Wind and Stone

by Ruirik

Calamity (Part IV)

Longbow rested his back against the cold cloudstone wall of the barracks reclaimed in the days after the initial griffon assault. Exhaustion seemed to claw at his body down to the very marrow of his bones making his wings feel heavy and his armor all but impossible to bear any longer. He sighed heavily, letting his body slide down the wall until he was slumped on the cloudstone floor.

Reaching to his haversack with his right hoof, he retrieved his waterskin and took a drink. It was warm and tasted of treated leather, but at least it was wet. He grasped his helmet with his hooves and lifted it from his head, shivering as his damp mane met the cool air. Longbow yawned, absently running a hoof through his mane. He was relieved that he wouldn't have to preen later, he had earlier when he was pulling his feathers to fletch a few extra arrows for the coming battle.

A pit settled in his gut, his gaze drifting to the floor.

"Longbow?" A mouselike voice drew Longbow's attention upward. Pathfinder stood in front of him, biting anxiously on his lower lip as his ears laid flat. Finder's eyes flicked up to glance at Longbow and almost instantly darted away.

Longbow frowned, seeing Finder rub at his shoulder with a hoof. "Couldn't sleep?"

Pathfinder lowered his head after relenting with a shameful nod.

Extending his right wing, Longbow motioned his little brother closer. "Come here."

"You're sure?" Finder looked around the room, mindful of the half-dozen legionnaires scrounging for supplies in the barracks.

"To Hell with all of em," Longbow said, shrugging his shoulders without sparing so much as a glance in their direction. "I don't care if the Legate herself shows up."

Despite Longbow's assurances, Pathfinder seemed hesitant. Longbow felt a pang of guilt in his chest, like a shard of steel embedded in his heart. His head sank as he sucked in a deep breath. "Finder, come here...please?"

Like a frightened colt, Pathfinder's head lowered as he stepped towards his brother. Longbow waited patiently, his wing and forelegs remaining outstretched the whole while. He watched his brother take a hesitant step towards him, followed by another, and another until he was close enough that Longbow was able to gently wrap his forelegs around the small colt and pull him into a tight embrace. Finder stiffened, seemingly unsure at what to do for a moment before he wrapped his forelegs around Longbow's neck and held the elder pegasus as though his life depended upon it.

Longbow closed his eyes, his right foreleg rubbing Finder's back like he had done countless times back home. Gently, he guided the colt under his wing, wrapping the limb around his brother’s shoulders and hugging him close. "I'm sorry."

"What for?" Finder asked, his voice scarcely more than a whisper.

"For snapping at you earlier," Longbow said, deliberately avoiding Finder's gaze. "I just..." he sighed again, rubbing a hoof through his mane. "I didn’t want this for you, you know?" Sighing, Longbow ran a hoof through his mane. “You’re not meant for this sort of work, Pathfinder. You’re not cut out for war, little brother. You’re too kind-hearted for this. You’re meant for maps or candles.”

Pathfinder’s ears flattened and his head lowered. “I just…” He tried in vain to swallow the knot that had built in his throat. He looked up to Longbow, tears welling in his eyes. “I just wanted to help you.”

“You were helping me by staying home,” Longbow said. “You were safe with mom and dad. “You could have helped by making candles and sending them to the legion.”

Pathfinder said nothing as Longbow spoke. The tears he'd tried to hold back dripped down his cheeks leaving dark streaks in his coat. Longbow reached over with a hoof, carefully wiping the tears away. His opposite hoof dipped into his haversack and fished around for a moment before grasping a small wooden toy.

“Hey, I've kept him safe." Longbow said, a slight smile on his lips as he offered Pathfinder the little centurion that the younger pony had given him when Longbow had left

Staring at the toy with teary eyes, Finder sniffled and shook his head. His small hoof gently pushed at Longbow’s, guiding the toy towards the haversack. “You gotta keep it, remember? I want him back when we go home.”

Despite everything, Longbow couldn’t help a small chuckle from Pathfinder’s sentiment. He nodded once as his wing gave Finder a gentle squeeze. “All right, Finder. But you’ve got to promise me something.”

“What?” Finder asked, his ears perking back up.

“If…” Longbow sighed as he ran a hoof through his damp, ragged, mane. “If something happens to me—”

“It won’t!” Finder declared with a stomp of his hoof. “I—”

“Finder.” Longbow placed his hooves firmly on the colt’s shoulders. “If something happens to me, I need you to promise me that you’ll fly away from here.”

“Longbow…”

“You fly hard and fast as you can,” Longbow continued, his eye locked to Finder’s, “and you don’t stop until you’re back home in Altus. Do you understand me?”

"But—" Finder shook his head, looking to his brother with a furrowed brown and pleading eyes. “But I can’t just—”

“Finder, please, I’m begging you." Longbow pressed a hoof against Finder's cheek, silencing the younger brother with the soft touch. "Please, little brother, just promise me this, okay?”

The silence that settled between the brothers seemed to stretch for an eternity before Finder’s ears again flattened and he relented. “I...I promise…”

Longbow allowed himself a relieved sigh and quickly pulled Finder into a tight hug. “Thank you, Finder.”

Pathfinder closed his eyes and held Longbow close. The older pegasus hummed the wordless song that had long since become a lullaby to the colt. Longbow’s hooves kept their grip around Finder, his wings joining them like a familiar safe blanket. He didn’t dare loosen his grip until Longbow felt Pathfinder start to slacken, the tired colt’s exhaustion finally winning out.

Careful not to wake him, Longbow folded his wings and laid Finder down on his side with his head near Longbow’s flank. His hoof gently petted Finder’s mane, just like their mother used to when they were little. The sleeping colt instinctively nuzzled closer to the warmth, his wings laying half open as he slept.

Longbow smiled at the sight, his mind drifting to simpler times that seemed a lifetime earlier than they had been. He leaned his head back until it pressed against the wall and let out a tired sigh. The approach of two mares in heavy armor, however, quickly caused him to tense.

“Kid,” Thorn greeted him with a curt nod. Beside her stood Iron Rain, who maintained a stony visage that was undermined by the sadness in her eyes.

“Legate Rain, Thorn,” Longbow returned the greeting with a nod of his own, but made no move to get up.

“Who’s the pup?” Thorn asked.

“My brother, Pathfinder.” Longbow answered, one hoof draped protectively over the sleeping colt’s shoulders.

Rain’s head tilted slightly and she took a step closer to inspect Finder. “Huh, so that’s his name.”

Longbow raised an eyebrow, confused. “Have you met him, ma’am?”

“Don’t call me ma’am, Kid.” Rain grumbled. “The Scout-Master had him report to me this morning. He did good work.”

Longbow bit his tongue. He still hadn’t forgiven the scout master for taking Finder instead of pretty much anypony for the morning’s mission. “Am I needed on the wall?”

Rain shook her head. “No, Kid. The sun’s gone down, nothing big will happen until first light. Get some sleep, then set yourself up on top of the palace with the rest of the archers. Things are gonna get messy in a hurry, and we have to buy time for the rest of the civilians to evacuate.” Rain paused, her head lowering for a moment as considered her words. “Besides, if the hybrids breach our walls as fast as they did a week ago, then the archers will be cut to pieces instantly. Keep back, keep safe, skirmish them as long as you can.”

“What about him?” Longbow motioned to Finder.

“What about him?” Thorn asked. “He’s a soldier, just like the rest of us.”

“He’s too young,” Longbow argued, managing to keep his voice down. “Please, Rain, let him evacuate with the rest of the civilians.”

“Desertion is a capital offense,” Thorn said, taking a step forward and narrowing her eyes until Rain’s hoof stopped her.

“Easy, Thorn. Sorry, kid, but we need everypony we got right now.” Rain offered Longbow an apologetic frown. “Keep him with you, fall back whenever the hybrids get close and reposition. He’ll have to be your wingpony.”

“But—”

“Longbow,” Rain interrupted him, “This is what it has to be. He’s a soldier, just like you and me. We swore an oath, and Nimbus…” Her words faltered for a moment causing Thorn to shoot a concerned look at Rain. Quickly composing herself, Rain cleared her throat and took a breath. “You have your orders, Longbow.”

The archer said nothing, but offered her the smallest of nods.

Rain gave him one last look before she turned away, Thorn trotting right beside her as always. Longbow watched them disappear outside, holding his breath until they were out of sight. He turned his attention back to Finder, a sad frown pulling the corners of his mouth downward.

His thoughts were interrupted by the approaching footsteps of another pony. He didn’t know whom he had expected, but it was certainly not the pony he found himself eye to eye with. Longbow forced himself not to snarl.

“Hey” Carver said, offering a friendly smile to Longbow.

“Go away.” Longbow growled, mindful to keep his voice down.

Carver sat back on his haunches, holding his forehooves up to placate the archer. “Easy there, I just came to check on the kid. I figure we got off on the wrong hoof the other day.”

“No, we really didn’t. Longbow said, scowling at the tan stallion. “You’re the dumbass who put my brother in this mess.”

“He signed up all on his own, I didn’t make him do anything!” Carver defended himself.

“No recruitment office would have been dumb enough to let him in if he didn’t have another pony to vouch for him.”

“I just—”

“Stow it, I don’t care.” Longbow hissed. “It’s your fault he’s here. He’s young, you’re old enough to know what war is. What possessed you to think a colt had any place on the battlefield?”

Carver’s ears flattened as he turned his head away from Longbow’s furious glare.

“Look at me.” Longbow demanded, waiting until his eye was once again locked with Carver’s. “I swear to you, if so much as a hair on my brother’s head is harmed, I’m going to kill you. Understand?”

“...Yeah.”

“Good. Now get out.”

---

Iron Rain frowned as she stood at one of the fortifications surrounding her father’s palace. She’d been simmering the entire morning and well into the early afternoon, and with her knife she’d carved bored patterns into the fortification walls. Around her, the rest of the Rainstorm sans Longbow, Stonewall, and Downburst waited in bored anticipation of the fight they were bound to have.

Through the windows in the fortification, Rain could see the regiments of the Second Legion organizing the civilians into flight groups for evacuation. The Second Legion’s legate had been insistent on pulling his troops out of the city first so that he could maintain the strength of his forces, which were already spread thin after sending four cohorts to Nimbus to relieve the besieged inhabitants. In their place, he was demanding that the remains of the Sixth and the Eighth Legions hold the city until the Second and the civilians had evacuated. What little those two legions had between them amounted to little more than six cohorts.

Six cohorts against a Gryphon horde. Roughly three thousand ponies against four times as many griffons. It’d be a slaughter.

“Waiting. I hate waiting,” Thorn muttered from where she sat reclined against a few crates. She played with her stiletto to alleviate some of the boredom, listening to the soft hiss as it slid in and out of the leather sheath under her wing. Groaning, she banged her helmet against the wall once and looked out the window. “We under attack yet?”

“Careful, Thorn, or you’re gonna start sounding like Red,” Haze teased. He was laying on his back atop a pile of rags, his eyes closed and his helmet at his side. His sword was propped against the wall, close to his muzzle.

Thorn shuddered. “Don’t worry, I’ll let the psychopath keep his job,” she said. Her eyes scanned the room before she found the pony in question. “You’re awfully quiet today, Red.”

The blue pony was uncharacteristically silent as he stared out the open window at the evacuation. Hearing his name, he slowly spun around. “Hmm? Need something, Thorny Girl?”

“I said you’re quiet,” Thorn repeated. Her eyes narrowed, and she went back to playing with her stiletto. “I would’ve figured we’d have to stop you from flying into the Gryphon camp by yourself.”

Red shrugged. “I can be calm sometimes, too. Mostly when I’m thinking.” He flashed a smile of crooked teeth. The obvious question, ‘about what’, went unanswered.

“We could’ve saved the city,” Rain grumbled to herself, her hoof pushing small pebbles of cloudstone across the floor.

Haze opened an eye. “Pardon?”

“It would’ve been easy,” Rain said, pushing one piece of cloudstone towards another. “By the time the griffons hit their high-water mark in their fast assault, they outnumbered us by what, two to one?” Her hoof swept more cloudstone chips into the crude representation of Nimbus she’d made. “The Second sent us four cohorts. That put us roughly equal with the griffons in terms of soldiers. Now, if the Second had brought all eight of their cohorts...”

Her hoof stomped on the gray pieces of cloudstone and swept the white ones over their crumbs. “Then we’d be the ones with more troops, and we could’ve destroyed their advance camp in a matter of minutes. Even once the griffon reinforcements arrived, we’d have enough soldiers to hold the walls of Nimbus and repulse any hybrid assault.”

She sighed and scattered the cloudstone pieces away. “But now, the griffons reinforced their horde with more and more troops. You all saw the thousands that flew in last night. Whatever chance we had to save Nimbus, we lost.” She spat on the floor. “All because the senators think Feathertop and the monument to Roamulus and the Unification War is worth more than Nimbus and tens of thousands of lives.”

Haze shrugged. “The advance Legions were all destroyed in the counterattack. The Eighth?” He shook his head. “Gone. The Seventh?” Again. “Cut off. Almost certainly gone. The Fourth? Well, they’re replenishing at Nyx after taking the brunt of Hengstead. We won’t see them in action for another month at the least. And we’re what’s left of the Sixth.”

Holding out his wing, he counted across the primaries. “That leaves the First, Second, Third, and Fifth Legions still unaccounted for. The First never leaves Stratopolis, the Third’s protecting the heartland, and the Fifth is still fighting their way out of Gryphus, from what I heard. They were fighting in the mountains near the Second before they were jumped. Magnus supposedly has a lot of soldiers there, too.” He sighed. “Guess that explains why the Second wants its cohorts back so badly.”

Rain bared her teeth and stabbed her knife through the cloudstone floor. “The senators don’t know anything. The Praetorian Council doesn’t know shit either. We’re losing this war because of them.” She turned to her friends, her eyes red not from the anger she was so openly expressing, but from the tears she’d shed in private. “Nimbus never should’ve fallen. It never should’ve fallen.”

“War sucks,” Thorn muttered to herself. “Just the way it is.”

A heavy knock on the door made all the pegasi present jump to their hooves. They all relaxed, however, when they saw Stonewall standing in the frame. The muscular stallion was already in full armor and had the latch on his scabbard popped. About an inch of iron was clearly visible against his side.

“What’s the situation, Stone?” Rain asked, finally putting her knife away.

“The Second’s taking off now, Rain,” he answered. “You know what that means.”

Rain sighed and grabbed her helmet. “Well, guess it’s time then.” She smiled faintly. “Time to give the ugly bastards a hell of a fight to remember. Maybe if we stomp them hard enough they’ll surrender, eh?”

