Night had fallen over Arnau hours earlier and dinner remained uneaten. And yet, Gilda found herself completely disinclined to leave her bed or eat.
Her armor and the tattered remains of Marco’s clothes, which she’d been very ungentle about removing, were strewn about her suite in a trail from the door to the bed; she’d been mildly amazed they’d actually been able to make it there rather than her throwing him to the floor and taking him the instant they got inside.
Thankfully, they had retained just enough of their senses to slap the master opacity control on the room skylights to make sure nocreature could see in. It also surprised her in hindsight that they had encountered no sentries or cleaning crews along the way to her room, given there were usually at least a couple pairs of them posted in the corridor and her wings were splayed wide for all to see.
But she wasn’t about to question their good fortune. In the end, they had mated not once, not twice, but three times, unable to get enough of each other. They were also helped by the fact that Marco found his recharge time was nearly instant; the stature of his human spear impressive and—she was told by him—expanded over what it was before, just as Fortrakt had described.
He endlessly enjoyed the simple act of touching and exploring her while she, in turn, found she couldn’t get enough of his smell or taste—of his wondrous talons working her or the surprisingly practiced sensual techniques of his tongue. She loved his earthy scent and the deliciously sweet and salty sweat he produced, to say nothing of how he made her feel! He let her be dominant as few griffon males would, all the while playing some surprisingly stimulating music off of his small portal device that only aroused her further.
Though she had denied him the rights to rut her properly without winning a mating round—she wanted him to keep having motivation to train, after all!—Marco had found a… loophole around that restriction she might have been more than momentarily annoyed at, had it not felt so incredibly and unexpectedly good. And when she half-seriously threatened to order Giraldi to give him the same treatment in retaliation, he’d only gotten more excited.
It was all exquisitely pleasurable, to say nothing of immensely enjoyed. And now, three hours later, they lay intertwined, staring up through a still-darkened skylight into the starry sky; the twinkling lights not too dimmed by the city ones.
They were both disinclined to move, but hunger and thirst were starting to get the best of them as Gilda felt her stomach growl. “You know, we really should get back to the suite and eat. Even though I’m sure your dinner is quite cold by now,” she told him as she laid her head against his bare chest, nuzzling it.
“Eh, Chris will keep it warm. And besides, we could always order room service,” he pointed out, laying a set of soft talons on her head. It was a minor intimacy compared to all they’d already done, but one she found she liked every bit as much as the more major acts they’d performed, for the simple sense of appreciation she felt from him.
“They don’t cook their meat,” she reminded him with a contented trill. “And Fortrakt is probably wondering what in the crows happened to us.”
“Unless he ended up in bed with Chris and Tara,” Marco pointed out between caressing her chest with his other hand, only half-jokingly. “You said he was going to have a chat with them—the same kind of chat we did?”
Gilda blinked at the image, then chuckled and shook her head, reaching up to run her talons gently through Marco’s mane of dark hair. It was very fine, she noted, but he kept it clean and reasonably well-groomed. “As fun as it is to think about, I doubt it. We were ready. But I really don’t think they were,” she said at some length.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he said with a sigh, reluctantly pushing off her to sit up on the bed. “Guess it’s past time we get back to them. So how are we going to explain this?”
“With the truth,” she told him firmly as she sheathed her still half-stiff wings as much as she could, rolling to her side so she could sit up and lay her talons on his shoulders, leaning on him from behind. She knew the humans didn’t consider that an erogenous zone, but griffons did, and it still produced a heady feeling within her. “We don’t hide this from them.”
“I doubt we could anyway!” Marco chuckled as he swung his feet over the side of the short bed and rubbed his face with his hands, leaning back into her slightly. “They know me too well. They’ll probably guess what happened the instant I step inside. But what about the Marines? I trust Robbie to keep a secret, but the rest…” he trailed off.
“Given how they tease him over his own eagless encounter, I imagine they’d be okay with it. I’m not sure about the Captain or Ambassador, though.” Or Tribune Narada… she suddenly fretted.
“Fuck Ambassador Goldbrick,” Marco all but growled, leaving Gilda wondering what the altered name meant. She guessed it was some kind of slur, but she’d never heard the term before. “And as for Captain Moran, he’s hard but fair. I don’t think he’d be happy, but I also don’t think he’d want us expelled over this.”
“He still doesn’t quite trust us,” she reminded him as she stood up on the bed and hopped down to the floor, starting to collect her scattered armor pieces. “And he’s got a good reason not to. We were spying on you, after all.”
“True. He may think you seduced me to gain information or something,” he mused as he began gathering his clothes, but at her offended look, he quickly threw up his hands. “Don’t blame him, or me for suggesting it! That’s a tried and true espionage technique on Earth.”
“And here as well,” she relented as she located her vest and began to pull it back on. Though considered dishonorable in the Kingdom, the Ibexians certainly recruited less-reputable griffons to do it, and she was sure the Council of Crows had resorted to it repeatedly in return to gain intelligence over the years.
“What about your own superiors?” he suddenly worried as he pulled on his torn-up jeans, which she’d broken the clasp on in her urgent efforts to get them off. “Will they be okay with this?”
“Leave that to me,” she said with a sigh as she secured the buckles on her leather cuirass and tightened the straps. She wasn’t looking forward to telling the Tribune, and she could scarcely imagine what Senior Sparrow Tarseus would say. Not that I care what she thinks. But Narada… “If worse comes to worst, I’ll resign so I can stay with you. I’m sure Captain Moran wouldn’t mind having a griffon civilian advisor around.” She didn’t think it would come to that, but if it did...
He stopped dressing to stare at her in awe; showing sudden and very obvious signs of excitement again, even after three figurative—if not literal—rounds. “You’d really do that for me?”
