Wind and Stone

by Ruirik

Calamity (Part II)

“Get outta my way or I swear I’m gonna paint the walls with your brain matter!”

Stonewall, a thick built stallion with a dappled gray coat and short-cropped, blonde mane, seemed unimpressed by the threat. He merely sighed and shook his head, levelling an unimpressed look at his friend. “You know how this works, Bluestreak. We stay put until the Legate has issued her orders.”

“Rain can kiss my plot!” Bluestreak shouted, his face split in a manic grin. “There’s griffons at our doorstep, I’m not waiting for her slow ass to show up and grant me permission!”

“Yeah, Bluestreak, you really will wait,” Stonewall said, his tone making it clear it wasn’t up for debate.

“And stop calling me Bluestreak. Gods sakes Stone, you’re sounding like my mother!”

“Stop acting like a colt and I’ll stop talking to you like one,” Stonewall shot back, the trace of a smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Honestly, Red, you’re gonna get yourself killed if you keep rushing headlong into every fight.”

Bluestreak made an amused snort. Despite impressions his nickname might have left to the casual observer, the lean stallion didn’t have a red hair on his body. His coat was a deep blue color only slightly darker than the sky blue color of his mane and tail. “There is no greater glory than death in battle. You know that, Stone.”

“Only an idiot dies for his country. The true glory lies in making some other poor dumb bastard die for his.” Stonewall smirked playfully. “Then you go home, get drunk, and find a warm mare to rut.”

“Hmm.” Red rubbed his chin with a hoof, seemingly legitimately stalled by the concept. “Glorious death in battle, or victory, booze, and easy sex.”

“Tough choice?”

Red produced a face-splitting grin and leaned closer until he was nose to nose with Stonewall, his predatory yellow eyes looking into Stonewall’s placid blues. “Not even close. Sleep with a mare and they want you to marry them.”

A deep mare’s voice cut through the air. “Clearly, you’ve been meeting the wrong mares, Red.” Iron Rain offered her friends a cursory smile.

“You’re late, Iron,” Red said, grinning at her with ever growing excitement. “What’s the matter, took too long to polish your sword?”

Rain scowled. “Keep talking, Red, and I‘ll have Mary geld you. Besides.” She reached back with a hoof and tapped the pommel of her sword. “Mine is much bigger.”

Red cackled at the joke and slapped his hoof against Rain’s shoulder. “You ready to have some fun, Rain?”

“Oh, Red.” Rain almost shivered at the thought. “Ofnir himself couldn’t stop me.”

“You should be more mindful of the Gods,” a deep voice cut in from across the room, causing the assembled ponies’ heads to turn towards the source.

Rain felt an old shiver run down her spine. Only two ponies alive could trigger that effect in her, and one of those was her father.

“Downburst,” Rain greeted the stallion in a respectful tone. “Why aren’t you at the palace protecting Father?”

The aging Legate’s mouth pulled into the barest hint of a smile. Despite nearing fifty years of age, Downburst was still acknowledged as of of the finest ponies ever to fight for Nimbus. He had a heavy build with a silvered mane and a near-black coat that bore the faded white scars of countless battles with griffons and pegasi alike. What’s more, he had been a fixture in Iron Rain’s life as a dear friend of her father’s and the pony who’d taught her the sword. “Lord Winter has requested a situation report. Knowing you, this seemed like the best place to be.”

“I’m not sitting out this fight, Father can’t—”

Downburst cut off her protest with a cold stare. “Lord Winter will do whatever he wishes, Lady Iron Rain. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Rain growled quietly.

“Good.” Downburst nodded. “Now that that’s over with: requesting permission to fly with you.”

Rain bowed her head ever so slightly. She had learned long ago never to take her eyes off of him. “There’s nopony I’d rather fight beside.”

A small, but genuine smile tugged at the old stallion’s mouth. “Then shall we proceed?”

“Oi, oi, oi!, what about me?” Red shouted, his hoof pounding his chest.

“You’re just here to keep me amused,” Rain shot back before returning her attention to Downburst. “I don’t suppose you’ve rallied the second cohort?”

“They’re assembling in the courtyard as we speak,” Downburst answered, pulling his polished helmet onto his head. “The First Cohort is already stationed in the upper ring. The Palace is more than ready for whatever the griffons can throw at us. Oh, and I saw Haze was rallying militia as well.”

“Excellent,” Rain said with a nod. With a single glance, Stonewall and Bluestreak stood at attention, and together, all four of them stepped into the courtyard.

Rain felt a swell of pride bubble up in her gut from the magnificent sight. Hundreds of pegasi that comprised the legendary Nimban militia were organizing into their centuria. All the while Nimban Centurions paced up and down the lines, making sure everypony was equipped and ready. She easily spotted Haze and Thorn on the far end of the field. She stuck two feathers in her mouth and loosed a piercing whistle to catch their attention before waving them over. Thorn and Haze spared each other only a brief glance before they fluttered to where Rain was standing.

“We should have three centuries ready to deploy in a few minutes,” Haze said, not bothering a salute.

Nodding, Rain’s keen eyes scoured the gathering ponies. Many wore old armor, passed down from generation to generation. Rain could feel confident that these were at least true Nimbans, tested in any of the countless skirmishes between Nimbus and griffon raiders over the years.

“Downburst.” Rain turned to the old stallion. “Organize the cohorts and prep them to fly. I want skirmishers in front, light and heavy fliers behind. When you’re done, meet me here; we’ll lead the charge ourselves.”

“By your command.” Downburst bowed his head ever so slightly before trotting to the assembling force.

“Stonewall, Red.” Rain turned to her friends, who both flashed her excited grins. “You have five minutes to ensure there are no stragglers. I want those cocky hybrids to feel the full weight of the Storm.”

Red shuddered like he’d just bedded a mare. “Oh, I love the way you work.”

“Go, now!” Rain waved them off with a hoof.

Stonewall smacked Red on the shoulder once before both stallions took to the skies. Rain didn’t spare them a second glance. As she turned to survey the field again she spotted a familiar stallion standing alone near the Basilica. With a flap of her wings, she took flight and quickly covered the distance between them, Haze and Thorn close behind her. The stallion, his attention focused on the assembling cohorts, didn’t notice her land initially.

“Well well,” Rain almost chuckled. “Look what I’ve found. A lost little Cirran.”

“Sir!” The stallion’s posture stiffened to a crisp salute.

Rain shook her head and looked him over carefully. His dirty brown coat and black mane were mostly covered by his armor. His left ear was sliced off halfway up with cauterized flesh where the wound had been cauterized to quickly stop the bleeding. The stallion’s face was tense from what Rain imagined was not an insignificant amount of discomfort, but he never gave voice to his pain.

Rain respected that toughness.

“At ease, Longbow, now’s not the time for ass-kissing and protocol.” Her eyes traced the contours of his armor to the stuffed quivers hanging from the sides of his armor, just under his wings. “How many arrows do you have?”

“Enough to kill a lot of griffons, Sir,” Longbow said, a ghost of a smile pulling at his lips.

“I like your attitude, kid,” Haze said as his hoof slapped Longbow’s back between his wings. Haze’s hoof met the hard steel plates with a solid clang and he immediately recoiled from the self-induced sting. Putting on his best pout, he turned to Thorn and held out the sore hoof. “Kiss it better, Thorn?”

“I’m your marefriend, not your mother, Haze,” she teased him, tousling his mane with a hoof.

Rain shot her friend a heavy frown. “Cut the crap, Haze, I need your head in the fight.”

In an instant, the playful pout vanished, replaced with a cold fire in his eyes and a small smile. “As if it was anywhere else, Rain.”

Nodding, Rain turned her attention back to Longbow. “Where’s your century?”

“No idea, Sir.” Longbow shook his head. “I was sent back here last night to get an update on when the Eighth could expect our replacements.”

“You any good with that thing?” Rain asked, pointing her hoof the the black bow looped over Longbow’s chest.

“Depends. Are you any good with that thing?” Longbow shot back with a knowing smirk as he motioned to her Zweihoofer.

Rain made an amused snort and turned to Haze. “Well would you look at that: a Cirran with some backbone!”

“Longbow.” Rain moved to stand beside him, her hoof slapping his back. “I want you flying with me. Your bow will come in handy.”

Surprised by the order, Longbow’s eyes widened briefly. “Legate Rain, I—”

“Remember that kid brother of yours you were telling me about a while back?” Rain asked, looking the stallion in the eye with a cautiously neutral gaze.

Longbow winced.

“There’s thousands of big brother’s and sisters fighting and dying on the wall.” Rain pointed a hoof to the edge of the city, angry flames dancing before the first rays of dawn. “Fight like your little brother’s depending on you.”

“Yes, Sir.” Longbow nodded, his eyes full of a grim resolve.

Thorn walked over to Longbow and placed her hoof on his shoulder. “Welcome to the Rainstorm.”

“Do good and we might even keep you,” Haze chimed in, ignoring the puzzled expression on Longbow’s face at the group’s moniker.

Rain continued, ignoring Thorn and Haze for the time being. “I fly in front. Haze to my right, Thorn to my left.” She gestured to each pony in turn with the corresponding wing. “Behind me will be Stonewall and Downburst; it’s their job to kill whatever gets past my sword. Behind them I want you.” Iron Rain looked Longbow in the eye. “Take any shot you get. I don’t want to see you holding fire until you’re out of arrows. Understood?”

“Yes sir!” Longbow snapped off a crisp salute.

Placing her hoof on his shoulder, Rain offered the stallion a curt nod. “Keep up, Cirran, there’s knife work needs doing.”

With that vague advice, Rain launched herself into the air and started towards the assembly area. Longbow watched her leave, his face never faltering from his professional mask. Underneath, however, was a far different story.

She had remembered him.

Iron Rain, Legate of Nimbus, had remembered his name!

A hoof sharply cuffed across his back, and Longbow levelled a glare at the offending pony. For his part, Haze seemed unimpressed by the attention. His lips were pulled into a face-splitting grin levelled directly at Longbow.

“What?”

“Just a piece of advice,” Haze started, his voice dropping low. “Don’t take the bait.”

“Bait?” Longbow’s head tilted quizzically.

Thorn prodded Haze’s side with a hoof. “Don’t spoil the fun part.”

“I think we’ll have more fun today,” Haze said with a soft chuckle.

Ignoring her two oldest friends, Iron Rain landed before the assembling legions and waited. Her keen eyes flicked back and forth, studying every pony that would make up her private army for the coming fight. Stallions and mares, some she knew and many she didn’t, massed in near silence. All of them had drilled for this, all of them were ready for this.

Rain couldn’t remember a moment in her life that she had felt more pride in her city.

Downburst approached her on hoof, his expression as impassive as always. “Legate Rain, three cohorts are assembled and awaiting your command.”

“Excellent! Thank you, Downburst.” Rain gave her mentor a slight nod before stepping toward the centuria.

“Nimbans!” Downburst shouted, gathering the attention of the assembled militia. Their chattering came to an abrupt end as they watched him with rapt attention. Downburst looked to Rain and gave her a curt nod. “All yours.”

“Brothers and sisters; sons and daughters of Nimbus, hear me!” Iron Rain called out, her voice echoing through the open square. “Right now, the griffons are clawing at our walls! Right now they are burning our homes and killing our families! Will we let this transgression stand?”

“NO!” shouted the centuria.

