Wind and Stone

by Ruirik

The Last Stand IV

Every hair of Thorn’s coat hurt. Every muscle fiber in her body felt like it was on fire. Every feather felt like a knife jammed into her wings.

The sweat practically steamed off of her body as she followed the wind. Despite the frigid air surrounding her, she was hot and dehydrated. Every single joint in her skeleton felt like it was swollen to the point where she couldn’t move, but she continued chasing the wind anyway. It was all she could do, and if she focused on her duty, she found she could ignore the pain. For now.

Other pegasi soared through the skies around her. Her makeshift century had done all they could to stabilize the fog over the coast. Sunny Days had returned with a few squadrons of legionaries and had promptly collapsed on the small cloud platform behind the wind, and hadn’t moved since. At one point, Thorn looked over her shoulder to see a few legionaries tossing her body into the sea so they could use the cloud. Haze explained to her that she’d died of sheer exhaustion as soon as she collapsed on the platform. A pang of sorrow nailed Thorn’s heart, but she didn’t linger on it. Sunny had done her job, just as she needed to do hers.

Even if she died just like Sunny.

A flicker of movement turned her eye to the side. At first she thought it was a griffon approaching her deafened side, but when she narrowed her eyes on the silhouette, she saw the limp body of a pegasus plummeting out of the air, glistening armor dully gleaming through the fog as it fell.

She didn’t waste her breath pointing it out to Haze or even to curse. She needed every lungful she could get.

The wind moved again, but she could feel it was wavering. Either Yngvilde was getting tired, or something was distracting her. Thorn didn’t know what it was, but she hoped it continued. They needed a break. They’d been flying and fighting for more than an hour since the wind started up, and now her backup was dropping out of the skies all around her. How much longer would she have to fly?!

Another pegasus dropped right in front of Thorn, and she could only watch as he helplessly fell to the sea below on weakly fluttering wings. As much as she wanted to swoop down and catch him, she knew she didn’t have the strength to carry him to the platform; their armor would drag her down with him. Instead, she tried to hold her wings straight and glide for a few seconds to ease some of the burning in her shoulders, but her trembling wings weren’t strong enough to stay straight and hold her altitude, and she had to flap them again to climb back to Haze’s side.

“Take… a break… Thorn!” Haze hissed at her between panting breaths. “You… need one!”

“No!” Thorn shouted back. “I… I can’t! Gotta… keep… the fog…!”

She faltered, and Haze caught her before she could fall out of the air entirely. She could see her coltfriend straining to support her, feel the heat radiating off of his body. He was trying so hard to fly with her and be by her side, and now he could only do his best to carry her as she wavered.

With a few seconds to relax her wings, Thorn carried her own weight again and once more flew into the face of the wind. “Thanks,” she coughed out. It was so difficult to breathe now. Her heart felt like it was about to burst and her panting wouldn’t let her fill her lungs with the air she needed to keep flying. Her wings were ragged and losing their feathers at an alarming rate. And if she’d already faltered once, it wouldn’t be long before she faltered again.

A particularly strong torrent of wind began to rip through the fog, and it sent Thorn and Haze tumbling backwards through the sky. Pegasi cried out as the gust knocked them out of the sky, and many weren’t able to recover. The gust tore apart the platform they’d all been using to rest on, sending tiny puffs of cloud bouncing through the atmosphere. And just like that, the fog began to part.

Thorn saw the opening as she tumbled through the air, and instinct and desperation alone caught her. She flew back into the face of the storm, beating the fog back once again, a one-mare immovable object against the unstoppable wind. Haze managed to follow her back into the storm, and the two pegasi used whatever reserves they had left to plug the gap.

Until Thorn noticed Haze drifting back out of the corner of her eye. She looked over her shoulder to see the stallion struggling to fly through the clouds, and he slowly began to lose altitude between each flap of his wings. “Haze… Haze!” Thorn shouted, using all her strength just to even maintain her position in the gale. “C’mon… fly… fly!”

She saw Haze strain against the wind with everything he had left, but it simply wasn’t enough. He stabilized his flight for a few seconds, and then a gust of wind tore a chunk of feathers out of his right wing. He drifted to the side, wings pivoting to hold him in place, but to no avail. His eyes locked with Thorn and he gave her a sorrowful smile, and then the wind knocked him out of the sky.

Thorn’s eyes widened in a panic, and she nearly broke free from her position in the sky to catch him, but he was long gone before she could even do so. All that remained of Haze was a gray silhouette fading into the white of the fog, and before she could blink—nothing.

Swallowing hard, Thorn turned her attention back to the wind. It was failing now, growing weaker by the second. But unfortunately, she was the last pegasus left to hold it in place. So she pushed against it. Every flap of her wings was another blow to the wind. The wall of fog began to fill back in as she shoveled it in front of her, and she nearly gagged on her own breath when she tried to breathe and the wind forced itself down her throat. But it was getting so weak. Just a bit longer…

And just like that, the wind stopped. Thorn blinked in astonishment, and turned her head this way and that to make sure it hadn’t appeared somewhere else. But all was still and all was quiet. It wasn’t hard to imagine she was the only living creature left in the entirety of the skies.

She felt a sharp pain in her chest, and she couldn’t hear her heart thumping anymore. Her wings stopped moving, and the wind began to tickle her sole remaining ear. Then she saw her legs and wingtips limply splayed in front of her as she fell back-first toward the oceans below.

It didn’t bother her any. She’d done her job. The evacuation was safe.

She blacked out long before she hit the water.

-----

Finder trembled as he followed Summer and Windshear through the brush outside the griffon camp. Not for the first time, he felt the terror in his chest urging him to flee, to take wing and fly as far away from here as possible. But he couldn’t fly, not with his injuries, and even if he could, the griffons would surely see him and kill him. Or worse, take him alive. On top of that, he’d insisted on following Summer and Windshear to the camp, and he couldn’t back out now. He needed to know if Rain was okay, and if she wasn’t…

He swallowed hard and tried to breathe through chattering teeth. Knowing would be better than not knowing.

“Camp seems empty,” Summer hissed to Windshear as she crawled along on her belly.

“You know it’s not going to be that easy,” Windshear hissed back. “Rain probably fell into the same trap we’re falling into.”

“T-Trap?” Finder stammered. His wild eyes darted between the tents, expecting to see a swish of a leonine tail or murderous avian eyes glinting at him from the shadows. “Oh no…”

Summer looked back at Finder and frowned. “I think you should stay here, Finder,” she said. “You’re too jumpy, and we need to do this quietly.”

“No!” Finder exclaimed. He stood up, wings flaring. “I don’t—!”

