Gilda’s campsite was barely even a hovel, set up in the shadow of the mountain, and the raised gravel barely avoided the grimy streams that ran past as rain rolled down from higher up the mountainside. We were in a high-pressure zone for the moment, as it was pressed up against the Canterhorn range, and so despite the clouds overhead, the rain did not fall on us directly. Here on the sunlit coast, the fog that covered Equestria had thinned somewhat. Between the clouds above and the blanket of fog near the shore, we could just barely see the rooftops of the coastal city a few miles away, and the glittering sea beyond.
The ponies without wings—Rivet, Star Bright, Posey and Roma—looked up nervously at the clouds above, likely worried that the clouds would shift and douse Gilda’s tiny campfire. Us pegasi knew we would be kept safe and dry until the winds shifted, however, and our focus lingered on the tunnel, which still loomed behind us. If I focused, I could still hear the whispers...or maybe that just the distant sound of the rain falling down the mountain. I would never be sure again. I found myself wondering if I might hear that noise lapping at the edges of my consciousness for the rest of my undead life.
I turned—forced—my attention from the mountain to our not-so-gracious host sitting by the fire. I was surprised to see a gryphon here; I remembered them decently enough, from before, though I couldn’t recall if I’d ever met one. Maybe only in passing. Relations with their country had always been strained, mostly because their society was wildly unstable. Gryphons seemed averse to being governed, even—or especially by—each other, and theirs was a long and bloody history of coups, revolutions, and infighting as the old families fought for dominance.
Gryphonstone—the most recent name of the country, thanks to King Guto, the last king before it had most recently collapsed—was a broken land of thick, boreal forests, sharp rock crags, snow-tipped mountain peaks, and desolate highlands. The gryphons lived in little feudal villages, where they hunted and scavenged to survive. That was one thing that was universally true about gryphons; they were hunters from birth, and those that couldn’t hunt didn’t last long, since they’d only be a mouth to feed.
How had that changed since the sun had stopped, I wondered? Were gryphons susceptible to the curse, just as we ponies were? Had the curse even spread that far, or was it localized to Equestria? Assuming they still hunted for meat—which perhaps could still be found, even though the plants of the world were dying—then perhaps Gryphonstone had never felt the throes of starvation such as Equestria had. In fact, it was possible that there were gryphons out there who hadn’t ever become undead.
If Maud was nervous about approaching the gryphon hen, then she didn’t show it; she seemed to be the only pony who seemed to have exited the tunnel with their wits safely about them. She joined Gilda by the fire, while we spread out slightly and looked for our own shelter, where we could look anywhere but that cursed tunnel. Maud set her club down on the ground slowly, a clear sign of peace, just in case. “You said your name was GIlda.”
“Yeah,” the gryphon in question confirmed. “No family name. Long story, and not one I feel like telling. What’s it to you?”
“I’ve heard the name before. My name is Maud Pie. My sister Pinkie Pie told me a few stories about you.”
Gilda rolled her eyes. “Of course I haven’t escaped that freak. Are you like that apple horse, family everywhere? Or do I just have the absolute worst luck?”
Maud blinked, very slowly, stone-faced as ever. “We’re related to the Apple family.” She said it so plainly that I couldn’t gauge how much it might be something she regretted nowadays.
“Ahhh, of course it’s both. Ponies.” Gilda spat, before she grabbed the fire poker and started to jab at the smoldering logs in annoyance.
“My sister’s not a freak,” Maud stated very clearly, and very bluntly. “And she said you were a friend.”
“She would,” Gilda snarled, before she shook her head. She clearly bit back a few more acidic words, then looked up at Maud. “That she doesn’t know—or hasn’t told you—why that’s changed, then that’s all you need to know.”
Maud had leapt to defense of her sister, but now, even she seemed very slightly confused. “I’d like to know more.”
“That’s cute. No.” Gilda jabbed the fire poker at the yawning maw of the train tunnel. “Instead, how about you tell me where you’re all headed. I figure since I’m being such a gracious host in my little nest here, it’s the least the seven of you can do.”
“Could ask the same of you,” Rivet interjected pointedly. He and the others had started to calm down somewhat, now that the danger of the tunnel had faded, and was quickly being replaced by the annoyingly acerbic gryphon hen.
