She heard it as a faint keening, as of wind against stone, but there was no wind. And there should have been no stone, not that deep in a swamp, but Rose suddenly saw there were dozens of pillars, scattered haphazardly through the trees. All she had been concerned with was finding a path, and she hadn’t noticed the telltale remnants of some ancient settlement.
One of the standing stones was not twenty feet away, and she took an involuntary step back as the sound suddenly spiked, making the rock vibrate visibly and churning the mud around it. Unease, even panic, was abruptly flattened under the suffocating weight of attention, something old and vast stirring all about them and turning its gaze on the two of them. There were no words, nothing but the keening of the standing stones, but there was a sudden, sharp impression of fact.
You should not be here.
“Rose,” Gérard said in a strange, calm tone that she distractedly realized must be what fear sounded like on him. “I think we should go.”
“Yeees…” She took another step back, but the keening peaked into an earsplitting shriek and the swamp itself stirred.
Gnarled trees twisted and cracked, massive limbs swinging around and reaching for them. The ground bubbled, solid patches of earth falling away into a morass of ooze and churning tree roots while the wailing echoed from every stone. She danced in place for a moment as the muddy ground she was standing on somehow fell apart and sucked at her hooves at the same time, and leapt to a tiny island of ancient cobble wedged into the mire.
Gérard followed. He landed more or less on top of her, his talons scrabbling at the rock as he tried to keep either of them from falling off the tiny pocket of solid ground, and she shrieked as she overbalanced, nearly toppling into the hungry murk before he pulled her back.
“Down!” He pushed her flat as a huge limb swung toward them, knotted branches like flails, and his body twisted and flexed as he faced it. There was a crack and a groan, and the smashed, severed chunk of wood splashed down next to them, showering them with gritty mud.
“Celestia save us,” she whispered, staring around at the suddenly hostile swamp. She could even swear the aged willows were moving toward them, their roots writhing and twisting. The cobble tilted, their precarious perch becoming even more treacherous.
“Rose.” Gérard’s beak flashing an inch from her muzzle was suddenly far down on her list of worries. “You must find us a path. I will keep you safe.”
“In this?!” But she was already studying the terrain around them, trying to find some safe spot, some possible path to escape the hostile mire. She needed no spells for that, not that she had any that would really help. None of them provided quick answers.
“Over there!” She shouted. “Between those two trees.” She tried to point it out with a hoof, though she wasn’t sure he would see what she did. The animate roots had churned up an ancient log, petrified by peaty brine, and beyond it was a marginally less unsafe swath of muddy grass. But the log was already starting to sink again, the only solid path she could see threatening to vanish. Even if she wasn’t sure where to go from there, it was better than where they were.
But there was a problem.
“But I don’t think I can jump - “ She didn’t even finish the sentence before Gérard hurled her bodily across the gap, sending her skidding along the hardened bark until her hooves caught the stump of some long-ago branch. Just before he landed himself, it occurred to her he had good aim. He snatched her up again on the roll and vaulted to semi-solid ground even as the log tilted and began to sink.
“Where next?” He shouted in her ear, and she shook her head dazedly. Even animate trees only moved so fast, and so long as they were out of the reach of those branches they were relatively safe. At least until the swamp dredged up something else to throw at them.
She narrowed her eyes and looked around. The paths were not only scanty, but constantly changing. But if they could break out of the trees they might actually have a chance.
“That way,” she pointed. “But we’ll have to be fast to get through any of them.”
“I am fast,” he said grimly. “But you are not. Direct me.” Without any warning he hoisted her onto his back, and she clung, startled, as he dashed toward where she had pointed.
He was fast. She’d seen him move before, but it was a different thing altogether to experience it firsthoof. Even with her weight on his back and his injury, she could feel the surge as his muscles bunched and drove them forward directly at the flailing morass of root and branch.
“Bottom left!” It was her turn to yell in his ear, not even able to disengage her hoof to point. “Above that root!”
He grunted and adjusted course slightly, leaping through the momentary clear space, his claws catching on a broad shelf of animate wood before he bounced off again, leaping over an ominously still pool of black mud to land with a squelch in haunch-deep muck. Rose toppled off, plunging into the chill and suffocatingly thick ooze herself.
They couldn’t stop there. Even beyond the reach of any immediate trees, the mud and silt clung to them, trying to pull them down as they struggled through it. Tiny things bit at her legs, making her shudder as she hauled herself through to a sort of sandbar, slowly disintegrating in the churn.
Gérard heaved himself onto solid land next to her, the two of them not so much dripping as shedding, chunky mud slowly sliding off them. “Well?” He asked breathlessly, barely audible over the noise of the stones.
She was already looking. There was no end in sight to the awakened swamp, though she couldn’t see much beyond the malevolent willows. But she did find something unexpected, just below the surface of the mud. “A road!”
“What?”
“Come on.” She plunged back into the mud again with a shudder, half-swimming and half-slogging toward the telltale straight lines. It was thirty feet of cold, soggy misery, with all the tiny denizens of the ooze swirling about her legs, but eventually she made the road, still fetlock-deep but on stable ground.
