Chapter 9: Two Fronts
In the city down below, ponies and griffons looked up from their business to see clouds of dust rising from the mansion perched at the peak of Diamond Mountain, no one but the completely deaf missing the deafening roar of wind or the low crunching sound of stone being smashed to pieces. Some earth ponies noticed that the mountain itself seemed to shudder from the force of impact. A few seconds later, a veritable cacophony of noise, roars, howling winds, and even booming thunder, echoed from the mansion above. Those in the town it loomed over trembled and began to move away, descending down into the lower tiers of the settlement to escape whatever forces were raging above. No one knew what it was...and no one wanted to find out either.
Hope Spot squeaked and dove beneath the covers of her bed, pulling them up and over to completely cover her sea-green mane. She curled up there, shivering as her room shuddered. The master bedroom at the top of the estate's central tower might have been the finest room in the entire manor, but being at the top of the mansion also meant that Hope Spot could feel every tremor coming from below, which were naturally amplified by the tower's structure as they traveled upward from the lower floors, making the room shudder violently. If the mansion began to collapse, then the tower was likely to tumble, taking Hope Spot down with it to her untimely demise.
Trembling, the teal mare slowly inched out from under the covers, slowly making her way towards the window to see what was happening down below. The window was her only means of knowing what was going on in the outside world. The door had been locked to ensure that she couldn't escape and, sadly, Hope Spot's skill with magic wasn't at a level where she could hope to manage teleportation.
Inching her head up to the sill, Hope Spot carefully turned to look downward, letting her dark-green eyes sweep over the manor below. From her position, she could see a cloud of dust rising from one wall of the house, billowing outward over the courtyard and the wall beyond. What's going on? she wondered, Is somepony attacking? Is someone here to help me? But nopony should even know I'm here...
Nopony that is, except for Sweet Water and the ones working directly for her, certainly not anypony who would give away her location to potential rescuers, not that her brother had the means to send ponies to her rescue. Whatever it is, she thought glumly, I hope I don't get killed because of it.
She turned her head to look at the door once more, wishing there was some way she could get it open. However, some form of spellwork had been inlaid in the door itself, preventing her magic from working on it. She suspected that the ward's original purpose had been keeping intruders out of the room, but it now did a fine job of keeping her in.
At least she was comfortable. Ironically, this prison was more luxurious than her own home. The bed was soft with silken sheets that made her sigh when she relaxed in them. There was a shelf full of books, ensuring that she wouldn't be bored while she waited. The bathroom was equally elaborate, with a large marble tub with inlaid enchantments to maintain the water at the perfect temperature for a long soak and a selection of soaps, shampoos, and bath salts. The meals that they brought her were more than decent. Her captors had been especially considerate when they found out she didn't care for fish, a local specialty. Had it not been for the circumstances of her arrival and the fact she couldn't leave her room, Hope Spot would have thought she was on vacation.
But she wasn't. And the present circumstances made that abundantly clear. For all she knew the whole manor might collapse out from under her. But nopony would help her. They would probably leave her up here to die in this gilded cage.
Slowly, Hope Spot slumped down and leaned back against the wall, curling up into a ball, she began to sob into her arms, praying fervently that she would live to see her family again.
Dawn's wings beat once, sending a wind to clear the dust away as he launched himself out through the broken wall and out into the open air. Skan followed, his larger, broader wings easily beating the dust away with each stroke as the ebony griffon launched into pursuit.
Dawn immediately doubled back, now charging for the black griffon. Just as he was about to come within reach of Skan's claws, Dawn kicked out his hooves, pushing off against the air to suddenly halt his approach. At the same time, he allowed his forward momentum to flow into his wings, adding the force of his whole body behind it, sweeping both wings forward in one of the very first techniques he had once taught Scootaloo, throwing his hindquarters back so he could kick out with his hind legs, throwing as much of his power, both physical and magical, as he could into the attack.
The blast of compressed air slammed straight into Skan like a battering ram. He managed to raise his gauntleted forelimbs to block his head, taking the force of the blow with the armor on his arms and chest. However, even with the prodigious strength of his wings, his own forward momentum wasn't enough to overcome the full power of the Forward Wing Strike. Dawn's attack drove him back, though Skan's strength kept him from being slammed into the manor wall.