“Of course we won’t!” Rain almost laughed, though she restrained herself for the moment. “We’re going to wade into their lines! Stab into their bellies! Paint our walls with their blood! We will burn this day into the mind of every last one of the hybrid bastards, and then...” Rain paused for a moment of effect. Reaching back, she drew her sword and draped it across her shoulder. “We will rid this world of every trace of Gryphus and the hybrids. We will exterminate their foul race, down to the very last cub. We will slay them all so that they will never again rise to shed the blood of the pegasi!”

“AAOOH!” the centuries shouted and stomped their hooves in approval.

Rain’s lips pulled into a wild, toothy grin as she stabbed her blade into the dense cloudstone floor. “Soldier’s of Nimbus!” she shouted to the assembled centuries. “Sound the horns and call the cry! How many of them can we make die?”

“AAOOOH!” the Nimban legion answered, unsheathing their swords and clapping the flats of the blades against their breastplates.

Iron Rain leapt into the air, her mighty wings driving her into the bloody dawn skies. Beside her rose Haze, Thorn, Downburst, Bluestreak, and Longbow. She pointed her sword to the distant walls that were bathed in the orange glow of the roaring flames that danced through thick columns of smoke. “FLY NOW, NIMBANS! FOR WRATH, FOR RUIN, AND THE GLORY OF OFNIR’S RED DAWN! ON ME, LADS! ON ME!”

---

Finder cringed, flattening himself against the wall as the thunderous explosions of flak artillery shook the skies above the forum. The Nimban ballistae placed around the palace had started firing again, launching clay pots filled with fire and powder that detonated in midair, scattering pieces of iron as lethal shrapnel in the hopes of bringing down aerial griffons. Even now, Finder could hear the screams of the dying hybrids outside the walls of the praetor’s office, and the tinkling of metal shards as they rained down upon the roof.

“The whole damn Ninth must have been routed!” Carver exclaimed, huddling closer to the wall as another explosion shook the building. “Otherwise the artillery wouldn’t be firing! Nimbans may be mad, but they aren’t going to risk friendly fire if they can help it!”

“And the Sixth?” Finder asked, remembering the other cohort that had joined the Ninth when Skyhammer was evacuating the medical camp.

“Same thing!” Dawn squawked from behind them, holding a wing to her face as granules of compressed cloudstone broke free from the ceiling, disintegrating into droplets of water before they hit the floor. “And since the artillery’s firing right over our heads, they either don’t know that we’re here, or they don’t plan on having any cohorts in the area any time soon!”

“Buck me in the ass!” shouted Carver, his sword dancing in his mouth as he spoke. “When I joined the Legion, I didn’t think they’d be so willing to just throw away reserves to give the veterans time to breathe!”

Summer rushed back into the main room, nearly tripping as the building shook yet again. “Ugh... It’s basic military tactics, Carver! We’re expendable, the veterans aren’t! What did you expect when you signed up for the Legion?!”

The stallion grunted as the walls shook violently, nearly throwing him off of them. “Not... this!”

“Aren’t you a pacifist?!” Summer shouted, pointing an accusatory hoof towards Carver. “Why the hell did you even sign up in the first place?!”

“Patriotism, mostly!” Carver shouted back. “That and my dad convinced me the fighting would be done by the time the Legion even needed me!”

Dawn shook her head, then checked to make sure her medical supplies were sorted and ready for immediate use. “A stupid idea if I’ve ever heard one!”

“I wasn’t planning on fighting!” Carver exclaimed. “I just wanted to be an occupying soldier in Gryphus once this was all over! Somepony needed to represent the good side of the Legion!”

Summer’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Are you retarded or something?! Nopony goes to war thinking that they’ll be part of the occupying force when it’s over and nothing else!!”

Carver’s cheeks flushed, and he turned to look back out the window at the ever-approaching horde of griffons. Finder watched with him, gasping as he saw a hundred griffons descend on the roof of a nearby building. They found a doorway and ripped it open with frightening strength, plunging inside to try and drive out the soldiers holding the building.

From the other end of the building, Skyhammer cursed. “The bastards just took the library!” the centurion exclaimed, stomping a hoof in anger. “Damn it all, Centurion Aurum was in there!” He shook his head in further disgust as he watched panicking legionaries burst forth from the windows of the library, trying to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the occupied building. A good majority of them were swatted down by the griffons’ aerial supremacy.

Turning around, Skyhammer raised his voice so his century could hear him. “This is it, fillies! The griffons will be knocking on the door any moment now! Fight hard and fight to your last breath, or I swear my ghost will make you cowards’ lives a living hell hole!”

“This is it, isn’t it?!” Carver asked his friends, shouting to be heard over the noise outside.

“Keep fighting and be careful!” Dawn shouted, stepping aside for a half-dozen legionaries to move into the adjacent room. Galloping over to the door, she gave it a buck to close it and squatted near it, clearing space in the nearby corner to set up triage.

Finder was already hyperventilating, and his world swam in a dizzying array of lights and flashes. The edges of hysteria were pressing down on his mind, and he was overcome with an overwhelming urge to turn tail and flee. Seeing his terror, Carver turned to his right so he could see Finder with his left eye, and stepped forward to place a hoof on the colt’s shoulder.

“Hang in there, buddy. We stick together, we’ll be fine.” Smiling around the sword he held in his teeth, he patted Finder’s forehead. “Now, you ready to do this?”

It took a second, but Finder was eventually able to give Carver a nervous nod. “Good,” Carver said, stepping back. “Because the griffons will be—!”

A furious screech, coupled with several hundred pounds of force, cut off Carver's words. Inches from Finder’s face, a massive griffon smashed through the window, tackling Carver beneath its steel armor and sharpened claws. Carver screamed in shock as he was blindsided and sent tumbling into the room, the griffon trying to rip off his armor with its talons. The stallion squirmed and thrashed, trying to keep his neck out of reach of the griffon’s beak.

“CARVER!” Finder screamed. Before any of the other ponies in the room could react, Finder kicked off the wall, opening his wings to propel him onto the griffon’s back. Wrapping his forelegs around the griffon’s neck, Finder pulled back as hard as he could. The griffon choked and missed driving his beak through Carver’s throat by little more than an inch. The downed stallion yelped as he felt the griffon’s beak slice across his skin on his neck, carving a shallow fleshwound that trickled blood through his coat.

Summer snatched up her sword from where it lay on the ground and dove towards the griffon Finder was trying to strangle. Swinging her blade, she slashed at the griffon’s arm, but her sword was stopped by its armor. Still, the blow forced it back, allowing Carver time to roll away from the griffon and get back to his hooves.

Before he could make a move, however, more griffons began to pour through the window. Carver, Summer, and Finder each found themselves fighting a griffon, while Dawn quickly drew a shortsword from her armor and stormed forward. Shouting, she drove it through the chest of the griffon whose neck Finder was clinging onto. A wet gurgle escaped the hybrid’s beak as it’s body stiffened in shock. With a grunt, Dawn pulled back on her sword, spiralling out of the attack to deliver another slash to the griffon’s neck. The blade cleaved straight through, and Finder felt the tip whisk across his body, uncomfortably close to his nethers.

The head Finder was hanging onto fell to the ground, bringing the panting colt with it. Letting go of the head, he looked at the faint red line cut across his abdomen. “Heh... cutting it c-close there, Dawn?”

Dawn offered Finder a saccharine smile. “If I wanted to geld you, I would have,” she said, turning back to the fight. Panting, Finder unsheathed his sword and charged towards Carver, trying to help him out against the much larger griffon he was squaring off against.

Carver swung his sword wildly, panting from exertion and trying to keep the griffon away from his blind side. The griffon lunged to Carver’s right, trying to keep itself in the relative safety of the stallion’s blind spot. Carver, well aware of the hybrid’s intent kept his left eye on the beast at all costs, and the two ended up spinning in a deadly dance as the griffon tried to get a good angle of attack. As it lunged forward with a terrible snap of its beak and a swish of its claws, Finder let out a shout and drove his gladius into the hybrid’s hind leg.

The griffon let out an ear peircing screech and whirled around to face his new attacker. Carver took the opportunity to grunt and swing his neck around, driving the edge of his blade into and through the griffon’s throat. Blood and meat split apart with a snickt and a splatter, and only the dull crunch of bone stopped Carver’s weapon. The corpse spasmed once, then dropped to the ground. When Carver ripped his sword free from its neck, the head flopped loosely, clinging onto its shoulders by only a few inches of meat.

“Good one, Finder!” Carver shouted, lightly hitting the colt on the helmet with a hoof. Hearing the screeching of more griffons outside, he tightened his grip around the sword. “Think you can do that again?”

Finder nodded, feeling proud. “They won’t even see me!”

A thick shower of hot blood sprayed over Carver and Finder, causing both to curse and recoil. Through the cacophonous screams of fighting all around them, they managed to pick out Summer’s victorious yell as her opponent toppled over, missing most of the left half of his body. Blood ran in thick rivulets down her sword, and most of the right side of her body was plastered a thick red. Her early rage had twisted into triumphant shouts as she finally got the chance to loose her fury on the griffons. “Having fun yet, boys?” she yelled in a voice that had Finder worrying for her sanity.

Carver grimaced as he wiped the blood from his armor. “Sweet Mobius, Summer, that was bucking brutal!”

“You know what they say about Nimbus, right?” Summer asked. Before she, Carver, or Finder could give an answer, another griffon approached her from behind. As it drove it’s beak down to her neck, the Nimban mare spun on her hooves and swung her sword up to catch it. There was a splitting crack as the hybrid’s beak shattered, but before it could so much as scream, Summer slammed her bladed wing through its larynx and pulled downwards. A gruesomely jagged cut ripped open from the griffon’s throat to its sternum, spurting blood as the hybrid choked out its last breath. Shrugging her wing, Summer knocked the body away and looked back to her friends. “When it rains, it pours.”

Finder didn’t need to see any more evidence to know that she wasn’t talking about actual rain.

Another griffon flew to the window and crouched in the frame, its large talons scraping against cloudstone on either side. Finder gulped and stepped back as the beast looked directly at him. It wasn’t like any of the griffons from before; instead of steel armor adorned with simple ridges, this griffon’s armor was covered in long, black spikes of steel and twisted metal. Almost every plate of its armor, from the shoulders to the bracers and all the way down its spine, were covered in the cruel spikes. The beast’s eyes, orange like the vicious flames that consumed the buildings around them, locked with Pathfinders. It sucked in a breath before letting loose a furious screech and lunging at the young pegasus.

Finder heard a pitiful scream as the griffon slammed its spiked shoulder into his chest and some part of him realized it was his own voice. The world spun all around him, but before he could gain his bearings, his skull cracked hard against the opposite wall. He struggled to breathe and his vision swam red before him, but when he put a hoof to his chest and it didn’t come away warm and stinking of copper, he knew that his armor had spared him a rather violent death. Still, the overlapping scales from the lorica squamata had been nearly pierced by the griffon’s spikes, and even now they stuck out awkwardly from where he’d almost been impaled.

The griffon took little time in noticing that Finder was still alive, and as it bounded closer, Finder got the chance to truly look at its terror. The griffon was taller than any other griffon he had seen, and his beak look like it had been marked by some sort of brand long ago. The spikes along his armor were all covered in blood, and so too were his beak and talons; with some sort of abject horror, Finder noticed that the griffon didn’t carry a weapon. It apparently liked to fight more with its armor and its natural weapons than with any blade.

