End Realm

by Scyphi

End Realm

“Are we there yet?” Gallus grumbled, poking his head into the forward compartment.

“No,” Smolder replied flatly, not looking up from the homework she was doing.

“Will we at least be getting there soon?”

“Also no.”

Gallus growled to himself. “How much longer, then?”

“I don’t know, ask our pilot,” Smolder replied, shooting him a look.

So Gallus did, crossing the tight compartment. The airship was one of the Equestrian Royal Guard’s, usually used as a dropship to transport troops. But today, as a courtesy, it was being loaned so to carry cargo and its three civilian passengers. “Hey! Lieutenant!” he called, trotting to the staircase leading up into the piloting room. “How much longer until we’re there?”

Lieutenant Ironhide, an earth pony royal guard, turned away from the controls to look down at him. “We’re still a couple hours away from Canterlot, I’m afraid,” he replied sympathetically. “Once we get there, it’ll be a quick hop to getcha back to Ponyville, but until then, you’re just going to have to sit tight.”

Gallus harrumphed and turned away, pacing back and forth within the passenger compartment. “Starting to feel absolutely bored to tears, then?” Smolder asked, looking up from her homework. She was only doing it to combat the boredom herself.

Gallus nodded with a sigh, looking towards the back compartment where their unique cargo was being stored. “Headmare Starlight was right, I should’ve just waited for you guys to come back instead of tagging along.” He looked to Smolder. “Don’t exactly have a reason for me to be here like you did, seeing it was your brother who was involved and all.”

“Eh, I’m only here because he wanted to keep the thing, not turn it over to the ponies,” Smolder said, rolling her eyes. “And Dragon Lord Ember feared he’d have a greed fit if she tried forcing it from him. I mean, every dragon has a moment of greed-induced bigness while growing up, but we still try to avoid them if we can, and as much as I love the lunk, Garble’s already had three before, so he’s kinda prone to them. Because I’m family, everybody figured I could talk him into letting it go peacefully. And I did.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t all that hard, though. Honestly, I don’t think I was really all that needed either.”

The deck under them suddenly wobbled, causing Gallus to stumble. “Oh, what now?”

“Sorry about that!” Ironhide called down from above. “There’s a nasty looking storm brewing nearby. I’m working at avoiding it, but we’re probably gonna get buffeted around a bit.”

And to prove it, the deck heaved again, causing Gallus to quickly shift his stance to keep steady. In the back room, something was heard falling to the floor.

“Oh dear, could we please try and keep her steady?” Sunburst called from within, followed by, “Gallus, are you coming back?”

Gallus groaned, but obediently turned to head back into the rear room, ignoring Smolder giving him a cheeky wave as he left. There, he found the School of Friendship’s assistant headstallion at a table, studying a series of parchments, some rubbings they had made earlier, and a few of the smaller pieces of stone texts that they could safely transport. He was completely engrossed in them, still trying to crack their secrets. However, despite showing great interest earlier, Gallus himself had given up hours ago.

“Professor, seriously,” the griffon told the orange unicorn as he returned to his side. “You should probably leave it to better, more qualified, creatures than us at this point.”

“And they’re already waiting for our arrival in Canterlot,” Sunburst relented without looking up from his parchments. “However, it was still us that Princess Twilight asked to supervise the transport of the artifact…I suppose because Dragon Lord Ember prefers dealing with creatures she already knows instead of unfamiliar royal guards…and that it was Smolder’s brother who first discovered it on the outskirts of dragon territories anyway. Regardless, until we do arrive, we might as well try to learn what we can ourselves. You did want to know why there were Old Griffish writings so far away from Griffonstone anyway.”

“I do,” Gallus admitted and motioned to Sunburst’s notes on the writings they’d found. “It’s weird, finding signs of griffon civilization out there. But I guess I figured the answers would’ve been more obvious, and now I’m thinking I should’ve just left it to more knowledgeable creatures than get in the way. Clearly I couldn’t tell you anymore than what you’ve already figured out, and I’m pretty sure you aren’t figuring out anything more either.”

“Perhaps, but we can still try,” Sunburst reasoned, before setting down his quill and facing the griffon. “I know it’s not been as exciting as you expected, and I’m sorry it hasn’t felt like it was worth it, but I saw that look in your eye when you first heard this had been found—you were interested in seeing it for yourself and didn’t want to wait. So I’m still glad you came anyway, if only for the experience.” He turned back to his parchments. “And you have still been of assistance, so I thank you for that much.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Gallus relented with a sigh, before turning to look at the artifact itself, strapped down further back in the room. “So…any ideas on just what this thing actually is?”

Sunburst followed his gaze to the strange, old, standing mirror. It had not aged well, bearing smudges, nicks, and scrapes in its frame, overall looking like it’d been abandoned and forgotten for many, many, years. Its oval frame was made of a curious black stone though, and was decorated with flat silver nodules around the edge, some missing, giving it a mysterious aura. It was very similar to a certain other magic mirror, which was what had gotten everyone so interested in it in the first place. Unfortunately, studying it hadn’t been so straightforward.

“Well,” Sunburst began, rising from his seat and joining Gallus, “I can confirm it bears mystical properties, though they seem very unrefined. It’s very like the sort of teleportation mirrors Starswirl the Bearded experimented with back in his day, but my studies confirm that this one doesn’t match any he worked with. However, he wasn’t the only creature who attempted to create such mirrors, and mix that with the fact we found these Old Griffish writings with it makes me think this may have been an attempt by the griffons of the day to make their own, possibly so to use it to expand their territories. If so, that might be why it was at the edges of dragon territory instead of closer to Griffonstone—they may have worked on it in secret.” He turned back to the parchments. “Unfortunately, the writings that survived aren’t too enlightening on that. They indicate that it is some sort of magic mirror, but of unspecified purpose, maybe built in response to some sort of threat that what I’ve translated hasn’t elaborated on. Possibly they feared Equestrian interference and were trying to retaliate by building their own first.”

“To sort of beat them to the punch,” Gallus said with an understanding nod. That did sound like the griffons he knew. “So…does it work?”

“I don’t know,” Sunburst admitted, stopping to rub at his eyes. “I’m not sure if they ever got it working or just gave up trying after a while. As I said, though, it’s definitely enchanted, through the usual means you’d expect a non-casting species like griffons to enchant something, at least for the day. I’ve tried feeding it a supply of magic, to see if that’ll power it up, but it seems to be thaumically inefficient, wasting more magic than it actually uses. Though, if it had ever worked once, it might be too damaged to do so now. Its thaumic field does seem…worryingly unstable, so it’s best left to more controlled testing in Canterlot. I’m not sure where it’d lead anyway. The texts suggest somewhere called an ‘end realm,’ but I’m uncertain what that could be.” Sunburst shrugged. “Ultimately, I can’t tell you much, not with how jumbled these texts are.” He smirked. “Clearly, the griffons weren’t very good at notetaking.”

Gallus sniggered at that, thinking of his own poor attempts at notetaking in school when the deck shuddered under them again, causing them both to wobble.

Sunburst hurriedly grabbed his parchments to keep them from sliding off the table. “Of course, my attempts to figure it out would be going better if it wasn’t for all this shaking.”

“I’ll go see what’s going on,” Gallus offered, and went out to hop up the stairs leading into the dropship’s piloting room. Unlike most airships Gallus had seen, which had their gondola open to the outdoors, this one was fully enclosed, with its snug piloting room wrapped with wide crystal windows giving an unobstructed view in almost every direction ahead of craft…which was how Gallus quickly saw that they were now engulfed on all sides by storm clouds. “I thought you said you were gonna avoid this storm, lieutenant,” he remarked to Ironhide, working at the controls, as the ship shuddered again. Lighting flashed nearby.

