The sign hanging above the tavern door proudly named the establishment ‘Warbler’s Roost’ in vivid, colorful letters, and beneath them, a colorful bird perched on a soup ladle rising from a bowl of steaming stew. The glow of candlelight shone through polished windows and into the dusty street outside as shadows crept over Boiling Springs, and laughter and music spilled out into the town with every opening of the door.
One of those openings came at the glow of a unicorn’s horn, and a young mare with mismatched eyes and an old mare with shining armor stepped inside. Sparrow found an open table and trotted over to it, while Typhoon gave the tavern a cursory scan before following her. The patrons were young, mares and stallions in the prime of their life, and they pranced and danced in the open center on a floor polished by thousands of stomping hooves, led by the lively performance of a trio of bards singing by the fireplace. It was loud, chaotic, and energetic, and Typhoon felt exhaustion grip her old bones just from watching them.
When Typhoon joined Sparrow and sat down in her seat, the young unicorn was already looking longingly at the group of mares and stallions spinning each other about in their dance. “This place is too noisy,” Typhoon grumbled, giving her head a shake and turning her back to all the commotion behind her. “The food better be worth it.”
“Trust me. If the scraps me and the girls sometimes got from the cook were good, then the full thing’s gotta be delicious,” Sparrow assured her. “Besides, it’s not all about the food, you know. Don’t you like music and dancing?”
“When I was a filly, yes,” Typhoon admitted. “A lifetime in the Legion has ruined all my joints, so I can’t enjoy dancing like I used to. Music I still like, so long as it's not bawdy tavern songs or any heroic tales twisted by bards.” Her eyes flitted to the bards in the tavern and she had to suppress a disdainful scowl. “If they’d seen what I’d seen, they wouldn’t be singing about it. And I’m happy they don’t.”
“But don’t you want to have somepony singing about you?” Sparrow asked. “It means your name lives on after you die. You’d be a legend!”
Typhoon scoffed. “Legends can be bad as often as they’re good,” the old soldier countered. “Would you like it if you did something foolish or stupid and it became the only thing anypony ever remembered about you?”
Sparrow’s ears fell and she sheepishly shifted in her seat. “No, that’d suck pretty bad… but I’d still rather be remembered than forgotten. I want somepony to know that I was here. That I lived and I did something. Even if it wasn’t great.”
Typhoon watched Sparrow as she tilted her head away and hid her blue eye behind a lock of mane, leaving only a red one to peer at the bards singing their music. For a moment, the old mare felt taken back in time to when another unicorn with red eyes sat across from her fifteen years ago and bemoaned the same things… but only for a moment.
“Too many ponies are remembered for the wrong reasons,” Typhoon said dismissively, and she waved down a barmaid with a wing. “And too many who deserve it are not.”
“Welcome to Warbler’s Roost,” the barmaid said, a smile appearing on her face even if it faltered for a moment when she caught sight of Typhoon’s intricate and heavy armor and the sword resting against the table. “What can I get for you?”
“Food and ale,” Typhoon said, and she threw a couple of gold coins down on the table. “I don’t particularly care what, so long as it’s filling.”
“Fish!” Sparrow cheerfully chirped. “With lilies and greens! Oh, and some ale, too!”
“Sure! I’ll get those right out for you. Enjoy the night!” the barmaid said, and with one last look at Typhoon’s armor and scars, she scampered away just a little too quickly to escape the old soldier’s watchful eye.
But it didn’t matter to Typhoon; instead, she turned her attention toward Sparrow. “Most unicorns I know can’t stand meat,” Typhoon noted. “Even earth ponies are more likely to eat fish than them. Not as much as pegasi, but still.”
“Do you think I could afford to be choosy?” Sparrow asked her. “I had to take whatever I could get! Besides, I heard that meat helps build muscle. I need that if I’m going to be a legionary.”
“You need a lot more than muscle if you’re going to be a legionary,” Typhoon said. “Your magic is your greatest strength. Work on honing it. Controlling it. Maybe then you’ll be able to make something of yourself.”
Sparrow nodded, eagerly taking in Typhoon’s comments as if they were holy scripture. “Will you show me tomorrow? We spent all day working on my stance and my grip and swings and we didn’t even get a chance to hit the dummy!”
“No,” Typhoon flatly stated. “Tomorrow you’re taking me to meet Deep Blue. That’s what we agreed on.”
