Red Dawn, Pt. IV
Celestia had said that the griffon couldn’t hurt her, but it looked like she was wrong. The other griffons losing their minds over a couple of their officers trying to kill their chancellor wouldn’t notice. But Chocolate Velvet did. He sat next to Celestia in silence and let her process what had just happened. The trio of dead griffons wasn’t a pretty image, but he was sure she had seen much worse in her long life.
The griffons had turned on the lights and those that weren’t freaking out concerned themselves with securing the floor and the rest of the building. There was a lot of shouting and stomping coming from the rest of it. The poor officer in charge of the guard was still stuck repeating to himself that it hadn’t happened.
“Why, Gast?” Celestia finally spoke something and drew Chocolate’s stare and his perked ears. “What of Guella and your three children?”
He felt it was right to approach her. He put his wing over her back, letting his body touch hers and their coats brush together. Softly touched his head against hers. She welcomed him, pressing further against him. “Did you know them, Celestia?”
She sighed, walking away back into the corridor, towards the stairs, and he followed. In the lobby, she drew him into a corner and spoke in a reserved tone. “The dark one was Gustav. He was a double-agent for The Lion. He fed the Blackfeather Division of the Griffonian Standing Army with half-truths and in turn delivered intelligence back to Griffindell.”
“Oh…” He nodded he had understood, and she waited for two of the griffon soldiers to rush down the stairs before she continued.
“The other was Gast. He has been a brilliant officer since the day he walked out of the GSA Officer Academy.” Her ears fell and her eyes filled with sadness. “He had a beautiful and dutiful wife and three lovely children… I suppose he would be one of those griffons to say that I was his friend, but he wasn’t mine.”
“Uuuh…” His curious expression changed to a confused frown.
“I believe I overestimated his loyalty to me… Gast was no spy, but he was a pair of eyes I could use to glimpse into the inner workings of the GSA and the Griffonian High-Command. He fed me realistic reports of the corruption in the government and how it influenced their military. I knew he was unhappy, but I never expected him to make an attempt on the Chancellor’s life. Much less resort to such an extreme measure to avoid imprisonment.”
The Princess cast her stare at the fancy carpet beneath their hooves. “I would have protected him. I don’t… I don’t understand. It was unnecessary.”
“This is messed up.” The captain in charge of the palace’s garrison walked out of the corridor, holding his head with the tips of his wings. “Out of nowhere! What the heck is going on?! Who even is in charge right now?!”
“Captain! What do we do?!” Another griffon, one of the young soldiers, came after him followed by the other two. All of them were about as panicked as their superior officer.
The poor captain, a young green and gray griffon, with utterly terrified gray eyes pointed at the stairwell and his paw trembled as a green twig in the wind. “Get the building locked down! Nobody gets in or out! And, and…”
“Captain,” Celestia spoke calmly. “Do you need some assistance?”
He gasped. Apparently, Celestia talking to him made him realize that he needed to get his nerves under control and start ordering soldiers around. He turned to his soldiers again and spoke with more authority and control. “Get the outside guard to lock the palace grounds down. And you make sure that everyone is in their posts. We don’t know if there will be another attack.”
He seemed to have the situation under control after some encouragement. Chocolate and Celestia turned back to each other.
“Do you think the Nightmare Luna has found is to blame?” He let his ears fall as he mentioned that issue.
“Yes. Likely. I don’t know.” Celestia sighed and shook her head dejectedly. “I’m sorry, Chocolate. I’m not very well right now.”
“I understand…” He sat and reached around her neck with his forelegs and wings. She sat too and hugged him back. “It’s just awful that it’s such a ‘Luna thing’… There isn’t much we can do other than trust her, right?”
“We can understand what happened.” She stood back to her four legs, and he did too. “We may not be able to help Luna deal with the Nightmare, but we can help the griffons deal with it and the situation their nation finds itself in. I’m considering disclosing the Nightmare’s existence. Although I am not sure. It could cause unneeded panic and the situation is bad enough.”
“Sounds like a bad idea…” Chocolate agreed initially with an unsure smile before he went on.
“Although, given the present situation…” Chocolate gave her an awkward smile. “I don’t think it can get worse.”
Then an explosion rocked the plaza outside. Lots of griffon screeching and panicked cries followed. Next thing they knew, a full-blown firefight began. Celestia quickly moved to the large windows and Chocolate rushed ahead of her and put a wing in front of her. “I don’t think that windows are a good place to be when creatures are shooting guns outside!”
“It is if I want to see what is happening.” Her forehead bent into a frown, and she sidestepped him only to have the griffon captain of the palace’s guard stop in front of her with his wings open.
“Princess! There’s been a murder attempt, two officers and a recruit are dead, and now they’re shooting each other outside!” He cried. “I don’t want you getting shot right now! I mean, not ever… But particularly not now!”
She simply picked him up with her telekinetic magic and put him aside, barely stopping to go around Chocolate Velvet again. “I appreciate the concern, but I believe that you should busy yourself with contacting your superiors and the garrison at Fort King Grover.”
Chocolate resigned to follow her after she used the ‘commanding voice’ with the griffon. Not really a lot he could do if she had set her mind that she wanted to make that mess her business.
Outside, the rain had gotten stronger. Some griffons carried sandbags from behind the buildings, hurriedly assembling a barrier around a cart… Was that a freaking machine gun? They had a machine gun on top of a cart parked sideways on the street and they were assembling a sandbag barrier too. Meanwhile others shot at GSA soldiers across from the plaza. The machine gun started firing too, with a griffon behind it and it forced the southerner soldiers to protect themselves.
From the top of the neighboring buildings, more griffons threw firebombs that were certainly magical, because the building caught fire. More precisely, the entrance on the ground floor of the hospital was engulfed in flames that refused to die, despite the rain. An explosion damaged the street before the hospital and seemed to have peppered the wall with debris. If anything, at least the northerners didn’t blow up the bomb inside the hospital.
