A Roc In A Hard Place
Everyone stood still for a heartbeat, the bristling griffon guards spread out in a loose diamond around the two unicorns and the corporal. Then Gilda strode several paces forward, holding her bladeless spear in both talons, shaking with tension as she stared - well, as she stared up at the monster.
"Well, I never!" The great shadowy bird reared up to her full height, looking insulted. It was lucky for her that the warehouse was so high-ceilinged. Or - was that the point?
"Lieutenant! You cannot allow your soldiers to insult my suppliers like this." The Stinging Needle looked like she was about to get out her needles and puncture the offending bat-hen.
"Gilda! Shut up and sit down. You're on report starting now! Put down that stick! Corporal, you will take that weapon from her and brain her with it if she makes another move against this fine griffon."
"Griffon! What griffon? Look at her, she's five yards tall!" Gilda waved a wing at the great beast. Now that the monster was erect, she realized her height estimates had been… insufficient.
"Private - Gilda was it?" said Rarity. "How could you be so cruel as to mention a lady's weight! Poor Lady George has always been so sensitive about her size! Do kindly shut up and stop making problems for us all!"
The entire warehouse was now alight with unicorn hornglow from both the lieutenant and the clothier. The great mass which Gilda had first mistaken for a cloth-swathed shack or pile of crates was now standing in the open, a great-winged grey and beige bird taller than Gilda's mother's house - the old one, not the shameful half-rotting one they'd moved into after the family's fortunes turned. The roc's great blue beak moved just like a griffon's as she squawked in offended tones.
"Miss Rarity, is this how my patronage is rewarded? Bizarre accusations of monsterhood, and racial taunts about my eastern origins? Just because I'm not from the Isles or Griffonstone, does not mean it is acceptable to call me a barbarian, and a savage, and a - a - roc!"
"Pardon your terrifying ladyship," said Gilda, definitely neither standing down, nor sitting down. "But I know Altiplano griffons, and if you're an easterner, I'm the Duchess of Treetop Roost!"
"And you would know such things by - wait a minute, are those crest-feathers stained? Are you cream colored under that hideous dye job?"
"No! Of course they're not! I just - look, I'm technically too young for the service, or to be out on my own. They're a light blue."
"They are not!" objected Corporal Gustav, who would know. "Don't lie to the nice lady, recruit. I caught you dying your crest, as white as month-old fish bones."
"But that would mean that…" mused the great roc, looking down in bemused thought, as she feathered the enormous tiara on her vast head with the leading edge of one of her wings. Gilda really didn't want anygriff - or anybirdy - pursuing that particular train of thought. She'd run this far from Griffonstone to get away from that look of realization. Griffons realizing what her coloration meant almost always resulted in attention from her distant relatives, which is to say - knives in dark alleys. And worse. Did she have to flee even further?
"Look, my coloring isn't the issue here. The issue is that this George is hiding in the middle of the provincial capital! How many griffons has she eaten? Rocs eat like, two hundred, four hundred pounds of meat a day! Or was that a week? Look, point is, it's a lot. This place must be full of pony and griffon bones!"
"I am not a binge-eater! And I've never eaten a thinking being in my entire life! Can you say the same?"
"YES! We're not savages in Griffonstone, whatever the damn ponies may say!"
"The point is, I am not what you say I am!"
"So you're not six yards tall and at least two tons of enormous impossible mythic bird?"
"A lady never addresses insults to her weight or her body-type!"
"You're not a lady, you're a roc!"
"I am not! Rocs are mindless beasts! I clearly can talk."
"I don't know, I've never had an argument with one before. Actually, I've never met one before. I hear that those who do, generally don't survive the conversation."
"You are distinctly not gobbled up, my little griffon."
"AHA! You clearly see me as tiny! You are an enormous monstrous beast!"
"There's no talking with you, is there?"
"So if you're not eating fledgelings on a daily basis, what are you doing to maintain that enormous bulk?"