Skan lowered his arms, only to find that Dawn was now pressing the offensive with incredible ferocity. The colt was once again charging him. As he did so, the colt lunged forward with one wing before sweeping it back in an arc, using his spine to put the full strength of his body into the pivoting motion. The wind was swept into a roaring twister that pulled Skan in, even as it plowed into the wall of the mansion, smashing the solid rock into pieces and pulling them into itself. The black griffon could barely spare a thought to keeping his orientation as he fought off the debris that now swirled about the funnel with him, threatening to crush him into a bloody pulp.
Eventually, the winds began to slacken and the tornado started to abate. Skan realized that Dawn would probably press the attack as soon as the tornado dissipated and decided to prepare himself. Reaching out, he snagged one of the passing boulders, sinking his claws into it. and holding on. The dust swept up by the tornado was beginning to clear, giving Skan a view of his surroundings. His sharp eyes immediately zeroed in on the black shape of the colt as Dawn began to charge once again.
With another roaring shriek, Skan hurled the boulder at Dawn, twisting his hips and using his wings as a fulcrum to put all his strength into the motion. The rock, about the same size as Dawn himself, was sent hurtling like a bolt from a crossbow. Dawn swept a wing forward, the feathers slashing through the air like knives. Suddenly, the rock was cleanly sliced in two. Dawn dived between the halves and continued his charge. Skan beat his wings and surged outwards and upwards to meet the colt's charge head on.
Dawn spread his wings out behind him, agitating the air as he fell through it. A crackling charge began to build up between his primaries. As he closed with the charging Griffon, Dawn snapped his wings ahead of him, launching twin bolts of lightning straight for Skan's head. However, the griffon raised his forelimbs, once again catching the lightning with the gauntlets. As it had the last time Dawn had tried to use lightning, the electrical discharge seemed to be sucked into the gauntlets before suddenly bursting out of Skan's armor near the base of his tail. Dawn's eyes narrowed as he continued on his course, fully aware that doing so put him in danger of being subjected to the griffon's overwhelming strength.
As their paths brought them together, Dawn's eyes finally picked out an important piece of the griffon's protection. They were narrow lines of cloth, nearly invisible against the griffon's black plumage that ran up his forelimbs before joining with the armor at his shoulders. Wires! Dawn realized. Within those lines must have been wires of some highly-conductive metal. The metal was carrying the charge of his lightning from Skan's gauntlets up to his armor before being discharged out the back, protecting the griffon from electricity by redirecting that electricity around him rather than allowing it to pass through him.
As Skan slashed at Dawn with his claws once again, Dawn dodged upwards, darting up and slipping behind Skan. The griffon quickly pivoted about, his eyes not losing track of the colt, regardless of how fast he was moving.
"You're remarkably well-prepared," commented Dawn as he hung back, rather than continue to press the attack, "I find it hard to believe that you were prepared to fight somepony who could use lightning."
"Ha!" said Skan with a laugh, hovering in place as well, "That's not exactly the case. Griffon weather isn't like pony weather after all. We don't have tame, scheduled, manufactured storms. All of our weather is wild. We always have to be prepared for the possibility of going through a lightning storm." He smirked at Dawn. "But certainly seems especially useful against someone like you."
"I can't argue with that," said Dawn with a shrug. He was, indeed, feeling a bit troubled by the situation. Skan was simply too powerful and too durable. He'd borne the brunt of Dawn's air strikes while hardly flinching, easily weathering some of the colt's strongest blows. His armor kept lightning from reaching his body. That ruled out most of the attacks Dawn was comfortable using against a living adversary. Both his wind blades and the powerful plasma blasts were tactics that were far more lethal than the ones Dawn had used thus far. Or perhaps not, he thought as he eyed his opponent, Maybe I can employ them non-lethally if I'm extremely careful how I use them.
It wouldn't be easy. He could aim to use the edges of vacuum blades to cut his opponent, possibly hitting certain muscles or tendons to disable him. However, the slightest miscalculation could result in a sliced artery or even a severed limb, leading to Skan dying from the resulting blood-loss. Dawn realized that he had no detailed knowledge of griffon anatomy, nothing that could direct his aim to avoid hitting vital spots. He once again eyed the griffon's armor, his eyes narrowing as he thought about it. Maybe I don't have to slice Skan himself. If he could cut through the wires that ran through the griffon's armor, disrupting the pathways that directed electricity away from Skan's body, Dawn would be able to use his lightning to land a decisive blow.