She asked herself the same question—was she really willing to give up her career and dreams of one day joining the Wind Knights for this one human?—and smiled at the answer she received, deciding he’d shown her a simple but powerful honor, to say nothing of treasures of the heart far more valuable than simple battlefield glory. “I would, Marco Lakan.” She allowed her wings to stiffen in response again; a riposte to his own erotic display.
“Wow...” was all he could say as he dropped to his knees and began exchanging licks and kisses with her once more. His hands even began to roam her wings and flight muscles again, starting to try to pull her armor off before they reluctantly pulled back at the sound of Gilda’s growling stomach, earning a laugh from each as they resumed redressing.
“One question, though, and I’m sorry if it’s a stupid one… just how did I honor you earlier?” Marco asked.
She smiled at that. It would have been a stupid question coming from a griffon, but it was somehow utterly endearing coming from this brown-skinned human, whose body and mind she now knew well.
“By trying to make amends. By elevating me above you. By making all this effort to train just to make yourself more attractive to me. By wanting to prove yourself to me on my terms—by wanting to have earned me,” she recited easily, but then her mood turned a mixture of enamored and exasperated. “And by having an uncanny ability to both piss me off and turn me on, often all at the same time.”
Marco could only grin sheepishly in response as he buckled his belt to secure his pants, though it still bulged over the only half-flaccid organ within. “What can I say? It’s an ‘uncanny’ talent I have. But it usually backfires. For the record, the only thing I regret with you now is getting off to such a bad start,” he recalled with a sigh; his remaining excitement quickly ebbing.
“Listen, I’m sorry again for avoiding you. I guess I did it because I don’t want you to be one of those people—well, griffons—who’d come to hate me.”
“By not talking to me, and treating me coldly,” Gilda said deadpan as she buckled one of her steel pauldrons next. “What a wonderful plan to get a griffon ‘girlfriend’.”
Marco visibly winced as he sat down to pull on his socks. “Okay, if you put it that way… then yeah, I was being stupid about it. I’d make a joke by saying it worked, except it didn’t until we started talking. Honestly, though, it’s the truth. I mean… we’d already got off on the wrong foot—or paw. I broke your boundaries so badly that first night you were ready to rip my balls off. And yet, just a few days afterwards, you swooped in to save me and Chris.”
“It was my duty,” Gilda reminded him, now working on her second pauldron.
“I know, I know,” Marco replied as he found his ruined shirt. “But that doesn’t mean I still don’t feel grateful. Even more so after talking to Fortrakt. He explained to me that those two griffons weren’t going for the kill, and that the worst thing they would have done was knock me out. And Chris told me how quickly you took to the air to find me. You basically could have waited until they were done with me before you came in to do your job, and nobody would have faulted you. Hell, I don’t even think that I would have.”
Gilda’s mouth opened but before she could speak, Marco raised a single finger, laying it on her beak in what she could only guess was a shushing gesture.
“I know you’re going to say you’re not like that. And believe me, I know you're not—especially after everything we just did! Listen, Fortrakt respects you a lot, and so do Chris and Tara. They were talking my ear off because I’ve been treating you coldly ever since waking up.
“But I’d gotten to see you in action by then, and no matter how turned on it made me, I also thought you were so far above me that there was no way you’d be interested in me. I know now I was wrong,” he recited in some shame, then held up a paw to indicate he wasn’t finished yet.
“I also know you tried to patch up things with me after you swooped in and saved the day, and I know that it must have taken something out of you to do so. I’m slow, but I’m not stupid. And as foolish as I know it was now, I really thought that after all that happened and given what little I remembered of that night, it was just best to keep my distance. That given how wild those few memories were, you’d feel more comfortable if I didn’t bother you more than strictly necessary.”
“That’s not how griffons do things, Marco Lakan,” she told him as she tugged the straps of her shoulder armor taut, checking herself in the mirror to make sure they were on straight. “We don’t hide our feelings, especially from our friends and mates.”
“Humans, unfortunately, have a bad habit of doing just that,” Marco recounted ruefully. His words made Gilda flash back to the movie Warrior, recalling how both protagonists had kept things from their friends and family, to the detriment of all.
But she didn’t have time to consider what that might mean for human society before Marco went on. “Then for what it’s worth, and as incredibly obvious as it seems right now… I really like you, Decurion Grizelda Behertz, both as a soldier and… well, an eagless. I’ve wanted to get to know you better from the start, but I was terrified of fucking things up further along the way.
“So, since I didn’t say this before… thank you for all you’ve done for me—done for all of us. Thank you for saving me and Chris. Thank you for putting up with all my alien idiocy and for… well, everything that happened between us that night, because I know full well that you wouldn’t have allowed it except for that spiked cider.
“And I know now that I hurt you even more afterwards by giving you the silent treatment. You didn’t deserve that. So please… accept my apology.”
He bowed his head in contrition, but Gilda immediately stopped him. “No. Don’t bow,” she instructed as she reared up on her hind legs, flaring her wings for balance as she rested one set of talons on his chest—and how odd that she didn’t have a second thought about doing it!—while her right foreleg went to his head, stopping it mid-dip. Marco stopped and his eyes focused on her in confusion. After a moment, he stood straight as Gilda went to all fours again.
“Uh, okay,” Marco muttered, his tone confused. “Um, did I get that wrong or something? I thought it was a sign of respect. I saw griffons bow before your Queen.”
Gilda sighed, realizing she had to add one more item to an already lengthy list of topics to discuss at her cultural training seminars. “It is. And they did. But they did it because it was the Queen—bowing is something gryphons reserve exclusively for royalty,” she explained patiently. “In other words, we only bow before either Queen Molyneux herself or a member of her line. We would also bow if brought before foreign royals like the pony Princesses.
“But I’m not a pony Princess or a gryphon royal, so don’t ever bow to me. Not even if you feel grateful or because you want to apologize. It gives me an honor I don’t deserve. And if you’ve learned nothing else about us, I hope you’ve learned by now that griffons consider it dishonorable to assume a rank or station we do not have.”