Before the griffon could pounce on Finder and rip his neck open with its cruelly hooked beak, Carver slammed into its side, wings propelling him into the beast with a metallic crash. The sudden force of the hefty pony caused the griffon to stumble and trip to the side, taking Carver with him. One of its armor spikes was loosely lodged in the plating of Carver’s armor, and Finder realized that Carver had intentionally slammed into him back-first so that his armor would deflect the spikes and keep him from impaling himself. As the griffon tumbled to the ground, Summer too leapt after them, her wings snapping open and helping her cover the remaining distance to the beast.

But the griffon was too quick for Summer to land a killing blow while it was down. Instead, it rolled to the side and kicked Carver off, launching the stallion directly at Summer and forcing her to abandon her attack. Spinning out of the roll and firmly planting its feet underneath itself, the spiked griffon struck out with a claw at Summer’s face. The mare blinked and pulled back, but not before receiving a painful rake across her muzzle, leaving three red lines that spewed blood into her once-white coat, one talon going so far down as to expose the bone of her skull. It left Summer reeling, but was hardly enough to keep her out of the fight. With a roar, she charged back in, swinging her gladius at the griffon yet again.

As the griffon sidestepped Summer’s strikes and retaliated with jabs and pecks of its own, Carver groggily climbed to his hooves. Shaking the stars out of his head, he trotted forward, managing a quick canter by the time he reached the griffon. He swung his sword down on the griffon’s side, but the hybrid caught the movement out of the corner of its keen eagle eyes and juked to the side, lashing its arm out at an awkward angle. Carver’s sword lodged between two shoulder spikes, and the griffon twisted its arm, tearing the gladius away from the stallion and forcing him to hop back out of range of the griffon’s armor spikes.

Finder’s vision slowly began to return as he watched his friends fight. They were on either side of the spiked griffon now, trying to gain some opening past its defenses. It wisely kept Carver away from his sword, and continually lashed out at Summer whenever she moved to attack. On the right side, Dawn had wandered away from her triage corner and was eyeing the griffon, trying to find an opening where she could quench her blade in hybrid blood. Stumbling to his hooves, Finder tripped and fell into the side of a damaged bookshelf. The already damaged wood groaned and creaked as it fell to the floor, flooding the room with early dawn light from the window it had concealed.

The window was open.

Finder looked back at his friends, and the words of his dream echoed through his skull. They made him cringe, and he flattened his ears against his head, not wanting to hear them. But still they rattled on, shaking his very being all the way to the core.

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

The window was open, and the building was being overrun. If there was a chance to fly and head straight for Altus, this would be it. He could slip out of Nimbus in the relative darkness and fly all the way back to the western coast of Dioda. He’d find his dad and his mom again, and they’d hold him and everything would be alright. And then Longbow would come back because he ran like he told him to, and everything would be better again. Everything would be fine.

But then he remembered what Carver’s corpse had told him in his dream. “I stuck my neck out for you so you could join the Legion, colt. And what did you do to show your thanks? You cut my eye out and then left me to die when the griffons came.” The one glowing, red eye in Carver’s face narrowed. “I thought we were friends.”

“We are friends,” Finder mewled to himself. Dawn had joined the fray against the griffon, trying to jab at its side with her shortsword, but it was simply too fast. Blocking a swing from Summer with a steel plate on its forearm, it swung its left arm around and struck Dawn with a spiked backhand. The mare sputtered from the contact, spraying blood from her smashed lips and broken nose, before slamming into the closed door, dazed.

“And we thought you were our friend, too,” the voice of Summer hissed as she approached Finder with the mutilated corpse of Dawn at her side. “But first chance you got, you ran. You’re a runner, Finder. You don’t face fear; you run from it.” At her side, the corpse of Dawn growled disapprovingly through the hole torn through her neck.

Finder thrashed, holding his head between his hooves as he fought down his own panic. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be a soldier. He didn’t want to die. Whimpering, he looked up again at the open window.

It would be so easy.

“No!” Finder screamed. Quickly, almost madly, Finder grabbed his sword and charged the griffon. “I’m not running! I’m not a coward!” With a small hop, Finder opened his wings and twisted in the air, landing on his back three feet from the griffon as a bladed wing swung over his head. With a feral cry, Finder snapped his wings open as wide as he could as his momentum carried him on his back underneath the towering griffon. The sharp scales along his wings clipped the griffon’s tendons in his ankles and wrists, and with a yell, the brute went down. As Finder slid out the other side and backed into a wall, he watched as Summer leapt on the flailing griffon’s exposed chest and drove her sword through its soft underbelly, carving him apart like a butcher.

Carver turned and hoisted Finder to his hooves, slapping him on the back for a job well done. Panting, he stepped aside and retrieved his sword from where it lay on the ground. Finder watched him, a slow smile curling onto his lips at the prospect that his friends had lived.

A loud crash made him jump and stood his coat on end as Finder whirled around.

The door exploded off its hinges with a sound like the snap of a breaking bough, careening into the room in shattered pieces under the influence of a griffon warhammer. One of the heavy planks, torn free of the others, took Finder square in the chest, sending him flying backwards and knocking the air from his lungs. At least half of the door slammed into Dawn, swatting her off her hooves with a startled shout from the mare. She tried to scramble to her hooves, but one of the heavy planks pinned her twisted wing to the ground. Dawn struggled to move, only to cry out from the pain in her crippled wing.

“Finder!” Carver yelled, jumping over to the colt to make sure he wasn’t hurt. His shout took Summer’s attention away from the griffon she’d killed and the door, and she looked up, wiping a bloody forehoof across her bloody face. Finder wheezed, trying to choke out a warning for them to help Dawn, but his words were lost to coughs and pants. Neither of his two friends noticed the griffon that charged through the doorway, bloodied warhammer clutched in it’s scaled hand. It took only a moment for the hybrid to notice the trapped mare, and it’s red tongue flicked across it’s cracked beak as it tossed the warhammer to the floor.

“Dawn!” Finder managed to cough, trying to stand. “Dawn!!”

But it was too late. The griffon leapt at the flailing mare and slammed her onto her back with a bloodied hand. The wet, sickening pop of Dawn’s wing tearing out of its socket as the griffon twisted her to the ground seemed to cut out all the noise from the rest of the battle. Screaming, Dawn writhed in agony only for the griffon to press its talons down on her shoulder and pin her in the open. By the time Carver and Summer turned, the screaming had abruptly stopped.

The orange fur around Dawn’s neck was streaked red, the orange giving way to crimson like grass in a wildfire. With a tug and a couple turns of its head, the griffon wrenched its beak from the gurgling tear in her throat. Strips of meat torn from the length of her neck—Dawn’s flesh— hung from the griffon’s teeth, trailing blood onto the poor mare’s spasming body. Eyes smug and fearless, the Griffon turned to Finder. The hybrid chewed once, twice, three times, then swallowed the strips whole, allowing himself a satisfied lick of his beak.

“DAWN!!” Summer screeched. She didn’t even bother to pull her sword from the other griffon’s body. Instead, she hurtled herself, a screaming mess of blood and tears, directly at the griffon’s neck. It didn’t even have time to gasp before Summer’s armored shoulder crushed its windpipe. The two of them tumbled back into the corner of the room, Summer coming out on top. The griffon tried to breathe, tried to struggle, but the Nimban mare locked her hooves together and piledrived them down on its temple once, twice, three times. Each savage blow was accompanied by a crack of bone and beak and the anguished mare’s furious screams. The griffon was dead by the second blow; the third broke open its skull, staining Summer’s forehooves with what was inside.

Hooking his forelegs under Finder’s armpits, Carver hauled him back up. The two of them nearly tripped over each other’s legs as they scrambled to Dawn. Finder reached her first, and with a quick flick of his hoof, he knocked his galea off of his head and bent down over the mare. “Dawn! Dawn! Dawn!!”

The orange mare was drowning in her own blood. It ran crimson, thick and bubbling, from the gash in her neck. Crimson ran from both corners of her mouth, and her chest spasmed as her body went into shock. Green eyes turned to glassy marbles, staring straight at the cloudstone ceiling, unseeing, unblinking.

“Summer!” Carver shouted, pressing his hooves against Dawn’s side to do something... anything! “Summer! We need you! She’s... s-she’s dying!!”

The cream mare was over in a flash. “Dawn!” she shouted, clacking her hooves together over the mare’s eyes. “Dawn! Stay with me, girl, stay with me!” The medic was shaking violently as she reached into her saddlebags and drew out a hooful of gauze wrap and bandages. Sweat poured down her head as she frantically applied them to the gaping wound in her foalhood friend’s neck, trying desperately to staunch the bleeding.

“Legionaries!” Skyhammer bellowed from the next room over. “Cover the entrances! We’ve got more coming in!”

Carver and Finder glanced between each other, then back to Summer and Dawn. Summer didn’t even move.

With an uncoordinated shove, Carver led Finder back to the window while another pair of legionaries moved in from somewhere in the office to cover the door.

Dawn coughed, spraying blood directly into Summer’s face, but the mare didn’t blink as it mingled with her tears. Summer kept her hooves pressed firmly over the bandages, willing to do some good, praying. It wasn’t more than a moment before the warm wetness of Dawn’s blood met her hooves. Pulling them away, Summer cursed, breath catching in her throat at the sight of the soaked bandages. Desperately, she reached over to her medical supplies. More bandages, rags, anything to stop it.

“Dawn, Dawn, stay with me!” Summer pleaded, her tears dripping onto Dawn’s pallid forehead. “R-remember Stratopolis? We’re gonna go there after this. You’re gonna see the plays in the Imperial Theater. Please…please stay with me…”

“Front door! Front door!” Skyhammer bellowed from around the corner. Soon enough, his armor-clad figure backpedaled into Finder’s sight. His centurion’s armor was stained with rapidly drying blood and hide, and his left wingblade was missing three of its scales. The collar of his armor was bent and crumpled, complete with the notch from a sword that had just barely been stopped from cutting through his neck. His face was a mess of rending scratches and cuts. The side of his face had been torn away so that Finder could see the bloodied teeth resting in his jaws. Despite that, the centurion looked as furious as ever, seemingly unimpaired by fact that he would never look right again.

His eyes scanned the room, looking for soldiers to move to the front. After glancing over the various legionaries in defensive positions, they settled on Summer and Dawn. “Celsus!” Skyhammer yelled, “Get to the front door! We need everypony we can spare there! They’re breaking through!”

Summer ignored him. Crying and gritting her teeth, she changed the bandages again and placed a third set in their place. The bags attached to her armor were already half emptied. “Hang with me, Dawn!” the mare choked out between gasping breaths. “Please! Please please please please please...”

“She’s dead, Celsus!” the centurion shouted. “You’re wasting supplies that can save others! Ponies are dying while you just sit there! Now move your fucking flank to this fucking door!”

“She’s not dead!” Summer wailed, pressing down on Dawn’s neck to try and stop the bleeding. “She’s not dead! She isn’t! She can’t be!”

From the window, Finder and Carver could only watch in horror and despair as the cream-coated medic cried harder and harder onto the still corpse of their friend.

“By the fucking gods and all that is holy in this shitstain of a city, Celsus, get your ass out here, now!” Skyhammer took a few steps forward, pointing his sword at the medic. “She’s meat, Summer! Put your blade where it matters.”

“She’s not meat!” Summer screamed. Kicking off of the ground, she spun her bladed wings out at Skyhammer. The centurion flinched back, but not far enough to avoid getting slashed across the muzzle. “She’s a pony! She’s my friend! And some fucking bastard just ripped out her throat like she was nothing more than livestock!”

