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Chapter 34

Author's Note:

WARNING:

This chapter contains multitudinous spoilers for Threshold. There is no guarantee I will ever finish that book, but answers to its plot threads are somewhat provided here.

If you're the type who would skip a chapter based purely on the off-chance that I'll rehabilitate and finish a years-old hiatus work, and you want that badly not to be spoiler'd... You've been warned.

My personal recommendation is that you're better off just reading this chapter and enjoying, but YMMV.

Earth Calendar: 2117
Equestrian Calendar: 15 AC (After Contact)
Twelfth Month, Fifteenth Day, Celestial Calendar

Hutch

"Sometimes it's the little things that keep you sane."

At the sound of my voice William looked up from his coffee mug; His expression was the same kinda vacant stare I'd seen on far, far too many good soldiers before.

Pain. Shock. Exhaustion.

Most of all defeat.

It took him a second to realize I was talking about the steaming, glorious substance that filled both our mugs. Fyrenn, Neyla, Kephic, and Varan were busy around the kitchen's wall hearth, putting together something that smelled almost painfully good.

Since when had they learned to cook anyhow?

Aston had gone to find Taranis. IJ and Stan were cuddled up together in a corner, and Skye was talking in quiet tones with Shierel about something. Probably Alyra and Miles, who were sitting side by side at the table.

Alyra had a wing over Miles' back, and the colt looked like somebody who'd been yanked from a frozen lake, wrapped up in a warm towel. Like if you took Alyra's wing away, it might take some of his will to live away.

William caught sight of his son and Alyra, and I saw an instant spark of hope light up in his eyes. I smiled, and sipped my mug as he nodded, whispering almost to himself.

"Yes. The little things."

We sat there in silence for a while, sipping coffee, watching the cooking, and the conversations alternately. The warm light of the hearth danced on everyone's feathers and fur, casting it all in sharp relief, and cozy colors.

I'd never seen anything like it before. Let alone with the resolving power and color gamut of those new eyes...

Rolling the taste of coffee... Real, fresh, organic coffee from a plant grown in the ground, around in my beak... Closing my eyes and recalling the sensation of the little peck Aston had left on my cheek before she stepped out...

The memory of the warmest, calmest, most restful night's sleep I'd ever had, tucked up in her forelegs and wings...

My ear twitching as Fyrenn said something that made the others laugh out loud.

Opening my eyes and taking it all in again; The smile Shierel and Skye were sharing. The way Alyra looked down at Miles, like he had suddenly become a whole new, and critical part of her world. The grins and smiles of all the other Gryphons I loved so much gathered around that hearth... Even Varan was smiling in spite of himself...

The way seeing it all seemed to give William a new ember of life, small but steady, against the frigid certainty of all we'd just lost...

Maybe there were no 'little' things.

Not really.

Maybe every last little bit of the good things in life were each important in their own way. Good food. Good conversation. A funny joke. The warmth of a solid fire on the feathers of your chest to beat back the chill of winter that had seeped into the castle's stone.

The much, much deeper warmth down in your bones that only family could give.

"Do you regret leaving?"

The ex lieutenant's words shook me from my reverie. It took me only a few moments of real-time to formulate a good response. I tried my best to make it look like I hadn't spent some decelerated time considering my answer very, very carefully. I put on the same nonchalant tone I always defaulted to with combat buddies, or off-duty troops.

No ranks. No formalities. No seniority.

Just friends.

"Sometimes. But never for long. Not really."

The way he blinked back at me, and cocked his head, I knew for sure I was gonna have to put some more words to my thoughts. I could see just how badly he needed the encouragement.

I wasn't sure if he could also see just how badly I needed to say it aloud for other ears to hear, for my own sake.

A quick inhale of that heavenly sweet scent of joe gave me some strength, clarity, and another moment to collect myself. I took a quick sip, and started up again, keeping my eyes going back and forth between everyone else in the room.

"As horrible as things are on Earth... As much as we've just lost... I've seen more than enough to know two things."

I pivoted to face William and flicked out a talon from my free claw in time to each point I wanted to make.