“Damn. And here I thought I could show you how sincere I was—other than all the sex, of course.” Marco chuckled. “Uh, okay, then how do I—?”
“I’ll cover all this in the cultural briefing tomorrow, but I think in this situation… baring your neck would be the most appropriate action. When you don’t want to rut me instead, that is,” Gilda replied with a wry grin and wink.
“Bare your neck… oh! You mean, like how the other griffons greet you outside of a salute?” Marco recognized with a smile as she nodded. He then bared his neck and held it, though a little too slowly and deeply for her. “How’s that?”
“Not that much,” Gilda said patiently. “Don’t exaggerate or force it—just do it. It shouldn’t be a strain on the neck or feel unnatural.” He corrected himself by trying it again, and this time, she nodded her satisfaction.
“There. Perfect. In the future, know that it’s appropriate to use for everything from indicating respect to an outright apology. It’s also a sign of submission you can use in place of ‘tapping out’ during a duel or spar. In fact, I’d recommend you do so when going against griffons, since they won’t instinctively know human signals.”
“Meaning, I could have just done that when pinned by that teen griffon and been fine.” Marco sighed somewhat ruefully as he straightened his neck. “Okay, forgive my ignorance—again—but I have to ask: what does baring your neck imply?”
“That’s a bit... complicated,” she admitted as she finished refastening her command chain behind her head, realizing she’d best come up with a succinct answer before she started giving her cultural training sessions the next day.
Marco raised one of his furred eyeridges. “More than this?” he motioned between the two of them, a human man and a griffon eagless; the closest analogy Gilda could think of at that moment was the pair of them trying to pick their way through a minefield of lightning-charged clouds laid by pegasi in the fog—one of the nastier tricks the ponies had employed against griffons during their war seven centuries earlier.
“You’ve got me there.” Gilda grinned, finding his mildly teasing expression and words oddly comforting. A small chuckle escaped her beak, which caused Marco to break out with a silly smile. It quickly became infectious, and her chuckle soon transformed to a soft laughter with a broad smile gracing her face.
“You have a nice smile, Gilds,” he told her, kneeling before her to cup her face and kiss her. “You should show it more often.”
“No way! I have a reputation to uphold,” she replied in mock severity as she rebuckled her vambraces, then stood up straighter before him, a uniformed soldier again. “I accept your apology, Marco Lakan—on the condition that you not avoid or ignore me any longer. That you come to me if you have questions and don’t just assume something out of ignorance. And that you tell me if something’s wrong or bothering you. Griffons don’t hide things from their mates.”
“Deal,” he said, offering his talons to bump, and suddenly the pair stood there awkwardly for a moment. “So, we’re mates, then…?” he had to ask.
“I guess we are,” she chuckled, amazed at how easy the admission was, but then her stomach grumbled again. “I’m hungry, and your friends and Fortrakt are probably wondering what in the crows happened to us. We really should be getting back to the suite now.”
“Yeah, I’m hungry too. Kind of odd they didn’t come looking for us, though…” he mused as he finished dressing; she reared up to give him a parting kiss and gentle nip to the neck. “So, um… after we eat, can I stay the night with you?” he asked hopefully, only to go slightly crestfallen when she shook her head.
“Tempting, but no. I’m still a soldier, and I still have a job to do. Once dinner is done, I have to write my nightly report and then go over my notes for the seminars tomorrow. Just talking with you here now has reminded me of a couple things I still need to add to them,” she sighed.
“Like how your beaks don’t preclude oral and that you love being on top?” he suggested with a lopsided grin, earning a swat of her wing against his backside in lieu of cuffing him on the head as she usually did with Fortrakt.
“All joking aside, I still have duties to perform, and I don’t get to put them off for sex. And besides, don’t you have morning workouts with Sergeant Reyes? Shouldn’t you be getting to bed early after all the energy you expended here?” she reminded him with a raised eyeridge of her own.
“Eh, a cold water dump will be a small price to pay for spending more quality time with you,” Marco replied with a smile as he secured his shirt as best he could, hiding the torn tail in his pants and using a collar button to at least partially cover another long tear at the top.
“Ah, so your intentions are suddenly clear,” she deadpanned as she walked past him. “You only apologized because you wanted to rut.”
“Well… not only,” Marco replied with a wry grin. “That was definitely a bonus, though.”
“Then you got what you wanted. Let’s go, Marco Lakan,” Gilda declared, walking to the room exit. “I’m hungry, and we might still need to save Fortrakt.”
“Right behind you, Decurion. So, I guess we’re cool now, right?” Marco asked.
“Nope,” was all Gilda said, trying not to let a grin break her beak.
That stopped Marco short. “Wait, what?”
“I accepted your apology, but you were right that you haven’t earned me fully,” she reminded him. “You said you wanted to prove yourself worthy to me on griffon terms? I’ll hold you to that. It’s like I said before—you can touch me, but you don’t get to truly rut me until you best me in a mating round. So my nest remains off-limits to your spear until then.”
“But—” She silenced him with a single swish of her tail, holding it high for a moment to give him an eyeful of her eagless attributes before she lowered it again.
“I let you have me twice, Marco Lakan—once under magical influence and once by choice. But next time, we do things properly. So train and train well if you want to have all of me,” she instructed him again, dangling her tail tassel in his face for additional enticement. “Because griffons do not hold back!”
“Yes, ma’am…” came his awestruck voice, but this time, she let the mistaken form of address pass as they walked down the hall. They passed two pairs of sentries whose eyes were unreadable behind their goggles, but who gave them odd looks at what she could only assume was the dazed expression on Marco’s face and the rips visible on his clothes.
