Chapter Seven: Myths, Legends, and Big Bugs
To neutralize the venom of a stingwing, combine one part gunpowder with six parts guava juice and apply the mixture directly to the wound. This will result in a fever, but your body will burn the venom out before it can kill you so long as you keep yourself warm and you were struck in an extremity rather than in the head or near your heart. If that’s happened, poor luck for you.
I followed the instructions and gritted my teeth as I applied what was probably an unbelievably bad idea to the wound on my hindleg, but this book hadn’t steered me wrong yet; and going off what I could glean from the torn illustration at the bottom of the page, I was reasonably sure the creature that attacked me had been a stingwing. I was dubious about the book’s instructions on how to cure a stingwing strike, but given that I had no other ideas about how to cure it, I decided to trust in the written word. The badly damaged book I’d picked up back in that ransacked shop over a week ago had proven quite useful with its tips about how to deal with the dangers of the Griffin Commonwealth. My scrounging had also yielded me a good campfire cooking kit, and I was learning how to make medicines from scratch rather than relying on finding them in abandoned hospitals.
The one complaint I had about the book—other than its missing or damaged pages and worrying it was going to fall to pieces every time I moved it—was that it wasn’t organized in any recognizable manner. The author seemed to have simply jotted things down whenever she or he had thought of them, which included not only survival tips but also general thoughts and journal entries. On the page across from the instructions on how to cure stingwing strikes was what appeared to be a shopping list (mostly obscured by ink that had bled through the page) and a short narration.
We’re in Jubilee Park tonight, or rather near Jubilee Park. They didn’t want to let us in, so we’re camped outside. Grimm wanted to fly me in, but Ginny managed to talk him out of it. Funny; I don’t think Grimm really would’ve done it unless I was okay with it, but he played out the argument with her nonetheless. How’d I get to have other griffins following me? What am I, the main character of some story? Or maybe some game like what the so-called seers of Conexo play, trying to divine the right way to live from a program another griff’ made for fun? That’s a thought. Young as I am, I could probably tell those old, balding vultures a thing or two about living, learned from actually doing it rather than staring at a screen, obsessively repeating the same actions with small changes and looking for the best outcome. If only they’d let me back in to talk.... They threw me out pretty sharpish, protecting their games. What are the griffins of Jubilee Park guarding? Can’t be much of value—what use are carnival games and rides in a post-megaspell world? It’s none of my business, I guess, though somegriff’ outa tell them they’ve got a better chance of surviving if they band together with some of the other settlements around. We’ll make our way down to Worrytown tomorrow. What a lovely name for a place—sarc. Gotta remember to stock up on bullets. Grimm’ll be off looking for bits and bobs, but I’ll see if Ginny can find some paper. The moon reflected in the lake sure looks nice. Wonder if it’ll ever fall outta the sky?
There were entries like that scribbled throughout the entire book; they gave me glimpses into the world of the author but were full of names and references of which I had no understanding. The only thing I was sure of was that, at some point, the author had had two companions called Grimm and Ginny, and they had unexpectedly become the leader of their little group—much like my own situation in the Equestrian Wasteland.
I pulled a blanket from my bag and wrapped it around myself as the fever started, and I walked my way over to the edge of the distribution station’s platform. I’d made it to the station marked DS-10 on my PipBeak’s map and set it up to broadcast Radio PC across the Griffin Commonwealth. Currently it wasn’t distributing anything, since I was out of the range of any broadcasts of the station. After I’d activated some more on the other side of the mountains to the north, however, the signal would be able to spread. I’d also set it up to rebroadcast a frequency I’d chosen for Radio Free Wasteland, once I’d managed to pick it up on DS-18 far to the north. There was no point coming back here if I didn’t have to, especially if the place might not be abandoned whenever I returned.
In order to reach DS-10’s control room, I’d had to fight my way through a swarm of stingwings. The oversized, mutated scorpionflies had been a real pain, not least because one of them had managed to get through my doctor’s coat and Stable barding to sting me. Just from reading my tattered guidebook and traveling around, I’d realized there were quite a few overgrown insects in the Griffin Commonwealth, particularly flying insects—which was just fitting, wasn’t it? It was only flying creatures that posed a real threat to griffins, since they could easily fly away from landbound creatures like the ones in Equestria. However, I didn’t have that luxury and had to face the land creatures head-on and the flying creatures from below. Lucky me.
