Chapter Thirteen: Moonrazed
Taking the handle in my teeth, I gave the cord a sharp pull, and the engine of the hopper roared to life. After a week of working with Guthrie, I was becoming quite adept at fixing up these flying machines. A hopper was a single-seat open rotorcraft, and I’d been spending most of my time getting familiar with them. After I’d fixed up a couple cable cars, Guthrie decided he had a good read on my abilities and moved me to the other half of his business. During the War, hoppers had been primarily used by flightless races when they visited the Griffin Commonwealth and hadn’t felt like climbing mountains to get to the centers of griffin civilization. Nowadays, they were mostly used whenever griffins wanted to get somewhere without flying or had something to transport that would be easier to toss in a basket or sling underneath the craft than carry on their person. There wasn’t much to some of them: just a seat, controls, a motor, propellors, and a minimal frame holding it all together in some cases; but they were like nothing I’d ever worked on before. I’d also experimented a bit with flying them, but never out over the edge of the skydocks or up toward the city buildings—the griffins living or working there probably wouldn’t appreciate my test flights.
Between my job fixing cable cars and hoppers for Guthrie and doing some alchemistry work on the side, I was starting to get back on my hooves. The price of my lodgings consumed most of my income, but with what was left, I’d been able to restock on ammunition and supplies; soon, I’d be equipped to head back out into the Commonwealth. I’d settled into a comfortable groove, though, and despite my worry about being so near to Gideon, I stayed in Shearpoint and kept working on hoppers. I engaged the hopper’s prop, and it tugged against the clamps holding it to the floor of Guthrie’s workshop, bobbing slightly. When I turned the engine off, I found Strake inside the workshop, staring me down.
“Doc,” he said, “Grand Marshal Gideon wants to speak with you.”
“What did I do this time?” I asked, guardedly.
My saddlebags and weapons were across the shop, more than fifteen paces away. There was no way I could get to them before Strake got to me. ERSaTS would be no help here, since he could just cast the spell himself with his own PipBeak.
“Nothing,” Strake said. “The grand marshal is not cross with you … yet.”
“What if I don’t want to speak with him?” I asked.
“Then he would become very cross with you,” Strake replied with a frown.
“I’m not going to end up in the dungeons again, am I?” I asked, and Strake’s frown deepened.
“Not unless you keep this up and refuse to come with me,” he said.
There wasn’t really anything to do but comply. There was nowhere in Shearpoint I could run from Strake, and even in a hopper I wouldn’t be able to leave the city faster than he could overtake me by flying. One small relief was that he didn’t stop me from grabbing my saddlebags and weapons before following him, but he was still leading me to Grand Marshal Gideon’s residence. He and the rest of Gideon’s enforcers could easily overpower me together, weapons or no. As we ascended the tiers of the city, Strake waited impatiently at the top of each flight of steep stairs, while I laboriously climbed up after him. The grand marshal’s residence (technically the seat of the Council of Marshals) was at the very top of Shearpoint, built against and into the mountain’s face. I’d seen it once before, after being released from prison, and had been eager to get as far away from it as possible. Strake didn’t lead me in through the way I had left last time—a good sign—and we ended up in a room completely different from a prison cell.
It was not dissimilar to the lodge where I’d met Gabby of Greta’s Grenadiers. The walls were lined with wood paneling, and a fire was crackling away in a fireplace built into one of the walls. Elaborate rugs covered the floor and banners were hung around the room, one for each of the Commonwealth’s roosts. A newer banner hung prominently on the wall, less faded and larger than the others, that bore Gideon’s crest: the silhouette of a griffin’s head crossed by lightning bolts with “GM XV” over it. Gideon himself sat in a plush high-backed chair behind a fancy wooden desk piled with all manner of bric-a-brac.
“Ah, Doc, thank you for coming,” Gideon said far more warmly than the last time we’d spoken. “You seem to be adjusting well to a life in Shearpoint. Were you planning on putting down permanent roots?”
“No,” I replied as I took a seat across from him, suspecting a trap. “I’ll be moving on soon.”
“How about now?” Gideon asked. The warmth hadn’t left his voice yet, so I didn’t think he was threatening me. With the grand marshal, it was hard to tell.
“It’s as good as any other time, I suppose,” I said.
“Good, because I have a job proposition for you,” Gideon said as he leaned back in his chair.
“What kind of job proposition?” I asked suspiciously.