“I think Flip-boy just got some griffie tail…” Gilda heard one whisper to his partner after they passed, to which she could only smile. But just as they arrived at the entrance to the civilian suite, Sergeant Reyes exited the room with a bowl full of some kind of steaming meat stew that made Gilda’s stomach rumble; her energy needing replenishment after all the intense lovemaking.
He saw them and smiled. “So, I take it you two had a good ‘talk’?” the Sergeant asked with a lopsided grin and wink as he recognized their contented expressions. “Or do I need to punish him at morning training tomorrow, Decurion? Because you know I will!”
“Gee, thanks, Robbie…” Marco only half-groused as Gilda grinned evilly for a moment.
“As fun as that would be to watch… no. And thank you very much for talking with me, Sergeant. It turned out you were right on all counts.” She bared her neck at him then turned back to her left. “See, Marco? That’s the kind of thing you bare your neck for—gratitude, deference or apology.”
“I’ll remember that,” he promised as Reyes listened in some bemusement while eating his stew.
“Uh, no idea where that came from, but do I have to bare mine back?” Reyes asked. “And for the record? When I was jogging, I cleared out the sentries from the hall ahead of you. I was trying to keep you two a secret, though I’m not sure how much good it did given they just saw you now.” He nodded back down the hall where Gilda could still hear the sentries whispering to each other about her and Marco.
Nevertheless, she smiled at the thoughtful gesture. “I see. I’ll cover all this at the training seminar tomorrow, but it’s not necessary to bare your throat in return. All you have to do, Sergeant, is put that stew down for a minute,” she all but ordered, a gleam growing in her eyes.
Camera, she mouthed at Marco with a wink, deciding that since Reyes had pranked Marco when she first arrived at their suite, it was only fair to help her new mate return the favor.
“Uh… okay.” Though confused, he did so carefully, setting his steaming bowl down on the floor before standing back up; Marco used the opportunity to surreptitiously pull out his smaller portal and make several quick motions on it. “Now what?”
“This,” she said as she reared up and shoved the surprised Sergeant into the wall so she could rub her cheek against his and give him a light lick. “Thanks for thinking of us. Thanks for the advice. Thanks for being Marco’s friend, and thanks for whipping him into shape… with the emphasis on whip.”
Reyes needed a moment to recover from his surprise and the pinned position he suddenly found himself in. “You’re welcome. But, uh… Decurion? You’re kind of giving me flashbacks to getting pounced on the balcony…” he warned as he flushed and squirmed uncomfortably, though he made no move to resist or throw her off. Which he probably could at that point, if he could now hold his own with Giraldi.
Gilda glanced down his body and grinned at what she saw; her gaze growing sultry. She might have been appalled that she was being so flirty or open with her affections now, except for how much she was enjoying herself—enjoying the idea that she could potentially turn on and dominate any human male she wished.
Though she was sorely tempted to take the tease further—he’d certainly earned some affection from her for as much as he’d helped not just her, but all her new human friends—she relented out of a simple sense of honor if nothing else.
“Don’t get too excited, Sergeant. After all, you belong to another eagless, not me.” She poked him gently in the chest with a talon before lightly trailing it down his belly, stopping it tantalizingly near the bulge beneath his pants; she could smell his surge of excitement and feel his body tense.
“But I do consider it my duty to remind you of what you’re missing with her. By my order, you will fight that mating round with Keiko Louvre. You will duel her. You will defeat her. And then you will rut her repeatedly. Consider it your duty as a soldier serving a diplomatic delegation to help establish good relations between our races.” She silkenly whispered her next words into his ear in a trilling tone of voice she’d never thought herself capable of. “Consider it your duty to bury your spear in her nest.”
She heard him take a ragged breath and felt him shiver, his pants bulging even harder. “Y-Yes, ma’am...” he said through a suddenly dry throat, then looked past her and blushed harder as his eyes widened. “Dammit, Marco, stop recording this!”
“Payback’s a bitch, Robbie.” She turned to see him holding up his smaller portal device with an evil grin as he repeated the same words Reyes had said to him upon playing his prank on him three weeks earlier. “You should have seen the look on your face when she shoved you into the wall! I’ll be showing this to Chris and Tara shortly, but maybe I should show it to the entire platoon? And I’m sure Captain Moran would be very interested to see it!” he suggested with great glee.
“Don’t you dare!” Reyes exclaimed loudly, uncharacteristically flustered. “And Decurion? With all due respect, would you please let me go before I…” the rest went unsaid, but a nervous glance down his body showed what he was afraid of.
“As you wish. But do give Keiko Louvre my regards when you rut her,” she couldn’t resist adding with a wink, eliciting another ragged breath. “Given your obvious stature, you should have no issue satisfying her,” she said with an approving nod to his bulge.
“But for the record, my ‘brown prick’ is still bigger, Robbie,” Marco teased.
“F-fucker…” was all a still-shocked and flushed Sergeant Reyes could say in retort as Marco just laughed.
“Thanks for the heads-up, Gilda. I got it all on video,” he announced, still snickering as he pocketed his device.
“You’re welcome. Now let’s go eat, Marco Lakan,” she said casually as she walked right by a still-sorely aroused Reyes, letting her tail brush over his chest and chin as she passed. “It may just be because I’m so hungry, but your stew does smell really good.”
“Thanks, but it smells like Chris added some spices he shouldn’t have. It better not have been curry, or we’re gonna have words…”
Another day, another report… Gilda thought as she rolled up the sheet of parchment that contained her latest list of deductions and observations of the humans, tying it neatly with a thin red ribbon and imparting the wax seal that had come with her command chain. The latter wasn’t just to keep it from unrolling, it was to keep the message secure; its internal enchantment would destroy the missive in a puff of fire if it was opened without the counterpart unsealing spell in the possession of Tribune Narada.
If things went badly the next morning, she knew it might be the last report she ever wrote as a soldier. But she was also at peace with it, finding herself with not a shred of doubt or regret over the time she had spent with Marco.