The centurion tripped backwards, staggering from his latest wound. Cursing, he flared his wings for balance as the blood poured from his face. “You’re dead, Celsus!” His back slammed against something hard, giving him enough time to properly glower at the medic. “That’s grounds for treason! The Emperor will have you cruci—!”

The griffon Skyhammer had stumbled against drew back its talons, and in one slick movement, tore his throat out lengthwise, soft flesh rending like butter under sharpened talons.

With a sadistic snarl, the hulking griffon tossed Skyhammer’s corpse aside, the centurion’s open neck immediately decorating the wall with crimson paint. Crouching low, the griffon snarled at Summer, who was still standing in the open with her wings out in shock. Before it could advance against the stunned mare, Carver bounded over and slashed at its face with a bladed wing. The brute stumbled back, bleeding lightly through a gap in its feathers, and struck out with talons still dripping centurion blood. Flaring his wings, Carver was barely able to reverse his momentum and land a few steps back.

Roaring, the griffon tore a heavy maul off of its armored back and brought the weapon to bear against Carver. Cursing, the stallion hugged himself and rolled to the side, feeling the ground shake as the maul smashed into the cloudstone right where his head used to be. “Fuck!” the stallion shouted, stumbling as he rose to his hooves. Grabbing his sword, he tried to jab at the griffon, but was quickly parried by the griffon’s bladed wing. With ungodly strength, the griffon hoisted the maul off of the smashed cloudstone, gave it a casual flick with his wrist, and swung it directly into Carver’s side.

The blow against his armor sent Carver spinning off further into the room, passing a few inches from Summer’s face, yet the mare didn’t move. She only watched the griffon with wide eyes, seemingly rooted to the ground. As Carver lay on the ground, dazed, the griffon recollected its maul in two hands and stalked towards the petrified mare, grinning.

With Carver struggling to breathe through crumpled armor and Summer in shock, a deep dread settled over Finder as he realized he needed to act. He needed to act. His sword was partially sheathed at his side, but he was too far away from the griffon to actually draw the weapon and charge before it could crush Summer’s head. Instead, he bit down on the hilt of one of his daggers and drew it. Spinning the weapon around with his tongue, the colt got the angle he wanted and reared onto his hindlegs. With a desperate grunt and a twist of his neck, he threw the dagger at the advancing griffon as it went to raise its maul.

Finder had only briefly thrown daggers behind his barracks with Carver and Windshear when he was still in camp, but some stroke of luck seemed to guide the wobbling blade as it wheeled through the air. With a solid snickt, the weapon struck the griffon’s forearm, sinking into the flesh just above its left hand. With a howl, the griffon clumsily dropped the maul and clutched at the knife sticking out of its arm.

While the griffon recoiled, Carver finally managed to stand up, gingerly rubbing the crumpled right side of his armor with a hoof. Hissing with pain, he managed to collect his sword and leap at the griffon, opening his wings for distance as he soared over Summer’s head. With a painful shout, he knocked the griffon back two steps and jabbed his gladius right into the hybrid’s chest. He was rewarded with a spray of blood and the strangled screaming of the monstrosity on the other end of the sword. He kicked away the body, only for his eyes to widen at what he saw in the other room.

“More are coming!” he shouted, scrambling backwards. “They’re coming! We need to get out of this place, now!”

“Skyhammer?!” Finder squawked, looking at the body slumped against the wall. “Skyhammer’s dead! What do we do?!”

Finder’s cries of dismay were soon picked up by the remaining legionaries in the building, even as they fought for their lives. “Skyhammer’s dead!” one shouted, his voice echoing around the small room. “The centurion’s down!” cried another. “Gods, fly! Fly, fly, fly!”

They frenzied, pegasi taking flight for the nearest windows. With a growl, Carver turned and slammed his hoof against the wall. “Don’t go yet! Fly together! They’ll pick you off one by one if you just run for it!” His words were largely ignored by the pegasi present, and soon the screaming intensified from outside. Some, however, paused what they were doing to fall back to Carver’s position, quickly trying to secure the entrances to the rooms that the griffon’s were moving in from.

“What do we do?!” one of the soldiers screamed. A griffon’s sword jabbed out at him from one of the adjacent rooms, and he barely managed to hook a wing under the weapon and push it aside for a sword thrust. He pulled the weapon back red and turned to Carver, his eyes desperately searching for some sort of leadership.

Gulping, Carver quickly galloped into the middle of the throng of soldiers gathering in the room. Using his wing, he pointed to the window he had been covering earlier. “Everypony, we leave through that window and fly low through the city! When we get to the palace, we regroup there and try to find some other century to hook onto! Our centurion may have fallen, but his orders saved us more than once! Are we going to honor his memory by standing and fighting, or are we going to make his death for nothing?!”

Cheers went up from the pegasi who were able to cheer; the others grunted but immediately went back to defending the doors, fighting and dying for every precious second.

“Go!” Carver screamed, ordering them onwards with a jerk of his head. “Eyes to the skies! Don’t let them catch you by surprise!” As his fellow soldiers filed out of the window and took wing, the stallion turned to Summer and scooped the mare up with a wing, draping her across his back. Their armored bodies clanked together with the sound of iron against iron, yet Summer didn’t move. Her eyes continued to stare blankly into the void in front of her, and her limbs hung loosely by her sides. Growling, Carver hobbled over to the window and launched himself out of it, his forelegs quickly wrapping around Summer’s as he slowly gained altitude and began to turn toward the city center. “Come on, Finder!” he called over his shoulder. “Come on!”

Finder galloped to the windowsill, but paused and looked back. The large forms of griffons were moving through the doorway, yet his eyes only saw Dawn’s crumpled and mutilated body lying in a thick pool of coagulating blood. He wanted to puke; he wanted to cry. Gods, her eyes were still open!

But no matter how badly he wanted to stop and shut them, he simply couldn’t. With a silent cry, the colt launched himself out the window with griffons snapping their beaks right behind him. Pumping his wings, he somehow found the strength to fly low and fast, regrouping with Carver and the rest of the survivors from Skyhammer’s platoon; hardly more than a dozen ponies. He pulled up along Carver’s blindside and flew in tandem with the blonde stallion, noting the tears he was trying to blink back and the distinct lack of any sort of emotion from the mare draped over his shoulders.

Overhead, a group of three cohorts spearheaded by a small formation of ponies flying in a wedge shape swiftly descended over the forum, immediately becoming tangled with the griffons occupying the area. Had they arrived five minutes sooner, Finder realized, Skyhammer would still be alive. Dawn would still be alive. Immediately, he thought back to what Summer had told him before the griffons reached the forum. He remembered Dawn’s disappointed sigh when he turned away, not saying anything. He remembered clearly what he had wanted to say to her when it was all over and they could relax by the fireside, just the two of them, while the moon glowed sweet and bright overhead.

His vision became bleary and his face felt wet and warm, but it still took the colt a second to realize that it was because of his tears, not because of the blood clinging to the fur.

---

“You doing alright, kid?” Rain asked, the wind carrying her rough voice back along the flying wedge to where Longbow trailed on the right side.

“Kid, ma’am?” Longbow shouted back, struggling to be heard over the roaring of the wind in his ears and the screaming of the battle below. “You’re younger than me! Hell, half of you look younger than me!”

“Thorn, Haze, and I are eighteen,” Rain responded, and she flashed Longbow a challenging look. “But we’re ten times the fighter you are. Besides, you’re the newest, so you’re the Rainstorm’s kid.”

Haze, who was flying several feet in front of Longbow’s left side, slackened his pace just enough to flash the newest recruit a smile. “Yeah, thanks for taking that from me, Kid.”

Longbow frowned. “You can have it back if you like.”

“What, do you think I actually liked it?” Haze scoffed. “Get used to it, man. Your name’s Kid now for as much as I care.” He winked, then accelerated back into his position just to the right of Thorn’s flank.

“Alright, fillies,” Rain shouted from her lead position, “looks like we’ve got griffons crawling all over the Forum. Let’s say we give ‘em a true Nimban greeting, hm?”

The rest of the Rainstorm shouted their approval, but Longbow only gulped and surveyed the city below him. Sure, he’d been with the Eighth at the front, and yes he’d killed quite a few griffons with his bow, but he hadn’t been fighting in Hengstead itself. The walls and buildings of the city were constricting, so he had the uncomfortable feeling he’d end up getting a lot closer to the griffons than he’d like. He flipped his head around and observed the three cohorts following the Rainstorm. At least he’d have numbers backing him up, if somehow the sheer skill and lethality of the Rainstorm wasn’t enough.

“Hah! The little greenwings are running!” the blue stallion known as Red exclaimed from the opposite edge of the vee, emphatically waving a hoof towards the buildings below. Sure enough, Longbow could see scattered pegasi bursting out of the windows of the various Forum buildings and offices and flying for their lives away from the fighting. Most of them scattered in every which way and were picked off by griffon tandems swooping down from above. Another, smaller group was struggling to maintain cohesion as it flew towards the center of the city. Even Longbow felt veteran’s pride as he realized that if the damned recruits had maintained that level of cohesion inside the buildings they would’ve been able to repulse the griffon assault. Now they were dying because they were too stupid and jittery to fight as one.

“Stratopolis is sending them over too soft,” Thorn commented, eyes narrowing on a particularly scrawny runt trying to catch up with the main body of retreating greenwings. “Freaking small fries. This is a veteran’s war, not an afternoon stroll.”

“Enough,” Downburst ordered, and the Rainstorm immediately fell silent. Looking to Rain, he began marking out buildings with a hoof. “I’ll take my half and take care of the legatus’ office. Go and clear that praetor’s study; there are documents in there I don’t want the griffons getting their claws on. Our three cohorts will provide top cover and push the griffons back out of Nimbus and leave their feathery corpses rotting along our walls.”

Rain nodded. “Alright, you heard the stallion!” she screamed over the noise of the battle, flying upwards and spinning in place so she was facing the legionaries behind her. “Centurions Caelum, Malleum, and Saber, take your three cohorts and hit the griffons with everything you’ve got! Try to pincer them and annihilate ‘em, then drive the survivors back to the walls!”

At her command, the three cohorts climbed and diverged, splitting into three prongs of attack with the cohorts on the edge wheeling out to strike from the sides while the center moved forward. As they passed overhead, Longbow had to pump his wings even harder to maintain lift in their turbulence. Ahead, the pegasi of Nimbus picked up speed and began to slam into the main swirling mass of griffons with deadly force, turning the sky into a deadly maelstrom of blood and death.

“Alright Rainstorm, while they’re taking most of the heat, let’s go cut a few griffon sons of bitches, right?” Rain called out, eyeing her soldiers with a borderline manic grin on her face.

“Ma’am!” the Rainstorm answered as a motley whole, ranging from Downburst’s quiet affirmation to Red’s almost primal screech. Longbow, for his part, joined in half-heartedly, still trying to get used to the idea of companionship with the ponies around him.

Rain turned her head and examined Longbow closely. “Alright, Kid, you ready to see how the Rainstorm fights?”

Longbow forced a confident nod, despite the anxiety flowing through his veins.

“Good. You’re providing backup for Thorn and Haze and me. Downburst’s taking Red and Stonewall with him. Between the three of them, I don’t think anything’s gonna be left standing.”

Longbow took one glance at the blue stallion who was practically frothing at the mouth, and knew somewhere inside him that that Rain was right.

