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// 1-21 
// Story: The Sparrow in the Storm 
// by The 24th Pegasus 
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With the kelpie gone and under Deep Blue’s control, the rain finally began to let up as Typhoon walked back to Boiling Springs. The steady rain, once the mask for the kelpie’s hunting grounds, slowly thinned out, and before long, it had stopped completely, and the sun started to poke needles of sunlight through the dissipating gray clouds overhead. Typhoon wondered if anypony in town would find the sudden shift to what looked like a promising sunny day odd, or if Deep Blue gaining control over the kelpie’s powers would change anything else for the town. At the very least, she could find some relief in knowing that a fey was no longer drowning and eating ponies in the springs the town was known for.

At some point after a lengthy bout of uncomfortable silence, Typhoon no longer noticed Sparrow’s hoofsteps behind her, and when she turned around, the young unicorn was nowhere to be seen. After pausing for a moment, Typhoon let out a small, relieved sigh. Though she was thankful that the real Sparrow’s sudden appearance had saved her from the kelpie’s ambush, she did not want to reopen the fresh wounds of her dismissing the young mare and her unrealistic dreams of becoming a soldier to a Legion that no longer existed. It would be best for Sparrow if she forgot about Typhoon entirely, the old soldier decided, and if she really was fascinated with the Legion enough to bother somepony about it, Hammer would make a fine substitute. The two knew each other, at the very least, and in time Sparrow would hopefully be able to satisfy all her curiosities with him. If she really wanted to make a difference, maybe she would take up residence as Hammer’s apprentice, learning the art of Legion smithing while getting her flank off the streets.

Typhoon shook her head. It was foolish thinking, pointless and distracting. She wanted the best for the young mare with the mismatched eyes, but the old soldier reminded herself to stay detached. Though her attitude and ambitions were hauntingly familiar, Sparrow was just one passing face out of hundreds she would cross in her journey. There would be more fillies like her in her travels, and doubtless many would want the same promise of adventure that had captivated Sparrow and drawn her to Typhoon. Perhaps harsh as it was, this one in particular was nothing special.

Nothing special… save for those eyes. One pink, one blue. Whenever Typhoon looked into them, she saw the ghosts of her past she once thought she had outflown.

…All the more reason to leave Boiling Springs and everypony in it behind.

By the time she made it back to Warbler’s Roost, the sun had finally chased away the last of the kelpie’s broken clouds, and its late morning warmth had started to dry Typhoon’s damp back and soggy wings. Ponies started to trickle into the seats, taking advantage of the sudden change in weather to run errands that had been put off by the rain or take the opportunity to have a nice lunch outside. Even the town guard had resumed their patrols, having spent the past day and a half mostly watching the streets of Boiling Springs from the shelter of overhangs and canopies. It was almost refreshing that the guards in their cobbled-together armor didn’t immediately recognize Typhoon without her armor or weapons, seeing her as just another aging mare with curious scars and an even more curious metal hoof.

Once inside, Typhoon went straight to her room, unlocked the door, and then unlocked the trunk to recover her belongings. She didn’t realize she had been holding her breath until she let it out with a small sigh of relief when she found her armor and her sword undisturbed inside the sturdy wood, and she emptied the trunk’s contents and placed them on her bed as she started to get her supplies in order. Her dreamcatcher, freshly repaired thanks to Deep Blue, was carefully tucked inside her left saddlebag and cushioned by her provisions and other traveling essentials, while her right jingled with gold and gems as she pulled out enough coin to pay for a warm lunch before heading off. Then, bit by bit, she slipped into her armor, first putting on the unicorn-style gambeson and then attaching the heavy bits of ground steel to her slight but still muscular frame. Her magic sword, greeting her with a frigid touch of hatred that left her shivering for a moment before it recognized her magic, followed as it hooked onto the left edge of her barding. And after taking a moment to flip Hammer’s skysteel helmet onto her head and fit her ears through the holes in the top, Typhoon left her room behind, pausing only long enough to pay her dues and get some hot food from the inn’s kitchen before leaving Warbler’s Roost for good.

