Wind and Stone

by Ruirik

The Last Stand III

This was not the plan.

Iron Rain felt her heart pounding in her chest as she frantically whipped her head from side to side. Her small company was surrounded, utterly surrounded. There was no conceivable way out of this mess. Five pegasi were nothing against several dozen griffons. And that was the problem; the camp wasn’t even full. At least half of Yngvilde’s griffons were gone. That meant that the hen had deployed them somewhere. And where else could she send them except for Altus?

“Surrender,” the griffoness demanded again. She pulled two blades out of their sheaths by each shoulder, the chains attached to their hilts rattling as she moved her wrists. “And I’ll let you have some company as my pet.”

Rain shrugged her shoulders, loosening zwei from its groove on her armor. “I don’t plan on living the rest of my life as your trophy.”

“I know; that’s what makes it fun.” Yngvilde grinned. “Töte sie. Retten den Großen.”

Rain didn’t need to understand Gryphic to know what the command meant. “To arms!” she shouted, moments before biting down on zwei’s handle and tearing it from her armor. Even as the blade screeched and sparks flew, the griffons surrounding her company began to pounce on her. But rather than block their attacks, Rain carried through with the draw, wildly spinning her body and throwing her weight behind what had turned into a slash. Zwei’s sharpened Gryphic steel cleaved through the first griffon’s neck and caught the second in the shoulder, shattering his armor and tearing deep into his chest. Two more hoofsteps pivoted Rain’s momentum about her assailant, and she used the griffon’s own body weight to fling him off her sword and free it for the third griffon diving on her from above.

The griffon met her weapon with a crash of steel, zwei’s long and heavy blade sparking off of his own weapon and the shoulder of his armor. Flaring her wings, Rain threw herself backwards before the beast’s talons could reach her neck, but not before they could reach her face. The points clawed at her cheek, raking through the tender flesh and sending blood spilling down her side. The pain sent Rain stumbling back, but before the griffon could leap again, she whirled about and cracked his beak with a powerful buck. Using her wings for balance, Rain kicked twice more until she heard the definitive crack of the hybrid’s neck and the wheeze of his breath as he crumpled to the ground.

Two griffons rushed her from the sides, and Rain swung her blade towards her left. The griffon dodged away from the tip of the blade, and Rain twisted her shoulders to cut zwei’s arc short and take out the legs of the griffon now behind her. It screeched in pain as zwei severed its legs, and Rain quickly crushed its skull into the ground with her forehooves, splattering the ground with gore.

But that left an opening for her other assailant, who threw his weight onto her back. Rain squawked as the griffon dragged her to the ground, and she wildly slashed with the scaled blades on her wings, searching for something soft to cut. She felt the griffon’s talons trying to get around her neck, and she knew then that he wasn’t trying to kill her, only restrain her. That was an advantage she could work with, and she thrashed harder to dislodge the hybrid. The beast had to loosen his grip to not accidentally rip open Rain’s throat, allowing Rain just enough room to twist around and jam the crest of her wing blades into his snout. Metal tore at the griffon’s face, and when he shrieked and drew back, Rain jabbed the blades into his neck and pulled down, tearing open his throat.

She was quick onto her hooves before more griffons could jump on her, but she’d lost zwei in the tussle. The blade was only a short distance away, and the griffons were further. She had time to reach it before they descended on her—!

A blade attached to a length of barbed chain soared past Rain’s skull, accompanied by a gust of wind. Rain whirled around to see Yngvilde standing on the other side of the pile of dead bodies she’d amassed, arm outstretched and chain unfurling from her wrist. The hen suddenly grinned and grabbed onto the unspooling chain, forcing them to tauten. The feathers on her wings twitched, and the wind began to gust toward her. A moment later, the blade flew past Rain’s head again, but on the other side of her body. Too late she realized what Yngvilde was up to, and before she could duck away from the chain, it struck her in the back of the neck and the blade began to spin around her. Coil after coil of chain wrapped itself around her neck, and as Rain thrashed and choked, clawing on the metal with useless hooves, the loops only tightened. All thoughts of grabbing a weapon and fighting back had fled her; now her only goal was to somehow throw off the chains and not let the hen strangle her.

“Keep struggling and I’ll keep pulling the chains,” Yngvilde taunted as she paced closer, twisting her arm and wrapping the excess chain around it. Rain could feel the barbs on the chains digging into her flesh, and if she tried to pull them apart too fast, they sliced into her neck. But they weren’t nearly long enough to kill her; otherwise, she might have twisted her neck around just to deny Yngvilde the satisfaction. Instead, she could only fall helplessly to the ground as she gasped and sputtered, wings and legs flailing uselessly as she fought for a grip on the slick metal.

And then Yngvilde was standing over her. “Pathetic,” she said, reaching down and grabbing Rain by the chains on the back of her neck. When Rain tried to strike at her with a wing, Yngvilde caught it in the loop of chains on her left hand and pulled down, nearly dislocating the limb from Rain’s shoulder. The Nimban mare cried out, but it was all she could do to keep her eyes open. She could scarcely breathe with the chains around her neck, and Yngvilde had kept them just slack enough to ensure she wouldn’t strangle herself. Instead, she was forced to look straight ahead as the griffons pressed what was left of her company.

“Watch them,” Yngvilde hissed into her ear. “Watch them die. Watch how your mistake got them killed.”

Rain gasped and tried to look away, but Yngvilde’s claws tightened on the back of her neck and jerked her head toward the desperate struggle happening in front of her. The proud Nimban mare, last of the Rains, could do nothing but watch helplessly as a griffon pounced on Aero and tore off one of his legs only to begin clubbing the stallion to death with it. She could do nothing to help Argenta as a griffon grabbed her tail and pulled her out of the air, only for another to leap onto her and pry open her ribs with his bare talons. She couldn’t call out to Northerly as he tried to put up as best a fight against three griffons as he could, only for the longsword of a fourth to decapitate him in a single strike, leaving his pained, horrified head to fall to the ground as his body twitched and bled. She didn’t have the air to cry out in horror as a hybrid ripped Valor’s intestines out of her body with his beak, smearing the feathers around his face red with her blood.

“You’re nothing but a failure and a disappointment to your line,” Yngvilde taunted her. “You’re a failure and a disappointment to me.” The chains slackened slightly, letting Rain gasp once before they tightened again. “And you’re a failure and a disappointment to every last pegasus sitting in that little town on the coast waiting for you to save them, every single one of your friends who you promised you’d get out alive.”

