"Utamak's city was a marvelous sight. The architecture was quite alien to me, but I appreciated the zebra sense of proportion, and color. Strong, thick, squared stone surfaces adorned with jade and gold. Not the flowing elegance a gryphon is used to, but indicative of many admirable cultural qualities..."
"OOF! A little more delicacy if you wouldn't mind?" Tharax winced, and worked his shoulder.
He swept his gaze across the room; Utamak had insisted that the gryphons take time to rest in his own chambers, and see to their wounds. The room was a spectacular display of tribal wealth; gold plated columns, a solid jade floor, and aged wood furniture that must have been produced by the most masterful of crafts-zebras.
Lyris glared good-naturedly, "If you would stop struggling, this would be easier. Now, on the count of three, I'm going to pull the spike out. Ready?"
The gold and brown gryphon nodded. Lyris tensed, "One..." With a swift sudden move, she yanked the spike out, "Two, three."
"MMMPH! You *lied!*" Tharax rubbed his shoulder, holding his claw against it to stem the flow of blood until Lyris could apply a bandage.
She snickered softly, "I... 'implied.' Less painful that way."
Tharax rolled his eyes, "Thank you. I *suppose.*"
Lyris smiled, and finished wrapping the wound as Utamak, Malus, and Poma arrived. Tharax glanced up and all concerns about his wound instantly faded, "How are the defenses looking?"
Malus inclined his head, "We have enough troops to man the walls... but only barely. The storm will break on us in less than an hour now."
Poma breathed in deeply, and exhaled slowly, "To make a long story short? We can not hold this city for more than a few hours, let alone vanquish the enemy, by any conventional means."
Lyris raised an eyebrow, "Implying you have some *unconventional* ideas?"
Utamak nodded slowly, "An ancient artifact my people possess, it can cause the enemy great distress. A crystal, bound with the power to destroy; emotions it attacks if you choose to deploy."
Tharax knit his brow, rapidly making the logical jump to the same conclusions the other commanders had, "We know wendigos thrive off of negative emotion... And if you have a way to attack emotions on a wide scale..."
Lyris began nodding, a grin spreading slowly across her beak, "You could not only deny them their source of power... you could use it..."
Tharax finished the sentance in an almost awed tone, "...As a conduit to destroy them all. Blast them with positive emotions until they disintegrate from the strain. Would that *work*?"
Poma smiled, "My mages think so. More importantly, Utamak's shamans agree."
Malus dipped his head towards the tribal leader, "The zebra are masters of potions, artifacts, and runes. If Utamak's best minds say it will work, then I have no doubts."
Tharax stood, and stretched, "Nor do I. How do we proceed?"
Utamak gestured to the window; an expansive trapezoidal void in the wall that looked out over the city, and away into the northern reaches. The storm clouds ahead of the wendigos had already begun to darken the horizon.
"If into the heart of the swarm you take the stone, then their minds shall all be overthrown."
Poma sighed deeply, "That means that the army down here only has to fend off the ground-walkers long enough for someone to get the stone into the center of the storm. It will be closest to the most wendigos there; the effect apparently intensifies the more of them it can affect at once. If we're lucky, it will spread to the entire whole, or most of it, and we can be done with them in one fell swoop."
Tharax sat, contemplating in silence, before finally speaking, "We used the weather against them last time, and to great effect."
Lyris exhaled in frustration, "So then...?"
Tharax began to pace slowly before the window, "So they will have adapted. All our experience thus far has shown us that they are not especially intelligent in anticipating new stratagems, but they are very quick to develop defenses to them once they are initially used."
Poma tilted her head in thought, "So... They'd want to nullify our chief advantage. When the center of the storm was high up, it meant that we could go there but their physical forms could not, and because we could resist their winds and lightning it gave us the advantage. So they will keep the center of the storm low..."
Malus grunted, frowning, "Low and protected by the ground-walkers. Unreachable."
Tharax raised a claw, "Not necessarily. Remember, they are reactionary. They expect to keep the center of the storm away from us by putting somewhere that a pegasus' advantages are removed. But they don't expect us to use the storm *this* way. If we circle around behind at ground level with a small force..."
Lyris snapped her claw in anticipation, "And if we had a diversion!"
Poma raised an eyebrow, "Such as?"
Tharax glanced down at the deserted urban center below, "Open the gates. Let them think they have breached the walls. They are poor judges of trickery and deception; they will flood in like the tide, but in so doing they will siphon off troops from the rear-guard and all their focus will be forward."