"Caw! I've never been insulted so much in my life!"
"You clearly don't get out much. And now that I look at you closer, you clearly don't get out much. Do you even leave this warehouse?"
"N-no? Not during the day. And I buy fish from the fleets. Do you have any idea how much tuna the fleets bring in?"
"Nah, the princess's service doesn't serve tuna. Too bad, that sounds good. I haven't had tuna in - well, way too long."
"I wish I could hunt them myself, but you know how it is out there. Ponies everywhere. Can't just stoop on a school and pull a wriggler out of the waves."
"I don't see why not. Look at 'em all. They still think you're a catastrophically obese griffon. How would such a cat-bird go adventuring like you say you do, I have no idea."
"You think they're just not telling me they think I'm a great big liar, too?"
"Well, maybe they think you'll eat them."
"I do not eat ponies!"
"Who ever heard of a roc that didn't eat ponies?"
"I AM NOT A ROC!"
"Well what the hades are you?"
"I AM THE GREAT TURUL, RULER OF ALL THE WINGED BEASTS, BLESSED AMONG BIRDS!"
"Oh, hey, I think I've heard of him. He's some sort of bandit king out in the mountains beyond the Altiplano."
"AND THAT EVIL LITTLE FRAUD IS NOT THE-"
George looked down at the staring witnesses to this little meltdown, and her eyes went wide with some emotion Gilda didn't quite understand.
"Didn't mean to say all that in front of others, did you, Your Majesty?" Gilda grinned.
Gleaming Shield had wandered off in the middle of the argument, bored to tears by Gilda and George's little tiff, Gilda feared. She’d be getting an earful once they got back to barracks. The lieutenant was staring at a pile of rugs against the far wall.
"Lieutenant ma'am, my apologies for making such a fuss." Time to do damage-control.
"Hmm-hmm. Uh-huh." The purple unicorn was unrolling one of the rugs, and looking closely at the patterns in the light of her horn-glow.
"I surrender myself to the corporal's discipline. Corporal Gustav?" It was at this point that Gilda noticed that the corporal wasn't really attending. He was still staring at the spot where his subordinate and the great bird had been arguing. Said great bird was pacing in the open space under the sky-port, muttering to herself.
Everygriff else were still standing where they were, equally glassy-eyed, including Rarity the Unicorn. Who looked like she was beginning to drool.
Just a bit.
"Corporal? Givens? Grant? Gwaine? Lieutenant ma'am, they're not responding, something's wrong!"
"Hrm. Probably something to do with that heavy Somepony Else's Problem spell attached to the feather-merchant, Gilda.” There was a bit of horn-glow around the purple unicorn’s head, sort of like a helmet or a - sphere? “I'm shielding as tightly as I can, but I can't look at her, or I'll start forgetting things again. Where did she find these? I've seen their like, but only in the Princess's receiving chambers!"
"It's the damned heir's coronet!" squawked the great bird - Lady George. "If I force too much cognitive dissonance through a bird's mind, it - it sort of overwhelms their reason? For a while, at least."
"For a while?” squawked Gilda. “How long is a while? Are they brain-damaged?"
"If you have broken my corporal, I will be quite wroth, Lady George. I will be expecting quite a discount on your feathers. Which I have yet to lay eyes on, mind you. Although if they are as fine as these Abyssinian carpets, I almost think that Gustav's mind would be worth the exchange."
"Lieutenant ma'am!"
"Oh, come on now, Gilda. Gustav was not exactly using it, was he? It's not as if a corporal's job is one for intellectuals. Mostly bawling, wing-beating and other muscle memory feats. It might make him a better NCO, who knows?"
"Miss - Lieutenant was it?"
"Hrm. Lieutenant Gleaming Shield, at your service - I gather 'lady' isn't the right form of address? Is George your actual name?"