Panicked griffons ran and flew in all directions from the plaza, while others retreated inside the hospital through open windows that were soon closed. More grimly, a few laid lifeless around the plaza. Local militiagriffons started fighting back against whoever the others were, but there was not a lot their muzzle loaders could do against a machine gun.
“This doesn’t look good.” Chocolate grimaced with urgency.
“No, it does not.” She agreed with a concerned frown. “Bold move. I wonder if their goal is to rescue the griffon Luna had apprehended. Although, I would expect them to attempt a much more discrete operation. I wonder if the attempt on the Chancellor’s life was a part of it. Or perhaps part of something bigger still. We must stop this before it escalates.”
Right on cue, a griffoness started yelling above the racket and it took Chocolate some time before he managed to see her on top of the hospital building. But she was speaking in that sing-song-y northerner griffon language that Chocolate didn’t understand. She wasn’t just talking, though. She was doing a speech, or something of the sort, punctuated by exclamations and prideful shouting, posing on her hindlegs and making a show of it.
The princess started taking backward steps, with her ears pulled back. Her frown turned serious rather than concerned and she spoke without looking at him. “Come along and help me contain the situation.”
“Wait, what?” His ears perked at her right before she teleported both of them outside. Out of instinct and before he even realized what had happened, he beat his wings to stay aloft next to her, hovering above King Grover’s statue. The cold rain immediately soaked his mane and his coat.
“Cease with this immediately!” Celestia cried and cast a simple spell that illuminated the plaza with a white flash.
The northerner hen mouthing off at the top of the hospital stopped and said a single word that sounded like an expletive. The shooting stopped for a while and griffons wearing the leather armor of the Griffonstone Local Militia hurried into the plaza, to drag to safety the downed griffons. Some of them, Chocolate noted, still moved.
“Get inside the hospital and help Luna’s royal guards however you can. See if you can also help the patients and visitors leave the area safely!” She ordered just as the griffons, against all common sense Chocolate would have expected, pointed the machine gun up at them. Celestia’s magic yanked it from its support and threw it away.
Equestria being a flat world, he wasn’t sure if it would enter orbit, but the thing took off at a seemingly orbital velocity. He didn’t have time to waste on that, though. His wings guided his flight towards the building. His plan was to enter through one of the windows and play by ear from there.
Shockingly, the griffoness at the top of the hospital pounced with a flap of her wings and attacked Chocolate. Surprised, he screamed and covered himself best as he could with his legs and wings. He wasn’t sure what happened, but she attacked him and then pounced from him to tackle Celestia.
His forelegs hurt like a muffin, but he spun in the air. “Celestia!”
The two of them crashed through the large window on the second-floor lobby. He clumsily flew to the broken window until he saw Celestia standing from the carpeted floor and the griffoness next to a wall. The hen shook her head and promptly hopped to a fighting stance, with a longsword that magically remained on her back.
That was easily one of the largest griffon hens Chocolate had ever seen and she had an uncannily beautiful, shapely form with the muscles of a wrestler. She was covered in blue and white, and she drew the sword as she stood on her hindlegs, aiming it at Celestia. A blue magical trail showed, following the blade. One of the magical weapons in the fancier end of the spectrum.
“Go help the others!” Celestia cried at him, before she returned her eyes to the griffoness.
One of the soldiers inside the building attacked the large griffoness from behind with the butt of his musket, but Chocolate didn’t stay to see what happened. He followed Celestia’s command, and his flight took him to the hospital just in time as the griffons outside started shooting at him. He crashed through one of the windows and crushed a bed next to the window. Unless he was mistaken, that was the second floor.
As he rose from the remains of the bed, he saw a small griffon family hiding behind the other bed in the room. At least two adults, one of them with a bandaged head and probably a patient in the hospital. He couldn’t discern their colors in the dark and confused lighting from the lightning storm and the fire, but he could see their scared expressions.
Thank Harmony the stupid northerners didn’t set the whole hospital in flames.
“Don’t go outside. Try to stay hidden.” He walked towards the door when a young female he supposed was a wife or an older sister cried and pointed at his legs.
“Your highness! You’re injured!”
The glass never made it through his coat, but his forelegs had a few deep gashes. The griffoness must have gifted him those before she attacked Celestia, and they looked on par with the pain. The gooey blood looked bad, but he judged his legs were working enough.
It would hurt like fudge later, though.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Just don’t go outside.” He insisted, his wings flared, as he walked to the door.
Poking his head out of the room, he saw the magical lighting in the corridor worked. A pair of griffons and a unicorn ran down the corridor. The unicorn and one of the griffons had little nurse hats and the second griffon wore a white coat. All three of them ran past Chocolate and he let them be. Just as he was going to walk out the room, a large griffon jumped from behind the passage to a lounge that connected the hospital’s wings. Upon seeing Chocolate, he stood on his hindlegs, yelling something, and wielding a long firearm the alicorn didn’t wait to identify. When the griffon shot at him, the thing sounded like a shotgun and the damage on the frame (behind where his head was) confirmed it. But the worst part was the screaming from the fleeing creatures.
It was at that moment, while the griffons screamed inside the room, he realized he didn’t have his armor nor his weapons.
The griffon in the lobby shouted something in the same language the hen was speaking, and he sounded angry. He heard pleas for their lives and panicked crying too. Chocolate was fed up with griffons trying to kill him that day and resorted to magic, even if it was not his strongest suit. His horn alighted in amber, and he took a quick glance at the corridor, finding the griffon by the lounge and the others cowering along the walls.
Five magical bolts of the same color shot from his horn and the griffon reacted rolling to the side. Unfortunately for him, magic usually was smarter than pellets. The two first bolts exploded on the floor, but the subsequent ones hit for gruesome results given the explosive nature of the magical projectiles.
As soon as the danger was over, the alicorn hurried outside the room. Eyes on the passageway to the lounge and his horn charged with magical energy ready to unleash on the first armed griffon he saw.
“Hide in the rooms!” He yelled at the three. “Don’t go out yet!”