“I want you to go to Moonraze and help … ‘reform’ the government there,” Gideon said.
“I thought you didn’t want me interfering in griffin politics anymore,” I reminded him.
“As an independent party, yes,” Gideon said, “but I see no reason why you couldn’t be useful under my direction. You’ve already proven how much mayhem you’re capable of bringing to a system, and this talent of yours would serve us well in a roost called Moonraze. Tell me, do you know anything about it?”
“I was warned away from it because it’s ruled by mythologists,” I said, thinking back to the barge captain’s warning two months earlier.
“Quite right,” Gideon said with a nod. “All roost governments are, of course, entitled to run things as they see fit. However, the situation in Moonraze has gotten out of claw. I did not fight to make the Griffin Commonwealth a respectable civilization only to allow barbarism within its own roosts. You will go to Moonraze, enter it, and wait to be contacted by my agent already within the city. From there, do what you can to topple Moonraze’s government and replace it with something more … agreeable.”
“Hold on,” I objected, “I haven’t agreed to do your job yet. Don’t I have a choice?”
“You always have a choice,” Gideon said smoothly, in a way that made it clear I really didn’t. “This way, however, you will be rewarded. Handsomely.”
“All right,” I said, “I’ll do it. But I don’t want to end up in your dungeons again just because I didn’t do things exactly the way you wanted.”
“In this situation, there are many acceptable outcomes. I’m sure you can tell the difference between a good or bad one,” Gideon said ominously. “Welcome aboard, Doc.”
***
I was out of Shearpoint before night fell. Gideon provided me with a sky-chariot to fly me to Moonraze, so instead of spending weeks meandering down the road and through valleys, it took only four days to reach the roost’s outskirts. Gideon was in a hurry to topple Moonraze’s government, though I had my suspicions that his sending of me to help that effort might serve a dual purpose; if I died in the process, that would suit Gideon just fine. Despite this grim inference, I’d agreed to the job and couldn’t very well go back on my word, at least not until I was out of sight of the griffin who’d flown me here.
Besides my transport, Gideon had also provided me with some clothing and equipment to help me blend in with the locals of Moonraze: raider attire. I traded my Stable jumpsuit and doctor’s coat for leather barding (decorated with far too many spikes to lay down comfortably in) over top of a baggy jumpsuit that concealed my PipBeak. The disguise had clearly been intended for a griffin, so I’d made some alterations during the flight; they weren’t perfect, but the task had helped keep my mind off how far away the ground was. I’d also been given a ripper to defend myself in close combat and had kept my shotgun on me. Once we arrived, I wrapped up my other weapons and gear in my doctor’s coat and stashed them inside a defunct refrigerator in an abandoned general store outside the city.
I could tell where Moonraze was before I even saw it, tipped off by the smoke diffused in the air over the mountain peaks between which the roost was nestled. As I got closer, the general haze resolved into distinct columns, some rising from industrial chimneys, others from within the city’s streets. A narrow pass led to Moonraze, and a scrap metal wall had been constructed across it with guard shacks on the slopes to either side. A griffin in raider armor flew down from one of them and landed in front of me, fingering the trigger on her shotgun.
“A pony!” she said in surprise. “What in Ishtva’s name are you doing here? I thought you were all dead.”
“Not quite,” I replied. “I’ve been moving through the Commonwealth, and when I heard about Moonraze, I knew I had to come here.”
“Oh really? Why’s that?” the griffin asked.
“Is it true there aren’t any laws here?” I asked, hoping Strake’s advice before sending me out had been good.
“Strength is law,” the griffin said like a mantra.
“Good,” I replied quickly.
“Well, I suppose I could let you in,” the griffin said as she scratched the feathers under her chin, where the strap of her helmet had ruffled them. “I’d have to open the gate for you, though, and nothin’s free.”
Her shotgun was no longer pointed at me, but I had no doubt she could have it ready again in seconds. I could probably kill or maim her in that time with my ripper and these mythologists respected strength alone, but I didn’t think I should start attacking them before I was even inside the city. Instead, I acknowledged her hint and fished some caps out of my saddlebags, tossing them to her with my magic. She quickly snatched them out of the air with a claw and flashed me a grin before flapping over the wall. A second later, the door in the scrap wall screeched open and I entered Moonraze at last.