“Alright, Kid, looks like you get to fly with us,” Thorn said from her place in the wing. She flashed Longbow a smile that unsettled him. “Think you can keep up?”

“I’ll certainly try my best,” Longbow answered, trying to sound confident.

Thorn just laughed. “Right. Well, maybe we’ll leave some for you. Just remember, you may be our Kid, but you ain’t a real member of the Rainstorm until you’ve got sixteen griffon kills to your name. Got it?”

Longbow nodded, then slightly smiled. “Well, I already killed seven in Hengstead. Halfway there, then?”

Haze chuckled. “Nice try, but unless the boss lady sees it, it doesn’t count. Start over.”

Longbow frowned, but Rain shook her head. “Aww, don’t worry about it, Kid. At least yours’ll be easy to pick out. None of us kill with arrows.”

Then, pumping her wings, Rain accelerated and her half of the Rainstorm peeled away from Downburst’s trio. With a hollering whoop, the legate twisted her wings and descended in a tight spiral through the smoky haze filling the early morning skies. Behind her, Haze and Thorn mirrored her actions, while Longbow simply tucked his wings and dove. The last thing an archer needed was to come out of a dizzying spiral and fire a shot while trying to see straight.

With a few adjustments to her wings’ trim, Rain slipped through the air towards one of the larger windows in the praetor’s office. The rest of her squad aligned themselves on her tail, with Longbow easing up for some extra distance so that the first three in would be able to clear a firing zone for him. Tucking their wings against their sides, the four pegasi sped towards the window at breakneck speed.

A griffon wearing horribly spiked armor hopped onto the windowsill from within the building, ready to take flight after the fleeing greenwings, when Iron Rain’s primal screech pointed its head skywards. Coiling her limbs against her body, Rain flicked her tail and flipped in a sickening somersault towards the griffon. She must’ve spun nearly a half dozen times before she struck out with her rear hooves, bucking into and through the griffon’s exposed face as her momentum smashed her through her opponent. The hybrid could scarcely shriek as its beak was forced through the back of its skull and Rain’s armored body piledrived its corpse into the ground just inside the building.

The other griffons in the room flinched and scrambled back at the screaming mare that had suddenly and violently entered the building, and before they could even so much as move towards her, Thorn and Haze burst through the window, one after the other. The two pegasi found targets at opposite ends of the room, and with deadly use of their speed and wingblades, dropped two cloven heads onto the floor. The griffon bodies fell amongst the bodies of other fallen griffons and Cirrans in the room, adding more red to the overwhelming scarlet wash.

Then Longbow burst through the window. Without a moment’s hesitation, his bow slid off of his back and into the crook of his left fetlock, catching onto the teeth around the edge of the iron anklet he wore. His right wing twisted back and flicked out an arrow from his quiver, sending the wooden shaft into the air. A practiced and perfected reflex in his right foreleg allowed him to snag the arrow by the feathered shaft in the grip of another iron anklet, knock the arrow to the drawstring, and pull. He quickly found a griffon rushing towards Rain’s blindside, and without even blinking he flicked his right fetlock, loosing the arrow right towards the beast’s neck.

All this filled the span of barely a second, and with a shrill whistle, the arrow sliced through the air and tore through the griffon’s throat. Blood spurted out of both ends of the shaft, as the arrow had gone in one side with enough force to barely punch through the armor on the other. The hybrid dropped its sword and clutched feebly at the arrow in its neck before it toppled and fell. It was dead by the time it hit the floor, but already Longbow had flipped another arrow into the air and was sighting a different target.

As fast as he was, however, Rain was faster. Kicking off of the griffon she’d downed coming through the window, she rammed her shoulder into the nearest hybrid, knocking him backwards. As the griffon struggled to regain its footing, Iron spun and slashed once with her wingblades to drive it back, then used her newly-earned space to tear her zweihoofer from its groove in her armor. The blade swung through the air with a frightening power, seemingly heralding death by its mere presence. Her unfortunate opponent tried ducking and weaving out of the way, but eventually was forced to try and block the weapon with his own sword. There was a metallic thwink and a snap, and Rain’s sword cleaved straight through the griffon’s sword, armor, and neck, bursting out of the other side in a shower of crimson.

Along the right side of the room, Thorn darted in and out of a griffon’s reach, delivering painful and precise slashes to any inch of its exposed body she could reach with her incredibly short sword. Longbow turned his bow towards her target, waiting for an opening while Thorn fought with her dagger—hell, it wasn’t even a dagger as much as it was a stiletto!—and poked grisly and deep holes in her opponent.

Enraged, the griffon tried swatting her blade aside with the bracers on his arm while bringing his longsword to bear, but Thorn was far too fast. Instead of ducking or backing up, the mare darted forward and planted the stiletto deep in the griffon’s gut. With a ferocious cry, the mare arched her back and flipped the griffon over her head, leaving the hybrid flailing in midair as he plummeted towards the ground. There was another whistle and a snickt, and Longbow made sure that the griffon never felt the cloudstone.

As Longbow nocked another arrow to his namesake weapon, he shifted to face left, where Haze was fending off two enormous griffons, each nearly twice his size. Where the griffons fought with a greataxe and a warhammer, Haze was keeping pace with his smaller gladius. His wingblades parried glancing blows and his agility kept him out of reach of their heavier weapons, giving him plenty of opportunities to deliver slashes to their exposed hides. Ducking under a heavy thud from the warhammer and a hissing whirl of the greataxe, he rolled underneath one griffon and slashed his wingblades as he passed. The griffon let out a high-pitched screech and dropped to its knees, its warhammer falling uselessly to the ground as his hands went to clutch its nethers.

Tumbling out the other side, Haze immediately kicked off the ground with his rear legs and went rocketing backwards, spinning completely over the howling griffon’s head and colliding with the griffon wielding a greataxe. The beast grunted and dropped the weapon, immediately pulling out a dagger and trying to drive it into Haze’s face as the pegasus clung onto its back, reaching his forehooves around its neck and trying to suffocate it. Longbow, meanwhile, took the opportunity to silence the crying griffon and put it out of its misery.

As he tried to line up a shot against the griffon Haze was strangling, however, it suddenly broke free and tossed Haze into Longbow’s sights. The archer immediately loosened his grip on the arrow and took a step back. Being violently flung from the hybrid’s back hardly fazed Haze at all. Instead, the athletic pegasus spun in midair and, with a mighty flap of his wings, charged his opponent, sword held high, while the griffon readied a devastating counter. But instead of meeting the griffon head on, Haze jumped to the side at the last possible second, hopping over the griffon’s sword with hardly an inch to spare. Spreading his wings, he stabilized himself as his hooves made contact with the nearby wall... then began to run along the wall, looking no different from the normal ponies who rationally chose to run on the ground. Using the corner to change angles, Haze whirled above the griffon’s head and, with a final twist, launched his body at its turned neck. His momentum and his heavy armor gave him the leverage he needed to break the beast’s neck with a solid crunch as the two of them fell to the ground.

A screech in Longbow’s ear gave him a split second’s warning before he felt talons clutching at his throat. Crying out in alarm, Longbow jerked his head back and away from the griffon’s talons and rammed his helmet into the hybrid’s beak, earning a little room for his efforts. It was all the archer needed to twist and strike the griffon with the top of his composite longbow, grunting as he put all the force he could into the blow. The griffon hissed and stepped backwards to try and regroup, but it was the worst thing it could’ve done against an archer. Longbow’s wing and hoof whirled in a blur of brown feathers and fur, and a loosed arrow pinned the griffon to the nearby wall, the fletched shaft jutting from its neck.

“Good one!” Rain shouted from where she was fighting one of the big griffons with the spiked plates—the oathsworn, if Longbow recalled from his time at the front. With a windmilling whirl of her zweihoofer, she cleaved the heavy griffon weapon clean through griffon armor, catching the blade in her opponent’s ribcage. The oathsworn slashed at the legate’s face even in its death throes, managing to score a shallow hit across Rain’s muzzle that left her reeling.

As the oathsworn’s body hit the floor, Longbow realized the room was quiet save for the noise of fighting outside. Clipping an arrow to the drawstring by the notch in the back, Longbow hopped into a hover and floated over to Rain. He offered her a hoof, but the proud mare simply ignored it and climbed to her hooves herself, dabbing at the scratch across her face. “That’ll scar,” she grumbled to herself, wincing with each prod of her hoof.

“Rain, please,” Haze said, trotting over and wiping the blood out of his face, “if you pick up any more, we’re likely to mistake you for a stallion.”

The mare’s response was to toss a bloodied griffon dagger at him, of which Longbow barely ducked out of the way. Haze simply flicked his wing and caught it with amazing speed and precision between the guard and lock scales of his left wingblade and tossed it aside. Longbow’s eyes widened, and he blinked in disbelief. “Woah, how’d you do that?”

Haze simply shrugged. “Don’t rightly know. When I get in the heat of battle I just... get a rush of adrenaline that makes me faster. Move faster, strike faster, harder to hit. Kind of a funny feeling, actually.” Then he turned to Thorn, and the two of them shared a few words in the brief moment of respite they’d earned for clearing the office.

Longbow shrugged, then smiled at the legate. “Well, don’t worry about what he says, ma’am, I think you look fine.”

“Scars are sexy in Nimbus, Kid,” Rain quipped, flashing a smile at Longbow. Then she looked around the room, noting the various dead griffons sprouting arrows from their necks. “Throat shots, eh? Brutal, if you ask me. I think you and Red’ll get along just fine.”

Haze made an incredulous snort. “Says the mare swinging around a griffon zweihander she stole from a dead hybrid?”

“I didn’t steal it, I merely put it to work after relieving its previous owner from his head,” Rain shot back before returning her attention to Longbow. “Good aiming there, Kid.”

The Altus native simply shrugged. “I killed four.”

“Then you’re a quarter of the way there.” The mare flashed another unsettling smile and moved towards Thorn and Haze. “Come on, guys, check upstairs for any more bastards. Shout for help if you can’t handle it yourselves.”

The two soldiers nodded and immediately sprinted to the building’s foyer. They spread their wings in unison and launched upwards, twirling around each other before landing on the second floor balcony and moving out of sight.

Rain simply chuckled and shook her head. “Pair of lovebirds, they are. I can at least count on them to handle themselves. I tell you what, one ain’t dying while the other’s still alive.”

Longbow nodded and went around to try and recover some of his arrows from the fallen griffons. Rain, meanwhile, simply prowled around the room, poking at a body with her sword every once in a while. While Longbow was trying to pull an arrow from the griffon he’d impaled to the wall, he heard Rain sigh despondently from somewhere further in the room. Turning away, he saw her staring down at an orange corpse lying in a pool of darkening blood. Abandoning the arrow, Longbow trotted to her side. He immediately felt his stomach backflip at what he saw.

It was an orange mare wearing the signature armor of the field medics, but with her throat violently torn open. Strands of bloodied meat hung from the hole in her neck, the blood already drying into a brown crust. Her vacant, glassy eyes stared at the ceiling in a mixture of surprise and fear. One wing was twisted awkwardly underneath the planks of a door, with a heavy griffon body laying on top. Almost half a dozen used and discarded bandages littered the ground nearby, with one still plastered to the mare’s neck, like somepony had desperately tried to save her despite the mortal wound.

“Tch,” Rain sniffed, shaking her head and nudging some of the bloody bandages. “Wasted supplies on a wasted life. Somepony else needed these much more than her.”

