52 - Remnants of the Fallen
After we wished Bon-Bon and Lyra luck and bade them goodbye, it only took us a few moments to catch up with Gilda. The gryphon hen hadn’t gone far; she stepped off of an awning that had been brightly colored—before the endless sunset had bleached the cloth white—and swooped low to meet us on the street. As she landed, she glanced back towards the pair behind us, and asked, “All done with the spy who’s got a license to kill?”
I blinked at her, and she shook her head. “It’s a reference to—agh, whatever, you probably don’t remember those books anyways. Ready to go find this bar?”
I nodded, and we set off, though I noticed Gilda kept glancing back at Bon-Bon until we turned a corner, and they were fully out of sight. “She’s n-not gonna come hunt you d-down.” I was pretty sure, at least; Bon-Bon just wanted GIlda to stop harassing her wife.
“That’s too bad,” Gilda said, and I was thrown for a loop. “She’s got spirit. Shame she’s too tied up with that mindless Hollow, or else she might be fun to pursue. If she had wings, I might have tried anyways, wife be damned.”
I stared at Gilda for a long few moments, trying to understand, and eventually Red just snorted, and thumped my shoulder with his own. “Gryphons. Threw me for a loop too at first.”
Gilda smirked at me, using the corner of her beak. “We take any chance we can get to sharpen our claws; especially against each other. Family reunions usually end with someone losing an eye or a talon.”
With a swallow, I forced my eyes forward, and started looking for street signs. “I’m g-glad I’m not a g-gryphon, then.”
“Yeah, you’re cool, but you’d be a soft little dewclaw by gryphon standards,” Gilda agreed. “Probably for the better.”
* * *
The Plastered Princess was close to the palace, on the side of the city closer to the snowy slopes above. As the city grew over prior centuries, it seemed as though the newer construction out near the cliffside was richer and higher-class, while this side, in the shadow of the peak, remained in use by the less wealthy and more utilitarian city workers. Even though Red knew where it was, it didn’t stand out much from any of the other dulled buildings around it, and if it wasn’t for the gryphon wearing the armor of a royal guard sitting outside, I would’ve struggled to find it myself.
He looked up as he approached, and I got a good look at him, then blinked in surprise. He was Hollowed, like me, and even his eyes had become glowing embers in his empty sockets. His fur was faded, but I could still see that it had once been a bright blue, and his voice, when he spoke, was still understandable, but raspy. “Hey there. G-going into the bar?”
As we came closer, his embers focused on us a bit more, and then he seemed startled as he jumped to attention. “Wait…G-Gilda?”
“Ugh,” she blew air through the sides of her beak. “Of course you’d still be here. Didn’t even have the decency to get torn apart by Hollows or demons out in the country.”
“W-what…?” The gryphon blinked at her in confusion while Gilda strode past him into the bar without even a second look. He glanced at us, as if looking for answers, but we had none for him.
Instead, Red held out a hoof. “Sorry. She’s like that. I’m Red.”
The gryphon nodded. “I…okay…? I’m G-Gallus. The bar’s open, I’m j-just getting some fresh air.” After a moment, he blinked at Red, as if recalling something from a lifetime ago. “You look…f-familiar?”
“We met once, long time ago. Friend of a friend.” Red said, then motioned to me, and the filly on his back. “She’s Holly, and this is Dinky. Know any unicorns that can treat burnout?”
“Not many s-sane ones, unfortunately…” Gallus sighed, then slumped slightly. “B-bring her in, maybe a couple of the other g-guards might know something.”
Red pushed through, followed by Gallus, and I was the last one to enter, letting the door shut behind me. The interior of the tavern was mostly made of wood, well-worn and cozy, with dusty old picks and hammers hung on the walls, as well as some broken weapons, and even a dented helmet mounted over the fireplace. A long bar ran the length of the room, with most of the barstools left vacant, as most of the occupants were sitting together in groups in booths or around tables. A few old stained carpets scattered across the floor only added to the cozy feeling of the bar, and a couple of Hollows had chosen to lie across those instead, so they could relax and lose themselves in the low ambience around them.
A couple of the groups seemed to be royal guards, wearing varying amounts of their armor and swapping old war stories, while in one of the booths sat three pegasi wearing blue and yellow flight uniforms. Another two groups looked like nobles, but their clothes were worn and untied, and they spoke with only the slightest hint of highborn accents. The only pony actually sitting at the bar was a unicorn mare with white fur and a dark brown mane, who had been speaking with the bartender—a much older, mustached unicorn stallion with beige fur, wearing a faded red coat. They both looked surprised when Gilda took her seat on one of the barstools next to the mare, having clearly interrupted a conversation they were having.