During my time in the Griffin Commonwealth, I’d become accustomed to its differences from Equestria. There were still differences in Moonraze’s architectural style that marked it as a city for flying creatures rather than ponies … but there was something familiar about it, too. The other roosts I’d visited, while they hadn’t been equal to their heydays, hadn’t been mostly in ruins. Moonraze looked like it had been hit by a megaspell, even though the radiation level here wasn’t much different than elsewhere in the Commonwealth.
It hadn’t been a megaspell that had torn down Moonraze: it had been the griffins living in it. Since the megaspells had fallen, raider gangs had fought over the roost until they’d been subdued by “civilized” griffins, who really weren’t all that different at heart. Raiders had eventually been allowed to filter back into the system if they promised to reform, promises that lasted only as long as it took to pass through the gate. The depravity of raider pseudo-culture, with flayed bodies and grotesque examples of violence, wasn’t on display here. However, one could easily believe those things still existed in isolated alleys and the dark places of the city. Every griffin I passed on the street looked ready to kill at a moment’s notice—and yet, they didn’t. Somehow, their society here among the ruins still functioned, at least for the time being. Grand Marshal Gideon was worried what would happen when the façade broke. That was why I’d been sent here.
Gideon had said that his agent would contact me, so presumably he’d had some way to notify them I was coming. For the time being, I tried to fit in as best as a pony could in a griffin city. Wandering around might look suspicious and could make it more difficult for my contact to find me, so I entered a shop that looked out on to a prominent square and ordered some food. The noodles I got from the vending bot were overly greasy and salty, but they were something to occupy my mouth and my stomach as I waited for somegriffin to find me. I assumed I was the only pony in the city, so it shouldn’t be too hard a task for them.
“Hey! Fresh meat!” a griffin called as I rose to take away my empty bowl.
It took me a moment to realize he was talking about me and not that somegriffin had dragged in a recent kill.
“What do you want?” I asked as he sauntered over confidently, backed up by several other griffins following in his wake.
“You’re not from around here,” he stated as he came to a halt a mere pace away.
“What gave you that impression?” I retorted. “Is it perhaps the fact that I’m a pony?”
“Real funny. How ‘bout I fly you up nice and high and see how well you float?” the griffin said as he scowled at me.
“I’ll pass,” I said as I moved past him to take my bowl away, hoping that would be the end of it. Naturally, it wasn’t.
“Hey!” the griffin shouted at me. “I challenge you to a duel!”
Slowly, I turned around to face him. His shouting had caused quite a commotion, and every griffin in the plaza was watching us. I’d been warned that something like this could happen. Apparently, duels were common in Moonraze, which only stood to reason since mythologism was founded on the idea of survival of the fittest. Strength was law and defined everyone’s position in the hierarchy, so it was inevitable that a newcomer would have to fight in order to determine where they fit. I had been hoping to wait until I’d at least had a chance to meet Gideon’s agent before getting pulled into this kind of situation, but I didn't see a way out. If word spread that a pony was in a duel, it might even draw in my contact more easily, so this wouldn’t be a complete loss—assuming I won, that is.
“You and me, groundbound. Borghan’s Pit,” the griffin set the terms of the duel.
“Lead the way,” I told him as I threw my bowl back on the table.
He did so, though his friends formed a rear guard to make sure I didn’t shoot him in the back on the way to the duel. Some of the griffins in the square followed as well, while others left hurriedly, presumably to fetch friends in other parts of the city. This duel with a pony was going to draw quite a crowd, even if they were all betting against me. The path I was led along took me through collapsed buildings and skirted the city’s factories, the gaps between which were all blocked off with high fences and fields of razor wire. Our destination was an old sports stadium that had been converted into an arena. There was another battle going on as we arrived, held between a griffin with a long spear and several shambling, long-necked creatures with webbed feet.
The griffin who’d challenged me took care of all of the formalities, and I was led to a position overlooking the fighting pit where “Challengee” had been crudely painted. The griffin already within the arena continued their fight, spearing the creatures below while avoiding their snapping jaws. As their fight dragged on, the arena began to fill with griffins flying in from around the city to witness my duel. The griffin in the arena noticed and paused, looking around, before looking up to a private box at one end of the stands. Within reclined a griffin in a heavy suit of mismatched power armor, his beak replaced by a mechanical one. If not for the feathers of his face, he could easily be mistaken for a griffin-shaped machine. The power armored griffin slammed an armored claw down upon his throne as a signal to the fighter. The spear-wielder gave a curt nod before darting around the arena in a dizzying display, the creatures below vainly snapping at her, until finally she swung around and impaled all three survivors through their heads with her spear. A cheer went up from the crowd and she took a bow before retrieving her spear and leaving the arena. While a team of griffins rushed out to remove the corpses, another griffin flew up over the fighting pit, holding a microphone in one claw.
