Angel gave a yawn as she stood up on the tower's balcony. Her newest assignments were bummers, standing all alone up on a wall or a tower where nopony went. I mean, who would want to sneak in the Royal Launderers tower anyway? Still, Angel was a guard and as such, it was her duty to guard stuff. By now, Angel was used to being awake during the day, so her readjustment to staying awake at night hadn't been easy. She was twice found asleep by another guard, thankfully not a superior officer, and really missed her friends. Her big golden eyes lazily scanned the sky above her, stopping at the big bright full moon. Angel loved looking at it and often wondered what was up there. She personally thought it was cheese because Luna had to have something to eat while she was banished.
A creak behind her caught her attention and a bright flash of green just barely missed her. Angel yelped loudly and spun to attack whoever it was, giving a loud snarl. The pony behind her, a dark blue one with a white and blue striped mane, backed away in fear and soon was the victim of a merciless bat pony beat down. Angel simply reacted as she brought a hoof up and under his chin, then landing a powerful kick to his belly as he rose from her first blow. The pony hit the wall and his image shimmered before melting away to reveal a pony almost as large as Angel, colored midnight black and full of holes. A sickly colored green mane wafted around a large crooked horn while a small buzzing could be heard from the translucent wings on its back.
Angel's face melted into horror as she saw what she was fighting and tried to jump away before a sharp pain caught her tail. She was pulled backwards and hit her head against the tower wall, causing her to get dizzy. The last thing Angel remembered seeing was a large set of green eyes boring down on her before she blacked out.
The changeling stood over the unconscious bat pony, silently cursing to herself about missing with her first spell. Her wickedly glowing green eyes scanned the pony who had gotten in two cheap shots on her and she half considered throwing her off the tower.
"Niccccce one, Gorgon," came a slightly hissing voice and the changelings head whipped up to see three Royal Guard standing in the doorway, each snickering.
The larger changeling bared her teeth angrily and hissed in reply, "Assss your future queen, I'm commanding you all to sssssshut up!" The guards faces immediately hardened and their snickers faded away. Gorgon hated it when her own charge of workers treated her like one of them. She was their leader and as such, demanded the respect of one. She wasn't a changeling princess just for show and she vigorously reinforced that to this group.
"Sssso, what are you going to do about thisssss?" one asked and Gorgon returned her gaze to the unconscious bat pony.
"Do we need to imperssssonate anypony elssse?" she queried.
"No, but that one issss ssssuppossssed to be at the Gala," a reply came.
Gorgon studied the bat pony and wondered what to do with it. She could just always leave her here and have her believe this was a dream. As a race born in darkness, changelings had a wide variety of ways to disappear. One was altering memories to make the pony believe meeting them was a dream or hallucination, another was eradicating the memory entirely. Being the future queen of the hive and Chrysalis's own daughter, Gorgon knew how to do both. However, her natural ability to sense the changeling's main food source, love, was perking up at the bat pony. Narrowing her green eyes, Gorgon inched closer to Angel, sniffing at her. Silently, she weaved a spell to look into Angel's affections to locate the source of this emotion.
Since it was the first spell she learned, Gorgon easily peered into the bat pony's emotions, trying to locate the source of love. Every changeling had to learn this spell and it was how they often changed into a specific pony without knowing anything about them. It was also how Chrysalis jumped into Princess Cadance's role without anypony knowing since she met Shining Armor first. Gorgon suddenly felt the surge of love within the bat pony and saw the image of a Royal guard who had an orange pelt, brown mane and vivid red eyes. She even saw the pony's cutie mark, an exploding rock with a white tail, and grinned to herself. While the changelings were feeding on the other Royal Guards who were entranced down in the armory, Gorgon herself was rather hungry.
"Get out of here," she whispered to her subjects, who looked at each other curiously. "I know what to do with this one," she continued, grinning wickedly at the sleeping bat pony.
Comet woke up to a pretty violent sneeze. He jerked back, wide awake and looked around. Outside of his vision, he felt something rather large shift next to him and slowly looked down to see Valyrie's white plume of feathers shift as they wiggled closer to Comet's chest. A sense of horror crawled up his chest, as well as one of caring. He had slept next to Valyrie all night and while it horrified him Angel might've seen this, he felt very refreshed, like one does after a very good sleep. He sat there, unsure of what to do before looking up at the clock. Well, it was more of a magically charged sundial than a clock. The sundial reacted to the rising of the sun since Celestia didn't raise the sun at exactly the same time everyday. It was very hard to tell time in Equestria, but some genious unicorn thought of a sundial that reacted to the sun's presence to keep time.
As of now, the dial read about nine in the morning. Comet silently thanked Celestia it was his day off.