Pausing in the street, Typhoon took a deep breath of the fresh air and rolled her shoulders, feeling the weight of her new armor weighing her down. Just like in Green Glade and the nameless hamlet and countless other small towns and locales before that, Typhoon felt that anticipation of flying somewhere new along with the small melancholy of leaving someplace old take hold of her, only this time it was magnified. She had stayed in Boiling Springs much longer than she had in any previous town in her recent memory, and though her purpose there had simply been business as usual like the towns that came before it, the ponies of Boiling Springs had left a sharper impression on her than most. Hammer, Sparrow, Deep Blue… Those were names and faces she would remember in her travels.

Her wings twitched, but she hesitated to open them just yet. She usually wasn’t one for goodbyes, but this time felt different. So, when she finally did open her wings and take to the skies, it was to the south, not the west, where the smoke from a forge drifted into the clearing skies.


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To Typhoon’s surprise, there were two ponies, not one, at Hammer’s forge when she touched down on the damp dirt. She hesitated when she poked her head around the corner and saw Sparrow laying on a crate in the corner, her head resting on crossed forelegs like a surly cat, and considered turning around and flying away to avoid yet another confrontation with the young unicorn, but Hammer lifted his head from his anvil and spotted her before she could. He opened his wing in a somewhat surprised greeting, and when Sparrow noticed that the sounds of hammer on steel had stopped, she perked her ears and turned toward where the blacksmith was looking. But her lips only twitched, pulling back the barest amount to reveal teeth, and the unicorn pointedly looked away while the two pegasi approached each other.

“Commander?” Hammer asked, stopping a friendly distance away from Typhoon and hanging his smithing apron on a nearby peg on the wall. “I didn’t think I would see you again, to be honest. I was hoping I would, but I didn’t think you’d stop by with your business in town concluded.”

“I… figured I should,” Typhoon hesitantly admitted. “You’ve been a greater help than just about anypony in this town. I wouldn’t want to disappear without saying my thanks one last time.”

Behind him, Sparrow’s ears flicked, failing to escape Typhoon’s notice.

“Well, I’m honored that you would take the time to say goodbye, then,” Hammer said, respectfully bowing his head. When he raised it, he looked back over his shoulder at the unicorn in the corner. “Sparrow told me what happened. A kelpie? In Boiling Springs? And you froze it solid for that odd wizard?”

“Part of a deal,” Typhoon said with a shrug. “He was hunting it and I needed his help. He agreed to help me if I helped him, so I did.”

“I’m glad I never came across anything like that during my time in the service,” Hammer admitted. “Timberwolves and hydras and even the occasional roc were enough for my time on the frontier, and I didn’t even have to do the fighting. A fey is in a whole other league compared to a dumb monster.” He chuckled and added, “You sure you don’t have a death wish, Commander?”

Typhoon’s awkward silence seemed to bely more than words ever would, but she forced herself to break it with a shake of her head and a quick pivot of the topic. “Anyway, I got what I needed. I’ll be heading west now. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back around here, but if I’m not, I at least wanted to let you know you’re doing good by the Legion’s memory. And to thank you, again, for your help.”

“It’s the least I could do,” Hammer said, and he fanned away the platitudes with spread feathers. “Just, would you mind doing me a favor, Typhoon?” When Typhoon quirked a brow, the blacksmith gestured to the peytral protecting her breast. “At least show all the monsters and bandits and anything else that tries to kill you between here and wherever it is that you’re going that I’m just as good with ground steel as I am with skysteel. I’d hate for my work to be the reason you get killed.”

“It won’t,” Typhoon assured him. Then her red eyes fell on Sparrow again, if only for a moment. “And if you don’t mind, can I ask a favor of you as well, Hammer?”

“You could just give me an order,” Hammer teased. “Just like the old days.”

Typhoon rolled her eyes and let the quip pass without comment. Instead, she angled her head toward Sparrow. “Would you look out for her?” she asked him. “She’s been helpful to me, but she’s going to get herself killed if she keeps living like she does. She could be a useful apprentice, another set of hooves, and her magic would be great for handling hot iron. It’d get her off the streets, at the least.”

Hammer looked back at her and rubbed his neck. “Well… I’ll try, Commander. But the smithing life isn’t what she wants. She wants to be a soldier. And I’m not a soldier.”