“Hens and cockerels! You’ve all come to witness a duel unlike any other we’ve ever had here in the great and terrible Borghan’s Pit!” the griffin announced dramatically, hyping up the crowd. “In a few moments, you’ll witness a fight between Gavyn, bloodsworn warrior of the great Lord Galen Imsmaeleon Ripper—”
The crowd erupted in cheers, but not for my opponent. The power armored griffin rose from his throne and extended his forelimbs up, mechanical claws outstretched before clamping them swiftly shut with an audible clank.
“The skies are ours!” he yelled, and the griffins in the arena echoed the mantra while mimicking his movements.
“And a pony, if you can believe it!” the announcer continued her introduction. “Let’s see how this dirteating outsider fares! No guns! No magic! Fight!”
Those last rules caught me off guard, but I understood why Gideon had given me a ripper. It was a weapon I could wield with my griffin claw and still have a chance of beating my opponent. I still couldn’t use ERSaTS, since even though it wouldn’t use my magic directly, I didn’t want to let the griffins know I had a PipBeak.
Gavyn jumped from his perch into the arena, and I followed suit. It was a farther drop than I’d anticipated, and the impact jarred my body. I had no time to recover from the jolt, for Gavyn was nearly on top of me in an instant, wielding a long knife in each claw. I backpedaled and drew my ripper with my griffin claw, flipping off the safety and engaging the blade. The chainsword roared to life, and I swung it in front of me to keep Gavyn at a distance.
I was in a nonideal situation with my back to the wall of the arena, so I tried to circle around my opponent. Gavyn had driven me back aggressively at the start of the fight for a reason, though, and wasn’t willing to let me get around him. He kept me against the edge of the arena as we circled, and I soon had to give up on that plan or end up forced down a corridor. I used my forehoof to kick up a cloud of dust into Gavyn’s face and charged toward him. My ripper’s spinning blades didn’t strike their target, but they did catch one of his knives and send it spinning away. His other blade struck my prosthetic claws and bounced off the metal.
I had the momentum now and pushed Gavyn back by threatening him with my ripper. He responded by spreading his wings and launching into the air. He circled in the air above me, trying to disorient me, before pulling throwing knives from pouches at his side and flinging them down at me. It was difficult to stay out of the way of the knives while craning my neck upward without becoming disoriented, but I somehow managed it.
His knife supply couldn’t last forever, and eventually he gave up on the idea of puncturing me from a distance. Gavyn began to swoop down toward me, slashing with his long knife while I reached up with my ripper. Neither of us managed to make any contact with the other, each out of the reach of his opponent's weapons, but we kept up the dance for several minutes.
Suddenly, Gavyn gave up on harassing me from above and swooped away, and I realized this had been his plan the whole time. In swinging our weapons at each other as he passed, I’d moved away from where his throwing knives were embedded in the arena’s ground. Now Gavyn was darting straight toward them, and I was too far away to stop him before he could pick them back up. Or was I?
I stretched my prosthetic limb back and then threw it forward with as much force as I could muster, releasing my ripper at the right moment that it went tumbling end over end toward Gavyn’s backside. He slowed momentarily to grab his knives and the ripper closed the distance. He looked back over his shoulder, alerted by the chugging motor—soon enough to see the handheld chainsaw coming at him, but not soon enough to get out of the way. He dodged, but the ripper struck his left wing. The ripper’s blade had begun to slow as soon as I’d let go of the trigger, but it took several seconds to come to a complete halt; it was still spinning when the blades chewed through Gavyn’s wing. With a sudden loss of flightworthiness, he skidded across the ground with the ripper still embedded in him.
I rushed to close the distance and wrapped my prosthetic claw around the ripper’s handle. The blades were clogged with bloody feathers, but they spun again as soon as my grasp depressed the trigger and Gavyn’s wing separated completely from his body. The griffin swore and threw a knife at me, but it embedded itself in my barding without going any deeper. I kicked aside the long knife he’d dropped and circled around to stand in front of him, pointing my ripper at his baleful stare.