“Shut your mouth, kid!” Windshear exclaimed, jamming his feathers into Finder’s open mouth. He used his other wing to gently encourage Finder to lie back down, and only then did he pull his feathers back. “Summer’s right, though,” he said. “If we’re going to have any chance of getting Rain out of here—any chance—then we need to do this quietly. Slip in, find Rain, and slip out. And we can’t do that if you’re going to flinch every time you see your own shadow.”

“I can be quiet!” Finder whispered. “Honest!”

“Count to ten for me, right now,” Summer whispered, glaring at him.

“W-Why?”

“Do it!”

Finder flinched back and swallowed hard. “Uhmm… One… t-two… t-t-three—”

“Stop.” Summer dismissively waved her wing. “Until you get control of your nerves, I’m not taking you out there with me. Stay here and keep your head down. I don’t want to have to watch your ass as well as my own.”

“But—!”

“She’s right,” Windshear said. When Finder snapped his eyes to him, he tried to offer the colt a soothing smile. “You can be our lookout. Any griffons come back, it’ll be up to you to let us know. We’re counting on you, okay?”

After a few seconds of mental deliberation, Finder shakily bobbed his head. “O-Okay,” he said. “Just please be careful? I don’t… I don’t want…”

“We’ll be fine, kid,” Summer said with a wink. “And Rain will be too.” Then, turning her attention to Windshear, she picked herself up off the ground. “Ready?”

“No,” Windshear said, standing up as well. “But I’m with you.”

“Good.” Summer nodded and readied her sword. “Then let’s get moving—!”

All three ponies flinched as a raw scream of agony tore over the camp. Finder’s heart lurched into his chest as he recognized Rain’s voice, even beneath all the pain. “Rain!” he shouted, jumping to his hooves and barreling forward, his hooves kicking up dirt as he galloped into the camp. Both Summer and Windshear were too slow to grab him before he darted past, and Summer cursed as she took off after him.

“Damn it, Finder!” she shouted at him, wings building up speed to overtake the colt. “You’re gonna get yourself killed!”

“You’re gonna get yourself killed!” Windshear hissed at her from behind. “Stop screaming!”

Finder charged past one tent and then another, trying to pinpoint the location of Rain’s screams. His fear had been forgotten; the only thing that remained was a panicked worry for the mare who had nursed him back to health. He was aware of Summer chasing after him, but it barely registered as a blip in his mind. His thoughts were focused only on Rain—so it was a bit of a surprise when Summer tackled him from behind and clamped his muzzle shut so he couldn’t cry out.

“Calm the fuck down!” Summer hissed in his ear. “You’re going to get every one of us, including Rain, fucking killed!”

“Take it easy on him, Celsus,” Windshear said, quietly gliding in after her. “He’s just worried.”

“I’ve half a mind to knock him out cold and dump him off in the brush somewhere…”

Another raw scream stole their attention, along with the clanging of metal on metal. All three friends turned their attention in the direction of the noise, where through a parting in the tents, they caught a glimpse of what was happening. There was Iron Rain, her wings bound and her body tied to a large wooden stake, her chest heaving and lips parted as she panted for breath. A pair of griffons stood next to her, one a hen, the other a tercel. Yngvilde was obvious from her sheer size and her similar looks to Magnus, but Finder didn’t recognize the tercel until he turned around and the flickering flame of a fire reflected off his glasses.

Todesangst.

Finder’s blood turned to ice and his limbs locked up. Todesangst was here? Here at this camp? This very camp he was in? The colt started shivering in terror. No, not here. Not like this. It was like he was a prisoner again, trapped in a camp with griffons who tortured him, day in and day out, who—!

“What is that fucker doing to her?” Summer growled. Her limbs tensed, ready to spring into action. “I oughta rip him in half!”

“Let’s get closer first,” Windshear cautioned. “We’ll have a better chance if we sneak up on them—oh, gods…”

Windshear paled as Todesangst grabbed a pair of tongs from a crackling fire and pulled a glowing horseshoe out of the blace. Rain tried to thrash away as he approached her with the shoe, but she was too tightly tied to the stake, and she couldn’t get away from Yngvilde’s vise-like grip. The hen grabbed down on her forehoof and forced her to extend it all the way, then held it in place while Todesangst mounted the shoe and hammered it into her hoof. For the fourth time, Rain screamed bloody murder, and it was only then did Finder see the faintly glowing shoes attached to her other hooves.

“Fuck,” Windshear whispered. “Oh, fuck…”

Summer showed far less restraint. “Stop it!” she screamed, tearing out of the cover of the tent and lunging at the two griffons. Their heads snapped in her direction, and Yngvilde grinned as Summer rushed her, sword swinging. All it took was a twitch of her feathers, and a strong gale caught the mare’s outstretched wings and sent her tumbling backwards.

Yngvilde smirked as she stepped forward, her eyes flitting to Windshear, then to Finder. “Just three, hmm?” she said, loosening the chains of her blades and letting them rattle as they dragged across the ground. “And you couldn’t even manage to sneak up on me. I was so distracted blowing away your silly fog and playing with your leader that I wouldn’t have noticed had you not been so loud.”

Summer snarled and rolled to her hooves, this time lunging at Yngvilde without the aid of her wings. The lack of feathers hurt her agility, however, and Yngvilde whipped a chained blade out with a gust of wind, nearly severing Summer’s head from her neck. Only a quick twist of her body and a raising of her armored forelegs saved the mare from her demise, but Yngvilde swooped under her and tossed her across the camp with little more than a flap of her wings and a shrug of her shoulders. A wooden pole in a tent cracked in two, and Summer flailed as the canvas enveloped her.

“You are nothing like your leader,” Yngvilde said, her eyes shifting to Windshear, who had approached much more cautiously with his spear readied. “She had fight in her. She had skill and control. And she had luck. None of that helped her. That’s why she’s tied to a post, wearing burning horseshoes after we plucked her feathers and poured hot ashes in her missing eye.” She relaxed her posture and exaggerated a yawn. “I could kill both of you in the blink of an eye. It wouldn’t even be fun.”

Her bored look turned into an excited grin, and she turned to Todesangst. “Give the last of the Rains her sword,” she said, to the tercel’s surprise. “Cut her ropes and let her fight. Then make yourself scarce. I wouldn’t want my favorite torturer to get himself hurt.”

Todesangst looked unsure, but a stern look from Yngvilde moved the wary griffon from his post by Rain’s side. He snatched Iron’s zweihoofer from where it lay and dropped it in front of her, then severed one loop of the rope holding her to her post. As Rain started to wiggle herself free, he bent down and whispered in her ear. “We should do this again sometime, Fraulein Regen. I did quite enjoy it, and I hope you did, too.”

Rain tried to slam her head against hers, but the tercel was too quick, slipping away into the camp. By the time she’d tossed the ropes that bound her wings to the ground, Todesangst was nowhere to be seen.