Red bumped my shoulder with his head. “Make sure she doesn’t start any fights. I’ll take care of Dinky.” As he moved towards one of the groups of guards, which included a few unicorns that would hopefully know how to help, I followed Gilda to the bar.
Now that Gallus had actually accompanied us inside, he seemed uncomfortable with the confined room, but he joined me as I moved to the bar. I sat next to Gilda, he sat next to me, and the bartender gave the three of us a raised eyebrow. In a highborn accent that sounded northwestern—Trottingham?—he stated, “We haven’t anything but water, I’m afraid. Boiled rainwater, at that. Terrible for tea, even if we had leaves.”
Gilda squinted at the bottles behind the stallion. “Well, what’s in those, then?”
“Vinegar at best,” he replied, without even a moment of hesitation. “The darker ones are just filled with mud. Trust me, I’ve checked. The last bartender went mad long before we arrived.”
With a frustrated clack of her beak, Gilda asked, “Well, then what’s the point of tending bar? Do you even sell anything here?”
“The atmosphere of a bar doesn’t require alcohol—though it certainly helps.” the stallion admitted. “It keeps us sane and off the streets, so I’ll serve water and toss out belligerents until things get better—or worse.”
Gilda stared him down for a long few moments, before she finally admitted, “Could use a drink, my throat’s getting dry. But I don’t have any money.”
“That’s fine; I won’t charge you for water, miss.” the stallion said, and his mustache twitched in a way that hinted at a smile, before he glanced at Gallus and me. “Same for the both of you, miss and sir?”
We nodded, and the stallion turned back to the bar to check the contents of a few corked bottles filled with clear liquid. As he did, Gallus leaned around me to look at Gilda. “T-talk to me, please? W-what are you doing here, at least?”
“Oh, I’ve come for teatime with the pony princess, can’t you tell?” Gilda snapped at him, before she took the proffered bottle from the bartender. “Don’t talk to me, chicken.”
Gallus leaned back on his stool, and I could hear him mumbling quietly to himself, “Ch-chicken? I’m n-not a…”
He trailed off, and the conversation seemed to wither there, as I considered my own glass bottle of water, and Gallus just stared at his own. Eventually, I took a swig—it tasted fine, though it had a metallic aftertaste, but being able to wash out my mouth with clean-ish water again in a cozy setting did a great deal to settle my worries. Afterwards, I looked at the bartender, and the mare with whom he’d been speaking as we came in. “Are you two p-palace staff? I was t-told to come here and f-find you…”
“We were,” the mare responded. “I’m Raven, former Secretary of State, and Kibitz used to be the Palace Majordomo, though I think he’s enjoying tending bar more.”
The stallion—Kibitz—snorted, but didn’t say anything. He busied himself with checking the contents of another bottle, and apparently decided whatever it contained was undrinkable.
Raven peered closely at me. “Who told you to find us, then?”
I swallowed another mouthful of boiled water before responding; whetting my lips helped me speak. “My f-friend, Bon-Bon. B-before that, the P-Pillars of Equestria, and b-before that, Princess Celestia.”
She considered that for a few moments. “You’re from Ponyville, then?” I nodded, and she continued. “So you’re likely the group she sent to Baltimare. You did a good job getting up here, considering the city-wide lockdown. The details aren’t too important, though you did mention the Pillars?”
“At the b-base of the mountain, in Hammerhoof. They’re w-waiting for us to open the g-gate.”
“Hm, then they’re as stuck as we are,” Raven grumbled, as she tapped her hoof on the bar. After a moment, she looked over at Red, who had passed Dinky into the care of a pair of unicorns wearing royal guard armor, and had begun to make his way over to join us. “Pick a large table; we’ll join you.”
Red blinked at her, then nodded, and changed course towards one of the unoccupied tables, near the blue-suited pegasi. Raven’s horn carried our bottles of water, and Kibitz joined us, so that after a few moments, myself, Red, Gilda, Raven and Kibitz were all relocated around the table. Gallus remained sitting at the bar, mumbling to himself, and Gilda seemed to prefer that.
“So, introductions,” Raven said, looking around, and she started with Red. “Kibitz and I know you, of course. I’m surprised to see you back in the city, without even covering your face.”
Red shrugged. “Not much point. I go by Red nowadays, though. Gotta earn back my old name.”
“I’m sure that’s the only reason,” Raven stated flatly, before she looked at me and Gilda. “As for you two…the gryphon seems familiar, but I don’t think we ever met in person.”