Gilda cackled, but there was no humor in it. “Nah, that’s not how this worked in Fillydelphia. Everywhere I went out there I had ponies asking me for my life’s story, as if any of them cared. No, I’m sick of talking. You talk, and I’ll decide whether I care.”
Roma stood and took a step forward, just enough to assert her presence. She held her head up high, and her face had turned to stone. She spoke as if she were in a market, haggling over prices with a rude customer. “You’re a gryphon, and you spoke about the hunting of game. You’re a hunter, through and through, right?”
That earned another quiet cackle from the gryphon hen. “Heh, sure, if you wanna play it like this, mud pony. I have to kill to eat, to survive. Just like any other predator.”
If the pejorative bothered Roma, she never let it show on her muzzle. “Then we’re not so different. We’re hunting a pony; a blue unicorn mare, wearing a witch’s hat. Have you seen her?”
Raindrops glanced warily at Roma. “Hey, not hunting. We don’t want to harm her, remember?” There was an edge to her tone, and I couldn’t be sure how much of it was just a matter of her still being wound up from being in the tunnel.
Gilda just seemed amused by the explanation, though. Her beak clicked as she spoke, and if she could, I got the sense that she was grinning. “We’re not at all similar, pony. Not in the slightest. But I get your point. So what did your prey do, to earn a party of seven chasing her down?”
“Eight,” Posey whimpered quietly. She was still staring at the tunnel, and her ears twitched as she listened for phantom noises.
Raindrops whinnied at Roma, and the ex-merchant stepped back, satisfied that she’d at least gotten Gilda interested. Raindrops wasn’t as confident as her, but she made up for it with subtle signs of aggression obvious only to flyers. Her wings were rigid on her back, and her pinions twitched as she subconsciously fluffed her fur to look larger. “She stole an artifact, important to Equestria. We just need it back, but we’ve also been asked to escort her to safety, unharmed.”
“Uh huh, sure. And this artifact, where will it need to be taken once you’ve separated the two?”
“Canterlot. To the Princess herself, and to its rightful bearer.”
Gilda’s claws tapped at her beak thoughtfully. “Canterlot, you say...Now you have my interest. As it happens, I need to get to Canterlot. I think I’ll come with you.”
There was a confused silence in the camp for a few moments, the other ponies exchanging concerned looks, before Raindrops shook her head. “What? No, that’s not how this works. We just need to know if you’ve seen her.”
“Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t,” Gilda said with a dismissive grunt. “But it sounds like you’re down a pony now.” She had a smirk in her eyes as she gave the slightest glance toward Posey, who wilted from her in turn. “If this unicorn is so dangerous that they needed to send a party of eight after her, then you can use all the help you can get, hm?”
“She’s not dangerous, there’s just a lot of ground to cover,” Raindrops said pointedly.
“Sh-she’s a little d-dangerous,” I pointed out. My side still ached where Trixie had kicked me.
“Holly,” Raindrops groaned. “Not a good time.”
“Either way, this seems like something I want to be involved in,” Gilda said, as her claws drummed against the fire poker. “I’ll do it for free, even. If any of you know anything about gryphons, you should know that means a lot.”
“Yeah, and that actually makes me more suspicious,” Raindrops stated. “What’s your angle, Gilda? Why do you want to get to Canterlot so bad?”
“Family reunion,” she replied quickly, with a click of her beak.
I tilted my head as I looked at her. I don’t know if my embered eyes could convey a dubious squint. “You s-said you didn’t have a f-family name.”
Gilda cackled in amusement again, as she waggled the fire poker in my direction. “Oooh, you caught that! Perceptive little Hollow, I like you.”
Raindrops nickered in annoyance. “If you’re not gonna tell us—”
“Raindrops.” Maud spoke clearly, and loudly, and all eyes turned to her. Raindrops let out a sigh as Maud spoke. “Princess Celestia wanted ponies to know about this. She sought help. We are allowed to acquire helping hooves for ourselves.”
“She’s just screwing with us!” Raindrops groaned. “I bet she doesn’t even know anything. She just wants to use us to get to the city.”
