to find that both of his wings had their feathers again.
Out of pure, stupid curiosity, he spread one of them. Maybe…
The sight that greeted him wasn’t pretty. Still wasn’t pretty. Still broken. He curled the wing back in.
Well, it’s better than nothing, I guess. Gallus stood up. No one else was in the cabin with him. It was quiet outside. He opened the door and stepped onto the deck.
The sun was out, shining luxuriously on the wet sheen that covered the surface of the entire ship. Gallus felt like the air was more refreshing than usual, somehow. He found himself taking deeper breaths.
A murmur arose around him. The crew was back at work, tugging at the various ropes and rigging sails. Some of them seemed injured, but not enough to warrant a visit to the medical bay, and thus sat on deck, looking out at the now visible sea or talking amongst themselves. Until they spotted Gallus, of course. That was when the whispering started.
Gallus walked around the Captain’s Cabin towards the middle of the ship. Some part of himself guided him in the right direction—a kind of itch that was like he had cut off his own foot and left it somewhere, and he had an intrinsic knowledge on where exactly it was.
Silverstream, Terramar and Brine stood on the deck, talking to each other. They all looked okay. No. They were okay. He knew that. Why did he know that?
Perfectly on cue, Silverstream stepped away from her brother and her second-in-command once Gallus was in sight, and she smiled at him.
Gallus knew what had happened.
The crown had snapped Silverstream back into consciousness just as she nearly fell off the edge of the ship, and it had increased the powers of the amulet tenfold. It had cast a light—brighter than she had ever seen, enough so that she had to close her eyes—that incinerated most of the kelpies, though some still managed to get away. They wouldn’t be returning any time soon, though.
After that, reorganizing the ship was easy. It wasn’t even half-an-hour since Silverstream had woken up.
The prisoners were being escorted back to the brig currently. There was still a question as to how many casualties of the crew were inflicted by the criminals prior to them stepping onto deck for that bogus negotiation, but that was being investigated right now.
But how did Gallus know all that?
Silverstream flew towards him, and suddenly the air he was breathing felt all the sweeter, more clean. It was like that metaphorical severed foot was making its way back to him.
He was still wearing the Crown of Grover. They were still connected.
Gallus ripped it off of his head just as Silverstream stopped.
Both of them winced from the discomfort of their connection being broken off so abruptly— like someone was roughly stroking their stomachs from the inside—but they got over it pretty quick.
Silverstream’s smiling face thrust itself into Gallus’s personal space.
He frowned.
“Hi,” she said.
“Don’t,” Gallus responded. “Don’t try it.”
Her smile fell for a moment, and she stepped back before smiling at him again. “Fine. I won’t. For now.”