It wouldn't be an easy task though. Thinking about it made Dawn realized that he'd neglected something in his training. Even before figuring out how to wield lightning, Dawn hadn't really put much thought into polishing his skills in using the vacuum blade technique. Because he'd always thought of it as a skill of last resort, and because he wanted to avoid relying on it whenever possible, Dawn had neglected to pursue any further mastery of the technique. If he'd mastered it further, he might have been able to control the motion, and even the shape of the super-sharp wind blades. As it was, he could only launch them in crescent-shaped arcs in a straight line. Once he'd learned how to wield lightning, Dawn had thrown all his work and concentration into mastering that, neglecting exploring the vacuum blade technique any further. From this distance, trying something as precise as stripping Skan of his armor without cutting the griffon himself was out of the question...
....Which meant that Dawn had to get close. The only other way the colt knew how to wield the blades of wind was to project them along the line of his feathers, wielding them like an extension of his own wings in a technique that was reminiscent of the cutting attack he'd seen the Wonderbolts use. But doing so meant getting close to Skan...dangerously close. Just as importantly, his attacks had to be precise to the finest degree or he wouldn't stop at slicing off the griffon's armor and would slice apart the griffon himself.
A quiet huff forced its way out Dawn's nose. In the end, it's no different from where I was before. Just as with Willow, just as with what Red River had been teaching him, Dawn had to shoulder the risk of entering into the place where his enemy was strongest in order to strike a decisive blow and end the battle. There was no use in dwelling on or thinking too much about it.
Instead, Dawn relaxed both his body and mind, letting his awareness bleed out through the whole of his form and out into the air around him. He was no longer centered in his own thoughts, but in that curious place in the transition between thought and action. He knew what he needed to do and he knew how to do it. All his training and experience had built his understanding to make this possible.
Skan's eyes narrowed as he watched the jet-black colt with those strange eyes. Something about Dawn Lightwing was changing. It was as though his form was blurring, becoming indistinct, and bleeding out into the sky itself. Thus, even though Dawn was right in front of him, Skan had trouble seeing the colt. Skan's gaze seem to pass across Dawn without even acknowledging him and it took every bit of the griffon's focus to keep track of where Dawn was, even though the colt hadn't moved in the slightest.
Dawn moved. His body seemed to vanish and then he was directly before Skan's eyes. Immediately, Skan raised a clawed hand, ready to swipe at the colt with a vicious, devastating strike that would carve apart Dawn's flesh. However, the colt's form almost seemed to melt before the griffon's eyes as Dawn practically flowed around Skan's slash, slipping past and to the side. At the same moment, Dawn swept his wing forward, holding it flat so that the feathers splayed out, swinging the appendage like it was a large, broad blade.
Skan's ears picked up a faint whistling noise and something stirred the fur and feathers beneath his armored plates, as though a faint wind had leaked through. Skan twisted to try and catch Dawn, but Dawn somehow slipped over his back and around to the other side, moving so fluidly that the griffon simply couldn't track it. Once again, Skan heard a faint whistling noise and felt a breeze stir beneath his armor. Skan whipped back around to the other side in an attempt to catch him, but it was suddenly like hunting a shadow as Dawn slipped away again.
And then, Skan felt lighter. A second later, he realized why. His armor was falling away, plate by plate. Looking down, the griffon was shocked to see that Dawn had somehow cut the straps that held the armor plates to his body. In less than a few seconds, his gauntlets were the only armor he had left. Eyes wide with shock, Skan shifted his gaze up to where Dawn was now waiting, wings extended. The griffon gulped nervously when he saw the sparks beginning to spit from the colt's wings.
Skan began to fold his wings in preparation for a dive, but the speed of light was far too fast for him to evade. On reflex, the griffon threw out a gauntlet, which intercepted the burst of electricity. But without the rest of his armor to conduct it out to a safe exit point, the lightning instead flowed through the embedded wires and then played out across Skan's form, causing the black griffon to scream and spasm as arcs of energy played across his body, burning feathers and making fur smolder. Skan barely had the presence of mind to keep his wings spread, turning his fall into a glide that carried him back into the hallway that he and Dawn had vacated only moments earlier.
The griffon hit the floor, stumbling and disoriented, his limbs not fully responding to the commands his brain sent them. He barely had the sense to turn and look back the way he had come, where he could see Dawn approaching. Already, the colt was trailing blue and white sparks behind one wing as he dived in. Forcing himself to move, Skan reared up into his hind legs with a defiant shriek. Raising his claws to strike. However, with the blow he had taken, he was far too slow to keep up with Dawn now.