"First? The more important war is *here.* Blood is being spilled. Tragedies are everywhere. But if we lose here? Nothing else will matter. Not a damn thing. I want to be where I can make the *biggest* difference. That's here."

He nodded once sharply, and confidently. He out of all of us probably had the least direct experience with the complexities of the events that had brought us all together. Hearing me affirm it out loud visibly gave him peace, and clarity.

I pressed on, flicking out a second talon, and gesturing with the mug in my other claw towards everyone else in the room writ-large.

"Second? My future is here. *Our* future is here. As a family. You, 'n me... The ladies that make us the luckiest undeserving sons-o-bitches in either world... The kids..."

We both stared in silence at Alyra and Miles for a moment, before both taking a quick sip of coffee in almost perfect synchronization. Some military habits die very, very hard. I couldn't resist a small chuckle.

"Hell... Fresh coffee?! How long ya think before the Genesists will actually have any of this good shit? And how long after that before the crops really take and they can stop rationing? Oh no. If we're gonna fight for our lives...?"

I shrugged with my wings, and took a deep, deep draught of the warm black liquid, then smiled. I didn't have to pretend; It was a real, genuine smile that went all the way to my ears, and my eyes, and my voice.

"...Might as well do it to the taste of the good stuff."

William nodded, returned the smile, and raised his mug.

"I'll drink to *that* sir."

I couldn't resist the urge to roll my eyes, and exhale in frustration. I flared my wings slightly, in spite of myself, and did my best to cut the harsh bark coming out of my beak with a grim chuckle.

"Godammit William... We're *family* now. And I ain't no soldier in no army no more... Not for the moment, anyhow."

He looked away. I reached out with one claw and took him by the shoulder. Firmly. Kindly. Like he was a kid brother, or another son of sorts.

When he finally locked eyes with me again, I stared him down, tryin' my damndest to project just how much I wanted to care for him, for no other reason than that pure and unconditional kinda love that Fyrenn just kept showing me.

This time I managed to keep my voice firm, but low, and gentle.

"It's *Hutch.* Just Hutch."

After a pause, he nodded, and grasped me briefly by the shoulder as well.

"Alright... As long as you call me 'Bill.' Just Bill."

I smiled again, and raised my mug.

"To the little things, Bill."

He stole a quick glance at his son, and I saw that genuine warmth appear in his expression again. His eyes brightened. His ears perked. The corners of his beak turned up. And for the first time all day, the smile finally reached his voice too.

"I'll drink to that. Hutch."

IJ

I had never set so much as a hoof on Earth.

When the collision of worlds first occurred, Chrysalis knew of it; Whether by magical attunement equivalent to an Alicorn's, or ancient technology still in her possession.

Most probably both.

That information had, eventually, warranted sharing with the entirety of the Hivemind. Earth represented, in Chrysalis' estimation, opportunities that were too good to pass up by half.

I wondered idly, not for the first time since recent revelations, if that interest had been fostered entirely by The Nightmare. It had certainly been given a helping hoof, at minimum. That much was blindingly obvious now.

With a small shiver, I pulled my eyes away from the sight of Alyra and the newcomer colt she had taken under her wing. Miles.

Alyra had become an unexpectedly bright anchorpoint of joy, and connection in my life. I made a mental note to see to it that I offered the same openness to Miles. I was seized with a sudden twin urging to expedite the founding of that relationship; On one wing the realization of how important Miles and Alyra had suddenly become to each other, and a need to foster connection with them to reinforce that for both their sakes.

On the other wing, the wholly unexpected, but not at all unpleasant sudden intense need to add to my small but slowly growing network of familial bonds.

After so much fear, and anguish, and self-recrimination, and hiding... It was as if something intensely elastic had finally snapped back into its natural shape. The strength of the bonds I shared with a few in this new family meant that I could safely trust them.

It was dawning on me, with increasing brightness, and a peculiar taste of hope, and contentment, that I could take that trust out another logical level; Whomever they trusted, I too could trust.

Whomever they loved, might also love me, and be worth loving.

My eyes shifted to Stan.

