Though Sparrow emerged into the fading daylight only seconds after Typhoon, the aging mare was already gone by the time her eyes adjusted to the light, carried away on her strong, soldierly wings. But, given that she was the only unicorn in a camp of thousands of pegasi who didn’t see her as an equal to be respected, the young mare with the mismatched eyes sighed and picked a direction to wander at random, hoping that maybe she could follow the excited whisperings of the legionaries to track down their idol. The camp buzzed with energy and excitement, and as the meal hour drew near, that buzz only redoubled into an excited frenzy as the legionaries of Legate Winds’ legion gossiped over Typhoon’s sudden appearance amongst their ranks like a class of excited schoolfillies.
It was only after an hour of frustrating and fruitless searching that Sparrow realized she was looking in the wrong place to begin with. Given Typhoon’s reaction to Winds and Tern showering her with praise and making their pitch to her to become the empress of a Cirra reborn, the last place the old and weary soldier would want to be was in camp, surrounded by the adulations of her adoring fans. It did make Sparrow a little self-conscious to realize how she was included in that group, and she did wilt a bit at the edge of the legion’s camp when she wondered whether Typhoon would spurn her now that she knew the old soldier’s history. Would Typhoon still let her squire for her now that the cat was out of the bag, or would she fly off and leave her behind?
That fear clawed at Sparrow’s stomach as she started nosing her way through the trees. Hopefully Typhoon hadn’t already flown away and abandoned her entirely. A sour part of Sparrow’s mind grumbled at another part that reminded her that, if worse came to worst, Boiling Springs was only a few days’ hike back the way she came.
But, whether by luck or something else, Sparrow did ultimately find the old soldier leaning up against a tree quietly eating her trail rations, staring out at nothing in particular through the trees that surrounded her. Typhoon’s ear flicked back in Sparrow’s direction as soon as she heard the soft fall of the unicorn’s hooves on the ground, and she swallowed the bite of her meal before asking without turning around, “Did they not feed you?”
“I didn’t ask,” Sparrow ultimately said with a shrug, not that Typhoon saw it, and she walked forward to sit down at the base of a tree facing the legionary. “I wanted to know where you flew off to.”
Typhoon had already put another piece of dried flowers and bread in her muzzle, though she didn’t bother waiting to respond. “Why?” she asked around the mouthful of meal. “I’m your trainer, not your chaperone.”
“Yeah, well let’s just say that being the only mare with less than six limbs and a stick on her head was making me feel like the odd one out.” Sparrow sighed and frowned. “They won’t respect me. I’m just a stupid filly playing soldier to them. They probably only let me into their camp because I was with you.”
After a moment, Typhoon shrugged. “Respect has to be earned,” she said. “The respect of the Legion is hard to earn.”
“Can’t earn it if I don’t get the chance,” Sparrow grumbled. Her horn flickered to life and she started rummaging through her bags for her own set of rations to have her meager dinner alongside Typhoon, and as her magic unwrapped some of her bread, she hesitantly parted her lips. “Typhoon?”
“Hm.”
“What happened with your brother?”
The older mare paused at the question, her mouth open as Sparrow interrupted her from taking a bite of her dinner. She closed her jaw and her lips pressed together into a thin line for several seconds, and her ruby red eyes scanned across the dirt and the blades of grass on the ground. “How much do you know about my dad—Hurricane’s family?” she asked, answering the question by posing another to the young mare sitting across from her.
“Apparently nothing, if I didn’t even know you were his daughter when you told me your name,” Sparrow groused. “I know that one of his foals was the Commander of the Equestrian Legion, which I just learned is you, and that another is Queen Platinum the Third. And now I know that he had a third foal that I never heard about before?”
Typhoon slowly nodded, and she shifted to a more comfortable position against the tree. “Nopony in the Legion liked to talk about him. Nor really anypony in Equestria, for that matter. Maybe if your parents were unicorns, then you would have heard about him.” As Sparrow questioningly cocked her head, Typhoon subconsciously gave her wings a little flutter and pressed her forehooves together. “When our father was off in search of a new home to escape the eternal winter, there was a group of discontented legates and praetorians who felt that it would be better to fly back across the sea and fight the griffons for our old homelands rather than trying to find yet another safe haven to the west. But they needed somepony with a claim to the title of Emperor to get the rest of the pegasi to fall in line, and with Hurricane gone, they went to his son.”