"Any more appropriate address would just increase the mental stress on you and your attendants, Lieutenant Shield. And George is as good a name as any. I would take a regnant name when I wore the Queen's Crown, and leave my nest-name to be forgotten."
"So you are not, indeed, the 'Great Turul', then?" The unicorn grimaced in pain, her horn burning brightly. "Oh, my aching horn, that does sting, you're right. Let's just call it… your inheritance. Yes, that reduces the pressure."
"The heir's coronet is the problem. It - hides my essence, my nature to all whom I meet. It's a protection, and a curse. I cannot reveal my existence to anybird who isn't of royal blood."
"Huh! Interesting. I wonder how the magic codes for that. Genetics? Right to the throne? Right to any throne? Clearly I'm not close enough for it to exempt me, or I wouldn't be fighting this monster of a headache. You can't just take it off?"
"I cannot. The magic prevents me from uncrowning myself, keeps me from circumventing the curse."
"Sounds like a perfect tool for an ambitious thief," observed Gilda, interrupting her betters' awkward discussion, neither one able to make eye contact with the other. Gleaming Shield was now facing a corner, grimacing, while the Great Turul was staring up at the closed and barred skyport. "Is that how you got all of this stuff?"
"I got all of this stuff, as you so baldly put it, by fair and honest dealing. It's not my fault that half the time the other merchants forget my debts, and never press for payment. And it's definitely not my fault that the other half of the time, they forget the payments due me. I learned the hard way never to accept cheques on accounts payable, let me tell you that."
"So," said Gleaming Shield, "The curse - it's designed to keep your royal heir from building up a rival faction or clique, and overthrow your sire?"
"Mother, overthrow my mother. We turul are matriarchal, like you ponies."
"You keep saying that - and damn it hurts when you say that. What's the difference between a roc and a turul, and why should I care?"
"A turul is a thinking bird, the right and proper expression of our race. Rocs are what happens when there's an interregnum. Or the queen doesn't do her proper brooding duties. Every clutch must be brooded upon by a rightly crowned mother of the nation, our sovereign queen. Elsewise, they come out of the egg mentally deformed, mad and animalistic. Every season I am not there to brood on my people's eggs, another flight of cannibalistic monsters are let loose upon the world. It is a catastrophe!"
"Where's your mother, then?"
"Dead, and I can't be sure it wasn't at the talons of my idiot half-brother. He always insisted he could be as good of a mother-hen as I, that he could be queen. Nonsense! But whatever happened - and I wasn't there - he was there, and I wasn't. And now that mincing fop is wearing the Queen's Crown as if he had an oviduct. It won't work!. I need to get back east!"
"Why are you here in Trottingham, if things are so urgent back - where is your nation?"
"The peaks beyond the Griffish Altiplano, all those uplands are our rightful inheritance."
"What, the Cawdelliera Real?"
"Ugh, what an unmusical name. No, we call them the Cathartidaeids, and our nation, Carthartidaea. Once, a long time ago, before your blasted aerial equines seized control of the imagination of all the colleges and universities, this continent was known as Accipitriformia, and we, the Great Turul, were sovereign and lady of all the great birds of Accipitriformia."
"Yeah," said Gilda, "But Beakland's a heck of a lot easier to say, which is why we started using the pony names. And we aren't on the continent, these are the Isles. What are you doing here, instead of a thousand miles to the east, claiming your alleged rightful throne?"
"Well… there are the current pretender's supporters. Who are, well…"
"Pissed off your mother's guard, did you?"
"Do you have any idea how hard it is to rally support while wearing this blasted inconvenience? I think they saw me as a roc. Or some other great vulture or chimera."
"There's enough of them in the wastelands, even in the Altiplano. There's a reason the griffs of the Altiplano don't sweep in and displace all the Groverlings and their squabbling. Los Hidalgos dela Altiplano, for all of their pride, are far too busy murdering anygriff impure. The limpieza de pluma occupies all of their attention. Which is just as well, after all this time, they probably would say we're not pure-feathered, either."