Another furious scream rang out from the camp, and Yngvilde lashed out with her chains, catching Summer’s hooves mid-charge and tripping her to the ground. Windshear tried to jab at her from behind, but her tail wrapped around the haft of his spear, jerking it out of his grip. Spear and stallion went two separate ways as Yngvilde’s fist met Windshear’s face and his spear buried itself in the wooden pole by Rain’s side. Grinning, Yngvilde turned to Rain and loosened her shoulders. “Ah, finally. I hope you’re ready to fight?”

Rain grabbed her knife, Mary, and pried off the horseshoes one by one, their metal still steaming in the winter air. She winced as her raw hooves touched the ground, but she didn’t let it interfere with her stance. Instead, she walked over to the pole, pried Windshear’s spear out of the wood, and tossed it to the stallion, who caught it in his wings as he sat up. “I was born ready,” she said, her voice hoarse and cracking from all the screaming she’d forced through her throat minutes before. Her eyes slid to Summer, who shook some dizziness out of her head and snatched her sword as she stood up. “Fight me and let them go,” she said to Yngvilde. “It’s me you want.”

“What I want is an entertaining fight.” Yngvilde smiled and began to slowly spin one of her swords by its chain, pacing ever closer to Rain.

“You’re outnumbered,” Rain observed.

“You’re outclassed,” Yngvilde retorted.

“We’ll see about that.”

Yngvilde was the first to move, whipping her twirling blade out at Rain. The links rattled as they straightened, and Rain quickly spun zwei around to deflect the chain away from her. She tried to charge forward, but her hooves still ached and burned from the glowing shoes she’d had hammered into them, and it hurt her ability to run. It was all she could do to shore up her stance and again deflect the second chained blade as Yngvilde slammed it down on her, the shower of sparks the two weapons made cascading into her face.

Summer roared as she leaped at Yngvilde from the side, and the griffoness tucked her wings and rolled underneath the pegasus. A flick of her wrist pulled her blade back to her right hand as she rolled back to her paws, and she launched it out in a sweeping arc at Summer’s backside even as she pulled back on the chain of her left blade. Summer flipped about in midair, her hooves landing firmly on the wooden stake that Rain had been tied to, and kicked off of it directly at Yngvilde. The hen pivoted her shoulders before Summer could close the distance, and the recoiling chain instead whipped in the pegasus’ direction, striking her midsection with the barbs and sending her tumbling out of the sky.

Windshear jabbed at the hen from behind, but Yngvilde casually moved her head to the side, grinning as the point of the spear poked past her face. Before Windshear could pull it back, she bit down on the haft and used her tremendous size and muscle to lift the stallion off the ground and slam him into the dirt in front of her. She redirected her right hand to pull the outstretched blade back across Windshear’s neck, but Rain jumped over the stallion and swung straight for Yngvilde’s. The hen pulled her right arm across her body instead, the outstretched chain catching the zweihoofer mid-swing, and she struck Rain across the face with her open left hand, her talons slicing through the Nimban’s cheek and smacking her away. Rain’s tattered wings flailed as she spun through the air before she crashed through a tent, taking the entire structure down with her.

“Pathetic!” Yngvilde squawked, pacing back and forth while she waited for her opponents to recover. “Is this all Cirra’s best have to offer me? Get up! Make me break a sweat!”

Both her blades returned to her hands at the beckoning of the winds, and she spun about when she heard hooves thundering across the ground behind her. Summer rushed at her once more, sword held high and wing blades at the ready, and Yngvilde practically trembled with pleasure once she closed to striking distance. Instead of flinging her blades out again, she grasped them firmly in her hands, parrying Summer’s ferocious slashes in a cascade of sparks and a cacophony of clashing metal. Even outnumbered two blades to three, the griffoness deftly parried and blocked every one of Summer’s attacks. As Summer tried to scissor the hen with her sword and an opposing wing blade, Yngvilde suddenly let go of her right blade and pivoted sharply to her left. The unraveling chain caught Summer under her left wing and wrapped around her neck twice, and as the mare choked and swung wildly with her free wing, Yngvilde ducked under it and slid behind the mare, flipping her over backwards and slamming her skull into the ground.

“You have no control!” Yngvilde taunted Summer as she struggled to free herself. “Is that why you’re a medicus and not a real soldier? What a shame you must have been to Nimbus—when there was something left of it!”

Yngvilde pivoted about to fend off a flurry of spear jabs from Windshear, sidestepping each thrust and parrying those she couldn’t move away from. Still, she maintained her grip on her other chain, keeping Summer strangled and helpless on the ground—at least until Rain appeared behind her, swinging zwei. Yngvilde pulled back on her chain then, unraveling the length from around Summer’s neck and slicing through her coat as it did so. The blade whipped past Yngvilde’s body and almost split Rain in two lengthwise, but the Nimban mare wisely rolled out of her attack and flopped to the side when her tired legs failed to get her standing again.

Yngvilde flapped her wings and jumped a good thirty feet away. Her claws digging through the dirt and mud as she turned about to face her opponents once more, she pulled both her blades back close to her body and began to spin them, the tips just barely scuffing the ground as she waited for the pegasi to approach her again.

“She’s too fucking fast,” Windshear grunted. Sweat shined on his face and neck, and his nostrils flared as he struggled to control his breathing. “We can’t get close to her.”

“That’s not the problem,” Rain observed, her eyes focusing on the spinning blades. “It’s those damn chains.”

“Fuck the chains,” Summer croaked as she stood up, blood dripping from numerous gashes around her neck and shoulders. “She’s gonna die like the rest of her kind, chains or not!”

Rain put her hoof on Summer’s shoulder before she could sprint off once more. “As a team,” she said. “We’re not making any progress one on one.”

“Are you three done with your pep talk?” Yngvilde called out from the other side of the camp. “Or should I go back to blowing away the fog you set up to hide your little town from me?”

“Follow my lead,” Rain advised, and tightening her grip on zwei once more, she began to gallop toward Yngvilde.

As soon as all three pegasi began charging her once more, Yngvilde’s paws shifted in the dirt and she threw her chained blades in opposite directions. After letting the chains unspool to almost their maximum length, the griffoness twisted in place, turning the two chains into a ferocious whirlwind of steel, breaking up the charge of the pegasi. Rain deflected one away off the flat of zwei and Windshear slid underneath the second, but neither managed to stop the chains from spinning. The closer they got, the more Yngvilde wrapped the lengths around her forearms, and the faster the blades became. Only Summer seemed to have gotten away from them, flying over the other two, but the moment she began her dive, Yngvilde stopped spinning and slammed the blades down from overhead, nearly slicing both of Summer’s wings off were it not for a last second roll by the medic.