“Fi-nish him! Fi-nish him! Fi-nish him!” the crowd’s chanting sounded over the putter of my ripper.
I looked down at Gavyn lying pitifully in the dirt, the remains of his wing bleeding profusely. He was beaten, so was it necessary for me to kill him? Surely all duels in Moonraze didn’t end in death, otherwise there’d be far fewer griffins left alive after the process to decide who was the strongest.
“Yield,” I told Gavyn, and he looked up at me with a mixture of surprise, relief, and disgust.
It took him several long seconds to war with his pride and decide what to do, but eventually he bowed his head and raised his open claws to me, apparently a sign of submission. I turned off my ripper and the blades spun to a halt. Almost immediately, boos and jeers erupted from the crowd that had been so enthusiastic a moment earlier.
“The pony … has won,” the announcer said hesitantly, looking confused before flying over to Lord Galen Imsmaeleon Ripper’s box.
While they conferred, the crowd continued to boo at me, and I was getting a very bad feeling.
“Cages! Cages! Cages! Cages!” they were chanting now, and they slowly fell silent as Lord Galen stood and the announcer held her microphone up in front of his beak.
“The pony has won, but hasn’t the guts to finish the job, as expected from a groundbound!” Lord Galen boomed and the speakers placed around the stadium shrieked and crackled. “Take him to the cages!”
Before I knew what was happening, griffins were swarming me so quickly that I had no chance to fight back.
***
Everything I had was stripped from me, other than my jumpsuit—a small mercy, as it allowed me to keep my PipBeak hidden. The cages I was taken to were in the industrial part of the city, past the fences I’d walked by on the way to Borghan’s Pit. On this side of the fences, the vibe of Moonraze was different. There were fewer griffins in raider armor, more of them unarmed and wearing jumpsuits like mine. As worn down as they seemed, they still gave me disdainful looks as I was led away between the factories whose stacks spewed smoke up into the air. It reminded me of the Stacks of the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad, a desolate and depressing place of industry closed off from the rest of the city. The cages I was brought to were in an abandoned sofa warehouse and assembled from spare pipes. Several other cages were occupied by sullen griffins who watched me get locked up without much in the way of reaction.
The griffins that had brought me here left as soon as I was locked up, almost as if I no longer existed. Shortly after they’d filed away, other curious griffin workers arrived to gawk at the only pony they’d ever seen. I took to examining my prison while they watched. There was barely enough space to turn around as I closely looked at the joints of the cage. It was well-assembled despite being constructed from scrap, so there would be no breaking through the bars. Conversely, the lock appeared trivial to crack even without a proper pick, but I left it alone for the time being. Even if I did escape my cage, I had no idea how I would escape Moonraze, whose only exit by hoof was guarded and on the other side of a city that had just called for my imprisonment.
After a little while, I noticed that one of the gawkers had stuck around while those that arrived before him had left. There was nothing distinguishing about him, yet he seemed familiar, although I couldn’t place him. Gradually, griffins grew tired of staring and left and no new onlookers arrived. Only then did the griffin who’d stuck around approach my cage.
“Hey, I know you,” he whispered through the bars, but the griffins in the other cages didn’t seem to care we were having a conversation. “You saved me from raiders outside the roost a couple months ago.”
With this new context, I was finally able to pinpoint when I’d last seen this griffin. The closest I’d been to Moonraze prior to today was when I’d purged Distribution Station 5 of raiders, and this griffin had been there, about to have his wing cut off by a ripper-axe until I’d intervened. Why he’d come here after he’d escaped those raiders, I couldn’t puzzle out.
“I’m Rael,” he introduced himself, “Don’t worry. Like you, I’m not one of … them. I’m here in secret, on a mission.”
Of course, it made sense now. Rael was Gideon’s agent in Moonraze.
“I’m Doc,” I said, though he probably knew that already. “I’m glad you found me. Do you have a plan for how to get the mythologists out of power?”
“Not a plan, per se,” Rael said. “So far I’ve just been observing and carefully spreading the word.”
Not only did Grand Marshal Gideon want me to assist in overthrowing Moonraze’s government, apparently he also expected me to do the work of planning it out. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Everyone always expected me to figure things out for them.
“How much of the city would be willing to rise up against the current government?” I asked.
“Well, most of the griffins here in Downtown, probably, so three-quarters of the population,” Rael said. “A lot of them are still mythologists, though, even if they’re not quite as radical as Galen’s followers.”