After slowly waking up Valyrie, who protested by burying her face farther into Comet's side and nipping at him playfully when he moved, the two made their way down to the mess hall to get breakfast. It was a rather nice day outside to them, but that was before they learned the windows were magically made to let sunlight shine through the stained glass. In reality, it was a gray and cold day outside, one that sounded the alarm of snowfall. However, this didn't bother Valyrie since the Gryphon Kingdom was always cold with its location north of Equestria. After the two finished breakfast, they went to check on Angel but found her sound asleep with a nurse tending to a large bump on her head. Comet was visibly worried, but the nurse assured him she would be alright.
"It's actually quite common for pony's who are not issued helmets," she said as Comet stood over the sleeping bat pony, "Now go on. I will tell her you came by." As the pegasus and gryffon walked away, neither one noticed the nurse's eyes flare bright green.
"So, what'cha wanna do today?" Valyrie asked.
"Well," Comet scratched his head unsurely, "I was going to take Angel on another date, but I guess that won't happen. I even rented a boat to go out on the lake."
Valyrie stood there and felt an evil smile perk at the sides of her beak. "You know, you and I haven't just hung out," Comet's head turned to look at her and she pressed on, hoping he wasn't going to get mad at her. "I have the day off too. Why don't we just go out and relax? Me and you and nopony else."
Comet had the creeping suspicion Valyrie wanted to monopolize of Angel's absence, but she didn't hint at any ulterior motive. He contemplated the idea of just he and Valyrie spending the day together before coming up with an answer.
"Uh, sure. That sounds fun," he said with a nice, but awkward grin.
Several hours later, Comet and Valyrie were walking down a street in Canterlot, smiling and talking to each other. The day, even though it was gray and started to snow, was going surprisingly well for them. Comet wore a new scarf Valyrie insisted he buy to keep himself warm, a rather plain brown colored one to match his mane and tail. After acquiring the scarf, the two had gone to the train station and sat on a bench, watching the random ponies walk by. There the duo just talked about everything, including why Valyrie was here instead of the Gryphon Kingdom. She explained that since her father was a high ranking soldier in the kingdom, she was a prized gryffon since she probably carried future great warriors. She also told of how one gryphon got stone drunk one night before the Picking, the ceremony where gryphons competed for gryffons, and tried to force her into an alleyway. Valyrie, according to her own words, beat the daylights out of him so bad, he had to be sent to the hospital.
What happened next was a series of honor and pride based mishaps. The gryphon's father claimed that unless Valyrie's father either banish her or repay his family's lost honor, there would be a feud between the two families. Valyrie's father was very unhappy with her, but in no way got violent. Instead, after hearing Valyrie's side of the story, he made the claim the gryphon's own son had shamed the family by going outside tradition. Thus began a war of words that got heated to the point where the lord of the village, a gryphon by the name of Hookclaw, settled the dispute personally. Valyrie wouldn't be banished, but she would be taught her place by being whipped publicly. The gryphon's son had to live with the fact he had dishonored himself and his family and suffer the consequences thereof.
After the proclamation, Valyrie's father consulted with Hookclaw personally and, after much convincing and gifts, he finally agreed to let Valyrie not be whipped. Instead, she would suffer only a partial banishment to Equestria where she would learn what would happen should she undermine the gryphon's authority again.
Comet simply sat there, stunned at what he had heard. Apparently gryphons were more barbaric than he had initially thought. Comet, in response, spent the rest of the day doing whatever Valyrie wanted to try and make her punishment leass of one. The two ate in a fancy restaurant since the Gryphon Kingdom solely had taverns, they went to an art museum since gryphons felt weapons on a wall were art and so on. Eventually, the sun sank below the horizon and Comet, along with Valyrie, sat on the roof of a building, watching the sky change colors.
Comet sat still, marveling at the colors while Valyrie had a hard time concentrating on anything but him. She hadn't told him about one thing from her homeland, the rumor of Equestria being the safe haven for any gryffon like herself. Now that she was here with Comet, it felt like a dream. She had come to Equestria without cutting ties to her family, met a wonderful and caring stallion and almost didn't want to return home. Comet, although not a gryphon, certainly had the build of a full adult stallion, muscular and strong while gentle and caring at the same time. He was handsome to Valyrie in a way no other gryphon could match with his fiery red eyes, brown mane that moved slightly in the wind and a smile that she never wanted to leave his face.
Comet looked over to Valyrie, who had a dreamy look on her face and chuckled. "So, I take it you enjoyed today?" he asked.
Valyrie answered by pressing her break to his mouth yet again. Comet sat there, wondering just what he was going to do. He had a cute and fun bat pony on one hoof, but now he felt a strange force vying for control of his feelings.