She smiled at the still-fresh memories despite the fact her writing talons were aching; understandable given she had been penning the report for the past hour. It was not just for Narada, but shortly, a returning Ambassador Strenus to go through.
It had been very lengthy, given all that had happened in the past day. She had opened by admitting that she was now in a relationship with Marco Lakan, but by choice this time—the Tribune’s likely going to find out from Captain Moran anyway, so best for me to tell her directly before she learns it from him.
Even though some of the details were probably needlessly lurid, she outlined all that had led to it, noting in particular that human males seemed to instinctively wish to prove their worthiness to females—and some even seemed to greatly enjoy being dominated by one. In that sense, they were completely unlike Equestrian ponies where the females courted males, or even griffons, where both genders courted the other equally.
He honored me in several very deep and direct ways, so I rewarded him as an eagless should, she took pains to say in the letter, attempting to preempt any accusation that she was emotionally compromised or had suffered some aftereffect of all the cider and fertility potion.
She was, however, starting to suspect that those aftereffects did exist, given two confirmed increases of male stature. And that was to say nothing of her later flirtiness and teasing of Reyes, who she worried might take it out on Marco the following morning.
She chuckled and shook her head at the thought. No, he’s not like that. Still, I’d best be present for his morning workout, she decided then, setting her alarm crystal back an hour—it was keyed by outside light level; you could set it to audibly vibrate when before-dawn twilight was reached—to make certain she would be there.
Though she didn’t look forward to the Tribune’s reaction to reading her account, she had also made sure she couldn’t be accused of otherwise neglecting her duties. She had written down everything she could remember from the movie as well as her conversations with Chris and Tara in regards to human history and culture, including the presence of large unintelligent horses used as war mounts, and the interesting evolution of at least one part of their government from what appeared to be an absolute monarchy.
The movie they watched earlier was, according to Chris, a historic retelling of real events with some major embellishments, but more or less accurate to the barbarity of the time—the human ‘dark ages’, they called them; you had to go nearly two millennia into the past, well before the Great Unification, to find its like in griffon history.
And yet, comparing the society the film depicted with the modern one found in Warrior, it struck her as strange that humans evolved warfare using close range fighting and weaponry. unicorn-style longbows and even primitive crossbows had been used to good effect in the movie, so surely they understood the utility of long range weapons in war? Why, then, would they have discarded them in favor of pure melee arms?
Or had they…?
Gilda shook her head. Now was not the time to go off on another tangent, especially given she had just finished her report. Sleep was certainly needed given her earlier energy expenditures and the double-helping of the delicious meat stew that was now settled happily in her stomach—Marco had outdone himself with it, and whatever ingredient Chris had added certainly hadn’t been bad, despite Marco’s mild grousing—but she found her mind was just too active to rest.
Chris and Tara had been okay with learning about them—Marco had been correct, they had guessed from their long absence and simply seeing Marco’s state what had happened—offering up congratulations to them both. Gilda had even accepted a heartfelt hug from Tara that left the young eagless fantasizing about the human female on top of everything else.
Have to say, I think I’d be willing to be with her again, too… She licked her beak at the thought, only to shake her head sharply. But definitely not now. Not only would it hurt Fortrakt, but Marco and I don’t need any more complications. She’s an honorable eagless, so I’m sure she realizes that as well as me.
She looked outside her room window, drinking in the sight of the starry skies above, which somehow looked more beautiful and inviting than ever. Maybe it was just the lingering afterglow of her time with Marco, but her musing thoughts vanished as she imagined the cool rush of the wind. She found herself yearning for the night skies; doubly so as she’d missed her evening flight. Being with Marco and earning the Diplomatic Command Chain she now wore had certainly changed things, but some would always remain the same, like her love for the sky.
Exiting the room, Gilda closed her eyes as she was hit by the sudden brightness of the hallway. It was brighter than a griffon was used to but still considered dim by the humans. Like ponies, they had much weaker eyesight than griffons—was that simply a byproduct of their smaller eyes?—and they tended to crank up the brightness of firegems placed around the area. Thankfully, not so bright that it would be blinding for her, though she was sure the bat-ponies that Tara inexplicably feared would find them painful.
After her eyes adjusted, Gilda found herself staring at Fortrakt’s door. She almost knocked on it, intending to ask if he wanted to join her before she remembered that Tara had said he wanted some time to himself.
Her guess had been right that unlike with her and Marco, his discussion with Chris and Tara had not led to anything untoward. In fact, by the time she and Marco returned, Chris and Tara did not care to discuss it beyond confirming they had spoken, while Fortrakt himself had already left the suite out of awkwardness and a need for distance.
Of course, that meant he didn’t yet know that she’d been with Marco, but she didn’t think he’d take the news too badly this time, given Marco wasn’t any object of affection or desire to him.
As she proceeded down the hall, she saw a few Marines, both on-duty and off, walking past; they greeted her with either ‘Decurion’ or ‘Ma’am’ in addition to a salute if they were in uniform. As the guard had been changed by then, she had no idea if the new sentries knew about her and Marco yet, though she couldn’t discern any change in their reactions to her from what she’d seen just hours earlier.
Even if they don’t know, they will by tomorrow, she knew, remembering something she’d once heard about how the only thing that traveled faster than news was gossip. It’s going to make giving the cultural training seminars interesting, to say the least!
Still, despite the complications it portended, and even the possibility that she was about to lose her post over getting involved with Marco, she was mildly amazed at how well she’d settled into her new rank and authority.
It had certainly helped that the humans’ somewhat informal attitude was much better than the stiffer regards other griffons gave her. She swore to the Ancestors that whenever she went outside, every tiercel and eagless in both the military and security services were baring their necks and saluting towards her as if she was going to call in the crows on them if they didn’t.