He didn’t stop to see if they obeyed. Upon reaching the lounge, other than the nice leather sitting pillows and tables with potted flowers, he found an injured griffon sitting against the wall.
“Your highness?” He croaked. Bluish gray coat and feathers, without a crest, but a fluffy chest that had pawprints in blood. Wide blue eyes filled with fear.
“Shh. I know you’re feeling awful, but you’ll be fine. Don’t move.” There was a contained pool of blood around him, and he had a gunshot wound on his left flank. It would probably be bad if he didn’t get help, but he would be reasonably fine for a while. “Stay here and don’t try anything for now. Help is on the way.”
He just nodded obediently, and Chocolate took the shotgun from the dead griffon as well as his bandolier with the ammunition. It was a break action shotgun, the most basic kind. He broke the gun open and magically pulled out the spent cartridge to replace it with a new one, and then slung the bandolier around his neck.
A deep boom sounded amid the racket of gunfire outside, and it was soon followed by a resounding and deeper boom that shook the crystal and bronze chandelier in the ceiling. That sounded like ammunition going off. What in Tartarus were those griffons doing outside?
A bright flash of golden light illuminated the sky outside. Maybe it was Celestia messing up the northerners. Chocolate turned to the injured griffon again. “Don’t move.”
He hurried to the stairs in the back wall and hopped down the first flight, using the wall for cover from which he scanned the ground floor entrance hall. He could see a lot of blood and debris with the rainwater. The main entrance still burned and there was a dead griffon with a security cap next to him. A gray and white northerner laid dead next to him. An information desk was broken in half and a scared yellow griffoness hid there, hugging herself and keeping her eyes closed shut.
Griffon voices spoke in High Griffonese and shots echoed in the hall. The griffoness behind the information table started sobbing and made herself as small as she could, covering herself with her wings. Still using the stairwell for cover, the alicorn quickly scanned the room to see if there were any threats other than the fire and the flying bullets.
He found an unmoving tan and white griffoness with an extended belly. Her coat was streaked with red from several points where debris had hit her. He frowned but tried to keep his head cool.
The entrance hall extended with a pair of double doors on each side of the stairs opposite to the main entrance, and they opened to the inner yard. One of the doors had a tripwire with a shotgun attached to it. The other had two northerner griffons shooting outside with one of the northerner’s fancy emplaced machine guns and a… Chocolate was sure it was a submachine gun.
He surprised them by shooting one in the back and then burning half of the other with a magical beam of amber light. They didn’t stand a chance, and the alicorn wasted no time turning to check on the pregnant griffoness. All the magic had left the lifeless flesh behind. It was probably debris from the explosion that killed her.
Seconds later a group of soaked local militias wearing magical and heavy leather armor approached. Their leader was a gray and white griffon and their weapons ranged from muzzleloader long and short guns and some spears, swords, and shields.
“Thanks!” The angry griffon cried over the racket of the battle in the front. “Bastards had the balls to attack a hospital!”
A series of three golden beams cut the air into the clouds from the other side of the building before they turned their attention back to each other. “Thank Harmony you and The Princess are here!”
“We’re here to get the civies out. The GSA is on their way.” The militiagriffon pointed at the back door. “We’re gonna sweep the floors and get everyone out through here before the cannons start firing in the front. We’re not really equipped to deal with these guys though. The only reason we’re here is because Princess Celestia tossed their machine gun in the front into next week.”
“You shouldn’t engage them.” Chocolate said without thinking while a pair of the green-wearing soldiers came and took the machine gun elsewhere outside.
“Screw that. These assholes came to mess with my city.” The griffon growled. “The GSA is covering our asses and they brought cannons with canister shot from the fort and they’re gonna take the non-combatants to safety once we get them out.”
Just as he said that Chocolate could see the soldiers with the green uniform. They were setting up barricades and cannons in a central area under a connection between both blocks of the hospital. It was a sort of cafeteria, but it was closed. Not only that, but more of the griffons in leather armor came to the entrance he had secured.
“So, you guys are gonna sweep the floors and get the patients and visitors out through here.” Chocolate nodded. “Got it. I need to see Luna’s guards and the old guy she arrested. Celestia thinks that’s their goal.”
“Third floor.” The lead griffon said. “They’re probably going to get him out through the ceiling. But, uh… Bats left about as soon as the night started.”
Weird. That sounded like a strange coincidence. He was going to ask about it, but gunfire in the floors above reminded him that there were crazy griffons raiding a freaking hospital. He shook his head. “Never mind. Just get them out. We’ll see what happens.”
The griffon’s leader turned to his subordinates and nodded towards the passage to the corridor on both sides of the entrance hall. The group split and they rushed into the corridors while the remaining griffons stayed with Chocolate.
“We’re going with you.” The leader said. “If there’s an alicorn in the hospital, I want him fighting next to me rather than getting his brain splattered on the wall.”
“Well, I’m not gonna complain.” The alicorn opened his weapon and replaced the spent cartridge. He held the weapon in front of him, floating with the barrel pointing forward. Then he led the griffons as he climbed the stairs back to the second floor above. He heard screaming, banging doors, angry shouting further up on the third floor… But fortunately, no guns.
The griffons split their forces again and one of the militias helped the injured griffon while the others followed him up.
Suddenly he was trying to climb the stairs against a flood of panicked griffons, ponies, hippogriffs, and even a kirin and a dragon. Fortunately, none of the invading griffons decided to check after the fleeing non-combatants. They just flowed past the alicorn and around the militiagriffons that instructed them on exiting through the back on the ground floor.
Reaching the next floor, Chocolate poked his head out of the stairwell and the lounge was a mess, but empty. Crashed flower pots on the floor, an upturned couch and a scared griffon lady hiding behind it. She pointed to the passageway to the ward wing on his left and he nodded positively. Then he beckoned her with a hoof to the stairwell and the griffon leading the other militias waved her down the stairs. She clumsily hurried to them.
“The local militia is securing the floors below.” The griffon told her quietly. “Go to them and don’t try to flee the building on your own. There’s fighting outside.”