Rain managed to slip between the blades at that moment and plow into Yngvilde with her shoulder, staggering the hen backwards if failing to topple her entirely. Windshear followed that up with a trio of spear thrusts that nearly impaled the griffon’s neck, and Yngvilde had to quickly pull her blades back to her to fight off the stallion. As she caught his spear on a cross of blades, Summer yelled as she pounced on her from above, and Yngvilde rolled backwards to dodge the attack. Almost immediately after, she found herself rolling away on the dirt from a slash from Rain’s zweihander, only jumping back to her paws when she was a safe distance away.

“Yeah, that’s more like it!” she said with an excited grin on her beak. “Now we’re talking!”

This time, the griffon took the offensive, charging directly into the trio of pegasi with her blades lashing out around her. The three ponies had to scatter from the onslaught of blades, and once Yngvilde had separated them all, she shifted her attention to Rain. Strong winds buffeted the mare, throwing her off balance, and Yngvilde swung her left blade downwards and her right blade from side to side. Rain opened her wings and used the tail end of Yngvilde’s wind to blow herself backwards and out of reach, and the two chains shrieked and warbled as they wrapped around each other. The griffon shifted her stance, carrying her momentum through the swing, and flipped backwards as the chains nearly took her own legs out. Instead, the tangled blades struck Summer’s armor, caving in the left side and whipping her across the camp, repulsing her charge and leaving the mare squawking in pain.

Yngvilde landed on her feet and pulled her arms apart, turning the chained blades into a whirling maelstrom in front of her—a maelstrom she turned toward Windshear. The stallion had been about to lunge at Yngvilde while her weapons were tangled, but now he scrambled backwards and fought to keep his balance on the slippery ground as the blades spun and whirled in front of him. But before Yngvilde could tear him to bloody chunks, Summer struck Yngvilde across the shoulder with her sword, the metal clanging off of the hen’s armor and cutting deep into her flesh.

“Yes!” Yngvilde screeched, once again pivoting on her paws and drawing her arms back across her body. The chain attached to her left blade nearly clotheslined Summer, forcing the pegasus to roll across the ground. By the time she got to her hooves, Yngvilde had gripped one of her blades in her talons and kept the other spinning by its chain, and pressed the attack. Summer parried and deflected three strikes from Yngvilde’s right hand and ducked away from the strangling chain launched by the hen’s left before it could wrap her up again, but instead of swinging it all the way around, Yngvilde buried the blade in the dirt and pulled forward on the chain, lunging herself at Summer. Her massive frame easily bowled over the pegasus, and Summer barely managed to swing her right foreleg across her body and punch the hen in the face before her beak could rip out her throat. A strong buck to the griffon’s chest forced her to recoil, and Summer managed to slip out of the gap in her stance.

But Yngvilde didn’t have time to pursue her target; instead, she crossed both her blades behind her back as Rain’s zweihander nearly cleaved her spine in two. The hen’s incredibly strength simply threw Rain and her weapon back a few paces, and she whipped around to face her, blades and chains a blurring, frighteningly dizzying storm of attacks. It was all Rain could do to keep up with the onslaught and not allow herself to be tripped or strangled as the chains whipped around and past her body. Her bloodstained white coat glistened in the sparks their weapons threw off, and she managed to repulse the assault—until Yngvilde suddenly stopped swinging her attacks and lunged forward, her talons firmly latching onto Rain’s neck.

The hen’s enormous wings carried her safely away from the other two pegasi, and she slammed Rain’s back against the wooden stake. Rain cried out in pain and tried to kick at Yngvilde, but the hen responded by slamming Rain three more times into the wood—and on the fourth time, she shattered the stake entirely with Rain’s bare spine. Rain coughed and fell into a crumpled heap where Yngvilde threw her, and the griffon grinned as she whirled about and parried Summer at the last possible moment, her blades forcing the mare to bounce off to her left. “Now you’re doing it!” Yngvilde screamed, her blades whipping up a cloud of dirt and dust as she frantically began to spin them again. Both blades slashed out fast as lightning at Windshear, forcing him back before he could close to stabbing distance, and Yngvilde cackled in glee. “This is a fight! This is a fight!”

“Shut the fuck up!” Summer screeched, dropping in front of Yngvilde and launching a ferocious attack of her own. The hen pulled back on her blades and used them to deflect and dance with Summer’s attacks, keeping the mare frustratingly just out of reach of her body. Summer grunted and growled in anger with every attack, and the glee on Yngvilde’s face only grew as she watched her opponent grow more frustrated.

“Too slow, are we?” she taunted Summer, blocking an attack and responding by punching the mare square on the nose. Summer snorted and recoiled, and moments later blood began to run down her broken nose. Yngvilde feigned motherly concern and bent over as Summer wiped the blood away with her feathers. “Awww, does filly have a booboo? Let Mama Yngy take a look at it for you. I’ll even use a favorite Cirran tactic when treating their wounded—spiking their skulls because you couldn’t save them!”

“SHUT! UP!” Summer screamed again, and again she launched herself at Yngvilde in a mindless fury. The hen cackled as she danced around Summer’s unfocused attacks, parrying them with ease and simply watching the sparks fly. “Die!” Summer roared between sword slashes, nearly tripping over her own hooves as she tried to take the hen down. “Die! Die! Fucking die!”

Yngvilde laughed and let one of her blades loose, pulling the blade across her body and once more wrapping Summer’s neck in the chain. But she didn’t stop her momentum when she felt resistance on the chain. Instead, she carried through with her motion, lifting Summer off the ground, over her head, and slamming her into the ground again. “You’re too much fun!” Yngvilde shouted as she repeated the motion, again launching Summer’s battered body into the ground as her chains held tight. “You’re so angry and helpless! You’re so—gah!”

The hen cried out in pain as the point of Windshear’s spear drove into her side. Snarling, Yngvilde dropped the chain from her hand and turned about, tearing the spearhead free in the process. She clutched her hand to her side and pulled it away, eyes fixated on the red seeping into it, and wiped the blood off on her feathers. Suddenly, the glee and excitement was gone, replaced with hatred and anger. “I see,” she growled, lowering her stance. “Time to get serious.”

She launched herself at Windshear with a banshee’s scream, knocking the stallion onto his back. But Windshear carried the momentum threw his fall, and using his wings for extra leverage on the ground, he managed to kick Yngvilde off and send her rolling across the ground. Unfortunately for him, the hen’s blade lagged behind, and a notch on its surface hooked underneath his spear and ripped it from his teeth. The stallion coughed and clutched his muzzle, falling to his knees as pain momentarily overwhelmed him. Yngvilde lunged at him before he recover, but just before she could slice him to ribbons, Rain jumped in between them and swung her sword like a bat, catching Yngvilde’s armor and propelling the hen across the camp. She crashed through a pair of tents and disappeared from sight, the canvas billowing outwards as her weight took it down.

“Fuck, we can’t beat this bitch!” Windshear exclaimed, snatching his spear from the ground and turning to Rain.

“Every griffon can die,” Rain insisted, eyes scanning the tents for any sign of movement. “Just because she’s the daughter of Magnus doesn’t mean she’s any different.”