The chains slackened once more, and Yngvilde threw Rain to the ground. The white mare coughed and sucked down air while Yngvilde stood over her, talons fingering the loop of chain still held in their grasp. “I’m not going to rip your eye out just yet,” she said. “I’m going to make you watch your little town burn. Every pegasus I capture alive, I’m going to kill in front of you. You’re going to watch every one of them die, and you’re going to look into their eyes and know that you failed them. Then I’ll take away your sight.”

Rain tried to stand up, tried to do anything, but the chains tightened around her neck too quickly, sending her back to the ground and gasping for air. “Bring me Todesangst,” she said to one of her subordinates, in Equiish so Rain could understand her. “Have him bring his pliers. We’re going to pluck this pheasant one feather at a time.”

-----

“Is that the last of it?”

Thorn watched Haze flutter over to her, his wings flapping about like giant trowels to scoop along the fog he’d collected from over the ocean. The air all around them was thick with an almost impenetrable white blanket, and it was hard to see anything more than blurry silhouettes beyond a dozen or so tail lengths. They’d put together a solid block of nimbus cloud to stand on in the middle of the malaise, and Haze touched down on it after he filled in a hole with his collected fog.

“We’ve got a bank a couple miles long set up along the shore,” Haze said. Sweat beaded along his neck, transforming into glistening frost the moment it touched his frigid armor. He shivered and flicked his tail, releasing a spray of tiny droplets into the sky. “Fuck. This must have been what flying in Feathertop was like for the legions before the eruption.”

“Don’t count on it to get warmer anytime soon,” Thorn cautioned him. She fluffed her feathers out and fought down a shiver. It certainly was cold out over the ocean in the middle of winter. The moisture from all the fog they’d picked up permeating her coat certainly didn’t help.

“Yeah, too bad we don’t have a volcano out here,” Haze said with a smirk.

Thorn rolled her eyes. “I think that’d be a little too warm.”

“I’d be warm for the rest of my life.”

“Shut up.”

Haze stuck his tongue out at her, and Thorn put her lips around it and kissed him before he could react. When they pulled away, she playfully tickled his wing with a feather and took a step back when he bumped his flank into hers. Chuckling, Haze rolled his wings and looked around them. “We should probably stop messing around. Wouldn’t want griffons to catch us sucking face, right?”

“Why not? It’s more dangerous that way.” Thorn licked her lips, and fought down a giggle when Haze playfully pushed her away with a wing. Her expression began to harden into one of concern, however, when she looked around through the fog. “Did you see any of the other wings?” she asked him. “They were supposed to report back by now.”

The stallion slowly shook his head. “I didn’t. I bet they’re still trying to plug a few last gaps. After all, nopony moves faster than me. You know that better than anyone.”

“I should have seen at least one by now,” Thorn muttered. “I don’t like this one bit.”

A slight breeze began to tug at her feathers, and she slimmed them down on reflex. Squinting into the east, her eyes tried to pick out any signs of movement. Slowly but surely, the breeze began to strengthen into a gust, and then a strong, persistent wind blowing from the east. The fog around them began to swirl, and Thorn caught a glimpse of distant land through a hole opening in the clouds.

“Rain was supposed to take care of this!” she hissed, launching herself off the cloud and using her wings to beat back the fog. The gusts of air coming off her angled feathers stayed the fog, and she began to drift to her left. “Come on, Haze! Move it!”

Haze jumped off after her and added his wingpower to hers, and the two pegasi together managed to stave off the winds. “It was a mistake to let Rain try that shit again,” Haze growled through gritted teeth. “Yngvilde may not be Magnus, but she is his daughter!”

“And she doesn’t have any of the same sense of honor and military spirit he does,” Thorn added. “We should have just murdered her in her sleep. She’d do the same to us if she thought that was the only way she could win.”

“You think you’re stealthy enough to sneak into a camp of eagle-eyed freaks and put a knife in their leader’s back?” Haze asked her. “That would have been suicide!”

“Suicide with a purpose is one thing. I would have at least put my stiletto in Yngvilde’s neck before the griffons ripped my guts out.” She shook her head. “All Rain did was fly off to her death. Stupid glory hound.”

“We don’t know she’s dead,” Haze protested.

“This wind certainly isn’t natural! Who else could be making it if not for Magnus’ brat?” Thorn gritted her teeth and flapped her wings harder; the winds had intensified to the point where they risked blowing her away with the fog if she wasn’t careful. “She wouldn’t be doing this if Rain was still fighting her or if she was dead! She should have taken more of us with her to fight that… that…”

“Griffon!”

“I was trying to think of something worse than that, but—!”

“No! Griffons!”

Thorn snapped her head over to Haze, then followed his outstretched foreleg into the mass of clouds. She barely had time to blink and register the silhouette lunging for her before it was upon her, bloodied talons reaching for her neck. Thorn folded her wings on instinct and dropped away, and the hybrid swooped over her head, his talons pulling her helmet off when they grabbed onto the plume.

The wind buffeting her body threatened to fling her out of the sky, but Thorn opened her wings and flicked her tail to the side to stabilize herself. The griffon who’d attacked her had disappeared into the fog again, leaving only a swirling wake that closed up on itself as the steady eastern wind blew it together. She could hear raptor screeches through the fog and the beats of heavy wings, punctuated with sparse cries of steel carried in on the wind. She had little doubt now what had been happening to the other pegasi maintaining the fog.

Haze swooped down to her, eyes rapidly scanning the fog around them. “Thank the gods you’re alright,” he muttered when he saw her flying into the face of the wind. “This is not good. Not good at all.”

“Shut up,” Thorn growled at him, and again she started pushing the fog back into the face of the wind. “We need to keep this wall up, no matter what!”

“Even when there are griffons attacking us?!” Nevertheless, Haze pressed on at Thorn’s side, and the two pegasi managed to stabilize the white wall again.

“Especially because there are griffons attacking us,” Thorn said. “They probably picked off so many of our other teams.”

“Then this plan is fucked!” Haze shouted. “If they’re taking apart our team, then we’ve already lost!”

“No we haven’t!” Thorn shouted back at him. “How much you want to bet that Magnus’ brat can only use her winds on a small section of the wall at once?”

Haze opened his mouth to respond, but a sudden shift in the winds preemptively silenced him. Both pegasi looked to the left where the winds had intensified, plowing a hole in the fog, and Thorn immediately dashed over to plug it.

“Okay, you’ve got a point,” Haze grumbled, following just off her flank. He used his large wings to push the fog back against the wind, nostrils flaring as he tried to keep his breath even. “But you know we can’t keep this up forever! We’ll get tired long before the winds stop!”

“We stop, everypony dies!” Thorn retorted. “So I’m not going to stop!”