He was curled up under one of my wings, pressed into my side as we shared a huge cushion in the kitchen's corner, a cider mug clutched between both front hooves. I had ever so slightly softened the material of the chitin at my side, and altered the normally insulating efficiency-oriented properties of my innards and chitin to allow more Equine-like warmth to pass from me to him.

After quite a few tears shed, he had at last settled into a meta-stable state of quiet melancholy, and shock. I could feel it radiating off of him, as if someone had brought a block of solid sub-zero ice into an average temperature room.

I could shed no tears for Earth.

It was not, as some might readily attribute to me on first judgment, callousness. In spite of a general sensation deep down that the Humans had at long last got exactly what they were asking for in their foolishness, and richly deserved in some limited cases...

There was a far stronger sense of pain, and sadness on their behalf. But not enough for tears. I simply lacked the depth of experience to feel deprived, or pained, to the level of tears.

Changelings under Chrysalis are xenophobic and self-centered by nature. Inasmuch as I continued to struggle with, what Kephic had termed, an 'icy demeanor... ' I was quickly changing the way I saw the world, ever since my own liberation.

The surface level was, perhaps, going to be the last thing to change. Hence no tears.

But inwardly I was being suffused, more and more each day, with a sense of generosity, and empathy.

Inwardly, I was perhaps crying, in my own peculiar way.

I'd fought it briefly at first, mostly out of fear. For a creature that changes so much, a Changeling actually changes very little on an emotional, spiritual, or mental level. At least, under Chrysalis.

But free of that influence, my own self-identity, and the power of my familial and friend connections, had started to assert itself, in spite of the fear. Exactly like something elastic snapping back after years of undue pressure.

That empathy, focused through Stanley, and the other Terran Converts as well, had induced a strong sadness for the loss we were all suffering as a consequence of so many deaths, atop the sadness I felt simply on behalf of their own individual pains.

It didn't matter what species they were, in the end; All lives cut short are wounds to us all.

I felt that I finally fully understood why Celestia and Luna were so keenly protective of their own. It wasn't mere loyalty to their kind, though that was one brick in the foundation, and one I'd found all too easy to relate to.

But I now knew that it was much more than that.

It was a keen love for life itself, for life's own inherent sake, and value. Life of all kinds, whether sapient, or animal, or plant.

A love I was growing to share at last. I still found myself dazzled at times by the sight of a ladybug marching tirelessly up a windowsill, or a fern rustling in the breeze. Life underground was not so dissimilar to the way Stan, or the others, described life on Earth. Albeit even life in the Hive seemed to have more natural beauty.

For Stan especially, the twin shocks of learning of the Nightmare's plans for Converts, together with the horror of what had just happened to his former home...

It was piling ruin atop ruin, atop ruin, even breaking loose old emotional scar tissue from the ongoing slow motion disaster of Earth's inevitable envelopment.

Stan's words, the first in hours, and therefore surprising as they entered the void of dull murmurs and laughter that permeated my mental soundscape, were oddly synchronized to my threads of consideration.

"It didn't seem real until now. Ya know?"

He pierced me with an expression that very nearly did bring on tears of my own at last. His voice was so forlorn... So soft... So pained, as he began to finally pour himself out to me with words, instead of sobs.

"Even after I got my wings... Even after I started livin' here in Equestria full-time... Even after everythin' I saw, and experienced? The Wisps? The PER? The HLF? Watching New York go...? The end of the world just wasn't... Real. Until now."

He shook his head, shivered involuntarily, and then took a deep pull from the cider mug. Trying to hide tears as much as to warm and comfort himself.

A sudden thought struck me. Without even bothering to contemplate the maneuver, much less warn Stan, I reached for an old, familiar friend in the back of my mind. My Pegasus morph replaced my regal form in a shower of blue-green and white sparks and energy. Stan yelped, and the commotion briefly drew the eyes of everyone in the kitchen, before their various cognitive reactions took over for reflexive surprise.

Aside from some bemusement from those less familiar with my abilities, the response was universally warm smiles. That too was a refreshing change in my life... To be surrounded by those relatively unprejudiced against the fluidity of my nature. To even be close to those like Alyra, or Fyrenn, who viewed it not just with calm dispassion, but interest, and a love of what I was for its own sake, simply because they loved me.