“It may be the best we can hope for, at least to start the roost changing,” I said, and Rael hesitantly nodded. “Do the griffins Downtown have any access to weapons?”
“Of course not,” he said. “Do you really think an armed revolution will be necessary to change Moonraze?”
“I can’t think of anything else that’ll work,” I said. “Galen’s raiders have to either be destroyed or fought off. Violence is the only thing they understand and respect, so we have to play by those rules, at least until we push them out.”
“I suppose that’s the practical thing to do,” Rael said, though he seemed uneasy.
“I can’t do much from in here,” I said, looking at the bars, “But it shouldn’t be difficult for me to escape. If you start spreading the word of revolution and bring me more information, I’ll try to think up a plan.”
“They should let you out to work,” Rael said as he looked anxiously over his shoulder to see if any other griffins had come to gawk at the captured pony. “I’ll find you then.”
Rael disappeared, running off between the factory blocks, and I sat down to think about how a gang of ragtag griffins, weary and unarmed, could overthrow an entrenched, well-equipped raider ruling class.
***
Rael was right about one thing, at least: the raiders did let me out of my cage to work. The work I was assigned to—hauling carts along tracks within the city’s forges—was long, hot, and exhausting, but not mentally taxing. It gave me plenty of time to formulate and discard plans for how to bring down the mythologists. Rael often walked alongside me, carrying bundles of materials or tools so that any passing overseers wouldn’t have reason to complain. He shared what he’d gleaned on the situation in Moonraze and his progress in recruiting other griffins to the cause.
Progress was slow but promising; as Rael spread the word, other griffins continued the work by spreading it farther. Fortunately, snitching was something that mythologism actively discouraged, seeing it as weak and cowardly, so the chance of our plans leaking to Moonraze’s government was minimal even as our numbers grew. Within a few weeks, most of Downtown was ready to rise up against the Uptown griffins. The remaining problem was how they were going to do it without the revolt becoming a massacre.
Weapons seemed a dead end for a long time. Makeshift weapons such as clubs were as easy to obtain as in any ruined city, but they couldn’t fight the mythologists with clubs alone. Any armories and stashes in Downtown, including the abandoned Lockbox, had been emptied long ago, so we wouldn’t be finding anything there. There were factories in Downtown that produced firearms, but a close eye was kept on these by overseers whenever workers were in the building. Everything was carefully counted, so any guns that went missing would quickly be discovered.
There was, however, one source of firepower that the raiders had neglected to consider a threat. A week into my incarceration, I learned about an old hangar at the skydocks that was housing a far-from-flightworthy airship. It would take a lot of work to make if functional, but it still had its weaponry; the raiders hadn’t even bothered to remove the ammunition from it, since it was incompatible with any other weapons they had. That was the good news—the hard part would be making it airworthy. The repairs would take time, but I started planning around it as the rebels got to work fixing the ship up whenever they had spare time or were able to slip away. It would be too dangerous for me to try going to the hangar personally, but I lent my knowledge of mechanics and electronics however I could when the rebels came to me with questions.
An airship alone, impressive as it was, wouldn’t be enough to win the day. It might’ve worked if the rebels were fighting ponies, but griffins could simply fly up, seize the airship, and make matters even worse. They needed personal weapons to defend themselves against boarders, which were only accessible outside of Downtown. We also couldn’t just fly the airship up without attracting attention from the guards. What our plan needed was a distraction, and I had an idea for how to draw the attention of every raider in Moonraze.
“Hey! Guard!” I yelled at a raider protecting an exit on the borders of Downtown.
“What are you doing over here?” he yelled back as he pointed his battle saddle machine guns at me. “You’re supposed to be at work or in the cages!”
“I want to duel,” I told him as I stopped up short, lest he shoot me and the whole plan go awry.
“What, me?” he asked cockily. “Once wasn’t enough?”
“Even if I didn’t land a killing blow, I won that duel,” I said evenly. “I want another duel to get me out of here. This time, I promise I’ll go all the way. I challenge Lord Galen Imsmaeleon Ripper.”
“You must be mad,” he scoffed, looking me up and down, comparing me to his hulking, power armored lord. “But the rules of Moonraze are clear, and I can’t stop you from throwing your life away.”