Gilda by this point was just babbling and distracting the great bird. The other griffons' eyes were clearing, and she noticed out of the corner of her eye the white-coated clothier looking mortified and dabbing at the drool that had stained the side of her muzzle.
"Yes, well, there's a reason that we trade by the Gizzard and not overland. And I'm here trying to - I don't know. Find a pony way around this blasted coronet. The stories say it came from the west originally, given as tribute by some pony wizard or other. But every time I talk to a pony - oh, blast, hello, Miss Rarity. How are you feeling? Did you find the restroom?"
"Oh! Oh, yes, it was lovely, I adore your bath-towels," Rarity lied smoothly, accepting her host's gracious falsehood, it being far more dignified than - Gilda had no idea how the unicorn was interpreting the results of her little fugue state. "But we were talking about…"
"Feather pricing, in bulk rates," said Lieutenant Shield, still refusing to look directly at the turul in the middle of the warehouse. The other griffons had settled down from their confused alarm into more of a bored confusion. "But really, what I want to talk about is terms for the purchase of this marvellous trained roc Lady George has here. It would be just the thing to make our battalion stand out!"
"It- it would?" asked the turul, now equally confused and alarmed, looking down at herself. "I- I mean, importing the bird was an enormous expense, and the training itself was such that I couldn't possibly let it go. I was going to offer it to the Princess's menagerie when I got that far west!"
"Trust me, the princess doesn't dabble in such dangerous exoticisms," the lieutenant assured the great bird, still not making eye contact. "She generally just chucks the great chimerae straight into Tartarus. Especially ones ponies can't talk to!"
"But you think," said Rarity, cautiously, "That such a dangerous creature would belong with a military formation, parading through the heart of this city?" She was now looking at the 'roc' as if it was what the three of them were discussing the sale thereof. Now that the magic had a rational expectation for what she was looking at, it let her see the great bird as, well, a great bird.
Just not, Gilda realized, the actual turul itself. The others were now seeing a 'tamed roc' in the place of the trader princess.
"Now, I suppose I could lend you the roc on a medium-term lease," said the turul, sounding intrigued. "And allow it as a sort of advertising for my prospective sale to the princess's court. If you can keep it under control, and civil, and safe among the griffons and equines, I suppose that would get around the whole 'Tartarus' problem, wouldn't it?"
Gilda looked up at the great beak, moving as the turul spoke. She wondered where the rest of the party thought the voice was coming from? Did they imagine a griffon somewhere nearby, speaking the words coming out of the roc's mouth?
"Capital idea! Write up the proposal, if it's within our budget, I say let's do this!" The lieutenant was strangely enthusiastic about the sudden windfall that'd fallen onto their backs.
"You'll have to include some sort of handler," Gilda piped up, alarmed at the prospect of what the magic might do, straining to invent reasons why the roc continued to speak after they 'left' the 'griffon adventure-trader' behind. "Do you have somegriff who can manage the lease?"
"Oh! Of course. Bob! Come on out here, Bob!" boomed the great bird.
"Yes, yes mum? What is it now?" The turul's approximation of a male voice was… well, Gilda thought it was about as good a job as she could expect of an eighteen-foot-tall royal princess trying to fake a male Trottish accent. "Why is Gertie out of her corner? Have you gone and let griffons off the street come and pester her again?"
Gilda listened to the turul argue with herself as the unicorns and other griffons looked back and forth between two empty bits of air, presumably where the heir's coronet had conjured forth speakers for the voices falling down from overhead.
She wondered how far the magic could be pushed. The turul royal heir might have a future in vaudeville.
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So, the coronet sees Gilda as royalty. Interesting.
9240835
Someone has to be heir to Boreas, after all.
I wonder if Gilda would be able to take it off the princess, being apparently royalty and all.