I pulled Stan closer with one now feathery, and slightly smaller wing, until his head was buried fully in the fur of my neck, and our sides were pressed tightly.

He bit back tears, and nibbled gently at the joint of my neck, and withers. A small, silent, but heartfelt 'thank you' for my gesture. The radiance of his love was like adding oil soaked fuel to a blast furnace for me.

After a moment of relative silence, as the flow of other conversations and activities was restored to the rest of the kitchen, and Stan contented himself to match my breathing, and cry silently into my neck, he finally plucked up enough free air, and mental overhead, to continue speaking.

He moved his head to lock eyes with me again, and inhaled deeply.

"I... Never thought about... Just how many people were gonna die. No matter how this went."

I immediately understood this new and somewhat unexpected facet of his suffering. Changelings are intimately familiar with the wretched calculus of births, deaths, and in particular deaths versus objectives, and risks.

From my time with the others, it seemed to me that only Gryphons ever came close to a tenth part of understanding that math the way we did, on a truly holistic level. The way only a hive mind can comprehend the void of loss.

Humans were perhaps the worst at comprehending the magnitude of disaster, and the extreme measures needed to cope, with Ponies in close second.

I kept silent, and maintained my best attempt at a comforting expression as Stan went on, opening a new window for me to understand the uniquely Human concepts of status quo, and mental inertia.

"I think we all somehow thought that... I dunno. Maybe we didn't *really* think we could get everyone out alive. But we never thought anyone'd die either."

I had done my research. Mostly for the sake of understanding my new family better, but also out of raw curiosity, and a desire to be a more well informed leader to my people.

Given the way Humans had always treated disasters, everything from global wars, to climatological disaster of their own making, I realized I should have foreseen my beloved's struggle.

Their history was replete with last minute 'too little too late' actions to avert crises, or recover from them, primarily because the dominant configurations of their societies had a critical flaw that introduced almost inescapable group-think, keeping them blind to disaster, or apathetic to it, until it directly and personally affected them.

" 'S a Human thing, I 'spose. 'Ya' don't have to leave, but ya' can't stay here.' Change doesn't exactly come easy to some of us."

I placed my forehead against his, and sighed.

Diseases. Famines. Overgrowth. Pollution. Genocides.

How many billions in their history were dead because of the lies they told themselves, and change they resisted violently?

War. Famine. Overgrowth again...

How many billions in the history of *my* kind were dead because of the same lies and resistance to change?

I blinked, and pulled back as a brighter thought struck me. An unusual occurrence, but steadily becoming less unusual the more time I spent around Stan.

It slipped out between my lips before I'd quite finished considering it. But I didn't regret saying it aloud.

"Some of you certainly know how to make good of change."

Stan's moment of confusion, clearly visible on his muzzle, gave me time to fully form the rest of the thought into spoken word.

"You one-form one-minds have a strange conception of time, lacking direct access to your forebears' memories. You are so quick to forget the wider context of history. What Humans call deep-time."

He nodded silently, his face locked into a serious, and curious expression, one ear perked, the other drooping slightly, eyes bright and fixated almost unblinkingly on me as I did my best to shape my ideas into something comforting, and express them in a kind tone.

"You are even quick to forget the context, and weight, of moments in your own past. Especially the good ones."

I planted a soft kiss between his eyes, and then held my head to his once more, whispering to him as he thrummed in his chest, and pressed into my side.

"You feel such a sense of defeat in this moment. Personally. But it is unwarranted."

I began to brush his back with my wing, nipping around one of his ears, and continuing on in an almost inaudible whisper.

"We have all accomplished much together. Not the least part being an open door for my kind, where there was once nothing but hopelessness. In that, and many other victories, that have saved, and bettered lives... *You* have had a critical hoof."

He exhaled deeply, shuddering slightly with the aftershocks of previous sobs. I held my head to the side of his and groomed his neck, raising my voice from a whisper to a murmur.