Even so, he had to go away and check that Lord Galen was willing to fight me. When he returned, it was with good news, at least for the plan. Word spread even more quickly than before my last fight, and I saw plenty of griffins flying overhead to Borghan’s Pit as I was led there for my fight with Moonraze’s ruler. The stadium was packed to bursting when I arrived, with griffins perched anywhere there was a spare spot to roost. When I asked, I was denied any form of weapon and was forced to the arena starting position.
“Hens and cockerels!” the announcer called into her microphone. “You all remember a few weeks ago when this dirteater fought in holy mighty Borghan’s Pit but failed to kill his opponent! Now he’s returned to seek his death against our great and powerful leader, Lord Galen Imsmaeleon Ripper!”
The crowd went wild at the mention of their ruler, and he appeared from his box, jumping down into the arena with a loud thud as his armor struck the ground, slowed only slightly by the massive mechanical wings on his back and the maneuvering jets beneath them.
“This is a no-holds-barred fight to the death!” the announcer said as she looked at me. “Fight!”
“No-holds-barred,” I assumed, meant that I was permitted to use any weapons at my disposal, even magic. I would need it if I was going to defeat Galen without a weapon, which currently seemed like an impossibility. This condition also meant that Galen could use any weapon at his disposal, and rockets streaked from his armor the moment I landed in the arena. They weren’t heat seeking or enchanted to track their target, and I teleported out of their path and fled from the blast.
Lord Galen didn’t try that trick again, either because he was out of rockets or because he wanted a more entertaining fight. Instead, he used the thrusters on his power armor to lift himself off the ground and fired bolas at me from a wrist-mounted weapon. The wire stretched between them was sharp enough to shred flesh, but not metal. I deduced this fact as one wrapped around my prosthetic arm, ripping apart the sleeve but doing no other harm. Another sheared through my tail, cutting it off short, and one of the balls clipped a hindhoof. Galen looked disappointed that his attack had failed to achieve anything meaningful and switched his tactic to flying directly toward me.
I’d started my gallop just trying to evade his attacks, but now I had a destination in mind. In one of the corridors leading out of the arena, I’d spotted a pile of weapons, obviously placed there to tempt me. It was going to work, too; although I saw nothing particularly useful, having something with which to fight was better than nothing. As Galen swooped down toward me, I used ERSaTS to put on a burst of speed and escape his claws. I ducked into the corridor where the weapons were waiting and grabbed the first thing with my magic that I saw, a badly nicked sword sticking out of the pile with its hilt exposed.
The instant I levitated the sword, I felt a jolt of magic run through me. A gem set into the blade of the sword that had been dull and lifeless before I’d touched its hilt with my magic began to glow a brilliant blue, and the blade took on a more subdued glow along its whole length. It was some kind of enchanted sword that required a unicorn’s magic to activate; it was likely the griffins had had no idea and simply written it off as a dull sword to throw into the pile. Galen rounded the corner and, seeing I was trapped in the corridor, pounced at me. Magic had been building along the sword since the moment I’d picked it up, and I allowed it to release. Lightning coursed from the tip, striking Galen squarely in the chest and flinging him back with such force that he tumbled end over end across half the arena.
Lord Galen stopped himself as he struck the ground, digging in his mechanical claws and rending deep gouges into the earth. His power armor’s wings twitched uncontrollably, malfunctioning from the blast of magical lightning, and he folded them away with his claws before turning his baleful glare back to me. I was galloping toward him now with the sword held in front of me, powering itself back up. The armor on his shoulders shifted, and he fired a grenade at me. I teleported away as it exploded into fire that burned far longer than it should have. Two more grenades followed, leaving burning patches of the arena where I couldn’t travel.
I skidded to a halt and let the sword release its magic again, sending another stream of lightning toward Galen. Even without wings, his thrusters were active, and he used them to propel himself back onto his hindlegs, letting the lightning pass harmlessly before him and strike the arena wall instead. With more time required to build up another lightning strike, Galen charged me. Using ERSaTS, I dodged his massive claws as they nearly clipped me, and I skirted his power armored side. As I passed by one of his thrusters, I used my magic to increase its already high temperature until it overheated and sputtered out. Galen tried to regain control as his other thruster continued to fire and nearly flipped him over, and I used the opportunity to make my escape from close range.