“Awww, come onnnnn,” Sparrow pleaded. “He’s not going anywhere! We can practice in the morning and you can meet him in the afternoon!” When Typhoon’s eyes narrowed, Sparrow pouted and changed approach. “You know you won’t be able to meet him unless I help you, right?”
“I agreed to give you a training session in exchange for helping me meet Deep Blue because I am fair. Not because I am nice,” Typhoon warned her. “Do not mistake one for the other.”
The veiled threat made Sparrow shrink in her seat, and after a moment, she let out a sigh. “Okay… fine. We can meet up in the market tomorrow at sunrise and I’ll show you how to meet him. Fair’s fair and all that.”
After a moment, Typhoon nodded once. “Good. Thank you.”
“Yeah, don’t mention it…” Sparrow grumbled and, sighing, she put her cheek on her hoof and looked out once again at the ponies dancing in the tavern. “You got any stories?”
“Stories?”
“Yeah, stories!” Sparrow perked up again, and she sat up straight in her chair. “You’re an old mare—uh, experienced veteran,” Sparrow hastily corrected herself at Typhoon’s frown. “You’ve gotta have some crazy stories, right? I mean… that scar on your face, it had to come from somewhere!”
The mere mention of the long scar over her right eye and down her cheek made it itch and burn, and Typhoon closed her eyes. “That is not a story for strangers,” Typhoon said after forcing herself to take a slow breath. “That one is… too personal.”
Something in her voice made it clear to Sparrow that the topic was not open to discussion. “Oh…” the young mare said, and she glanced away, feeling uncomfortable. “Well, uh… what about any other ones? I’ve got some good stories too. The one on my lip I got when I… woah! What’s going on with your wings?”
Typhoon blinked her eyes open, confused, and when she glanced down at her wings, she saw snowflakes forming on her feathers. With an annoyed snort, she roughly shook her wings, knocking them loose and momentarily creating a snow squall around her that melted as soon as the flakes hit the floor. “My magic,” Typhoon said.
“Your magic?” Sparrow asked, and she leaned a little closer against the table... before she seemingly thought better of it and leaned away. “Like what you did at Eagle Springs? You froze Wren pretty solid... I didn't even know pegasi had magic like that!”
“All ponies have magic,” Typhoon corrected her. “Unicorns have the most visible form. But pegasi and earth ponies have it, too. For earth ponies, it gives them strength and hardiness, and it allows them to subtly control the growth of plants over time. For pegasi, it allows us to fly and walk on clouds. But if you’re trained in it, a pegasus can also express it in other ways.”
Holding out her wingtip, Typhoon pressed it against the table, and a small circle of ice began to expand against the wood, much to Sparrow’s amazement. “Pegasi are… creatures of emotion. Some ponies claim that we can fly because of our love for the freedom of the boundless skies above us. We love the ability to go where we want, to do what we want, to be who we want. It’s a very emotional connection with the world. And somewhere along the line, somepony discovered that we could channel our emotions to control the elements of the world itself.”
She lifted her wing from the table, and after a moment, a small flame danced on the end of her wingtip. “Unicorns cannot control the four elements of the world—the earth, the air, the fire, the water—but pegasi can. I can’t explain why; a wizard could explain it better than me. But the elements are tied to our emotions. Anger summons fire. Fear channels the earth. Joy bends the winds to our will. And ice is… sadness.” Typhoon tucked her wing back against her side, her vision drawn down to the circle of ice already beginning to melt on the table. “Most pegasi will never channel their emotions in the way needed to control the elements. Some will do it accidentally after great trauma or overwhelming excitement, but never again. But if you’re trained, you can do it at will by focusing on a thought or a memory that’s tied to the relevant emotion. And once you open that door, make that connection, sometimes you channel your emotions subconsciously when a particularly powerful memory strikes you.”
Typhoon raised her eyes, finding Sparrow's eyes staring back at her, filled with sudden understanding. “That’s why I ‘iced up’ a moment ago. And that’s why I will not discuss that memory with ponies I do not trust.”
“I… see,” Sparrow said, and her eyes seemed to soften some. After a few heartbeats of silence, she cleared her throat. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You did nothing wrong.” Typhoon hesitated for a moment, and then she put her metal hoof on the table, where the warm air in the tavern made the wispy fog emanating from it all the more visible. “I lost my hoof in a battle against buffalo,” she began, her mind going back to a battlefield long ago and far away. “Do you know what those are?”