“She doesn’t know what she wants,” Typhoon bluntly stated. “One day she’ll grow out of it, if she gets the chance. The Legion is dead, and it won’t be long before everypony who sees themselves as a legionary is dead too.”

Before Hammer had a chance to reply, Sparrow finally snapped her head upright and cast a baleful glare at Typhoon. “I don’t know what I want?” she barked, hopping off of her crate and stomping over to the pair of pegasi. “And you do? You don’t know who I am! You don’t know my life! So stop pretending that you do!”

Where awe and excitement at standing in a legionary’s presence had once been, Typhoon now saw only rage filling the young mare’s pink and blue eyes. But she didn’t let the fire of youth sway her, and she only met Sparrow’s glare with an icy look of her own. “You are not a soldier, Sparrow. You are not a legionary. You’re dreaming of something that can never happen. Do something better with your life than wasting it trying to be something you cannot.”

“I can be a soldier!” Sparrow shouted back, and her shoulders rose and fell with the beginnings of hysterics. “Nopony’s born a soldier! They train and they fight and then they are! But you won’t show me! You won’t teach me! Why won’t you teach me?!”

“Because the Legion is dead!” Typhoon snapped back, an aggravated edge breaking through her usually cool discipline. “It’s gone, don’t you understand? What are you trying to prove by clinging onto something that doesn’t exist anymore?”

“That ponies still believe in it!” Sparrow gnashed her teeth and stomped her hooves in frustration. “Fuck, Typhoon, i-it’s the only thing I believe in! Everything else has failed me or left me or used me except the Legion! A-And I’m not going to let you ruin that for me too!” She looked around the room, and suddenly her magic seized one of the swords sitting in a barrel and she brandished it, leveling the point towards Typhoon. “F-Fuck! Fuck, fight me! I-I’ll prove that I’m worthy! I’ll prove that I’m a legionary!”

Hammer and the Commander took a step back, and when Hammer tensed, Typhoon held him back with an outstretched wing and a small shake of her head. “Let me,” was all she murmured to him, and then her attention shifted back toward Sparrow. “Put the sword down,” she calmly ordered. “I’m not going to fight you.”

“Yes, you are!” Sparrow screamed, and then she swung the sword.

Typhoon didn’t have a chance to draw her sword, as the hilt was still latched into its scabbard after her flight across town, and she didn’t have her scaled blades on her wings, not anticipating to use them any time soon. But she did have her wings and reflexes honed from a lifetime of battle, and she used them to fling herself back before the point of the sword slashed through the air where she was once standing. Her hooves scuffed across the ground in the forge’s yard as she landed and found her balance, but Sparrow was already charging out to meet her with the sword in her magical grip, not deterred by her first errant swing and miss.

Icy magic brimmed to Typhoon’s wingtips as it heeded her instinctual call, but in a split second, the old soldier forced it back down, opting instead to flutter backwards again out of the range of Sparrow’s next swing and further into the yard. Rather than end the fight with magic, her wing unlatched her sword when she landed, and she drew her sword and parried Sparrow’s third swing in the same motion, sending it tumbling momentarily out of the unicorn’s grasp. When Sparrow turned her head to try and locate the sword and catch it in midair, Typhoon pushed off the ground with her legs and wings and rammed her armored shoulder into the young unicorn’s chest, catching her off balance. Though the two mares were roughly the same size, Typhoon’s strength and armored inertia was enough to send the unicorn tumbling across the ground, and she landed in a heap a short distance away.

But, undeterred and spurred on by rage, Sparrow was back on her hooves in a heartbeat, and she plucked her sword from the ground. She fully bared her teeth and growled in frustration, turning to face Typhoon once more, who calmly watched her with sword held in mouth, waiting for the young mare to make a move. She didn’t have to wait long; with another shout and lunge, Sparrow leapt forward, swinging the sword at Typhoon again, but keeping it closer to her body this time, and maintaining a stronger magical grip on the hilt as she swung.

It mattered little. Typhoon sidestepped the strike, then swept Sparrow’s legs out from underneath her with her wing. When Sparrow collapsed in front of her, Typhoon held the point of her sword to Sparrow’s jaw. “In a real fight, you’d be dead,” the soldier gruffly stated. “Put the sword down and stop before you get hurt.”