“Oh, I am,” Ironhide assured in a calming voice. He may be a big and burly looking guard with some experience under his metaphorical belt, but he was still nothing but friendly to his current passengers. “Or at least I’m certainly trying. It’s almost like the storm’s following us.”

Gallus blew a raspberry, glancing around at the billowing storm outside. “Storms can’t follow you. At least not without some pegasi to push it around and I don’t see any.” The deck shuddered again as a crossbreeze tried to push the little craft aside.

“Well, never fear,” Ironhide assured. He patted the controls in front of him with one hoof. “She’ll get us through, just you wait and—”

He was cut short when a strong lightning bolt flashed to the immediate right of the airship, near enough that the boom made the craft shudder ominously. Both of them stopped to stare in its direction, surprised.

“…so that was awfully close,” Gallus observed unhelpfully.

Ironhide’s brow furrowed. “It was,” he agreed, the earth pony tightening his grip on the ship’s wheel. “But, you know what they say. Lighting never strikes—” He was interrupted again when another bolt struck dangerously close, this time on the ship’s left. “The hay?” he muttered, looking around for some explanation. None were immediately obvious, but the dark storm clouds had them surrounded on all sides now, so it was becoming difficult to even tell.

Gallus inched closer, starting to worry. The ship’s flight hadn’t gotten any smoother and now there was a near constant but uneven vibration running through it. It filled him with a building dread. “What happens if that lightning hits us?” he asked.

“There’s a lightning shield in place, it’ll deflect most of the damage,” Ironhide replied.

Gallus’s eyebrows went up. “Most?”

It was then that the first lightning bolt struck the aft section of the airship. It hit with some force, roughly jolting the craft. More worryingly, Gallus felt the residual static charge run through the floor and up his feet into the core of his body. He saw Ironhide’s fur briefly stand on end. The earth pony quickly scanned the many dials on the control panel in front of him, but despite a brief fluctuation, the airship seemed alright.

Nevertheless, the impact seemed to have rattled him and he reached over to up the dropship’s throttle to max. “Maybe we should stop tempting fate and get out of here already,” he muttered, keeping them on the most direct course out of the storm possible. He had to fight to do so, the wind outside trying constantly to blow them off course. “We have to still be on the outer edges of this storm anyway.” But another minute had barely passed before another lightning bolt hit them in roughly the same place. From the jolt, it felt like it hit with more force than the first had. His calm attitude was now gone from Ironhide’s face, showing Gallus that their situation was getting as worse as he thought it was. “We need to get out of here before any more strikes hit us like that.”

Gallus looked at him, a little alarmed. “I thought you said there was a lightning shield!”

“I did! But it’s not rated for a constant barrage like this! A few more hits like that and it might fail, and then we’re really in trouble!”

“That’s not all the trouble we’ve got!” Smolder said as she suddenly appeared in the stairway, looking a little alarmed. She jabbed a claw behind her. “Something’s happening with the artifact thing!”

Even more alarmed now, Gallus exchanged a look with Ironhide before following Smolder back down into the back compartment. Sunburst was still there, but he’d left his studying to face the mysterious mirror, horn lit and at the ready. It was easy to see why, because the mirror had begun sparking with its own magical energy as if violently charging up of its own volition.

Sunburst glanced at them as they arrived. “It just started doing that on its own!” he exclaimed to answer the unspoken question.

There was another thudding boom and the deck rocked as another lightning bolt hit. Gallus saw arcs of energy snap from the surrounding walls into the mirror, causing the energy already surrounding it to grow in power. His eyes bulged as he understood. “It’s drawing energy right from the storm,” he breathed in a horrified whisper. “That’s why all that lightning keeps hitting us.”

“Well, it needs to stop!” Smolder declared, motioning to the mirror. “’Cuz I do not like how this is looking right now!”

Indeed, the arcing of energy around the mirror was getting steadily worse, to the point that a faint, wavering, bubble of unstable energy was forming around it. Sunburst continuously scanned it with his magic, his face grim. “It’s getting increasingly unstable. It might overload if this keeps up.”

Gallus and Smolder looked to him in alarm. “What happens if it does?” Gallus dared to ask.

Sunburst simply answered by miming an explosion with his hooves.

Another boom of a lightning bolt hitting the airship was heard, further worsening the mirror’s state as the lightning’s energy jumped into it. Gallus also felt more of a shock running through the floor and into his feet, making him suspect the lightning shield was starting to fail.

“Maybe Lieutenant Ironhide can quickly land the ship so we can take shelter somewhere until this storm blows over…” Sunburst started to suggest but was cut short when another lightning bolt struck the ship. This seemed to push the mirror over the edge, as the energy surrounding it grew even more unstable, it began producing a whining sound gradually growing in volume and certainly didn’t sound good. Sunburst paled. “…Which…we should do now.”

Smolder and Gallus didn’t need to be told twice, and they hurriedly backed out of the room, Gallus having the foresight to shut the door dividing it from the rest of the airship. But he could still hear the hum of the overloading mirror’s crackling energy. Worse, Gallus could feel a tingling sensation in his feet no matter where he stepped now, as if the whole ship was now statically charged. Everything seemed to be at a breaking point, and he shuddered to think what would happen when it all finally gave.

For now, they all crowded into the control room with Ironhide. “Lieutenant, we need to evacuate the airship, the artifact has become unstable,” Sunburst explained hurriedly. “Please land immediately!”

“Would love to, professor, especially as I don’t know how many more lightning strikes we can take, but this blasted storm as gotten me all turned around!” Ironhide declared as he struggled to just keep the ship in place due to all the pushing and tugging the storm was doing to it. “I have no idea what we’re even over…it could be a valley full of quicksand for all I know!”

“Maybe we should just throw the dumb mirror overboard, then!” Gallus began to suggest. “Who cares what happens to it at this point so long as whatever it is doesn’t take us—”

He saw the lightning before he heard it, behind him and to his left, streaking across the dark sky just in the corner of his vision. He had only time enough to register it was there, perceiving it almost as if in slow motion. Then it struck. There was a blazing flash of light, brighter than all the others as Gallus found his vision momentarily blinded, and he and the others all threw up their hooves and claws to shield their eyes. For a split second he felt the current of energy run through the ship as the lightning pierced it. Then a wall of sound struck him from behind with all the force of a runaway train.

BOOM!

Whether it was because of the lightning shield finally giving out or the mirror overloading, he couldn’t be sure, but there was an explosion from somewhere in the rear of the craft, generating a flash of fiery light from below deck followed by a blast of hot air rushing up the staircase, flooding the cramped piloting room and bringing with it a cloud of thick, acrid, smoke. It was magically charged, Gallus feeling it tingle against his flesh, but he barely had time to think about that as, in the same moment, the deck heaved forward, throwing them all headlong in such a way that he felt like they’d all briefly become weightless before they were slamming into each other and the piloting controls. Then before their full body weights could even finish settling, the deck heaved backwards, tilting at a sharp angle as the airship’s nose jolted upwards, tipping them into the back of the cramped room.

By that time, Gallus finished blinking the stars out his eyes and his ears suddenly became aware of other noises, bad ones—the blaring of warning alarms on the control panel, the snapping of the lifting envelope tethers, and the ominous groan of a dying airship. Loose debris could be heard bouncing around below deck as the airship shuddered and heaved, feeling like it was ready to fly apart out from under their feet. Ironhide had managed to keep ahold of the ship’s wheel and was trying desperately to level off while the others shoved and elbowed each other in their haste to untangle themselves and get somewhere—anywhere—that felt safer than right here.