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye, and she whipped around and lashed out with her right wing. The featherknife caught the throat of a charging griffon, slicing it open in a splash of red that stained her face and neck as the hybrid tumbled past her. Haze grunted in exertion as he warded off a griffon’s sword with one wing and punched with the other, forcing the attacker back. Flipping around, he bucked the griffon in the chin, crunching its beak, and the tercel fell out of the sky with its hands to its face. He wavered in flight as the winds beat against his back, but Thorn caught him with a foreleg and held him steady until he got his balance again.

“We’re getting lucky,” he said. “They’re going to pounce on us with bigger numbers soon, and we’re not going to see them coming. Are they just blindly stumbling into us, or do they know where we are?”

“We’re being too loud,” Thorn grunted at him. “They can hear us. Their ears and eyes are better than ours.”

“Great. Just great!”

“Stick by my side and stay quiet,” Thorn ordered him. “Only shout if we’re about to be attacked. If they can’t find us, we won’t have to deal with as many attacks.”

Haze bared his teeth in a scowl, but he nodded anyway. “We’re going to die…”

“We knew that from the start. That doesn’t change anything.” A gust of wind pulled a feather loose from Thorn’s wing, and she winced at the needling prick on her skin. “It was never about us.”

The wind around them began to lessen, and Thorn followed it to the next hole in the wall after a second to rest her wings in the suddenly still air. Haze followed suit, and soon the two ponies were once more fighting against the gusts, doing their best to maintain the wall and not let anything open up around them.

A shout and a nearby clash of steel snapped Thorn’s head to the left, and she spied several faint silhouettes circling about each other through the thick fog around them. She glanced back at Haze, whose brow was furrowed in concentration, and slapped his shoulder. “Pegasi,” she said, voice just loud enough to be heard over the wind but not much more. “We need to help them.”

“The wind’s going to tear open the fog if we do,” Haze warned. “We’re the only ones keeping it up!”

“If we get more pegasi we can do a better job of it,” Thorn countered. “Much as I hate to admit it, you’re right. We’re going to get tired before much longer. We’ll need some replacements to take shifts.”

Haze sighed and nodded. “At least fighting’s better than this. I’ll follow your lead.”

“Stay close.” Thorn flapped her wings furiously for a few seconds to push the fog out as far ahead of them as she could to hopefully buy the wall some time before the winds ripped it apart. Then, pivoting her wings about, she fanned her feathers and tried to use Yngvilde’s storm to carry her up to the fighting Cirrans without burning anymore energy. Her shoulders burned and her wings felt shaky; she didn’t know how much longer she had before she simply fell out of the sky through sheer exhaustion.

She picked up altitude before jumping into the fight, giving her a perch to survey the situation. Three pegasi squared off against no fewer than five griffons, and she didn’t know if any others were hiding further in the clouds out of her sight. The three pegasi circled together in a slow formation, their mouths agape as they panted for air, the plumes of their crests drooping from the moisture and humidity of the fog. The griffons took turns attacking from different angles, forcing the pegasi to scatter and dodge the attacks before reforming. The beasts were toying with them, wearing them down, and the Cirrans were far too tired

Haze flew up next to her, and Thorn nodded. The two split apart without a single word, already knowing each other’s plan from years of flying together. Thorn veered off to the left while Haze went right, and once she’d flown over where the griffons were circling the pegasi, she pulled her stiletto free from its sheath and tucked her wings against her sides with only her wingtip feathers pointing out to steer.

The griffon in her sights began to fly toward the group, talons extended and ready to rip through flesh, when Thorn fell on him from above. He squawked in surprise as she drove her hooves into his back, the scales of her wing blades snapping shut around the roots of his wings. The long point of her stiletto punched straight through the side of his neck, appearing momentarily out the other side before she pulled it out again and kicked off of the falling, sputtering hybrid. Then she was flying again, eyes darting over her surroundings to make sure she was clear.

Her sudden attack had disrupted the fight, and the griffons withdrew a few wingbeats in surprise. Before they could jump at her, isolated from the other pegasi as she was, Haze fell from the sky with a shout and swung his sword at a nearby griffon. Steel sliced through flesh, and the griffon’s head fell away from its body as Haze’s momentum carried him through the attack.

Thorn turned her attention to the pegasi hovering to the side. “Well? Come on! Are you pegasi or doves?!”

A raptor shriek brought her attention back forward, and she only had a moment to brace herself before a griffon pounced on her, talons extended. The hard points found the soft flesh around her neck and shoulder and scratched into them, and only some desperate twisting and turning from Thorn managed to keep them from opening her arteries. She kept her teeth locked tight around the hilt of her stiletto and tried to kick and punch with her hooves and wings, but she couldn’t generate the leverage to get through the griffon’s armor. A beak snapped for her face, and a last second twisting of her neck saved her eye at the cost of her ear. The griffon’s beak chomped down on the triangle of flesh and tore it free from its roots, sending waves of pain down Thorn’s skull. The world suddenly seemed strange and off-balance, and the only thing she could hear from the right was the howling of the wind as she plummeted in the griffon’s grasp.

When the griffon spat out her ear, Thorn snarled and managed to free her left hoof enough to punch the griffon with a cross across his face. It bought her some breathing room to kick out of his grasp, and before his talons could grab her again, she was already tumbling away through the fog. The griffon recovered and beat his wings, yet he only flapped them three times before another pegasus mare rammed her armored shoulder into his skull, snapping his neck immediately.

Thorn panted and righted herself on aching wings. Her hoof flew to her tattered ear, where a constant ringing and howling had deafened her to everything from the right. Pained eyes fell on the mare, who flew over and helped support the Nimban. “Are you alright, ma’am?”

The words sounded muffled and blurred; Thorn was only able to barely make them out. “I’ll live,” she grunted, taking her blood-slicked hoof away from her head. “The others?”

“Driving the griffons away,” the mare said. “Your surprise attack threw them into disarray.”

Thorn nodded. “Good. But there will probably be more. The skies are crawling with the monsters. They’re picking us off up and down the coast.”

“We lost several already.” The young mare grimaced and watched the white wall with worry. “What do we do?”

“Yngvilde is trying to blow away the fog,” Thorn said, pushing the other mare away enough to fly on her own now that the pain began to subside. “We need to stop it.”

“But how?”

“I’m trying to find as many pegasi as I can and get them to follow the wind,” Thorn said. “Yngvilde can only blow away a little bit of the fog wall at once. If we follow the wind and take turns repairing the wall, we can keep it in place. But I need more pegasi. Haze and I can’t do it ourselves.”

The young mare glanced at her wings. “I-I don’t know how much longer I can stay airborne,” she admitted. “We’ve been flying for hours in our armor. I’m cold and wet and exhausted. I feel like I’ll fall out of the sky at any moment!”