Malus inhaled, and shook his head, "Risky... but it would give us time and the opening we need to get the stone into the heart of the storm. And that's victory."
Lyris glanced at him incredulously, " 'Us?' "
Malus nodded, "Us. I know you two gryphons will insist on being protection for whoever has to go in there. You can't go alone, because you stand a much better chance if you have a pegasus with you to carve a path through the wind and lightning. Poma won't allow it to be anyone but her, and if she is going to put herself in that position, she isn't doing it without me. So yes. 'Us.' "
Lyris glanced at Tharax, "You have to admit; it's hard to argue with that."
Tharax glared, "Is it? You're not trained warriors. You two are very brave little Ponies... But this is a mission for..."
Malus huffed, "For *what?* gryphons? *Warriors?* We may lack training, but we have skills that you *need* for this fight. And we may be short on training... But we are *not* short on courage; you know this already. Would *you* allow anyone under your command to volunteer for a suicide mission? No. And that's why you volunteered first. You wouldn't abandon me to die, even if it was going to cost you your life. You would be remiss to deny me the opportunity to return that honorable act in the same spirit."
Tharax looked as if he were going to object, but he stopped, pausing in the act of taking a breath to consider. Finally he nodded, "You're right."
Lyris stared in surprise, but the male gryphon didn't seem to take any notice, "Utamak will be in charge of the city defenses. Poma, Malus, myself, and Lyris will take the stone to the center of the storm. The timing has to be strict for this to work; we'll need about twenty minutes to sneak around to their rear guard. After twenty one minutes, the city has to open itself to the horde. and pray that we succeed."
Poma inclined her head, "Malus and I should go; Utamak's shamans need to train us in the use of the artifact."
It looked as if Lyris was about to object, but Malus spoke first, "Yes; we know that because it is an artifact, that you two could also use it. But artifacts tend to be techy around gryphons; partly because you have an immunity to any effects it generates, and most artifacts don't take well to that, according to the Shamans. They asked specifically for Ponies."
Tharax sighed, "Besides which, while you are otherwise occupied Lyris and I must plan our route, and assist Utamak in plotting out the city's hopefully false 'demise.' "
Poma nodded, as she and Malus and Utamak turned to leave, "And may the blessings of Celestia rest on us all."
Tharax snorted, "No offense; but you pray to your goddess, and let *us* pray to *our* God."
Malus chuckled, and the three commanders departed. Utamak offered a parting word, "On the walls shall I be, readying the defenses. When you are finished, seek me out, and we shall plot our pretenses."
Once the gryphons had the room to themselves, Lyris sighed and began to pace. Tharax took up a seated position on his haunches, staring out the window.
Lyris huffed, "I'm not sure how I feel about this."
Tharax continued to stare, speaking in a calm tone that indicated he was more at peace with the plan, "Be glad that we have companions we can trust who have skills that will aid us."
"They're untrained."
"And there *wasn't* a time when we were too? The fact that things are less than ideal is not something we can change. By any amount of fretting."
Lyris sighed, and stepped up beside Tharax, sitting down beside him, "Maybe I'm rubbing off on you after all."
Tharax raised an eyebrow, "One hopes so. Then again, you've always been more of a stickler than I, so perhaps I should regress a little for my own sake."
Lyris batted at him casually with a claw, "Heh. Typical male bravado." She turned her head to face him, and her expression took on a serious demeanor, "I want you to make me two promises."
Tharax returned her gaze, "Name it."
"If it comes down to it? No bravado. Don't sacrifice yourself for any reason other than the mission. Not for me, not for them. We're all volunteering for this, and there is no point in adding one more body to the pile of dead heroes."
The male gryphon sighed and winced, "And?"
Lyris leaned closer, and placed one of her wings around her friend, "And if we both live through this? Promise me you'll stop behaving as if you have forever to decide where your heart lies."
She sighed, stood, and began walking to the door, "As a species, we are long lived. But most of us do not die of old age. Tomorrow is less of a certainty for us than for most. Shouldn't that make the present all the more valuable?"
"...At the time, I did not think much of her words. In retrospect, I regret that. I regret that deeply."
Apple Bloom stepped out in front of Tharax, and began walking backwards so she could keep facing him. Her gaze was filled with urgency, "What *happened*?"
Sweetie Belle looked on the verge of tears, "Did she... die?"