“Yes! Thank you! Thank you!” She quickly nodded and scurried down the stairs while the brown alicorn and other griffons hugged the wall and approached the entrance to the long hallway. There was some sobbing and griffons speaking in High Griffonese, but Chocolate supposed it was a good thing the guns were silent. Yet, instead of looking past the corner, he focused on his magical senses.
He could feel the magic emanating from their griffon bodies. Several of them were still inside the rooms and in the corridor. There wasn’t much more he could garner from the energies he captured, his magical senses not being as refined as those of Celestia or Luna. But he knew they were far into the corridor and chanced a glance around the corner. He saw five griffons, no details at all, but he definitely saw no thestrals. With another quick glance he saw the northerners had hostages with them and one of them carried out an old griffon on his back he supposed was Luna’s prisoner.
He huffed. Those griffons, the innocent ones, were in danger because of that whole mess. He didn’t want to gamble with their safety. After all, he had learned something with the Royal Guard and their operations protocols. They could always get the old griffon again later.
“Let’s get them.” The griffon leading the local militiagriffons urged the alicorn in a low voice, but the stares of his subordinates told him they weren’t very eager about fighting the northerners.
“They have hostages.” Chocolate whispered back but turned his attention back to the corridor. “They really want that old bird out.”
“What’s it with him?” The griffon too took a glance around the corner. “The bats kept him snugly in his room and nobody, but the docs and nurses were able to see him. Not even the military had access to him, and I know he is important to the Northerners. You’d think the intelligence guys would’ve wanted to have a word, but the bats didn’t let them in. Everything was going through the Royal House.”
“I don’t think you want to stick your beak into that. And right now, we gotta let them walk. We can nab them later when they ditch the hostages.” The brown alicorn concluded. “How are things outside?”
“I don’t really know.” The griffon shrugged. “Northerners are making a mess of the plaza and the GSA is bound to arrive in force soon-”
He was cut short by a violent wave of heat and golden light accompanied by shattering glass. The large, blue and white griffon lady he had seen before slowly spun on her belly into the corridor out of a door with her limbs splayed all over.
“Oooooow…” She groaned with her limbs hanging limply in each in a direction. Her pained grunt didn’t really need a translation. Then, once she had regained her faculties, she yelled at the griffons with the old prisoner. They practically dragged him to one of the rooms, leaving the hostage doctors, nurses, visitors, and patients to cower in the corridor.
“Get them!” The local militiagriffon in charge bellowed. But what happened was a short series of events. First Celestia popped into existence on the other end of the corridor. The fleeing griffons got in the way of the alicorn and the local militiagriffons. And the blue and white griffoness screeched something, dragging herself into the nearest room like she really regretted picking that fight.
Chocolate, along with the griffons with him immediately jumped into action as soon as they had some space. Celestia teleported once again, and he heard the griffon lady squealing. However, his focus was the griffons trying to escape with the prisoner. His hooves skipped on the linoleum, but the griffons were much more agile than he was, even with full leather armor. They rushed into the room the northerners had entered and Chocolate followed them.
It was just a simple room, unoccupied, with a bed, a bedside table, a griffon-sized chair and an open window that let the pouring rain in. He followed the griffons to the window, and the first one of them, despite their boss yelling at them not to, jumped out. A shot rang and he immediately lost his balance and fell.
“Damnit!” The griffon in charge cried as he and Chocolate looked outside to see the overeager guard laying on the grass of a patio area between building blocks.
More shots rang and bullets whizzed by. Chocolate could see the civilians being evacuated out of the hospital, and the GSA soldiers shooting up at them. Once the racket was replaced by the noisy rain the griffon commander pulled one of his guys by the gorjet of his armor.
“Go there and get Gommer to our griffons in the back.” Then he let go and looked at another griffon in the group. “You go see whoever is in command with the GSA. They probably know these northerner assholes are going to the teleporter. Let them know they have a priority target. You two clear this floor. The rest of you, we’re gonna tail them and hit them from behind when they run smack into the GSA.”
Finally, he looked at Chocolate Velvet. “What about you?”
“I came here to see if Luna’s guards were ok, and you guys have it under control. I gotta help Celestia. It’s kind of my job.” He shifted his hooves nervously. She was fighting that griffon lady and… Well, Celestia was Celestia, but it really was his job to stay with and protect her. He couldn’t help but worry.
The griffon in charge nodded. Chocolate supposed he was in a hurry. “Yeah. Makes sense. Good luck.”
“Good luck to you guys too.” Chocolate held up his hoof and griffon bumped his fist with it. “I’ll make sure to let her know you guys are after the northerners to the teleporter.”
With that, he hurried out of the room through the door, into the room across and jumped out the broken window. He was again above the plaza, and it had turned into a battlefield to the point it was dangerous to just hover in place there. He stayed close to the wall.
It was hard to see in the dark, but what light the public illumination provided in the form of gas lamps helped. On one side were the barricades the northerners had set up to cover their retreat from the hospital and in the rooftops around the plaza. But the street that circled the plaza had several connections and Chocolate could see the green uniform of the Griffonian Standing Army in the rooftops across and behind improvised barricades on most of the streets below. One of the streets had the burning remains of a cart and the buildings on both sides had collapsed.
Muzzle flashes on one side of the plaza, and a cloud of smoke on the other. The northerners certainly had much better equipment, but the GSA had numbers and they were pissed off. A good indication of that was the fact that Chocolate was hovering next to the hospital, and they weren’t shooting at him, but at the griffons in green.
Movement caught his eye and he saw a group of the GSA with proper cuirasses above their uniforms crossing a street into the plaza from inside a building. They stormed the northerner’s right flank with swords, pikes, and pistols. Turned out that getting shot with muzzleloaders from the flanks still hurt you even if you carried a fancy rifle.
A young and blue griffon shoved a similarly young pink griffon lady out of the way. He shot his rifle several times as the others organized themselves to rebuke the enemy maneuver. His weapon pierced at least four cuirasses until a southerner pike-wielding griffon impaled his chest. He was the first of the northerners to fall, but more came out of the building.
