Griffonstone was burning.
The acrid smell of smoke mixed with the hot-stench of freshly spilled blood. As King Cyne Frostwing prowled around Cardinal Farvald, he swallowed the drool pooling in his beak. His claws and paws splashed through cold pools of blood and pushed aside corpses. He wanted to taste his earned victory- but he had not earned it yet.
The other Living Hero grunted, flicking his rapier towards Cyne. The move was deftly parried by the King’s warclaws, the sound of metal against metal echoing across the yard.
Around them, the remains of their army tended the wounded, took stock of the dead, and watched. In fact, the vast majority of Griffonstone had stopped to watch. Those that weren’t trying to put out the fires, at least. Red and green banners fluttered in the wind as the perimeter of the courtyard was packed with silent griffs, each awaiting the result of their demigods’ duel.
Cyne’s charge was dodged by Farvald, just as it had been the previous fifteen times. They had been going at it for quite some time now. The space between them had been utterly ruined by the glancing blows of their blades, cobblestones cut and crushed into gravel from their fury. The sun had approached the horizon. Their fury had not waned even a little bit.
“End this madness,” Cardinal Farvald growled. “There is no point in us fighting!”
“I will have your skull,” Cyne growled back. “You murdered my friend. You tried to kill me. Stop begging. It’s pathetic.”
Lunge. Parry. Thrust. Dodge. Swing. Swipe.
A knight’s armored corpse was obliterated when it was caught between them. As their fighting neared one edge of the gathered crowd, the closest griffon observers took to the sky, beating tired and bloody wings as their weapons and banners draped below them, clutched in their talons.
“I did not attack you!” The Cardinal insisted. “I have never raised a blade against you, young Cyne. It’s not too late to end this. We could rule together!”
“Liar!” Cyne hissed, chipped metal claws missing Farvald by a paw’s length.
Metal clanged against metal as Cyne bore out his anger on the older griffon. The two Heroes fought on, Cyne with strength and Farvald with speed.
“Imagine, two Heroes ruling together,” Farvald hissed between his attacks. “The ponies have conquered the skies together! What could we, the mighty griffons, accomplish?! The whole continent could be ours! Every mountain, every city, from sea to sea! Why must we fight over scraps when there is a feast to be had?!”
“I will never fight by your side!” Cyne yelled. “For my pack-brother, your life is forfeit! I would burn the world to ash just to see you pay!”
“But I did not order his death!” Farvald repeated.
Cyne pressed forward, “Your assassins left their weapons behind! I saw their cloaked bodies! Their sigils and colors matched your pathetic church! You should have bought better ones if you intended on killing me!”
Farvald grunted, “I need no assassins if I want to kill you, cub!”
When the old, gray griffon thrust his rapier towards him, Cyne let the blow hit. The ancient, storied blade of yore cut through his own tabard. Enchanted metal and gold splintered at its cut, but the real damage was to Cyne’s left lung and closest rib. The cut collapsed the lung, impaling halfway through the Living Hero.
But Cyne had let the blow connect for a reason. He grabbed the Cardinal by the arm, claw blades impaling into the older griff’s shoulder. With a pained grimace, King Cyne Frostwing slashed his other claw down his foe’s face. Metal was rent just as much as the old griff’s beak as his face was half-torn off, yet the metal claws continued their path of destruction downwards. Cardinal Farvald was cut open from eyebrow to collarbone, his royal blood gushing out in rivers of red.
Cyne let Farvald fall to the ground, watching as the old griff drowned in his own blood.
“For Lothar,” he spat, slicing Cardinal Farvald’s head clean from his shoulders, ending his pitiful gurgling.
Snarling, King Cyne Frostwing looked around the courtyard. Blood dripped from the rapier in his chest. He ignored it for now.
“Brothers. Sisters. Sons and daughters,” he panted, voice ringing out across the crowd. “Kneel to your King!”
His army knelt at once, taking positions of supplication as they cried out, “Long Live King Cyne Frostwing!”
Cardinal Farvald’s army followed a few moments later, shocked at the sight of their demigod’s death. Many likely fell to their knees in horror in grief. Cyne didn’t care why, only that they knelt. With a roar of triumph, King Cyne Frostwing announced to the city that he had won.
The war was finally over.
As the Cardinal’s forces stood down and surrendered their weapons to Cyne’s soldiers, the victorious champion took stock of the situation. With the Cardinal’s faction dismantled, all of Griffonia was practically his. Sure, there were the Greenbark bandit clans to deal with and the Sachen Bulwark would need an in person visit and promises of recruits and supplies to earn their loyalty, but the entirety of the Griffon Kingdom was Cyne’s for the taking. When the historians wrote of the war between the Crown, the Sword, and the Idol, they would tell of the Crown’s triumph over all others.