“And he accepted?” Sparrow asked, and when Typhoon slowly nodded in affirmation, she sharply frowned. “But Hurricane wasn’t dead. Why would he do that if your dad was still alive?”
“Because Cyclone was a teenaged colt with a fiery temper who grew up with dreams of glory to match the accomplishments of our father,” Typhoon bitterly remarked. “Remember, he and I were born and raised shortly after Hurricane led what was left of the Cirran Empire across the sea to flee from the griffons. Hurricane was surrounded by legacy and reverence, so much so that he always felt smothered by it. But to us, it was something we measured ourselves by. We wanted to be as great as our father, if not better, to live up to his name.” She shook her head, and when she traced her hoof across the ground, it left a thin line of ice where the metal touched the dirt. “When the legates made promises of glory to Cyclone if he picked up the title of Emperor, he accepted without hesitation. And I will admit, if they had come to me instead, I would have given it serious consideration. I might even have accepted as well. I don’t know.”
Ice burst out from under the old soldier’s hoof, startling Sparrow and seemingly even surprising Typhoon, who immediately stomped it into the dirt. “The point is,” she said, and this time her eyes locked with the young unicorn’s, “Cyclone betrayed Cirra, our parents, and me because somepony poisoned him with that title. He arranged a trap to get me out of the picture, started a civil war, and invaded the Diamond Kingdoms when trying to get them to bow to Cirra to make up his armies to fight the griffons. It only stopped because our father happened to return from his search just as the fighting began to escalate and there were enough soldiers loyal to him to stomp it out. When the dust settled, the unicorn king was dead, our mother was slain, Cyclone was forced into exile… and captivity had made me a different mare.”
The cold, shivering silence of that icy and ominous statement seemed to sap the warmth out of the air, and Sparrow felt a shiver run down her spine. “I… guess I can see why you didn’t want the centurion to talk about that.”
Typhoon curtly nodded, and after a moment, she shifted her attention back to her hooves and her evening meal. “I lost my mother and my brother because somepony tried to summon the specter of a dead empire with that title. Countless ponies lost their lives. And now I see it happening again, only the legates this time want me to be their empress, not my brother.”
“But you’re not a filly anymore,” Sparrow countered, and she was met by the raising of one of Typhoon’s eyebrows. “You learned how to lead, right? You were the Commander of the Legion for years. You’re older than both the centurion and the legate. They wouldn’t be able to manipulate you into doing something bad.”
“If I took that title then there would be no going back,” Typhoon said, and a sharp frown creased her muzzle. “Equestria would be broken forever. The pegasi would abandon it in favor of flying behind a flag of soldiers and war. And what happens when Everfree stabilizes and looks to bring the frontier back under its control, only to find a nation of warriors on its border idolizing the militarism of Cirra?”
Sparrow winced at the question, because she knew the answer even if she didn’t want to believe it. “If you were the one in charge of it, then you could find a way to make things work.”
“I am nearly sixty years old,” Typhoon plainly stated. “I have pushed my body to its limits for most of my life and suffered painful injuries that I still bear the scars from. I don’t know how much longer I have left, but I make no delusions that I will live long enough to die surrounded by great grandfoals.” She let out a hollow sigh and fanned one of her wings, her eyes idly looking over the crooked and weathered vanes of her aging feathers. “I don’t know how long the turmoil in Everfree will last. It might outlast me before the queen gets things back under control. And if it does, I couldn’t guarantee that whoever succeeded me as empress of a reborn Cirra would be willing to reintegrate with Equestria. Once the genie is out of the bottle, she is not so easily put back in.”
The young unicorn looked down at her meal and sucked on her lower lip as she thought on that. She knew that Typhoon was right; if the daughter of Commander Hurricane gave her name and blessing to the idea to revive Cirra, could Equestria ever peacefully reclaim the frontier? Would the Cirran Legion, no longer loyal to Equestria and the unicorn who ruled it, willingly submit themselves to the country that had dissolved them after the war with the spiders? How red would the rivers run?