Tharax made a point of refusing to meet the fillies' expectant, concerned gazes. He swallowed hard, "I lost something very valuable in that final battle. And to this very day, I am doing my best to take an important lesson from that."
Scootaloo frowned, "That's awful."
The gryphon nodded slowly, "Loss is a hard thing indeed. And part-and-parcel of war."
The group remained in somber silence until they reached their next destination. ponyville's blacksmith was not normally accustomed to working on weapons, but the Crusaders now knew enough about Tharax to guess that he wasn't visiting the shop to pick up horseshoes.
They followed him more closely, hoping to learn more as soon as possible.
The Blacksmith was a unicorn; one of two smithies in town, the other being a staunch earth pony. Ponies went to the latter for heavy duty work, and the former for precision things like complex small tools.
Tharax found the unicorn working over her small bellows, "Hello again."
She looked up and smiled, "Ah! My most unconventional customer. Right this way..."
The unicorn led the group around the side of the building to a storage area lined with assorted implements such as tweezers and scissors, along with a few ornate pieces of metal artwork, including bits of wrought iron railing and fencing.
The unicorn snorted, "I must say; your order was the most challenging thing I've ever had to work on, especially given the fact that you didn't leave me with a lot of time. But I managed it. What did you do to put a hole that big in alloy?"
Tharax exhaled, "Ah... Well... I took the short, and dangerous route to get here. There was a wild Wyvern in one of the caves I stopped to camp in and..."
The unicorn held up a hoof, "I don't want to hear it. It'll give me nightmares."
She gestured to a gleaming set of plates lined up on an oaken work bench. Leaning against the bench was an enormous war axe; its double blades etched with a flowing plethora of intertwining knot-like designs.
Tharax hefted the weapon, and examined it closely, "Well done, I must say. Thank you."
The unicorn smiled and nodded, "Much obliged. Especially given your generous payment. Take care now."
As she left, Tharax began hefting the pieces of his armor, and securing them in place. The smell of warm metal, warm feathers, and leather was overpowering. It was a tangy combination evocative of far away battlefields, and halls full of victorious warriors. The Crusaders breathed deep, taking in the novelty of it.
The three fillies watched in fascination; they had never seen armor besides that which Celestia's royal guards wore. Their adornment was for ceremony; the sleek, tightly plated, burnished gear Tharax had donned was clearly aggressive, designed to take horrifying punishment, and to intimidate.
When he had finished, he secured the axe at his back, and left the smithy quietly. The Crusaders followed, still marveling.
Scootaloo asked the question they were all thinking first, "Was that the armor? And the axe? That you used in the war?"
Tharax nodded, "Yes. It has seen many conflicts, and served me well. The armor is my own design, as it is for most gryphon Knights. The axe was passed down to me from my father when he perished in battle."
The depth of his words once again brought about a reign of silence. Despite the somber tone, Sweetie Belle finally lost all patience, "Tell us! Come on! What happened?! Did Lyris really..."
She gulped as the gryphon's face went through a bevy of negative emotions, and his ears flattened.
Nevertheless, after a moment spent gazing at the horizon in sadness, he continued the narrative.
"When the ground-walkers arrived, they took their time to line up in ranks. They appeared like a sea of bones, champing and stamping as the gale howled around us. If Tartarus is a real place? Then I imagine I have already seen worse than it can offer. The sunset mixed with the storm to create a sky that was partly a dark abyss, partly a blood stained canvas. And we were right in the center of it. Utamak was resplendent in his armor, and I had no doubt he would care for the city, and all the rest of the warriors defending it, my own included. So Lyris, Malus, Poma and I left the city by the south gate, and began our careful journey..."
Luckily for the raiding party, the area around Utamak's city was littered with boulders and strange rock protrusions; an alien landscape of rock and sand that provided ample cover to hide their movement from the wendigos.
Nevertheless, the going was tedious, particularly for Lyris, Tharax, and Poma, who were used to flying and making use of speed and agility as their primary weapons.
Much of the journey was made in silence. It wasn't strictly necessary, but it felt as though it was. Not long after the group set out, the clash of the main battle reached their ears. Blood curdling screams, and war cries, mixed with the haunting call of the wendigos, the rumble of hooves, and the clash of steel.
Lyris sighed deeply, turning her gaze towards the ferocious conflict, "God help us all."
Poma inclined her head, "Celestia, God... I'll take anyone at this stage."
Malus placed a comforting hoof around her, rustling her saddlebags slightly, and the softly glowing blue stone contained within, "I'm here too."