“Nah,” Gilda confirmed. “If we did, that was a lifetime ago. I heard you explaining you’re palace staff, though, so that means maybe you’ll know how we can get inside.”
“We’ll come to that,” she agreed, before then turning to me. “As for you…who are you, exactly? You’re a complete stranger to me.”
I gently lowered my chin to the worn wooden surface of the table. “I’m a st-stranger to me, too.”
“She goes by Holly,” Gilda explained on my behalf. “No memory of her life before, but she puts all she has into a fight, which is pretty good for a pony. Between the three of us, we can handle things.”
Raven considered us carefully. “You know what that entails, correct?”
“Maybe we do, maybe we don’t. What’s the situation inside the palace, exactly?” Gilda relaxed to listen, and tossed back a beakful of water.
“Before I can begin to explain that, I need to verify you are the team sent to Baltimare. Was there a written order given to you?”
“Give her the necklace,” Red said to me, as he bumped my shoulder.
“Necklace?” Raven’s eyebrow rose, and when I reached into the bottomless bag and withdrew the Element of Generosity, she took a deep breath. “Ah. That will suffice quite well. As an acting member of the Palace staff, I can take that now.”
“Again, just like that?” Gilda asked, looking around the room. “Lot of work and a lot of blood went into getting that piece of jewelry back. How do we know you’re legit?”
Red cleared his throat. “Gilda. Can’t think of anywhere safer these days than a bar full of guards and palace staff.” At his assurance, I passed Raven the necklace, and she let it sit on the table, where she could look down at the purple gem set into the gold. It didn’t seem nearly as dulled as it had before, though the gold itself was as tarnished as it had ever been.
Raven glanced back at Kibitz, who simply gave her a nod. “Very well. Since you are undoubtedly at least part of the team sent to Baltimare, then your orders were some of the last given by the Princess. She returned from Ponyville without incident, and immediately began to brief us, her administrative staff, on what had happened there. Knight Rainbow Dash was part of that staff, and had been left here to head the palace guard while the Princess was away.”
Raven closed her eyes. “She…did not take the news of what had occurred at Ponyville well. She immediately began to berate the Princess for leaving without including Dash herself as part of her protective detail. Eventually, she decided that the Princess leaving the Palace at all was too dangerous, and Dash assumed direct control of the Palace through the Golden Guard.”
Gilda’s eyebrows went up. “A coup? That had to be bloody. Is the sun princess even still alive?”
“There was no blood at all; the Princess surrendered command before blades could be drawn. She only lingered long enough to formally release the palace staff that had been deemed as ‘security risks’ by the Golden Guard, ourselves included. Following that, she has presumably been confined to her secure living quarters, while Rainbow Dash has militarized the palace and locked down the city. The Golden Guard may still even be giving commands to the troops around the country on the Princess’ behalf, though I have no way to confirm that.”
Gilda rolled her eyes at that, and growled in annoyance, “Of course she did. Soft little ruttin’ ponies! I swear, that love and friendship rot goes all the way to the top, and it’s why you’re still stuck grinding yourselves to death against a bunch of wild animals down there!”
“I’m not interested in debating that with you. The fact remains; Rainbow Dash is in command of the palace, and Canterlot will remain on lockdown so long as this state of affairs remains. If we are serious about returning the Princess to her throne, we will need to remove Rainbow Dash and the Golden Guard from command.” Raven looked at the three of us carefully. “Do the three of you understand?”
Red nodded, while Gilda threw a smirk back at the sleeping form of Dinky. “I told her! I told that filly that by the time we got to Canterlot, Dash was gonna put herself in our way! Just wish she was awake, so I could laugh right in her face.”
I swallowed, and my voice was fragile. “We n-need to kill her?”
Raven nodded sadly. “When last we met, Rainbow Dash had become…fundamentally unreasonable. She will not negotiate, and she will almost certainly try to kill the three of you, as invaders of the palace. She likely sees it as her duty. But if you can manage to merely incapacitate her, that would be much more preferable.”
Raven looked down at the element of generosity, still sitting on the table. “I have to ask again, are you willing to do that?”
“I’ve been ready!” Gilda crowed, as she slammed her fist down on the table. “I would’ve done this already if it wasn’t for that stupid magic shield!”
Everypony in the bar flinched at the outburst, and the sound of the impact against the wood. But after a moment, Red nodded, and looked over to me.