“She’s been playing with us this whole time!” Windshear spun about to watch Rain’s back, though his attention wavered when he saw Summer writhing on the ground, struggling to break free of the chains that had entangled her. “We need to do something!”

“We are doing something!” Rain hissed at him. “Every minute she’s fighting us is another minute for the plan to work! Now come on, get Summer out of those chains and let’s keep the pressure on!”

Windshear nodded and leaped over to Summer with a flutter of his wings. While he tried to free Summer with his hooves, Rain hefted zwei once more and scanned the tents for any movement. But it wasn’t her eyes that alerted her to Yngvilde’s next move; it was her ears, and she barely had time to turn about and raise her sword to deflect the chained blade launched out of a tent flap. The chain wrapped itself around zwei, and instead of surrendering her grip, Rain fell to her back and braced her oversized sword with her hooves, pulling against the force on the other side of the chain. The sudden resistance seemed to surprise Yngvilde and pulled her out of the camp, and Rain used the last of it to rock herself to her hooves. Rather than let Yngvilde get set and dictate the terms of the engagement, Rain jumped directly into the hen’s face and began wildly swinging zwei about. Yngvilde had to fall back and block with her singular sword, but even a weapon down, the griffoness was still dangerously armed. When Rain overextended to try and slice her throat out, Yngvilde slipped to the side and closed to engage with her claws and beak. Rain nearly dropped her weapon as the griffon pecked at her face, her hooked beak violently snapping shut as she tried to find something to tear, and her sharp claws digging into Rain’s flesh.

Rain’s hooves struck Yngvilde’s face, forcing the two to separate for the briefest of moments. Knowing that her next move could likely be her last, Rain tried to strike at Yngvilde with a desperate swing of zwei. But at that same moment, Yngvilde had thrown her blade at Rain, the chain rattling as it unraveled from her arm. The point of one blade met the flat of the other, and in that moment, steel screamed and cried as one shattered into pieces.

It was not Yngvilde’s blade.

Rain fell to the ground, stunned and world ablaze as pieces of zwei buried themselves in her flesh and cut up her face. It was all she could do to writhe on the ground and try to pry the metal out of her body with nothing but her blunt hooves. The remains of her weapon forgotten, the only thing Rain knew in that moment was searing pain and agony, and for a moment, she worried that she’d lost her other eye in the death throes of her sword.

Yngvilde grinned with glee as she watched Rain scream and flail as she tried to pull the pieces of her broken weapon out of her flesh. She bent down and picked up the hilt of the broken sword and turned it over. “Griffon steel. You got this from one of our officers, didn’t you? Maybe from that little labor camp you raided?” She tossed the hilt aside in disgust. “Your culture has always been obsessed with ours. You think you’re so much better than us, Nimban, but let me ask you this: what would you be without us? You’d be nothing.” She knelt down and put her talons on Rain’s throat, choking the life out of her. “Without griffons, Nimbus would just be another city. A dirty border city with nothing like the glory or splendor of Stratopolis and the Cirrans. We are your everything. But to us, you mean nothing.”

Her feathers twitched, and she suddenly whirled about, releasing Rain and skirting to the side of a spear thrust. Her frown hardened and she began to vigorously twirl her blade as Windshear lunged at her, poking and thrusting with his spear, trying to find an opening through her defenses. Yngvilde backpedaled at a leisurely pace, keeping Windshear’s spear well away from her body. Twirling his spear in his grip, Windshear struck three times in rapid succession, and when Yngvilde twisted her chain to deflect his weapon, he suddenly hooked it back and pulled. The chain wrapped around the spear, and through sheer surprise, he managed to tear the chains off of Yngvilde’s arm.

The hen grunted and gripped her arm, her fingers stemming the blood from the cuts the barbed chains had torn open as she was disarmed. Windshear wasted no time pressing the attack, striking in a flurry of blows to try and get past Yngvilde’s defenses now that she had no weapons left. But the griffoness was fast and nimble, especially without her chains to weigh her down, and the winds seemed to always catch her feathers at the right angle to keep her away from the spear. And when Windshear overextended just a fraction too much in his frustration to skewer her, Yngvilde lunged at him and knocked him onto his back.

Windshear managed to get his spear between the hen and himself, and he repelled Yngvilde’s first claw strikes by pressing the haft against her chest and forcing her back. But all it took was a snap from the hen’s beak and the wooden haft splintered in two, and the razor sharp talons of one hand jammed themselves into the spaces between Windshear’s ribs and pulled until they cracked… and then pulled them through his skin.

The stallion couldn’t cry out as Yngvilde tore apart his lungs with her bare hands, and in mere seconds, he stopped breathing altogether.

Summer had just managed to untangle herself from the chains when she heard Yngvilde’s furious roaring and Windshear’s final, sputtering cough. Her eyes widened in horror as she watched the griffon empty the stallion’s chest cavity with her claws, with Rain still rolling and writhing in a growing pool of her own blood behind them. The medic’s limbs began to shake and tremble in terror and fury, but she snatched her sword back in her teeth as the adrenaline surging through her veins made her vision swim and her hooves feel numb. She had fully expected to die today, but seeing Windshear like that seared memories of Dawn into the backs of her eyes. Suddenly she was just a frightened medicus cowering in a building once more, watching in fear as her friends dropped around her.

Yngvilde finally turned her attention away from Windshear’s emptied corpse and to Summer’s scared face. The gray feathers around her beak and neck were slick with blood, and her talons had sticky bits of gore still clinging to them. She grinned and left the stallion’s body behind to pick up the chained blade he had managed to pry off her arm. “What’s the matter, prey?” she asked Summer, wrapping the chain back around her bleeding arm. “Did you finally remember who the predator is?”

She advanced on Summer, and Summer retreated at a matching pace, eyes darting around the campsite. For a moment, fear and dethroned fury, and the pegasus started to pant. Yngvilde slowly brought her chained blade to a twirl, and she nodded her head over her shoulder. “You’re a medic, aren’t you?” she asked, her claws gleefully tearing into the ground. “Why don’t you help your friend get his liver back in his body?”

Summer ceased her retreat, and Yngvilde paused as well. “Did I strike a nerve?” she asked her. “Come on, daughter of Nimbus. There’s still enough time to save your ruler. Unless you want to watch me bite her wings off?”

“No!” Summer cried, and her hooves scuffed the ground as she launched herself at the griffoness. Her wings furiously flapped, but Yngvilde didn’t budge in the face of the charge. Instead, she waited until the last moment, then reached out with her left hand, her fist cracking Summer’s jaw before the pegasus could swing her sword and sending her tumbling away.