She smiled, "I know. And I'm most grateful for that, out of everything."
It took the group almost exactly Tharax's estimated twenty minutes to pick their way through the boulders overland. At one stage, he began to privately worry that time would run out, but the closer they came to the wendigos' rear guard, the easier the going became.
At exactly nineteen and a half minutes, they had reached the final piece of cover between the boulder field, and the wendigos. They were close enough for the storm's intensity to be deafening, but their speculation had been right; the center of the storm lay at ground level, in the midst of the ground-walker rear guard.
Poma winced, "That's a lot of skeletons..."
Tharax tightened his grip on his axe, "But if Utamak succeeds, it will diminish to a manageable amount."
Malus raised an eyebrow, "Does your kind 'manage' everything at the tip of blades, talons, or beaks?"
Lyris chuckled, "No... Just anything to do with confrontation."
Tharax rumbled deep in his chest, "If it crosses us, or those we protect, it dies. No appeals, no restrictions."
Poma exhaled and knit her brow, "Whatever happened to mercy?"
Lyris grinned wryly, "Mercy is for friends and family when they make mistakes. Everyone else gets exactly one chance to behave. After that, anything is fair. And we don't pull strikes."
Malus rocked his head back and forth slightly, in partial disagreement, "Well.. In *this* particular case, I think we're all of the same mind. These are monsters. They need to be wiped off the face of Equestria."
Tharax smiled; an expression of predatory glee, "Ask and ye shall receive."
Lyris unfolded her bow, "In abundance at that."
As the count reached twenty one minutes, a sweeping cry went out among the wendigos. It contained notes of triumph and hatred. The city had been 'breached.' It was time.
Tharax looked between each member of his party in turn, "It has been my honor to fight by your side. No quarter. No pause. No reservations. We win, or we die."
With that, the group began their silent charge. As they neared the rear ranks of the enemy, it became immediately apparent that Utamak's diversion was working as intended. The ranks had already thinned out by over a third as the unearthly corpses surged into the city without caution.
Poma and Lyris took to the air, the former to begin pushing back the wind, the latter to gain a better vantage to fire from. Tharax remained on the ground with Malus; he felt that it was worth sacrificing an initial flighted advantage to make himself a force-multiplier to the earth pony's untrained strength.
They hit the final ranks almost as they hit the sleet and the worst of the wind. The force was so visceral, and physical, that were it not for Poma, Lyris would have been unable to even continue. Malus quickly began to rely on Tharax to spot and dispatch any enemy that was within striking distance, but beyond his own tiny sight range. Even the gryphon was beginning to suffer a loss of visibility in the storm, however.
The attack, nevertheless, had the advantage of desperation, brutality, utter surprise, and direction.
The first two rows of wendigos were so concentrated on moving forward, that they found themselves entirely unable to react to the oncoming juggernaut of warriors. The four companions let loose with their battle cries then, the point of stealth having long since passed.
At first, while the going was incredibly difficult and slow, progress was nonetheless steady. The four friends quickly passed the point of no return as the rear-guard ranks closed over their entry hole. And then the progress began to slow.
First the storm intensified even more, to impossible levels of gale force wind. Chunks of sleet became dangerous projectiles, and the lightning was so constant that the scene was brighter than a sunlit day.
And the wendigos were the worst of it. Not simply the ground-walkers, but the ethereal forms. Even the gryphons could feel the tug of their emotional manipulation. It was only partially magic in its mechanic. Its insidious ability to reach anyone lay in the fact that it merely reflected back to them their negative emotions, thus compounding them and amplifying them to dangerous levels.
Tharax could see, through the miasma of weather and battle, that Malus' muzzle was twisted into what seemed like a permanent grimace. Poma was openly in tears of pain and despair, and Lyris was swiftly reaching a point where her rage was going to outweigh all sense of logic, clarity, and self preservation.
Tharax, for his part, was struggling with his fear for Lyris' safety, combined with his rage.
He gritted his beak, and swing his axe with added abandon, totally ignoring the leftover soreness in his shoulder. Pain of the physical sort had long since dimmed to a mere intellectual realization of injuries. Nothing in the corporeal world could stop him, short of death.
So he forced himself to ignore emotion as well. When that began to fail, he concentrated on his rage, feeding his fear into it to shift the balance. In a state of rage, he could still fight, but not in a state of grief and terror.
Finally, after what seemed like days of battle, but what could have only been minutes in reality, they punctured the eyewall and entered the center of the storm.