"Whether fighting, or writing, or speaking, or puzzling out a question. You have made a difference. Countless times. In ways other Humans and Ponies could not, or would not."

At last I pulled back, and released a smile that had been building for several moments, warmth suffusing my chest as he smiled back in turn through silent tears.

I nodded towards him, and touched the tip of my muzzle to his as I capped off my attempt at restoring some of his emotional balance, with an admission that I would have once eschewed, but now embraced.

"You are *the* most important difference in my life."

He closed his eyes, learned in, and kissed me for a long moment, before finally responding with words of his own.

"I love you. So much."

I pulled his head under mine with one hoof, and we both shifted to a slightly more comfortable position as I murmured one last time in his ear.

"I love you too. And our love will be more than enough to get through this. For the both of us."

Aston

Flying on your own wings is *the* best sensation physically possible, in any form, no matter who, or what you are.

Anyone who says different is either a lying liar who lies, or has never flown on their own two wings, most likely because they are in the deeply pitiable position of not having wings to begin with.

I would never say that to the face of anyone without wings... But Make no mistake, I believe it down in my soul unreservedly. Beings without wings got the short end of the biological stick. Mistakes were made, whether on their part, or that of whomever created them.

God? If that's you? I have a *bone* to pick with you about the Human shape. If it was someone else down the chain? Well... I hope whoever it was, they suffered from their poor life choices.

I'd trade just about anything to replace all those years fighting bullshit fucking Human sinuses, paper thin Human skin, weak Human muscles, and completely useless Human bones, for years with wings.

Sure... I'm biased.

Doesn't mean the sentiment is untrue.

Magic? You can have it. Don't care. Not interested.

The sensations of Human skin? Garbage. Doesn't do anything fur and feathers don't do, does what it does do worse, and can't keep up in any meaningful way with the things that fur and feathers do which skin can't.

Physical intimacy of the reproductive organ related nature?

Forget about it, because it ain't even worth remembering.

Absolutely nothing but a tiny ember at the end of a wet matchstick, compared to the roaring fusion drive of tucking into a two hundred kph stoop with a gust of wind behind you.

Hutch and I hadn't flown much at all before the trip to Canterlot. On the way, we'd practiced as much as we could get away with, and Shierel's tutelage had been invaluable.

But this was the first time I'd had a chance to test my physical limits, alone, and on no one's timetable, and without any specific focus other than 'FLY!'

A castle of many spires on a majestic mountainside is a heck of a playground for something with the agility of a Gryphon. Sure, a Pegasus is 'agile' as compared to a fighter jet. Or even a Human in a thruster suit.

Dragons are incredible in many ways, and quite flexible for their size... I'd never want to pit a VTOL against one, the VTOL would lose. Badly.

But a Gryphon?

When we put our minds to it, we can fit through spaces that should, by all accounts, be impossible, at speeds that would make a fighter jock's eyes water, given the close quarters.

We can turn one eighty in less time than it takes you to think it, inside a space as small as our body can fit with the wings and other limbs folded and held close.

And we can do it at any amount of negative or positive G, around any obstacle you can imagine, and from any speed we are capable of, and we never get confused as to what is 'up' and what is 'north.'

Ever.

I know, because I did the incredibly stupid maneuever to test it for myself. Well... Not stupid if you're experienced. I wasn't. I was just lucky. Or blessed with a damn good guardian angel.

Three hundred kph from a stoop, directly into a bell-tower with only one way in and out, while the bell was being rung, with no room to fully extend my wings, one-eighty right below the bell, using the clapper as my 'post' to go around, and then out with around two fifty kph of that speed still on me.

All that in between tolls of the bell to avoid crushing my hearing.

I just about pulled a muscle and dislocated a shoulder.

Just about.

So very worth it.

After that, I took fewer risks, and pushed a little less hard. Now that I knew what I *could* do, I was satisfied to just... Play. For lack of a better term. Zipping under bridges, slaloming between spires, trying out aircraft aerobatic maneuver chains with the added benefit of having the control surfaces linked right to my brain...

And all of it in the cool night air, by the light of Luna's moon, and the stars.

Damn.