I couldn’t stop looking at that necklace, and the purple gem set into the gold. I’d already killed one bearer, though it seemed as though there hadn’t been much of her left by the time I’d gotten there. Now I was being asked to kill another, and she was apparently still coherent and aware of her actions…though it sounded as though her actual sanity might yet be up for debate.
How many more? Was I to kill all of them? I couldn’t raise my weapon against Pinkie Pie, I knew that. I’d fall on my own sword first.
But Rainbow Dash…to her, I held no particular loyalty. If we could incapacitate her instead, then I’d be happy with that outcome. But if the time came when it was me or her, when only one of us could be allowed to live…
I sighed, and nodded. “Okay…I’m w-willing.”
Raven sighed, and it seemed as though a great weight had been lifted from her withers. “Very well. Then all that remains is how to get you three past that ‘magic shield,’ as you put it. Once you’re inside, I’m confident in your success.” She turned to the three blue-suited pegasi, and waved them over with her hoof. “You three, we’ll need your help.”
As they took their seats, Raven indicated each of them. “These three are members of a flying team called the Wonderbolts, a stunt flying division of the Equestrian air brigade. They’ve always had access through the Interdiction Field for morale and security reasons, and they should be able to fly you three into the palace. Presenting acting captain Soaring Tide—”
“Soarin’,” the stallion corrected, and there was a clear habit in making that correction, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere. Maybe he was just used to going by that nickname. For some reason, he was staring at me very intently, and especially at my wings.
“—and lieutenants Misty Fly and Silver Lining,” Raven continued, with barely a pause for the interruption. The other two Wonderbolts were a stallion and a mare—and all three were pegasi, of course. It suddenly occurred to me that this may have been the single largest amount of living pegasi that I’d ever seen in one place, since waking up, though “living” seemed as subjective as always.
Soarin’ was the worst off of the three, and his embered eyes were dull as he silently continued to examine me. Silver Lining, the other stallion, had similarly lost his eyes to the curse, but he seemed to be handling it well. And Misty Fly, the mare, seemed the most stable out of the three of them. She even retained her eyes still, though I could see they were a bit sunken, and the crow’s feet at the edges of her eyes were deep and irreversible. Their flight suits were all faded, but in good condition—only Soarin’s seemed more tattered than those of the others, and it wasn’t by much.
“Fly us in?” Gilda asked, as the three pegasi took seats at the table. “What, right through the field? I figured we were going in through a side gate or another sewer or something.”
Silver Lining was the one to respond. “Those are all locked down too tightly. The interdiction field’s…sort of flexible, by design. Some intentional gaps in security were acceptable. As long as you’re flying in a loose formation, it will overlook ponies that haven’t been authorized to pass through.”
With a nod, Misty flicked some old napkins across the table. “Yeah, it’s not a complete shield, either. It’s like a bunch of overlapping walls in a bunch of circles around the palace. You just gotta fly through the right spaces at the right altitudes, and you won’t even know it’s there.”
Gilda narrowed her eyes. “But, a lone, unauthorized pony, or gryphon, even if they knew the path…”
Misty Fly traced a path between the napkins with her hoof. “Would hit the first checkpoint, and then zap, suddenly they’re falling out of the sky. Either into the moat, or onto the palace grounds, where the guards and medics would make sure they weren’t hurt too badly, then dragged back out onto the street.”
“Firmly but politely escorted,” Silver Lining corrected.
“Eh, same diff.” Misty tapped the napkins again. “Want me to draw you a map of the current path? It probably won’t matter too much once we’re flying, but some flyers like to have them drawn out.”
“C-current path?” I mumbled quietly.
“Indeed.” Silver Lining pulled on his flight suit, to make sure it wasn’t hanging too loose, then continued. “The field can be reoriented along several pre-configured patterns, but they all work the same way; the only difference is in the path that needs to be flown. In times before, the palace staff would have changed the configuration at random times, so that one pattern was not overused. However, they’ve grown lax about doing so, and I doubt the current residents even know how to change the alignment of the field, so it should be the same as it was before.”
“What if they have?” Gilda asked, as she raised her eyebrow.
“Then we all take a dip in the moat really early on, and try one of the others we know instead, after we’ve dried off and our flight magic starts working again,” Misty said, with a shrug.
“Alright,” Gilda muttered, as she tapped her beak with a talon. “Alright. Yeah, that should work. So we all fly through in formation…we’ll need two flyers to carry Red, that might as well be me and one of you two. Another carries Holly, and the last one is the formation lead.”
“Have you worked with the Wonderbolts before? Or another military flying unit?” Silver Lining looked at Gilda with curiosity.