“So am I, soldier,” Thorn said, her expression hardening into a frown. “But we have to. This isn’t about us. If this wall goes down, our species goes extinct. I don’t care if I fall into the ocean and drown when all is said and done, so long as our civilians get out alive. Understand me?”

The two pegasi hovered in place, their breath fogging in front of their muzzles as they panted on shaky wings. Finally, however, the other mare nodded. “Right. I do. I do, ma’am. I’ll… I-I’ll try.”

“Good.” Thorn put her hoof on the mare’s shoulder. “What’s your name?”

“Sunny Days,” the legionary answered.

“I don’t think I could have thought of a more ironic name for today.” Thorn allowed herself a little smirk, and even Sunny relaxed a little. “I have a more important mission for you than helping with the wall, though.”

Sunny blinked. “You… do?”

“I need you to find other pegasi lost in this fog,” Thorn said. “I need you to find them and bring them to me. We’re not going to stop this wind without numbers. Can you do that?”

“I… I-I think I can.” Sunny swallowed hard but did her best to salute Thorn. “I-I will, ma’am.”

“Good. May the gods be your wings.” Thorn craned her neck back above, where a few last silhouettes still darted about through the fog. “And may they be mine, too…”

She ferociously flapped her wings and began to climb, leaving Sunny Days behind as she pierced the veil of fog. She didn’t know how much she had left in her, but she’d opened another hidden chest of energy she had somewhere on her as she powered through the heavens. How much longer she could keep it up for, she didn’t know, but she would fly until she couldn’t fly anymore.

The figures became more distinct the closer she flew toward them. She saw a griffon’s silhouette tear the wings off a pegasus with its bare claws, before another pegasus jumped on its back and tried to cut through its neck. The griffon dropped its helpless victim, but instead of diving down to catch them, Thorn flew up at the struggling pair. The fog thinned just enough for her to see an opening on the griffon’s unarmored underside, and she sliced her wing through the hybrid’s body from its navel to its neck. Blood and guts split out of the seam, and the pegasus dropped its opponent as the griffon stopped moving.

Thorn and Haze made eye contact, and Haze immediately cursed and fluttered over to his marefriend. “Shit, Thorn, are you—?”

“Fine,” Thorn hissed, still wincing at how disorienting the world seemed without an ear. “A little off balance. That’s it.”

A few other pegasi flew up to them, forming around the two Nimbans. They were all struggling to stay airborne, and their coats and armor were speckled with a mix of blood, sweat, and frost. Haze looked over his shoulder at them, then moved a little closer to Thorn. “What do we do, Thorn?” he asked her. “We can’t keep this up. If we get attacked again…”

“We don’t have a choice,” Thorn said, and she gently moved Haze out of the way so she could look over the pegasi they’d rescued. It was a start; nowhere near the numbers she needed to safely maintain the fog wall, but she had to work with what was in front of her. “We’re going to keep the wall up,” she told them. “We’re going to fly with the wind and beat it back. No matter how long it takes. Understand?”

The pegasi breathlessly nodded, but she could tell it was reluctant at best. Reluctant pegasi wouldn’t be able to keep the wall in one piece for her.

“Put together a cloud platform from the fog if you can,” she told them. “Take a minute to rest your wings, and then get back in the air. We cannot stop, alright? If we do, we lose.”

The soldiers nodded again, and they began to coalesce some of the fog out of the air to make a tiny cloud to rest on. Thorn didn’t focus on that, though; the wind had changed again, and she followed it to the next batch of fog. Once again using her wings as oversized feathery paddles, she fought with all her strength to keep the fog anchored in place, even as she faltered once and felt her pounding heart begin to choke her throat.

She would not fail her species.

-----

All was deathly quiet inside Altus. The fog hung low over the fishing port, obscuring the streets below. Carver hid inside of a fish monger’s shack, the smell of oil and seaweed clinging to the walls and pummeling his nose. Behind him, two ponies waited by the windows: Summer on one end, Stonewall on the other. They had chosen a shack down by the wharf, with as clear a view out over the roiling winter oceans as they could get. The boats had disappeared well over an hour ago, if not two by this point. The plan was in motion, and now Carver felt isolated and alone. He liked having information at his wingtips as a centurion, but now, all he had was the vague framework of a plan and a simple command:

Hold the town, no matter the cost.

And it would cost them everything. Carver was no fool. He knew there was no getting out of this alive. If nothing else, he knew his family was safe. He’d placed them on one of the first boats out and had shared tears with his sister. Their goodbyes were heartfelt and raw. Both knew they would never see each other again. But it had to be done.

Carver closed his eye and inhaled sharply. Now, more than ever, he understood the ultimate meaning behind the Legion’s words.

Ante Legionem nihil erat, et nihil erit post Legionem.

Before the Legion there was nothing, and after the Legion there will be nothing.

He couldn’t let his family and past keep him from his duty now. And he couldn’t let his fear of the future keep him from doing what had to be done. The only thing that mattered now was the Legion, and he was one of its centurions. He would do his duty, and it would kill him.

“Something’s coming,” Summer abruptly said, breaking the still silence inside the shack. Carver readied his gladius and looked in her direction, and Stonewall looked over his shoulder. When Summer didn’t clarify further, Carver crossed the shack and peered out the window next to her. At first, he didn’t know what she was looking at, but then she pointed with her hoof out across the water. Sure enough, a small silhouette skimmed across the water, wings frantically flapping as it flew through the fog.

“Is that a pegasus?” Carver wondered aloud. “It’s too small to be a griffon.”

“It has to be,” Summer replied, her voice low. Then, suddenly, her eyes widened. “Gods… I think it’s Finder!”

“Finder?” Carver echoed. Sure enough, the scrawny body fluttering through the fog could be none other than Finder. Despite the orders he’d given his century to stay inside buildings until the griffons arrived, Carver rushed for the door and threw it open, flagging Finder down with a wing.

The colt arrived moments later, his coat slick with the spray of the sea. He shivered and trembled, but he didn’t give Carver a moment to ask him anything. “The griffons know!” he shouted, stumbling against Carver’s chest. “They know!”

“Woah, woah, hold on, kid!” Carver said, flustered with Finder’s desperate panic. “What do they know? What’s going on?”

But Finder didn’t answer him. “Where’s Rain?” he asked, eyes wildly tearing through the shack. “Where is she?”

“She’s gone, Finder,” Carver said. By this point, Summer and Stonewall had abandoned their posts to see what the commotion was about, and Carver angrily tried to shoo them back to the windows. Stonewall obeyed; Summer didn’t.

“Finder, what the fuck are you doing back here?” she squawked at him. Then she bit down on his ear and dragged him into the shack. “And get inside! There’s griffons about!”