Longbow nodded, only half hearing what Rain was saying. Sure, he’d been in combat before, and killing griffons had become frighteningly easy to him. But being an archer, he was almost never at the front, and he almost never saw the dead unless they were being flown back to be buried. The mare seemed so small and worthless lying broken in front of him. He shook at the thought that she was once a living pony with dreams and happiness of her own.

Bending down, Longbow carefully closed the medic’s eyes and freed her wing so that he could lay both out by her sides. Longbow wasn’t all that religious—if the gods really were as powerful as everypony said, they’d smite the griffons for Cirra in a heartbeat—but he knew the mare’s soul at least deserved to be laid to rest.

Rain watched him with a curious look. “Good thing they didn’t take her wings so her soul can fly to the Great Skies,” the legate commented. Then she turned away, pretending to see something interesting on the far wall, but it was clear the medic’s death was still on her mind. “It’s a damn idiot that wastes bandages on a pony with only half a throat. Whoever the bastard was probably killed three more soldiers bleeding out there somewhere by taking those wraps away from them. The medic who kills more ponies than she saves deserves to burn in hell for failing her oaths.”

Longbow nodded. “Can’t save ‘em all.” Then, without another thought, he turned away and left the body behind.

“Poor girl,” Rain said, shaking her head. “I think I bumped into her the other day. She was wandering around camp with some scrawny green colt.” Her wings shifted with an awkward laugh. “I bet he was one of the first to go. Stratopolis shouldn’t be sending them over so young.”

The brown stallion tensed, staring at Rain. His mouth moved around words that weren’t there, but he ultimately shrugged and forced the niggling thoughts out of his mind. Turning to the other end of the room, he noticed a stallion with most of his throat torn out lengthwise—a centurion, by the gold feathers on his shoulderpiece. “Well, I guess that explains why the recruits started running,” he said. Taking notice of the missing flesh along the left half of the centurion’s face, he gagged and leaned against the wall, shaking and dizzy. When it cleared in a few seconds, he closed his eyes and turned away. “At least he went down swinging.”

“The most any of us could ask for,” Rain said. She walked across the floor but stopped about halfway, cocking her head. Her ears flicked, and then she smiled. “Incoming.”

“Incoming?” Longbow asked, looking up. “What do you—?”

The solid thwump of a heavily armored griffon corpse plowing into the floor behind him caused him to jump. Whirling around, he drew his bow, only to see Thorn flutter down from the second floor landing and land on the body, casually pulling her stiletto out of one of the many, many stab wounds across its body. Haze landed next to her, and the two shared a cocky smile.

“Found him hiding in the closet upstairs,” Haze said, stepping forward while Thorn wiped her bloody stiletto on the corpse’s feathers. “Thorn and him had fun playing pincushion through the thin cloud door he was hiding behind.”

Thorn simply smirked and sheathed the stiletto. “Red and them done yet? Surely there’s gotta be more griffons asking for it.”

“How about we take a look?” Rain asked, moving towards the front door. “Thorn, Haze, at my sides; Kid, you shoot anything with a beak. Spare none. A wounded griffon today’s simply a more pissed off bastard tomorrow.”

The three ponies following her nodded, taking up positions behind the legate while she looked out the door. The militia’s counterattack was driving the griffons back towards the wall, but it was slowly losing momentum as Gryphon reserves simply replaced the soldiers they felled. Nimbus had no such reserves left; after seeing the cohorts organized around the palace, Longbow was certain that everything Nimbus could field was up in the air. As the dawn began to break over the burning city, the only reinforcements Longbow could see were a few withered centuries flying in from the east, led by a black stallion in centurion’s armor.

“Shit, the Eighth must’ve gotten wrecked,” Haze said, his voice almost a whisper as he peeked through the opening. “Is that all that’s left of them?”

“I hope not,” Rain replied in a worried mumble. “They’re our advance legion. If they’re wiped, we’ve just lost a month’s worth of progress.”

“Hey, Kid,” Thorn shouted, nudging Longbow with a wing, “You were with the Eighth, weren’t you?”

Longbow nodded. “I was, but my centurion sent me back to get more archers from the reserves and fly them forward. We lost half of our archery corps in an ambush north of Azoeth, and we needed the replacements before we pushed much farther.”

The blonde mare smirked. “Looks like Kid was a big hotshot in the Eighth, eh? Sorry that we’re not as spritely a bunch as they are.”

“Do you even know what that word means?” Haze asked, his amused eyes locked on his marefriend.

“Well, you’re definitely spritely, I’ll give you that,” Longbow said, smirking. “But yeah, I was already on my way to becoming an optio for my century. Single-hoofedly picking up the pieces after your centurion gets shot and filling a griffon flanking maneuver with holes tends to do that to you.”

Haze seemed genuinely impressed while Thorn only scoffed. “That was then. Welcome to the big leagues, Kid, where the only thing we care about is how many griffons you kill.” Then, turning to Rain, she lowered her head and squinted over her shoulder. “We ready to move?”

“Waiting for the signal,” Rain said, keeping one eye on a window in the building across the street and another eye on the battle in the skies. “Downburst would let us know when they’re finished over there.”

A pained screech echoed across the forum, and the four ponies inside blinked as a massive griffon covered in spiked armor smashed through the window of the opposite building. A red pegasus clung onto its body as it fell, and the two of them slammed into the cloudstone with the hybrid taking the brunt of the blow. Longbow saw the beast struggle on the ground, trying to shake the pegasus off of itself, but failing to dislodge the determined pony. With a flick of its neck, the pegasus drew a dagger and plunged it into the griffon’s chest once, twice, three times... six times... thirteen...

Longbow was certain the pony would’ve kept going if Rain hadn’t stepped outside of the door and fluttered over. “Hey! Red! Nice to see you’re doing good!” Flicking her tail, Rain gestured for the other three ponies to follow her.

“Hah! So much blood!” Red screeched, sitting proudly atop the corpse of the fallen griffon oathsworn. “It’s been ages since I’ve gotten to fight an oathsworn! They’re still just as prickly as ever!”

As Longbow approached the pegasus, he suddenly understood why everypony called him ‘Red’ instead of Bluestreak. Almost every hair and every feather of his body was covered in sticky crimson, hiding his natural sapphiric coloration under a plaster of scarlet. His eyes were wide with exhilaration and he had a manic glee carved into his face. Even though he hadn’t seen the rest of the group in action yet, Longbow knew that Red was probably their most terrifying weapon.

“At least it’s something to keep you entertained,” Thorn muttered, following Rain across the forum. Haze flew in her wake, with Longbow reluctantly taking up the rear. The ranger kept one eye on the sky, but it seemed the three cohorts from the palace were keeping the skies clear for the time being.

“Oh, Thorny girl, you know nothing gets me happier than a good morning bloodbath.” His manic grin only widened, revealing his set of cracked teeth. They weren’t so much white as they were red, and Longbow shuddered as he flicked his tongue over the blood. Even Rain seemed a little unnerved.

“Is Downburst finished in there?” Rain asked, managing to keep her voice steady despite the spectacle before her. “Or do we need to do one last cleanup?”

Red’s laugh was a shrill and disturbing cackle. “What do you take us for, Rain, a bunch of greenwings? Place’s as clean as a whistle.” He stopped and thoughtfully tapped a hoof against his chin. “Well, maybe we added a few decorations and a fresh layer of paint, but if you don’t mind the smell, I’m sure it’s perfectly liveable.” His eyes lit up, and he bounced off the spiked body of the oathsworn. “Oh! Speaking of greenwings, there’s this adoracute one I found in the back office! Little thing nearly speared me when I tore the door apart to get in. Don’t know why.”

“Probably because they thought you were a griffon going to rip their throats out,” Longbow observed, landing a short distance away from the group. That didn’t stop the bloodsoaked stallion from bounding up to him and wrapping him in a big, crushing, sticky hug.

“Haha! The Kid’s still alive, ain’t he? That’s a good sign.” He flashed Longbow that disturbing smile. “Most of our prospective kids don’t make it through their first spat with the Rainstorm, but it looks like we found a keeper.”

“He killed four,” Haze noted with a touch of approval that made Longbow’s chest swell. Red’s ears twitched as he processed the information, then slapped Longbow across the back. The blow was hard enough that he felt it through his padded armor.

“Alright, look at you, Kid! Already moving up in the world!” Opening a wing, the psychotic stallion draped it across Longbow’s back and led him forward. “Plenty more where they came from, too. I mean, take your pick!” And with that he gestured towards the sky, where a looming wave of griffons was slowly grinding the Nimban advance to a standstill.

Rain took one look at the swirling mass in the sky and frowned. “Alright, let’s get Downburst and get out of here. The push was fun, but we’re going to bleed dry before reinforcements arrive if we don’t fall back and bunker up.”

Red looked disappointed. “Aw, Rain, come on! The fun’s just getting started!”

“I thought all you Nimbans wanted to do was die a glorious death in battle,” Longbow teased. Red nodded vigorously, but the other Nimbans simply groaned.

“Typical Cirran,” Thorn muttered. “That’s what the young and foolish of Nimbus say before they’ve learned that there’s a difference between dying a pointless death and dying for something that matters. Veterans like us seek the latter, but for now, I’m more than happy keeping my head on my shoulders and my lungs in my ribs. Okay?”

Longbow winced and stepped back while the mare opened her wings and flew into the building through the shattered window Red and made in his departure. Haze filled her place and rubbed Longbow’s shoulder with a hoof. “Don’t worry about it, Kid. She gets like this whenever there’s a griffon within five miles of her. She’s a really nice girl if you can loosen her up with some booze.”

Rain rolled her eyes. “Alright, come on. Let’s get going.” Then she too entered the building through the window. Behind her, the rest of her team took wing and followed, entering a spacious room where the rest of the Rainstorm was gathered. Bodies and blood littered the floor and stained the walls, and the talons of a freshly killed griffon twitched on some impulse in the corner. What really caught Longbow’s eye, however, was the unfamiliar pony standing close to Downburst, clutching his spear with barely a tenuous grasp on his terror.

“Any problems on your end?” Downburst asked Rain as soon as the two exchanged salutes. “There were a few more here than I anticipated, plus an oathsworn, but Bluestreak took care of them for us.”

Rain shrugged. “There weren’t many left in the praetor’s office. I think the majority of them left after they slaughtered the greenwings inside. We still had two oathsworn to contend with, but they fell like all the rest.”

Red gasped. “You had two?! Why’d you guys get the fun building?!”

“Can it,” Downburst ordered, and the psychotic pegasus apparently had enough discipline drilled into him that he snapped his jaw shut and looked away, silent. Then the older warrior turned towards the far window and looked to the skies. “The griffons are making another push, and our cohorts are falling back to regroup, just like I wanted them to. We’ll hold the palace and keep the Commander secure until help arrives. With any luck, our fastest messengers should’ve gotten to the Second Legion by now.”

“Fuck Gold Moon,” Rain sneered. “That sonuvabitch got Nimbus into this mess with that grand scheme of his, and now we’re all out here and dying to pay the price for it.”

“If Commander Gold Moon had superseded your father’s wishes and let you go to the front, you’d be dead by now and your lineage silenced.” He placed a hoof on Rain’s shoulder, and the mare shrugged it off. Downburst only hardened his gaze and leaned towards her. “Like it or not, Rain, you’re more valuable than anypony else here. You die, and House Rain dies with you. Seven hundred years of royal lineage simply gone. I hope you think about that the next time you try to put yourself in harm’s way with your reckless bloodlust.” Downburst’s gaze softened ever so slightly. “Remember the end it led your brother to.”

