“Dumb bad luck, I swear. This is the direction my cat went in, I was just here looking for her!”
“So, you’re not working for -”
Somewhere in the distance there was a crash, splintering wood and colourful cursing, then approaching footsteps.
“More of the shipment’s gotten out! Someone’s got to be sneaking around in here. There’s no way they can be getting out on their own.”
“This is turning into a complete farce. Forget the ones that have been let loose, and move whatever you can. And post some extra spotters! I’m getting the feeling the Bronze are going to swoop on us any minute now. Once I have finished up here, we are leaving with whatever we can manage and ditching the rest, is that clear?”
Hearthfire struggled uselessly against the ropes snaring her limbs, ignoring her body’s protests, and managed to move until she could see the knots. They weren’t tied particularly well, but that was small comfort; it didn’t take much to stop a pony from moving without resorting to magic. Looped over there. Through there. Doubles back.
She flexed her legs, watching how the ropes constricted, tried to deduce the steps that would be needed to untangle the knots. Maybe if she was quick enough, she could slip the ropes and be up and running before her captor could react. Just needed to be sure that he was properly distracted, wouldn’t notice the glow of her horn until too late. With every muscle screaming at her, she twisted her neck to try and see behind herself.
The room was a plain oblong, lined with stacks of crates reaching to the low ceiling. Her captor was standing in the doorway conversing with another unseen person outside, the crossbow lying momentarily discarded a few feet from him on a writing desk, on top of a stack of papers. The blocked door seemed to be the only way out, but she had to try. She turned back to the ropes, mentally preparing for the trickily dextrous piece of magic she was about to attempt.
It was so close to going according to plan. With three swift telekinetic tugs, the ropes came free from her front hooves. In trying to free her hind legs, something snagged, or she pulled something the wrong way; she couldn’t stifle the yelp of pain as the bindings tightened. The griffon in the doorway turned, his face lit by the flickering magical luminescence, and he snatched for the crossbow without hesitation.
On pure reflex, she rolled, levering herself around with her two free limbs, and lashed out blindly with her magic as the griffon raised the bow. Something in the trigger mechanism must have been knocked out of alignment by the undirected assault, because the arms snapped forward, propelling the bolt deep into the wooden crate panel inches from her head. The griffon swore and started to reload, a hint of panic in his eyes, but the catch had been damaged and refused to cock correctly.
Hearthfire wasted no more time: she gritted her teeth, and tried once more to free her hind legs as the ruined crossbow was thrown angrily aside to clatter on the stone floor. The rope came loose at last, and she staggered unsteadily to her hooves, turning to face her captor. The griffon edged backwards, suddenly afraid, but unwilling to turn his back as Hearthfire advanced.
He doesn’t know what I can do. It was a moment of clarity; there weren’t that many ponies in Spire to begin with, and unicorns were the rarest of the three pony common pony breeds...
She halted halfway across the room, lowered her head as if to charge, and pushed all her limited magical reserves into making her horn shine as bright as she possibly could. The ambient lamp light of the room seemed to dim, eddies of air current disturbed by the magical accumulation sent tiny dust devils whipping at her coat and set the lamp flames dancing, and with the most bestial roar she could muster, she threw back her head and hurled all the force she could gather straight at the terrified griffon.
Luckily, he didn’t stick around long enough for the projectile - which amounted to nothing more than a puff of air wrapped in glowing magical light - to strike him. He hurled himself aside, vanishing out of sight with a flap of his wings. She could hear his shouts for help fading into the distance.
Time to find out if Cas is here, and get out.
She bolted for the door. Beyond it, towering stacks of crates stretched in every direction, up to the shadowy rafters of the warehouse. She had emerged from one of the outer walls into the main storage space, with no immediate sign of an exit. There was a commotion happening somewhere out of sight, deeper into the stacks, sounds of people bashing about, crates falling, and indistinct shouting from which intelligible fragments rose:
“There goes another one!”
“After it!”
“Idiot! You let it get away!”
More thumping, a cat’s yowl, and the surprised yelp of a griffon in pain.
“Argh! Wretched creatures! Get back here!”
Hearthfire guessed at the correct route, and galloped down the aisle she hoped would take her towards the shouting, and, with luck, Cas.
As she pressed deeper into the huge warehouse space, she passed stacks with tarpaulin sheets thrown over them; tugging one aside revealed dozens of tightly woven wicker cages filled to bursting with frightened feline eyes. There had to be hundreds of them, at least ten to a cage, and they all knew something big was going on.