That forced a chuckle out of Gilda, and she shook her head. “Naaah. Just, yanno, when someone chatters your ear off for months in flight camp about this stuff, some of it sticks.”
Raven coughed politely, and indicated towards me, as she passed a stick of charcoal over to Misty Fly “Pardon, but why is Holly being carried? She’s a pegasus as well.”
“She can’t fly under her own power,” Gilda explained again, on my behalf. “Too much damage from Hollowing. Best she can manage is gliding, and I’ve only seen her do that once so far.”
I shuddered. For a moment, I was there again, burning and screaming as I fell towards the toxic lake, with my wings only barely functional. But that time…one wing had been ripped up by a demon dog, just before. I wondered if I could manage an actual glide now, though I would almost certainly still need to start at high altitude, because I knew I couldn’t manage takeoff. Maybe Gilda would carry me up, and let me try, if we found a spare moment?
As I shook myself out of that idle thought, I caught the eyes of Soarin’, who was still looking at me oddly. That seemed to prompt him to speak. “S-so, wait, you don’t know how s-skilled you are at f-flying?”
I blinked at the Hollow stallion, then gently shook my head.
“And you d-don’t know who you are? What’s the f-first thing you remember?”
Misty Fly put her head in her hooves. “Celestia’s sake, Soarin’, not this again…”
I looked around the table, before I hesitantly answered, “I w-woke up on the edge of C-Cloudsdale, or the r-ruins of it…In a b-bookstore?”
His embered eyes seemed to flare to life, just a bit. He turned to Silver Lining, and hissed in very much a whisper. “It c-could be her!”
“It’s not her,” Silver Lining replied, without even looking up from the napkins on which Misty Fly had briefly begun to sketch the flight path.
“You d-don’t know that!”
“W-what’s going on?” I asked hesitantly, as I looked around the table. Everypony except the Wonderbolts seemed just as lost as I did.
Misty Fly looked up, and sighed. “Lovebird here has been asking every Hollow pegasus that comes through town where they came from, and what other pegasi they’ve seen, and how much they remember. Which isn’t many—there’s very few pegasi left, after Cloudsdale fell.”
Silver Lining nodded in agreement. “The rest of the Wonderbolts have been MIA ever since, presumed dead. Active, reserve, and training. All lost in…whatever happened, up there. We only escaped because we had been running an errand out to Dodge Junction at the time; we didn’t even see it happen.”
“We’re probably the last ones left, by this point. Anypony else would have tried to regroup by now. And that’s after a lot of flyers got poached by the golden guard, and thrown into that meatgrinder over in the dragonlands…” Misty Fly said, as a growl crept into her voice, and she paused to take a deep breath. “Anyway. The three of us have been coming to terms with that ever since. Me and Silver have mostly gotten over the coulda beens and the shoulda beens, but Soarin’ here, well…”
“We c-can’t just give up on them,” he mumbled. As Misty and Silver had explained the situation, his eyes had turned back to me. “What if they d-don’t remember?”
“If they don’t remember, then what difference does it make? They’re not the same pony, then.” Misty said, as she started sketching the flight path again. “We’ve had this argument before. We have this argument every time a new mare shows up. The next mare might be Spitfire, too.”
“Maybe they’re all Captain Spitfire,” Silver Lining said, with a tired roll of his eyes. “Seems just as likely as her just showing up one day, out of the blue…”
“Sh-shut up,” the Hollow stallion grumbled, before he turned to me. “Y-you’re sure you don’t r-remember...anything?”
I’d remembered some things, during my travels before. I was pretty sure I’d grown up in Cloudsdale, or at least another cloud city. I remembered flying in formation. But I also remembered other things too, like parts of Ponyville, from before the fog and the demons. I closed my eyes, and grit my teeth, as I tried to scrape whatever was left of my old, undead brain for anything else that might have been buried inside. “T-tell me about her. Anything that m-might jog my memory.”
“Here we go…” Misty muttered, around the bit of charcoal in her teeth.
Soarin’ shushed her again, though it sounded more like a hiss, coming through his Hollow throat. “Sh-she was strong. Stronger th-than anypony I knew. And sh-she could see the p-potential in others, knew how to d-draw it out. Enc-couragement, and admonishment. She would s-sit you down to talk about your h-home life, but she would th-thump you if you were being stupid at parade r-rest. She n-never gave up on anypony, j-just helped them be the b-best version of themselves that they c-could be.”
This time, the other two Wonderbolts were quiet. Silver Lining had closed his eyes, and was taking long slow breaths. Misty Fly had paused in her sketching, and her eyes were wet. Maybe they didn’t agree with him, but it seemed as though Soarin’ could still bring back old memories. I wasn’t sure if they were happy memories, or painful ones—and maybe time had made good memories painful to think about.