“Empress Gristle,” he whispered, watching his griffons start cleaning up.
“King Cyne Frostwing,” his pendant answered.
“It is done. There is Peace in Griffonia once again.”
“And as I promised, you are the griffon standing at the top.”
Cyne reflected on that. When he had found the magical pendant, he was nothing but a squire in Lady Adela’s Crown faction. With a great deal of strength, cunning, and risk-taking, Cyne Frostwing had risen through the ranks to be a King. And a Living Hero at that!
“... It was costly,” he admitted. “Lothar should be here. He should have been here to witness it all.”
“Heavy is the head which bears the crown,” Gristle said.
Cyne sneered and bent low, scooping up Farvald’s decapitated body.
“Then tonight, all of us shall drink and feast in honor of who we’ve lost along the way.”
Cyne blinked, aware that he was aware again. He rose from his seat with a pained groan, stretching and rolling his shoulders to work out the knots created from his uncomfortable sleeping arrangement. He surveyed the room as his mind rebooted, processing what it had just experienced.
His mind was still reeling from his second meeting with the long-dead Heroes.
The griffons of his warhost were sprawled out in various displays of content and post-drinking-collapse, snoozing away the morning hours. Most were likely dreaming of the same thing they had been doing before passing out: drinking, feasting, and mating.
The thought of dreams stole any warmth from Cyne’s heart like an icedagger through the spine. He shot upright, frantically searching his person for the pendant. His claw ran down the length of the silver chain around his neck, grabbing hold of the gold charm and pulling hard. The silver links shattered as he started to storm out of the room.
“Gristle,” he growled, keeping his voice low to not wake anygriff else. “Gristle!”
He pressed a claw into the green gem, threatening to crack the precious jewel.
“Mmm, King Cyne?” Came a quiet voice. “I did not expect that you-”
“You knew!” Cyne hissed.
He hurried through the halls of the castle. The one or two other griffs he bumped into or passed by quickly got out of his way and bowed. His eyes scanned each of them, just in case they were the one griff he would be searching for after dealing with Gristle.
“Knew what, Your Majesty?” Empress Gristle asked innocently.
“Cut the bullshit,” the Hero cursed. “You’re nothing but a liar and a fraud! And worst of all, you knew!”
“I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,” the magical pendant insisted. “What did I know?”
King Cyne Frostwing arrived at last at his intended destination, throwing open the doors to the balcony and stomping out to the edge. He held out the claw that clutched the snapped metal chain, letting Empress Gristle’s crushed gold pendant swing in the freezing winter morning air. Two thousand lengths beneath, the snow-covered valley that surrounded Griffonstone lay like a scaled-down model of the countryside.
And Gristle’s pendant hung precariously over the sheer drop, nothing separating her from the fall save for the claws holding her snapped chain.
“King Boreas said it himself!” Cyne cawed. “There never was an Empress Gristle! Not in his time, not in the time before him, and most certainly not in the years after him! Nogriff has heard of you in the Great Roost!”
“Those jumped-up autocrats dare-”
“No!” He cut her off. “Enough! No more lies! Nothing you say will save your life! Die with dignity, or die in shame, either way you’re going to die today!”
“My King,” Gristle said hastily, finally picking up that Cyne wasn’t buying into her lies, “w-would you really have kept me if you knew I was just a common griffon?! You would have cast me-”
Cyne snarled, clicking his beak at the piece of jewelry, “You’re not even a griffon! Skinwalker! Featherdancer! Vermin! Your machinations are over, I will kill you for once and for all, changeling!”
“M-My King!” Gristle whispered as Cyne’s claw relaxed its grip a hair and let the pendant drop a talon’s length. “Please! I have done nothing but serve you!”
Cyne snarled, “You knew!”
“Knew what?!”
Cyne shook his claw, sending bits of gold filigree snapping off and falling into the wispy clouds beneath them.
“Those assassins weren’t meant for me! Lothar wasn’t meant to die that night! Cardinal Farvald never tried to kill me!”
“I didn’t-”
The charm slipped further, only the end of the snapped chain being held now.
“The blind wisegriff,” Cyne revealed. “Rykard. You and he are hatched in the same flock. Both of you claim to be griffons, but nogriff can work against Griffonia without the Heroes knowing! Those assassins were sent to kill the changeling that claims to be Rykard. Why?! Why did they try to kill him?!”
“I don’t know!” Gristle said, her gem flashing purple. “I knew he was a changeling, but I don’t know anything else!”