“We can only hope,” Thorn muttered. She strode across the room and helped Haze strap his sword back to his armor before turning to Stonewall and walking out the door. Rain, Red, and Haze followed shortly after, with Stonewall taking up the rear. Together, the five pegasi left the fortification and made their way to the plaza in time to see the first of the Second Legion’s centuries escorting a group of five hundred mares and foals out of the city. Across the plaza, another surge of air signaled the takeoff of the next group. The legionaries escorting the civilians harried them the entire way to move faster while simultaneously looking over their shoulders for the dreaded surge of hybrids from their camp.

“Grabacr give them a good tailwind out of this city,” Rain prayed, her voice low as she watched her civilians, the ponies she was supposed to protect, flee their homes. “And may Mobius grant his mercy on those who are about to die.”

The other pegasi nodded in silent agreement. Sighing, Rain spread her wings and flew closer to the reclaimed walls, where four of the six cohorts Nimbus had left to defend itself with were mustered. The rest of the Rainstorm followed in her wake, not saying anything until they had left the evacuating civilians well behind.

“Where’s Kid?” Haze asked, flying closer to Rain. “Or Red’s little pet?”

“They’re staying at the palace with the rest of their friends and family,” Rain said. “Longbow’s an archer so he wouldn’t do much good at the front anyway; the griffons will just overrun it fast enough. Plus he’s got his runt brother to look after, so I put the two of them as far away from the heaviest fighting as possible.” She shrugged mid-flight. “Whether or not they all survive is up to them.”

Haze drifted back, silent, until his flight put him almost wing to wing with Thorn. Seeing an outcropping of crushed cloudstone that used to be a house centered where the cohorts were gathering, Rain tilted her wings until she was able to land right atop it. Her four wingponies fanned out on either side of her, and standing proud, waited for the gathered soldiers to quiet down and listen.

They didn’t have to wait long.

When every eye was trained on her, Rain took a deep breath and stepped forward. “Ponies of Nimbus,” she began, her voice, slow, steady. “Soldiers of the Legion, sons and daughters of Cirra. In a few minutes, we’re going to be in the fight of our lives. I’m not going to lie to you here; it’s going to be bloody. It’s going to be messy. See these walls?” She gestured behind her with a hoof, to where the blood of the fallen had stained the cloudstone an ugly brown. “In a few minutes they’re going to be swarming with griffon hordes all thirsty for your blood. Now, look to your left and your right.”

The ponies did as they were told, and Rain gave them a few seconds before quieting the murmurs with her hoof. “As much as it hates me to say it, one of those ponies next to you isn’t going to be here when this is all over. We’re outnumbered, and badly, and we don’t get the order to retreat until all the civilians are gone and command says so.”

She gulped. “I can assure you, it’s just as bleak for me up here as it is for you down there.”

Uncomfortable mutterings arose from the crowded ponies, and even the Rainstorm exchanged looks behind Rain, wondering what she was doing. In that moment, however, Rain opened her wings and took to a hover above the cohorts. “But is that an excuse to stop fighting? To just keel over and die? No! It’s not! And you want to know why?!”

Her eyes hardened, and coiling her wings at her sides she landed hard on the cloud in front of the central cohort. Now among her soldiers, she raised her voice even higher. “I’ll tell you why! Because Nimbus doesn’t give up! Nimbus doesn’t surrender!” Pushing a centurion out of the way, she grabbed a legionary at the front of the cohort and hauled him closer by his pauldrons. “We are Nimban warriors! We are the fiercest, deadliest, maddest sons and daughters of bitches the world has ever seen! We’ve beaten back onslaught after onslaught for centuries, millennia even! And this?” She gestured around her. “This will be the greatest battle in all of Nimban history—or rather, second greatest.”

Pushing the legionary back into line, she once more took off and hovered over the gathered soldiers. “Nimbus may fall today, but does that mean that everything’s lost?” She emphatically shook her head ‘no’, and even got a few cries from the crowd. “Today, we fight to prove to Gryphus that they’ve made a huge mistake attacking our nation. For every one of you standing with me today, we’ll put three of them to the grave! And even if we leave, they’ll know, Magnus will know, that one day we’ll be back with the fury of ten legions and we’ll purify this city with griffon blood! That! That will be the greatest battle of Nimbus! Now,” she continued, drawing her massive sword and holding it to the sky, “are you going to live to see another day, to fight for your life, your right to someday fly back to this city and murder every leonine bastard that drove you from it?!”

The cheers were deafening. When they ended, Rain flew another few feet higher. “Are you going to fight to the bitter end, until your sword is shattered and your bones broken and you’re swimming in a pool of griffon blood, so that those you love will be safe?!”

Again, she was answered with a frenzy of cheering and the stomping of hooves. Even the Rainstorm behind her seemed to be twitching with excitement and anticipation. Grinning, Rain stomped back onto the cloudstone she was originally perched on. “Damn right you will! The griffons will be coming at us any minute, but remember what you’re fighting for, remember who you’re fighting for, and keep your buddies on either side of you safe! That’s how we’ll win this! That’s how we’ll make Gryphus pay! We are the spiked shield of Cirra, and we will spill the blood of our enemies, until the skies rain red!”

With one last look at the legionaries, at those who were about to die, Rain screamed at the top of her lungs, “Brothers, sisters, brave Nimbans all…” Rain’s lips pulled back into a wild grin. Hefting her zweihoofer high above her head, she called out to her legion. “Sound the horn and call the cry!!”

She was answered by the voices of thousands of ponies screaming back at her, “How many of them can we make die?!”

“To the walls!” Rain cried, taking flight herself with the Rainstorm following her. “For the Legion! For Nimbus! For Cirra!!”

---

On the outskirts of the city, thousands of pegasi rose into the air and mounted the walls in preparation for one final fight. In the center of the city, however, the enthusiasm and patriotism that fueled the legionaries about to die was vacant, leaving a hollow dread in the stomachs of every soldier present. The two cohorts tasked with holding the Nimban palace and protecting Commander Gold Moon and Lord Winter Rain milled about, sharpened their weapons, and nervously glanced towards the eastern skies.

Finder was one such pony. Sitting wedged between two rounded columns, he rhythmically ran over the edge of his blade with a stone to keep it sharp. True, it hadn’t seen much use in combat so far, but it was all he could do to keep his mind off of the primal fear clutching at his chest. Instead of thinking about Magnus’ arrival, he sharpened his sword. Instead of thinking about Longbow’s outburst, he sharpened his sword.

Instead of thinking about Dawn, he sharpened his sword.

Another group of civilians took off and fled to the west, their shadows making the sunlight flicker over Finder’s face. He craned his neck to watch them, raising a forehoof to shield his eyes from the sun. Part of him—most of him—wished he was up there too, flying back to Altus, to his parents and the safety of his fishing town. He didn’t want to be in Nimbus anymore. He hated Nimbus, hated it with with more passion than a fourteen year-old should ever have to hate something with. He wanted to leave the Legion, to throw away his helmet and sword and spend the rest of his life fishing and sailing the coast.

Of course, he couldn’t. It wasn’t that he’d be tried as a deserter and probably hanged, even if he was only fourteen; the Legion taught them that every pony who fled his post is responsible for the deaths of two ponies he was supposed to fight alongside. Rather, it was the simple fact that he couldn’t abandon his friends. Whether or not they were the two ponies that would die if he left, he couldn’t know.

One of those ponies was wandering up the cloudy hillside towards him. Carver carried a soft limp with each step, and his eye was dull and unfocused, like he hadn’t slept in days. Finder could tell at a glance why; it was practically emblazoned across his friend’s shoulder. He no longer wore the pauldrons of a legionary, and the plume in his helmet had been changed from red to black. Because Carver had been able to rally Skyhammer’s platoon after the centurion’s death and lead his fellow legionnaires to safety, the Eighth’s legate, Red Tail, had seen it fitting that he be promoted to centurion in Skyhammer’s place. Ever since then, the tan pony had been busy shuffling between the officer’s quarters for orders and his century’s camp to deliver them, and the stress seemed to be pulling him apart, limb by limb.

“Hey, Carver,” Finder greeted in a little voice. “You doing alright?”

“Huh?” Carver blinked, his eye settling on Finder. Upon noticing the small colt, an exhausted smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Oh, hey, Finder. Yeah, I’m... doing fine.” He yawned and tried to cover it with a hoof. “Could stand to have gotten a little more sleep, but the legate’s been bucking orders in my direction almost nonstop.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how he finds the time to manage his entire legion if he gives every centurion this much attention.”

Grunting, Carver sat down next to Finder and rested his back against a pillar. Closing his eye, he asked, “Where’s your brother?”

“On the roof,” Finder murmured, drawing the stone along the blade of his sword yet another time. “With the other archers. He said I’m supposed to go to him as soon as the griffons arrive.”

Carver nodded. “Ah. That’s probably for the best, then.” He shrugged his shoulders, listening to the eerie calm over the Nimban city, before asking, “Everything alright between you two?”

Finder was silent for a moment. “Yeah,” he eventually answered in something comparable to a squeak. “Everything’s fine.”

Carver raised an eyebrow, but he said nothing.

“Carver?” Something in the colt’s voice startled him, and he opened his eye to see Finder staring at him. “Are we gonna die?”

The tan stallion bit his lip. Extending his wing, he gently wrapped it around Finder’s back and held him close. “I don’t know, Finder,” he admitted. “I wish I did, but I don’t. It’s... it’s gonna get ugly, though, I can tell you that.”

Pathfinder squirmed, his hooves fidgeting with the sword. “That’s what Longbow says,” he muttered. “That’s what everypony.”

“Only because it’s true,” Carver said. He sighed and patted Finder on the back one more time before withdrawing his wing. “Just stick close to your brother and stay focused. That’s the only way any of us are getting out of here alive.”

The little colt nodded. Setting the stone aside, he finally sheathed his blisteringly sharp sword and watched another group of civilians take off. “What about you guys?” he asked. “Can’t you guys hold the roof with me and Longbow?”

Carver sighed and shook his head. “I already have my orders. I’m supposed to hold the eastern windows of the palace with what’s left of our platoon. Windshear wanted to stay with Summer and I, so he’ll be helping us too.” He smiled, faintly. “But you and Longbow will be on the roof, so you two can give us air support, right? It’d be nice to know that somepony I can count on is watching my back for me.”

To Carver’s surprise, however, Finder shook his head. “I... I don’t want you to count on me.”

Carver raised an eyebrow and nudged the colt’s shoulder. “Huh? What do you mean?”

“I just... don’t.” Finder said, staring at his hooves. “I never should’ve come here. All I did was get her killed.”

“Get her...” Carver echoed, before realization dawned on him. Gritting his teeth, he gave the colt a rough shake. “Finder, it wasn’t your fault! There was nothing anypony could’ve done. It was just...” he sighed. “Just bad luck is all. It was just her time.”

But Finder shook his head. “It’s my fault. I... when the griffon kicked open the door and it hit me, all you guys were paying attention to me. If I wasn’t there, you would’ve seen her, s-saved her...” he began to hiccup and wrapped his forelegs tightly around himself.

A rough hoof to the back of his head made the colt gasp and nearly fall flat on his face. “Finder. Snap out of it.” Carver offered the colt a sympathetic frown. “It’s not your fault. Stop beating yourself up over it.”

Regarding the sniveling colt for a second longer, Carver sighed and sat down next to him. Wrapping his hooves around Finder’s shoulders, he pulled him into a warm embrace. “I know you feel guilty, Finder. I do too. We all do... especially Summer.” He shook his head. “But no amount of crying’s ever going to bring her back. The only thing we should do—the only thing we really can do—is to fight on and fight harder so that we can live to remember her.” He smiled faintly and rubbed Finder’s back, between his wings. “If we don’t live to remember her... who will?”

Sniffling, Finder finally managed to find the strength to look Carver in the eyes. “Okay,” he whispered, nearly choking on the word. “Okay. I’ll... I’ll do my b-best.”

Pulling him closer to hug him one last time, Carver patted Finder on the back. “It’ll be okay, Finder,” he said. “We’ll get through this together.”

Wiping a tear from his eye, Finder nodded to Carver. “Yeah... together.” The corners of his lips plucked in a fragile smile. “Thanks, Carver.”

Carver smiled. “Anytime, Pathfinder. If you need to, remember you can tell me anything. I’ll be right nearby—!”

His words were cut off by a loud chorus of screaming and squawking from the eastern walls of the city. Both pegasi turned their heads to see a shadow of browns and blacks swarming out of the clouds and descending upon the city, swiftly getting entangled with the cohorts defending the walls and the sky. Bodies began to fall, and once more it began to rain in Nimbus.

Dragging Finder to his hooves, Carver gave him a slap on the back and pointed to the palace. “You get up there and stay by your brother’s side, alright? Don’t worry about us! He’ll get you through this in one piece!”

Finder’s heart quickened, and the tendrils of fear slowly began to twist their way into his mind. “B-but what about you, Carver?! I don’t want you to die!”

“And I won’t!” Carver hissed, shoving Finder back towards the palace. “I’ve got family waiting for me in Nyx, you hear? I don’t plan on dying before I can show them my promotion!” He flashed his teeth in a crazy smile. “And I don’t care what it takes, but I’m bringing Summer and Windshear back with me! I’m not losing another friend today!”

Turning around, Carver began to trot backwards while waving his sword to get the attention of his century. Seeing Finder still standing behind him, he frowned and bucked the colt into the air. After a brief squawk of pain, Finder opened his wings and found himself hovering over Carver. All it took was one last glare and the waving of his sword for Finder to nod and scale the palace, his eyes searching for the familiar coat of his brother.

“On me!” he heard Carver shouting as he left. “C’mon, Cirrans! Let’s show these Nimbans we’ve got the guts to stand with them and beat the griffons back one more time!”

---

Iron Rain flew high over the walls of Nimbus, her wings fueled by thermals from the fires and smoke below her. Behind her trailed the rest of the Rainstorm in their standard wedge formation, and even further behind them she led six centuries of one of the airborne cohorts. Each of the centuries had broken down into arrowheads of eight pegasi each, and with the wedges at different heights, Rain felt like she was leading a barrage of arrows towards their targets. Which, in a way, she supposed she was.

Ahead of her, she could already see the swirling clouds of griffons rushing to meet her. Unlike the Cirran methodology for airborne combat with its neat formations and cohesive unit structure, the Gryphons preferred to fight in the skies either individually or in pairs. When they had numbers on their side, it was definitely effective, as it gave them more teams to harass airborne legionaries. But Rain knew she couldn’t split up her formations, as they were what gave the pegasi strength in the skies, and she couldn’t abandon the airspace over the walls either.

The griffons were building up momentum on their approach to the Nimban walls, and the legionaries below braced themselves against their weapons for the hammer blow that the griffon charge was likely to be. Rather than let that hammer swing with its full force, Iron Rain accelerated, the Rainstorm following suit behind her and, in turn, leading the centuries on faster and faster.