A golden flash from the hospital roof drew Chocolate and he flew upward. Just as he reached above, another flash announced a sword that flew towards him. It wouldn’t hit him, but the surprise made him react. His magic held the flying object and immediately his horn filled with throbbing pain. Magical feedback, common in high-level magical weapons, caused him to yelp and let go of it.
The sword clanged to the concrete roof and its owner, the steely-blue and white griffoness jumped at it. Turning around, and standing on her hindlegs, holding the sword towards Celestia. The alicorn wore her magical ‘sunlight’ armor, shining like she was the sun itself walking on the roof of the hospital. At night, it was almost impossible to stare directly at her.
Celestia talked to the hen. Slowly and with all the typical compassion she would when she didn’t want to fight someone. Infuriatingly Chocolate couldn’t understand the High Griffonese, but next she spoke to him. “Assist the local militia in apprehending the griffon they came to rescue, Chocolate Velvet. I was going to speak to him eventually, and I didn’t expect they would attempt a rescue such as this.”
Chocolate almost screamed when he saw what happened next. Celestia was looking up at him and the griffoness with the magical sword lunged at her. Her sword aimed at Celestia’s chest, and she landed her attack, but she couldn’t deal with the magical feedback of her armor. The griffoness screeched and her sword flew from her paws. It punctured the concrete and stuck, which was impressive, even for a magical sword. The backlash from the armor’s magic sent the griffoness flying backwards against the concrete roof and she cried again.
It happened so fast Chocolate barely noticed Celestia’s horn shining, charging up with magic and the subsequent flash that exploded at the griffoness. She cried again and the force of the impact shot her against the parapet, and it cracked against the hen’s back with a sickening sound.
He landed on the roof, just to ensure Celestia was alright. Her bare chest under the transparent golden armor had been pierced, but it didn’t seem to be deep enough to worry. Only a small streak of blood tarnished her coat.
“Don’t worry, I am fine.” Celestia told him calmly.
He looked back at the griffoness and her body let smoke from almost the entirety of her charred fur and feathers. Her flight feathers were literally burned to their stalks. She was still breathing, but Chocolate could swear that her nostrils let out twin puffs of smoke. She was probably going to need a healing potion if Celestia wanted to interrogate her in any practical time.
He just stood there as Celestia walked towards the griffoness. She had started moving again, barely managing to crawl towards her sword. She grunted and whined something in High Griffonese. Celestia spoke again, and to Chocolate it sounded as though Celestia pleaded with the griffoness. If he knew her, and he was sure he did, Celestia was asking that she surrendered.
The exchange of shots below them continued, but cannons started firing and it sounded as though yet another wall had just crumbled. He turned and looked at the plaza below. Some crazy bird brought a twelve-pounder to the southern side of the fight and brought down an entire wall of some public office building on top of the northerners.
And then a little griffon cub, brown and yellow came running into the plaza, yelling at the top of his lungs. “Don’t listen to Gail’s lies! General Gamaliel lives!”
“What the?” Chocolate raised an eyebrow, watching the griffon kid while Celestia approached the parapet to look down at the plaza too.
The small griffon hovered in the air and put his paws before his beak. “Stop fighting for the fat loser! General Gamaliel supports The Liiiiiooon!”
The chocolate colored alicorn wasn’t sure who Gamaliel was other than he must be a general and that his opinion must be important to the griffons in the Griffonian Army. Things only became stranger when one of the officers on the southerner side of the firefight lost his mind.
“Shut this brat up!” The griffon pointed from behind his sandbag wall. “Go! Grab him!”
Celestia blinked a few times watching the scene unfold as some of the confused griffons stopped shooting at each other and the ones on the southerner side began debating and talking back to their officers. “I believe that is Colonel Gaspar’s son.”
“Who?” Chocolate turned to her.
“He is the commanding officer for Fort King Grover.” Celestia clicked her tongue. “What is happening in this town?”
She spared a quick glance to the side and her horn lit up again to tie the griffoness’ limbs together and stop her escape attempt. After looking like a nice gift, the griffoness just gave up. After that, Celestia kept watching with Chocolate as a group of griffons joined the northerner side. Someone had a megaphone and put it to use.
“Brave soldiers of Griffonia! You recognize my voice! I am Colonel Gaspar of the Fort King Grover garrison and I beg you to listen to me! I urge you to cease hostilities with our northerner brothers and sisters! The real traitors to Griffonia are Chancellor Gail and his supporters!”
“Shoot him!” The griffonian officer on the other side screamed desperately. “Shoot! Him!”
But when he raised his pistol, the soldiers on his side of the sandbags tackled and brought him to the ground.
“The GSA High-Command unduly stripped General Gamaliel of his position and his honors for speaking against their corruption!” The griffon with the megaphone spoke on. “Blackfeather operatives made up accusations of terrorism and killed Griffonian civilians! Ask the northerners about the Six of Fate and the Glass Dragon! Ask the Blackfeather officers about Operation Expressway!”
Chocolate, of course, had no idea what the griffon was talking about, but he supposed it was something incredibly important. Even more so when Celestia gasped and hopped off the roof, opening her wings to soften her fall.
“I command that all of you cease hostilities immediately and drop your weapons!”
The griffons on both sides obeyed immediately and the griffon with the megaphone stared at her like he didn’t believe what he was seeing. Then he nodded at the megaphone with a grin as though the idea had worked better than expected. It surprised Chocolate that the northerner griffons obeyed too, but then again… When Celestia descended from above wearing magical armor like she was wearing the sun itself that was understandable.
He followed her to the plaza and griffons stared from the broken windows of the hospital as she walked, all majesty, to the improvised barrier the northerners had made with the cart that once had the machine gun. The air smelled of smoke, despite the heavy rain. Glass and debris in the stone cracked under her step and was easily heard as the night had become silent. Only distant gunfights were heard sporadically.