The ebony colt moved with almost contemptuous ease, ducking underneath Skan's swiping claws and charging straight for the black griffon's underbelly. As he did so, Dawn thrust forward with his wing, molding air with the electricity he had gathered and charging it. Rather than allowing the power to concentrate fully into plasma, Dawn simply slammed Skan with a hammer of electrically charged air that sent shockwaves of lightning rippling across the griffon's body, even as the force of the blow slammed him back through the remains of the wall on the other side of the hallway.
Skan tumbled to a stop on the floor of an empty room, his body unable to move. The griffon was barely conscious of Dawn's approach and coughed harshly as he tried to get up. However, that wasn't possible. It was as though his body had separated from his mind. Skan could barely even feel his own limbs anymore and what he did feel felt distant.
As he stood over his foe, Dawn took a moment to calm his breathing, getting his body to relax after the incredibly tense battle. His front legs ached fiercely and his shoulders were especially sore. His wings burned from the exertion and his coat was matted with sweat. It took a moment, but Dawn managed to relax his body somewhat.
"W-well done...little cub," coughed Skan from his position on the floor, surprised that he was still able to even speak, "Are you going to finish me?"
"That was never my intention," said Dawn, "If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn't have bothered to take such risks."
Skan laughed...or tried to as his laughter dissolved into a flurry of hacking coughs. "In other words, you never faced me with your full strength to begin with."
"It's hard to describe," said Dawn, "But I never wanted to kill you, or anyone if I could avoid it. It is more a problem of finding a way to fight with my full strength that doesn't endanger my enemy's life."
Again, the griffon coughed in a vain attempt to laugh at the colt's words. "That's a difficult path to walk, little cub. It is a far simpler thing to kill your enemy and be done with it."
"Maybe so," said Dawn, lowering his head as he thought of the ponies closest to him, of his mother and his fillyfriend, of their happy smiles and the warmth of their embrace, "But I feel that there are those I would lose if I do not follow this path. I owe it to them to do my best not to spill blood needlessly."
"That is a sentiment I will probably never fully understand," commented Skan, "Killing comes far more easily to us griffons. Maybe we could stand to learn from you a little more."
"I suppose," conceded Dawn, with a nod of his head, "But I am afraid I will have to cut this discussion short. Please tell me where I may find Hope Spot."
"You'll find her in the master suite," replied Skan, "At the top of the highest tower."
"Thank you for your cooperation," said Dawn, bowing and spreading his wings to the griffon, "I hope that we can meet again...as something other than enemies." Turning, Dawn walked out of the room and spread his wings to fly back down the hallway he had come from, heading across the foyer from where he and Perlin had first entered the mansion, heading towards the sounds of battle still emanating from down the hallway on the other side.
Perlin and Zhan raced down the corridor, their momentum resulting in them actually running along the walls as they beat their wings to speed their rush. Zhan was out in front, her pointed wings allowing her to zip down the hallway with incredible speed. As he followed in her wake, trying to catch up so he could attack, Perlin couldn't help but admire the griffoness' profile. It was very different from most of the other griffons he had seen. She was smaller, lighter, and much faster. Strangely, the avian portion of her body seemed more like that of a falcon than that of an eagle. I wonder if that means that there are divisions among the griffons, not unlike our pony tribes, Perlin thought idly as he continued to pursue her, wondering where Zhan was heading.
All things considered, Perlin could have simply abandoned the chase and gone after Hope Spot. However, he didn't want to leave Zhan to come at them at a more inopportune time. She struck Perlin as the more dangerously pragmatic of the pair and one willing to take advantage of a situation where they had Hope Spot to look after to attack.
Besides, this fight was simply too much fun to abandon now. Wherever Zhan intended to run to, Perlin was sure that it would make things more interesting than they already were, which would be an impressive feat.
The hallway took a sharp turn before opening up into another room. This one Perlin took to be a ballroom of some sort. It was a large, open space, lined with ornamental pillars on either side, with an arched ceiling, where sections had been carved out to make room for skylights, half of which were streaming gold and rose-hued light from one side as the last rays of the setting sun reached the glass and refracted down through it, creating even more pillars, these ones of enchanting radiance, that stood at angles throughout the room. All in all, Perlin couldn't imagine a more picturesque place to do battle.
Zhan immediately took to the open air in the high-ceilinged room, beating her wings and accelerating towards the arches above. Perlin couldn't keep up with her raw speed, but he followed behind nonetheless, curious as to just what the griffoness was planning.