“What’s the plan, Rain?” Stonewall shouted from her left shoulder, struggling to be heard over the wind roaring in their ears. He cast a cautious glance at the griffons they were rapidly approaching head on. “Aren’t we supposed to be defending the walls?”

“We are!” Rain shouted back. “But if we let the griffons hit us at a standstill, it’ll be over in a second.” Tilting her wings, she increased her altitude by a few dozen feet to align herself with the very center of the swirling mass of griffons. “Wide wedge, wings out, pass through only! Five hundred yards, then back! On me!” Barking her orders, Rain pushed herself even harder and stretched out her wings as her commands were relayed back to the cohort. At her sides, the vee shape of the Rainstorm flattened out, as did the wedges following them.

Rain took a deep breath and clicked off the yards in her head.

Five...

The griffons were getting larger now, but their sights were still set on the ponies below. They began to descend, assuming that Rain’s cohort would try to stay above the walls and drop on them then.

Four...

She could make out the leader of the griffon charge, a massive brute wearing heinously spiked armor. His maul was raised, ready to lop the head off of the first pegasus it encountered.

Three...

Squawks of alarm rose from the griffons as they realized that Rain’s cohort wasn’t slowing down. Half the Gryphon formation began to split to try to intercept them, but the confusion was only breaking their already loose cohesion.

Two...

Rain smirked. She might not be able to stop the charge, but she’d be able to weaken it enough that it just might be repulsed by her soldiers holding the line below her. She only hoped her little speech had been enough to give them that extra spark to survive.

One...

“For Nimbus!!” she screeched as she tore into the griffon formation. Immediately her right wing cleaved through the spine of the Gryphon Oathsworn leading the charge, and she ended up corkscrewing out of the attack to her left. Her right feathers left a twirling streak of blood in the atmosphere as Rain dived deeper and deeper into the mass of griffons. Her wings found two more targets on the way down, scoring clean kills off of each, and when she was finally underneath the griffons she spared a glance over her shoulder.

Blood rained from the sky as her cohort cut cleanly through the griffon charge from above, the wide wedge shapes gouging holes out of the enemy formation as they dove through. A sizeable portion of griffons tried to adjust and counter the charge, but the pegasi were moving too swiftly for the larger hybrids to have a chance at inflicting some damage on Rain’s cohort. By the time the last legionary flew out of the mass of griffons, only several scattered individuals and pairs managed to make it to the Nimban walls, where the pegasi held strong against the pockmarked assault.

At five hundred yards away, Rain leveled out and began to climb again, the pegasi on her tail following her as she twirled back into the sky. The tail end of the griffon charge had already split around her, causing Rain to curse as she climbed back towards the clouds. Like the pincers of a claw, Magnus’ hordes began to circle around to try and crush Rain’s flanks now that her cohort was out of position and had griffons between it and allies.

There was only one way out of that situation, and it was speed. “Move, move!” Rain screeched, frantically beating her wings. “Up two hundred and then dive for the walls! The third cohort will take our place! You slow down, you die!”

Then the griffons were upon them.

Corkscrewing out of her climb, Rain barely managed to skirt past the outstretched talons of a hybrid lunging for her neck. Behind her, Haze snapped his wings open wide to dump speed and tumble away from the hurtling griffon, but Thorn flipped in midair and drove a bracer-clad hoof through the griffon’s face and into its skull. The creature spasmed once and began to tumble from the sky, lifeless, while Thorn withdrew her hoof. The shattered beak, bone, and razor sharp teeth of the griffon skull she had caved in had etched a series of oozing red cuts into her fetlock, but the Nimban mare paid it no mind and instead focused on keeping up with Rain and dodging griffon attacks.

A scream of manic pleasure behind Rain was all she needed to hear to know that Red had scored a kill. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the blue pegasus decapitate a griffon with a wingblade then swiftly spiral about and buck the airborne head straight into the face of another griffon hot on his tail, causing it to stumble in shock. Before it could recover, the beast’s stomach was shorn open by another legionary following the Rainstorm, spilling blood, bile, and intestines onto the amber plains of wheat below.

“Four! That counts, that totally counts!” Red squawked, ducking under a griffon’s charge and pouncing onto the back of another that had Stonewall set in its sights. The griffon cried out and tried to roll to shake Red off of its back, but the stallion took the opposing scales at the crests of his wings and locked them around the shoulders of the griffon like pincers. With a yell, he opened his wings, forcing the scales together. The effect was akin to a pair of scissors, and the hybrid cried out in pain and fear as its suddenly wingless body began to plummet to the earth below. “Five, and bonus points for saving Stonewall’s sorry ass!!”

“Aw, look who learned to count to five!” Haze joked, winking at the increasingly scarlet-coated stallion. A brief glance ahead was all he needed to spin and twirl between two oncoming griffons, tearing their insides out with his wingblades as they passed. “Mobius, they just don’t know when to give up, do they?”

“Well, we certainly aren’t greenwings,” Thorn said as the Rainstorm pulled closer up on Rain’s flanks. Flipping her head over her shoulder, Thorn observed the chaos behind them only for a second before muttering, “Ouch.”

“Ouch?” Haze echoed, raising an eyebrow.

“Saw some poor bastard get split in two with a Gryphon zweihander,” she answered. A moment’s pause. “Lengthwise.”

Screeching and angling her wings low, Rain dove towards the walls, the rest of the Rainstorm following her. While the lead five ponies broke away, the tail end of her cohort was under assault from all sides as they withdrew back to the safety of the Nimban walls. The griffons that had recovered from her unexpected charge were raking back and forth across the pegasus wedges. Where there were once neat formations, the sky was filled with a rainbow of feathers and an overwhelming amount of blood.

Four hooves connected with the back of a griffon skull as Rain came to a hard landing, crushing the hybrid’s face into the cloudstone and crunching its spine. It didn’t even make a sound as the pegasus mare spun around and kicked it off of the wall, drawing her massive sword in the same motion. Thorn and Haze landed to her right, while Red and Stonewall took up her left flank. With the cohorts switching out in the sky above them and the griffon charge momentarily shattered, Rain found the Pilus Prior and slapped him on the pauldron to get his attention. “Status?!”

The Pilus Prior spared Rain only enough time for a rough salute before turning back to watching the skies. “Minimal casualties, Legate. Your charge really shook them up, but I wonder if it was worth the price.”

Rain winced, watching the tattered remnants of the tail end of her cohort make it back to the safety of the walls. She figured she’d lost a fifth of her cohort’s strength off of that charge; she was down to four hundred pegasi in that case. At least the double-strength First Cohort along the walls seemed relatively unscathed. Making a quick sweep of the battlefield, Rain took a headcount. By her numbers, she was roughly at 2,400 pegasi against twice as many griffons, with more reinforcing the horde’s numbers by the second.

But there were only twice as many griffons in front of her as she had at the walls...

“How many ponies do you have on the flanks?!” Rain shouted to the Pilus Prior.

“Two centuries to each flank,” the Prior answered her. “The Second Cohort split its centuries in two to cover them as well. That’s 512 for each side.”

Rain scowled like she’d tasted something bitter. “Put another century on each flank. There’re too few of the bastards in front of us, and watch the ground!”

The Prior saluted, holding his wings out to the side and parallel to the ground. “As you command, ma’am.” Turning around, he quickly grabbed two optios and barked Rain’s orders at him. The pegasi saluted and flew off to their respective legions. In no short order, Rain watched as a century pulled off from her left and her right and flew further down the walls, taking up fortified positions looking north and south.

Turning back to the rest of the Rainstorm, Iron Rain led them to a fortified rampart and drove her sword into the ground. “We hold here until the bastards crush our flanks, which is only a matter of time. As soon as they start falling, we pull back to the palace and hold there. Got it?” Receiving nods and shouts of “Ma’am!” from her friends, Rain nodded once and turned towards the center of the city. “Any idea on the status of the evacuation?”

Stonewall narrowed his eyes at another flight of civilians taking off. “If everything’s stayed on schedule, there should only be another eight or nine flight groups left to round up the stragglers. They’re supposed to fly red flags over the palace once all the civilians are gone so we can fall back.”

“Those’ll be a sight for sore eyes,” Rain said. Looking back towards the east, she frowned at the reorganizing and surging wave of griffons. “Stone and Red, you two got my left. Haze and Thorn, my right, and save the romantics for the bedroom, you hear?” Her comment earned a roll of Haze’s eyes and a scowl from Thorn, but the four pegasi responded to Rain’s orders all the same.

Legionary milites rushed up to the walls around the Rainstorm and braced themselves against the cloudstone crenellations as the looming shadow of griffons descended upon them. Unlike when Rain led the Fourth Cohort on its reckless charge through the griffon descent, the Third Cohort climbed at a steep angle to try and crush the griffons that reached the walls from above. While not as daring as Rain’s strategy, it was nevertheless a safer and more conservative option, given that the griffons wouldn’t be caught off-guard against it again.

“Brace yourselves!” Rain cried, gripping her massive sword in her jaws and tearing it from the ground. “Stand your ground until I give the order! We’re all that’s between the griffons and our civilians, you hear?! Stand your ground!”

The griffon charge struck the walls like a blow from the gods themselves.

Screeching, spitting griffons tore into the Cirran defenses, rending limbs and painting the walls in Nimban Red. In the first few seconds of the clash, Rain was certain she heard more cries of piercing steel and iron and the screams of the dying than she had ever heard in her life, and that was saying something. Her focus was immediately drawn back to the battle at hand however when griffons began to charge her rampart.

Screaming with the fury of a maddened mare, Rain spun her massive sword around her body, whirling the long and lethal blade through the shoulder and down into the ribs of the first griffon charging her. Using her left wing to shove the griffon off of her sword, she reached out with her right and deflected a griffon longsword aimed for her flank. Tumbling forward, she quickly put distance between herself and the griffon swinging madly at her lightly armored rear and choked down on her sword. With the weapon more firmly balanced in her jaws, the Legate of Nimbus bucked off of the cloudstone crenellations and rammed her shoulder into the griffon’s side, sending its sword flying.

Hissing, the griffon drew a dagger from its side and hurled it towards Rain. By some stroke of luck, the mare managed to skid low across the ground and deflect the projectile with the wide and flat portion of her blade. Grunting, Rain kicked off of the ground and threw a bladed wing towards the griffon’s face. Snarling, the griffon blocked the wing with the steel bracers protecting its forearm and immediately punched Rain’s snout, forcing the mare to recoil. With blood pouring down her nostrils and the pain in her muzzle telling the mare that her nose was likely broken, Rain once more spun herself into a whirlwind of blades, sending her sword and the blades on her right wing towards the griffon’s left side. The griffon tried to block, but the weight behind Rain’s sword staggered it enough that her wingblade was able to finish the job, tearing open the arteries along the unprotected side of the beast’s neck.

She wasn’t able to revel in her victory long, for a crushing pain in her left haunch brought her down screaming. Knowing she was in immediate danger, Rain fought through the blinding pain and rolled to her right, swinging her left wing wildly as she twisted. There was slight resistance along the scales and an angry cry of pain, and she glanced upwards to see a griffon oathsworn with a massive warhammer held in one hand clutching at a freshly-inflicted wound across his cheek.

Through the red haze clouding her vision, Rain took the time to examine her wound. The griffon’s warhammer had crushed the tail end of her armor and had probably cracked her femur. At least the armor had prevented the hybrid from shattering it outright; she could still fight like this, even if the slightest movement of her leg nearly brought her down in crippling pain.

Growling, Rain rolled onto three hooves and dropped her stolen zweihander on the cloudstone wall. With one of her hind legs useless, she knew she wouldn’t be able to gain any of the momentum she needed to swing a sword that large. Instead, she drew her knife, Mary, and raised her wings in preparation of a fight.

The griffon made a noise that sounded like a boulder tumbling down the side of a mountain. It took her a second to realize that the beast was laughing. Holding its warhammer with both hands, it advanced on its hind legs, its wings open and displaying dual rows of serrated blades upon each crest. “You fight still, pony?” it asked in a thick accent, giving Rain a crooked smile that showed rows and rows of razor sharp teeth. Across its face it wore a strange pattern of blue tattoos and corded feathers that Rain had never seen before.

Rain blinked several times, once in surprise and the rest to keep the red haze out of her eyes. “I didn’t think you barbarians knew how to talk.”

“Nothing to say to dead horse,” the griffon answered her in its broken Equiish. “Ponies weak. Die today. Die tomorrow. Die forever.” Snarling, it raised its warhammer high over its head. “Just another pony corpse!”

Snapping her wings open, Rain hurtled herself off to the right, biting down a scream as her wounded leg flopped after her. With a thunderous boom, the oathsworn’s warhammer crushed the cloudstone underneath it, pelting Rain with sharp stones and a spray of condensation. Growling, the griffon tore its weapon free from the walls before Rain had the chance to recompose herself and began to stalk her like wounded prey.

Cursing, Rain fluttered further to the griffon’s left, trying to get around the reach of its terrible weapon. Sensing an opportunity, Rain suddenly accelerated her revolutions and dove towards the griffon’s unprotected left. The oathsworn began to swing its hammer to try and catch her before she arrived. With a sudden twist of her wings, however, Rain suddenly darted towards the griffon’s opposite side, ducking underneath the hammer and plunging her dagger deep into its ribs. She pulled the blade away, bloodied, when she realized that the griffon hadn’t stopped swinging his hammer even when the mare stabbed him. She barely had time to yelp before the hammer completed its revolution and caught her in the side, nearly breaking her neck with the whiplash alone and sending her skidding down the cloudstone wall, wheezing for breath.

The griffon clutched its side, panting, and its hand came away bright red. Turning back towards Rain, it flashed her a dangerous smile as she tried to stand up. “Pony outmatched, like rest of pony nation!” it spat, taking a lumbering step towards her. “Pony weak by itself, where griffon strong! Pony die alone! I break bones and feast on flesh!” Bending down, it picked up one of Rain’s pauldrons, which had broken loose from the hammer blow. It looked at the insignia for a second before realization dawned on its face. “And... Leg-It, too? Better!”

Gasping in pain, Rain somehow managed to plant her hooves underneath her and grab Mary from where it lay at her side. “Die alone?” Rain wheezed, taking a step closer to the griffon. She spat on the wall, leaving a red spot in her wake. “The only one that’s dying alone is you.” She smiled and sat down, her left leg held awkwardly out to the side and making her grimace. “Because no matter what happens, us ponies fight together.”

Before the griffon could so much as laugh, a sword severed its hind leg, sending it toppling and howling in pain. Landing on its chest as it rolled, Bluestreak grinned manically, his coat now sufficiently plastered with blood and the plume of his helmet soaked enough to serve as a paintbrush. His bloodied sword was held between bloodied lips which dripped more vitality than even the most feral of the griffon berserkers. “Hallo, Freund,” Red greeted the oathsworn in his terrible impersonation of a griffon accent. Looking to Rain, he cocked his head. “Mind if I take this one?”