She sincerely hoped she would get used to it as time passed by. Or will I even need to after tomorrow? she wondered and worried as she exited the Inn.
As she passed by the front gate, she spotted the three goggle-wearing Marines that stood guard. Their long black-tubed weapons were pointed downwards, hanging loosely from the straps though their mounted purple lights were aglow; she noticed then that they seemed to make the granite ground beneath their feet sparkle; tiny crystals embedded in the rock fluorescing intensely from whatever strange energy the violet lights fed them.
Before she could wonder again what the nature of the lights were, one of the Marines—two stripes meant he was a ‘corporal’, if her memory served—addressed her. “Good evening, Decurion. Out to fly again?”
“Yeah, but not for long. Just gonna clear my head. You can expect me back in an hour or so. And yes, I know the latest password procedure,” she assured them before they could ask. It was one of the new security procedures they’d implemented after the Ibexian adepts infiltrated the Inn, as they’d apparently gotten past a couple checkpoints in disguise by overhearing the simple sign/countersign challenges they’d been using previously.
The new procedure was that it wasn’t just a simple password they required now—when challenged, you had to give a proper response based on whether it was morning, afternoon or evening, inside or outside, day or night (determined by whether any part of the sun was above the horizon), whether the challenge phrase had an even or odd number of words, and even if the Marine or griffon challenging you was standing to your left or right.
Thus, there was no single response that would satisfy any given challenge, nor could you come up with the correct answer using a scrying spell or any other remote mind-reading magic the Ibex and other races were sometimes known to employ. Even knowing the password procedure was no guarantee of finding a good reply; especially if you weren’t good at speaking Equish—which few Ibex were.
Answering correctly required you to step down a decision tree and come up with an Equish word quickly that matched the desired parameters—for example, if it was morning, outside and night, like it would be when she returned, then her reply was required to have the letters M, O, and N; an odd number of words in the challenge phrase meant she had to reply with a sentence that had an even number and vice-versa.
The final part of the procedure was that a challenge from her left meant she had to end with a word containing the needed letters plus the last letter of the first word spoken, while a challenge from the right meant her first word had to contain the needed letters plus the first letter of the last word spoken.
It was a difficult procedure to follow if you weren’t already well-versed in it. Fortrakt and Gilda had practiced doing so extensively while they’d been convalescing; by the end, they’d been having a very good time trying to stump the other with difficult letter combinations and even paragraph-sized challenge phrases that made it difficult to count the words and determine whether it was even or odd.
The Marines, fortunately, kept it reasonably simple with challenge phrases that generally ranged from two to five-word sentences, but if you couldn’t come up with a correct reply within six seconds, you were either detained or denied entry.
Once past the barricade the humans had built, she dashed towards the battlements, squawking a clear signal for the griffon guards posted nearby before she took off from a crenel, flapping her wings as the cold night air took her into the starry skies. She climbed a few levels up, meeting and passing at least two patrolling griffons before she reached the fifth level, high enough that she could float almost lazily just by keeping her wings spread as she enjoyed the nighttime view of the glittering gem that was the Kingdom’s capital city.
This was how she’d start her flights, and it was always her favorite part. Granted, it wasn’t sunset, which was her favorite time of day, but it was still a striking sight to see the city lit up like that; a glittering jewel against the slopes of the Falcine mountain range. Admiring the view—maybe it was just her continuing good mood, but it looked more beautiful than ever to her—she basked in it for a few more minutes before starting a workout by flapping her wings, hard.
Dashing forward in the air, she started an intricate sequence of rolls and dodges, sometimes folding her wings to her side to accelerate before spreading them out to abruptly change angles, trying sharp turns that would allow her to dodge bolts and move through confined spaces in a hurry.
It was something she’d gotten good at as a teen, just having to keep up with Rainbow on their improvised obstacle courses. Of course, she’d never been Rainbow’s equal at that given pegasi were much more agile to begin with, possessing an uncanny ability to grab hold of or push off the air itself.
She next dove towards the fifth level—the highest level she was allowed to come within a hundred wing paces at night without heightened clearance she did not have—descending towards a landing stage and, without pause, dashing perpendicular to the battlement as some patrolling Paladins watched but did not interfere.
Her breathing became ragged as the muscles of her legs sprinted tirelessly while they pounded on the unforgiving stone ground, working herself to nearly exhaustion—she still wasn’t back to full stamina, though she was close—before she reached a new crenel and took flight again.
She repeated her fort-runs twice over the next half-hour before deciding she’d had enough and returned to the Inn.
“Greetings, Decurion. The bricks are splintered.” The Marine to her left said as she presented herself to them; their violet lights causing her to squint slightly as they passed over her eyes. The strange light also made her normally brown wing feathers glow brightly with a slightly violet-tinted white hue—now that was an interesting effect! But she didn’t have time to contemplate it as she mentally stepped down the password procedure quickly but carefully:
Even number of words… morning, outside, night, and the first letter of his last word was S… she cataloged quickly before coming up with a reply.
“So summon a damned mason,” she answered within three seconds, earning a snicker and even some impressed clapping as they let her pass.
Her response didn’t have to make sense; it just had to have an odd number of words and end with a word containing the letters M, O, N and S. But coming up with a reply that did make sense given the constraints earned a strong measure of respect and could be considered an accomplishment. Reentering the inn, she thought she might have been getting more odd looks from the Marines than before as she went upstairs to her room, but also couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just her imagination.
Though she was dirty from her earlier exertions, she found she didn’t want to bathe just yet; still able to scent some of Marco on her. It brought a smile to her face as she climbed into bed and quickly nodded off, deciding again that whatever happened to her tomorrow, the day had been 100% worth it.
That regardless of what happened to her, it was a day she would remember for the rest of her life.