But she never hit the ground. Yngvilde whipped around in the same motion and let her chained blade unravel, guided along by the winds. The barbs hooked into Summer’s right thigh, and the blade wrapped itself all the way down her leg. Before the mare could fall out of the sky, Yngvilde pulled back on the chain, reversing Summer’s momentum and pulling her back toward the hen. But the chain didn’t stay wrapped around Summer’s leg; it unspooled with the force of Yngvilde’s tug, and the barbs along each link tore terrifyingly deep into the flesh and muscle, spraying blood all along the medic’s underside. She finally struck the ground not too far away, yelling and howling in pain as she clutched at her ruined leg, too hurt to even stand up.

Yngvilde kicked her onto her back and sat on top of the mare’s chest, her paws keeping her forehooves and wings pinned to the ground. “You are so ugly for even your kind, do you know that?” Yngvilde asked her. She wickedly grinned as she put her talons on either side of the mare’s muzzle. “But I’ve heard Nimbans love scars.”

Summer tried to find the words to retort her, but all of that fell apart when Yngvilde’s claws dug deep into her cheeks and pulled, cutting them to bloody ribbons.

And all of Rain’s and Summer’s screams fell on the trembling ears of a colt curled up in terror behind a tent. Pathfinder shivered and tried to cover his ears where he lay, frightened out of his wits. Seeing Todesangst again had broken whatever resolve he had once possessed. The griffon’s face had brought back so many other unpleasant and awful memories, and it was all he could do to not let them worm their way into his brain. But they were already there, and now Finder couldn’t do anything other than curl himself up and try to hide away from the world so nopony or no griffon could find him.

But he could not hide from the pained screaming of his friends. It was like his nightmares had come true, and their screams had followed him out of his dreams. The only thing he could think about was that this was his fault. Once again, he’d screwed up, and his friends were the ones to suffer. It was too much to bear, too much, too much!

He screamed when talons grabbed him by the neck and tugged him away from the ground. He cried and kicked out, tears running down his face, but the talons held tight and simply spun him about. His nose bounced against a beak, and his pupils shrunk to pinpricks as he found himself staring into Yngvilde’s avian eyes.

Her feathers were covered in pegasus blood.

“What are you doing so far away from the fun, little colt?” Yngvilde asked him, the matronly tone in her voice made all the more frightening by the gore clinging to her feathers. Finder could only stare back at her, too afraid to so much as twitch a wing, as she grinned and walked back to the middle of the camp on three limbs. “Your friends all got to play with me. Don’t you want to as well?”

She spun Finder about with a turn of her wrist, and the colt whimpered as her talons poked into his flesh. “There’s one of them,” she said, forcing him to stare at Windshear’s mutilated corpse. “Was he your friend? Perhaps your brother?” She laughed, cruel and heartless. “I can’t tell with your kind. You’re all prey to me.”

Then she spun Finder around to Summer, who could only lie on her back and raggedly breathe through the damage done to her muzzle. “And this mare, what can I say? I just tried to help her look more beautiful to her kind. But I think I may have overdone it…” She giggled as she shoved Finder closer, forcing him to get a good, long look at Summer’s ruined face. The mare’s cheeks had been torn apart, and her lips had been sliced to ribbons. “It’ll be a miracle if she can ever really use her lips again. Do you think she can smile with her face like that? Or are my alterations a little too… permanent?”

Finder trembled, tears running down his face as he had to look at Summer. This was his fault, a little voice in his head insisted. If he had just done something, Windshear would still be alive, and Summer wouldn’t have lost half her face.

Or he may have died trying in the attempt. And being dead would have been so much better than being alive and guilty.

But the next words he heard weren’t Yngvilde’s cruel, taunting laughter. They belonged to the voice of the only person that could stir something in him. An angelic voice, ragged from screaming and pain, but still that of an angel no less. “Let. Him. Go.”

Yngvilde turned around in surprise, dragging Finder along for the ride as well. Finder’s eyes widened to see Rain standing on four hooves again, but with shards of metal sticking out of her face and neck and chest. Her white coat had turned red and brown from the blood soaking into it, but she stood tall regardless. And in her mouth, she held one of Yngvilde’s chained blades by the sword’s hilt, the chain dangling to her left.

The hen laughed and doubled over, dropping Finder to the ground. “You still want more, Nimban?” she taunted Rain. “Do you want the same treatment I gave your medic? You know I’m not going to kill you, as much as you may wish. Stand up again and again, and I’ll keep knocking you back down until you have no choice but to call me ‘master.’” She pulled her own chained blade out to her talons and eyed up Rain’s ragged feathers. “Maybe I should remove your wings this time. That should keep you down for good.”

“Let. Him. Go.” Rain hissed again, beginning to limp over to the griffon.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” Yngvilde wrapped a loop of the chain around Finder’s neck and lifted him up by it. The colt cried and coughed as she tightened it under his chin, and the spark of alarm in Rain’s eyes sent her giggling. “You have no cards here. You can hardly walk, and this colt can’t even fight. And you still think you can make demands of me?”

She eyed Rain’s stiff posture, pinned down the worry in her face, and grinned. “Don’t tell me this little runt actually means something to you, Nimban. Or have you gone soft?”

Rain raised her hoof to take a step forward, but Yngvilde stopped her by twisting one of Finder’s wings and eliciting a strangled scream from the colt. “Don’t try anything hasty,” she said now, flourishing her talons as she moved them from Finder’s wing to the artery bulging out of the side of his neck. “You wouldn’t want me to slip, would you?”

“Stop hiding behind him,” Rain spat around the sword’s handle. “If you even claim to call yourself Magnus’ daughter, then fight me right. Fight me honest like the warior you say you are.”

Yngvilde snorted and dropped Finder to the ground. “I don’t have to claim anything, Nimban. You’ve seen what I can do. You know what I am.” She dug her free claws into Finder’s shoulder grunted, flinging the coughing colt into the space between them. Grinning, she pointed to Finder and began to slowly twirl her blade. “I’m going to kill him now,” she announced. “And you’re going to try to save him. And you’re going to watch as my sword lops his head off just a breath before you can get to him. Sound like a fun game?” When she saw Rain’s eyes widen, she shifted her stance and began to twirl her blade in larger and larger arcs. “What are you waiting for, Rain? Your medic to bleed to death where I left her?”

Rain’s eyes locked on Finder’s. Finder’s locked on Rain’s. For just a moment, the colt’s trembling stopped, and he swallowed hard. He tried to offer her a smile… and then he closed his eyes and bowed his head.

Rain looked at Yngvilde, gleefully grinning with malice and cruelty opposite Finder. She knew the hen was true to her word. There was no way she could reach Finder fast enough with her hobbled hooves and plucked wings. All it would take was one flick of Yngvilde’s wrist and the colt would lose his head. How could she possibly close the distance and make it to Finder in time to save his neck?