The description didn’t do much to rekindle memories of my own, either. I had brief flashes of posters, and the suits seemed familiar, but I couldn’t tell him whether or not I’d worn one myself. I didn’t want to give them false hope, but I didn’t want to crush what little remained. And I didn’t know enough about myself, about the pony I had been in my life before, to know what the truth was. Eventually, I decided Silver Lining was right; even if I was Spitfire, that mare was dead now. Maybe these were her bones, her flesh, but I wasn’t Spitfire.
I tilted my head down towards the table. “I d-don’t think I am. Even if I w-was before…I don’t think I am, anym-more. I haven’t acted like Sp-Spitfire since I woke up, either. Not like you d-described her.”
Soarin’ swallowed, and he placed his hoof on mine. “Th-that’s okay! You still d-don’t remember. You’re still not s-sure. Just k-keep it in your m-mind, okay? Just th-think about it! I’ll b-be here, if that ch-changes. I p-promise.”
I looked up at him, again. I didn’t know the stallion that he was, before he went Hollow. But there didn’t seem to be much of him left. Maybe this faint hope was all that he had, now. The belief that Spitfire was still out there. And—though I hated myself for thinking about it—we needed him still, to fly us through the interdiction field.
“O-okay,” I said quietly, with an accompanying nod. “If something j-jogs my memory…I’ll c-come back. And I’ll t-tell you.”
“Thank you,” he said with a smile, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“If you’re quite done,” Kibitz interjected, “I believe you all need a plan once you are inside the palace. Unless you all are already familiar with the layout of the interior?”
“Could use a refresher,” Red rumbled.
“Well, hang on,” said Misty Fly, as she pulled out another napkin for Kibitiz’s own map. “Let’s focus on where we’re landing, first. And keep in mind, we’re not going inside with you.”
“You’re not?” Gilda asked. She looked up sharply, and her eyes quickly darted between the three Wonderbolts. “Why not?”
Misty Fly turned to the side, and pressed a hoof to her own side;where the suit should have been taut over the barrel it was instead hanging loose, hiding a form that was no doubt withered and malnourished. “We’re not frontline combatants, and we never have been, despite Dash’s best efforts. Anypony that was, she already poached. And as much as I’d like to get in there and wring her scrawny neck for that, I’m not stupid; the guards would turn us into bloody smears before Dash ever got the chance. We’re just going to drop you on the roof, then fly back out before they can shoot us out of the sky.”
“Cowards,” Gilda grumbled, with a clack of her beak.
“No, we’re stunt flyers.” Silver Lining declared. “Search and rescue was our most dangerous assignment before the Dragon War, and sticking to that has kept us alive since. Best not to hasten our division’s extinction just for glory.”
Gilda was going to snap back at him, but Raven cut her off before she could open her beak. “So. The Wonderbolts are going to drop you three onto the roof; there’s not much flat roof to land on, for obvious reasons, but the central palace should suffice, since that has the dining hall and throne room. There’s roof access on the northeast and southwest corners, which will allow you down into the palace proper. From there, you should be able to navigate to the throne room’s interior, where Rainbow Dash is likely still holding court.”
“Need to make one diversion,” Red said, as he leaned forward to look at the map Kibitz had been sketching of the palace’s layout during the conversation. “The royal armory. Ah need to go there, t’ pick someone up.”
“Someone? Not something?” Raven said, as one eyebrow curled upward. “Very well—though I’d still advise eliminating Rainbow Dash first, to disperse the golden guard. You may find other destinations within the castle easier to reach if the inhabitants are no longer hostile to intruders.”
Red nodded, but didn’t say anything else, and so Raven continued to explain. “Rainbow Dash has likely kept the Princess confined to her quarters for her own safety. While normally one could access those quarters through several other corridors, the palace was designed so that they could be easily barricaded at key choke points. It’s not unlikely that Rainbow Dash has done so, which means that the only remaining access would be through the throne room, and therefore dealing with her.”
Gilda smirked again at that. She was clearly eager for that confrontation, even if I wasn’t sure why.
“Once she has been dealt with, the Princess taking the throne should sway even the most Hollow members of the Golden Guard—hopefully. There may yet need to be some cleanup on that front.” Raven shuddered with distaste. “Once that nasty business is taken care of, then the Princess should send someone out to retrieve us and deliver the keys to unlock everything once more, and we can resume normal operations within the palace—starting with washing out the carpets, more than likely. We, in turn, will be able to unlock the gates to Hammerhoof, and send somepony down to fetch the Pillars, and start attending to what I’m sure is a cataclysmic refugee crisis at the base of the mountain.”