“Colonel Gaspar.” She greeted the griffon with a respectful nod before she turned to the northerner griffons staring dumbly at her with their guns in paws. “Kindly tell me about the Six of Fate and the Glass Dragon.”
It took a few seconds while griffons stared with uncertainty and others tended to their wounded friends. But one of the griffons, a large and imposing white one pointed a finger with a sharp talon at Celestia and spoke with the whistly accent of the northerners. His face showed fierce anger. “You know very well! You were there!”
“I was there. When Lord Gildon summoned heroes to hunt and slay the Glass Dragon, I was studying the Northern Wilds with my protégé, Sunset Shimmer. I heard the summons and we answered. I saw Lady Gaharjet track the monster and we fought it. It proved too strong, so we retreated, and her beloved forged an arrow that allowed us to slay the monster with her magical bow. With the monster slayed, we went our separate ways and I returned to Canterlot. Years later I learned that Gaharjet had become with cub, and she mated with Master Gembert. But they passed away in a train accident.”
“A training GSA detachment responded!” The officer cried from the other side of the southerners’ sandbag wall. He hopped over it and approached. He wore a soaked green uniform and a black cap with a black feather. A gray and white griffon that tried to look larger than he was by letting his wings raise. “They witnessed the accident and assisted the victims.”
Celestia scowled like she smelled something was up. Chocolate imagined the intimidation tactics griffonian intelligence officers used to don't work on alicorns… “I suppose you wish to tell me about Operation Expressway?”
“It never existed!” The officer glared at her.
“There was no train accident.” Colonel Gaspar approached her, and Chocolate took a step back to give the tan and yellow griffon space. “General Gamaliel showed up when I was commanding a force to shut down the teleporter and prevent the northerners from fleeing. He told us everything. He was a colonel at the time, under the Blackfeather Division and he commanded the operation they called Expressway. They derailed the train to murder Lady Gaharjet and Master Gembert. Gamaliel admitted to shooting her himself. They took their child and brought her to Griffonstone. The child vanished after that.”
Hearing that, Celestia’s eyes closed, and her head shook ever so slightly. She inhaled softly and let go a gentle sigh.
“Why do you believe this nonsense?” The griffonian officer with the black feather scoffed. “How do you even know these birds aren’t feeding you lies?”
Celestia ignored the officer and walked around the cart that served as a trench. The rain had drenched her flowy mane and gave no signs of diminishing. She took several steps towards the imposing stone statue in the center of the plaza.
“I am sorry, old friend…” She stared up at the fierce and giant stone griffon under the rain. “I should have done something sooner. You were right.”
The griffons watched expectantly until Celestia turned, flaring her great wings covered in golden light. Her horn shone with golden light and charged her voice with magical power.
“On my authority, as dictated in the Alicorn Concordat, Paragraph Zeroth, I am seizing control of all governmental branches of Griffonia. Effective immediately, I command all hostilities to cease. The northerner griffons, and associates, are to be granted passage to the teleporter facility, which shall be henceforth shut down until new orders. The griffon lady in the hospital roof is to be placed under arrest here on Griffonstone as I wish to interrogate her.”
Chocolate kept his mouth shut, but thought it was curious she decided to let the old griffon Luna had captured go. Maybe she figured that the griffon lady on the roof was good enough and she didn’t want to provoke the northerners.
Right on cue, or as though they had been summoned, an entire company of Royal Guards appeared on the plaza. Fully clad on their golden combat armor, not the traditional day-to-day armor and armed with halberds. Individual platoons of unicorns, pegasi and earth ponies with their specialized versions of their armors and arms. All of them organized into formations behind their commanding officers and just sitting there like they were each a statue.
But Celestia wasn’t done. “The city is to be put under martial law. Colonel Gaspar, I bid you remain in Griffonstone and assist in guaranteeing law and order in collaboration with the Royal Guard.”
The griffon nodded politely at Celestia. It was a curious situation where the northerners seem to have garnered the support of an important character outside of their usual sphere. Chocolate imagined the colonel would want to leave too, but he also supposed that if he wanted to support The Lion, he should stay. Especially since Celestia did support The Lion too.
Chocolate wondered what would have happened if things had happened differently. If Celestia wasn’t there. If that General Gamaliel hadn’t showed up, or never met with this Gaspar. He had no idea what went on in the background while those two officers tried to murder the Chancellor. It sounded like they would spend a few days figuring out all that had happened.
For some reason, considering Luna’s letter, he wondered if the blue alicorn hadn’t had a hoof in the whole situation.
“All of the northerners will escape! All of this will have been for nothing!” The gray and white officer with the black cap and feather cried. “Soldiers died defending their homes!”
Celestia shook her head calmly. “This happened because the Griffonian government is corrupt. It has been for quite some time. Corruption has taken root in the political system over the decades and short of a radical reform, there is no fixing it. Now, we have reached a breaking point. And I will not allow this to continue and avoid interfering. I’ve done that for too long, and it is not working.”
“The northerners have unsavory beliefs and despise the southerner griffons. They hate your kind, and you know this! You know all of it!” The officer opened his forelegs. He tried earnestly, without spelling it all out, Chocolate knew. “They hate the hippogriffs! They want a war and to install a freakish theocracy around their barbaric religion!”
“That is part of the same problem that I will try to fix.” Celestia still didn’t let him sway her.
“You can’t do this!” The officer yelled.
“She just did, bruh.” A soldier wearing the green uniform under his cuirass, drenched under the rain, stopped next to him, followed by the others.
“Kindly inform your comrades of my orders, so that they are effective faster.” Celestia smiled at the griffon trooper.
“Ma’am.” He bowed and left with the others to carry out her orders.
“Are you northerner freaks okay with this?!” The officer cried and made angry gestures like he had been cheated in a card game.
The big white griffon that had talked to Celestia shrugged while his companions helped their injured. “She’s done more than you did.”
“Uh… Shining Armor is kind of not available, Celestia…” Chocolate gave her a lost frown as things happened around them. “Who’s to be your second-in-command?”