Carver followed him inside and slammed the door shut, but Finder was already blathering on as fast as he could, the words leaving his mouth as fast as his mind could put them together. “Swift Spear and I went out to investigate the missing boat and then we found it but there was nopony there and there weren’t any bodies and there wasn’t any blood so that meant that something must have taken them and that means—!”

“The griffons know we’re evacuating,” Carver darkly concluded. When Finder breathlessly nodded, Carver cursed and kicked over a nearby table. “If they catch our civilians on the way out—!”

“They don’t know about the boats,” Finder insisted. “Only we knew that part of the plan. The evacuation should still be safe, but if the fog lifts…”

The four pegasi turned worried expressions toward each other. “There’s nothing we can do about that now,” Carver said. “The fog is in Thorn’s and Haze’s hooves.”

“We can do something,” Summer hissed. “We leave this dump of a town and take the fight to Yngvilde. Rain’s going to need all the help she can get!”

“Rain will be fine,” Carver insisted, attempting to pin Summer to her post with a single-eyed glare. “We have our orders, she has her plan. And if we fail…”

“We’re already failing!” Summer growled. “This stupid plan is crumbling all around us! I told her, I told you all, we should have stood and fought, not tried to run—!”

A scream punctuated the foggy town, at the same time infinitely far away and so close that it could have come from just outside their shack. All four pegasi stopped their bickering and froze in place, listening for more. Whether it was a pegasus’ scream or a griffon’s scream, none could say. But it curdled the blood and turned one’s veins to ice, and only the scream of a dying creature could shake a soldier that way.

“Posts,” Carver breathlessly ordered, though the command was hardly needed. Summer and Stonewall, experienced veterans both, went back to their positions by the windows even before his lips moved. Only Finder remained in the center of the shack, dripping wet and out of place, without a post to be ordered to. He had no sword, no armor, nothing apart from a rough spun tunic to keep him dry that had only succeeded in soaking up the salty sea spray and sticking to his coat. It probably weighed more than he did.

Now, more than ever, Carver saw the frail colt that Finder was, and not the brave little soldier he had fooled himself into seeing before.

Carver took his own post by the door of the shack and peered through the cracks in the wood. Nothing moved inside of the town, and all had fallen silent once more. He felt cracks beginning to show in his confidence. Had he really heard the scream? It was so quiet out there, it felt like only spirits and ghosts lived in Altus anymore. Though maybe that was true now; the pegasi standing in the town, ready to die, were scarce more than specters of an empire’s dying gasps.

Then it started like a boom of thunder: fast, violent, and with no warning.

The screams and squawks of a ravenous horde of murderous griffons descended on Altus like a tidal wave. The noise was so loud that it hurt Carver’s ears, and he struggled to keep them standing upright and listen for nearby movement. Finder hit the floor and covered his head while Summer and Stonewall took a few hesitant steps back. They were all thinking the same thing: how many griffons had Yngvilde sicced on Altus? How soon would they all be dead?

“Trust in the defenses,” Carver murmured under his breath. “Trust in the defenses.”

Then the screaming redoubled in earnest, raw with pain and surprise. The entire town of Altus filled with a sudden cacophony of death. The hidden pikes and traps tore through the griffons faster and dirtier than any legion of pegasi could, given the circumstances. The roof of their shack bowed and buckled as a few griffons landed on it, and blood began to drip through the moldy thatch keeping it up. One of the pikes embedded in the roof fell through to the floor, its sharpened in slick with blood. It landed in front of Finder’s face, and it was all the colt could focus on.

“Finder,” Carver warned him. “Do. Not. Move.”

All four pegasi remained still as statues as the screaming and howling carried on all around them. Carver dared lean forward just enough to peer through a crack in the shack’s door to the streets outside, where vague leonine shapes thrashed with their huge wings as they tried to break free of the tangling net tossed over the streets or pry their wounded off of the stakes jutting out of the roofs. As soon as the first charge had been broken by the static defenses, pegasi began to burst out of buildings and jab up through the nets with long pikes, skewering the attackers ensnared in them and forcing their allies to scatter and abandon them to their fate. Carver thought he saw Windshear somewhere in the mess leading the spears, but he couldn’t be sure. Yet in only a few minutes, the scattered defenders and the town itself had driven the first wave of griffons away from Altus, drawing first blood with nary a casualty.

Carver let out a breath he’d been holding and glanced back at his friends. “That’s one point for us,” he said, managing an uneasy smile.

“We’re not gonna win this fight one point at a time,” Summer muttered back. “If we don’t press our advantage—!”

“We don’t have an advantage, Summer,” Carver chastised her. “All we have are our defenses, and that barely evens the playing field. We can only hope to slow them down, not actually win this fight.”

“Bullshit,” Summer growled. “I keep telling you, but you fuckers won’t listen to me! We need to go for the head of the damn snake, not pick off her fodder one at a time!”

“We have our orders.” Carver pointedly turned away from her, trying to snuff out the argument before it got worse. “Rain will take care of it, and we’ll take care of ours. Understand?”

Summer still tried to persist. “Carver, I’m telling you…”

“Be quiet, milite,” Carver finally snapped. “That’s an order.”

Without even looking at Summer, Carver could feel her fury singeing the air at him pulling rank on her, but like a good Nimban, she shut her mouth, coiled her wings, and obeyed the command, returning her attention to her post.

All fell uncomfortably quiet again, though Carver could still hear the distant cries of griffons shouting to each other somewhere beyond the fog. They’d repulsed Yngvilde’s first test of their defenses, but he knew her horde would be adjusting their tactics now. “They’ll be approaching from the edges of town,” he said. “They can’t pounce on us from above, the nets and the stakes make sure of that, and if they try to remove them, we’ll kill them where they land.”

But just as he began to feel comfortable, he heard panicked screaming break out from somewhere behind him, coupled with Summer’s exclamation of “Shit!” He turned around and galloped over to her, abandoning his post, and was greeted with the sight of an orange glow fading against the white fog of the morning. Acrid black smoke began to rise at the edge of the town, and he thought he saw a pegasus twisting through the air, body burning like a candle in the dim gloom of the day.

“They’re trying to burn us out,” Carver realized, and he soon understood that Altus’ greatest strength was at risk of becoming its greatest weakness. Within moments, barrels of burning pitch began to rain down from clouds high in the sky, striking buildings or bouncing off the netting and spreading sticky flames that clung to everything they touched. The reed and thatch roofs of Altus lit like kindling, the damp air of the sea doing little to slow down the hunger of the flames, and fingers of fire began to glow over the streets in a crisscrossing pattern as they marched along the nets.