He found out quite quickly. On the verge of slamming beak-first into one of the ceiling arches, Zhan flipped her body around and planted her hind paws against the stone. Perlin's eyes could see already taut muscles tightening, winding like powerful springs as Zhan's own momentum pressed her into a crouch against the ceiling, her entire body seeming to coil like a serpent preparing to strike.
And then she vanished. The only sign she had been there at all was a web of cracks spreading from where Zhan's hind claws had pierced into the stone with incredible force. Perlin's only warning was a feeling of rushing air, not dissimilar from the non-visual cues that Dawn's attacks gave off. Fortunately, it was all the warning he needed. Twisting his body, Perlin swept his wing out in front of him as fast as he could, barely managing to make it in time before metal claws raked against his feathers, drawing out a stream of sparks as they raked across the wing's width. In an instant, the feeling was gone. Perlin's ears picked up a shuddering crunch of stone being crushed behind him and spun about to see a similar series of cracks spreading across the surface of one of the pillars down below him. However, there was no other sign of Zhan. Instead, Perlin's ears picked up another crunch, followed by that feeling of rushing air once again. He twisted his body to intercept the attack, but was too late.
The sting of claws raking across his barrel told Perlin that Zhan's attack had found its mark. However, his effort to respond to her by twisting and sweeping his wing out had forced her to take a shallower angle of approach, so her claws barely cut deeper than his skin. But this was an unfavorable situation, to say the least. With her wings alone, Zhan had already been an opponent whose dexterity was on par with Dawn's, able to perform the same feat of seeming to teleport from one place to another.
But now she wasn't just relying on her wings. Perlin now realized why she had led him to this room. She was now combining her incredible flight speed with her body's brute strength, using the pillars and arches around the room as platforms to push off of and accelerate even further beyond what she had been capable of with her wings alone. The pillars afforded Zhan with numerous places to push off from, broadening her tactical options immensely. Perlin realized that he had seriously underestimated the griffon and he hadn't even thought her a pushover to begin with.
His mistake had been to view his opponent as, more or less, a pegasus with extra-sharp bits, that her attacks and skills would rely primarily on her ability to fly. However, griffons were only half-bird in form. The other half was a lion's, a creature of the earth. She used her avian aspect to move swiftly through the air, while her terrestrial aspect allowed her to draw out extra strength with support from the earth. Rather than fighting like a pegasus, her nature was closer to that of a pegasus combined with an earth pony. I should be extremely glad she doesn't have magic as well.
Even as Perlin was thinking about this, Zhan had already attacked a half-dozen more times, ricocheting off pillars and arches like an out-of-control pinball, her body completely invisible to Perlin's eyes, save for the fleeting afterimages he managed to spot whenever she happened to slam feet-first into her chosen platform within the range of his vision. Of the six strikes, he managed to fully block half of them. The other half had gotten through his defenses, but were shallow, thanks to the fact that his wings still managed to keep her from striking full on. However, at this rate, blood loss would eventually weaken the cream-colored colt and dull his reflexes to the point he wouldn't be able to defend himself at all. Then she would strike the finishing blow.
I need to do something about her situation, thought Perlin as he twisted about, barely managing to twist about and catch Zhan's claws with the flat of one wing, She has too many points to push off of. The obvious approach would be to cut away the pillars. If he managed to remove them, he could limit Zhan's options to the ceiling and the walls, which would cut down on the number of architectural features she could use as platforms. Moving at such speeds meant she was limited almost completely to straight lines, able to only make minor corrections to her trajectory.
A slow smile spread across Perlin's space. Yes, he could try to take away the advantage this room afforded to her. But I have a better idea.
Once again feeling the shift in the air signaling Zhan's aproach, Perlin twisted about to intercept her, once again lashing out with a wing. However, instead of simply slashing with the wing alone, he launched three of his wired feathers at varied angles. Zhan's claws didn't even make contact with Perlin's wing as the griffoness was forced to make the most radical adjustment to her trajectory she possibly could to avoid the deadly wired blades. Feeling the breeze of her passing, Perlin smiled and twisted to fling a pair of feathers from his opposite wing, aiming for his estimation of her landing point. Of course, it was far too slow and Zhan was already gone from the pillar Perlin had been aiming for.