The way that fresh, clean, cold air felt between my feathers... The way it *smelled.*

The loss of the smell of pine trees, in snow, with wafts of fresh baking cutting through it all periodically...

I genuinely believe that was a greater loss for the Human race than the loss of any city.

A greater gift regained than any preservation of art, or culture.

Valuable as those things are... Life starts to turn gray and meaningless without nature in it.

Being exposed to it every waking second... It was an inexplicable revelation. I literally lacked half the useful words. Or if I knew them, I didn't know how to use them. You have no idea what you lack in life until you're exposed to it.

To Hell with the luxuries of money, and technology.

Damn it all and let it burn.

Five seconds of Hutch's beak run through my crest, or salt spray against my chest, or the smell of fresh baked bread, or the wind through the pines... Or the sight of real stars...

Fuck your couch, fuck your marable counters, fuck your stainless steel induction range, and fuck your gold plated jacuzzi on your fuck-off five deck yacht.

A *lifetime* of Earth's greatest luxuries would be jack shit compared to five seconds of *living.*

And now that I knew that?

I was never, but never, going to take it for granted ever again.

I also knew that I had a job to do, and couldn't cavort forever, as fun as it was, and as amusing as the Canterlot denizen's awed and confused upward gazes were.

I'd figured out where Taranis was almost immediately. I'll just bet he saw me too; Dragon eyes are not Gryphon eyes, but they are no joke. They'll still beat the optics and AIs of a Scythe, no-contest.

Bet that thermal vision is nifty too. Seeing your enemy through a wall is not an advantage to be trifled with. I'd seen what they could do with that ability first hand. Er... Claw.

Still wouldn't trade it for being a Gryphon tho.

That, I admit, is more personal taste. Dragons fly too, so they meet and exceed the 'Laura Aston does-it-have-wings' testing threshold of good biological design.

Seeing a Dragon in flight sure is a majestic sight.

Seeing one curled up around the top of a tower, absorbing heat through the chimney, and stargazing?

I swear Taranis looked like something out of an old illustrated story book I used to read to myself as a kid.

As I dipped into a gentle turn towards him, it hit me that I looked a hell of a lot like a fairytale illustration myself.

By the time I alighted on the tiny section of free rooftop beside him, I was giggling almost uncontrollably just picturing what we must look like from a distance to anyone who wasn't used to this kind of sight.

Maybe you never quite got used to it.

I sure hoped I wouldn't. The sense of wonder was exquisite.

Taranis raised one eyecrest scale, and cocked his head, asking silently what the hell was wrong with me for giggling like a little kid.

Well... I settled myself, mentally and physically, and watched his enormous blue muzzle and piercing eyes for a moment. No... Not 'wrong' with me... Just 'What's so funny?' I guess there was nothing wrong about it, come to think of it.

Laughter is one heck of a good drug.

I sighed, smiled, and gestured first to him, then me, then the sky.

"Could you have ever imagined all this? In your wildest dreams? Before?"

It was his turn to smile, and then chuckle; A deep, brief, but warm thrum down in his chest that shook the roof. He shook his head, staring out at the horizon for a long moment before replying.

"Never. I was a very... Practical man. A soldier. A leader. A survivor. I did not give myself time to dream. Not in any meaningful way that could have produced an image as vivid as this. More is the pity, and the fault is mine alone. Having lived this way for more than a decade now? I feel that those who can not dream of something like this have suffered a great loss in their soul. There is great practicality, and value, in dreams."

I nodded, following his eye-line as I spoke, out to the spot where far off ridges met the cascade of gem-like distant stellar bodies, burning softly against the blues, blacks, greens, and purples of space.

"That's not your fault alone. You and I grew up in a reality so far removed from all this... From everything that matters to having a *good* life... How can you dream when it takes everything in you just to survive? That's the Nightmare's fault, first and foremost, at the end of the day."

Taranis nodded, and thrummed assent in his chest once more, folding his forelegs under his chin, and blinking thoughtfully.

"Her name is apt. She transformed our world into a living nightmare. And she hopes now to do the same for all who draw breath."