Roma spoke up as well. “I don’t like to agree with Raindrops, but we need something up front. If she won’t even give us that, then I can’t trust her.”
Maud turned back to look at Gilda, who had barely moved from her spot. The gryphon’s only movement was to stir the fire, and in the dull light of the camp, we all took in how bedraggled she was. Her feathers were faded and tattered, and her fur thin. But she wasn’t Hollowed yet. As rough as she had it, Gilda still had her sanity.
Maud shook her head. “I don’t care. This is for myself and for Pinkie; I want to know what she did, or what you think she did, to break your friendship.”
Gilda huffed through her beak. “Hmph. Nice that you can pretend to care. Show me I can trust you, and we’ll see.”
“Then that’s good enough,” Maud declared. “Welcome to the search party, Gilda.”
Raindrops groaned in annoyance, before she turned to walk away. I almost thought she was going to abandon us entirely—she’d demonstrated enough that she didn’t appreciate being challenged—but she only walked to the edge of the camp and sat down next to Posey.
Gilda flicked the fire poker around in her dexterous claw so that the tip pointed downwards, and then stabbed it back into the gravel and the fire underneath, where it stood until it was needed again. “Alright! Now, tell me about this unicorn you’re hunting. Has anypony here actually seen her for themselves?”
I sat up a bit, which got Gilda’s attention. “I t-traveled with her for a while, b-but Maud said she used to be f-friends.”
Maud looked down at the fire. “Friend of a friend. But Trixie’s changed since then. You knew her more recently, so you should tell us about her. I’ll fill in any gaps.”
I was still uncomfortable with speaking at length. Really, I was still somewhat uncomfortable with speaking at all, even with how my stutter had been slowly fading. But my throat still ached, breathing while talking still wasn’t entirely natural to me. Most of the time, that seemed to suit me just fine; I was alright with hanging off to the side of a conversation and just listening in, unless I really had something to say. But it seemed like I was being called forward to speak at length, just like this, more and more as my journey went on. It certainly didn’t help that it felt like I needed to take three times as long to talk, in comparison to an un-Hollowed pony.
It really didn’t help that I wasn’t a terribly interesting speaker; I could see Gilda was getting bored of my brief summary of Trixie before I’d even gotten to the Ashen Wallowers, and her attention quickly wandered to her thin little pack of supplies, and the weathered recurve bow sitting on top. After only a few moments, she plucked it from the pack and started to check the tension of the string, then each of her arrows in a large quiver. Those arrows seemed to have been fletched with her own feathers, though the tips were forged from proper steel.
I knew a little about bows; when I tried to remember how I knew, it felt similar to how I knew about Cloudsdale’s weather machinery. Subjects taught in school, even if the school itself had long been forgotten.
They weren’t pony weapons, and never had been. They required claws to pull and release the string, which ponies didn’t have. Earth Ponies could close distance quickly enough to make up the difference, and deal damage a dozen times more traumatic with a club or axe. Pegasi could, in theory, draw the strings with their wings. But the tension of the string was often too strong to get a half-decent draw, so only experts could become bowmares, and it usually wasn’t worth the effort without a specific talent. Unicorns could hold, nock, draw and release a bow using their magic, but for all the effort it required, they could also just sling magic from their horn. That was infinitely more versatile, and didn’t limit them to ammo in the way that a quiver full of arrows would.
Instead, they’d been developed by gryphons and minotaurs, across the ocean, and usually the two races used them against each other. They were an ancestral gryphon weapon, long used for hunting by way of weakening prey and tracking them by following the trail of blood left behind. They preferred their bows quick and light, so they could strike fast and silent, while minotaurs had iterated for power. Minotaur bows were meant for sieges, with broad-chested warriors launching arrows that could impale a pony all the way through in a single shot from their greatbow, or a team working to set up and fire a ballista, a massive mechanical crossbow that could punch right through a city wall.
Even then, most gryphons had long upgraded to gunpowder weaponry. The grips and hammers of firearms had been another invention of theirs, albeit one which was much more easily adopted by ponies, and boasted power that made them worth the effort to fire, reload, and maintain. While Gryphonstone still mostly used blackpowder, ponies had the advantage there; equine alchemists had crafted more powerful powder loads, percussion caps, and brass cartridges that could be safely stored and easily reloaded. Applejack’s shotgun took ammo like that, and the cannons of the Firebreak were, again, minotaur siege weaponry.