Sparrow nodded, though it was uncertain. “I think so? They’re like, really big cows or something, right?”
“Perhaps to put it simply, yes,” Typhoon said. “They’re massive creatures, twice as tall as an earth pony and three times as strong. The prairies around here used to be some of their stampede grounds. When Equestria was still young but unified, settlers and Legion colonia claimed land increasingly further away from Everfree for the nation. The buffalo pushed back, and it was the duty of the Legion to protect our settlers.”
“That must have been easy,” Sparrow said, her eyes slowly lighting up with fascination. She started to lean over the table, her ears pointed squarely at the soldier sitting across from her. “You could fly and buck lightning from clouds! What could the buffalo do against that?”
“More than we gave them credit for,” Typhoon admitted. “The buffalo tribes started to rally together to drive our settlers back off of their lands. Attempts to solve the crisis diplomatically were fruitless, but in hindsight, I understand why. It’s unreasonable to ask somepony after breaking into their home to compromise and part with some of their valuables in the name of fairness, so to speak. But when diplomacy failed, the Legion was sent to break up the tribes. We won the initial fight in the field, but the buffalo retreated into a narrow canyon, and in the middle of the night, burned some kind of magical plant in great bonfires. The smoke drifted over our cloud camp and we all lost our magic for the better part of a week.”
“You lost your magic… in your cloud camp?” Sparrow’s eyes widened. “But wouldn’t that mean you would…?”
“Fall?” Typhoon nodded. “Yes. We did. I woke up when I fell through the bottom of my tent. The air was filled with confused screaming. I managed to glide into a river that broke the worst of my fall, along with my shoulder and a few ribs. Most of the legion wasn’t as lucky. Those of us that survived did our best to regroup and find defensible terrain to hold out as long as we could until another legion could arrive to rescue us.” She held up her hoof and looked it over, noting where the skysteel joint had been magically fused onto the end of her fetlock. “I got charged and trampled during the last of the fighting before we were saved. I was lucky my hoof was the only thing injured beyond repair. I had to have it amputated and replaced when I got back to Everfree.”
“Woah…” Sparrow mused out loud. “See? Now that’s something that would make for a great song! The last stand of the legion against all odds! Come on, even you have to agree that would make for a great bard’s tale!”
Typhoon frowned back at her. “A story where most of a legion died after falling from a cloud in their sleep and the survivors were trampled into the dirt in a canyon?” She could only derisively snort at her own summary. “I fail to see where heroism comes into play. We underestimated our enemy and nearly all perished because of it. There was nothing glorious about it. And a lot of good soldiers died because of my mistake.”
“Your mistake?” Sparrow blinked and cocked her head. “Wait… Hammer called you Commander earlier today. Was that your legion?”
Typhoon nodded once, and she looked off to the side, at the dancing patrons and the singing bards, for wont of something to focus her eyes on. “I was their legate, and I led my soldiers into a trap. A lot of good pegasi died because I made a mistake. If the gods were just, I would have died there with them. But I didn’t. And sometimes I wonder why, after all this time, after all my battles, they’ve let me live for so long.”
Sparrow brought her hooves together and looked down at the space between them. “Maybe they’re not done with you yet?” she posited. “Maybe they’ve got plans for you?”
“Or maybe I’m being punished,” Typhoon countered. “After all I’ve seen and done, all that’s crumbled…” Her voice trailed off, and with a sigh, she sat back in her seat, listening to the wood creak under the weight of her armored back. “Forget about it,” she said after a moment, and she all but shoved the conversation topic away with a wave of her hoof. “When you get old, you get sentimental. Soldiers don’t expect to live until they’re gray in the mane. We don’t know what to do with ourselves if we do.”
The young unicorn gave her a skeptical look, as if she saw right through the shield of humor Typhoon used to deflect from the topic. “There’s always time to find something new,” Sparrow said. “Life’s too precious to waste whatever time you have left.”
The barmaid chose that moment to arrive with their food, setting it down between the two mares with her magic, ushering an end to the conversation. But even as Sparrow thanked the barmaid and began to shovel food into her muzzle, Typhoon could only stare at her plate, lost in thought.
She snatched her tankard of ale in her wing and raised it to her lips. She hadn’t had a stiff drink in a while… and now she felt like she needed one more than ever.