The calm was instant, and deafeningly eerie.
The only sound was the now seemingly distant moan of the wind, the softer but more urgently worrying moan of the thousands of wendigos above their heads, and the occasional distant crack of lightning.
The calm did not last long. Very swiftly, the ground-walkers realized that something was amiss, and ranks began to converge on the storm's heart. Row after row of menacing skeletal forms encircled the group.
Lyris glanced down at Poma and Malus, "Get started with the artifact. We will cover for you."
She readied her bow, and Tharax began to swing his ax in lazy figure eights, "Seems like this is the story of our lives. You, me, and a horde of something unpleasant that needs killing."
Lyris snorted morosely, "Not that it hasn't been wonderful... But It could have been more too."
Tharax smiled, "Still might be."
He turned his gaze towards their nearest enemies, who were balking and shying away from the positive emotion as if it were acidic. The gryphons passed each other a knowing smile, and then dove into the fray.
There were many enemies; a seemingly unending stream of them, scrambling over the bones of the recently dismembered to gain access to their targets. But the area the two gryphons had to protect was also quite small; Poma and Malus were huddled tightly around the blue stone, eyes shut tight in concentration, as its glow began to slowly but steadily intensify.
Then it all went horribly wrong.
The crush of ground-walkers, combined with the fact that the storm's eye-walls and close winds prevented the gryphons from flying, had left them in a situation that even their almost-precognizant reflexes were strained to keep up with.
Tharax saw it happen. Had to watch, as if in slow motion, as the bone pierced Lyris' chest from behind, and the blood, more golden than red, tainted her chest feathers..
The male gryphon instantly lost all sense of self preservation, and fear.
Gryphons were natural warriors from the moment they hatched. With training, they could become so deadly that only Dragons, Changelings, or diamond dogs in numbers dared to take them on. Beyond even training, a truly berserk gryphon; one pushed beyond the threshold of negative emotions and into the state beyond rage was, like an angry Dragon, a weapon capable of ending some smaller battles wholesale.
Tharax let out a long, tortured war cry, and began to swing his axe, paws, claws, and wings like a dervish of death. He even began to use his beak, not pausing to think about the disgusting reality of touching it to dead bones.
For a few brief moments, he was pinwheeling, flipping, punching, clawing, and slashing so swiftly and violently that the ground-walkers refused to even come near him. But the crush of their brethren from behind forced them into the oncoming hellish nightmare that they had unleashed.
Death incarnate.
When Tharax finally paused, it was only because his brain finally notified him that the heart of the storm was once more empty of ground-walkers. He spent a long moment trying to re-collect his faculties, before glancing over at Poma and Malus.
The artifact stone had, under their auspices, begun to emit not only a sharp blue glow, but subtle arcs of energy that were reaching out to any nearby wendigos. Any time it touched them, they shied away violently. Doubtless this had been the reason the ground-walkers finally retreated.
Then Tharax remembered why he was so upset.
He rushed to Lyris; now lying in the dirt and sand, clutching her chest and murmuring. And in that moment, he knew that there was no chance for her.
"...As she lay there, bleeding to death, I experienced the worst moment in my life. I had known her since we were fledglings; my earliest memories besides my own parents, were of her. There was so much that could have been, and should have been. And I had let all that time slip through my talons without even thinking to care. Sometimes we don't understand the full value of what we've been given. Until we stand to lose it..."
Tharax sighed, and for the first time he appeared almost vulnerable to the Crusaders. Downcast.
Out of respect and shock, the three fillies kept silent. Death was not a part of their daily lives; having it recounted by someone who had witnessed it, and sensing his emotional tie to it, made it very real to them for a brief moment.
Each struggled to choke back their own conflicting emotions as they strode on in silence with the gryphon. They knew that he had been very generous and open to share something so deep with them, and they knew it was going to give them pause, and lead them to ask questions, for years to come.
When Apple Bloom accidentally bumped into Tharax, she looked up and knit her brow in honest confusion, "Why're we back here?"
Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle noticed, with a start, that they had circled all the way back to Carousel Boutique.
Wordlessly, Tharax walked up to the door and rapped sharply with a fisted claw.
After several moments of curious and uncomfortable silence, the door opened to reveal Rarity. She smiled slightly, and inclined her head, "I *just* finished. If you'd like to step in and rest while I finish packaging your order.."
She paused and gazed out at the Crusaders, eyes widening, "What are you three doing here?"
