Galyn rubbed his face. To say that it stung would be an understatement. He had never imagined that his first contact with the Crown of Grover would involve being bludgeoned across the cheek with it.
He glanced at the dragon lying slumped in the corner of the room, scarcely breathing and struggling for consciousness. She was looking at him, and there was a soft lightness to her eyes. Pleasure.
Galyn chuckled. He wanted to tell her, “I suppose you have reason to enjoy my pain,” but he couldn’t. His jaw was broken.
He snapped his head in her direction, and she screamed as her body faded from the material plane, swallowed up by the aetheric space he used to store his vessels. She would stay alive for a while yet, locked in a hazy stasis until he next had a use for her. If he had a use for her.
Dragons. They were useful primarily for their vitality and secondarily for their passion. Galyn whispered the words he couldn’t hear, accessing Strata’s inner fire and transferring its energy to him—specifically to his face. His shattered bones remade themselves, his jaw set back into place, and he didn’t feel the pain that he should have felt, instead giving that to Strata as she lay dormant in the nothingness he had set out for her. He whistled as he touched his healed cheek and rubbed his beak. Gallus must have broken half his face. Maybe wearing Gabriela’s face was a little too insensitive. Maybe he should have expected nothing less from the former captain of Princess Twilight’s royal guard.
He rocked forwards and steadied himself on the restroom sink. He had used up all of his power for the last week or so getting everything in Griffonstone together: whisking away the heart of that pathetic community of commoners at the base of the great tree, galvanizing the council, maneuvering Gallus onto a ship, summoning not just a coven of kelpies but rousing a whole kraken from its deep sleep at the bottom of the sea…
All for nothing. He was stupid. Useless. Feeble.
No. He smoothed his headfeathers over. No. Those thoughts were not real. He was the next great leader of Griffonstone. He was lion and eagle. Bred perfection. He would roll the world over and tear open its belly to feed himself and his family.
He had to get back to Griffonstone, converge with the others and get their advice. He had anticipated that, even separated and broken, the former students of Princess Twilight Sparkle would prove formidable. He knew that it would take more magic than he had ever used, that he would encounter setbacks. He had to go home and rest and prepare for the next step.
It was time to rain fire on Canterlot.