“There’s the steel and fury you ponies need! Stars, if you’d just done that to begin with, this never would have happened in the first place!” Gilda looked giddy at the thought of blood soaking the palace’s carpets, and she even turned back to look at Gallus, who was still sitting morosely at the bar. “You gonna help them fight this time, chicken? Get some blood in your beak again, like a real gryphon?”
Gallus shot her a nasty look, before his embered eyes dropped back to his glass bottle of boiled rainwater. “I…I am a real g-gryphon.”
“Sorry, what was that? Couldn’t hear you. Maybe you need to crow a little louder!”
“I’m m-more of a gryphon than you are!” Gallus squawked, as he spun around, knocking his bottle onto the floor. The outburst and the sound of shattering glass got everyone’s attention, and Gallus shrunk back from all the eyes on him. He still managed to mumble out, “At l-least I’m helping ponies out here, d-doing good work for the Pr-Princess.”
Gilda rolled her eyes. “Do you even hear yourself? What kind of gryphon cares about pony problems like that? What kind of gryphon sucks up to the pony princess and grovels at her hooves? I bet you lick her fancy golden hoofshoes clean, too!”
Gallus' eyes narrowed. “A b-better gryphon than you are.”
“Pffft! Don’t make me laugh, chicken.” Gilda finally turned around to face him fully. “A good gryphon would have come home, with tales and spoils of their hunts, and helped Gryphonstone flourish!”
That finally seemed to get through to Gallus, and his eyes fell again. “And…I w-will. After this f-fight is over. When things aren’t so d-desperate out here. I’ll go back to G-Gryphonstone and—”
“Back to Gryphonstone now? Pffft. Don’t bother. There’s nothing left, anyways.”
That caused Gallus to snap to attention. “W-what?”
Around the table, that sentiment was shared; Raven and the Wonderbolts stared at Gilda in shock, and Red blinked in surprise. I didn’t understand—how could a country just be gone?
And Gilda seemed to revel in our shock and confusion, though she eventually singled me out. “Holly, you remember when we were leaving Ponyville, and you and the twerp over there—” she jabbed a thumb at the unconscious form of Dinky, who had been moved to a booth to rest. “—both wanted to know why I was so pissed at the pink freak? That’s why. None of you ponies know what happened to Gryphonstone. None of you care. It’s like the rest of the world doesn’t exist any more, outside of your pathetic ruin of a country! Nopony even bothered to come and check on us, your supposed allies!”
“Gilda.” Red spoke firmly, and her eyes snapped to meet his. “What happened to Gryphonstone?”
“What didn’t happen to Gryphonstone?” Gilda said, with the edges of her beaks curling upwards in a mad grin. “I’ll tell you what didn’t happen. That trade with you ponies that our economy was dependent on, that didn’t happen, because the dragons made the seas too dangerous! That diplomacy that you ponies and your perfect pony princess prize so preciously, that didn’t happen, and so the fights at our borders started again! And that military support you promised us, the lofty statements about Rainbow Dash herself showing up to defend us from any retaliation from your big stupid war against those overgrown lizards?!”
Gilda had started ranting by this point, gesticulating wildly with her claws, but now her voice fell back to a low growl. “That sure didn’t happen. So the dragons razed Gryphonstone down to the ground. Burned the whole country to glass, killed everyone. You never showed up.” Gilda’s claws were digging into the table now, leaving deep scores in the weathered wood. “Dash, the Wonderbolt, the great Prismatic Dragonslayer, hero of the Dragon War, my friend—or so I thought—never showed up. Not even after the dragons were finished.”
“They killed everyone,” Gilda snarled, and I noticed again the arrows in her quiver—the ones tipped with volcanic glass and bone. “Everyone but me. And Gryphons don’t go Hollow; we don’t have the luxury of walking around as corpses after we get barbecued, even if everyone back home wasn’t cooked into the stone now.”
Gallus let out a snarl of his own now, as he approached Gilda, who turned to face him as he jabbed at one of his embered eyes with his own talon. “Gilda. If g-gryphons don’t go Hollow, then w-what is this, huh? W-what am I?”
I knew he was right; we’d seen gryphons before, as we’d passed through Hammerhoof. I hadn’t paid them much attention then, but surely they had to be Hollow as well. Gilda had been saying that gryphons don’t go Hollow for so long, that I’d started to believe it myself—though to be fair, she’d done a damned good job of not getting killed for the entire time that I knew her. And unlike Applejack, she wasn’t Hollow now, so the deception wasn’t as plainly obvious.