“Well, a little more chaos can’t hurt, can it?” Hearthfire muttered to herself, as she set about grabbing the bolts between her teeth and yanking them open. Cats near flew from the cages as each one opened in turn, streaks of fur on four legs that scarpered down the aisles or scrambled upwards to leap from crate to crate up by the ceiling.
“Fur and feathers, here’s even more of them! Someone’s got to be letting the blasted things out!”
“It’s that unicorn! She got away. Forget the cargo, find her and get rid of her, right now!”
The last voice was one she recognised as the griffon with the bow. She slowed her progress to a more careful canter, prepared to bolt at any moment if she was spotted.
She rounded the next corner and almost ran slap bang into a pair of them, two large, burly griffons. The three of them froze, but it was Hearthfire who recovered first, turning tail and accelerating to a full gallop in a respectable distance. Shouts behind her as her pursuers took to the air; they would easily outpace her over a straight line, but she had no intention of playing into their claws. She was easily more maneuverable than them while she was on the ground and they were in the air, and from what she’d seen, a griffon on the ground wasn’t the best designed creature for running.
Three twists and turns chosen at random and she was gaining ground swiftly as her pursuers fought to keep up in the confines of the warehouse’s stacks. Realising they were falling behind, they changed tactics, rising up to the ceiling where they could easily keep pace with her no matter how she moved. They were going to try and cut her off, and no doubt there would be others moving in to help.
“Oh, sugar, sugar!” Hearthfire stopped, knowing it was useless to keep running, and considered her options. Her pursuers circled, and dropped, one to the front of her, one behind. She felt for her magic, but already knew it would be drained from her earlier exertions. Nothing. Did her best not to tremble as she shifted to keep them both in her field of vision.
“You’ll both be sorry if you don’t walk away,” she blustered, “A unicorn is a terrible foe. I could strike you down with a thought, if you force me to!”
They exchanged a glance, but didn’t back off.
“The guards, the... the Bronze, will be here any minute. They know where I am, they’ll know I’m missing by now. If you run, you might still get out before they arrive...”
They weren’t buying it.
“Sod it.” She ran for it, back the way she had come with her head down, straight at the nearest of the two griffons. She caught him off balance; he tried to snatch at her as she passed, but she ducked under his talon swipe and through, running for her life again. They recovered fast, and were hot on her heels almost immediately. She risked a glance back, regretted it as she misplaced a hoof and stumbled.
The griffons surged ahead, sensing their advantage. They didn’t see the boxes tumbling until it was too late; an avalanche of heavy wooden crates came crashing down in front of them. The lead griffon didn’t have time to stop, just ploughed beak first into the heap. The second managed to slide to a halt short of the obstruction, beating his wings to stop mid-air, before a last box dropped from on high and drove him to the floor with a squawk.
Hearthfire gaped at the pile of shattered wood in disbelief. Maybe her luck was finally turning? Then she spotted the grey shape leaping down the tangled box-slide in a blur.
“Cas!”
She snatched Cas out of the air as the cat bounded joyfully towards her, and hugged her tightly to her chest. She felt tears welling, sobs mixing with her relieved laughter until she could hardly breathe.
“You’re okay,” she managed, when she had regained a measure of control, “...and you saved my flank! Come on, we should get out of here before more of them show up.”
Cas led the way as soon as she put her down again, but it wasn’t to the exit, much to Hearthfire’s exasperation; at least, until she realised where she was being taken. Cas took them all over the warehouse, ducking into cover to hide from passing griffons, and when they reached the stacks of cages, Cas would pause. Together, they would set loose another wave of cats to flee into the night, before moving on to the next set.
“You couldn’t just run away, could you?”
Three griffons dropped from above, hedging them in. She recognised the middle griffon from the store room. He’d found another crossbow from somewhere.
“I don’t recommend trying your magic again. I am not going to be caught off-guard a second time. Move.” He gestured with the crossbow.
“And keep your mouth shut, or I’ll put a muzzle on you.”
Hearthfire did as she was told. She did her best not to let the glimmer of hope show on her face as Cas darted away unnoticed amongst the horde of escaping cats.
She was marched towards the back of the warehouse, to an unobtrusive single door set in the rear wall. One of the other griffons produced a key, and the door opened onto the chill of Spire's night.