The noise, if possible, got even louder. “Which way?” Gérard had to nearly scream to be heard above the din, and Rose had to stifle the urge to clutch at her ears.
She chose the direction on instinct, Gérard following behind as she splashed along the gentle curve of the cobbled road, as fast as she could manage without losing it entirely. For all the volume of the wail assailing them, nothing further seemed to be happening and they even seemed to be leaving the standing stones behind.
“Rose!” Gérard called her name a moment before the road bucked underhoof, not quite knocking her over but sending her stumbling a few steps. She looked back at him but he wasn’t stopping, so she didn’t either, praying that whole thing didn’t vanish from beneath their hooves. Or talons, or claws.
The road swayed drunkenly underneath them as they ran, sending up great sprays of mud, but didn’t manage to throw either of them off, though Rose had to slow to a crawl to keep her hooves. Not that it seemed to matter, the hostile swamp slid around them anyhow, as much riding the road as walking it, the straight lines curving and slithering.
And lifting.
Gérard cannoned into her as she skidded to a halt as the roadbed in front of her lifted up, murky water streaming from a massive stone serpent’s head. Moss clung to the carved jaws, and the eyes were made of fragments of some ancient mosaic staring sightlessly down at them as the rocky coils that were the road wound tighter and tighter.
For once Rose moved nearly as fast as Gérard, leaping out of the way as it struck with a tremendous noise that was felt, rather than heard. Endured, rather than experienced, a cacophonous wave that sent her skipping across the mud. She fought to her hooves again, struggling back upright in the clinging mud, only to find that Gérard hadn’t gotten out of the way at all.
He was on top of the snake’s head, grimly digging his claws into the golem’s eyes, uselessly chipping away at the mosaic tile as it reared and lashed a mile-long tail, sending up vast plumes of mud as it shook itself. The gryphon was a clinging gnat compared to the massive power of the ancient serpent, no more than a petty annoyance.
She saw his beak move as he shouted something at her, but she was still deafened, the struggle happening in a ringing silence. The snake plunged down again, not at her, but into the mud, and Gérard catapulted off onto the coils of rock still above the surface. He pointed, emphatically, and she understood what he was trying to say. Run.
She ran.
Or rather, slogged, through the terrible mud, not sure where she could possibly run to. But the moment she had the thought, she realized. The snake’s tail ran deep into the territory of the singing stones and the living swamp, but the head, the end of the road, was here. And roads didn’t end without reason.
Against all instinct, she splashed toward the snake, rather than away, making for where the head had first emerged from the mud. There had to be some line, somewhere very close, that marked the end of the territory. Scarlet would have known, and probably have noticed the magic of the stones before even straying inside. But all she had was Gérard, and he couldn’t replace a single one of her friends.
But he could distract the golem from her. She wasn’t sure what he thought of her sudden change of direction, but he gamely launched himself at the muddy head as it surfaced, spraying slime. He seemed to think he could still fly, she thought distractedly, barely clinging with two limbs at a time.
One of the coils whipped around as she passed by, a fresh churn of mud sweeping her up and then crashing over her head. She struggled to the surface, gasping for breath, only to be covered again. And again. And again.
Her lungs were aching by the time she crawled onto solid land, her limbs trembling with exhaustion, but the trees were still and the ground was solid, though nearly as muddy as she. Gérard had stopped dancing with the snake, and was just hanging on, the stone coils heaving and thrashing. She waved frantically at him, trying to convey that it was safe.
She wasn’t sure if he got the message, got distracted, or was just too tired to hang on any more, but he lost his grip on the golem’s head and was sent arcing through air, his good wing flapping madly to try and stabilize himself. Rose ran after him, wincing as he crashed down through willow branches, ending in a squelching slide and torn grass.
He staggered to his feet as she approached, whirling on her with a look that was pure predator, eyes hungry and sharp, freezing her in her tracks. Then he blinked, and the Gérard she knew returned. He snapped his head around just in time to catch the snake submerging again, the swamp subsiding in a deafened silence.
His beak opened and closed, but all she could hear was some faint sound through the ringing in her ears. By his expression he only just realized he couldn’t hear either, rubbing at his ears and then shaking his head and pointing away from the singing stones. The meaning was clear. Keep going.
But his leg gave out from under him and he nearly collapsed, stumbling forward a moment before balancing on three legs. Despite his grim willingness to push forward, she doubted he could get much further than she could in their current state. They were both covered tip to tail in mud, exhausted, and injured. So instead of simply going onward, she closed her eyes and cast her spell again, letting the surrounding terrain filter into her mind.
It was hopeless. There was nothing more to their surroundings than muddy swamp, and they needed clean water and a dry place to rest, not to mention a fire and, while she was wishing, a friendly inn with the finest cider. She groaned and started forward again, keeping her spell rippling over the landscape despite the strain. With any luck she’d find something before they dropped from exhaustion.