Sweetie Belle piped up, hoping to quickly prevent her older sister from probing into the day's events and learning that their adventure had begun with them spying on Tharax, "He's been telling us a story. Explaining something to us."
Rarity looked taken aback, "Oh!" She paused, and stared down contemplatively, "Oh... well... you'd all best come in then. Has the story finished?"
Tharax shook his head, "I think it's best I wait until..."
Rarity nodded rapidly, "Yes yes, of course. I appreciate your discretion, as will my friend."
Before the Crusaders could even begin to attempt to parse the 'adult speak,' Rarity continued, "Well! As I said, your order is complete. No charge; I am *happy* to perform this service. Just let me get them packaged."
As she trotted out of the main area, into the back room, she tossed her mane, "Oh, by the by, they're here. They're waiting for you in the kitchen."
Scootaloo wrinkled her muzzle, "They? They who?"
Sweetie Belle raised an eyebrow, "*Tharax* was Rarity's big client for today?"
Apple Bloom frowned, "We *still* never got our answer!"
Tharax stepped out of the room, seemingly deaf to their conversation. Within moments, he returned.
The first thing the Crusaders noticed was that the gryphon was smiling. Widely. Genuinely. An expression, for the first time since they had met him, of pure and deep joy.
The second thing they noticed were the other two gryphons. A similarly armored female, who looked to be about Tharax's age, her left wing draped over Tharax's back in a show of affection, and a young male fledgeling beside her, who couldn't have been much older than the Crusaders themselves.
It was plain to see from his coloration that he was their offspring.
Tharax nodded, "Young fillies; let me introduce you to my fledgling, Saranif, and my mate. Lyris."
The silence of shock seemed to stretch to an eternity. Scootaloo was the first to close her gaping jaw, but she found herself unable to get words out. Merely half-thought up noises of dumbfounded confusion.
Sweetie Belle was the first to regain full speech faculties, "But... you're not *dead*!?"
Lyris chuckled, a musical and comforting sound, "No indeed little one, though I have very nearly been dead many times in my life. Has my mate been telling you his war stories?" She offered Tharax a love-filled good-natured glare.
Apple Bloom nodded, "Eeyup. But we don't know how this one *ends* yet!"
Tharax shook his head, "And the ending will have to wait."
Apple Bloom frowned, "Awwww! But whyyyy? I'm itchin' to know! I waaant to know naaaoooow."
The golden and brown gryphon shook his head again, more emphatically, "It is not my place. I need the permission of another first."
At that moment, Rarity re-entered with two packaged wrapped tightly in flax paper, suspended in her magic. She levitated them across to Tharax, who took them in his claws, and tucked them under one wing, "My thanks to you. Are you sure you will not accept payment?"
Rarity shook her head slowly, but firmly, "This is a gift on behalf of my friend, and to honor the fallen. I insist."
Lyris smiled and inclined her head, "We will see you this evening then?"
Rarity nodded, "I wouldn't miss it for the world, darling. It will be hard enough as it is, and I want to be there for her support if nothing else."
Tharax sighed contentedly, "All is ready. Shall we go?"
Scootaloo cocked her head, "Go? Where? Your gathering?"
"Indeed."
The Crusaders were almost as surprised when they arrived back at Sweet Apple Acres, as they had been when Lyris stepped out of Rarity's kitchen.
Apple Bloom looked up with pleading eyes into Tharax's sympathetic golden ones, "Ah don't understand..."
He blinked, delivering his reply in a monotone that revealed almost nothing, "You will."
He led the group around the side of the barn, and through the doors. Applejack glanced up from her work, sorting her crop between 'good' and 'bad buckets.' she smiled sadly, "Ah figured ya'll would be along pretty soon."
She jerked her head at the Crusaders, "You told em yer story?"
Tharax nodded, "All but the end. With your permission?"
The orange earth pony removed her hat, a stunningly rare gesture, and sighed, "It's high time. Go right on ahead."
"...Lyris was not long for the world, but she had a sliver of a chance. If we won, we might be able to get her the care she needed to survive. zebra are masters of herbal medicine, and we are a quick-healing, hard to kill species. If we receive care for serious traumas in time. And time was running out. For the city, and for her.."
Lyris gazed up into Tharax's eyes, smiling sadly, "You know..." She paused to cough, a disturbing trickle of golden blood eeking from her beak, "I could say 'I told you so.' "
Tharax let out a sound somewhere between barking laugh, and wracking sob, "Typical female bravado."