Cyne shook his head, “Even if I believed that, you still lied to me. That bolt was meant for his neck. Griffonia burned because the assassin fowled their shot! You knew something was wrong, that there was more to the scent, and you remained silent! Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t crush your gem and scatter the dust to the wind!”
Gristle was silent, faint flashes of purple revealing that she was still present.
“... I brought you this far!” The changeling named Gristle said. “You were nothing but a squire for a noble when you found me. With my advice and guidance, you have become the most powerful griffon to fly the skies of Griffonia in centuries! The Masquerade decrees that I cannot reveal anything about changelings- but that seems to be gone now!”
“What if I asked you to tell me everything about the changelings? How to find them? How to kill them?”
Gristle fell silent.
Cyne snorted, “Thought not. You are not loyal to me. Why would I have a turncoat like you in my court? You’ve already lied to me once, vermin! If I hadn’t listened to you… maybe Lothar would still be alive.”
“You wouldn’t be King,” Gristle said. “You wouldn’t be a Hero.”
“... We were meant to be Kings together,” Cyne whispered. “Lother and I, side by side. No withered old bastard like Farvald ruling with me, but Lothar! Strong Lothar! Wise Lothar! My Lothar! You insects took him from me! I lost him because of you!”
“I’ve done nothing but try to help you,” Gristle insisted. “Nothing! I have given you all the wisdom I could without revealing myself!”
Cyne shook his head, “Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. Perhaps I should leave your fate to the Heroes. Let them decide if you should shatter or if you should live on in your cursed form. Life or death? Which will they decide? I leave your fate up to them, but your sentence is clear to me. Empress Gristle, you are a liar and a fraud, and I cast you out of my kingdom!”
Cyne pulled his arm back, and with a yell he hurled the enchanted pendant as hard as he could. The dented charm soared through the sky, glinting in the morning sun as it sailed away into the distance. Cyne watched it fall, his eyes easily tracking it as it fell further and further from his city.
His scowl turned to a look of surprise when a fireball intercepted the discarded pendant. Two wings of fire emerged from the ball, and Gristle’s gem trailed behind the fireball as its metal chain was gripped in talons made of flame itself.
“Philomena,” Cyne whispered the phoenix’s name, recognizing it from Lady Adela’s storybooks.
The legendary creature swooped across the sky, leaving a trail of steam where it cut through the thin clouds. The bird flew west, away from the city and with the enchanted gem still in its clutches.
“Life it is,” King Cyne Frostwing muttered under his breath. “... One skinwalker down, one to go.”
I slowly pushed the goggles up. The sight of Princess Procho’s flaring half-soul vanished from sight, yet her voice remained in my mind. God-Splitter hovered in its containment field, glowing red-hot from the spells we had been casting on it in the past hour. The very mechanism that made it one of the best weapons of war in existence was preventing us from finding out more about the half-soul contained within.
“What?! Why- who- how?! You are… Why are you here?!”
Luna stepped away from the chalkboard as I repeated to her the words spoken over the Weave.
“... I am nothing like you!” Her voice rang in my mind.
“Princes Procho?” I asked over the Weave. “Can you hear me? What’s going on? Where are you?”
Luna quickly hoofed me our Soulmancy journal and I started jotting down our words so far.
“I… see,” Procho said quietly. “Where are we going? Do you even know where we’re-”
Luna leaned over my shoulder as I wrote, reading while keeping an eye on my hammer.
“Keep repeating your questions,” Luna instructed. “I will observe her soul for any notable changes if she responds. Perhaps we can finally figure out what is triggering these brief moments of connection.”
“What is happening, Procho? It is me, King Phasma, we may have spoken before.”
The half-dead Princess continued her conversation with this unknown individual despite my questioning. I kept repeating my questions, and she kept ignoring me.
“Why? There is nothing… You speak of my mother, you pompous candlewick! I do not… Yes. Yes. Of course I’ve heard of him, the Masquerade Protocol was everything!”
“She may be speaking about you,” Luna remarked.
“It seems so,” I muttered, still writing everything down.
“‘Pompous candlewick,’ what could that mean?” Luna wondered. “... There are few creatures who could be so closely associated with fire. None of which are creatures prone to conversations.”
“Fine then. Take me to this changeling king. There’s no point in staying in Griffonia anymore. If I can…”
Princess Procho’s voice started to fade away.
“Princess Procho? What happened? Where are you? Where are… I think she’s gone again,” I sighed, saying the last part aloud.
“Her soul has reentered a state of dormancy,” Luna observed using a spell. She added her own observations and data points in our experiment journal, “I will need to go over some of this with Celestia; she has a better mind for the higher points of magical theories. It may take some time to replicate triggering Princess Procho’s soul. At any rate, it seems we know where exactly her other half lies. Or lay, if this half-conversation is anything to go by.”