Gilda was jolted out of her sleep barely three hours later by the sound of the crystal alarm on the nightstand vibrating hard in its casing, emitting a shrill sound that normally made her want to smash it. Groaning slightly—it seemed like she’d just gone to bed!—she rolled over slowly as her memories returned to her, grinning as her mind caught back up with the previous day’s events.
She was tired, but not unhappy, though she knew she was going to have to steal some extra hours of sleep eventually to make up for the ones she’d lost. But she’d endured far worse during her Gauntlet training, so she rolled out of bed, doused herself in the shower to both clean up and wake up, and gave herself about five minutes of grooming before heading downstairs to the meeting suites they were now using as training rooms.
She was met by a few Marines along the way, and though she found herself watching carefully for any sign of being treated differently—a stare, an odd question, or a simple smirk—she couldn’t detect any. Instead, they greeted Gilda as they always did, with a smile and salute, admitting her to the Marine recreational area on the second floor once she’d answered the latest challenge of the sentries outside.
She picked out the voice of Sergeant Reyes quickly as she entered.
“—isn’t too bad. Legs still sore, Flip-Boy?” she heard him ask as she walked down the short hallway towards them; she could hear the sound of some hefted weights and grunting that accompanied it.
“Not as bad as yesterday.” Her heart rate spiked in excitement and even a little anxiety as she heard Marco’s voice—she didn’t have any regrets about the previous day, but did he?
“Speak for yourself. My arms are killing me,” Chris replied as she turned the corner to the cleared-out suite, which was now empty of furniture except for various exercise equipment; barbells, benches, and at least one large hanging bag the size and weight of a boar she’d seen them practice punching with their bare fists.
“Good. That means you need to increase your reps and hang time off the pull-up bar,” Reyes remarked unsympathetically. “And you still hit like a girl. So we’re going to start you on some bag work.”
“Now I resent that, Sergeant,” Tara told him with a mock glare. “Or do I have to deck PFC Ricardo again for trying to grope my butt while I was on the pull-up bar?” she asked mildly, causing Gilda’s eyes to go wide, then narrow.
“And you hit harder than most of my Marines.” He turned to her with a grin, not seeing Gilda enter. “Don’t worry. He’s already been hauled before Captain Moran, and I also threatened to tell Giraldi what he’d done. I didn’t, but after Doc patched him up, they sent him to the encampment outside the city to keep that idiot safe from him.”
“And from me,” Gilda announced her presence with an angry trill, one that caused Marco to grin and Reyes to stiffen. “One of the Marines groped you, Tara? Good thing I wasn’t here.” She flexed her claws meaningfully as the rest of the Marines in the room grimaced.
“Appreciate the thought, girlfriend, but I fight my own battles,” she said with a wink, dressed in shorts and a tight-fitting shirt. “It was two days ago, and trust me, he already regrets it, if for no other reason than that the rest of the boys let him have it after me,” she said to some snickers from the male Marines around her.
“I’m sure,” Gilda replied, furling her feathers as she was reminded again of why she liked Tara. “Hope you don’t mind me sitting in on this workout, Sergeant.”
“As long as you don’t try to tease me again,” he replied in a jovial tone, though he fidgeted slightly. Chris and Tara smirked while Marco snickered, the latter earning a glare. “And just for that, Flip-boy, we’re going extra hard today.”
Gilda heard him groan, followed shortly by Chris and Tara. “Are you serious?”
“Yes,” Reyes declared, suddenly all business again. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about what retarded reasons the three of you had when you decided to sign up for morning training, but you did. That means you freely gave me all the rights to make sure I un-fuck you. So stop bitching and moaning! When I say more reps, you say how many. When I say jump, you say how high!”
“Really? How many? Wow, Robbie. Are you trying to become some sort of drill instructor?” Marco asked, his tone teasing. “Are we your first recruits?”
Reyes didn’t reply; for a moment, there was nothing but silence. “Listen up, all of you,” the Sergeant spoke after what seemed an uncomfortably long pause, in a voice so soft that even Gilda had to strain to hear. “What you’re experiencing during my morning training is nothing compared to what Marine boot camp has to offer.”
The three instantly fell silent, perhaps recognizing they’d overstepped. “I… of course,” Marco muttered apologetically.
“I’m sorry Robbie, I didn’t mean to—” Tara added as well.
Reyes cut them off with a wave of his soft talons. “I know, I know. Look, I’m not mad at any of you. I just don’t want to give you the wrong impression about what it takes to build a Marine. Of what it takes to make it in the Corps.”
“Not that I’d want to go through it, but if I were to ask you to describe boot camp… how would you?” Chris inquired as he began running in place lightly. He’d lost some of his paunch and gained at least a little more sinew on his skinny limbs by then, though he was still well behind the well-muscled frames on the other Marines.
“In one word: chaotic,” Reyes replied, earning some rueful nods from the other Marines in the room as they continued their own activities. “You come in on a bus with just the clothes on your back, nervous and jittery as fuck. They start screaming at you the moment the bus pulls to a stop at Parris Island, and it only gets worse from there.
“First thing they do once they’ve got you off the bus is herd you into groups and usher you inside where they shave your head, strip you down to your skivvies, and give you identical uniforms with no name tags, stripping you of all individuality. And while this is going on, you got a bunch of DIs yelling constantly at you; in your face about how worthless and useless you are as they tell you what not to say or do, how to march, and to always toe the line.
“In boot camp, you as an individual no longer exist. There’s no me, my, I, or Roberto Reyes, former star soccer player in high school passed over for an athletic scholarship by all his favorite Division 1 schools. There’s only Recruit Reyes, whose prior accomplishments mean nothing.
“And Recruit Reyes has to show the DI his left shoe, his right sock, and it has to be done any day now. They’ll scream if you’re too slow, stick even just one toe out of line, or even just look funny. And that’s just the first hour of the first night.”