After giving the railing a test shake to make sure it was secure and not rusted through, I leaned against it and looked out across the valley below. Once you traveled east of Brittle Pass, the space between the mountains opened up even more widely than the valley leading down to the coast. I’d had to depart the river and its road to reach this distribution station, but I could still see the river in the distance, Celestia’s sun glinting off the ribbon of water that wound its way through the center of the valley. A vast greenness was spread out below, but I didn’t see any definite signs of surviving civilization; there were ruins from the old world scattered around, but the ones I’d passed through on the way here had been just that: ruins. There was no smoke rising from any of the distant structures suggesting that someone was living there. I could be wrong, of course, and a settlement to rest in would be welcome, especially if I kept having to fight dangerous wildlife and deplete my ammunition stock.
I’d head back down into the valley tomorrow and continue my quest to the east, further up into the northern Griffin Commonwealth; but for tonight, I’d sweat out this venom and pray for the best. Maybe I’d even try to decipher a few more passages from the ruined book.
***
In the following days, I kept on trekking through the valley, seeing no signs of life on my journey. Well, no signs of intelligent life; there were plenty of boars, bears, deer, and of course bugs, but no griffins. The more I thought about it, though, the more it made sense that I wouldn’t be stumbling across griffin settlements every few minutes. Griffins preferred the higher altitudes; that was where all their great cities (“roosts”)were located. Fortunately, I’d managed to add the locations of these roosts to my PipBeak’s map from some of the surviving maps back in the Pleasure Coast. There was an additional point I’d found on every map that wasn’t considered a roost but was what I believed to be a city—and that was Griffonstone.
Griffonstone was located south of the valley I was traveling through, and for the past day and a half, I’d been able to see what I assumed to be it, given its prominence. Rising above all the other peaks was a steep mountain that looked like it had been sheared in half. A dark aura hung over the sharp rocks, and unlike the surrounding peaks, no snow clung to its sides.
As I tore myself away from staring at the peak for the umpteenth time, I saw a wagon in the distance ahead of me, sitting alongside the road. Peering through the binoculars I’d picked up in an abandoned hunting lodge, I spotted a griffin in the harness at the front of the cart, though it’d currently come to a standstill. It didn’t seem to scream ambush, so I resumed my journey while keeping an eye on FITS. The spell didn’t detect any hostile intent from the griffin, and that was good enough for me for the moment.
When I neared the wagon, I saw that the griffin was no longer in the harness, though I hadn’t seen her fly off anywhere, and FITS showed one creature in the wagon. As I approached to investigate further, the side of the wagon popped open, revealing an elderly griffin with a shotgun held in each claw. My first instinct was to reach for my own shotgun, but FITS didn’t show her as hostile; and even using ERSaTS, I didn’t know if I’d be able to draw and get out of the way of her shot in time.
“A pony, huh?” the griffin said, her voice tinged with caution. “Can I assume you’re not here to rob or kill me?”
“No, ma’am,” I replied as courteously as I could, considering I was looking down four barrels. “I’m just a traveler … like yourself.”
“Well, that’s different, then,” she said cheerily as she withdrew her shotguns and pulled upon a cable within the wagon.
Panels flipped and banners fell, transforming her wagon into a mobile shop before my eyes, with goods and prices listed beside the seller’s counter she now stood at.
“What can I get for you?” she asked.
The supplies I needed most desperately were ammunition, and luckily, she had plenty to sell. She was also willing to take any ammunition I’d picked up that I had no use for; and bullets, shells, and bottlecaps traded places across the countertop. From deep within her stash of goods, she also produced a book on magic. Given the indentation in the cover, I suspected she’d been using it to prop up some piece of furniture, but I eagerly paid top price for it. I wasn’t one to turn down the opportunity to learn more magic merely because of minor aesthetic damage.
“Are there more traders like you out on the road?” I asked when our transactions were concluded. If I was going to make it all the way to my destination, I needed to either find a way in between settlements to restock or carry much more ammunition with me. (That, or the Griffin Commonwealth would need to be nicer to me, which didn’t seem likely.)
“Oh, there are a few, but not many,” the griffin said as she carefully dropped stacks of bottlecaps into pill bottles, a smart counting practice that I noted. “Most traders prefer to set up shops in settlements or roosts, but there are some of us who risk the roads. There are griffins—and ponies, apparently—who’ll buy out here and pay a premium for the convenience. Even the raiders, if they have the wits not to mess with me.”
“You sell to raiders?” I asked in disbelief.
“Sure, why not?” the griffin said as she finished her counting. “Someone’s going to sell to them, so why not me? Where do you think they get all their weapons and ammo?”