Summer scowled at Carver from his side. “If we burn to death here instead of dying in combat, I’m gonna rape your fucking ghost in the Great Skies.”

“We need to get out of this building,” Carver said, already moving for the door. Before he could, a burning wooden barrel smashed through the roof of the house and broke apart on the ground, splattering black pitch all over the doorway where he’d been standing not a minute before. Fire followed the liquid down from the roof, igniting the pitch and filling the air with smoke and flames that clung to whatever they touched.

“The window!” Summer screamed, already vaulting herself through the empty hole in the wall before the flames brought the roof down on them. Stonewall silently followed immediately behind, making nothing more than a grunt as the mute climbed after her. Carver started for the window on instinct, but his eyes fell back to the floor before he could, and he saw Finder shivering on the ground in a panic, seemingly unaware of the flames burning around him. “Kid!” Carver shouted, and when Finder didn’t move, he lunged back toward the middle of the room and grabbed the colt by his mane to haul him to his hooves. The colt squeaked and whimpered but began to move after Carver regardless, and the centurion flung him through the window first before jumping over after him. They both fell to the ground in a rough tangle of limbs, and Summer and Stonewall helped them stand and get away from the building as the roof cracked and began to cave in.

Carver winced and rubbed at his one good eye, already irritated from the smoke and the heat around them. It looked like they’d been taken straight to the underworld kingdom of Razgriz; the white fog was gone, burned away by the heat and pushed aside by the foul black smoke rising from the burning husks of hovels. The net strung up over the streets was collapsing as the flames ate away the knots holding it together, and griffons were already beginning to enter the streets from holes in the protective screen. Legionaries rushed out of burning homes, some with soot and sweat on their faces, others swatting frantically at flames clinging to their manes and tails and feathers. Everywhere, Cirrans clashed with Gryphons among the fires, looking like a legion of damned fighting against a horde of disgraced.

“How the fuck are we supposed to hold the town now?!” Summer shouted over the roar of the fires. “There isn’t gonna be a town to hold much longer!”

“The town doesn’t matter,” Carver said, coughing out a lungful of ash. “Only the griffons do. We need to kill them and keep their attention here, no matter the cost.”

Summer and Stonewall exchanged looks, and Carver turned to the little colt next to him. “Finder,” he said, “I need you to follow me close, okay? Stay glued to my flank.”

Though Pathfinder looked dazed and horribly confused, he nevertheless managed a little nod and took a few steps toward Carver’s side. Carver patted him on the back with a sooty wing, then turned back to the rest of his squad. “We go up the street, link up with the spears. We can make a phalanx going down the street. If we can form a cohort, we’ll get the griffons’ attention for sure.”

“If we’re gonna die, let’s at least do it quickly,” Summer growled, eyes flicking up and down the street as griffons closed in through the crumbling defenses. At last, they settled on Carver. “Whenever you’re ready, sir.”

Carver suppressed a sigh—he knew he’d be dealing with the aftermath of pressing rank on her for a while. Still, that was a problem for later; right now, there were griffons that needed killing if they were going to have any hope of keeping the evacuation secure. Spotting a contingent of spears, Carver pointed in their direction with a wing, the sharp scales along his feathers rattling and reflecting the lights of the fires around him like thousands of tiny suns. “That way. Form a wedge and cut through anything between us and them. Let’s move!”

The four ponies moved as one, with Carver taking point, Stonewall on his left, and Summer on his right to cover his blind spot. Pathfinder trailed behind them, too afraid to get too close to his friends when they inevitably entered the fray, yet doggedly following their hooves in case griffons attacked their rear. Up ahead, a pair of eight-pegasi contubernia had formed themselves into two lines facing outward, their spears keeping a pack of griffons at bay and blocking the street. The griffons harassing their lines had steadily forced them back toward each other, and now they were out of room to retreat.

Carver didn’t have to give any commands; he and his companions all launched themselves into the griffon rear with brutal discipline, cutting several down where they stood before the rest realized they were under attack from two sides. Pathfinder stood back as they worked, useless as he was in a fight without weapons or armor. Carver ran his gladius through the unarmored neck of a griffon as it tried to disengage from the spears, while Stonewall used his shoulder to knock a griffon off its paws for a spear to tear open its throat. Summer pounced on the back of one griffon, tumbling to the ground with him, and cut into the hybrid’s body with bladed wings, snarling all the while. It scared Pathfinder to see his friends throw themselves so readily into brutal killing like perfect soldiers of the Legion, and it left him ashamed that he couldn’t be strong and brave like them.

The chaos Carver’s wedge sowed in the griffon ranks allowed the line of spearponies to press their attack, and the razor sharp points flared in and out as they advanced. In moments, the throng of griffon soldiers lay dead and dying, and the spearponies turned about to aid their friends on the other side. Together, the two lines of spears forced the griffons to retreat, those that could taking wing through the smoke and ash for safety, while others ended up tangled in the nets still hanging over the streets. The former disappeared into the malaise; the latter died on spearheads as they tried to tear themselves free.

Carver pulled aside the spearponies’ centurion as her soldiers caught their breath. “Where’s Windshear?”

“I don’t know,” the centurion admitted. “We got separated when the griffons started firebombing us. He had about half of my century with him. I think they were moving toward the piers.”

“Okay. We need to find him, regroup and rally.” Carver turned a worried eye toward the flames leaping up from buildings around them, silhouetting avian monsters against the smoke and fog. “If we can form up, we can delay the griffons a little longer.”

“Delay?” The centurion scoffed and pointed at her soldiers, most of whom were covered in blood and soot. “There’s no delaying this. Another hour, we won’t have a town to hold.”

“Then we’ll hold the cinders,” Carver snapped. “We have to keep the griffons’ attention on us or else it’s all over!”

“It’s already over.” There wasn’t any fight in the mare’s voice; it had been replaced with sheer exhaustion and grim despair. “I’m taking my soldiers to the skies and we’re flying west. We’ll have a better chance at making it over the open sea. If we find the civilians, we’ll provide rearguard for them.”

Carver’s jaw hung agape. “You’re abandoning Altus?”

“What’s left to abandon?” The mare raised an eyebrow and gestured around her. “Fire and a lost battle? Altus is lost. Now we need to defend our civilians over the open seas.”

“We swore an oath,” Carver reminded her. “To lay down our lives for the Legion.”

“I remember the words.” The centurion sighed and spread her wings. “You can decide if you want to die with meaning or not. I’m saving my soldiers from this deathtrap. The Legion means nothing if there isn’t a Legion left at the end of it all.”

With that, the centurion sharply whistled to her spearponies and took wing through a gap in the net, a trail of soot-stained armor following after her. Carver could only watch in dismay as legionaries began to abandon the burning ruins of Altus for safer skies—not that they’d find much more safety with the hordes of griffons flying above them. The plan, already held together by little more than desperation and duty, was unraveling at an alarming rate.