Rain flinched, her lips pulling back to a tense frown. “Steel was a fool.”

“He was,” Downburst agreed with a nod. “Learn from his mistakes, lest you be doomed to repeat them.”

“I am not my brother,” Rain said, pushing past Downburst and casting a longing look to the vicious battle raging overhead.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Red mumbled under his breath, not so subtly sneaking a look at Rain’s plot.

Longbow wisely hid his disapproving frown.

“And if you’re not your brother, then don’t go charging into a regiment of griffons and expect to come out the other side,” Downburst intoned, his eyes hardening against Rain’s scowl. “Steel had his own ‘Rainstorm’ too, if you recall. I fought in it with him, just like I am with you. But Steel was reckless, and he always put us in worse and worse situations. The fact that we always came out the other side in one piece did nothing to teach him caution.” Rain snorted at him and looked away, but the aging stallion only shook his head, disappointed. “The mission he died on? He had us chase a griffon scouting party across the border. Didn’t seem to realize that they’d be trying to link up with a larger body of soldiers.”

“That’s why he was an idiot,” Rain muttered. “He was too interested in fighting and killing to think like a damn legate.”

Downburst only nodded in agreement, somewhat surprising the mare. “He was. And when that scouting party led us into a clearing, we got ambushed by a few dozen griffons. Steel fought and fought and fought, but they eventually tore his wings from his body and cut him open from throat to spleen.” He shook his head. “I was the only one that survived, by luck or by fate, and I got back to your father to tell him what happened.”

Then, draping a wing across Rain’s back, he said to her simply, “If you’re not like your brother, don’t make the mistakes he did.”

Rain said nothing, only fuming quietly to herself. Giving the mare one last pat on the back, Downburst turned to the rest of the pegasi present. “Griffons are going to be all over this place in a few minutes; we’re not prepared to fight them, so we’re pulling back to the palace where we’ve got some strong defensive positions to force them back on. You there,” he said, pointing a hoof at the trembling spearpony in the room, “take those documents on the table there and bring them back with us. We can’t let them fall into griffon hands, or else the Second Legion in Feathertop’s going to be compromised.”

The spearpony breathlessly nodded and scooped the documents under his wing, then shifted closer to Longbow, either through some natural gravitas or simply the fact that he looked the least intimidating of the soldiers present. Longbow noted that he was absolutely covered in blood, almost as much as Red was, but he definitely wasn’t enjoying it. He looked like he’d been through hell; Longbow had no reason to doubt that he’d suffered anything less.

While Rain and Downburst went back and forth on a few details of stratagem and what exactly needed to be taken from the Forum before the griffons arrived, Longbow stepped closer to the spearpony and placed a hoof on his shoulder. “Hey, you alright?” he asked, trying to force a smile to his face and seem just a little bit friendlier to the shaken soldier. He wasn’t sure if he should be worried when he couldn’t.

“Fine,” the spearpony muttered, although from his expression and the way he carried himself, he was anything but.

“Well, you’re safe now. You’re with the finest group of soldiers I’ve ever known,” Longbow said, again trying and failing to smile. When the spearpony was silent, he stepped back and offered his hoof. “Name’s Longbow.”

The blood-covered stallion looked at it awkwardly for a few seconds, but gingerly shook it nonetheless. “Windshear,” he muttered, almost sounding ashamed at his own name.

“What happened to your century?” Longbow asked. Windshear looked around, noting plenty of pegasus bodies littering the room. Longbow mentally smacked himself for asking such a stupid question.

“Don’t rightly know,” Windshear eventually mumbled. “We were at the front—at the wall—when they just started coming. There were hundreds, thousands of them. I saw my friends fighting for a while up ahead, but then they started retreating and I wanted to go with them but I had my orders to stay and I couldn’t do anything except try and fight and fly for my life when the griffons hit and I—”

Longbow silenced him with a touch on his shoulder. Windshear looked down at his hooves. “I did bad things. I shouldn’t be alive right now. I don’t deserve it, and I don’t even know if my friends are alive anymore.”

“We’ll find them when this is all over,” was all Longbow said. He wasn’t going to lie and say they were fine; for all he knew, Windshear’s friends were all facedown across the Forum somewhere. The bloodied pegasus seemed to understand his intentions, and only nodded silently. There was no anger or bargaining; only a grim acceptance of the likely truth.

“Alright, we need to fly now,” Downburst said, bringing the attention of the Rainstorm to him. “Fly back to the palace and group at the door. We hold it until our last breaths. Understood?”

“Sir!” the pegasi in the room all shouted back at him, with the exception of Windshear. The greenwing could barely manage more than a mumble as he shook in his armor, the bloodstained plates rattling against each other with each small jerk of his body.

With a nod, Downburst pushed past the soldiers in the room and took wing out the window of the building, the rest of the Rainstorm following him as he left. Longbow and Windshear took up the trail position on the right flank of the wedge as the pegasi all raced back to the palace. Behind him, Longbow could see about a cohort and a half’s worth of pegasi disengaging from a fight with more numerous griffon forces and rushing back to the palace’s fortifications, their speed allowing them to easily outpace the griffons in their heavier armor.

Below, the city of Nimbus was slowly giving way to fire and ash. Most of the eastern quarter of the city was ablaze and crumbling, the cloudstone buildings simply falling off of the foundations of the city and breaking into mist and fog against the ground below. Griffon reinforcements had slowed to barely a trickle into the city, but they still outnumbered the pegasus defenders trying to hold it. The Gryphon general in charge of the assault must’ve thrown everything he had at the city to dislodge the Nimbans defending it through simple, brute force. While Nimbus was still hanging on for the moment, Longbow couldn’t doubt that it wasn’t working. Completely cut off from the rest of the Legion, the ponies defending Nimbus couldn’t count on reinforcements showing up until at least the next day, if a detachment from the Second Legion around Feathertop happened to arrive. Until then, all they could do was fight and die for the city in the hopes that it’d be worth it.

“Alright, this is it!” Rain screamed to the rest of her soldiers from her position at flight lead. “No wavering! No running! We touch down at the palace and we fight with our backs to the wall, not another step back! We fight until we’re dead, you hear me? Dead!”

“Ma’am!” the Rainstorm answered her, and then began to bank off towards the palace. Longbow blinked as he eyed the fortifications surrounding the palace; they definitely weren’t there a few hours ago. Somehow, the Nimban militia had assembled a two-tiered ring of walls and sandbags that looped the entirety of the palace on such a short notice. Archery towers stood watch over reinforced trenches, and everything bristled with weapons and gleamed with armor. As the Rainstorm descended upon the palace, Longbow gave Legate Rain a quick nod and split off to take a position on the roof. Waving a hoof at Windshear, Longbow ordered the greenwing to fly up with him.

There was already a century of archers on the rooftop, and Longbow quickly pressed himself against a nearby pile of sandbags and took quick stock of his quiver. Seven arrows left; he really wished he’d had the time to restock before this fight. Looking around him, the rest of the archers on the roof seemed like they were equally as woefully equipped as he was. Almost all of them had some spatterings of blood across their armor, the tell-tale signs that the fighting had gotten a little too close for comfort. That there were even enough ponies left to make a century of archers was a miracle in itself.

“Uh, Longbow? What am I doing up here?” Windshear asked, looking nervous at how exposed they all were on the roof. “Wouldn’t we be better off on the clouds? You know, where our backs are sheltered?”

“I’ve got a better line of sight up here, and I want somepony watching my back once things start getting messy,” Longbow answered him. Narrowing his eyes, he snatched an arrow with the metal claws on his hoof and nocked it against his bow. The griffons were coming in, fast. “You going to be okay in a fight?”

Windshear’s throat bobbed as he gulped, and he nodded. “I guess I’ll have to be, won’t I?” he asked. Still, he readied his spear and leaned his athletic frame against it, nervously licking his lips as the enemy approached with a herald of screams.

At a centurion’s whistle, all the archers on the roof readied their bows and nocked arrows against the approaching wave. Longbow tensed and gently tugged on his bow, pulling the string taut and bending the wood. “Archers, ready!” the centurion shouted, running to the front and raising his sword. “When they’re in range, fi—!”

He didn’t even get the chance to finish his command before Longbow released his arrow. The feathered shaft flew straight and true, burying itself deep in the skull of a griffon centurion—or whatever the griffons called their centurions, Longbow thought. The hybrid didn’t even squawk as it fell out of the sky, dead.

Longbow turned his gaze to the stunned archers around him and shrugged. “He said when they were in range...” He looked back to the front and readied another arrow. “You might want to start firing now.”

The centurion blinked. Then he raised a hoof and pointed it directly at the charging griffons. “Loose arrows!”

Immediately, a hailstorm of arrows cut through the sky and into the advancing surge of griffons. Several brutes fell left and right, but too many arrows only pinged off of steel armor or simply flew overhead. Longbow scowled as he tracked another griffon officer and put an arrow into its throat; they weren’t even going to put a dent in their charge at this rate.

Then they were swarming the palace. The majority of the griffons dove low, slamming themselves against the pegasi manning the fortifications below. The Nimban fortifications held strong with the first wave, but the griffons at the front diminished the pegasus advantage as they rushed into the walls faster than the pegasi could dispatch them. Longbow could see Iron Rain and the Rainstorm holding strong against the front of the palace, while another legate with one eye led a furious counterattack directly into the griffon charge. The ferocity of the legate’s attack tore a hole in the griffons’ charge, forcing them to retreat and giving the soldiers responsible enough time to fall back to the walls.

Still, some of the griffons went straight for the archers on the roof. Flicking an arrow into the air, Longbow swiftly caught it and put it straight through the face of a griffon charging at him. Flaring his wings, he twirled to the side as the body crashed over his barricade, spilling blood across the roof. Four arrows left; he’d have to make them count or scavenge some from a nearby corpse.

The griffons dropped onto the roof behind the archers, and there, their deadly claws and longswords went to work against the lightly armored pegasi and their gladii. Longbow wheeled around and fell onto his back as he fired, the arrow passing inches above Windshear’s muzzle and into the eye of a griffon about to lop his head off. Windshear flinched at the scream, but instinct took hold and he mercilessly rammed his spearpoint through the griffon’s stomach.

Three arrows. Longbow would’ve been content to pick off another soldier from his cover, but a flash out of the corner of his eye gave him barely enough time to roll away from the longsword that would’ve taken his head off. Still, the metal cut across the back of his neck with a searing pain, and Longbow screamed as he fell against the barricade at his side. He struggled to his hooves, only for a powerful clawed hand to grab his skull and slam it back into the cloudstone roof. As much as he struggled, he didn’t have the natural muscle of a griffon and couldn’t force the hybrid away. Then suddenly the pressure lifted and Longbow was showered in blood. Rolling away, he looked up to see Windshear forcing the griffon down with the point of his spear. A quick slice of his wingblades against the lion’s throat ended it.

“Thanks,” Longbow breathed, and he took Windshear’s offered hoof to pull himself off the ground. On the roof, the archers had been decimated, and the centurion was going hoof to claw with a griffon oathsworn. Quickly and calmly, Longbow drew an arrow and put it under the oathsworn’s outstretched wing. The griffon howled, giving the centurion enough time to duck under its wild swing and uppercut with his gladius into its chin. The griffon slumped and fell, its blood dripping off of the roof of the palace.