Even as he struck out, Perlin allowed himself to lose altitude. He retracted the two feathers he'd launched in his second attempt, but not the first three he'd sent out. As he sensed Zhan's approach once again, Perlin tugged hard on the wires themselves. He could almost feel the griffoness's surprise when he was suddenly no longer where he was supposed to be.
The first three feathers Perlin had launched had lanced out like darts. A subtle motion of his wing had sent them swinging in arcs so that the wires wrapped around a trio of pillars on one side of the ballroom. Now Perlin pulled on those wires, successfully tugging himself out of the line of attack. Letting the wires go slack released the pillars and Perlin glided to a stop between them. As he did so, his ears picked up a rapid series of impacts as Zhan's paws slammed home against several pillars, walls, and arches in succession, the path of impacts taking her from the ceiling, to the other side of the room, to the wall behind Perlin, and to the pillars on either side of him. When she hit the pillars by him, Perlin launched his wired feathers, all ten of them this time, out to either side of him, swinging the wires in arcs, Perlin swung them directly against the pillars, abruptly changing the angle of their swings so that the feathers were now suddenly sweeping directly towards him, moving with speed that even he couldn't track with his eyes, possibly even matching Zhan's speed.
Just as he had anticipated, he'd managed to pull off the tactic just as Zhan was making another run at him. He could feel the change in the motion of the air caused by her passing as she desperately twisted to avoid ten razor-sharp blades coming at her from different angles, abandoning her attack to escape injury. However, Perlin wasn't done yet. The angles of the wired feathers' motion sent them swinging into one another's paths as well, the wires twisting, seeming to tangle together, altering the direction of their motion yet again before they crossed with the other wires at different angles, quickly wrapping together in complex, almost indecipherable motions.
Then Perlin leapt into action, surging forward just as his ears picked up the impact of Zhan against the wall directly behind him, just where he'd expected her last attack to take her. It was all a question of speed now.
In front of Perlin, all ten wires had crossed and he snatched them in a single bundle into his mouth, halting any further tangling. He continued his flight, spinning about as he did so, drawing the wires taut. Just as he'd anticipated, Zhan was hurtling straight for him. He must have looked so foolish to her, tangling his most formidable weapons so severely. However, as Perlin drew the wires taut, the true nature of his intent became clear to the griffoness. She desperately tried to twist and turn, but it was too late. Her speed, her most deadly weapon, had now become her greatest weakness. When Perlin drew the wires tight, what had seemed only to be a complicated tangle, a snarl born of Perlin's foolishness, now took its true form, a web...a trap.
As Zhan hit the wire snare, she went into a tumble, pulling at the wires. Perlin strained at both ends of the wires. His wings felt as though they were about to be pulled from their sockets. His teeth seemed to be on the verge of being ripped out at the roots. The force behind Zhan's charge was immense. However, Perlin hung grimly on, waiting, feeling for the right time. As the wires caught Zhan and halted her charge, her momentum and energy was channeled into them. Perlin was waiting for the moment when that transfer was perfectly balanced between Zhan and his wires. It would come in an instant.
When it did come, Perlin released the sections of wire he'd gripped in his mouth, causing the whole web to go slack. The inertia that Zhan's collision caused them to whip and twist about, even as her own remaining momentum sent her tumbling further, both factors causing the wires to wrap around her body. With a snap of his wings, Perlin drew the wires taut once more, now looking at the griffon he'd handily snared in his hastily-constructed net.
Zhan was in a poor position. Her tumble had resulted in her limbs being tangled up at random. One foreleg was leveraged behind her back, while a wing splayed out almost directly behind her. Her remaining foreleg was stretched out in front of her, as though she was still reaching for Perlin, despite having been brought to a complete halt. Her remaining wing was bound tightly against her side by wires wrapping across her whole body. Finally, her hind legs had been pulled apart, being stretched in separate directions.
"I have you now," said Perlin with a slight smile, "You certainly made me work for this." Not bad for a trick I made up on the spot, though I should talk to the doctor about mithril fillings for my teeth if I'm going to try something like that again.
Zhan's eyes narrowed and she glared at him. "Now what?"
"Now, we finish it," replied Perlin. He allowed some slack into the wires, causing their hold on Zhan to loosen. In the next instant, he whipped his entire body around, turning to face away from Zhan, sweeping his wings about him with the motion. He also started retracting the wires immediately. Instead of tightening back around Zhan, they were pulled back towards their point of origin. The feathers on the end of those wires followed, slicing through anything that impeded them, including the stone pillars and griffon flesh. Zhan shrieked as she was sliced from several directions at once. The feathers also sliced the stone pillars on either side of the griffoness into several pieces.