Summer made her way to Carver’s side as he stared into the smoke above them. “We need to change the plan,” she insisted. What exactly she wanted to change it to didn’t need to be said.

Carver gnashed his teeth together. “We need to go to the pier and find Windshear.”

“Are you serious?” Summer’s eyes widened in surprise. “Soldiers are abandoning Altus by the score, and you’re still determined to hang onto the town?! We need to—!”

“I know what we need to do!” Carver shouted back at her, and the harsh edge to the stallion’s normally calm and friendly voice made Pathfinder jump. When Summer fell silent, Carver sighed and rubbed his feathers against his brow. “You need Windshear’s spear if you’re going to have a chance to take that monster on. Griffons are bigger than us, and she’s bigger and stronger than most. If you can’t keep a little separation on her, she’ll kill you all in seconds.”

“By the gods, finally,” Summer said, wingtips fluttering at finally getting what she wanted out of Carver. Then she hesitated. “Wait, ‘You’?” she asked. “You’re not coming with us?”

“I can’t,” Carver said, gesturing around them. “I swore to help hold the town, and I’ll hold it to the last. Besides, you can’t take Pathfinder with you. He needs somepony to protect him.”

Summer glanced back at the shivering colt and cursed. “Damn it. Okay. We’ll get Windshear, then the three of us will go after Yngvilde while you keep Pathfinder safe.”

Stonewall silently nodded his agreement, and Carver bobbed his head as well. “Alright. Let’s get moving; we can’t waste any more time.”

He turned to go, but Summer jumped forward. “Carver, wait.” When the stallion looked back at her, eyebrow raised, the mare hesitated and wiped at her soot-streaked face with her wingtip. “Just… gods damn it all…”

Before Carver could ask what she meant, Summer grabbed his face in her hooves and pulled it to her own. Her lips attacked his and she kissed him so ferociously that he stumbled backwards and into the side of a building. Summer didn’t stop until she absolutely had to take a breath, and then she glared at him with harsh emerald eyes. “Don’t fucking die, Carver,” she commanded him. “I’m not done with you yet.”

With that, she galloped off to the docks, leaving a very stunned Carver behind to struggle to comprehend what just happened. Finder blinked blankly at Carver, and it was only when Stonewall wheezed in silent laughter and slapped Carver on the shoulder that the centurion seemed to get some of his wits back about him.

“Err… right. Let’s… let’s get after her.” His worked his jaw from side to side and touched his hoof to his lip. “I think she bit me…”

The renewed screeching of griffons overhead snapped them out of it, and Carver made sure Finder was close behind him before chasing after Summer into the thick of the town, toward the pier jutting out over the silty shores into the crashing sea beyond. The fighting, it seemed, had slowly concentrated the defenders and attackers toward this one spot, where the constant salt and spray kept the netting wet and the fires away, and the barrels of pitch would fall harmlessly into the ocean as the waves smashed up against the stony seawall. The buildings surrounding the pier were all burning, and some groaned and cried out as their roofs collapsed and their walls billowed out. Spears and swords held the piers and the surrounding real estate from the griffons pushing up against them, and more of the mongrels would drop in through holes in the netting and add themselves to the push. Furious, chaotic fighting and dueling erupted in the side streets and alleys as isolated groups of pegasi and griffons struggled against each other, and Carver and Stonewall added themselves to a knot of combat Summer had thrown herself into while Pathfinder huddled against the wall of a building yet to be consumed by flames.

Carver slid himself in by Summer’s left with a flourish and slash of his sword, driving the gladius between the loose shoulder plates of a griffon and cleaving its arm from its shoulder. Summer winced at the surprise spray of blood taking her in the side of the face, and she whirled about to finish the griffon off with the pointed crest of her wing. “I got you,” was all she said, paired with a glimpse of teeth behind bloodied lips, and she backed against Carver, brushing her flank against his as she covered the stallion’s blindside.

The three members of the Rainstorm left behind to hold Altus pushed their way through the thick of the fighting, Pathfinder huddling behind them and trying to keep his head low and out of the fighting. The chaos around him was impossible to focus on; everything was fire and steel and blood, set to an orchestra of wails and a trumpeting of screams. Griffons and pegasi met in a furious clash of steel and death, and the sea-slick planks of the pier groaned and creaked as bodies piled in. He locked in on Carver’s tail, staying as close to the sweaty, ash-laden bundle of hair as he could, cowering as sparks cascaded around him from clashing swords and the breaking waves showered him in salt.

A body slammed into his side, and he toppled over with a yelp. The pier struck him like a hammer to his ribs, knocking the breath from his lungs and putting stars in his eyes. When he tried to stand up, a hind hoof caught him below the ear, and nausea overtook him as the world began to ring. Whimpering, Finder tried to curl up into a ball, but claws raked at his hock before a gurgling cry showered him in blood. The colt screamed as he felt something haul him upright, but the grip on his shoulders came from blunt hooves instead of sharp talons.

Then he was sitting on his haunches, and Summer’s pink mane filled his vision. The ends were slick with cloying blood, turning brown as they glued themselves to her face under her galea. She was shouting something at him, though the ringing in his ears wouldn’t let him hear her words. Her hooves dug through the bag of medical supplies she kept at her flank, and she pulled out a wine-soaked rag and pressed it to Finder’s ear. Hold this, he thought he saw her mouth, or maybe she said something and he simply couldn’t hear it; the world was bright and spinning, and he doubled over to retch on the slick wooden planks when he reached for the rag.

Summer turned away at that moment, leaving Pathfinder behind and throwing herself back into the fray to plug the hole she’d left behind. The colt quivered and feebly reached for the rag, clutching it between his hooves as bodies moved around him. Some part of him realized he was surrounded by ponies wielding spears, their armor glistening with spray and feathers crusted with salt. They shouted and thrusted in discord as the pegasus ranks splintered, but a stallion as white as the salt of the sea rallied them and pushed back with his spear. The ranks of the legionaries closed, reinforced with Carver, Summer, and Stonewall, and the pier began to feel a little less crowded as they pushed forward in stomping unison, leaving Finder behind.