Galen spun around at me, enraged, and fired more bolas at me, but his shots were wild and flew over my head. Even without his thrusters, the motors in his armor made him fast, and he was soon on top of me again, swinging at me with his claws. The sword was only partially charged, but I released its magic directly into his claw, which lost power temporarily and fell short of my body. Using ERSaTS, I targeted Galen’s power armor and let out quick bursts of lightning, but that proved to be the wrong move.
They caused a little mayhem but not enough to slow him appreciably, and he reached out with a giant claw and snapped my sword. As the blade shattered, the magic became unpredictable, and I dropped it from my magical grasp before it did me any harm. With his other claw, Galen grabbed me without squeezing hard enough to crush or slice and lifted me up to face him.
“Your pony withardry is nodding compared do dah mighd of griffinth,” he slurred, his mechanical beak incooperative thanks to one of my lightning strikes.
The crowd was cheering their lord’s victory so loudly and they were so fixated on him that it took them longer than it should have to notice the airship beginning to hover over the stadium. The rebels aboard, having succeeded in killing the few guards who hadn’t come to watch the spectacle, had managed to launch undetected and secured weapons from an armory near Downtown. Now, they let loose the full armaments of the airship upon the packed spectators. Missiles and minigun rounds tore through the mythologists as they looked up in horror at their doom. Lord Galen turned his eyes skyward in time to see the airship just moments before anti-machine rounds tore through his power armor as if it were made of paper. His claws relaxed as he died, and I was able to slip away from his corpse and out of the line of fire as quickly as I could. The workers of Downtown were reaping their vengeance on their oppressors, and it was sheer luck that I hadn’t been consumed by it already.
***
After the attack on Borghan’s Pit and the death of Lord Galen Imsmaeleon Ripper, the rest was trivial. Not all the ruling raiders had been killed, but after the initial slaughter caused some survivors to flee, there weren’t enough left to put up an adequate fight. Strange as it seemed to me, they stayed in Moonraze and accepted their fate, sentenced to Downtown until the city could be rearranged. They genuinely believed in the tenets of mythologism; if they’d been beaten, then they’d accept that their victors were inherently better and stronger than them—at least until a challenge could be made. A new government was in the making, and with many of the leadership roles being filled by non-mythologists, change was on the way for Moonraze. That fulfilled my mission for Gideon as far as I was concerned, so I sought out Rael to make sure I was allowed to leave the city and would be rewarded for this incredibly hazardous job. I found him near the square in front of what had been Lord Galen’s palace, watching griffins remove corpses of other griffins from crane hooks.
“I pray this will be an end to such things,” he said as I approached.
“What did they do?” I asked, though it wasn’t hard to guess.
“Mostly they stood against Galen and refused to accept his rules,” Rael said, “Or they caught him in a bad mood. That one there was discovered to be an agent of Grand Marshal Gideon sent here to overthrow Lord Galen.”
“Gideon had two agents in the city, then,” I said. “Looks like he was smart to have a backup.”
“Two agents?” Rael asked me in confusion. “Are you an agent of Gideon?”
“I thought you were,” I told him, realizing I’d never actually asked him about the Grand Marshal. Our paths and goals had aligned, but perhaps not for the same reason.
“Good heavens, no,” Rael said vehemently. “I came here as a missionary to spread the teachings of Rok to these misled souls. I wish it could have been accomplished without violence, but Rok does teach that violence is sometimes justified in order to achieve peace. Whether this counts as defense …”
Rael raised his claws to indicate that he was unsure whether what we had done was justified by his faith and was experiencing a spiritual conflict.
“Good luck with … that,” I told Rael, gesturing vaguely. “Maybe we’ll meet again someday, under happier circumstances.”
“Maybe we will,” Rael said wistfully. “Farewell, Doc, and may you bless and be blessed by those around you.”
Leaving the Rokkist acolyte to his contemplation, I departed Moonraze. I’d found a shotgun to replace my missing one, and the rest of my possessions were waiting for me outside the roost. Once I had those, I’d find Gideon’s agent who’d delivered me here (assuming they hadn’t left me for dead) and be on my way back to the Pleasure Coast, reequipped and ready for whatever lay ahead.
Level Up
New Quest: A City on the Sea – Return to the Pleasure Coast.
New Perk: Well-Rounded – You’ve learned some new skills in Shearpoint to round out your repertoire. +3 to Electronics and Pilot.
Alchemistry +2
Alteration Magic +2
Athletics +1
Electronics +6
Manipulation Magic +2
Melee Weapons +2
Pilot +7
Repair +4