The gondola then abruptly leveled out, but not because of anything Ironhide did because in the same moment there was a loud TWANG and a broken tether suddenly whipped hard against one side of the piloting room windows, cracking them. It was in that moment Gallus realized the gondola was tearing away from the big balloon of lighter-than-air gas keeping them all up in the sky. In the next, Gallus realized that the storm outside had completely vanished behind a wall of fiery smoke and sparks, both of which were spiraling past the sides of the airship at such speeds that Gallus had realized what was happening the same moment Ironhide shouted it.

“We’re going down, fast!” the lieutenant bellowed as he abandoned the now-useless controls and started pushing them for the stairs. “Get below deck NOW!”

There was an almost unreal panic in his voice that was bone-chilling to hear, so there was absolutely no argument from the others as they shoved their way downstairs, immediately turning for the nearest of the seats lining the forward compartment. Gallus had just time enough to lay claw on the safety belts of his before the falling airship thudded its right side hard into something, jolting him out of his seat. Glass shattered as something smashed through the piloting room windows above them, a spray of purple shards spilling into the compartment with them as Gallus felt himself tumble into a freefall. He realized the whole airship was rolling over uncontrollably before it slammed hard into something and gravity returned, Gallus smacking hard into a surface—he was too turned around at that point to tell which one. From there it was just a chaos of being thrown roughly around what must have been all over that little compartment amongst the sounds of the airship thumping, cracking, and breaking. At one point, he distinctly heard Smolder let out a pained yell, before with a rumbling screech, the room around him suddenly stopped moving, throwing him towards the nose of the ship with a slam.

He must have been knocked out for a second, because for the next few moments he was only dimly aware of the world around him as if viewing it from the other side of an empty stadium, the sounds echoing, faded, and muddled, before abruptly coming to again with Ironhide in his face, shaking him awake.

“Hey!” he said urgently. “You okay?”

Gallus was momentarily too shell-shocked to even be sure he still had a body, but then his nervous system suddenly remembered it existed and a deluge of signals flooded his brain, most alerting him of the many new aches and pains he sported. Glancing at his talons as he tried to heave himself upright revealed that he was scratched all over. And his head was throbbing, no doubt from where he’d slammed into the bulkhead he’d come to a stop against. But quickly testing all of his limbs, he found he didn’t seem seriously hurt.

“Yeah,” he told the guard unsteadily, “Yeah, I think I’m good.”

“Good!” Ironhide said, patting him quickly on the back. “Just sit tight for second while I check the others.”

He then turned away to someone else, giving Gallus the chance to look the earth pony over. Like himself, he was scratched all over, with a particularly nasty looking cut over his stifle and his armor a bit banged up, but he otherwise seemed okay too—at least, he wasn’t so hurt that he let it slow him down as he reached Sunburst picking himself up out of the debris scattered about them. His professor had lost his glasses and was favoring his left foreleg, so Gallus figured he probably needed Ironhide’s assistance more anyway.

This gave him the chance to turn and survey the forward compartment…or at least what was left of it. At first he didn’t recognize it at all, disorienting him, until he realized the airship had flipped in the crash leaving the compartment upside-down and him now sitting on what had been its ceiling. Unsurprisingly, all of the interior lighting had gone out, leaving their only light source a small flame burning in the back corner, which oddly seemed like the least of their concerns at the moment. The staircase that had once lead up to the piloting room—which Gallus suspected got squished flat in the crash—had broken free from its mountings and been thrown to one side where it appeared to have jammed itself between the floor and ceiling. Debris was scattered everywhere, enough to just about carpet it entirely, and composed mostly of bits of broken wood and other airship parts, shattered glass from the destroyed piloting room, as well as shards of what appeared to be some kind of purple crystal—the vibrant color making these shards stand out from the rest. Gallus stared at one particularly hefty piece that had come to rest near his footpaw. Where had these come from?

But he was distracted from that when he heard Smolder let out a yell, starting softly before rapidly growing in volume, from deeper within the ruined compartment. “Uh…help!” she called out, panic thick in her voice.

Despite his aching body protesting and telling him to stop, Gallus threw himself onto his paws and darted towards the sound of her voice. Ironhide, twisting around at his sudden movement, shouted a protest, but he was ignored as Gallus sought out his dragoness friend. He found her midway down the compartment, almost hidden in the dim lighting and trying to painfully sit up, but Gallus’s eyes went right to the jagged shard of purple crystal buried deep into the lower left of her belly.

“Smolder!” Gallus exclaimed in alarm and hurried to her side, desperate to help his injured friend somehow.

Claws held askance as if lost and stained from her blood leaking around the crystal, Smolder locked pained and pleading eyes with him. “Pull it out!” she hissed desperately.

Uncertain, Gallus reached forward to do so, but Ironhide, running up to join them, shouted, “No! That could just make the wound worse! She could bleed out!”

Gallus immediately withdrew his talons at that, alarmed.

Smolder was unswayed. “You can’t just leave the thing in me!” she snapped back.

“You’re both right!” Sunburst interrupted, hobbling up to them. He lit his horn and somewhere from amongst the wreckage, his glasses floated out and back onto his face, one lens cracked but otherwise intact. “We should pull it out, but the lieutenant’s right, it’ll only make it worse if we can’t also stop the bleeding.” Seeing he had everyone’s attention, he sat down so to take the weight off his injured leg. “Now, I know a spell we can use to cauterize the wound, but Smolder…it’ll be immensely painful.”

Smolder weighed that for a moment, but seeing she was already in pain, it didn’t take much for her to decide. “Just…do what you have to!” she urged, trying to put on a brave face.

Gallus put a reassuring paw on her shoulder. To his surprise, Smolder grabbed it with both paws and pulled it closer, revealing just how anxious she actually was. Meanwhile, Ironhide gingerly wrapped one hoof around the shard in Smolder’s belly, but hesitated as doing so was against what he’d been trained.

“Are you sure, professor?” he asked Sunburst firmly.

“The alternative is to leave it there, and seeing we don’t know how long until help can come…” Sunburst reminded as he prepared the spell. He left the thought unfinished. “When you’re ready, lieutenant.”

Ironhide looked back to Smolder. “You ready?” he asked her. Smolder didn’t actually look it, but she nodded anyway, more eager for it to be over. “All right, then.”

With one swift jerk, he yanked the shard free of Smolder’s body. He had barely done so when Sunburst fired a yellow-orange spell into the wound, producing a faint sizzle as it burned its interior, ceasing the bleeding immediately. Smolder instantly tensed and screamed in agony, her claws digging deep into Gallus’s paw, before sobbing uncontrollably from the almost unbearable pain. Once the initial spike of pain lessened, this transitioned into a stream of curses unfit for repeating, before finally, breathing deeply, she croaked, “Rocks, that stings!”

Gallus winced as they all did what they could to reassure her. “She’s going to be alright though, right?” he asked, worried.

Sunburst hesitated. “She’ll still need medical attention, Gallus,” he stated seriously. “But hopefully this’ll suffice for now.” Seeing Smolder try and sit up, he held her down. “Until then, you probably shouldn’t move too much. This is just a patch job, Smolder, not a perfect fix.”

“…fine,” Smolder relented, remaining where she was.

“In that case,” Ironhide continued, tossing the bloodied shard aside and standing up, “We better figure out what the hay happened. I’ll see if I can get outside, take a look around.” He turned to Gallus. “Since you’re not too injured, go see what supplies we’ve still got.”

Surprised he was asked to do this, but figured it was probably because Smolder and Sunburst were less mobile, Gallus got up to do so. He was just starting to open a nearby storage cabinet when Ironhide pulled open the door to the backroom and froze at the sight awaiting him on the other side. “Uh, professor?” he called to Sunburst. “You’re going to want to look at this.”