But Sparrow did know one thing, and that was that the rivers were hardly clear today. Bandits and monsters prowled where the Legion once kept the frontier safe and under control, and now the remnants of its proud legacy bled themselves on each other’s blades and devastated the land around them. Sparrow didn’t know much about war or politics or the oft repeated mistakes of history, but she did know death. The War of Silk may have ended, but the killing never stopped.
“Then what are you going to do now?” Sparrow asked her. When Typhoon gave her a questioning tilt of her head, the unicorn jumped to her hooves. “We have to do something, Typhoon! They’re killing each other out here. Who knows how much worse it is somewhere else? Dry Fens is just one town in the middle of nowhere, but what if war came to Boiling Springs? The guards there were already scared of bandit legions attacking it, but they’re no match for them! They’d be slaughtered!”
“What do you expect me to do?” Typhoon asked her, and she tucked away the remnants of her own meal as she stood up to meet Sparrow eye to eye. “I am one mare, and even if you were just as good of a soldier as I am, that makes two of us against thousands. Whatever is going on here isn’t our fight.”
“But innocent ponies are dying because of it!” Sparrow protested. “The Legion was supposed to protect ponies! It might be gone, but that doesn’t mean we let ponies die! We owe it to them to do something!”
“Getting involved in the fighting isn’t going to stop that,” Typhoon countered. “You can’t stop bloodshed by shedding more blood. Thinking like that is going to get you killed.”
“Then what can we do?” The unicorn stomped her hoof in frustration, and she momentarily bared her teeth as her question ended in an exasperated growl in the back of her throat. “We can’t just leave without doing anything! Who knows how much longer these two legions will be fighting! Who knows how many more ponies are going to die!” Then, under her breath, she muttered, “I thought you were supposed to help ponies.”
Yet Typhoon’s sharp ears heard it, and anger flashed over her face—but only for a brief moment. Almost as soon as it appeared, it was replaced with a weary, defeated sigh. “I thought so, too,” Typhoon murmured back, and she lowered her head and let her wings droop ever so slightly. “That’s why I disbanded the Legion. That’s why I left Everfree. After everything that had happened, I thought that was the last thing I could do to help ponies. But I may have only made things worse.”
“Then let’s make them better, okay? Let’s fix it,” Sparrow urged her. “Even I know that you can’t bring peace back to the frontier with a wave of your wing, but we can at least save one town. We can work with Lost’s legion and save Dry Fens. Maybe we can even get the legionaries who took it over to see reason!”
“What do you mean, ‘reason’?” Typhoon asked her. “They’ve gone from soldiers to looters. They have no discipline left.”
“But how much you wanna bet that word’s already spread around Dry Fens that Commander Typhoon was spotted nearby?” Sparrow pointed back in the direction of Camp Stratopolis. “The pegasi in there probably aren’t the only ones that still respect you. If there’s one mare in the world who could put a stop to this without lifting her sword, it’s you! At the very least, we have to try!”
Typhoon rubbed the crest of her wing against her muzzle and looked away, her eyes studying something off in the distance as her mind wandered in its own thoughts. After a few silent moments, she sighed and gave her wings a fidgety flutter. “I… you might be right,” she finally admitted. “At the very least, the longer the standoff with Dry Fens goes, the weaker Winds’ legion is going to become. It’s already in a sorry shape.”
Sparrow felt excitement rising in her chest as she hammered home her plea. “You could take this legion and set it up to do something good for the frontier!” she exclaimed. “Finally get some law and order back here! Not as the Cirran Legion or the Equestrian Legion, but Typhoon’s Legion!”
The old soldier shot Sparrow a dirty look. “I can’t stay around and lead a legion again,” she told her. “I need to keep going west. But if I can at least leave something in a better state than how I found it, leave something good behind me…”
Her words trailed off, and with a slight shake of her head, she angled back toward the direction of the camp. “I’ll need to think about it more. I can’t give Winds and Tern what they want, but I’ll talk with them and see if I can give them what they need.” She started to walk, and after a moment, looked back over her shoulder and beckoned for Sparrow to follow her. “In the meantime, let’s get some warm food. If we’re going to be staying here for a little bit, we might as well get to know the soldiers.”
The thought of warm food, and the prospect of getting to speak with more legionaries like a fellow soldier, quickened Sparrow’s steps, and soon she cantered along at Typhoon’s side.
“Yes, ma’am!”