Not that anything Gallus said seemed to dissuade her. She just grunted at him, and narrowed her eyes. “You’re a Hollow. But you’ve always been more pony than gryphon—so no wonder you caught that stupid pony disease.”
Was she rationalizing this to him, I wondered, or herself?
“G-go rut yourself, Gilda.” Gallus mumbled to himself, as he turned away, and started walking back to the bar. “I hope you g-go Hollow too. So you c-can understand. I hope you d-die screaming, a d-dozen times over.”
“Nah,” Gilda said, turning away from him, towards the rest of us. “When I die, it’ll be once. I’m just hoping I get to take revenge on Rainbow Dash first. For Gryphonstone.”
Raven and Kibitz exchanged glances—it didn’t take much to imagine what they were wondering. My view of Gilda had been shaken as well, and now I was wondering if she’d always had this in the back of her mind, this entire time. And I wondered why she’d chosen to help us, and help me, because surely it couldn’t have all just been for the sake of getting here. She’d put herself in danger a dozen times for our sakes, and any one of those times she could have fallen; to think that it was all just for this one fight…that seemed mad.
But Gilda did seem mad—by both meanings of the word.
Raven and Kibitz seemed to agree on something, without a word being spoken, and Raven shuffled the napkins with the charcoal-drawn maps on them once more. “Well. Whatever your reasons, the fact remains. Rainbow Dash presents an obstacle, one that needs to be removed.”
“And it’ll be done,” Gilda said with a snarl, as she looked around the table once more, and especially focusing on me and Red. “Right, you two?”
We both nodded hesitantly, and with that settled—for the moment—Raven continued to explain the specifics of our path through the castle, and the various side passages that we could use to avoid the majority of the Golden Guard within.
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God damn I want to know what's gonna happen next. This has been a slow crawl with climactic hardships each step, but from the fields of ponyville, to the base of the mountain, to the crawl up its sewers, and to the city itself... We're steadily approaching the palace where the princess herself and the supposedly mad Rainbow Dash are. I fucking love it.
Also, has Holly's fur color been revealed yet? First chapter said she had no fur left basically, and I can't remember if it ever regrew after that. Any good guesses as to who she is yet?
Amazing chapter. Can't help but wonder who the equivalent of Smough will be.
So Rainbow has gone partially mad. Applejack 2.0 Electric Boogaloo coming soon in theatres.
Gallus' hollowing is interesting since griffons don't go hollow or at least that's what it appears to be. Gilda wanted payback, though if it's a sign of she's going hollow or she's just mad, I don't know.
And we are all mad here. What a chapter. It was to be expected that dying repeatedly and the world dying around you leaves everyone just a bit mad. Seeing them cope is half the interesting part of any such story. Let's hope Celestia doesn't take a dip in her sanity, after this little coup.
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I took it as a sign that Gilda was deluding herself. Considering, if I remember right, everyone else went hollow. She did, after all, see her entire home get burned to the ground and felt betrayed by those she trusted most. That ought to leave a mark or two on her mind. As for how she is still deluding herself... well, Griffons burned by dragon fire probably take quite a while to regenerate... and if I were to guess, Gilda has a few deaths under her belt by now. Probably rationalized away as. "They got me good, but not good enough to kill me." I wouldn't be surprised if the certification was a death as well.
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But what do you suppose might make Gallus and Gilda so different from each other that one is Hollowing and the other isn't? 🤔
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I think Gilda is hollowing, but slowly because she takes good care of herself and is still afraid of dying. Once you know your hollowing death is just another resource.
Not sure if this had been said or not but I think Celestia is the Gwynevere equivalent with Luna acting as the Gwyndolin. The Celestia we see is really Luna in disguise as Celestia has either already gone Hollow long ago or is somehow removed from the board and Luna needed to keep the masses from giving up entirely from Celestia's absence.
Also, Twilight is definitely Gwyn and Fluttershy is the Bed of Chaos
Also, I think Gilda will become the Smough expy; she will be the one that ends Rainbow Dash and she'll take the power for herself and go mad with it, forcing Holly to take her down in the end with Gilda having a mixture of RD's power and her own power.
Ornstein time
O' Great messiah of the Souls Pony. I implore you to return. I must salute the sun yet again, and I cannot bear to think that we're about to reach dragon slayer Rainbowdash and you've gone hollow on us. Rage against the dying of the light you cantankerous cashew!