Rain waved a hoof. “Go right ahead.”

“Thanks.” Grinning, Red lowered his head right next to the frightened griffon’s ear. “You know, I could always use some more chicken in my life.” Leaning back, he tightened his grip on his sword and silenced the griffon’s screams.

When it was over, the blood-coated stallion licked his lips and trotted over to Rain, who was supporting herself against the crenellations of the walls. “Seventeen,” Red proclaimed, smacking the mare on the shoulder. His eyes narrowed and his expression hardened when he got a look at the wounds the mare was nursing. “Damn, boss, one oathsworn too much for you to take nowadays? Getting old sucks, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t think it was just an oathsworn,” Rain said, watching the rest of her soldiers repel the griffon assault. Haze and Thorn were cleaning up against a trio of griffons, while Stonewall swiftly executed a crippled and helpless foe. “He looked like a High Guard.”

“Magnus’ personal dickheads?” Red asked, cocking his head. “I guess they think highly of you, girl.”

“He didn’t know who I was,” Rain said. She pressed a hoof against her ribs and grunted with each stab of pain. One. Two. Three broken ribs. While such a wound would likely take other pegasi off the battlefield, Rain was tougher. She could still fight if she needed to, and she had to. She didn’t care what her father said. Nimbus would not fall today, and she was going to make damn sure of it.

Her ears flicked as Thorn and Haze trotted to her side, both panting and covered in blood. Haze walked with a slight limp to his foreleg, and a deep cut on Thorn’s brow was spilling blood into her eye, although the mare treated it more like a nuisance than anything. “We beat the griffons back from the center, but the flanks are under attack,” Thorn said, looking over her shoulder. “We’re getting crushed and encircled.”

“The Third’s falling apart, too,” Stonewall added, approaching from Rain’s other side to stand next to Red. He was missing one of his ears but otherwise didn’t look too much worse for wear. “The Fourth’s falling with them. High altitude griffon fliers came down on them from above. We have to abandon the walls, or we’re cut off.”

Rain gritted her teeth together. There were simply too many griffons! “The civilians?”

“The last flight’s leaving as we speak,” Stonewall answered her. “We need to pull the First back if we want to buy them more t—!”

He was cut off by the walls violently buckling underneath them. Gnashing her teeth together, Rain flung herself to her right, landing hard on her broken ribs and jolting her wounded leg. Up and down the line, the walls of Nimbus were exploding into cloudstone rubble as massive boulders tore through the compressed cloud. Thorn and Haze immediately took to the skies as the section of wall they were standing on suddenly gave way and fell apart. Grunting, Bluestreak hooked his legs under Rain’s shoulders and hauled the mare away from the collapsing cloud and mortar. When Rain finally got her limbs back underneath her, where she had been standing moments before was all but obliterated.

“Ballistae?” Thorn spat, the scowl on her face deepening with each passing second. “Of course they’ve got freaking ballistae. They got wingshot in there too?”

As if answering her question, four griffon ballistae parked safely outside of the city limits launched several clay pots towards the interior of Nimbus. As they passed through the retreating Third and Fourth Cohorts, they detonated, sending shrapnel scattering through the retreating legionaries and dropping dozens.

“You just had to ask!” Haze growled, backhoofing Thorn across the helmet. All around them, the First Cohort began to break ranks and pull back as the hurtling boulders and exploding wingshot pots started mutilating its numbers. Dropping onto the walls, he worriedly looked between Rain and the ballistae. “What do we do?”

Rain squeezed her eyes shut and cursed under her breath. ‘I’m sorry...Father...’

“We—” she coughed and spat another glob of blood on the ground. “We have to take them out. They’re going to tear apart the palace and whatever defenses we’ve got left. I’m not as concerned about the casualties as about them shortening the fight; if we don’t make this last long enough, the bastards will just chase down our civilians and slaughter them.” Watching the wall shatter and vacate around her, Rain opened her wings to her friends. “So, Rainstorm? One last fight before we earn our peace?”

To her surprise, however, not a one of them smiled or moved to join her. As Rain stood there, confused, Bluestreak was the first to approach her. “I’ll take care of it, boss. You get the hell out of here.”

Rain blinked. “Alone?” She shook her head. “No. I’m going with you.”

Bluestreak sighed. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?” Rain asked, her expression shifting from one of surprise to irritation. Glancing in a circle, she realized the rest of the Rainstorm all bore Red’s expression.

“You’re too important to lose, Rain,” Stonewall spoke up. “You’re your father’s only heir. If Nimbus loses both of you, then the Line of Rain comes to an end.”

Rain scowled and turned on him. “You sound just like my dad!” She practically spat the words at him. “And my brother! I will not be coddled like some Stratopolitan foal, sheltered from battle until I’m old and feeble!”

“Then live to fight another day!” Red shouted at her. “Your father gave the rest of us orders to make sure you got out of here in one piece. So I’m gonna take care of those ballistae myself!”

“You can’t possibly—Mmmf!”

The rest of Rain’s voice failed to escape her lips, because Bluestreak’s were pressed firmly against hers. The Legate’s wings jolted straight out and her eyes widened in surprise as Red leaned her back, getting everything he could out of the very, very passionate kiss. When it finally ended many seconds later, Red licked his lips and smiled at Rain. “Gods, I’ve always wanted to do that!”

Before Rain could even respond, Red tore off her helmet and viciously pummeled her brow. A single powerful strike from his hoof was all it took to bring the Nimban mare down in a heap. Catching her before she could hit the cloud, Red passed the unconscious legate to Thorn and Haze. “Keep ‘er safe, Thorny Girl!” he exclaimed, smirking. “I want her to freak out about it later!”

Thorn nodded. “Give them hell, Red.”

“Oh, you can count on that.” Flexing his wings, Red took off into a hover, a manic smile covering his face. “See you bastards on the other side! I’ll make sure to grab a table Hell’s mess hall for you!” And with a flash of his wings and the errant blue feather, Bluestreak sped off towards the east.

Stonewall watched the stallion fly off. “Godspeed, you magnificent bastard,” he murmured. Turning back to Haze and Thorn, he flared his wings. “We need to get out of here. We’re the last ones on the walls, and that’s no place for us to be, even if we’re the Rainstorm.” Narrowing his eyes at Rain, he gestured towards the rest. “You two, get her the hell out of this city. Bring her to Nyx and rally whatever milites they have stationed there. We don’t know if the Gryphons are going to take their time to revel in their victory here or if they’re going to roll us all the way back to the heartland, but we can’t be caught unprepared again. This was our one slip-up in the war; another’ll bury us.”

“And you?” Haze asked, shouldering his share of Iron Rain’s weight.

Stonewall shook his head, watching the last ponies flee to the center of the city. Shadows flitted overhead, the telltale signs of griffons taking the walls. Drawing his sword, he looked to the skies. “The griffons see two pegasi trying to get a third out, they see easy prey. I’m covering you.” There was a screech from above, and Stonewall whirled about to slice his sword through the chestplate of a griffon diving him from above. Blood sprayed his face, momentarily disorienting him, and with a shove he sent the griffon toppling off the wall. Turning back to Haze and Thorn, he screamed, “Go!” and took wing, rising to meet the incoming griffons. Spinning his sword so it’d catch the sunlight, he slid it back into its scabbard and took off for the north, an entire company of griffons on his tail.

Gritting his teeth, Haze turned away and looked at Thorn. “Come on, we need to get out of here!”

Together the two pegasi flapped their wings in unison, lifting Rain’s unconscious body off of the walls and flying low through the city skyline to escape the griffons swirling above them. Taking the sidestreets, they managed to dive through a hole in the cloudstone roads and set a course to the west.

“Think he’ll be okay?” Thorn asked, sweat beginning to add its shine to her neck.

“He’s not the fastest flier,” Haze said, “but he’ll give them a run for their money.”

With Nimbus behind him, Haze cursed and shook his head at the smoke pouring from the buildings, especially around the palace itself. “Damn greenwings,” he muttered. “They were never ready for this.”

“We’ll mourn them when they’re dead,” Thorn answered, pointedly keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead. “Right now, they’re all we’ve got between the griffons and our civilians.” After a second’s pause, she added, “They’ll hold for as long as we need them to.”

Haze hummed his reluctant agreement, and instead of directly answering her, only worked his wings harder, leaving Nimbus behind.

---

As the ranks of the First Cohort pulled back from the walls, Centurion Carver narrowed his eyes and loosened his sword from its scabbard. He and the remainder of the legionaries defending the palace formed a resolute line, their blood and iron ready to defend the legacy of Nimbus to the last. On the balconies and ramparts of the palace itself, numerous Cirran archers stood with arrows nocked to their bows, ready to draw and loose into the oncoming griffons once the remaining pegasi were clear.

An explosion of mortar and fire at the eastern walls left Carver frowning and the other milites at his sides muttering to one another. The griffon artillery was far heavier than the artillery the Cirrans had, and as such it was safely outside of the range of the Nimban wingshot ballistae. Carver had no doubts that it’d be able to strike the palace, however. He cursed under his breath; another thing beyond his control that he’d have to contend with just to leave the damned city in one piece.

“Legionaries!” Carver shouted, turning to face the soldiers of Skyhammer’s platoon. “I know it’s grim. I know it looks rough. But stick with your wingpony and believe in each other, and we’ll pull through! Alright? Let me hear it!”

A mix of cheers and averted eyes answered him.

The young centurion frowned. Out of sixty-four pegasi that flew into Nimbus a week ago, only thirty-three remained. Nimbus had been a baptism by fire by every meaning, and it made Carver’s blood boil. Greenwings like him and Finder and his friends shouldn’t have been thrust into the fighting like this. No wonder half of his compatriots had fallen on the first day.

“Our job is to secure the eastern windows until Commander Gold Moon and the rest of the chain of command evacuates Nimbus,” Carver continued. At the worried mutterings of his soldiers, the centurion raised a wing. “Every second we buy at this palace is another second for our civilians to fly to safety.”

The thrumming of hooves against the clouds and the palace heralded the arrival of the retreating pegasi from the Nimban walls. Looking over his shoulder, Carver saw the griffons forming for an attack on the palace. Raising his voice, he continued, “Fight as hard as you can, but if the griffons take this position, fly west to Nyx and report to command there! We’ll regroup and live to fight another day!”

Rushing back towards the palace, Carver slid behind a barricade. Summer and Windshear galloped out of the crowd to join him, weapons readied and eyes focused forward. Glancing at his sides, Carver offered them a reassuring smile. “You guys ready?”

Windshear nodded, but his spear trembled in his grip. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Summer didn’t answer, her eyes locked on the approaching horde. Her sword was readied, but Carver still spared her a concerned look.

“Summer?” He carefully pressed a hoof to her shoulder.

“Eyes ahead, Carver,” she answered, never looking away from the coming horde.

The rush of ballistae firing over their shoulders made the assembled Cirrans instinctually duck behind their cover. A dozen clay pots soared overhead, leaving trails of fire in their wake. The streaming ammunition carried into the approaching griffon formations before the expertly timed fuses detonated, filling the skies with shrapnel and killing scores of hybrids at once. But other than chewing holes in the formation, it did little to slow the griffon advance.

An authoritative shout from the roof of the palace led to the cloudstone structure’s balconies bristling with drawn bows. Carver spared a glance at the upper ranks, searching for Finder and his brother, but the archers were too indistinct to pick out. With another shout, nearly a hundred bows twanged in unison, filling the skies with arrows. Many found their marks, bringing down more griffons from afar; many more missed or simply bounced off of the hybrids’ armor. Widening his stance, Carver braced for the first wave of griffons to hit.

The explosion of ballistae rounds all around him swept him from his hooves and flung him back like a ragdoll.

His helmeted head slammed hard against the cloudstone walls of the palace, momentarily blinding him and chipping his teeth as his jaws cracked together from the force. He lost his sword somewhere in the barrage, but he couldn’t find it with the world spinning and flashing in front of him. With a few deep breaths, he steadied his vision and scrambled to his hooves.

Summer was picking herself up on his left, her coat marred with dozens of scratches and oozing blood. The entire left side of her coat was covered in vitality and blue feathers; it took Carver a moment to realize that they were the remains of a milite who’d been crushed directly beneath one of the griffon’s shots. Seeing his glance, Summer gritted her teeth and waved him off with a wing, hobbling forward and snatching her sword.

Windshear fluttered over from Carver’s right and dropped his sword in front of him. The centurion nodded his thanks and grabbed the weapon, rushing forward to meet the griffon charge. The ballistae had been well-timed, as they’d broken up the Cirran defense immediately before the griffons touched down. Already the pegasi were being routed from their defensive barricades, and the griffons were making a push towards the large barred windows of the Nimban palace.

“Come on!” Carver shouted, charging forward and engaging a pair of griffons in front of him. The two hybrids hissed, one moving to block his sword and the other circling to his flanks before a furious screech stopped it in its tracks. In a burst of white coat and pink mane, Summer leapt on top of the griffon like a feral beast, her bladed wings forcing its claws away and her hooves pummeling its skull. Rolling backwards, the griffon managed to flip her into the air and kick, sending the Nimban mare rocketing into the sky like a missile. Tumbling through the air five or six times, Summer managed to stabilize herself, howl, and dive straight back down at the griffon below. Before it could rally any sizable defense, Summer plowed into it, and the two went straight through the clouds below them.

Carver wasn’t left with much time to gawk at the sight. With a hiss, the griffon in front of him slashed a massive longsword in his direction, forcing the stallion to flop backwards and out of the way. Grunting, he rolled to the right and felt a burning pain in his scalp as the griffon’s talons grabbed onto a fistful of mane and pulled. Howling and bucking, Carver managed to shake the griffon loose by delivering two crushing bucks to its ribs. He was almost certain he managed to break something even under the armor protecting the griffon’s chest.

Whirling around, Carver delivered blow after crushing blow with his gladius and bladed wings to the griffon, slowly tearing away its defenses as it tried in vain to fend him off. The griffon slipped trying to back away from Carver, and the stallion leapt on top of the hybrid before he even knew what he was doing. Shouting with each strike, he slammed his gladius down on the griffon longsword until a hook from his wing stripped it away. With one last shout, his gladius split the griffon’s brain into two distinct halves.

A kick to the back of his neck slammed Carver into the ground, the misty vapors of the clouds nearly drowning him as he gasped. Flapping his wings, he managed to shake the griffon on his spine loose just enough for him to squirm away from the talons reaching for his neck. Still, a powerful hand grabbed ahold of his shoulder and hauled him back, the talons audibly scraping against the metal as Carver struggled.

He tried to strike out with a wingblade, but the hybrid’s other hand latched onto the base of his wing and squeezed. The talons piercing into the pressure point made Carver’s wing lock in pain, preventing him from moving at all. Opening his eyes through the pain, he bared his teeth at the griffon inches from his face. The griffon hissed back, rows of razor sharp teeth lining the inside of an already lethal beak. Squinting at the beast’s rancid breath, Carver shoved back all he could, but to no avail.