Sunburst quickly hobbled over to see. His eyes bulged. “Oh my goodness.”

“What? What’s wrong?” Gallus asked, also hurrying over only to have his breath catch in his throat at the sight awaiting him.

There was no backroom anymore. It had been completely blown away, opening the back of the airship directly to open air. This meant that everything that had been inside of that room, including the mirror that started this, was now gone, either destroyed in the blast or tumbled overboard during the crash. However, the bigger problem was what lay beyond the airship. Before the crash, they had been sailing over some unpopulated flatlands, slightly rocky and not exactly lush but there was still plenty of plant life to be seen too.

But the terrain out there now was nothing like that. It was all nothing but jagged and scorched rock, hot and inhospitable, interspersed with smoke, fire, and lava at random intervals, giving the whole region a volcanic, almost demonic, look. Some of the rocks grouped together to form jagged pillars tall and as massive as mountains, holding up a ceiling that was just as rocky and unfriendly as the ground. It was like they were in some cave, except the whole expanse stretched on for literally miles, until the haze of smoke and dust that swirled throughout hid the horizon from view. The only plant life to be seen was the odd dry skeleton of some kind of shrub, which only sprouted from the ground maybe once every hundred feet. Protrusions of purple crystal, the same as the pieces that had gotten inside the airship, thrusted up from the earth more frequently than the dead plants did.

More important, Gallus had no idea where the heck this place even was. But it was certainly not Equestria.

“Whoa,” Smolder murmured from behind them, leaning as far over as her injury would allow so to see too, “Even the Dragon Lands look friendlier than this place.”

“But…how did we get here?” Gallus demanded.

“The mirror,” Sunburst breathed, horrified. “When it overloaded, its magic must’ve channeled through the whole airship and teleported us all here.”

“Did that include itself?” Ironhide asked as he surveyed the alien terrain.

“Probably,” Sunburst replied. “But clearly it fell out in the crash. We’ll have to find and recover it, hope it’s still intact.”

“And if it’s not?” Gallus asked.

They all exchanged solemn looks. The question didn’t need answering.

“Right, no point waiting then,” Ironhide decided, taking charge. He turned to Sunburst. “Professor, do you know any defensive magic?”

Sunburst hesitated. “A few spells…but I’m not terribly practiced at them.”

“Can you cast a magic flare if needed?”

“Oh, easily.”

“All right, then, we’ll make that the distress signal for while I’m out there,” Ironhide said, forming a plan. “In the meantime, sit tight and stay safe, see what supplies you can dig up, and be ready to move out of here.” With Sunburst doing as instructed, he patted Gallus on the back. “You’re going to be with me.”

“Wait, what?” Gallus repeated, staring after the guard in surprise as he trotted over to a nearby equipment locker.

Ironhide didn’t reply as he pulled from it a spare royal guard helmet and two short spears with crystalline heads. He offered one to Gallus. “Do you know how to use one of these?”

Gallus examined the spear without accepting it. “You…spear things with it, right?” he guessed.

Ironhide managed a small grin. “Not quite. It’s a spell spear.” He motioned to a hook-shaped trigger on its underside. “Pull this and it’ll fire a bolt of magic in the direction it’s pointing. To activate it, twist this.” He twisted a metal ring at the base of the spearhead and the crystal point lit up with a pale blue glow. “It has two settings. Stun.” he twisted it again and the glow changed to a harsher blue-violet color. “Kill.”

Gallus paled at the very idea of the latter. “But…”

“Look, I get it, I’m asking a lot of you right now,” Ironhide interrupted, sympathizing as he lowered his voice so to talk without being overheard. He jabbed his head towards Smolder and Sunburst. “But with her wound and his bad leg, I’m going to need your help—and I don’t know about you, but I’ve got the distinct impression that something bad is waiting for us out there, leaving us as the only things standing between it and them.” He again motioned towards the others.

Gallus glanced back at them, dreading the idea of either of them being harmed when he could possibly stop it. But his fears threatened to prevail. “I’m not a trained guard like you, though.”

“Right now, that doesn’t matter. You could have all the training in the world but it still all comes down to whether or not you’re willing to forget yourself and step up. A good royal guard doesn’t do this for themselves, Gallus. We do this for those we’re trying to protect, bearing the costs so they don’t have to.” Ironhide took a deep breath. “So I need to know now—can I trust you to have my back?”

Gallus glanced from him and back at the others before taking the proffered spell spear. “Yes.”

Ironhide grinned faintly. “Good.” He plopped the helmet onto Gallus’s head. “Consider yourself an honorary royal guard, then.”

---

Leaving Sunburst to stand watch then, Gallus followed Ironhide into the demonic land. Their wrecked dropship looked even worse from outside, flipped over liked it was. With its backend blasted away and its lifting envelope missing, it was quite literally a mere fraction of itself now. That it sat, alone, in the middle of this forsaken terrain only made it unnerving on top of it all. Fortunately, when the craft came down, it left behind it a long trough of broken ground and pieces of airship, giving them a direction to head in. Remembering roughly their altitude when they started going down, Ironhide even had an idea of how far to go to find whatever was left of the mirror.

Nevertheless, Gallus remained on edge, constantly scanning the unfamiliar terrain as he followed Ironhide’s lead, just waiting for something horrific to happen—this seemed like the perfect place for that, at least. He also suspected that Ironhide was right and something nefarious was out there, as they kept hearing distant howling noises that sounded like some sort of evil creature. But if so, it was still far away because they saw absolutely no sign of it, like it really was just them out here. Gallus wasn’t sure what was worse, the idea that there might be a horrific monster hunting them or that they were utterly alone in this alien wasteland.

Meanwhile, he held his spell spear tightly, keeping it at the ready. He was inwardly glad of the protection it offered, but he also kept it set to stun—the idea of ever using the other setting terrified him, a lot more than he’d admit. The fact that Ironhide had instructed him about it regardless though did give him the nagging feeling the earth pony suspected they might yet have to resort to such lethal settings. Gallus secretly hoped that was just paranoia on his part. But save for cautiously skirting around a pool of molten rock neighboring their path and navigating through a semi-treacherous crevasse between two huge pillars of stone, the hike was surprisingly uneventful. And before long, the trail came to an abrupt end, marked by a large group of the debris scattered in a rough blast pattern. So they started sorting through the debris. Gallus quickly noticed that most of it seemed to be parts from the airship’s back room, giving him a flare of hope. If there was anything left of that mirror, it’d have to be here.

And it was. He found it after the sound of a motor drew him to one of the airship’s engines—still intact—and spied the mirror lying at an angle not far behind it. It was a bit banged up from the fall and still sparking with unstable magic, but it was otherwise miraculously intact. Its glass surface wasn’t even cracked.

After excitedly calling Ironhide over, they cautiously surveyed it. “I’m no magician,” Ironhide remarked, “but I’m guessing all that magic it was overloaded with must’ve cushioned its fall somehow.”

“Who cares?” Gallus declared. “It’s here! We can use it to get back, right?”

“That’s the idea,” Ironhide replied, sharing the griffon’s excitement. He moved to try and lift the mirror only to jerk back when its residual magic shocked him. “Unfortunately, it’s still pretty unstable to move…I think I’d rather bring everybody to it instead.”

Gallus thought how both Sunburst and Smolder were injured—especially as Smolder’s were more serious. “That might be hard to do, lieutenant.”

Ironhide turned to him. “I realize that, but—”

He was cut short when an animalistic, unearthly, howl suddenly filled the air. Unlike others they’d heard along the way, this one sounded close. Ironhide immediately dropped into a defensive position, spell spear at the ready. Gallus hurriedly fumbled with his and attempted to match the earth pony’s stance. They stood back to back, scanning the debris field for trouble. There was a clattering noise as something shifted amongst the broken pieces of airship. Something was definitely nearby, and the feeling in Gallus’s gut suggested it was nothing good.