“Griffonia,” I nodded. “Makes sense, I guess. More sense than being further east.. As for what the hell is happening over there, your guess is as good as mine.”
“Do you not have agents observing the banished drone? The one you tried to assassinate, an action which sparked a civil war and caused the deaths of thousands?”
I shied away from her, rubbing a foreleg, “You don’t know that! The griffons are fierce creatures, this King Cyne more than the rest. I can’t imagine he would be happy sharing power with that other Hero. Farvald, was it?”
“I suspect the truth will become known to us in time,” she said, shaking her head. “Come, we must report this to Celestia at once. And you did not answer, what do your spies say?”
Luna closed the thick, partially-filled tome and made for the door. I followed at her side. As we left our room, our compliment of eight guards formed up ranks around us. Even with the assassination attempt weeks in the past and the fact that we were in the middle of the Palace, no chances were being taken.
“I recalled them, remember? Cadance is responsible for that now.”
Luna nodded, “Ah. Of course. We shall be informing her, too, of course.”
I bit my tongue, “.... And Chrysalis.”
My marefriend snorted, “Indeed, her too… After everypony else. Perhaps before the witnesses are called up to testify tomorrow. I am sure she will be happy to hear of her daughter’s whereabouts. Make sure your Fifth Hive leadership is also appraised of this development.”
“Of course.”
Luna continued, “I cannot say I have any experience in any matter such as this. We might want to inform the Element Bearers, because… well… you know, they are capable of incredible miracles with the artifacts at their disposal.”
I raised an eyebrow, “Huh? This doesn’t seem like a situation that can just be hoofed off to them and expect them to figure it out.”
“They have been quite capable of handling the strangest scenarios so far,” Luna said, looking over her shoulder up at me. “Speaking of which… Celestia has an idea.”
“She tends to have those,” I chuckled. “She and I like to plan. What is it?”
She looked at our guard contingent, “Your drones are equally sworn to secrecy, yes?”
“For the eighth time, yes Luna. I’ve told you about the lengths drones go to serve royals. It’s a bit disturbing, if I’m being honest.”
The four drones around us didn’t react- but I did taste hints of anger from the four Royal Guards accompanying us.
“As you know, we are on a strict deadline,” Luna began. “The war is coming. Ponies and changelings will die. It is a terrifying and daunting fact, but a fact nonetheless. Celestia is hoping to stack the deck as much as possible in our favor. Seeing the overall progress with you and your changelings, Cadance and her have… concocted a scheme that is hard to accept. I myself remain not entirely convinced, but risks must be taken to minimize our losses.”
“C’mon, Luna. What is she up to?” I groaned.
She grit her teeth and her apprehension simmered from her like a heat-haze.
“... She wishes to utilize the Element Bearers to offer an olive branch to Discord. My sister believes they are capable of bringing out his better qualities and convince him to rein in his more… destructive tendencies.”
I face-hoofed, almost taking a tumble as our entourage walked through the halls.
“Of course she wants that. That is insane. Like, Discord-level insanity. Do you honestly believe that could work?”
“There’s a chance,” Luna whispered. “As I said, it is risky. That is not in question, and I am likewise skeptical of our odds of succeeding. But what if we do succeed? What if? The Elements have worked miracles in the past and if we are lucky, they will do so again.”
“Aren’t things kinda too volatile in Canterlot to let the genie out of his bottle? We’re in the middle of Chrysalis’s trial for Panar’s sake!”
“Keep your voice down, Phasma. Let us ask these questions when the four of us are together. But… if you are against this, I must ask: do you intend on throwing your weight around to stop Celestia’s scheme?”
I scratched my head, “Goddess, I don’t know. I suppose I can. But should I? I kinda sat out the entire fight with Discord before and you ponies eventually got him back under control. Considering I am not under much flak for releasing him, it might be best for me to stay away from this. Arguing against this could be considered hypocritical. Plus I’m lazy and up to my fangs in work. This trial is making rulership damn near impossible, with half of each day dedicated to just sitting in a chair watching it unfold.”
“Nopony would mind your absence,” Luna offered an out.
“Not gonna happen,” I sigh. “You know as well as I do that I just have to be there. I can’t name the specifics of why. To grant legitimacy? To provide a public face for the changelings condemning her? Because seeing her go down makes me smile? Either way, I can’t imagine the history books talking about this without me being present.”
“The choice is up to you,” she said, walking a bit closer to brush shoulders with me. “You have my full support, no matter what you decide.”
“Thanks, Luna. That means a lot to me, ” I smiled.
She smiled back, “The specters of the past may be hard to stand up to, but with friendship, anything is possible.”