Then the saliva striking his face suddenly turned red with blood. The griffon spasmed and dropped Carver, a talon reaching for the spear head jutting out of its chest. Its eyes found Carver’s face, the hatred and spite in them only growing brighter and brighter until all at once the fire was extinguished.

Windshear kicked the corpse off of his spear and spat on it. “Fucker,” he muttered, readjusting his grip on the spear. Reaching out to Carver, he pulled the stallion back from the fighting. “We’re getting torn apart here! You have to make the call!”

Carver took a moment to collect his breath and observe the battle around him. His century was beaten to almost nothing, and the veterans mixed among the greenwings were doing what little they could to bolster the defenses. A costly counterattack managed to push the griffons back down the hill and away from the windows, but Carver knew very well that he didn’t have they reserves to try that again. Biting his lip, he took a step forward before resolve solidified its hold on him.

“We have to buy the civilians more time!” he screamed over the battlefield. “Just five more! Hang in there, legionaries! Hang in—!”

“Down!” Windshear screamed, cutting Carver off and tackling him against the clouds. A second later, the walls of the palace exploded inwards as ballistae shots pummeled their sides. Debris rained all around the two stallions, with several smaller chunks thunking off of Carver’s armor. With the last of the cloudstone settled as rain on their armor, the two stallions shook the debris off of their shoulders and stood back up.

“Gods!” Windshear cursed, his legs trembling beneath him. “That artillery’s gonna pound us into oblivion at this rate!”

“I know,” Carver spat, feeling blood dribble down his chin. He took one look at the tattered remains of his century and cursed. “We’re falling apart! Where’s Summer?”

“Here!” came the answer from his right. He turned to see Summer standing there, one leg held awkwardly against her side and her coat covered in blood from mane to tail. Her eyes were wide as she clambered closer. “There’s griffons underneath the city, too! They’re tearing apart the foundations! They nearly got me when I pummeled that bastard to the ground below. Damn near took my leg off.” Her eyes widened as she saw the sorry state the Nimban defense was in. “Carver, we have to move now, or we’re all dead!”

Carver bit his lip. “Just a few more minutes—!”

“We don’t have a few minutes! We leave now or we die, that’s all there is too it!” She cast a glance inside the windows of the palace. “Lord Rain’s guard can hold them off until they evacuate. They should be almost gone by now, anyway.”

Sighing, Carver nodded. “Alright. Help me round up the stragglers.” Galloping forward, he scaled a pile of rubble and raised his sword. “Everypony, fall back! Fall back to Nyx! Retreat! Retreat!”

“Carver!” Summer screamed behind him. The stallion whirled in place, only to see Summer pointing skywards. Turning about, he saw what she was pointing at; a volley of ballistae shots, aimed right at the archers on the roof of the palace.

“Finder!” Carver shouted, taking wing for just a moment before Windshear bit down on his tail and hauled him back. The centurion could only watch, helpless, as the stones began their descent on the palace.

The roof imploded with a cacophonous roar, shaking the very foundations of Nimbus to the core.

---

“Finder!”

The world exploded in the screaming of pegasi and shattered cloudstone, launching Pathfinder off his hooves and flinging him down like a foal throwing a toy against the ground in a tantrum. His eyes saw naught but blurry cloudstone and splashes of color as he tumbled amongst the groaning of the palace. When his back slammed against the ground he cried out in pain, a scream that ended in a wheeze. His world swam before him as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

The thudding of four hooves near his head brought him back to reality. A strong brown foreleg reached under his shoulders and hefted the whimpering colt off of the ground. Finder’s body shook a few times before he found himself lying against a wall in the interior of the palace.

“Come on, Finder, look at me!” he heard a muffled voice say through the ringing in his ears. Opening his eyes, his double-vision finally cleared until he could focus on Longbow’s face. His brother’s coat was covered in scratches, and a few grains of cloudstone were embedded in his cheek. The bandage that covered his missing eye was peeling off, and noticing the colt’s unease, Longbow pulled it back in place as best he could.

“Wha... what h-happened?” Finder asked, his tongue feeling sluggish and his head pounding like a war drum. He looked over Longbow’s shoulder to where several legionaries were picking themselves up out of the rubble, crying in pain or looking for weapons and friends. Many bodies didn’t move, and the white cloudstone of the palace was stained red with blood.

“Artillery,” Longbow answered. He cast one last look at the breach in the ceiling and hurriedly pulled Finder to his hooves. “We have to go. Now.”

Griffons began to pour through the ceiling, executing the legionaries too wounded to move and pushing back those that met them. Cursing, Longbow shoved Finder towards an open door, joining the mass of greenwings fleeing from the griffon horde. Pausing in the doorframe, Longbow fired three arrows into the griffons descending on him, bringing three to the ground in moments. He spared them no mind; instead he turned and bolted through the open door, pushing the heavy iron and cloudstone door closed.

“Longbow!” Finder screamed rushing to his brother’s side. “Pegasi!” He bit his lip as he watched several panicked legionaries rush for the closing door, griffons hot on their tails. The nearest, an orange mare with a pink crop of hair glued to her muzzle with dried blood, screamed and reached for the door.

Finder’s heart stopped. She looked so much like Dawn.

The door slammed shut with an unceremonious thud, and Longbow bucked the heavy bar in place. Finder jumped back for a moment, startled, then cried out and rushed towards the door. He heard a series of dull thuds as the mare tried to pound the door open, but just as Finder got his hooves around the bar, her screaming abruptly stopped. Longbow had to turn around and haul the shocked colt back, tears streaming down his green face.

Dropping Pathfinder by a nearby wall, Longbow inhaled a deep breath and took stock of the pegasi around him. They were exclusively greenwings, each one shaking as they looked around themselves, bewildered. They didn’t run, however; Longbow’s gravitas as a veteran kept the panicked milites by his side, and he could feel the eyes watching him.

“Ready swords, bows, whatever you have on you,” Longbow said, striding forward. “Griffons probably surround the palace now. We need to make our way to the throne room and grab Lord Rain and Commander Gold Moon and get the hell out of here. It’s our only chance.”

Waving a wing, he directed a pair of milites to scout the palace halls while the rest of his soldiers got ready. As he surveyed the ragtag dozen ponies left around him, he noticed Finder standing a ways away from the group, his eyes fixated on the door. Sighing, he trotted up to the colt and draped a wing across his back.

“Finder...” the elder brother began.

“You killed her.” Finder’s voice was quiet but damnably accusing. “You shut the door right in her face.”

Longbow sighed. “I couldn’t leave that door open for another second, Finder. I’m sorry.”

“But she was right there!” Finder moaned, taking a step towards the door. “Just another few seconds and—”

“I don’t care about her!” Longbow suddenly exclaimed, making the colt wince in fear. “I was trying to keep you safe! If I’d let her in, we’d have griffons down our throats and we’d all be dead!” He shook his head and stomped, his anger nearly cracking the floor. “I don’t want you to die, Finder! Just stay by my side and away from the fighting and I’ll get you home to mom and dad! As far as I’m concerned, nothing else matters!” Cuffing the colt with the feathers of his wing, he marched back to the rest of his soldiers. “Now come on. I don’t want to be sitting here when the griffons bust through that door.”

As if on cue, a heavy force slammed against the door from the other side, nearly making the bar buckle in two. Scrambling to his hooves, Finder quickly glued himself to Longbow’s side. Another thump at the door caught his attention, and he tried his best to ignore the crimson pooling out from under it. Swallowing hard, he turned back to Longbow, who was shepherding the greenwings out of the room and into the palace’s many hallways.

Row upon row of polished armor greeted Finder as the pegasi galloped down the hallway. Banners, shields, and swords hung above each, carrying some motto or family motif with each one. Finder remembered stopping here with Dawn on their fast day in the city. Each armor belonged to a hero of Nimbus, erected here so that they would never be forgotten. Dawn had even showed Finder a set of half-plate armor standing beneath a crescent shield and a rusty polearm that had belonged to some ancient legend of her own ancestry.

A twinge of sadness pulled at his heart as he passed the armor. It felt like it’d been years since then.

He nearly bumped into Longbow as the archer came to a stop before a massive iron door, decorated with cloudstone mosaics and gold trim. Worriedly looking over his shoulder, Longbow pushed his way to the front of the crowd and pounded as hard as he could on it. “Open up!” he shouted, pounding again. “We’re survivors! We’re trapped, we need in!”

Some grim part of Finder’s mind briefly mused on karma while he watched his brother scream at ponies who wouldn’t answer him.

Finally, a heavy latch screeched open from the other side of the iron, and the doors slowly opened inwards. Eight Royal Nimban Spearponies stood on the other side, hurriedly gesturing for Longbow and company to enter. Longbow muttered some prayer of thanks to the gods and galloped in, shouting at the greenwings to follow. They didn’t need to be told twice.

Longbow stopped at the nearest Royal Nimban and saluted. The Nimban ignored it entirely, instead grasping his golden spear tighter and looking back down the hallway. Longbow faltered for a second, but asked nonetheless, “Are Commander Gold Moon and Lord Rain ready to evacuate, sir?”

The Nimban narrowed his eyes at Longbow. “Your Cirran commander is burning battle plans and logistics reports and should be ready shortly. Lord Rain is too honorable to abandon the Nimban throne. He will not be joining you, but will lead us into the Great Skies, with Garuda’s blessing.”

Longbow had to suppress a scowl; he hated the Nimban mentality on death in combat. “Sir. The griffons have more than likely surrounded the palace, and the east wing is breached. We’re going to have griffons all over us in a few minutes.”

The spearpony nodded, and at his signal, the heavy doors shut with a boom. “We will hold here, no matter the cost. The rest of you greenwings, flee to the war room; Commander Moon should be ready for you there.”

“Sir.” Longbow nodded and waved for the milites to follow him. Pathfinder squeaked once at the intense glares from the Royal Nimbans and nearly latched onto Longbow’s legs. Before they were even halfway across the room, however, a torrent of air tore through the room, and the spearponies began shouting.

“W-what’s that?!” Finder exclaimed, feeling his heart accelerate until he was sure it was going to rip itself to pieces. Longbow looked back to the door, eyes wide, and how the spearponies began taking positions in front of it. Suddenly, with the hideous screeching of metal, the doors were torn apart, ripped from their hinges and flung inwards like cards. Two Royal Nimbans were crushed by their amazing weight, and the rest scattered, trying to mount some sort of defense for the demonic screeching filling the halls.

Longbow spun around, drawing his bow. “Move!” he shouted to the rest of his company even as he too backpedaled. “Come on, through the next doors! M—”

He didn’t even get to finish the word before a gale as strong as the hurricanes that tore through Altus in the summer knocked them all to the ground like paper soldiers. Trying to untangle themselves from each other, the soldiers managed to climb back to their hooves just in time to see griffons rush at the Royal Nimbans holding the line. True to their reputation, the Nimbans fought back ferociously, denying a single griffon entry to the inner palace and leaving a score of bodies at their hooves. Longbow was almost considering rushing back to help them hold the line when another blast of wind knocked them all back, and into their place strode the largest griffon he’d ever seen.

The griffon stood taller than two of his own kind, and the golden armor studded with amethysts and spiked steel only added to his terrifying presence. The ashen feathers covering his face were nearly spotless, the only blemishes being the blood of Cirrans whose throats he’d ripped out with his monstrous beak. His talons, serrated and horrible, held a golden longsword larger than most pegasi, and it too dripped pegasus blood. Fiery eyes regarded Nimbus’ finest with unbridled disdain, and the griffons he’d entered with did not dare to cross in front of the behemoth.

“Gods, no,” Longbow murmured. “Gods, no...”

The acrid stench of urine filled the air as Finder realized his legs were suddenly wet. He knew who the monster was. He’d heard them say his name but a day ago.

“Magnus...”

As one, the six Royal Nimbans rushed the enormous griffon, golden spears held high and thrusting at his armor. Magnus seemed amused by the attempt, and with an agility that a monster of his size had no right to have, sidestepped each deadly point. A torrent of wind sent the Nimbans staggering back, and before they could even recover, the golden sword swung with the fury of a tornado itself.

In one swoop, it was over. The piercing cry of metal rang out six times in the halls of the palace, and six dull thuds echoed as as many heads hit the floor independent of their bodies. His features almost bored, Magnus pushed all six bodies over with one wave of an enormous hand.

Then his eyes set on Longbow and his soldiers.

“Run!!” Longbow screamed, pushing them along. “Fly!! Don’t look back! Don’t look back!!!”

---

“Hahaha! Is that all you bastards got?! Come on, give me a real challenge!” Red twirled through the tumbling remains of a trio of griffons cut apart with his wingblades, the blood drenching him like a pouring rain. “Or do your toys not mean all that much to you?!”

Another squad of griffons split off from the ballistae Red was rapidly approaching, screeching furiously as they descended towards him, blades readied. The Nimban madpony only laughed harder and rose to meet them, cannonballing straight into the leader of the party and knocking him out of the sky. In a flurry of blades so quick and so precise it resembled a waltz of death, the formerly blue pony cut them to pieces and continued on his way. Their brief interruption hardly slowed him at all.

“Hey! Shitstains!” Red screamed as he barreled towards the griffons at the nearest ballista. “Why’s it a bad idea to try to make a cloud house out of wood?”

Instead of flying directly at the ballista, the stallion corkscrewed and kicked his forelegs out... right into the cloud below it. As the pegasus punched through the vapor, the cumulus cloud exploded with a faint puff, catching the ballista crew by surprise. With a sudden lurch, the ballista groaned and embarked on its terminal flight to the ground.

Red took a second to admire his handiwork before emphatically pointing it out to the stunned griffons around him. “Wood doesn’t float, you idiots!” Then he lunged forward and ripped his wingblades through the unarmored chests of the crew around him. Two fell immediately, and the rest threw their hands in the air and fled east as fast as their wings could carry them.

“...Bitches.” Shaking his head, Bluestreak eyed the next ballista in line and flew straight at it. The squawks in the background were getting louder now; he was starting to attract unwanted attention from the griffon reserves. His lips splitting in a manic grin, he sprinted forward and landed on top of the base of the ballista, barely two feet away from the nearest operator. The griffon squawked and tumbled back, leaving Red to stare at the four of them.

“Hallo, Freunde! Say, you weren’t using this, were you?” His eyes glinted, and reaching down with a wingblade, he hooked a scale under the release lever. “Nein? Then I think I’ll just... be going then...” With a jerk of his wing he severed the cable attached to it, and the recoiling torsion springs flung him into the sky—and away from the griffons divebombing his position.