He saw Ironhide turn to speak when a tall and jagged piece of airship hull shifted right in front of Gallus. He spun around it in time to see it leap out from behind it, snarling and snapping. Gallus reacted by dropping flat to the ground in terror. As cowardly as that was, it might have saved him, as doing so caused the creature to miss entirely, landing behind him while Ironhide dodged to one side of it.

“GALLUS!” he shouted as he spun around to face it, spell spear ready to shoot.

It wasn’t clear if he shouted out of concern or to get him moving, but if the latter, it worked. Gallus sprang back up and forced himself to face the creature. At first glance, it vaguely reminded him of some kind of lizard, except it was bigger than he was. Its hide was cracked and pulsing with a heat like that of molten rock, almost as if it was made of magma itself. Of more pressing concern though were the monster’s jagged teeth and spouts of flames it breathed like a dragon, seeing how much damage either could do to them.

The creature paused briefly to resize its prey. Ironhide used that chance to fire at its feet, trying to scare it off. Unfortunately, this only seemed to rile it up more, knocking Ironhide aside before charging Gallus, seeing the frightened griffon as the easier target. Gallus’s first instinct was to hide, flapping his wings to vault him over and behind the big piece of hull. The creature merely slapped it aside like it was nothing and continued advancing.

Gallus then remembered his spell spear and fired repeatedly at it. The stunning spells did little except slow it briefly, not powerful enough to have any real effect. When he saw it gear up to try and pounce again, he panicked and, out of desperation, changed the spear’s setting before firing again without thinking. The harsh blue-violet bolt hit the creature right as it jumped, hitting with enough force to blow a small hole in its chest and knocking it backwards onto the ground where it writhed, critically injured. By then, Ironhide hurried up and ended it with one final blast from his spear.

The creature immediately went silent, starting to melt into a blob of cooling molten rock.

Ironhide panted for a moment, making sure the creature stayed down, then looked to Gallus, concerned. “Are you all right?”

Gallus didn’t answer as he stared at the beast’s remains, the spell spear in his talons trembling as realization sank in fully.

Ironhide approached him and gently used his hoof to lower the spell spear. “If it helps,” he said, “it looks like it’s just a golem. It was never actually alive to begin with.”

Gallus wasn’t sure if that reassured him any. He wished he could stop trembling.

Ironhide seemed to understand. “Hey,” he said gently, placing a hoof on his shoulder. “You had no other choice and defended yourself. I’d rather you did that than let it kill you.”

“That terrified me though,” Gallus croaked, finally finding his voice again.

“It terrified me too,” Ironhide admitted without hesitation, making Gallus pause. He gave the griffon a reassuring smile. “All it means is that you’re normal.”

Gallus blinked a couple times, processing that. But then they heard another howl, more distant this time, but it still made them tense.

“C’mon,” Ironhide then urged when no other creatures immediately appeared. “We better go get the others. Something tells me we might have more company soon.”

Gallus didn’t argue. Heading back to the wreck seemed like a great idea at the moment.

---

By the time they returned, they found Sunburst had gathered up what few rations that survived the crash, bandaged up his injured leg to help be more mobile, as well as build a stretcher to move Smolder on. He was relieved to hear the mirror was found intact, but he was especially eager to get back to it and go home because Smolder wasn’t looking so good. Her wound wasn’t any better or worse than before, but she had nonetheless turned alarmingly weak and her eyes sullen, looking ill.

“Are you doing okay, Smolder?” Ironhide asked, concerned.

“Just feeling kinda tired,” Smolder murmured feebly. “I mean, I did have a crystal stabbed in my gut an hour or so ago…must’ve taken more out of me than I thought.” She looked optimistically to Sunburst. “But I’m still pulling through, right?”

Sunburst forced a grin. “Sure! You’re going to be just fine!”

He then pulled Ironhide and Gallus aside to talk privately. “She’s not fine,” he explained. “I studied the crystal that injured her and found it’s full of dark magic, a large amount of which transferred into her body.”

Ironhide eyes widened as he understood. “She’s suffering from a negative thaumic overdose?”

Gallus didn’t like the sound of that. “What’s that mean?”

“The dark magic is poisoning her, Gallus,” Sunburst explained seriously. “But we can’t do anything about it here. If we can’t get her back in time to purge it from her system…she might not make it.”

Gallus felt his stomach clench. “We can’t let that happen!”

“We won’t,” Ironhide promised. “We just need to get back to the mirror and go home like we already planned. It’s just now we’re on the clock, so let’s get moving.”

They gathered up what they could carry, strapped Smolder to the stretcher, and headed out, Sunburst and Gallus carrying Smolder while Ironhide led the way. Like before, the hike began uneventful but intimidating, especially now they were hearing the calls of more golems searching for them, coming ever closer. But now Gallus found he didn’t care so much. His friend’s life was on the line—that scared him way more than any golem. And he swore to himself he wouldn’t let any of them stand in the way.

That promise was soon put to the test, though. As they neared their destination, the golems finally showed themselves, this time appearing as a whole pack. Gallus, bringing up the rear, noticed them stalking them from the shadows, waiting for their chance to strike. “Lieutenant?” he called warily.

“I see them,” Ironhide assured. “Just keep moving and don’t give them any reason to attack.”

They did, but the golems continued to lurk nearby, slowly edging closer. Soon they neared the crevasse their path went through, signaling that they didn’t have much further to go. But Smolder, who had been dozing on and off through the hike, lifted her head up to glance behind them. “Guys, those things on our tails are getting restless,” she murmured uneasily.

Sunburst was worried too. “They could attack once we’re in the crevasse and bottleneck us,” he reasoned to Ironhide. “Could we possibly go around?”

“Not without dragging out the trip,” Ironhide said, motioning to the thick pillars of stone that made up the crevasse’s walls. They were several tens of feet thick in either direction. “Considering we’re already in danger, I’d rather hurry this up if we can. Besides, we don’t know what the path going around will be like. It might be even more treacherous.” He looked back at the others. “Just keep moving as fast as you can and try and stay ahead of them.”

But the closer they got to the crevasse, the closer the golems drew and the more restless they got. Gallus wondered if the only reason they were holding back was because they knew their prey could fight back, so they were testing their boundaries. As the golems started speeding up as they entered the crevasse though, Ironhide changed priorities.

“Professor, take the lead,” he ordered Sunburst, letting the unicorn pass him. “No matter what, keep going and get yourself and Smolder to that mirror. It’ll be dead ahead another hundred feet after the crevasse.” He then fell back to stand beside Gallus, walking backwards so to face the golems now almost close enough to start nipping at their heels if they wanted. The earth pony hefted his spell spear. “Gallus, if any of these guys make a wrong move,” he stated simply, “shoot them.”

Gallus swallowed. “Got it.” Letting Sunburst use magic to carry his end of Smolder’s stretcher, he turned around to face the golems as well, brandishing his spear. He did not like the look of the pack of the creatures looking for their opening, but he already decided that if any of them wanted to get at Smolder or Sunburst, they were going to have to get through him first.

They managed to get halfway through the crevasse before a golem that finally broke lines and lunged. Ironhide fired a single shot at it—one was all he needed. That seemed to open the floodgates as the rest howled and started lunging for them in rapid succession. Gallus downed one with two shots of his own. He winced doing so, but the thought of what would happen to his friends if he didn’t made him push past it for now. They switched into a run after that so to keep some distance between themselves and the pursuing golems, but they kept coming. And though Ironhide and Gallus were standing their ground, they knew they were outnumbered and it was only the tight confines of the crevasse that kept them from getting mobbed.