There were still almost twenty griffons on the roof and only Longbow, Windshear, the centurion, a couple archers left. The pegasus survivors quickly gathered together, the archers taking cover behind Windshear and the centurion as they fought to try and slow the griffons approaching them. Longbow’s mind screamed for him to run, to fly, but his discipline screamed back that there was nowhere to run and nowhere to fly. He drew his second to last arrow and aimed, ready to fire.

Then, suddenly, a proud warcry sounded from the west, and almost two thousand pegasi reinforcements came swooping into the city. Longbow’s keen eyes spotted the familiar aquila of the Cirran Eighth; reinforcements had arrived! The fresh pegasi began cutting through the griffon lines from behind, and the hybrids began to scatter and pull out of the city.

A scream mere feet from his face reminded Longbow that the reinforcements hadn’t reached the palace yet. While more than half the griffons panicked and fled thanks to the lack of leadership Longbow was responsible for, the ones that remained threw themselves at the pegasi on the roof. Three dove immediately for the centurion, their toothed beaks open and screaming as they tore at his armor. Longbow and the two pegasi next to him put three arrows into the nearest one, but the remaining two off-balanced the centurion and tore him apart with frightening ease.

Three more dove at Windshear, and Longbow thought he’d just lost his greenwing friend for a second. But Windshear didn’t fight like any greenwing Longbow’d ever seen. His spear twirled through the air, deflecting attacks that his surprisingly nimble body couldn’t simply twist around. One of the griffons overextended, and Windshear hooked a forelimb around its neck and spun around onto the beast’s back. A quick puncture with his spear into the griffon’s neck brought it down, and a reflexive curl of his wing blocked the next griffon’s attack. Leaping off of the body, Windshear tackled the next griffon in line and managed to get underneath it just as the third brought its longsword down on him. The hybrid screamed as its spine broke under the powerful blow.

Then the griffons that had taken apart the centurion engaged the archers. The first archer tried to block the griffon’s longsword with its bow, but the heavy steel weapon cut clean through the bow and into the pegasus’ chest, ripping it open like some sort of bloody sack. When the first pegasus hit the ground, the second archer bolted and fled, leaving Longbow to face down the remaining two. He quickly readied his bow and tried to put his last arrow into one of the griffons charging him, but the brute was faster. With a screech, it knocked aside his bow, arrow and all, with a swing of its sword. Longbow backpedaled as best he could, curling his bladed wings around him to shelter his lightly protected chest from the griffons’ ferocious attacks, and drew his gladius.

The griffons attacked as one, their longswords cutting through the air in different directions at Longbow’s frame. He caught one on the scales of his wingblade and forced it back, then gasped as the tip of the other longsword cut clean through his leather armor and sliced along his right flank. Gritting his teeth, the archer struck his bladed wing out at the griffon that’d cut him; somehow, the bladed scales connected with flesh, and with a jerk, Longbow tore half the griffon’s face from its head.

As the wounded griffon writhed and screeched on the ground, that still left the other Longbow had hooked on his other wingblade, and rather than trying to dislodge its sword, the griffon simply let go and struck Longbow across the face with a taloned hand. The sharp claws struck deep, and Longbow screamed as he was flung across the roof. He tried to stand up, but his face felt like it’d been pressed into a pile of steaming coals. Worse yet, the entire left half of his vision was a bloody, murky red. He tried to wipe it away with a hoof, but screamed more at the touch. He pulled his hoof away, and moving it into sight of his right eye, he could see bloody, pulpy viscera clinging to it.

A shadow moving against the ground warned Longbow of his impending demise, and he reached in vain towards his bow and arrow lying on the roof a mere foot from his outstretched hoof. Then there was a scream, and the griffon corpse dropped without warning into his remaining field of vision. Longbow jumped and rolled onto his back to see Windshear standing over him, the haft of his spear soaked with gore. The spearpony smiled, but that smile dropped from his face and his eyes widened as he saw Longbow’s bloody grimace.

“How... how bad?” Longbow asked, his hoof dabbing at his cheek. He didn’t want to touch his eye again; he feared more would come off on his hoof. He wanted to vomit, but the pain at least kept his stomach from retching.

Windshear opened his mouth to answer, but one final griffon pounced onto his back and hauled him towards the edge of the roof. Longbow could see a bloody puncture wound in its sternum; how Windshear’s spear hadn’t killed it, he hadn’t the faintest idea. But there was no time to wonder on that now; as Windshear fought and struggled to get the griffon off his back, Longbow lurched forward and grabbed his bow and arrow. Nocking the arrow, he rolled onto his back and drew it as fast as he could. He squinted his one eye and tried to aim at the griffon, but the hybrid was keeping Windshear between them as it backpedaled towards the edge of the roof. Longbow would’ve taken the shot at the slightest opening, but his depth perception had gone along with his eye. Last thing he wanted to do was skewer his spearpony friend.

“Longbow!” Windshear screamed. He tried to cut the griffon with his wingblades, but the griffon kept them pinned against his sides. “Longbow, help!”

Then the griffon’s rear paw slipped off of the roof, and that gave Longbow the impetus to fire. Praying that his shot would find its mark, he loosed his arrow as the two began to fall to the ground below. There was a spatter of blood, a scream, and they both disappeared from sight.

“Windshear!” Longbow screeched. Ignoring the pain in his face, the archer opened his wings and dove off the side of the palace right as the Cirran reinforcements swooped overhead. Flaring his wings, he landed amongst the bloodsoaked crowd, trying to spot the spearpony amidst the piles of bodies littering the battlefield. Ponies were crying out in pain or dismay across the fortifications as the griffons withdrew. Behind him, he could see the Rainstorm, beaten and bloody, but still intact. Nearby, a trio of pegasi were cradling a comrade as he bled out in the grasp of a manila mare. He paid them no mind, and soon found Windshear pinned underneath the hulking mass of the griffon, an arrow sticking out of its ear.

“Somepony get this damn thing off of me!” Windshear grunted from underneath it. Half smiling, half grimacing, Longbow stepped forward and hauled the armored corpse from the pegasus. Windshear shakily got to his hooves and took a deep breath, then wrapped Longbow in a bone crushing hug.

“Heh... glad to see you made it...” Longbow grunted, patting Windshear on the back. When the spearpony finally separated, Longbow took a deep breath. He looked to the skies, to where the Cirran reinforcements were driving the griffons back out of the city, and sighed. All that bloodshed for nothing.

Windshear jumped behind Longbow, startling the pegasus. “Gods... my friends! They made it!” Windshear exclaimed, and he shook Longbow’s shoulders. “Come on, you’ve gotta meet them! I’m just…” A breathy, euphoric laugh escaped the stallion’s parched throat. “I’m just so glad they all made it!”

Longbow held out his wings in acquiescence. “Okay, okay... but then I’m getting a damn medic to fix my eye.” Windshear blanched at that, but finally only nodded as he led Longbow to a group of ponies standing on the edge of the battlefield.

“Carver! Summer! There you guys are! What happened?” the spearpony asked as he trotted up to them. Longbow hung back a bit and watched, unsure. The mare, whom he presumed was Summer, was shaking where she sat. Her eyes stared into space, their spark gone and her expression hollow. The look of a broken mare.

The stallion standing at her side looked only slightly better off. He wasn’t shaking like the mare, but he was definitely trying to cope with the situation around him. He seemed only half-there as he shook hooves with Windshear. Then realization dawned on his face, and he wrapped the spearpony in a tight hug. Tears streamed down his face as he said something to Windshear, and the spearpony’s smile fell away. They separated, and they could only whisper to each other in disbelief.

Longbow was just about to walk away and find the rest of the Rainstorm when he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. Not just something; somepony.

The green colt was delicately picking his way across the battlefield, seeming lost and misplaced. His armor was bloodstained and held loosely around his small frame, and the golden luster in his eyes flickered as he blinked. Those eyes had seen trauma.

Longbow didn’t want to believe what he was seeing. He wanted to believe it was a simple hallucination, some strange trick his mind was playing on him. Anger and sorrow threatened to overwhelm his soul. He hadn’t wanted this.

Neither of those emotions came to the forefront. All he could do was ask, in a slow, almost timid voice, one word.

“... Finder?”

Comments

[SolidFire]

Whoo! This updated now! I... the emotions that I went through while going over this were absolutely insane. I was shaking during the buildup to that certain scene, and I cried a bit too once it happened. I loved this chapter while hating it with a righteous fury, and yet we are promised that this is just the beginning. I can't wait for the next chapter of this. You magnificent bastard, keep up the greatness!

~SolidFire

[RoboRed]

And now the two brothers met again.

I'm glad Windshear made it out alive, but poor Dawn...

[djthomp]

Ahh, damn, Dawn.

I listened to the first part of this with a speech-to-text app while out on a run, during which it started raining, so I can neither confirm nor deny that Dawn dying made me cry. It was the rain, I swear.

At least we know that everypony that died in this fight ended up in the Summer Lands.

Longbow is winning some major points with his use of that bow, he seems to be a bit of a minor badass. And the "oathsworn"? That of course makes me wonder what the oath in question is.

Bending down, Longbow carefully closed the medic’s eyes and freed her wing so that he could lay both out by her sides. Longbow wasn’t all that religious—if the gods really were as powerful as everypony said, they’d smite the griffons for Cirra in a heartbeat—but he knew the mare’s soul at least deserved to be laid to rest.

Argh, and now I'm sad again and I can't blame the rain.

Shesh, Red is kind of scary.

There we go, the brothers reunited at last. Shame it's in the middle of so much death and fire and destruction.

[SolidFire]

4438104
That part you quoted... I had finally calmed my sniffles and dried my tears when I got to that part. Then I had to re-start that evil process. Summer is broken now... hell, I bet Finder is too. He just lost his crush! Despite all the waterworks, it was still a good chapter.

~SolidFire

[Ruirik]

4438104
4438199

[Brown Books]

Damn it all, Dawn, why you! Why couldn't it have been Carv-...I mean someone else!!!

Great chapter home-slice, I just love and hate it at the same time. Wait is that even possible?

[Ruirik]

4442438
I refer you to my previous comment.

[Pega-ace]

[Ruirik]

4444011

Problem?

[Pega-ace]

4451470

Sigh... No. It's your story, write it how you want it to be written. Rainstorm puts me on the edge though.

[Ruirik]

4454814
Look at the bright side, I can't possibly do anything worse now, right?

[Pega-ace]

4454901

Everyone in this story dies except for Finder and Rain. You can do much worse.

Oh, and also, is Rain's "zweihoofer" supposed to be a zweihammer, or a zweihander? And why "hoofer"? They use their mouths to hold swords, do they not? If it's because it's Griffon, shouldn't it be "zweitaloner"?

[Esteem_punk]

Ending on that note....you are a very cruel featherhead. Heck of a good way to bring me back in to reading after another short leave of absence.

[Ruirik]

4455113
The weapon is strictly speaking a griffon Zweihander. That said, when Rain took it she renamed it to zweihoofer as an insult.

[-Brutus]

This looks really good, I'll give it a read soon! :)

[FancyFan]

Wow. Was not expecting Longbow to make it to the end of the chapter.

[Web of Hope]

Nearby, a trio of pegasi were cradling a comrade as he bled out in the grasp of a manila mare.

Awwww...I forget who that was

[Web of Hope]

4435194 mehhhh. Honestly, I was disappointed. The brutality lived up, but the feels didn't.