Backflipping through the air, Red suddenly snapped his wings open, catching the throat of a griffon Oathsworn on the crest of one. Spinning in place, he caught the falling and headless body and grabbed its waraxe in a fetlock. “Hey, you mind if I borrow this for a moment? ‘Of course Bluestreak sir, be my guest!’” Gasping with feigned disbelief, he slid the axe out of the groove in the griffon’s armor and took it between his teeth. Pressing a hoof against his chest, he smiled and released the body. “Why thank you, Hans! You are just too kind!”

Twisting his body, Red sped straight through an oncoming group of griffons trying to chase him down, his wings trailing contrails in the high altitude. An errant javelin or two nearly skewered him as he divebombed the next ballista, and only a last minute flaring of his wings allowed him to slide out of the way. Heaving the greataxe over his head, Red flew right past the torsion springs of the ballista and flung it with all his might, screaming “Catch!” as he let go.

The axe buried itself deep in the cables of the ballista, severing dozens of the taut ropes at once. With a tremendous explosion of force, the ballista tore itself to pieces as all the tension was released at once, filling the skies with wooden shrapnel. Through it all, Red twisted and pumped his wings, keeping his speed up as he sighted the fifth ballista in line.

Overshooting the fourth completely, Red gritted his teeth and slammed his shoulder into the tail end of the fifth ballista. The force from the impact spun the light ballista to the right, and wasting no time at all, Red kicked the release lever even as the griffons tried to stop him. With a tremendous thwang!, the ballista fired a stone directly into the side of the fourth, tearing it apart completely. Rolling off of the wooden construction, he quickly decimated the crew as they tried to flee in a maelstrom of blades, leaving nobody left to man it.

Only one ballista left now, but there was company waiting for him. Standing in front of the final siege engine was an enormous griffon, easily twice as tall as Red, wearing horribly spiked armor and wielding a greatsword longer than Red’s wingspan. The hybrid snarled at him, the blue tattoos wrinkling across his feathers, and it opened its arms in a challenge.

“Finally!” Red exclaimed, racing forward to meet him. “A griffon that’s not a wimp! Let’s see what you’ve got, asshat!” Whirling his sword, he rushed headlong into the fray.

The griffon put two hands on his greatsword and swung down with terrifying force. Instead of trying to stop the gargantuan weapon, however, Red merely bounced his blade along the edge and spun to the side to get his wings in range. But astoundingly, the griffon took one hand off the massive sword and caught Red by the face, his serrated talons digging deep into the pony’s flesh. With a hiss and a grunt, the High Guard spun Red around and slammed the stallion’s skull directly against the frame of the ballista.

Red responded with a double buck directly into the griffon’s face, forcing it to let go and giving him some time to recover. Blood poured from the deep gouges torn out of his coat by the High Guard’s talons, and Red shook his head to get it out of his eyes. “Hah! That’s what I’m talking about! Come and get some, wimp!” And he charged towards the griffon again.

Choking down on his zweihander, the Griffon swung the weapon at Red, hilt first. Red deflected with his sword and jabbed at the griffon’s exposed flank, but the griffon grabbed the stallion’s gladius with his bare hand and shoved Bluestreak back. Red lines poured blood in the hybrid’s palm, but he hardly seemed to care as he grabbed hold of his zweihander and swung it wide with a shocking amount of force and speed. Raising his wing, Red was barely able to catch the sword, but it sent him reeling nonetheless. The stallion went tumbling across the ballista but caught hold of the wooden frame before he went sailing off the cloud entirely.

The glint of the sun sailing overhead was all the warning he had. Grunting, Red rolled to the side just as the griffon’s zweihander bit the wood of the ballista, sending a shower of splinters into his face. Hopping over the embedded sword, Red delivered a scissoring strike from his two wingblades to the High Guard’s neck, but the griffon caught both on his bracer-clad forearms and viciously headbutted Bluestreak. Red responded by biting at the griffon’s face, forcing the shocked hybrid to shove him away. Kicking off of the griffon, Red landed on the ballista and flared his wings, taunting him. “Come on, kitty cat! Surely you’ve got more than that!”

Growling, the High Guard hefted his zweihander once more and swung it at Red, but the pegasus was too fast, and again the weapon bit deep into the frame of the ballista. Fluttering up to a higher perch on the machine, Red yawned and laid on his back, shutting his eyes. The shake of the ballista a second later as the griffon tore his sword free and the parting of the air gave the Nimban enough warning to backflip out of the next attack. The wood groaned as the ballista’s weight shifted to the side, and Red once more perched on the top, a concerned look in his eyes.

“Oh, look what you’ve done now. You’ve gone and broke your toy.” He sighed and stretched his wings, the blades screeching against each other. “Looks like somebody’s gotta be put in timeout.”

Kicking off of the ruined ballista, Red propelled himself directly into the griffon’s face. Both his front hooves connected with beak and feathers, and the griffon tumbled backwards, staggering from the blow. In an instant Red was upon him, delivering a terrifying series of gashes and strikes with his bladed wings in close quarters. But the griffon refused to die, carefully sheltering its neck and other vital areas with its armored forelegs even as Red tried to cut them to pieces. Snarling, the High Guard shot his arms out and blocked both of Red’s wings at once, forcing them back in a contest of strength solidly in his favor. Sweat beaded on Red’s brow, but he couldn’t overpower the griffon; in a matter of seconds, he found himself on his back, his wings pinned behind him and the griffon’s talons wrapped tightly around his throat.

Gritting his teeth, Red tried to break free, but he only felt the griffon’s talons piercing through his hide, searching for the arteries in his neck. With one last defiant action, he wadded up whatever bloody saliva he had and spit directly into the griffon’s eyes. The beast howled and let go with one hand... but not both. The other kept Red pinned down, and even though the grip on his neck was weakened somewhat, the stallion couldn’t worm his way out.

Then the griffon recovered. Hissing in rage, he tore Red’s helmet off, stuck his talons deep in the stallion’s blood-soaked ear, and pulled.

Skin, fur, and muscle all yielded to the griffon’s serrated talons. When his ear was torn open, Red gritted his teeth and hissed between them. When the High Guard’s talons wound their way behind and through his eye, however, the pegasus screamed. With a wet pop, the griffon pulled Red’s eye from its socket and crushed it into paste in front of him.

The pain gave Red’s limbs a new desperate strength, and even as the entire left half of his face felt like it was burning off, he somehow managed to shove the High Guard off of him. Scrambling to his hooves, Red quickly snatched his sword and barely blocked the taloned strike of the griffon’s open hand, the remains of his eye still staining it red. Spitting, the griffon whirled around and shoved Red away, the pegasus quickly losing Magnus’ chosen to his new blindside.

“Hrracckkkkt—Where are you, you sonuvabitch!!” Red screamed, scaling the ballista and spinning in place to try and find the High Guard. “I’m not done with you yet, asshole! Where are you?!”

A punch to his jaw from the darkness swallowing the left half of his vision startled him, and snarling, Red spun and swung his sword to the left with all his might—only to find nothing there. He briefly paused, his mind trying to work out where the High Guard had fled to, but by the time he realized his mistake, it was too late.

Steel crumpled iron, rended flesh, sundered bone, and decimated viscera. A searing pain the likes of which Red had never felt before split across his lower abdomen; he already knew the damage was fatal before he fell over, his hind legs failing to keep him up. The world swam in a haze of red and black, and the pony vomited blood onto his forelegs. Simply breathing made him want to scream, and it took all his effort to look over his shoulder at the griffon standing behind him.

Suddenly he knew why the griffon fought with such a huge sword; it was the reason he couldn’t feel anything but pain past his gut. His legs and the lower half of his torso lay a few feet away, pouring blood from the intestines left in them. As he stared in disbelief and increasing deliria, the High Guard sneered and sheathed his sword, instead turning his attention to the ballista he was standing on. Growling, he leaned down and began trying to mend the siege engine, clearing the firing path of splintered wood from the frame.

Hissing, Red tried to crawl forward, his sword clenched between bloody teeth. The light was fading away all too quickly; his vision was narrowing down to a single point fixated on the griffons neck. But the High Guard saw him coming, and without so much as a thought he shoved the dying pegasus back towards the bottom of the ballista. Red slamming his skull against the base of the machine managed to knock a little life back into him.

But even that was fading away. Wheezing, his neck fell back as he lost the strength to support it. His dying gaze tilted to the side, and just before everything went back, he saw the firing lever, primed and waiting to be pulled. Gasping in pain, he reached over with his wing, struggling to get a scale hooked under the rope the lever was attached to. With the last of his strength, he forced the sharp scale under the cords and smiled at the griffon, his teeth and lips stained red.

“Hey...” he gasped, barely catching the griffon’s attention. Then he smiled even more manically. “Watch your step...”

He pulled.

The rope snapped.

A stone went rocketing up the damaged track of the ballista, straight at the griffon standing in the way.

The engine exploded in a shower of debris and splinters.

---

Stonewall dove between two buildings, the furious cries of griffons still hot on his tail. Sweat poured from his brow and his wings ached, tired from sprinting for so long and carrying so much weight. So far, his agility in the burning city kept the griffons from closing the gap, but there were simply too many for him to lose. Everytime he wound through an alley or darted through the upper floors of some noble’s manor, they’d spread out above him and scream to each other whenever he emerged, and the chase would continue.

Twisting his wings, Stonewall knifed down an alleyway, forcing the larger griffons behind him to either slow down or fly over it. It’d buy him some time, but not much, and he was panting now. Looking ahead, his eyes fixed on the Nimban palace. It was crawling with griffons now, and the legionaries around it were beginning to pull back. It was time to go.

Bursting out of the alleyway, Stonewall banked hard to the south and worked his wings for all they were worth. Already he could hear the griffons closing in on him, and he spared a second to look over his shoulder. The sight made him curse and push himself even harder. Ten griffons were practically glued to his tail, just barely out of reach, while the rest trailed at a longer distance, resting their wings and readying themselves to compensate in case Stonewall managed to turn and elude the ones right behind him.

Griffons began to cross in front of him, making their way to the palace. Stonewall clenched his teeth together and pressed on, weaving through them, not slowing for even a second. As easy as it would have been to cut a griffon’s throat out as he passed, he’d lose precious speed in doing so. He wasn’t concerned about killing anymore hybrids today, anyway; all he focused on was surviving to fight another day.

The southern walls rose before him, and hissing in pain, Stonewall forced himself to gain altitude. If he could just get beyond the city limits, maybe the griffons would break off and leave him. It was a slim chance at best, but his only one. There was no way he could make it to the pegasi at the palace without getting crushed between the griffons already there and the griffons chasing him.

The griffons behind him suddenly pulled up, ascending almost perpendicular to the city streets. Stonewall himself was angled to barely clear the wall; maybe they were letting him go? Panting and wheezing, the exhausted stallion barely skimmed the edge of the wall, his hooves dragging against the interior crenellations.

Five griffons were waiting for him on the other side.

Cursing, Stonewall tried to skirt past them, but his wings were too tired to respond. Instead, a griffon shield collided with his skull and sent him flying back, gasping and choking for breath. He was slow to get to his hooves, but the griffons made no effort to end him there and then. As more settled in on the walls around him, he knew why; he was cornered prey, and all they were doing was delaying his death.

Closing his eyes, Stonewall focused on slowing his breathing and drew his sword. Spreading his wings, he forced the griffons around him back long enough to try and find some bit of terrain he could use to his advantage, but the towers along the walls were too far away. He was simply trapped on an open stretch of cloudstone, with nothing but his blades and his armor to fend off a horde of griffons.

The first three leapt at him at once. Not fully recovered from his flight, Stonewall backed up as fast as he could, trying to get all three centered in front of him. Grunting, the stallion slid to the left around the first griffon’s attacks and raised a wing to stop the second. The blades sparked as they collided, and Stonewall grunted as the force behind the griffon’s swing threw him to his side. He leaned with the motion and found himself inside the swing of the third griffon. The sword rung against his armor but failed to pierce it, and he responded by stomping the griffon’s foot. The beast howled and jumped back, but Stonewall, weary as he was, was faster. He spun in place, ending with his wingblade tearing into the griffon’s throat. Pulling down, he ripped the griffon’s throat out, leaving it to die fitfully against the cloudstone.

The other two griffons responded by attacking him from both sides. Gnashing his teeth, Stonewall stuck both wings out to his sides, simultaneously catching both swords. Screaming with exertion, he shoved the stronger, heavier griffons back, giving him enough room to dash forward and away. But two more griffons descended out of the skies and landed in front of him, immediately swinging with swords and biting with beaks. Stonewall rolled backwards out of the way, barely seeing the sword swung at him as he tumbled. Hissing, he raised a wing and fended it off, and with the other, sliced off the griffon’s foreleg. The beast collapsed next to him, howling in pain, and Stonewall rolled over to drive his sword into its eye.

Tearing the gladius free, the Nimban whirled around and stopped another griffon from jumping on his back. The blade whistled through the air and caught the griffon in the gut, splitting it open and spilling its intestines across the wall. Another griffon rushed him from behind, leaving Stonewall no time to tear his sword out; instead he tumbled forward away from the attacker and locked his teeth around the sword of the griffon he’d just killed. Drawing it, he spun in time to stop the second attack, and with a desperate thrust, pierced the griffon’s heart.

A hybrid seized his wing from behind and pulled, dislocating the limb and making Stonewall scream in pain. He tried to turn and fight the griffon off but it twisted his wing, forcing the stallion down. His sight fled from him, and he was left gasping as another griffon grabbed his other wing and likewise twisted, dragging him up to his knees.

The pain in his shoulders nearly pushed Stonewall into a painless oblivion, but the griffons were too careful to prevent him from blacking out. Instead, they kept a dagger at his throat and forced his chin up. His face covered in sweat and wheezing for breath, Stonewall could hardly focus on the Oathsworn walking towards him.

The Oathsworn stopped a few steps away and simply stood there, scowling at Stonewall. Hefting a zweihander, he placed it on Stonewall’s shoulder, letting the stallion feel the weight of the steel pressed against his neck.

Stonewall maintained a cold and hateful stare at the griffon standing in front of him. “Do it,” he spat, baring his teeth. “I’ve already earned my reward.”

But the griffon narrowed his eyes and only stepped away. Speaking to the griffons around him in his native tongue, the Oathsworn pointed to Stonewall. Immediately the griffons twisting his wings stood up, dragging the aching stallion with them.

“Kill me!” Stonewall screamed at them, fighting against their grip. “End it, you cowards! Do it! Do—!”

His words were cut off by the Oathsworn spinning back around and slamming the hilt of his zweihander into Stonewall’s muzzle. The stallion’s neck jerked back and he spat a tooth at the ground, blood immediately pouring out from between his lips. Spitting it at the ground, he tried to break free one more time, but both griffons twisted his wings even harder, to the point where he was almost certain he could feel the muscles tearing in his shoulders. His head hit the ground, but he was too exhausted to scream anymore. Looking up, he caught one last look at the Oathsworn as it sneered at him from above.