“Well … raiding, I suppose,” I said lamely.
It hadn’t really occurred to me before, but simply scrounging through ruins probably wasn’t enough to keep raiders supplied. Even back in Equestria, somepony must have been selling to them. But even though it made sense from an entrepreneurial perspective, that didn’t mean I had to like it.
“None of my business. Besides, I don’t seek them out. That’s a good way to get swarmed by a whole gang instead of just a raiding party, in case they turn out to be some of the nasties,” the griffin said. “That’s why I didn’t go to ground or shoot you right away, you know. You didn’t look focused on hunting me down or waiting in ambush. Distracted by Griffonstone, were you?”
“Yeah, actually. Do you know what happened to it?” I asked eagerly, curiosity leading my thoughts away from questions of morality.
“Of course! Every griffin knows the story of Griffonstone. Although, if you want the full story, you’d have to find a Remember—just a warning that they tend to do it in a musical fashion, though,” the griffin said, leaning forward conspiratorially and placing her claws alongside her beak as she made her aside, even though we were the only living beings within sight. “It’s a tale of the folly of our ancestors in attempting to play both sides in the war between you ponies and the zebras.”
“Both sides?” I interrupted. “I thought the griffins fought on the side of the zebras.”
“It’s true that our mercenaries fought mostly for the Zebra Empire, but what choice did they have?” the griffin said with a shrug. “You Equestrians were already prejudiced against both griffins and soldiers-for-hire, so they went where the jobs were. We had plenty to do with Equestria in other ways, though. If you came from the west, surely you saw Pleasure Coast and all the signage showing prices in both guilders and Bits. During the War, we acted under the Godfeather Doctrine, named after one of the Grand Marshals; we’d stay neutral but contract out to both sides. Fat lot of good it did us in the end, since we still got hit by megaspells—just they came from both sides instead of one.”
“Anyway, Griffonstone. I guess it used to be our capital a long time ago, back when griffins had a king, but it was in ruins long before the War. Some Grand Marshal decided it’d be a great idea to build an advanced superweapon in Griffonstone and encourage a bidding war between Equestria and the Zebra Empire for it. The plan fell through when both assumed the other had bought it, and on the Last Day, the mountain was struck by two megaspells. It’s a real cursed place now. I don’t know a single sane griffin who’d consider looting it, even though it must have some pretty rare treasures.”
“According to Grand Marshal Gideon,” the griffin said with an eye roll, “it’s a lesson that the Griffin Commonwealth should’ve kept from getting involved in the War. If we’d done that, we could be ruling the world now instead of just scraping by, albeit better than most places. He’s no merchant, though, and I doubt he’s ever left Shearpoint. If the Commonwealth would’ve kept out of the War, sure we’d have avoided getting hit by scattered megaspells, but we’d also still be living in hovels strewn throughout the mountains. All the infrastructure we’ve got was built with Equestrian gold and zebra silver. All in all, I think the cost was worth the payoff.”
“Wow, that’s certainly … informative,” said, though I wasn’t sure I agreed with her assessment. “So, nobody’s ever gone to Griffonstone, huh?”
“Sure they have,” the griffin snorted. “They’ve just never come back alive. Don’t you be getting ideas about breaking into Griffonstone, not if you have any desire to keep on living. If the radiation or the poisonous air or the ancient curses or the mutants don’t get you, then the security system will. Take that as a free piece of advice. Oh, and you should stay away from the road. Raiders east of here like to set up ambushes.”
“Thanks for the warning,” I said, “And for the supplies.”
“Oh, it was my pleasure,” the griffin said with a cheeky wink. She tugged on a cable within her wagon and it shut itself up, becoming nondescript once again.
***
I eyed the underside of Distribution Station 9, carefully weighing my options. If I wanted to spread Radio Free Wasteland and Radio PC across the Griffin Commonwealth, I’d need to get inside the distribution station. Unfortunately, there was a fairly serious obstacle blocking my path; halfway up the access staircase was a massive insect nest. By the look of it and according to the notes in my damaged guidebook, it was home to cazadors, giant wasps like the one I’d fought in the arena back in the Pleasure Coast. The smart thing to do (short of marching in the opposite direction as quickly as I could) was to sneak past and leave them undisturbed. That didn’t look like it would be an option, though, given how the nest swallowed up the stairs. I could try crossing over the surface of the nest, but I liked that idea even less than fighting them. If I chose that plan, I was liable to fall to my death, break through into the nest and become trapped, or awaken the swarm and be forced to fight in treacherous terrain. No, the best—and still altogether bad—option I had was to destroy the nest from below and take out any survivors before they could sting me to death. What I wouldn’t give for a suit of Steel Ranger armor right about now.