His friend grinned, "Maybe you're starting to rub off on me."
Tharax clutched her claw tightly to his chest, "Hold on. Or I swear, I'll come after you just to make you pay for leaving me here this way."
"You..." Lyris paused to cough again, "You got it."
The male gryphon tore himself away, and dashed over to Poma and Malus, "Soon?"
Poma nodded, "Yes. soon. It is working... But more slowly than we'd hoped."
Malus opened his eyes, and locked gazes with Tharax, "You should know... well... ah..."
Poma opened her eyes as well. A trickle of a tear ran down her muzzle, and it was then that Tharax understood. He knew even as she spoke the words, with a gut wrenching surety that seemed to fill his stomach with boiling grease.
"The power required... it is much higher than Utamak's shaman's expected. It is not beyond our capacity to muster and give but..."
Malus bit his lip, and finally voiced the awful truth, "But we're fairly certain we won't survive the process."
Tharax shook his head, forcing back his own tears, "No... no no... we'll help you. We'll contribute, or find another way..."
Poma smiled sadly, "Now that we have begun, we can not add others to the process without starting over. Lyris doesn't have that time, neither does Utamak."
Malus sighed, "We accepted this risk. The same as you. We're happy to make this sacrifice. Same as you. For the sake of future generations."
Tharax knelt, and embraced the pair with his wings, covering them and the artifact in a canopy of feathery affection. He breathed deeply to bite back a sob, and then spoke to Poma, "You will both be long remembered. We couldn't have done this without you."
He shifted his gaze to Malus, "You... you and your mate would have made excellent gryphons."
Malus grinned wryly, "And you and Lyris will make excellent parents."
Poma nodded slowly, "It is time."
Tharax pulled back, and moved to kneel beside Lyris, raising her head so she could see. she waved her own farewell, her tears streaming freely, "Blessings on you; one day we will sing songs in the halls of victory about you."
Malus nodded, "You two... do us two favors."
Tharax jumped to answer, "You have but to name them."
"First; stop acting like a pair of school-age foals and just get mated already."
Lyris laughed briefly, choking back the sound as the motion began to jostle her damaged body. Tharax nodded, "And?"
"...Once promises were said, it began. The stone's glow became blinding; Malus and Poma closed their eyes against it, but Lyris and I stared into it and watched. We can see in the most blinding of light, but for once I did not want to see. And yet, I did as well. I wanted to bear witness, so that their sacrifice would never go unappreciated. As the stone began to pulse, it levitated and the arcs became more powerful."
"Poma and Malus began to rise with it, caught in its spell, no longer providing it direction. They simply waited, calmly, even happily, for it to demand of them the ultimate sacrifice. At last, in a blaze like the death of a star, the stone took them. They simply vanished painlessly into pure magic. The infusion was not just enough; their sacrifice was born of overwhelming positive emotion. The stone exploded."
"The shockwaves traveled outward, and everywhere they touched the wendigos died in agony. The non corporeal ones went more swiftly; the reaction cascaded across them, searing them out of existence with the fury of dragonfire and the speed of a summer monsoon. The ground-walkers experienced even more pain; their stolen bodies prolonged their deaths by seconds, and the sound of their torment was so deafening that it drowned out all else."
"When it was finally over, the storm, and every cloud for hundreds of miles, had been blasted away like stone before sand. A clear blue sky and setting sun shone down upon the results; heaps of disconnected bones, boulders overturned and dragged for yards by the wind, and Utamak's city. Burning, damaged, but still ultimately saved."
"On that day, we lost only twenty two warriors total. I consider that nothing less than a miracle of divine origin. The wendigos were never seen again; they had all been obliterated; not simply forced away, but forced out of existence by the stone."
Lyris took up the tale briefly, "We did exactly as Malus and Poma bade us. When Tharax learned that I was to survive my wounds, he proposed on the spot. I had no reservations or hesitation in accepting. Setting about our friends' final request was, however, significantly more difficult..."
Tharax resumed, "It has taken me these many years of searching to find what they asked us to find. A combination of obligations, travel, disasters, and events that scattered the clues we most needed, made it a long search. But we finally found you."
The Crusaders tilted their heads in unanimous confusion, "Huuuh?"
Tharax knelt before Apple Bloom, and smiled sadly, "You. And your sister, And your brother. and your grandmother."
The filly continued to stare in confusion, "But ah don't...?"