A paw stomped hard on his skull, and he saw no more.

---

Lord Winter put his shield through the gap in the griffon’s beak. Its bladed edge slid out of the back of the hybrid’s neck, leaving its tongue spasming upward into open air as its eyes and nostrils flopped to the ground with a wet thump. The flared his right wing out, catching another of the tired creature’s necks with the spike at the center of his weapon.

The Consul of Nimus barely flinched at the splash of hybrid blood on his back. “Careful, Downburst.”

“Sorry.” The Lictor ducked under a threatening slash from a griffon already missing a wing, and in a surprising show of mercy, thrust his gladius down from above the creature’s collarbone and into its heart. “Been a long time since we’ve had a proper fight, hasn’t it?”

“This isn’t a proper fight.” Winter spared his shield, opting to rake his single wingblade along the shins of the last griffon in the foyer. When it collapsed, he spared no time in bringing his forehooves down on its spine. “This lot was pathetic. Most likely scouts that got out of position. The real challenge will be here soon.”

“You sound sure.” Downburst chuckled as he wiped his sword off on a griffon’s coat. “Personally, I figure we’ve just gotten so good at this that there isn’t a griffon worth our time.”

“A team of green recruits could have held this, Downburst. There wouldn’t be a war if there armies were like this.” Winter glanced at his spiked shield. “I haven’t even used Nimbus to guard.” His deep breath told another story, though; the stallion was getting tired. His age was showing. “Shall we try and rally―?”

The doors, already ajar, creaked open. Both veteran soldiers turned, eyes sharp, toward the source of the motion. A small team of legionaries was in fighting retreat, beaten back behind the blades of a larger, stronger mass of griffons.

“Time to be heroes again?” Downburst smiled, and wrapped his teeth tightly around his weapon. It took the aging stallion three flaps to reach a suitable height, and each motion came with the groan of his wings and the clack of the scales on his wingblades. Then he titled himself forward and dove into the fray.

Winter Rain’s left wing, covered in similar scales, folded back against his side. His right, carrying the shield Nimbus, moved forward to be ready. His hooves tensed on the stone, and with the groan of bones too old for battle, he charged.

A griffon sword was aimed at the neck of a sky blue colt, too tired to stop the attack. The Consul of Nimbus rolled into place, letting the griffon weapon scrape across his shield with a spray of sparks. The hybrid winced, its avian eyes struggling with the unexpected light. Another one of the tired Cirrans had enough presence of mind to thrust a spear through the creature’s side. It wouldn’t be a fast death, but it would put the creature down.

The sky blue colt stood slack-jawed at his sudden salvation. Winter’s eyes weren’t as easy to distract. He saw the griffon on the other side of the pony, talons outstretched and ready for a kill. Nimbus moved faster. The hoof-length spike in its center drove into the monster’s eye. The force of the shield and its mass broke the creature’s beak. It collapsed in shock, and Winter knew it would bleed out before it woke.

Another talon scratched through his once-proud purple robes, scoring three marks into his segmentata. Before the Consul could strike, a wingblade slashed through the hybrid’s neck, and it collapsed with a spurting gasp.

“Reminds me of Brisenbaen. This is the second time I’ve saved you.”

Winter would have rolled his eyes, had they not been in a pitched battle. The bladed lower edge of Nimbus thrust forward at another griffon. “Then you owe me one more.”

The griffon parried the blow with its oversized sword, though its eyes betrayed surprise at the attack coming from a shield. Winter replied by placing his hoof on the top of the shield and thrusting it up the length of the hybrid’s blade. Sparks flew up at the creature, but it proved clever enough to duck under the shower of lights. Unfortunately, it didn’t know about Winter’s other wing. His blades claimed the creature’s throat with little difference to the fate of the one Downburst had killed mere moments earlier.

“Don’t you miss those days, Winter? Things were simpler back then.” Downburst pulled his sword along a griffon’s belly, spilling its entrails. Something resembling glee flashed at the corners of the stallion’s cheeks, though his focus remained sharp. “We weren’t responsible for the whole city, at least.”

“We do what we must,” Winter observed emotionlessly, even as he thrust the spike of Nimbus through the ribs of another hybrid. At the same moment, the corner of his eye caught a griffon halberd as it drove through the shoulder and neck of one of his guards. “The left side is slack.”

“On it.” The Lictor placed his wings on the ground, using them alongside his hind legs to flip up and over the mass of soldiers, toward the place where the Cirran soldier had died.

Winter didn’t have time to watch his friend at work; His off-wing was barely fast enough to intercept another griffon as its beak reached for his throat. The creature screeched in his ear as it bled, driving its throat further onto the scales of his wingblade in the throes of death.

With his head turned away, the Consul only felt the force of the griffon arrows as they struck the wide surface of Nimbus. His head turned from the dying griffon on his wing just in time to see the arrow that struck his upper foreleg. His eyes squinted. His teeth clenched. His world grew harsh, defined by motion and focus more than emotion and sensation. He was the only Cirran in the room; his mind discarded the others.

Leg was worthless. Bone scratched. He ignored the pain as he lifted it from the ground, shifting its partner under the center of the shoulders to carry his weight. Shield was pulled closer, protecting his body. Arrows bounced off, deflected. Glancing over for information, he saw three hybrids approaching. Greatsword, spear, and two smaller swords. Archer was too far to confront. Spear and swords could be blocked by wingblade; the large sword needed Nimbus.

From that point, for Winter, it was almost reflex. He put his entire weight into a lunge at the griffon with the spear, shield-first. The hybrid assumed he meant to block with Nimbus, and tilted his weapon toward Winter’s bad side. The pegasus reached forward with his free wing, catching the scales of his wingblade on the wooden shaft partway up the weapon. The griffon only had the time to widen its eyes before the bladed edge of the consul’s shield drove straight through them.

He was between the other griffons now, and his eyes flicked between them. His wingblade slashed rapidly at the one with two blades; naively, it stepped backward. The space was all Winter needed. His shield moved under the blow he knew was incoming, catching the larger of the griffons’ weapons even as he closed the gap. His steps were uneven, limping on three legs, but they were enough to get at the creature’s exposed side. He lifted a hind leg and his bladed wing at once, intent on kicking off of the creature as he killed it.

An arrow changed the battle again, but this time it was a Cirran shaft, driving into the creature’s eye. When Winter’s leg pushed against the creature, it toppled like curtains pulled down by a child. Rather than leaping back shield-first onto the surviving griffon, he fell off-balance just before it.

“Lord Winter!” The young pegasus’ shout preceded pain, sharp and piercing against his back. It was a pain the soldier’s body didn’t know, and that on its own was enough to tell him that he wouldn’t survive the wound. Other soldiers had told him they saw flashes of their lives when they’d made their last sacrifice, dying in his forelegs, but the only thing his mind could think to latch onto was pain.

It settled, he wasn’t sure how long later, as a gust of wind swept through the room. The griffon with the two swords was dead, lying at the hooves of an impossibly small green legionary with a scout’s armor tight to his body. The stallion―no, a colt―was struggling in vain to help Winter to his hooves.

“We’ve got to get back.” That was Downburst’s voice, somewhere nearby. “Longbow, cover us. Colt, stop. I can lift him.”

Words were slow to come to Winter, but discipline managed to move his tongue. “Downburst… what…”

“Not now,” the lictor interrupted. “Winter, the griffon archduke is here.”

“Magnus?” The wounded pegasus coughed in pain as his oldest friend lifted him, balancing his chest with both wing and foreleg. “How do you know?”

“Just look,” was Downburst’s answer. Winter did.

Archduke Ottgam Magnus could never have been missed in the mass of griffons that slaughtered the last of the Cirran defenders. The sight took Winter’s breath away: the griffon ruler was twice and half again as tall as his subjects, with the terrifying wingspan and the brutal musculature to match. In one talon, he carried a gilded longsword that would have put even Iron’s stolen weapon to shame, its blade nearly as wide as any pegasus’ wing. Its serrated edges dripped with fresh Cirran blood, as did its owner’s talons. His head was covered in ashen feathers, where it hadn’t been stained by pegasus blood from his beak. The fur of his leonine body was a gray on the verge of black, reminding Winter of charcoal.

As the old pegasus felt his blood slowly dripping away, he felt a pang of fear: not for himself, but for Cirra. They had underestimated their foe. Whatever Magnus was, he was no normal griffon. Winter wasn’t sure the pegasi were ready to fight the monster.

“Colt,” Winter gasped, before sucking down a painful breath to strengthen his voice. “Colt.”

“Sir?” the little green one asked.

“Get out of here. This is a place for old stallions to die. Tell the emperor what you see. Warn him.”

“Lord Winter,” the stallion Downburst had called ‘Longbow’ cut in as he stepped into Winter’s vision. “There’s nowhere to go. We were hoping your vanguard would still have the throne room. All the other exits are theirs now.”

Winter’s eyes swept the room, to the brutal realization that there were far, far more griffons than pegasi left. As Downburst set his friend on the throne of Nimbus, dragging his ancient shield across the padded wood, the consul shed a tear. His city was dead. In mere minutes, the battle had ended, and he had lost. All that was left for the griffons was to clean up. From that chair, too weak to stand and fight, growing closer to his own death with every breath, Winter watched his soldiers die.

When it was over, and the last loose blade had clattered to the cloudstone floor, the griffons grew from a chaotic mass to an organized force. Along proud walls that had once been home to the greatest warriors of the pegasus race, griffons stood in line. Flanking the path up to the throne from the main doors, well-armored hybrid elites stood in perfect formation. Winter had, in his time, killed three of the oathsworn. He had never imagined they numbered enough to fill the great hall of the Nimban palace.

And yet, compared to their leader, they were nothing.

“Lord Winter Rain, Consul of Nimbus, son of Autumn Rain and heir to emperors and warchiefs. Tell me, how does it feel to be the last Lord Rain? To be the son of the Nimban line who lost their city?” Magnus voice was deep and resounding, as befit his titanic body, but there was a mirth to his words that twisted in Winter’s stomach worse than a knife ever could.

Winter conjured up as much strength to his voice as he could. “I haven’t lost it yet, Ottgam Magnus of Angenholt.”

“Haven’t lost?” The griffon’s beak opened to a roaring, boisterous chuckle. “Look around yourself, pegasus. My oathsworn fill your throne room. My army is wiping the last vestiges of your species from my new city. In a moment, I will take your throne, and your head as well. I count three of your soldiers left, and one is barely even grown.”

The little green colt in scout’s armor stepped backward, hiding behind the archer―Longbow, was it?―as Magnus’ gaze fell on him. At the show of fear, the freakish griffon ruler smiled wider still.

“You think Nimbus will die with me?” Winter shook his head, his mind thinking of his his daughter. “I sent our civilians away. Perhaps you take the city today, Magnus, but tomorrow, the sons and daughters of Nimbus will grow up, and they will cut your armies down.”

“I doubt that.” The way Magnus’ voice delivered the words seemed to chill the back of Winter’s chair, despite the humor the griffon seemed to gain from the thought. “If your generals lead, and your armies fight the way that they have here, and at Hengstead, I’m afraid there won’t be any sons or daughters left to avenge you.”

Winter rolled forward in his chair, glaring across the room into Magnus’ eyes. “You would kill our children?”

In response, Magnus shrugged. “I was quite content to let this be a casual game between your Emperor Haysar and I, as so many of your Emperors have played before him. But he saw fit to raise the stakes, and slaughter the cubs and the elderly of Hengstead. It seems such a shame to spill such innocent blood, and to waste such potential, but I am not one to deny my soldiers their emotions. They want vengeance for their mates, and their young. You will be lucky if your kind is not extinct by years end. I wouldn’t bet on them.”

“You treat this war as a game?”

Again, Winter’s rage was only stoked by the griffon’s continued amusement. “I don’t expect you can understand my viewpoint. Where you stand, this battle here, in Nimbus, is the culmination of your life’s work. Here, you struggle to save as many of your people as possible, while you hold the so-called ‘spiked shield’ against the ‘barbaric’ hordes of my people. Your legacy is decided, Winter; set in stone by what you’ve done up to the moment I walked through those doors. Now, your life is over, your legacy set in stone, and you will soon go to face your judgement. To you, this war is everything.” Magnus shook his head. “But in a matter of decades, when I tell the story of this war to the next generation of young griffons as they grow up in the streets of Stratopolis, I doubt I’ll even waste the breath to mention you, or this battle. Stratopolis will be the one worth remembering. Do you understand me, Winter? Your efforts here have meant nothing. And now,” he added, stowing his enormous sword onto a strap on his back and producing a sword-sized knife from a sheathe under his wing, “I believe it is time to bring this little game to a close.”

“I think I agree,” Winter answered, his words growing harder to summon with every syllable. He struggled to his hooves, and at great pain, pulled Nimbus up against his body. “You may kill me, freak, but no matter how long and how hard, every drought ends in Rain.”

“Winter, you can’t―” Downburst’s words simply couldn’t compete with what followed.

“Freak?” It wasn’t that Magnus was shouting; his voice still seemed controlled and level, even amused. It was something else, as if a wind in the room had picked up, reverberating off the walls to echo every movement of his tongue. “I would be amused by your spirit, pegasus, if it wasn’t so thoroughly disgusing. You called me a freak, ‘Lord’ Winter. Let me ask you: what do you think I am? A mutant? Some strange twist of breeding and fate? Or perhaps you believe in magic?”

“You’re a monster.”

“I am a god, Lord Winter.”

“Your size and your voice don’t scare me, Magnus. A delusional griffon could never conquer Cirra.”

“I’ve already conquered Nimbus,” Magnus countered with amusement. “But since I have nothing but time, I think I’ll prove it to you.” The giant griffon turned to face Longbow. “Archer, shall we play a game? My oathsworn won’t interfere, and I won’t even move. Draw a drop of my blood, and I’ll let you all leave Nimbus unharmed.”

Longbow turned to Winter for advice, and the dying pegasus nodded. “You can end this rebellion here, Longbow. Show the griffons their place.”

The sound of the wood straining back as Longbow drew his arrow was deafening. The ears of the other ponies perked in anticipation, though the archer himself found his folded flat against his head in concentration. His left eye closed, and his right traced down the shaft of his arrow to stare straight at the charcoal feathers covering Magnus’ throat.

The sharp twang of the string snapping back was nearly deafened by a roar of wind. Like a Hurricane, it filled the room, stirring the rubble on the floor and unsettling the fur and feathers of the rooms inhabitants―all save Magnus. The arrow flew for the griffon ruler, and the grin at the corners of his beak grew wider still. The pegasi watched the arrow with baited breath, clearly able to see the steel tip as it slowed, and slowed…

…and stopped, mere inches from Magnus’ unarmored flesh. Amused, his talons reached up to grab the shaft out of the air, twirling it and inspecting its quality. “You fletched this with your own feathers? It’s good work.” As his avian eyes swiveled up, the little green scout at Longbow’s side cowered. “Oh,” Magnus noted. “You still don’t believe me?” With a flick of his wrist, the winds rose again. Nopony saw the arrow; all they heard was the colt’s shriek of pain as the shaft buried itself in his flank. “Go ahead, archer. Take another shot.”