I spent a lot of time examining the nest (and even more time dithering and putting the act off) until I had a thorough idea of how it was attached to the cliffside and stairs, and how I could possibly dislodge it. I studied the book I’d bought from the griffin trader a few days ago, which contained instructions on how to perform teleportation spells. I’d been trying it out around the campfire on rocks, which gave me somewhat of a starting point. I didn’t know just how different it would be to teleport grenades across a long distance, but nothing ventured meant nothing gained. Before I could overthink my plan, I scrunched my face up in determination and pulled the pins.
Reaching out with my magic, I caused the live grenades hovering in front of me to disappear and reappear somewhere else. From the detonations going off above me, I had been able to pull off my plan correctly, give or take a bit of a shift in position. Apparently they still hit closely enough, and the cazador nest began to pull away from the mountainside, its own weight dragging it down now that it didn’t have enough support to stay in place. Cazadors began to crawl from holes in the surface as it plummeted, disoriented and struggling to right themselves. As the nest struck the ground, it landed upon mines I’d recovered from the road (another trick I’d picked up), and an explosion tore through it. Pieces of nest and cazador geysered upwards in a spume that struck the descending cazadors.
FITS was covered in hostile contacts as the surviving cazadors pinpointed me as the source of their destruction and, buzzing angrily, winged their way toward my position. As those in the air flew my way and I used ERSaTS to snipe them with my battle rifle, more emerged from the ruins of the nest. Whenever it looked like there were enough clustered together, I chucked in another grenade, but I was soon out of the throwable explosives and had to rely on my firearms alone.
The cazadors fanned out into a crescent as they regrouped, and I focused my shots on the left wing. One insect from the right wing managed to close in, and I bucked it back with a kick. As it came at me again, its stinger got caught in my doctor’s coat and I wheeled on it with my shotgun, blowing its head off. That wasn’t enough to kill it instantly, and it kept struggling for a few seconds before going still. I sighted my shotgun down the row of cazadors closing in from the right and repeatedly pulled the trigger, turning them into bug paste.
I turned my attention back to the left, where more cazadors were rapidly approaching. As the leader of the group was almost on top of me, I extended the blade on my PipBeak, slamming it into the cazador’s thorax. It struck out with its stinger at my prosthetic arm, but the metal was unaffected. Spinning around, I launched the cazador off my blade into another before firing my shotgun into the pair.
The bugs were all around me now, and I pulled the shotgun trigger wildly as I spun around, guaranteed to hit at least one. Whenever I could, I used ERSaTS to avoid strikes that would kill or maim me, like stingers headed toward my eyes. I couldn’t keep it up forever, however … and there were a lot of cazadors.
They swarmed me with a vicious intensity, and one maneuvered a stinger through my Stable 85 jumpsuit and into a thigh. The pain was excruciating as its venom coursed through me, but I kept fighting for survival, for a way out of the swarm, reloading my shotgun desperately and swinging the blade on my PipBeak around trying to clip wings or antennae.
Another strike managed to pierce both doctor’s coat and jumpsuit and inject venom into my shoulder, and I found my vision becoming hazy and my motions sluggish. FITS was looking clear, though; only a few cazadors left. I just had to get through them, and then I could find a way to neutralize the venom. Surely that tattered and smudged guidebook had some recipe for this. Suddenly, I was struck in the stomach by a cheeky cazador that had its head sliced off a moment later. I fired at one, then another, until FITS said there was a lone survivor.
Its stinger struck the back of my neck, and I felt the fourth dose of venom doing its deadly work. I reached back with my prosthetic claw and grabbed the cazador, dragging it forward. Once it was on the ground in front of me, I fired point blank through the pulsing haze at its blurry shape with my shotgun. I spun around and confirmed FITS was clear, right before falling to the ground and blacking out.
***
When I awoke, my head was still fuzzy and slightly throbbing, but at least I woke up. At least, I was pretty sure I wasn’t dead; I’d be really disappointed if heaven smelled like this and didn’t have comfier beds. My senses returned slowly, and I felt something warm and damp on my forehead. That sensation disappeared for a moment before I felt something cold and damp take its place. I opened my eyes, and it took a minute before my vision adjusted to its usual clarity.