“If only we could block their path, force them to go around while we keep going,” Ironhide muttered as he shot another golem. This one got dangerously close before it went down.

Gallus scanned the crevasse for any ideas before spying a massive chunk of rock some feet almost directly above them. It looked loose. If he could get that to fall…

He adjusted his aim and fired his spell spear a few times at it. But while it jostled, it didn’t budge. “Good try,” Ironhide praised, seeing what he was trying. “But it’s too shored up from this side, so—LOOK OUT!”

Gallus spun around to see a golem make a leap for him and quickly fired almost pointblank in its face. It became a near free for all after that, with multiple golems going for them at once. They kept them back, but only just barely. Gallus realized then that the number of golems hadn’t been going down—more were joining the group from behind. They were about to be overrun if something wasn’t done soon.

The last straw was when he heard Sunburst stumble behind him and turned in time to see the unicorn fall, spilling Smolder from her stretcher who shouted in pain, clutching at her wound. Ironhide broke off to help them while Gallus provided cover, but he knew immediately it wouldn’t be enough. His eyes went back to the boulder, remembering suddenly what Ironhide had told him earlier:

“A good royal guard doesn’t do this for themselves, Gallus. We do this for those we’re trying to protect, bearing the costs so they don’t have to.”

So still eyeing the boulder, Gallus decided then and there that, no matter the cost, that sucker was coming down.

He laid down a spray of fire so to down the first row of golems before taking flight, flying low as he elbowed aside one golem, trying to get back on the other side of the boulder. He heard Ironhide shout after him in alarm and his shots as he resumed the fight, but Gallus ignored it as he passed under the boulder and pointed his spear at its base, holding down the trigger and unleashing a constant salvo at it. As hoped, it wasn’t as shored up from the other side, and soon the boulder slid free, bringing down a large portion of the crevasse wall with it. Gallus had time enough to see Ironhide, Smolder, and Sunburst staring after him in horror—but ultimately safe—before the boulder came slamming down between him and them, sealing off the rest of the crevasse.

Relief fleetingly rushed through Gallus as he saw he’d done it, but then remembered this left him trapped with the golems as one swatted him right out of his low flight, sending him skidding on his back. He raised his spear to defend himself only to have one golem rip it from his talons with its mouth. As another two pinned him down with their hot but not scalding paws, Gallus braced himself for the end, hoping it’ll be quick and not in vain.

So he was surprised when they instead started dragging him back the way they’d come, heading out of the crevasse. Once they were out, most of the golems dispersed save for four which boxed in Gallus and continued to drag him somewhere off the crash trail of the airship. It was almost as if they were escorting him somewhere. Wherever they were taking him, it took a few minutes, during which Gallus figured that they were taking him to some burrow so to save him for later. As if he really needed them to drag this out any longer. But instead of a burrow, they brought him to the shore of a massive lake of molten magma, the searing heat making Gallus’s body squeeze itself of every last drop of sweat in a moment. He thought for a second that the golems intended to hurl him into the lake so to burn.

Instead, they forced him into a submissive bow towards it. Didn’t expect that.

But there was more to the lake than he thought, as it began to stir and boil before an absolutely massive creature thrust its head up from within the middle of it, Gallus gaping up at it as it brought its condescending gaze down upon him. Like the golems, it bore a distinct lizard shape but scaled up several times, as well as a spiked armored back, a large horn protruding from the top of its snout, and a distinctly red hide. And there was an intelligence in its gaze that the golems distinctly lacked.

“Well,” it rumbled in a booming voice, “it has been many millennia since I’ve had the privilege of a griffon trembling before me like this.” It made a thunderous, wicked, cackle at Gallus’s shocked look. “Oh, come now, surely you knew my golems had to have a master commanding them, yes?”

Gallus blanked out for a moment as he sought a good response. “Don’t call me Shirley.” He winced even as the dumb comeback left his beak.

The creature cackled again before its gaze turned murderous. “I suppose you have no idea at all who or what I am,” it grumbled, bringing its head down low so to look Gallus in the eye. “After all, I’m sure your forefathers made certain any and all record of me was erased after they banished me.”

“That does sound like something they’d do,” Gallus conceded, trying to not let the beast intimidate him…or at least let it show.

“I am Cherufe,” the beast growled. “And once I ruled a mighty land in your world, unopposed until your own kin’s expanding territories intruded into mine. But when I retaliated in kind, burning their lands, they tricked me and trapped me here,” he motioned to the terrain around them, “the End Realm.”

Realization struck Gallus. “The mirror,” he muttered. “The griffons built it so to banish you!”

“Yes!” Cherufe hissed, spitting a shower of sparks from his massive mouth. “They thought by trapping me here, they could be rid of me forever! But instead, I have learned, grown, and thrived! I am a hundred times more powerful now than when they had so foolishly picked a fight with me! They could not possibly beat me now!”

“Except you’re still trapped here!” Gallus reminded him.

But at this, the Cherufe made a wicked grin. “Not anymore,” he said, leaning closer. Gallus could feel his scorching breath singe his feathers. “Because now you are here!” He cackled again, seeing Gallus’s shock. “Oh, that’s right. I saw your flying machine’s arrival here. I know you brought the mirror with you, bringing it where there was none before. You have so foolishly given me the way to finally escape this world and go back to yours.” His vicious glare could melt lead. “And then I will see to it that your world will burn, charred until it becomes a truer End Realm than this world ever was.”

Horrified, Gallus tried to rise to his feet but the golems held him down. “You can’t!”

“NO GRIFFON WILL TELL ME WHAT TO DO!” Cherufe bellowed, making the land around them quake. “Not again! I WILL have my vengeance at long last!” His fury then transitioned into cruel humor again, leaning close again. “I almost want to make you watch it all…but it has been ever so long since I last tasted griffon flesh…”

Then before Gallus could finish registering what that meant, Cherufe opened his mighty maw wide, leaning forward to snap him up with one bite. Though seeing how his throat was so hot that it literally glowed, Gallus wasn’t sure he wouldn’t just vaporize on contact with the monster’s tongue. But before he could get that far, a volley of bright magical lights suddenly shot into Cherufe’s mouth, exploding violently. The behemoth reared back, letting out a roar of agony while Gallus whipped around to try and find out what had just saved him. When one of the golems next to him was shot down by another blast, he traced it back to a nearby bluff where Ironhide laid low with his spell spear.

“Get out of there!” he shouted at Gallus before shooting another golem.

Gallus didn’t hesitate, shoving aside a third golem before going for the fourth who still had his spell spear in his mouth. Pressing one foot on its chest for leverage, burning his footpaw in the process, Gallus ripped the spear out of the creature’s mouth and quickly shot it before fleeing away from the lava lake. He saw Ironhide leave his perch and hurry to join him.

“You were supposed to get to the mirror!” Gallus shouted at him as they came side-by-side.

“Sunburst and Smolder are already there, using a salvaged engine to power it up!” Ironhide shouted back. “But I wasn’t about to just give up on you, Gallus! The royal guard isn’t in the habit of leaving creatures behind!”

Cherufe was heard bellowing in anger behind them, and Gallus glanced back to see the fiend recover from Ironhide’s attack and resume control. “After them!” he bellowed to unseen golems no doubt already coming their way. “Do NOT let them escape!”

“Whatever—look, we need to keep him from getting at the mirror!” Gallus said, glancing behind them. They had no visible pursuers but that could change at any time.

“I heard!” Ironhide replied. A pair of golems suddenly ran out in front of them, but they quickly shot them down without slowing. “Unfortunately, Sunburst’s not sure the mirror will actually follow us back to our world this time! Something about it being caught between realms? I didn’t really understand it—I just know we can’t move it ourselves!”