Longbow looked at the scout with a mixture of horror and guilt, and then shook his head. Magnus responded by chuckling, and extending his talon in the colt’s direction. With another surge of the strange breeze, the shaft in the young legionary’s leg twisted, burrowing deeper

“Enough!” The shout was Downburst’s. The Lictor drew his sword and spread his wings. A single flap was all it took to toss himself across the room in Magnus’ direction. One of the Oathsworn stepped out of their formation to block Downburst’s path. The Cirran was ready to battle the griffon, but he was beaten to the first swing when a titanic gilded blade thrust its way out of the hybrid’s throat.

“Ihr kennt die Regeln,” Magnus told the corpse, as he withdrew his sword. “Ich habe meine Feinde gewählt. Sie sind mein, ebenso wie der Herrscher und seine Untergebenen. Euch einzumischen kostet euch eure Seelen.” He said nothing to Downburst, instead rearing up on his hind legs and tightening his one-clawed grip. The tip of the blade nearly scraped the ceiling.

Downburst lunged forward, inside of Magnus’ titanic reach. The gilded blade swept down, but the Lictor was watching it; he rolled aside, avoiding the weapon. His focus returned to the griffon’s leonine paws just in time for one to slam forward, kicking him squarely in the side.

The force matched the creature’s size, hurling the pegasus backwards across the room. Magnus wasted no time, bringing his sword to bear with a frightening agility. Downburst rolled to the side as the blade clashed against the cloudstone floor. Rather than lifting the blade again, the griffon turned the blade to its side, scraping up a huge spray of sparks as he moved to bisect his foe.

Again, Downburst was too fast. Pushing off the ground with his wings, the aging pegasus flipped himself onto his hooves, rushing toward Magnus beneath his attack. His sword cut through the flesh of the hybrid’s right paw, coming to a stop when it met bone. A huge gust of wind seized the old pegasus in that moment of victory, again tossing him backwards to the foot of the chamber’s dais with an audible and painful crunch.

Downburst tried to stand, but before he could, he found Magnus’ paw pressed against his chest. His blade was missing, and what should have been a gaping wound instead took the form of clean, undisturbed flesh.. “Why do you persist, pegasus? Don’t you see that it’s hopeless?”

The croaking, wheezing voice of Consul Winter spoke from his seat when Downburst’s words failed under the griffon’s paw.

“He did exactly what… any Cirran would do. His duty… You claimed my life… but I die now...not by… your talon…” Winter’s defiant glare accompanied a slight but proud smile, strong despite his failing breaths. “…but as a proud… Nimban. Ante Legionem...”

With those two words, the Consul of Nimbus collapsed backwards onto his throne, unable to support himself. The growing pool of blood from his side dripped off of his seat, pooling down the dais and around the prone form of last friend. Magnus stared at the body as it grew cold, his charcoal brow growing bolder and more furrowed with every passing moment. When he gave voice to his anger, it was in an incoherent howl, and the winds of a hurricane that blasted out the last remnants of the chambers windows. With a single mighty stomped, he crushed Downburst’s ribcage beneath his paw, just one step on the way to the corpse of Winter. Grabbing it roughly with one claw, Magnus seized the entire seat with his other, ripping it out of the ground and hurling both toward the doors to the room. Still his fury was not satisfied, and he turned his hateful gaze on Longbow.

The young stallion stood his ground, glaring up at impending doom, keeping his body between Magnus and Pathfinder. It was a strong, defiant glare, and a powerful stance, and they lasted until Magnus’s claw extended. At the bidding of his winds, the arrow in Finder’s leg flew free, finding its place in Magnus’ palm. With too little time for Longbow to react, Magnus spun it in his talons, and then slammed it down into the pegasus’ lower back. It was a paralyzing wound, and it stole Longbow’s breath almost soundlessly. Unable to hold his weight, the pegasus fell.

“Die Leben von jedem deiner Art sind mein,” Magnus howled, wrapping a claw around each of Longbow’s wings. The stallion’s eyes widened, but there was nothing he could do. “Du wirst gehorchen!”

“Wait!” Pathfinder shouted. To his surprise, Magnus’ claws were still. “Please! Please, I’m begging you, don’t hurt him!”

Magnus leaned forward, his head nearly as large as Pathfinder’s entire body. The colt was suddenly aware of how easily he could be swallowed whole. “Why should I stop?”

“B-because―” It was so hard to speak.

“What does he mean to you?”

“H-he’s my b-b-brother.”

Magnus’s smiled, and nodded his head. “I see.”

Then his claws moved apart.

The sound of the scream was short, but it contained more pain than Pathfinder could have ever imagined.

---

“He ripped off your brother’s wings?” Stalwart gasped.

Pathfinder stared down into his empty mug, and then reached across the table and took Stalwart’s from him. With his muzzle covered by the mug, all Stalwart could see of the stallion’s face were the wrinkles around his eyes and across his brow.

Suddenly, it was clear where they had all come from.

The mug moved down toward the table, shaking with Finder’s hoof, until it finally came to rest. He spoke with gravely, roughly-formed words, as if some weight were restraining his tongue. “Do you know what’s inside a wing, Stahl-for-short?” the veteran asked, his eyes still locked on the drink.

“We don’t need to talk about this, sir, if you don’t―”

“Under the feathers, there’s skin.” Finder interrupted. “You know how that looks. Under that, you see muscle; it looks like rabbit meat. You ever eat rabbit, Stalwart?”

“Once. I know it’s popular with ponies from your generation.”

“I can’t,” Pathfinder explained. His throat bobbed as he swallowed dry, and then he forced down another shaky drink. “Under the muscle, there are tendons. Just like my brother’s bowstring.” His eyes swiveled up. “I tried to string a bow once, in the legion. The string came back and hit me in the jaw. String’s a funny thing, though; it’s stronger than you’d think. You pull on it hard enough, a lot of the time, you break what it’s attached to before you snap the cord. You ever seen a ship’s winch anchor?”

Stalwart’s eyes widened. “Uh… yeah. I served on Captain Winterspell’s ship for a few years, when the Guard were still manning trading ships.”

Pathfinder gave a nod, but it almost seemed to go without conscious thought. “On a ship, sometimes the anchor gets caught on a rock. If you can’t get it free, you have to cut the rope. If you turn the winch too hard, it’ll rip right off its mount, before the rope snaps.”

Stalwart shuddered. Finder didn’t notice.

“Underneath that, you have the bone. Resilient stuff, but it you shatter it, it breaks like porcelain: jagged edges and loose pieces everywhere.

Finally, Stalwart’s hooves pressed down on the tabletop. “I think I understand, Pathfinder.”

When the scout looked up, the wrinkles and bags of his face made cast him not merely old, but a corpse. “You will never understand, Stalwart. Not unless you fly back to Dioda and stare Ottgam Magnus in the eyes. I’m trying to spare you that. Be smart, colt. Listen to me. Go home.”

Stalwart swallowed. “Was he an Empath?”

Finder looked away. “I don’t think so. We didn’t know what Empatha was in those days, but… You’ve seen Celestia.”

Stalwart nodded.

“He was to a griffon what she is to us. Maybe he really was a god… I’m not sure I can even believe in them anymore. But even Commander Hurricane, Celestia rest his soul, couldn’t do what Magnus did. And I have no doubt he’s still out there, somewhere, waiting.”

Stalwart nodded. “So… what happened next? How did you survive?”

Pathfinder looked down into Stalwart’s drink, pulled it shakily up to his lips, and then drained the entire thing. Once it was done, he let it clatter from his hoof, frowning in Stalwart’s direction.

“I’m not sure I did.” Pathfinder stared down into his drink again. “Longbow passed out. Shock and blood loss I guess. But I saw it all…”

---

“Not my baby!” Sea Breeze screamed, cradling the mutilated body of her eldest son in her forelegs. “Gods above, please! Give me back my baby!” Her puffy, sobbing eyes turned to face her younger son. “You did this!” she shouted “You!”

“Did you enjoy that, colt?” Magnus’ voice broke the vision, as he let Longbow’s unconscious form fall into the growing puddle of his own blood. The gigantic griffin clutched the blonde wings as though they were feathers, and began to fan himself. “Let me tell you something. I never wanted to do this.” With the wings, he gestured around the room. “This… extermination, I mean. I had been looking forward to the war for quite some time. Angenholt does get boring over the years. I had planned to let one of those fine griffons in formation there be our general, and see if he could take back a few cities, or a few hundred miles of ground.” The ‘thumb’ of Magnus’s claw spread out the two wings, making even more of a proper fan, with which he proceeded to relieve the heat from his charcoal-feathered head.

“Your emperor changed that, little one. He decided to slaughter my females, and my young. I can abide the deaths of soldiers. They’re easily replaced.” A few griffons in the mass behind him stirred, but they remained quiet as he spoke. “I can tolerate the churn of war. But extinction? The griffons are made in my image, colt, and I will not tolerate their destruction. So, if it is going to be your race or my own… I’m afraid that decision has already been made.” Magnus lifted his right paw from the ground, aligned it carefully above Longbow’s rib cage, and took the time to look up and smile in Pathfinder’s direction before he brought it down.

“No!” Finder tried to scream, though it came out more as a wheeze. His legs were frozen in place when he moved toward his brother’s corpse. Tears leaked from his eyes as he gave a desperate shake of his head. “No, no, no no…”

But to Pathfinder’s surprise, Longbow’s eyes shot open. A gasp escaped his crushed lungs, and he sat up, even around the enormous paw filling his chest. “Dead,” the corpse whispered, finally standing on four legs of bone and rotting tissue. “Dead! Dead because of you!”

Finder began sliding backwards, his wings opened in terror. “No! Longbow, I—Please! I’m sorry!”

“Sorry?” Longbow spat, glaring in fury at Finder’s retreat. “You being sorry is supposed to fix this?” Longbow’s lips pulled back in a snarl, his perfect teeth ruined by the stains of his own blood. “You killed me. I would never have stayed behind if it weren’t for you. I’d be gone with Iron Rain.” Longbow shook his head, his disgust apparent in his scowl. “You’re no brother of mine.”

Hot tears trickled free of the colt’s eyes, burning salty lines down Finder’s cheeks. “Longbow... please...”

“Bah, I broke him,” growled Magnus, staring at Pathfinder as he pleaded forgiveness of Longbow’s corpse. The griffon ruler discarded the bloody, useless wings and gently rubbed his throat. “So much for entertainment. One of you, Oathsworn, take the hatchling and throw him wherever you’re keeping the others. Show him more hospitality than the Cirrans gave ours. He’s too young to be good for information, but he may be worthwhile for the entertainment. Don’t kill him.” Almost as an afterthought, the emperor shook off his paw, sending a little splash of entrails and gore across the dense stone. “Perhaps I can still catch their other commander before he escapes.”

With a silent salute, three armored and striped griffons spread their wings and approached Pathfinder. As their claws wrapped around his body tightly, lifting him away, his eyes remained focused on his brother’s corpse.

“I’m sorry, Longbow.”

“Go home, Pathfinder,” the corpse spat. “Go home before you can do more harm than you’ve already done.”

Pathfinder screamed to the sound of his own wings snapping.

Author's Note:

Special thanks to The24thPegasus for his invaluable help in making the Calamity arc. His expertise in combat writing far outclass my own. Special thanks as well to LoyalLiar for his assistance with Magnus. They are the masters of war and politics, respectively. If you don't follow them then please go to their pages and do so. They're two of the best writers on the site, and the best friends you could ask for.

Next time, on Wind and Stone: Umbra

Comments

[SolidFire]

This chapter was just... holy shit. So many ponies died in this glorious battle! The Rainstorm kicked so much ass up there, but Red... his death was seriously just as good as Silver Sword's, just a bit less emotional because there was far less time to get to know and love the character. Oddly enough, I think you killed him just about at the same time 24 killed Silver (words into the story I mean). Stonewall went down like a badass too, even if his death wasn't as spectacular. I kind of wish you'd move this to mature, that way you could remove these restrictions on the gore. Deaths are painful enough, but I like to see the bitter detail of a character's demise.

Longbow's death definitely could use some of that unhindered detail, but what you did with the flashback... er, flash-forward, was quite effective and masterful. I didn't find myself crying like I did last time so many beloved characters died, but my heart still pounded as every possible death presented itself to me. I think it's just the deaths of pretty little mares that makes me sad, and I can attribute that to subconsciously seeing a real-life beloved female in their place. It's fucked up, I know, but it gets quite the reaction out of me. Thus far my theory is holding true, with two for two on the deaths of loved ones.

Umbra is going to be quite the chapter, and hopefully worth the wait. This one certainly was worth is, especially since it was 24 damn thousand words long! Now I must wait for the next update in PoL. Will it be GotP or SL? Either way, I know it's going to be fantastic. Also, Ruirik, this comment is mainly here so that this chapter may be christened and graced with a comment—pity it's mine, since you already know how I felt from this chapter. I know how you feel sad when your updates don't get much love, but that's understandable. Hurry and do your ice-bucket challenge, because I'm doing mine this weekend... most likely. Until next update!

~SolidFire

[RoboRed]

I...whoa...jeez, that was a lot to take in all at once...

[Willsons]

That was heavy, god... I loved it though.

[djthomp]

God. Just, man, these chapters are rough on my emotions. At least Red managed to go out in glory.

“Hey...” he gasped, barely catching the griffon’s attention. Then he smiled even more manically. “Watch your step...”
He pulled.
The rope snapped.
A stone went rocketing up the damaged track of the ballista, straight at the griffon standing in the way.
The engine exploded in a shower of debris and splinters.

*fist-pump*

In response, Magnus shrugged. “I was quite content to let this be a casual game between your Emperor Haysar and I, as so many of your Emperors have played before him. But he saw fit to raise the stakes, and slaughter the cubs and the elderly of Hengstead. It seems such a shame to spill such innocent blood, and to waste such potential, but I am not one to deny my soldiers their emotions. They want vengeance for their mates, and their young. You will be lucky if your kind is not extinct by years end. I wouldn’t bet on them.”

Oh hell, so that's the reason for all of this, the reason why Magnus decided to change the game?

Damn, that ending.

[KMCA]

yeeaaaah, as much as I'm enjoying this I think it needs the mature and gore tags.

[FancyFan]

Yep. Longbow died. Dammit why are you so good at making me get attached to the characters who I know are just going to die anyway.

[Thefallen501st]

Why did I have a feeling when that Magnus was gonna turn out to be some sorta god boring