Above me was a utilitarian ceiling with caged lights set into it. I briefly wondered if I was in a Stable, before remembering that there was no such thing in the Commonwealth. A Lockbox, maybe; that’s what the griffins called them. Though, I could swear I’d seen this style before, and not in a Stable. A griffin with black feathers, except for her all-white face, blocked the light as she looked down at me.
“Oh, good, you’re going to be okay,” she said with relief. “We weren’t sure there for a while if we’d given you the antivenom in time, and a large enough dose. You took a lot of stings.”
“Right … the cazadors,” I said, my head still kind of fuzzy. I tried to prop myself up to get a better look around. “Where am I?”
“You’re in Hope Springs, an independent griffin settlement,” the griffin said as she helped me up, rearranging the pillow under my head against the bed’s frame so I could sit. “I’m Gretchen.”
Now that I was able to get a better look at my surroundings, I was able to make out better where I was and why it felt so familiar. I was in the control center of a distribution station, though it no longer looked like it was being used for its original purpose. The chairs against the consoles had been removed, and most of the space was taken up by benches or sectioned off with dividers to form transitional rooms. There were a couple other griffins in the control center, either sitting around or talking to each other. Directly across from the main door was a sculpture created from scrap that looked like a diamond with two downturned wings. It was the same symbol on my tattered guidebook and the shop where I’d found it.
“Hello Gretchen, I’m Doc,” I introduced myself absently, reaching out a hoof that Gretchen took in her claws. “Are we in the distribution station above the cazador nest?”
“That cazador nest was beneath Hope Springs, yes,” Gretchen said. “The town really does owe you debt of gratitude for that. We didn’t know it was there at first. By the time we did, it was too large to safely remove. We’ve been doing all we can just to protect against the cazadors or stay out of their way, but now we don’t have to worry about them at all anymore, thanks to you.”
“What is this place?” I asked, looking around.
“Why, this is the Church of Rok. Aren’t you a Rokkist, Doc?” Gretchen asked quizzically. She reached into my saddlebags beside the bed and pulled out the badly damaged guidebook. “When we found this in your saddlebags, we assumed you were.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just found that in a ruin and thought it was interesting.”
“Well, that does explain why it’s in such poor shape,” Gretchen said as she looked at the book forlornly. “No matter; we’ll get you an intact one before you leave. I’m sure the priest’ll allow it. This is The Book of Rok, or How to Live in a Post-Megaspell World. You’ve really never heard of it?”
“No, I’m, uh, new to the Griffin Commonwealth,” I said. “I only recently left Pleasure Coast. This is your … holy book, then?”
“Yes, the sacred writings of Rok,” she said with adoration. “He was born over a hundred-fifty years ago, in the first generation after the megaspells fell. Though a griffin, he was unable to fly, which gave him a perspective no other living griffin had. He traveled the Commonwealth, writing down the wisdom he learned, and collecting followers into a town. After he died, they spread his message with the rest of the Commonwealth: that in order for griffins to live in a post-megaspell world, we couldn’t just carry on as if nothing had happened and go back to the way things were before the War. We needed to help support each other, seek peace, and strive to build a better Commonwealth instead of fighting over the scraps.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Gretchen said. “I guess I got a little carried away there with preaching. I’m training as an acolyte here, and I’ve been practicing my proselytizing for when I go on pilgrimage someday. You should read the Book of Rok and discover the wisdom inside for yourself.”
“No, it’s okay,” I said. There really wasn’t much else I could say, given that she’d taken me here and nursed me back to health. “This whole place used to be a distribution station, you know. It can repeat radio stations to spread them to more of the Commonwealth. I’ve been traveling in order to activate them. I don’t suppose you’d mind if I did so here, would you?”
“You can ask the priest when he’s done speaking with Riker, but I’m sure it’s okay,” Gretchen said sweetly. “After all, Rok would want us to help you.”
Level Up
New Perk: Look to the Skies – In the Griffin Commonwealth, looking up once in awhile is crucial. All penalties to Perception of things above you are removed.
New Quest: Good Tidings – Convince the priest of the Church of Rok to let you reactivate Distribution Station 9.
Alchemistry +1 (47)
Barter +1 (97)
Explosives +3 (107)
Lockpick +1 (105)
Manipulation Magic +6* [Skill Book] +2 (29)
Medicine +1 (116)
Small Guns +3 (111)
Speech +1 (103)
Survival +6 (42)
Unarmed +1 (89)
*Crash Course