Celestia stared at him for a second before she moved away. “You are.”
He blinked twice. A Royal Guard pegasus, as professional as they always were, stood before the brown alicorn. “Your orders, highness?”
Chocolate straightened and coughed into his hoof before he made a sweeping gesture. “For now, assist the griffons in guaranteeing safety to those who wish to leave via the teleporter and lock down the city. Also, make sure to identify and detain all the GSA intelligence officers. I have the feeling they know more than they want us to know.
He saluted with a wing and moved on. Chocolate saw Celestia approaching the northerner griffons. A line of dead griffons made an awful display of just how that thing had reached a breaking point, as Celestia had said. They covered their fallen comrades with a white tarp, but the rain stained everything in red. Next to them a crying griffon lady, all pink and blonde on her crest held a small-framed northerner griffon. His red blood had stained his blue feathery chest and her pink.
She held him despite the sad northerner griffons waiting to take him next to the others. The rain washed away her tears, and soaked the feathers in her crest, but she looked up to Celestia and said something with her whistly language that Chocolate didn’t understand. The way she looked up at Celestia really hurt Chocolate and he didn’t need to understand her language to feel her pain.
Celestia shook her head softly and looked down. The Princess said something to the northerner hen, and she held him again, sobbing against his face. The northerners in charge of gathering their dead respected her and waited. One of them talked to Celestia in a heavy accented Common Equestrian. “We’ll take them to their families, and they will be buried in accordance with our customs and their deeds. If that is acceptable under your truce.”
Soldiers from the Griffonian Standing Army approached. “Princess… We can let them take those that passed away. But we can’t let the northerners take their injured guys through the teleporter… They’ll die. And the hospital is a mess.”
“He’s…” The soldier pointed at one of the injured northerners, a young griffon. Unconscious, but still breathing. “He’s my sister’s kid.”
The northerners didn’t argue, and they too looked at Celestia. Chocolate thought it was curious how the rhetoric died as soon as the bullets stopped flying and griffons were left dead or bleeding the same red on both sides.
Celestia and Chocolate looked at the hospital, with its destroyed front. Not a single glass window had survived, and the large doors were gone, along with a chunk of the front wall. A few griffons came out the door, a few of them wearing lab coats or their typical nurse hats. They watched expectantly.
“Eh…” Chocolate shrugged. At least the fire was gone. “I’ve worked in worse places.”
He dropped the shotgun and the ammunition he had acquired and walked towards the building. “Get the injured into any rooms you can find that are reasonably clean. Get started on a triage and take the greens to the government buildings around the plaza. Put yellows on the wards and get the operating rooms ready to go with the reds in their wards. Have the hospital’s stock of wide-spectrum antibiotics on standby and commandeer all that you can from local pharmacies and clinics. Get all doctors and nurses involved. Even the students from the university. Recall all that are on vacation or off-shift.”
He turned to the soldiers. “Get casualty collection points set up and send all of them here. Even the ones you think are dead. Nobody died yet until we said so in the hospital. Get someone on the door to talk to the families and get volunteers… There will be a lot of work to do, and we’ll need blood donors.”
The first to respond was a very distinct and unique griffon lady with a nurse hat. Her coat was the most impressive shade of golden and she hopped off the destroyed steps to the hospital’s missing door. “You heard the prince! Come on! Let’s get them out of this rain!”
The griffons with her sprang into action. A few went to help Chocolate move the wounded griffons, others went to help the northerners and others still went to the southerner side. One of the young nurse griffonesses in the group stopped before Princess Celestia. A soft shade of tan and white, she talked to the princess with a sad frown.
“Princesss. What happens to us when we die?”
The others nearby stopped working, including the northerners and they paid attention to the Princess. She spoke softly, with a calming smile. “There is a gentle stream of magical energy. The magic that flows from the Sun into us and the world. It binds all creatures and our world together as it drifts to the moon before it returns to the source. Remade, reinvigorated, made powerful again and given purpose, it returns to the world in a never-ending cycle. Souls are the same. Carried in this great magical river, slumbering from their tiring journey through the Lands of the Living. Princess Luna protects them from the Nightmares that would feed off their magical energy until they are safe on the Moon and returned to the source. They’ll rest in the Pool of Souls, and they too are healed, remade, and reinvigorated. Until they are again ready and they are carried back to the world, when flesh summons them to a new being.”
The young griffoness stared at the stony street and thought about what the princess had told her, until she raised her eyes again. “What about the northerner griffons?”
“It is the same for all creatures. Ponies, griffons, dragons, yak or even monsters.” Celestia explained patiently. The northerner griffons didn’t react. They said nothing, only listened.
The golden griffoness called, next to Chocolate Velvet. “Gina, stop bothering the princess and come help! There is a lot of work to do!”
Celestia stared at the statue of the past griffon king and then at the manehattian building they called ‘Chancellor’s Palace’. She too had a lot of work to do.
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How many chapters long will this story be?
11257172
I don't have an exact number. But I know exactly where the plot is going and how it's going to end.
Probably for the best magic exists in this setting as this seems to be Equestria's main edge in this conflict. Machine guns vs muskets is definitely NOT an even match up!
I know this is a fairly minor aspect of the story, but I do appreciate they way my own perspective on Godfrey and Georgia's situation has shifted after reading up to this point in PoP. Back in Fólkvangr it was easy to assume that the death of his parent's and particularly his mother was all the result of a grubby sell sword with an itchy trigger finger. While I'm not going to say his mother's death was totally warrnted, I do have to acknowledge some extenuating circumstances. She was a Loremaster, specifically sent to Griffonstone to beguile and convert a high ranking officer over to the Harpy's cause. Not only that, she took her own children to be trained as undercover soldiers, taught them how to fight and to lead. Even if she wasn't capable of The Voice (to use a Dune reference!) or even had access to soul memories, she was undoubtedly trained for years to manipulate her fellow griffon's into serving her interests. Looking at it from this perspective, I can't really blame the mercenary for shooting her on the spot, she legitimately was dangerous!