Her vision began to blur and something sucked away the colors from the edges of her vision. All her pain, all her fear, all her exhaustion had been honed down into one singular expression: desperation. Her carefully laid plans had all fallen apart around her. Her friends had been slain because she had failed them. And if she didn’t kill Yngvilde soon, her entire species would cease to exist. If the tens of thousands of survivors attempting to flee Altus were wiped out, there was no hope left for the pegasus race. And if she failed here, Yngvilde would make sure she saw every last death.

She was not going to fail.

The desperation powered her limbs and drew on something deep inside of her, something she didn’t know she had, but had nevertheless always felt its presence. It flowed through her body and to the very tips of her feathers, flaring up when she raised her wings. And then she beat her wings, launching herself across the ground.

And the wind followed her.

Rain streaked across the ground almost too fast for the eye to catch. Yngvilde swung the length of her chain, but it wasn’t even halfway to Finder’s neck before Rain was at the colt’s side. Her otherworldly speed carried her past Finder and directly beneath the plunging chain of Yngvilde’s blade, and she raised her sword to cut the swinging chain short. Sparks flew as it deflected the weapons momentum, and the head of the blade buried itself in the dirt a few feet away from Finder’s neck.

But Rain didn’t stop. She followed through with her momentum, wings pivoting at opposing angles to spin her about and disengage from the chain. Her stolen sword aimed for Yngvilde’s neck, and the hen only deflected Rain’s chin out of the way at the last moment, barely ducking away from the strike. But Rain recovered almost instantly, much faster than she’d ever recovered from an attack in any fight she’d fought in her life, and began to attack Yngvilde with a flurry of blows barely a split second later. Yngvilde had to flap her wings and put some distance between herself and Rain to recover her stance, but that distance lasted barely a fraction of a second before Rain streaked over to her again and pressed the attack. The griffon’s features, once haughty and gleeful, had turned to a furrowed brow and gritted teeth as she struggled to keep up with the ferocity of Rain’s otherworldly attacks.

Yngvilde finally managed to land a solid blow to Rain’s cheek, sending the pegasus stumbling backwards and giving her some breathing room. Panting, she reeled her chained blade back in and slowly grinned as Rain kipped up back to her hooves. “So Todesangst was right,” she murmured to herself, readying for another series of ferocious strikes. “The monster was right all along…”

Rain and Yngvilde charged each other once again, the wind at their wings crashing together a split second after the smashed their swords against each other’s. Their weapons blurred faster than the eye could track. Rain struck high, and Yngvilde deflected. She parried off the blow and tried to slash down at Rain’s neck, but the Nimban mare hopped a half step backwards and punched the hen’s cheek with a hoof. She tried to bring her sword down on Yngvilde’s neck to end the fight in one swoop, but the griffon rolled across the ground, her tail tripping Rain’s hooves out from under her. Rain fell forward and rolled back to her hooves in the same motion, turning about just in time to block three more slices and roll to the side when Yngvilde hopped back and let the chain fly from her wrist, the sword nearly taking Rain’s ear off.

Rain darted inside Yngvilde’s reach before she could pull the weapon back, punching directly at the griffon’s throat, only for the hen’s hand to catch her hoof. Yngvilde threw it aside and punched Rain’s muzzle with a cross across her face, and Rain’s ears twitched as she heard the chain links rattling. She angled her sword down on instinct, and the first loop of chain that started to wrap itself around her neck instead got caught on the sword before it could squeeze her throat. She pulled up sharply, straining her neck in the process, but managed to reverse the blade’s momentum and sent it unraveling back at Yngvilde. The griffoness had to catch the flat of the blade with her hand to spare her neck, and in that moment, Rain lunged forward, driving the point of her sword into the hen’s leg.

Yngvilde squawked in surprise and pain and responded by headbutting the crown of Rain’s head. The mare gasped and groaned as the crack of skull against skull sent her reeling, and Yngvilde lunged at her with her fists this time. One caught Rain in the shoulder, a second in the chest, and when Rain doubled over to try and shield herself, a third blow caught her under the chin and sent her airborne. The pegasus tumbled through the air, wings limp and fluttering, until she crashed down hard on the ground next to Finder.

She immediately climbed back to her hooves with a gust of wind, but Finder could tell at a glance that she was wavering. Her legs trembled and she tried to keep her weight onto the fronts of her hooves, likely to avoid the sore flesh underneath from the glowing horseshoes hammered into them earlier. Her wings shook with each breath, and Finder could tell that it wasn’t just the wind that seemed to be following her, emanating from her. She was exhausted and hurting. And as his eyes turned to Yngvilde, he saw the hen grimace as she cracked her neck, and an entertained smile began to worm its way back onto her beak.

Yngvilde was enjoying this. And Rain wouldn’t last much longer on her own.

Rain burst forward with another otherworldly burst of speed, her pilfered sword screeching as it met Yngvilde’s on the other side of the camp. Finder didn’t watch them fight—at the speed they were moving, there was no way he could—so he instead turned his attention to Summer. The mare was weakly coughing and gagging on her own blood and ruined face not too far away from him, and scrambling to his hooves, he rushed to her side.

He tried to block out the cacophony of steel from the fighting behind him as he looked over Summer. The mare was still conscious—how, Finder didn’t know—and struggling to breathe. Her eyes fell on him and she tried to say something, but she instead sputtered a few meaningless noises around the blood filling her mouth and the tattered remains of her lips and cheeks. She tried a few times to roll over without avail, and Finder understood quickly enough what she was trying to do. Placing his hooves under her side, Finder rolled her over, taking care not to disturb her leg in the process. As Summer flopped onto her stomach and began to cough and spit out a frightening amount of blood, Finder found his eyes glued to her leg, feeling sick to his stomach at the scratched bone exposed to the air. He didn’t know how Summer wasn’t doubled over in crippled pain, but maybe her leg was so badly mangled she couldn’t feel it anymore.

“Rain…” Summer coughed, the singular name coming across more as a grunt without any faculty over her lips. Finder thought she was trying to bare her teeth in pain, but she didn’t have any muscles left to move what was left of her lips. Instead, a green eye fell on Finder. “Help… Rain…”

Finder gulped and stood up, turning toward the fight happening before him. The two combatants twirled around in a dizzying dance of death, but it was clear who was winning. Yngvilde constantly drove Rain back, and even though her face was screwed in concentration, it was clear she was enjoying the fight. Rain, on the other hoof, was starting to lose steam. Her hooves were slowing, and the mystical wind she had somehow summoned was beginning to fade. How much longer she could keep it up, Finder didn’t know. But the moment she failed, it was all over.

He grabbed Summer’s sword off the ground and began to gallop over to the fight, but before he could, Yngvilde grabbed Rain by the throat with her free hand and lifted her into the air. She flapped her wings two times, gaining some height, then screeched as she threw Rain across the camp. The pegasus tumbled through the air, trying to catch herself on ragged wings, but failing as her strength ignored her summons. Instead, the mare slammed hard into the wooden stake in the center of the camp and tumbled down it, falling in a heap of feathers and blood at the bottom. She did not get up again.