They trudged along for an agonizing hour and a half before she finally found a trickle of clear water, a rocky rill with a tangle of brambles and a shelf of overgrown roots, mossy but dry. They were both shedding flakes of dried mud as she dragged herself over to the moss and dropped to her belly, utterly spent.
Gérard collapsed next to her without a word. Despite the fierce discomfort of being caked in drying mud and the renewed itching along her flanks, she actually drowsed for a bit, until Gérard roused her by removing the wrappings around his wing and side, revealing a bloody, muddy mess. Reluctantly, she heaved herself to her feet, floating her canteen over to him before staggering off to collect dry wood.
It wasn’t until she had the fire going that she realized he hadn’t chaperoned her. But she didn’t think that was trust, only simple exhaustion. Neither of them had the energy for speech as she washed Gerard’s wounds with boiled water, wrinkling her muzzle at the telltale stink of a beginning infection. There wasn’t much she could do but smear the last of the salve on the ragged wounds and hope, and try not to think about the same happening to her own injuries.
Fortunately, as Gérard tended to her in turn, it seemed the resin had held up better than her stitches. The gouges were scabbed and sore, but closed.
“Pony lands are more dangerous than I would have credited,” he said at last.
She stared at him. “Why d’you think half my team was good at fighting? If they weren’t here, they would have been at the front.”
“Tch.” He seemed surprised. “I have been underestimating you, I think. Are all your expeditions like this?”
“No, my team was alive in all my expeditions.” She snapped at him. “Scarlet would have stopped that before it even started.”
“Was it unicorn magic, then?” He let her comment pass by.
“I have no idea.” She sighed, pulling the maps out of her saddlebags and flexing them to crack the mud off. “We just don’t know what is buried in most of these places.” Her horn lit as she added to their path, south, then sharply east. She outlined the area with standing stones and finished with the stone snake, its head outstretched and aligned perfectly with the cardinal direction.
“You do not? Isn’t this your land?”
“With Discord and the Winter of Nightmares, there is...a lot that’s been lost.” She rubbed at her throat with a hoof. “Celestia Herself may know what all that was, but I don’t.”
“Hmm.” Gérard clicked his beak. “Perhaps we were less prepared for our trip than I thought.”
“You could have just flown over everything though, right?”
“Only for so long. We are not pegasi, to create weather where we may. And even then, there is no guarantee that the clouds would be safe, is there?”
“No.” They had found that out only eight months ago, when a ravenous stormfront hunted them for days before finally dispersing. Sky had spent most of his waking hours leading it astray.
“Tch. I fear this expedition was fated ill from the beginning.”
“Not ill enough,” she growled.
“Yes, if we had failed at some step earlier…” He sighed. “But failure is not so clean, is it? It catches and drags down everyone. It mires and muddies and pollutes. Like this swamp.” He waved a talon, dried mud cracking off and crumbling as it scattered across the moss. “It is very much a metaphor for the war. A good idea, a better path to avoid danger...only to find that you have engaged something far larger than you ever thought.” Gérard looked at her thoughtfully. “I think it is telling that it is you that found the way out, and not I.”
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” There were hints there, to be sure, but she was too tired to try and tease the meaning from his monologue.
“I suppose not. You have not lived the war from my side.”
“I’ve lived it enough from mine.” She started more water to boil on the fire. Gérard didn’t seem to mind the mud, but it was driving her to quiet madness. Even though she felt like she could drop into sleep right there, if he insisted on talking at least she could spend the time getting clean.
“Hmm.” He was silent for a while, not looking at her, or at anything in particular. Finally though, he asked a question. “When you win, what do you think Equestria will want from us?”
“What?” She goggled at him. “We just want you to stop killing ponies!”
He shook his head at her. “But you will have won. Surely there will be prizes, concessions…”
“No!” She stared. “We don’t want anything but peace.”
He stared back, his normally fierce gold eyes dimmed with exhaustion and pain. And he looked away first. “Perhaps it is so,” he murmured. “But that is not how we think.”
“I don’t think it’s too much to ask!”
“It is not enough.” Gérard stirred restlessly. “I believe you when you say that is all you want, and yet the thought of Equestria asking nothing at the table fills me with terror and dread.”
“What? Why?”
“Because to ask nothing means you intend to take everything.”
Suddenly she shared Gérard’s horror. Not only at the idea that Equestria would wage such total war, but at what could result from the gryphons thinking that. She had no political experience, but none was needed to understand what desperation could drive.
“But...surely someone will understand. You understand.”
“I believe what you are saying, but my instincts still scream otherwise.” He waved a talon vaguely. “It would take more than words to show that your intentions were...honorable.”
“Like what?”
“I have no idea,” Gérard murmured. “Aquila himself, perhaps, descending from his Eyrie. It is simply too strange to swallow whole.”
“I’m sure Princess Celestia will think of something.” She was torn between being glad it wasn’t her responsibility, and needlessly chewing over this new worry.
“Someone needs to. Else we will simply make the same mistakes all over again.”