Sparrow lay on the ground panting, but only for a moment; no sooner had she reoriented herself and felt the icy point of Typhoon’s sword did she quickly summon magic to her horn and give Typhoon a rough shove to her chest. The burst of magic caught Typhoon by surprise, and she staggered backwards a half step, but it was the half step Sparrow needed to scramble back to her hooves. She didn’t say anything, only letting out a cry of anger as she swung again and again at the legionary, lashing out in blind rage, hoping to land the hit that would prove her worthy in Typhoon’s eyes.

Yet her furious strikes meant nothing against the sword of a mare who had witnessed a lifetime of battle. Typhoon parried some strikes, but she sidestepped the rest, remaining just out of reach of Sparrow’s wildly slashing sword. The moment Sparrow pushed herself too far, overextended just a little too much, the old soldier was there to close the distance. Darting inside of the unicorn’s reach, Typhoon wrapped a foreleg around Sparrow’s neck and used her armored weight to tackle and pin the mare to the ground. It was then that she touched a wingtip to the earth, and a line of ice lashed out at Sparrow’s sword, freezing it to the earth before the unicorn could grab it again, and remaining firm despite Sparrow’s attempts to wrench it free.

“Stop this,” Typhoon ordered her, speaking around the sword in her mouth, and when Sparrow tried to stand up, she pinned back the young mare’s foreleg and twisted it behind her back, causing her to yelp in pain. “The only thing you’re ready to do is die, Sparrow. You will not be a legionary. You can do many things with your life, but the one thing I will not let you do is pointlessly throw it away.”

“You don’t understand!” Sparrow shouted, writhing and gasping on the ground even as Typhoon tightened the pressure on her leg. “You… you don’t… you… aaaugh!”

For a moment, Typhoon thought Sparrow’s scream was a sign she had pulled her leg too far.

Then she saw the rock.

By the time she saw it, it was too late. A stone the size of her hoof slammed into her muzzle with a painful crunch, and the dazed legionary tumbled off of Sparrow in a feathery, flailing mess of limbs. Her vision swam, her skull rang, and she tasted blood on her tongue and felt it gurgle out of her nose long before the rest of her senses caught up with her. When they did, she hurriedly planted her legs on the ground and made to stand up, only to see Sparrow drop the rock from her magic and instead pick up Hiems Osculum from where Typhoon had dropped it.

The unicorn shivered, and tears ran down her face as her magic trembled around the hateful sword’s grip. “I… I-I-I’m n-not worthless…” she cried as tears stained her muzzle. “I’m not… I-I… I can still… c-can still…”

Her magic fizzled away, and the sword clattered to the ground, an icy patch spreading from where it fell. Sparrow followed moments later, crumpling to the dirt in a sobbing pile, burying her face in her forelegs. Her muffled cries and wails seemed to drown out everything else in the yard, even the ringing in Typhoon’s head.

Hoofsteps on grass made Typhoon turn her head, and she saw Hammer standing next to her, worriedly looking her over. “Commander… you’re bleeding. Are you alright?”

“F-Fine,” Typhoon said, tripping over the first word as blood stuck between her teeth and her lips. She pressed a wingtip against her nose and channeled her magic, numbing the swelling and clotting the break with ice. “A rag and something for the pain, please.”

“Right. As you wish, ma’am.” He moved to start, but hesitated, and his eyes fell on Sparrow. “What should we…?”

Typhoon turned her eyes toward the shaking, sniveling mare, and she felt a sharp pain threaten to rend her chest apart. She clenched her teeth, bared them for a moment through the pain, and then squeezed her eyes shut. She could only see the tears in pink and blue eyes down the length of her sword, and the desperate cries of a mare who wanted to prove her worth to an uncaring world.

“I’ll pay you for the sword,” Typhoon finally said. “And some scraps of mail. If you have saddlebags and some food for the road… great. Will save me a trip to the market before we go.”

Confusion took hold on Hammer’s face, if only for a few moments, before giving way to realization. “Commander? Are you sure?”

“No,” Typhoon admitted, but she let out a sigh and stood up anyway. “But she deserves this. And if Gale couldn’t have it… maybe I can do better with her.”