Applejack moved to stand beside her sister, placing a comforting hoof around her, "Sugarcube... Ma and Pa have always been just Ma and Pa to you. Mostly to me 'n Big Mac too. We didn't use their names that often even with each other."
Apple Bloom slowly began to comprehend, but only slightly. So Applejack took a deep, sob laden breath, and finally spoke once more, "They were our parents. Momma and Poppa. Poma and Malus."
For a moment the filly's face was contorted by a swift train of nearly indecipherable emotions. At last, finally putting the puzzle together both mentally and emotionally, she leaned into her older sister and began to weep freely.
Big Mac, who had arrived silently as the story was winding down, stepped over and wrapped his long sturdy neck around his siblings, pitching in with his own stoic comfort born of maturity.
Somehow, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle managed to squeeze in and offer hugs to Apple Bloom as well.
"Dear Princess Celestia,"
Tharax's gathering turned out to be a ceremony of honor and passing for Malus and Poma. A surprising number of ponyville residents attended, including, most importantly, all of Applejack's family friends, and all the warriors in the town's midst.
"Today, ah began to learn about death, war, grief, sacrifice, an' movin' on afterward."
Of the stonemason, he had requested a small pair of obelisks; both headstones for Malus and Poma's 'graves,' and monuments to all the fallen warriors of the wendigo cataclysm. The gathering carried them to the top of a sun-drenched hill, with just the right amount of trees so as to be beautiful, but not cloying. There they erected the marble pillars; a permanent reminder of sacrifice.
"A visitor to ponyville told us a story. He helped me start ta learn alotta hard things, but more importantly, he gave me an mah folks the truth about somethin' we'd never really understood before."
After the initial ceremony, Tharax presented Applejack with a gift, from his family and Applejack's friends; the packages Rarity had prepared. They turned out to be the remnants of Malus and Poma's tunics, recovered from where they had fallen when their bodies vanished, and restored by the master seamstress to mint condition.
More tears were shed, but the catharsis ran far deeper than the grief. After that, there was a sort of celebration. According to both gryphon culture, and the fallen Ponies' last wishes, the death of a warrior for the sake of a victory was to be treated as something more to be celebrated, than to be mourned.
"None of us knew what had happened to ma and pa; we knew they had gone off on a journey to serve, but not where, or why, or what had happened. All we knew was that, sure as shootin,' the only reason they never came back was that they had ta be dead. Ah didn't think that not knowin' how, or why, would be such a burden, but it was."
In the end, Applejack, her closest friends, the remainder of the Apple family, Tharax and his kin, and the other two Crusaders were all that remained at the farm. For once in the lives of the young ones, there was no curfew. They all stayed up late into the night, swapping stories. Some about the few memories Applejack and Big Mac had of their parents, others about Tharax's adventures, and a few about the funny mishaps and shenanigans of life in ponyville.
"Big sis said it's called 'closure;' findin' out all about somethin' that hurts, and usin' what ya've learned to help come to terms and live with it. We didn't understand at first, we Crusaders; but AJ was cryin' because she was healin' Just like all of us ended up doin.' "
Tharax and his family consented to stay the weekend in ponyville; eventually most of the townsfolk warmed up to the strangers, and a surprising number even listened when Tharax delivered an impromptu story and lesson about Warriors. Foremost among the listeners was miss Cheerilee. During the festivities Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, and their families, were nowhere to be seen.
"I know ah haven't learn'd all there is ta' know about all this. Big Mac says its a long process ta have true peace with a death in tha family. An' it seems like there are more hard lessons in war, an' sacrifice too. We begged Tharax, and he promised to send us gryphon books; so's we could learn more. Books of War Stories."
Inevitably, Pinkie Pie threw the gryphons a welcome party. The levity of the occasion helped to allay the sombre tone of the past days. At last, however, it was time for life in ponyville to return to normal.
Tharax and his family bid their new friends farewell, but only under strictest promise to visit at least every Warriors' Day.
"Mah friends are a huge help too. They're like an extended family, and that helps me know ah don't have to do this alone. AJ has her little circle of friends, ah do too. Sometimes it still hurts to think about it... But ah don't always have ta think about it. And it hurts less every time. Ahm proud that mah Ma and Pa served. Ahm happy ah know the story. And ah hope ah'll keep on learnin' until the pain is so small, that it can never overshadow the joy. Until ah know what every grown up pony should know about sacrifice, and heroes.
Yours Truly,
~Apple Bloom~"