It's an accidentally brilliant strategy, actually. Once all of the other heirs have bumped each other off, Gilda can claim the crown for herself... assuming that anyone recognizes her claim and that she even wants the thing. Though her crest may address the first concern.
As for Lady George, I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.
Welllll now, what an interesting bit of worldbuilding and political setup!
also gilda is totes a heir.
This story just keeps getting more fun. Another for the Fav Folder.
Well I guess Gleaming Shield will have some word with Gilda once they are back to base...
I didn't really think I was going to like this story. I was, happily, vastly mistaken.
Also, have you read Pratchett? Because I detect a bit of Logique du Pratchett (1) in some of this.
(1) This is, perhaps, horrible French, but perfectly grammatical Genuian.
Lady George look like a very nice addition to the cast. I like the character and the potential it bring to the story. Lot'sof avenues to explore with that coronet.
Nice mention of the Abyssian! Now if Capper could somehow end up in Twilight regiment, it would be perrrrrfect.
Would live to see Capitain Celano and her crew making an appearance. I am sure Twilight would find some use for a pirate crew.
Well, isn’t this a curious twist of events? Goodness, I absolutely cannot wait to see more of Gertie going forward.
I wonder if we’ll get the story of exactly how Lady George managed to tame such a creature....
Having a trained roc on hand would make for one hell of conversation piece.
Ah. And now it starts to connect...
Leave it to Gilda to comically underestimate the potential here.
9241669
That sounds like one of those clop stories where the Sparkle siblings get together.
9242035
Ah, no. It's more of a somewhat gritty murder-mystery, in the vein of Justified, In Plain Sight, or Sons of Anarchy.
So not nearly as respectable as a sibling-incest clop story.
Wow, I did not expect Lady George. I wonder why you picked Turul instead of Simurgh?
Ah, I'm really excited to see the Colonel-Prince. Blueblood's going to be the idiot raving to everyone that the Roc is talking to themselves and there's no such thing as Bob, isn't he?
9240876 Given what we've seen of Griffons, both in canon and particularly in this 'verse, unless Gilda is holding the idol in both claws, I feel like every last griff will just try to shank her so they can sell any regalia she has for drinking money.
9242101
First off, there's this: vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/c/c5/Comic_issue_39_Turul.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160505143704
As Oliver reminded me, the Turul is MLP comics canon.
Secondly, I associate the Simurgh with the Endbringer from Worm. I realize this isn't a thing outside of that web-novel, but it's an association, and not one I can easily break out of.
9242297
...
......
.... And suddenly you became one of my favorite authors on this website o.o
Man I miss Taylor so much XD She's seriously one of the best characters I've read about when it comes to superhuman themed web-novels :3 Well... with Olivia from Stone burners at a nice second place :3
......... Wait...... There's a sequel to Worm at Wildbow's site......? what...? O.o
9242297 Oh shoot, I totally forgot about that! So That's Lady George in that pic?
9242594
Same species, yeah.
“Griffonstone has no king. Griffonstone needs no king.”
9250403
And yet, Griffonstone continues to tear its own guts out, arguing over potential kings.
9250426
Perhaps having a queen to mix things up a little is just what they need.
This was awesomely hilarious.
Well that was interestingly hilarious.
They're off to a great start!
the near total lack of indication on who's talking is killing me. I can't tell what's going on at all when the ponies are talking.
And things just got all the more interesting.
The whole crown thing was Starswirl's work, wasn't it? Anytime some ancient magical thing pops up causing trouble due to unthought out issues, it's probably Jerk Beards fault.
Still... interesting bits of lore added and very eager to see where this goes.
Though if Gleaming was implying Celestia wouldnt be able to see she wasn't a roc... pretty sure Celestia counts as royalty. Or does it only count bird royalty? Though even so.... they got wings.
So wait...Gilda wasn't effected by the curse...soooo shes royal?
9242297
Russian mythology also has Sirin and Alkonost as great birds, but if Turul is in MLP canon...