Perlin's feathers returned, snapping back into their proper places. Zhan dropped limply towards the ground, having been cut in several critical places. Perlin watched as the griffoness plummeted towards the unforgiving stone floor below...
...Only to be caught on a cushion of wind as an ebony blur streaked out of the same hallway Perlin and Zhan had come from. As Zhan's fall slowed to a gentle stop, Dawn swept a wing across his body, a burst of wind blasting aside the chunks of pillar that threatened to smash Zhan beneath them. After making sure that they were no longer being threatened by debris, Dawn turned his attention back down to Zhan as he examined her wounds. His wings blurred, seeming to flick sharply over the gauntlets around Zhan's forelegs. The strange alloy, which had withstood repeated blows from Perlin's wings, fell away with no fuss. Dawn kicked the savage weapons away and continued his examination.
As Perlin slowly dropped to the floor, Dawn turned to glare at him. "I thought I told you, no killing for killing's sake."
"You also told me once that mercy is a luxury that one can only afford when one has the power to hold their enemy's life in their hooves," replied Perlin, turning to display the collection of cuts he had gained as a consequence of the battle, "It was a close-run thing. The slightest error and you would be there, staring at my severed head."
Perlin turned his attention to Zhan, who was, somehow, still conscious. Her eyes were glazed, a sign that the injuries were takin their toll. Like Dawn, Perlin examined the extent of her injuries. The fight had been every bit as close as he had claimed. In all honesty, Perlin was a bit surprised by the trick he'd ended up using. Never before had he seriously considered using the wires themselves as a part of his weapon. He had always viewed them as merely the tethers that connected the feathers to his wings, but not as weapons in and of themselves. His web had worked out quite well. But, given its novelty, he hadn't been able to be as precise with it as he would have liked.
As a consequence, Zhan's condition could be best described as...messy. Perlin's feathers had sliced through muscle and tendon without discrimination. Fortunately, his attacks seemed to have missed any major arteries, but Zhan was still in very real danger of bleeding out. However, there didn't seem to be much that either him or Dawn could do. Neither of them had brought any medical supplies and Perlin didn't rate his ability to treat another pony, much less a creature of a different species altogether, beyond basic first aid, which was slightly less than what was called for here.
"I'm not sure what we can do," Perlin said after a moment. He turned to look speculatively at Dawn. "Where's her comrade?"
"The other one is incapacitated right now," replied Dawn as he wondered what to do.
At that moment, the two of them heard a click of stone bouncing off stone. Both colts whirled to see a unicorn slowly slinking into the room from the entrance that they had both come from. From the uniform the stallion was wearing, it was clear that he was a member of the household staff.
"Ah!" exclaimed Perlin, his wings spreading in his excitement, "Perfect!"
Dawn's eyes narrowed at he looked at the servant. The unicorn looked as though he had been about to bolt. After all, he had simply been poking his head into the room to see if the battle was truly over. However, Dawn's fierce draconic gaze, pinned the stallion in place like an insect in a hobbyist's collection. "Is there anypony among the staff here capable of healing magic?" asked Dawn.
"Th-there is," stammered the stallion, having to force words out from between his chattering teeth, "The head maid is a proficient healer."
"Then please summon her here so that this griffon can get the treatment she needs," said Dawn.
"B-but th-the Viscountess wouldn't approve," protested the servant, clearly nervous at the possible outcome, "She'll be livid if we aided a guard that failed her so badly."
Dawn's eyes narrowed into a glare that froze the stallion's blood in his veins. The sheer force of his will behind it was intimidating enough, but its influence was only magnified by the intensity his unique eyes lent it. The psychological affect on the stallion was profound as his entire body began to shake beneath the force of Dawn's glare (1).
"I have more than had my fill of hearing what this Viscountess wants," growled Dawn, "Perhaps it is just as well that she receives a severe lesson that things will not always go her way. Go and fetch your head maid...now!"
The stallion didn't even bother nodding, instead turning to flee back the way he come. Dawn continued to glare down the hallway until the sound of the servant's hoofsteps could no longer be heard.
Turning his attention back to Perlin and Zhan, Dawn could see the older colt smirking at him in amusement. "My, aren't you testy."