Besides that, it sounds like Godfrey and Georgia were already being groomed for their "preordained" role since before they were old enough to walk, and that their own hopes and ambitions are strictly secondary. Sure, Godfrey seems to be taking to his role fairly well, but it feels like poor Georgia has been getting dragged along by her ankles towards a life she absolutely does not want. This is one of the things I find the most frustrating about The Harpy (y'know besides that whole "Master Race" thing!) and that is how controlling she actually is. For all her talk of allowing "free will" for her children to make their own choices, time and again she has used her connections, power, and her access to the world's "source code" (that she evidently wrote!) to ensure they make the "right" choice, whether they want to or not. And she absolutely tosses her turds when things don't go her way. My point being, I don't think she has any intention of allowing Georgia to pursue her passion as an artist, not when She already has a role in mind for her. Very frustrating to watch. Oh and just to be clear this is a good thing. I appreciate a villain that manages to be both inspiring AND infuriating!
Also I'd be lying if I said it wasn't satisfying to see Celestia force Gwineth rethink her life choices!
11835930
It's not a minor aspect of the story. It was intentional. One thing that is important for the AU, when it reaches the end of the first phase, is that readers understand the importance of different points of view. The Harpy and Celestia are not fighting normal enemies. It's not against nobles, or random monsters. They are each fighting a god, and gods fight with souls, rules, and ideas.
Also, Duna is precisely where the idea of the Loremasters come from. Yeah. Legitimately dangerous. But the best part is that you haven't seen the last of them yet.
When you think about free-will and the Harpy's designs, you need to see that Godwin and Georgia aren't just anybody. Part of the idea is that freedom comes with different prices for different griffons. All the Harpy expects out of some random noble is that they don't mess up their bloodline. For commoners, she has another set of rules, but she doesn't care who they breed with as long as they are not generating Saddani. She expects the northerners as a whole to hold the Windigos' monsters at bay. The Saddani can do whatever they want, as long as they accept they are an impure griffon breed and stop mingling with the ponies. There is a point to all the drama about Grinolf and Grigory defending him to the Harpy.
The Harpy commands her Loremasters to go make a cub with specific males because she knows what she is doing and in their case, they are the fruit of one such arrangements. Other than Godwin and Georgia, other example is Gallensa. She is the next Emperor's mate. Do you think the Harpy would leave that to chance? Gallensa's whole life has been curated to the point she is an actual genius and she knows that. She's so dangerous Celestia went executive power on her career as a thaumatoengineer. More about her in another story, though. The point is that the more important a griffon, the greater their privileges, and the less freedom the Harpy gives them.
Perhaps the most important thing here is that bit about points of view. It is great about the Harpy that she constantly offers with one hand and withholds with the other, but there is another layer to that. The Harpy does what she does because she believes it is the best for them to grow through struggling. I kept hitting that stroke about the Harpy telling Godwin three times that he could bail out of the whole deal in the meeting and in the end she even poked at Godwin that Gilda had gotten what she wanted, she herself had gotten what she wanted. What about Godwin? Did he get what he wanted? He allowed himself to be put in that situation. You'll later see a similar thing about the southerner soldier, Geordi, that the Harpy locked in her tower.
I kept toying that the Harpy might have known what Gilda, Geena and Godwin were up to. They were playing 'the game of griffons' (which the Harpy mentioned a couple of chapters before) around her and she played it with them. Behind the scenes, no. She doesn't know that Gilda (literally) sold her Godwin's ass to save Geena failing her assignment of bringing the two siblings to her. Much less that Gilda did it to help the hippogriffs behind Mother Harpy's back. In Georgia's situation, there is nothing keeping her from being an artist. Furthermore, it is part of the point that from outside, the pony version of free-will and the griffon version are indistinguishable from each other. Remember what Celestia did with Chocolate Velvet, exemplified in the fight at Twilight's airship, in Ponyville?
It is implied that Celestia did the same thing with the Battlehorn families and their vassals. The difference is that at some point Celestia decided that was no longer needed. Maybe the Harpy will come to see that she is doing more harm than good? Is she? What if the Harpy wins in the end because Celestia chose to be nicer? Godwin is a weapon much as the Harpy will accuse Celestia of weaponizing the hippogriffs. The Harpy isn't doing the whole pure race because she is birb Hitler. She is doing it because that is she will empower griffons, bring them back to the the way she created them, and she sees the hippogriffs as an attack against her.
Because gods fight with souls, rules, and ideas and the windigos said it.
Here is something funny: what do you think is the greatest sin that the Harpy will never forgive?
And that got rambly. Geez. I need sleep.
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There is one other thing that I forgot. I once watched a class with a teacher with degrees both in writing and History talking about the story where Hera denies Hercules her breast's milk.
It is the origin myth for the Milky Way in the sky and he was talking about how counterproductive it is to fully condemn Hera for wanting to deny Hercules his godhood. He goes on in detail about the need for a different moral for the gods, because the goal of the authors was not to examine the morality of denying Zeus's son godhood, but two layers of meaning.
1. The story is truly about the patch of stars not about how Hera is evil, Zeus immoral for cheating, or rightful Hercules is.
2. You can't apply the same morality of men because motivations are intently different. Hera was protecting the institution of goodhod, Olympus, by denying Hercules her milk. There is no true analogy that can compare anything a mortal can do with what she did.
We inherently condemn the Harpy for violating griffons right to self determination, because we compare it to parents who will force their children to marry against their will. With nations that will promote an ethnic state and segregation But both are a different order of magnitude.
There is no analogy with the correct stature that can be made by anyone who is not a creator deity. All we can really do is take sides.
This is the root of the divine right argument. And one can argue that there are no gods in a secular state. No gods in reality. Well, the Harpy is a God inside the story.
What if ants decided to tell us we should only eat fungus and one single female should be mother to all. They don't have a valid argument: we are not ants. Their worldview is incompatible with our existence, and vice-versa.