And yet, Gilda still used a bow. It wasn’t a weapon I had ever expected to see here in Equestria, at least not without wandering through an armory or a hobbyist’s collection. It made sense to be wielded by a traveling gryphon, but then, so did a rifle or pistol, neither of which she seemed to have on her. She even looked at Star Bright’s revolver with distaste, while she ran a talon down the inlaid bone of her bow.
Even though Gilda claimed not to have any family, she seemed proud of her heritage. She was a long way from Gryphonstone, and maybe the ancient gryphon weapon was her own personal way of remembering that heritage, or upholding what she felt was tradition. That, combined with the fact that she had clearly come all this way and hadn’t yet Hollowed, told me that Gilda was an extremely capable Gryphon. She was acerbic and dodged questions, so, just like Raindrops and Roma, I didn’t trust her personally. But she could absolutely hold her own in a fight, and I resolved to try my best to avoid being on the wrong side of her arrows.
When I finally finished telling GIlda about Trixie, she had questions, though I could tell she was reluctant to have me talk more. “Okay, hold up. The skeletons you fought, why couldn’t she use her stupid unicorn magic on them? Sounds like the skeletons saw right through her illusions, but only sometimes, and that screwed you both over. It’d make sense if she used that to ditch you, flee like a coward. But you made it sound like she was baffled whenever it happened.”
“I might be able to answer that,” Star Bright said, as he sat up. “I have a little bit of illusion training, though this Trixie sounds like a master of the art. Two possibilities; first, whatever magic animating the skeletons also allowed them to see through the illusions, or the necromancer controlling them had cast the ability on himself which propagated it through his thralls. But I don’t know enough about the actual mechanical spellwork of necromancy to say for sure.”
“And that doesn’t explain how she could still sneak around them by turning herself invisible,” Raindrops pointed out, and then she grimaced. “Which is a real problem we’re going to have to worry about too.”
“Precisely.” Star Bright nodded to her. “Second possibility: Trixie’s illusions are designed to be seen from specific angles, like wooden scenery in a play. From the audience’s perspective, they look passable, but from behind, they’re just painted wood. It’s very likely that the necromancer, being able to see the same illusion from multiple perspectives, realized that the illusion was just that, and promptly ignored it. However, her invisibility would be a cloak used to hide herself no matter how she was viewed, and that allowed her to sneak past unnoticed.”
Gilda nodded. “Alright, that makes enough sense for me, but doesn’t really help us when we need to fight her. Thanks for the magic lesson, horn-head.”
“You’re...welcome?” he asked, in a confused tone.
Roma tapped her hoof. “We still don’t want to fight her, remember.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, ponies and friendship and forgiveness. Eugh, that scat is like a disease you ponies spread, wherever you go.” Gilda let out a feral bird call from her beak, as she yawned directly at Roma. “This Trixie sounds like she ruttin’ cracked as soon as she got her hooves on that necklace. I’ll bet you ten-to-one when we find her? She’ll be wearing that necklace, and both it and her eyes will be glowing as she slings big angry blobs of magic at us. See how much she’s in a talking mood then, I dare you.”
A sad silence fell over the camp as we looked at each other. We’d brought weapons, to be sure, but they were for our own protection as we traveled. Actually raising them against Trixie...that went against what the Princess wanted, and the thought that we might have to do so sat heavily on our shoulders, like the rain cloud above pressed down against our little warm pocket of air. I didn’t want to think about it, but I knew Trixie—this Trixie, not the one Maud had known—better than anypony else present. I knew that she wouldn’t be the sort to just go quietly.
“We’re...hoping it doesn’t come to that—” Rivet started to reiterate.
Gilda cut him off with a frustrated clack of her beak. “Yeah, keep pretending the world’s not how it is. You gonna keep that up until she’s bashing your skull in, and sucks out your soul? You might think ponies aren’t capable of that, but lemme tell you, I’ve seen some real heinous scat go down in your friendly little country.”