Dawn snorted. "Finding out some idiot noble has been keeping an innocent mare imprisoned so that she can threaten my family just so she can manipulate one of my friends tends to have an adverse effect on my temper. I'm halfway tempted to go to Canterlot and give her a piece of my mind in pony."
Perlin let out a barking laugh. "I wouldn't mind that myself."
Dawn could see that Zhan was still bleeding. There were too many wounds to staunch and they were all across her body, meaning that simply tilting her one way or another wouldn't help matters. He could only hope that the head maid made it in time to actually administer treatment. Fortunately, none of Zhan's cuts were across important arteries and veins. As he continued to watch the griffoness, Dawn's ears picked up a faint dripping and he looked over to see that it was blood dripping from Perlin's own lacerations. A faint flicker of guilt flashed through Dawn as he remembered that Perlin had shown him the wounds earlier. But Dawn, in his anger, had scarcely acknowledged them as anything more than proof that Perlin had been serious about how difficult his fight had been. "I suppose we should have her see to your wounds while we're at it."
Perlin shrugged, as though he didn't even realize that he'd been hurt at all. "Ah, it's not so bad." He looked down and lifted a wing, as he did, Perlin realized that his flesh hadn't been the only casualty of the battle. His cloak, the one Rarity had made for him, had several tears in it from where Zhan's claws had cut through the fabric to reach his barrel. "Oh bother..."
A few minutes later, the head maid, another unicorn came trotting in, glaring at the two colts like they were misbehaving children. "Unbelievable! Do you brats have any idea what you've done? The architecture of this estate is nearly two-thousand years old! The rooms of this mansion were carved from the bedrock of the mountain itself and you've smashed portions of it like cheap china! How dare you-!"
The mare was cut off as Dawn sharply extended his wing, stretching the leading primary so that it hovered just below the mare's chin, his turquoise eyes glaring back into hers. "I could care less about this estate. If you're really so upset, then you should talk to your employer about her questionable business practices if they bring things like this down on her property. Now, do the job that you were called for and the damaged sections will remain the only damaged sections. If not, then I will go ahead and level the entire thing."
The maid gulped, at first looking as though she wouldn't back down. However, after another moment, she sighed and stepped away from Dawn so that she could turn her attention to Zhan. A shining aura washed over the griffoness. Her eyes drifted closed as the healing magic took effect and the cuts began to close.
"We're lucky it was nothing more than lacerations," said the maid, now all business, "If she'd broken any bones, we would have to feed her before we could place her under the healing spell."
"Thank you," said Dawn, before jerking his head towards Perlin, "Now, if you would be so kind as to see to his wounds..."
The mare sighed and turned her attention to Perlin. Once again, her horn lit and the cream-colored colt was bathed with light. When she finished, the cuts across Perlin's body had scabbed over. There would be some scarring, but nothing too noticeable once time had passed.
"Well, that's all well and good," said Perlin, before turning about, "Perhaps we should retrieve Ms. Hope Spot and be on our w-whoa!" He stumbled, almost falling flat on his face, but managed to rally at the last second and remain standing. However, he was stumbling around drunkenly as his eyelids began drifting downward.
"I didn't think this through as well as I thought," muttered Dawn as he moved to support Perlin from the side. The healing magic had sapped a good deal of Perlin's energy. It didn't help that he was also worn from the recent fight. Perlin was now fighting simply to remain awake long enough to see their mission through. Dawn was seriously worried that they wouldn't even be able to make it to the station like this, especially if they had another pony in tow.
Perlin's legs stiffened and he forced himself to stand up fully. His eyes clenched shut and he shook his head vigorously. When he opened his eyes again, they'd cleared somewhat, but still held that glazed quality of a pony who had been woken up too suddenly from a deep sleep. "Don't worry," he said, his voice almost as unsteady as his legs had been earlier, "I can make it. Let's go collect our prize."
With a sigh, Dawn nodded and the two of them began to walk towards the exit of the room. Perlin seemed at least steady enough on his own. Dawn, following what Skan had told him, led the way, taking them towards the center of the mansion, where they found a long, spiraling staircase leading up the tower. The ebony colt glanced dubiously at the stairs, then back at Perlin, who simply nodded at him.
"You go on ahead."
Dawn nodded and frowned. "If you fall asleep down here, I'm not carrying you out."
Perlin laughed and smirked at him. "I didn't expect you to be so worried about my health. I'm touched."
Dawn snorted in response and made his way up the stairs. Perlin watched him go, a sly smile gracing his face.