Gilda listened intently as Reyes continued to enumerate a list of what he had gone through when he was a recruit. In many ways, she could relate, having gone through the Kingdom’s all-service Gauntlet when she joined the Auxiliary Guard.
She’d had her share of bad moments there, especially early on when her temper and attitude issues got her into repeated trouble; they had come down doubly hard on her given all the time she’d spent in Equestria.
Still, she’d made it all the way through, just like Reyes and the other Marines in the room. Given that, she could easily appreciate what the Sergeant was saying. Strength through unity and discipline was the bedrock of the Kingdom Military as well, after all, and she found herself amazed again at how alike their races were culturally despite how different they were physically.
“Oh wow,” Tara muttered. “What’s the point of some of those orders, though?”
“To give a recruit a sense of what it would be like if he was in a war zone,” Reyes explained as he helped Chris stretch his legs. “Take it from me after two tours in Afghanistan that war is nothing but chaos. A stabilizing factor in such a situation is basically orders given by the higher-ups. Orders that allow Marines to do something rather than sit on the ground with their thumbs up their asses, waiting their turn to be killed. It also teaches brotherhood—that you can depend on the Marine next to you. That you, in turn, are expected to do the same for him or her.”
“‘The Marine Corps teaches family values’,” Marco muttered. “You told me that back in Equestria.”
“Yeah, well, you should know I rarely talk out of my ass,” Reyes replied with a smile, and Gilda found herself finally starting to understand that ass was a human slang term for a rear end.
“Huh. And here I thought Marines were knights in shining armor, swinging swords and slaying dragons.” Tara teased as Gilda blinked.
They have dragons in their world? And wear Equestrian-style armor? Even after all the time she’d spent with them, she was getting dizzy from the turns the talk was taking.
“Ha! You should know I put on my shiny armor everyday I’m in the Corps, Tara. Oorah!”
“Oorah!” The other Marines in the room echoed as one.
Marco chuckled. “Heh. Oorah! Though I have to ask, Robbie—for as hard as you’re working us, are you recruiting us?”
Reyes laughed straight from the belly. “Are you serious, Flip-boy? Who’d want to recruit you?” he asked, though there was a twinkle in his eye.
“Ouch!” Marco replied as the other Marines snickered while Chris and Tara looked at each other and oooed. “Dude, that hurt. Are you saying I’m not good enough?”
“Considering that I already have you three whining about my morning workouts because it doesn’t have the air-conditioned rooms, fan-equipped treadmills, fruit shakes, or all that tight female ass jiggling in your face? Yeah. Hell, I can’t see that you could even handle a little bit of boot camp.” Gilda heard Reyes laugh again. “Shit, Marco, I bet you just want to pop your cherry.”
Gilda blinked at yet another unfamiliar term. ‘Pop’ his cherry? What did that mean?
“Uh, for your information, I already have,” Marco replied somewhat smugly.
“We all have!” Tara added to a sharp nod from Chris as the pair continued through their respective warm-up routines.
Whatever they were bragging about, Reyes was unimpressed. “The fuck you three did. Firing a rifle downrange doesn’t count,” the Sergeant retorted before he caught himself, giving a quick glance towards Gilda as Tara looked up sharply and Chris visibly grimaced, like they recognized the slip. Despite that, or maybe because of it, Reyes charged ahead. “There’s a lot more to combat than that.”
Gilda felt her heart stop. She didn’t know what a ‘rifle’ was, but ‘firing’ down a ‘range’ definitely indicated some sort of distance weaponry. Then they DO have them! she now knew beyond any shadow of a doubt. And it wouldn’t make sense that they’re hiding them from us, because they’d need to get at them quickly if they need them, whether for use against us or the Ibex. Wait—could it be those black tubes they’re all equipped with?
She kept her face carefully impassive as she watched and listened, her mind turning. And what does it mean that they’re not using anything we even remotely recognize as distance weaponry? If they were using primitive bows so many centuries ago, what type of ranged weapons have they advanced to by now?
“Good morning, Decurion.”
Gilda almost jumped at the sound of Captain Moran’s voice, which held the same cool tone she’d first heard from him when he informed Tribune Narada that he wanted to discuss Fortrakt and Gilda’s spying with her. For a moment, her wings flared in a fight-or-flight response; she found she was ready to both defend Marco or take wing and flee as she instantly realized there was only one possible reason he’d be there.
Stilling her emotions and bracing herself, she turned and came to attention as she found herself face-to-face with the intimidating human Captain flanked by two fully armed Marines, offering him a thump of her right set of talons to her chest.
The Captain, however, wasn’t impressed by the offered honor, only perfunctorily returning the salute as he stared down at her in a manner she could only describe as baleful. “My apologies if I startled you, Decurion Behertz. And sorry to pull you away, but I want to see you in my office, immediately.”
He was giving her an order like he was the Tribune herself, and even though she wasn’t under his command, she found herself inclined to obey it as surely as if the Tribune had issued it. “Of course, Captain. If I may ask, is this about—”
“It is about exactly what you think,” he cut her off hard, addressing her in clipped tones over crossed arms. She internally cringed even as she quickly recognized that he was trying not to say it out loud—did that mean the other Marines didn’t know, and he was trying to keep it secret? “And we need to talk.”
That immediately got Marco’s attention. “Sir, I’d like to come too and—"
“This is none of your concern, Lakan,” The Captain said in a clipped voice that brooked no argument or backtalk, his glare and sharp tone instantly silencing him as surely as it would one of his actual subordinates. “I’ll send a Marine for you later if I want to chat, and the same goes for you, Sergeant. In the meantime, as you were and feel free to continue your workout. For now, I need to speak to the Decurion in private.”
“And after that?” Marco asked anxiously, causing the rest of the room to hold its collective breath; even Reyes suddenly looked nervous, Gilda noted.
The Captain gave him a withering stare before replying. “And after that, we’ll see.”