Finder froze mid-gallop, his mind suddenly veering into dark places. Rain was down. Summer was down. Windshear was dead. It was just him and Yngvilde, and he stared in horror as the griffon alighted not too far away. She began to twirl her blade again, and Rain still didn’t move. Terror settled in Finder’s gut as he realized it was all on him to save Rain, to save Altus, to save everypony he cared about who he still had left in this world. And he began to tremble because he couldn’t do it. He knew he couldn’t do it. He wasn’t a soldier. He was just a weak, worthless, pathetic colt. A colt who had bitten off way more than he could chew and had spent the past several months choking on it.

And when Yngvilde won here, he was going to be captured again.

He was going to be tortured again.

He was going to be raped again.

Icy terror gripped the colt’s body, and he doubled over, shivering in panic. He couldn’t do that again. He couldn’t suffer that again. He couldn’t. He couldn’t. He looked at Rain, just now beginning to fight to sit up. She had saved him from the darkest days of his life. And the moment she was gone, that light would be snuffed out forever. And not too far away, an angry griffoness was about to put the finishing blow on the mare who had treated him and cared for him when he just wanted to die.

It spurred his hooves to action. He rose up and galloped forward again, just as the hen let the sword fly from her grip. Terror gripped the colt, but it had moved him to action nonetheless. Déjà vu seized hold of him, and he remembered a time long ago, when he had jumped in front of a spear meant to skewer Rain. And now he was doing it once more.

Even though he was afraid of what came next.

By the gods, he was so afraid.

And then Yngvilde’s sword, carried along by her magical winds, met the stony coat of a colt too terrified to open his eyes and look death in the face, and shattered.

Everypony froze as the shards of Yngvilde’s weapon rained onto the ground, tinkling as they bounced over each other. A jagged hilt was all that remained of the chained blade, and now it lay limp and lifeless on the ground. Yngvilde stood in place slack-jawed, Rain stared up at Finder with wide eyes, and the colt himself finally dared to look himself over when he realized he wasn’t dead or in crippling pain.

It was like he was looking at a statue. His olive coat had hardened into a literal stony gray, and his feathers looked like they’d been chiseled by a thousand of Cirra’s greatest stone masons put together. When he tried lifting his leg, he was met by somewhat stiff resistance and the sound of stone grinding on stone, but it retained most if its range of motion. And when he turned to face Yngvilde, his hooves hit the ground with heavy thuds.

Yngvilde soon recovered her wits and snatched her chain back. She grabbed onto the hilt of the sword and looked over the jagged end of her weapon, then turned her sinister glare to Finder. “You… you dare,” she hissed, venom dripping from her beak, hate spiking through the new and inexplicable armor that now covered the colt from head to tail. She wound up the chain and let the shattered hilt hang from her wrist, stomping toward Finder with an aggressive flaring of her wings. “First a poor copy of my father’s spark, now petrification? Your kind is even more abhorrent than I’d realized. You are monsters, vermin, all of you, and now you do me the greatest insult of all: you shatter the weapon that my father gave me when I came of age?!”

Finder drew back in increasing fear as the hen bore down on him. Far from feeling protected by his new stony hide, he instead felt trapped and slow. And to make matters worse, the more frightened he became, the thicker and heavier his armor grew. It was a cycle that fed on itself, and the colt could feel his strength fading as he tried to carry his increasingly heavy body on wobbly legs.

He soon found himself cornered by the hen, too weighed down to flee. Sneering, Yngvilde lunged at him and wrapped her talons around his throat, anchoring him in place with her sheer size and strength. “I can’t even strangle you,” she growled as she tried to crush his stony neck. “How do I kill you, colt? Do I grab a chisel? Do I stick my finger through your eye until I can stab your brain? Do I throw you in the ocean and drown you?”

She threw Finder onto his back and leapt on top of him, pommel of the hilt brandished like a club. “Do you feel this?!” she screamed at him as she smashed it into his muzzle, the dense metal not breaking like the sensitive steel his coat had already shattered. “Are you rock the whole way through, or just your skin? What happens when I crack your coat? If I kill you, will you stay a fucking statue so I can mount your pieces in the mead hall?!”

The griffoness howled with fury, and Finder whimpered and cried as she repeatedly bludgeoned him with the hilt of her sword. He could feel the blows rattling his teeth and striking his nerves underneath his stony armor. He didn’t know any of the questions the hen screamed at him, and he was worried that he would be forced to find out. He could already feel his nose beginning to chip and crack under her furious assault. But he couldn’t defend himself in the slightest; Yngvilde had him pinned down too well to strike back, and even if he could, his legs were too heavy to move on his own.

But it was obvious the lack of any meaningful damage was frustrating Yngvilde. “Why won’t you die?!” she screamed, her features screwing up with rage. “I will end your miserable species! I will drench the seas red with your blood! I am Yngvilde, daughter of the Living God, and by the spirits of my forefathers, I demand that you die!”

She raised her hand to drive the pommel through Finder’s muzzle, but before she could swing it down, a bloodstained white hoof hooked around it. The hen squawked in surprise, and when she looked to her right, Iron Rain pulled a shard of her sword out of her coat and jammed it into the griffon’s neck. Yngvilde’s eyes bulged and she dropped the hilt, her hands flying to the metal poking out of her feathers and coming away bloody. Her face twisted from shock to pain to rage, and she tried to lunge at Rain in one last desperate attack. But Rain easily stepped to the side, brushing the hen away with a wing and sending her tumbling to the ground.

Yngvilde grabbed the shard with one hand and tore it free, opening a river of blood that began to soak her feathers. “Hckk… you… Hrck!”

Rain’s wingtips inched out in alarm as the hen stood up and took two, three, four steps toward her and Finder. Thoughts of her fight against Magnus and how the griffon god had casually shrugged off losing an arm flew threw her mind, and she suddenly feared that the hen would simply refuse to die. But Yngvilde coughed, or rather, tried to, and a gurgle of blood sprayed from the hole in her neck. She reached out once, claws extended…

…and fell to the ground face first.

Rain let out a sigh of relief as the hen’s feathers twitched their last and her blood began to pool around her. The Nimban mare collapsed onto her haunches, panting and pressing a hoof to one of the many bleeding wounds on her body. She was exhausted. Fully and completely exhausted. No witty remarks, no snide comments came to her mind as she stared into Yngvilde’s glassy eyes. The griffon was dead, and the hardest fight of her life was over. Not even her clash with Magnus had taxed her as much as his daughter did.

But perhaps the difference was that Yngvilde was mortal while Magnus was not.

Comments

[Lerris]

gad damn

[DoctorWhoooves]

What a pleasantly unexpected turn of events