Left to his own at the end of the slick jetty, Pathfinder clutched one hoof to his stomach and the other to his ear, wine-soaked rag burning the gash and making him wince. Windshear and Carver had rallied the defenders of the pier and were pushing back, using their spears and pikes to send the griffons scrambling for safety. The low net hung over the water prevented the larger beasts from taking wing, and many tumbled into the waves on either side as they died, bleeding from wounds to their throats or chests. An ear-splitting screech rose up over the harbor, and as one the griffons began to withdraw, surrendering the trembling wooden pier to the pegasi. Rather than pursue into a griffon shield wall, beaten, battered, and bloody legionaries planted the butts of their spears into the wood at the base of the jetty and took several panting breaths. A momentary truce settled over the town, an eerie silence broken only by the cries of pegasi and griffons dying elsewhere in the smoke, and the crackling of timbers as they gave way to the fire burning through them.

Pathfinder forced himself to his hooves and began to walk. He trembled with every step, feeling like the world was spinning around him, but he made it to the rear ranks of the auxiliary spears, where his friends were gathering to lick their wounds. Carver and Summer seemed uninjured, but Stonewall held his wing awkwardly against his side, and Windshear had lost his helmet somewhere in the fighting and his entire body seemed to be covered in scratches and oozing blood. A chunk of feathers had been torn out of his left wing, but if it bothered him any, he didn’t show it.

Windshear only gave Finder a breathless nod before turning back to Carver. “It’s impossible,” he said. “We’re not going to hold much longer. Gods, the pier isn’t going to hold much longer. I thought it was going to collapse in that last crush.”

“We can’t hold Altus,” Carver agreed. “But we can make them pay for every inch of it.”

“But we need to go after Yngvilde while the griffons are focused here,” Summer said. “Rain’s strike team failed, otherwise there’d be chaos in the griffon horde.”

“You don’t call this chaos?” Windshear gestured around them incredulously.

“She’s sending commands to her army through messengers,” Carver said. “That’s the only way you keep a griffon horde like this from falling apart into an undisciplined mess. Cut her out of the equation, the horde will disperse without a general to command them.”

“Why not just go after the messengers, then?” Windshear asked. “There’s no way we can kill her. She’s Magnus’ daughter, and you all know what happened when Rain should have killed him.”

“We don’t know how many runners Yngvilde has or where they might be,” Summer said. “And Yngvilde isn’t Magnus. Whatever Magnus has, she only has half of it. Her mother was a normal hen.”

“You have to try,” Carver insisted. “Altus is lost; we’re only buying time, and our purse is almost empty. Discipline across the town is cracking. Pegasi are fleeing west as their units break to find the civilians. If we don’t end this, get the horde to dissolve…”

“Alright, alright, you make your point.” Windshear cursed and shook his head. “You sure Rain failed?”

“Hold out your wing,” Summer said, extending her own. “You feel that?”

Windshear did as he was told, Pathfinder as well, and a grim look settled on the spearpony’s face. “The wind’s still blowing,” he said, and Pathfinder noted how the feathers in his wing ruffled this way and that as the wind blew against them. “Damn it. Okay, so she’s still making the wind. But there’s no way we can kill her.”

“Even if we can’t, we’re getting her to stop blowing away the fog,” Carver said. “She can’t fight and use her magic at the same time. The wind wasn’t blowing earlier when Rain supposedly was engaging her, it only started up a little while ago. But if we don’t stop that wind, the fog, the whole evacuation…”

“Right, right. I know.” Just as he started to stand up, anxious shouting rose up from the front lines. The five ponies all stood up and turned toward the town, where a fresh wave of griffon reinforcements through themselves at the pegasi holding the pier. The sheer weight of the charge sent the pegasus lines reeling back, and soon the five friends had to backpedal to not get trampled by their own soldiers.

“We have to go now!” Summer shouted, looking back over her shoulder. “The harbor! There’s a gap in the net! We can slip through!”

“Go!” Carver shouted, but before he and Stonewall could disengage from the crush, griffons leaping into the water began to pull themselves up the wooden posts of the pier with their claws. One reached for Stonewall’s hoof, grabbed it and nearly dragged the stallion into the water before Carver lunged in to sever the hand from its arm. The two stallions struggled to recover, and soon the crush was on them, swept into the mass of backpedaling spearponies.

“Carver!” Windshear screamed, but Summer grabbed his shoulders and dragged him toward the end of the pier.

“We have to go!” she shouted at him, and Pathfinder thought he saw tears forming in her eyes—or was that just the sea spray? With a grunt, the medic flung Windshear backwards, where his only options were to catch himself on his wings and fly out or splash into the water below. He chose the former, and as he slipped past the net, Summer bit down on Finder’s mane and did the same, forcing the colt to take wing as the sea rose up to meet him. The icy cold winter water lapped at his underbelly, and the sagging net over the pier came down to meet him, but he could see the little hole between the water and the net—

And then he was through, wings shedding seawater as he gained altitude. He met Windshear hovering some dozen yards above the ground, and Summer joined them. “Come on, we have to move!” Summer urged them, but Windshear lingered, and so too did Pathfinder, their eyes trained on the pier below. Pathfinder desperately searched for Carver somewhere in the crowd of combatants, and Stonewall too, but couldn’t find either.

“Oh, gods…” Windshear moaned, and Finder quickly saw why. One of the houses on the pier’s south side collapsed into the sea, dragging the net stretching between it and a house on the north side of the pier down onto the battle. Griffons and pegasi alike dropped their weapons and cried out in alarm as the slick ropes bowled many into the water, pinning many more against the wooden pier. And it was then that Finder spotted Carver, head and foreleg stuck between the knots of the net, trying desperately to cut his way free with his wings.

Then the north house collapsed.

“CARVER! NOOOO!” a distant voice shouted; whether it was Summer’s or Windshear’s or his own, Pathfinder couldn’t tell. The collapsing north house topped into the sea, pressing the net firmly down on the pier and knocking more creatures into the water. The weight of the debris dragging on the pier, already weakened from the fighting, cracked and splintered one of the supports. And once the first slick trunk gave way, the others soon caved and failed like a house of cards. In moments, the pier that had once launched fisherponies and been the heart of the small town collapsed into the sea, dragging everyone on it, griffon and pegasus, into the ice-cold water.

Pathfinder trembled, his eyes desperately flickering across the water. He could see ponies and griffons thrashing about, struggling to break free, but the armor and the chill hemorrhaged away their strength, dragging them to the cold below. Fire danced on top of the waves as the pitch floating in the sea caught fire, and soon there was nothing except a swirling sea of white and orange, froth and fire, salt and steam.

A warm cheek pressed against Finder’s own, and soon Summer took his hoof and began to guide him away from the town. “Come on, Pathfinder,” she urged him. “Come on, let’s go.”

Wordlessly, Finder nodded and flapped his wings some more, but he felt like a ghost, like he wasn’t really there. For while his body may have been flying east with the last two surviving friends he had, his soul stayed and drowned beneath the fires of Altus like so many other ponies.

Comments

[RoboRed]

All gone horribly south