“Then we have to destroy it!” Gallus concluded, “Before he gets to it!”

But first they had to actually get back to the mirror themselves. Fortunately, they seemed to have a good lead on their pursuers, and though more golems started appearing by the pack to give chase, they managed to stay ahead of them. Of course, once they stopped at the mirror, the golems would finally catch up, so they were still going to have to fight back long enough to even get through the mirror in the first place. This proved to not be all of their troubles though, as they heard Cherufe bellow in anger again, frustrated that they were getting away, and looked back in time to see him, back in his lake, belch a mighty ball of fire. But this apparently was no ordinary ball of fire, because it started to spread out, forming something of a billowing firestorm that steadily increased in size in their direction, washing over the already deadly landscape like a wave of scorching heat.

Ironhide needed only one look at it. “Uh, run!” he advised, upping his pace.

“Running!” Gallus agreed, pushing himself faster too, despite his lungs already burning from the exertion. The smoky, hazy, air filling the End Realm didn’t help with this, but he pushed through anyway. He had to.

Finally, the debris field came back into view, with Sunburst and Smolder still there waiting for them, though considering they had roughly dozens of pursuing golems on their tail, this was only so relieving. Still, Sunburst had clearly taken the intact airship engine Gallus had seen earlier and wired it directly into the mirror, pumping magical energy into it until the mirror was swirling with unstable energy much like it had when the airship went down—he was trying to recreate the circumstances that had brought them here.

“Gallus!” Smolder croaked from her stretcher. She looked even weaker now than when he’d last seen her, but she was overjoyed to see him alive. “You’re okay!”

“Yeah, but none of us will be soon if we don’t get out of here, quick!” Gallus said, throwing himself behind a stack of debris and started shooting the golems that were now catching up to them.

“Professor!” Ironhide said as he did the same. “How much longer?”

“Soon, I hope!” Sunburst explained. “The mirror is too damaged to activate normally now, so I’m hoping destabilizing it again will create sort of a tear between worlds we can slip through instead, like a smaller scale version of how we got here in the first place!”

“Will that bring the mirror with us?”

“No!”

“Then that’s no good, because we’ve got a big bad monster that wants to come and destroy our world!” Gallus shouted, frustrated. He vented some of it by shooting golems though. Funny how quickly he had adjusted to doing this, but seeing their lives were on the line, there wasn’t really time to mull on that.

“Does that big bad have anything to do with the fire hurricane that’s coming our way?” Smolder asked, weakly jabbing a claw at the wall of flames coming their way, not far behind the golems.

“Unfortunately, yes!”

“Is there a way we could destroy the mirror once we’re through?” Ironhide asked Sunburst.

“Ah,” Sunburst replied, fidgeting and feeling put on the spot as he sought a solution. He yelped briefly when a golem nearly got through to them before Gallus and Ironhide both downed it. “Maybe! If we trigger the engine to overload…the blast might be big enough to take out the mirror too. But it’ll have to build up as much of a charge as possible first!”

Ironhide withdrew from his position until he was next to Sunburst. “Show me how to do it!” he ordered. “I’ll rig it to blow while the rest of you escape then make a run for it myself!”

Meanwhile, Gallus kept shooting golems as they came to view, not even letting them get close if he could. Because the terrain was fairly open in this area, leaving the golems with little cover, this wasn’t as hard to do as it had been back in the crevasse. But the golems wasn’t the issue this time, it was the “fire hurricane” as Smolder had put it. It was still a few hundred feet off, but it was getting dangerously close fast. Gallus could already feel the heat of its flames starting to wash over them, fueled by a hot wind that picked up as it drew nearer. They were running out of time.

But luckily it didn’t take long for Sunburst to rig the airship engine to blow, setting it up so that all Ironhide had to do was yank out a specific wire—the engine would do the rest. This just left waiting for the mirror to finish charging, and that Sunburst unfortunately couldn’t predict. At last though, as the remaining golems started to mob them and the fire hurricane within a hundred feet away, close enough that its outer edges started to blow hot sparks their way, the mirror suddenly flashed, forming a fluctuating ball of light at the center of the unstable energy forming around it.

“That’s it!” Sunburst exclaimed, having to shout over the wind. “That’s the tear we need!”

Ironhide pushed him in its direction. “Take Smolder and go!” he ordered. “We’ll cover you!”

Smolder started to object, not wanting to leave them behind, but she wasn’t in any position to stop them as Sunburst did as told, taking her stretcher in his magic and pulling it and himself into the distortion. Their images wavered a bit before vanishing entirely in the energy. Gallus hoped this meant they safely got through. By this time, the golems were starting to thin out, apparently not built to withstand the oncoming fire hurricane either, now less than fifty feet away and rushing towards them, almost on top of them.

“Gallus!” Ironhide shouted, voice almost lost in the hot wind pelting them with sparks. “Pull back and get through the mirror!”

Gallus started backing for the mirror, shooting golems as he went. The wind blowing dust and hot cinders in his eyes was making it hard to aim. About to cross into the swirling ball of energy, he stopped to shoot a golem trying to rush them. He was glad he did because that was when he saw another golem lob a piece of heated debris at Ironhide, the object’s sharp sides slashing at one of his legs. He yelled in pain and doubled over.

“Lieutenant!” Gallus shouted at him, alarmed.

“Get through the blasted mirror, Gallus, that’s an order!” Ironhide shouted back, forcing himself back up to yank out the wire. Immediately, the engine sparked and started to whine as the overload began. They had only seconds at best before it blew.

So Gallus didn’t even hesitate. He didn’t have time to. He left the mirror and darted towards Ironhide. The firestorm was upon them now, making it difficult to see and treacherous to move as the more flammable pieces of debris both caught fire and started to get thrown around in the wind, but all of that barely registered as he arrived at the earth pony, tossed aside his spell spear, and threw him over his back.

“I told you to go!” Ironhide bellowed in his ear.

“And you wouldn’t leave me behind, so why should I?” Gallus bellowed back as he spun around back for the mirror.

He had no idea how much time he had left before the engine blew—he couldn’t hear it anymore over the roaring wind of the firestorm, feeling its flames lapping at his feathers now. Was he on fire now? He wasn’t sure he cared right at the moment. All he focused on was getting to the mirror, almost gone from view in all the debris and fire being blown around, but he could still make out the bright glow of the tear and aimed right for it, bodily throwing himself into it at the last few steps. He felt his feathers stand on end as an electrical charge ran through him. The End Realm and the more familiar hilly terrain of Equestria flashed back and forth before his eyes as they seemed to slip in and out of either world.

But then he felt the familiar tingle of a magical aura grab him before he and Ironhide were bodily thrown out of the distortion, landing on welcome grassy terrain right before Sunburst’s hooves. There was then a loud and bright bang as the engine blew back in the End Realm, part of the explosion translating back through the rift before it snapped back in on itself and vanished completely, sealing instantly.

Silence fell. A welcomed silence.

Gallus looked upwards and saw sky again. Blue, warm, partly cloudy, and distinctly Equestrian. It was beautiful. He couldn’t help but smile.

He felt Sunburst patting him down with his cloak. Suddenly smelling burning feathers, Gallus realized he really had caught on fire, but hopefully it was just feathers and not flesh that was burned. Given what he had just been through, he could stand losing a few feathers to this. He rolled over to look at Ironhide, lying beside him and panting. Some of his fur had been singed off his body too, but other than his injured leg, he looked okay.

He was staring at Gallus with an expression that was caught somewhere between a glare and pride. “Gallus, that was absolutely reckless what you did and it could’ve gotten us both killed,” he reprimanded. But then the proud expression won out and he reached out with one hoof. “Thank you. I really wasn’t looking forward to dying back in that horrid place.”