So had I. Apple Bloom and Applejack had been proof enough that ponies were capable of terrible things, if they were properly motivated. And they’d still had their minds; the Hollows I’d fought, the Hollows I’d killed and drained for myself, they didn’t even have that. They had long gone mad and feral, and the only reason that weren’t as vicious as the Apple family had been was because they were no longer smart enough to do so.
I didn’t totally buy into Gilda’s rhetoric; ponies were still good, and that we were working together for the Princess to save Equestria was enough proof that we were worth saving. But as much as I hated to admit it, as much as we all hated to even think about it, Gilda had a point. We might have to fight Trixie out here. Maybe even kill her, if she attacked us.
Would we still be able to return to Ponyville, and give the Princess the Element of Generosity, with bloodstained hooves?
“What’s your plan, when you get to the city?”
Gilda’s question dredged me out my thoughts, and I saw several other ponies look up suddenly as if roused from their own. When a response didn’t come, Gilda jerked a clawed thumb towards the distant rooftops of Baltimare. “The city. You said it yourself, it’s a lot of ground to cover, and I only count three flyers, including myself.”
“Two flight-capable creatures,” Maud corrected. “Holly’s state prevents it.”
“Rut me, Hollowing clips your wings too?” Gilda looked at me with a fleeting glimpse of sympathy. She understood how much it hurt me, how much it burdened my soul, that I couldn’t fly. Or maybe she was just thinking ruefully of the idea of it happening to her. It only lasted for a moment, before she looked back at Maud. “Alright. So two flyers, everyone else is ground-bound. That’s not too bad for a city, but the main burden’s gonna be on you guys to check interiors.”
“It gets worse,” Roma chuckled darkly. “We’re planning to split the party when we reach the main highway entering the city.”
“You’re dickin’ me,” GIlda groaned. “That’s a bad idea. Why?”
Raindrops sighed, and stood up to trot back to our group and rejoin the conversation. “We don’t know if Trixie made it to Baltimare, or even came here in the first place. While the first team searches the city, the second team is going to follow an overland route back to Cloudsdale, or at least that valley Holly mentioned. They’re going to look for Trixie in case we beat her here, or if she was attacked on the way here, or even just for clues that she actually did go this way to begin with. The second team will search the city itself, starting with her destination—the Baltimare public library—and spreading out from there.”
“Still dumb, but it’s less dumb than it could be,” Gilda admitted. “And you’re all that the all-powerful goddess-Princess could send, huh?”
“There might be other groups,” Maud explained. “She sent couriers with copies of the...bounty, to other settlements. They may be en route as well already. I should have authority over them, as a member of the Golden Guard.”
“Sounds like competitors to me,” mused Gilda. “Keep an eye on them, if we do come across any. Maybe they’re as foolish and optimistic as you all are...or maybe they see things my way, and don’t feel like cooperating.”
More dead ponies, potentially. I was already regretting the decision to come out here.
Gilda pointed to Raindrops. “You, the pessimist. City or wilds?”
“What?”
“Nothing personal, but we should split up the flyers.” Gilda counted on her claws. “One on each team, so if either finds anything, they can fly to the other team and tell them to regroup.”
Maud grunted in agreement. “Raindrops. You take the wilds. I’ll be on the city team with Gilda.”
Raindrops grumbled in annoyance. “Great, you get to be the bird wrangler then.” After a moment, she sighed, and shook her head. “Be careful out there, Maud. You’ll need somepony else to argue with you about your plans. Rivet?”
The large stallion shook his head. “Nah, I’m staying out of this one. I’ll be on the wilds team, I’m better out in the open. And I have the endurance for all that walking.”
And so it went for a little while, as both team leaders worked out who should go with whom. After a bit of arguing and debate, it was decided that Raindrops should take Rivet, Roma, and Posey, while Maud led Gilda, myself, and Star Bright. With four ponies—creatures, rather—to each team, we were evenly split, and should be able to handle most minor threats without too much difficulty.
With that decided, we were nearly ready to set off. We only delayed for a bit longer, to check our equipment and examine Maud’s maps, but when the wind shifted and Raindrops had to shield the map from her namesake using her wings, we decided it was as good a time as any to get moving. We left in a single large group towards Baltimare, where we were to split up and begin our search for Trixie, the wayward illusionist.