“Me either, lieutenant,” Gallus replied, letting himself relax in the grass. He was never going to take grass for granted again. “Me either.”

---

It didn’t take long for help to find them. As it turned out, search parties were already in the area looking for them, thinking their airship had simply gotten blown down in the storm. The truth was much stranger though, which they all took turns explaining as they were transported to the nearest hospital for treatment. Smolder was obviously the highest priority with her dark magic poisoning, but once the doctors did their bit and had most of that flushed out, her robust dragon body quickly started bouncing back. The doctors said her wound probably wouldn’t even leave a scar. Had she been any other creature, she might not have been so lucky, but that just went to show that some days it was good to be a dragon.

The rest of them faired pretty well too. Sunburst’s injured leg proved to only be sprained, not broken, and should recover nicely. After that, they only really suffered from cuts, scrapes, bruises, and in the case of Ironhide and Gallus, minor burns, all of which were easily treated. All in all, what they really needed now was a chance to rest up from the day’s trying events, so the doctors set them up in cots to do so, all sharing the same room. They had a few visitors come to check up on them, namely Princess Twilight, Starlight Glimmer, and Gallus and Smolder’s other friends. Ironhide’s commander also came to praise both Ironhide and Gallus for their actions getting them home, promising Ironhide an Injured Guard Award and Gallus a Citizen’s Medal of Valor for their bravery, both of which were accepted fairly modestly—it was pretty easy to do when you were too tired to really care at the moment. Otherwise they were left alone, reflecting back on the adventure while they munched on some much needed food to fill their empty stomachs.

“So do you think it worked?” Smolder asked part way through the meal. “Did we destroy the mirror?”

“Difficult to say,” Sunburst admitted. “Starlight and Twilight are scanning the area to try and find out more. But seeing nothing else has yet to follow us out of the End Realm, I feel pretty confident in saying that we at least damaged the mirror enough that nobody’s probably using it any time soon.”

“Hopefully that’s enough,” Ironhide mumbled.

“Yeah, that Cherufe needs to stay right where he is,” Gallus stated. “I’m definitely not eager to ever have to face him again, so hopefully I’ll never have to.”

“Though if you ever do, I’m sure you’ll be ready to kick his butt,” Smolder stated confidently. “I mean, you did it once already, right, Mr. Royal Guard?”

Gallus made a weak laugh. “Doesn’t mean I want to do it again, Smolder,” he assured. “Honestly, I think I’ve had my fill of the royal guard for now.”

“That’s too bad,” Ironhide said wistfully. “You have promise, Gallus.”

Gallus paused. “…really?”

“After that show? Hay, yeah!”

“Perhaps you should consider signing up after you graduate, Gallus,” Sunburst suggested, trying to be helpful, “If you want.”

Gallus considered it for a moment then shook his head. “Nah. Honestly, I can’t see myself in the royal guard anyway.”

Smolder snickered. “Wouldn’t it be funny then if one day you ended up, like, captain of the guard or something anyway?”

Gallus snorted. “Yeah, right. Like that’ll ever happen.”

Author's Note:

My chief goal with this fic was to give some sort of initial motivation/inspiration to explain why Gallus later ends up becoming captain of the royal guard, as we know he ultimately does in "The Last Problem" -- a little trial by fire adventure seemed a good way to do it.

Cherufe gets his name from an actual mythical creature from legend, but he's otherwise mostly inspired by the image of the unnamed creature the Young Six are shown to have fought as seen in that one stained glass window again seen in the finale. The idea was that this fic serves as a sort of prelude to the fight that window portrays, so yes, that does imply that, in my mind, this isn't the last they see of Cherufe.

But that's a story for another day.

Comments

[Rated Ponystar]

Good story. I like it.

[TheStratovarian]

I enjoyed it. Nice little 1/6th slice of things.

[fanreader999999]

Meh

[Jay Bear v2]

This story was clever in how it tied into those hints we see in the finale episode. I also liked how faithful the new world building (things like the magical spear, the portal mirror) is to the show. That said, I didn’t understand why griffons all forgot about the big baddy. He sounds like the kind of monster they’d brag about beating. That didn’t distract me from the story, though, and it was a fun, adventurous read.

One last thing: between the fiery hellscape, the demonic voice, and Gallus blasting away magma-infused golems, I got some serious Doom vibes reading this story. So I “made” some “”fan”” “””””art””””” for everyone to suffer enjoy.
i.postimg.cc/W4XXt14y/End-Realm.png

[Scyphi]

10033082
Personally, I actually kept thinking of Half-Life the whole time I was writing the thing, so much so I was making a very concentrated effort to try and make it at least visually different, in terms of setting and such.

That said, I didn’t understand why griffons all forgot about the big baddy. He sounds like the kind of monster they’d brag about beating.

A fair point. My thinking as to why it was forgotten was just A: it'd been a really long time since that had gone down, and since then the Griffon Kingdom had sort of gone really downhill and weren't big on maintaining their records (I mean, you saw the state their library was in, right?) so eventually it faded from memory and B: Cherufe was a seriously bad enough of a baddie that they were left spooked enough afterwards that they deliberately buried the tale so nobody would know about it, and if nobody knew about it, then everybody would be far less likely to try and do anything that might let him come back.

I probably would've gone into more detail about points like this in the story if I didn't have a set word limit to adhere to for the contest.

[Bachiavellian]

Hey there! Thank you so much for entering The Discovery contest and for requesting a review! I’m Bachi, and I was the judge assigned to your story.

Let me start off by saying that this story stood out from a lot of other entries in the contest simply because of how ambitious it is. We get a lot of huge, cool ideas, and I’m always down for big double-helpings of worldbuilding and adventure. It’s also really neat that you tie everything back to the idea of explaining why Gallus joined the guard, so kudos for that!

Now, I think the way to take this story up a notch would be to focus a bit more on how you want your prose and your perspective to read. It was a good choice to make Gallus your perspective character, and I think it’d be a great idea for the story to really double-down on his viewpoint. Right now, the narration is mostly high-level stuff that’s more concerned with what’s happening rather than how Gallus feels about it. Which, of course, helps you explain all of the complicated ideas that you’re delivering, but this kind of prose also has a tendency to feel clinical or detached sometimes. I think this story sometimes struggles with translating its high stakes into emotional stakes, so maybe making Gallus’s feelings bleed a little bit more clearly into the text might help with that.

I also think it’s worth mentioning that it’s important to keep in mind your reader’s energy level throughout your story. This story really does crank the tension up to 11 pretty quickly, and keeps it there for most of the story. It’s fun, of course, but it can also feel exhausting if you don’t offer some kind of relief now and again in one form or another.

Both of these aspects of the story make it just a little harder for the piece to resonate as emotionally as it might be able to. I think you’ve done a great job at sorting out the logistics of your ideas and handling how you convey information to the reader, which is essential for this kind of action-adventure setpiece fic to work. The whole goal of any story (at least, in my humble opinion) is to make the reader feel something, so I hope it makes sense that I put a lot of focus on how this piece handles its emotions.

Thank you again for submitting to the contest! Please feel free to reply or PM me if you have any questions. I really hope you found this review helpful!

-B.

[Scyphi]

10156148
All good points. I'd like to think that, were I not writing on a word limit and had no need to fear potentially going over that, I would've done precisely some of these things. Honestly, the story was probably always longer than the fic ultimately ended up being, and probably would've only benefited had it been allowed to expand as such. But then that's exactly why I wrote it--I wanted to challenge myself, see if I could achieve that same thing but within the needed word limit.

Points for me for me to consider for the future should I try something like this again, then.