I watched something in his expression shift subtly, and I tilted my head, almost as a reflex, biting back the impulse to speak. Hoping he would. And he did.

"I was there."

I blinked in confusion, and he looked up to lock eyes with me as I began to put the pieces together rapidly, based on what little I knew of his service history, even as he elaborated in a somber, yet somehow matter-of-fact tone.

"I was there fifteen... Almost sixteen years ago, now... I was one of the ranking military officers on site when the collision occurred. The anomaly. That then grew to become the bubble."

There was something spectacularly unnerving about seeing such a huge, unshakeable, powerful behemoth of a creature speak about something in such a reverent key.

A small exhalation was all I gave by way of answer, waiting for him to go on. Willing him to go on. Those kinds of recountings were invaluable perspectives. He'd witnessed something, directly, that I had only seen from afar. Something that had shaped the life of every single thing in both worlds.

"I was so close, that I almost became casualty number one. And the egghead would have been number two. I wonder if I'll ever see him again... He would be here, somewhere... Living that quiet life he always wanted. As far from his old name as he could possibly get."

I could put two and two together well enough to understand about half of Taranis' mumbled rememberings. I raised one eye crest, and flicked my right ear in irritation. He grinned, shook his head, and let out a small puff of steam. But he did elaborate further. Miraculously.

"Doctor Thornton. Lawrence. He was there studying the anomaly on behalf of the Council. Genius. Idiot."

Before I could even begin to start making sense of Taranis' visible, and audible emotional response to the memories, his tone took an unexpectedly warm... Melancholy turn.

"And a good friend."

I bit back any questions I had. And I had a few hundred thousand.

Reports from individuals directly involved with first contact were few, and far between. There was a lot of mystery, and rumor, and hearsay still associated with those early days. I was not about to put a stop to Taranis now.

He adjusted his head and forelegs, and sighed deeply.

"If Innara is still kicking around, counting myself, and Samanth... Cal. She always preferred Cal... Only about a dozen living souls know that Lawrence... He and Cal... Were the first."

I couldn't resist slowly cocking my head, my left ear straight as a flagpole as curiosity got the better of me. The blue Dragon locked eyes with me again, and said just two words for clarification.

"First Converts."

My whole conception of history imploded violently. Or at least, history with regards to the most important events of the century. I would have stammered, but I couldn't even get air into my nares. Somewhere about half ways through my brain trying to leap ahead at lightspeed and work out all the implications of his words, Taranis mercifully took pity on me and launched into a deeper, almost mournful explanation.

I could feel chills developing in my spine, tail, and wing edges as he spoke.

"As I said, he was a genius. And an idiot. Most particularly in the political arena, as to that latter trait. He met up with a brilliant, but... Unstable mage. During, and after first contact. It was as if the stars aligned to bring them together."

My emotions got the better of me and I finally managed to get my voice back; Low, full of awe. I couldn't resist shaking my head slowly as I whispered my thoughts aloud.

"I was always told that Conversion was pioneered by a large team made up of both scientists and mages... Their names were never shared... To protect their privacy... And program security... Because of all the controversy..."

Taranis snorted, rolled his eyes, and then exhaled a deep, sad breath of preparation. And remembrance.

"That is only half un-truth. I am quite certain that after Flux and Thornton allowed that Djin out of its bottle, that Innara and Celestia both wanted their work checked, double checked, and then checked again. Especially after what happened to Thornton and Cal. And Flux. And Ralph..."

When he had said 'Innara' the first time, a thread had clicked into place in my head. A historical file. An image. A vivid memory of a brief meeting with the woman herself, for a few minutes, at some sort of military function.

"Innara... You mean former Councilor Sulerahmen?"

I didn't realize I'd asked aloud, until I'd already done it. Something in Taranis' face, deep down behind his eyes, told me that I'd hit on the truth, even before he spoke.

"The Councilor was, behind the curtain, probably most primarily responsible for ensuring that first contact went amicably from a political standpoint. In spite of everything that occurred, and all of EarthGov's efforts to the contrary. She was also the key sponsor for the initial Conversion programs."

Taranis' gaze went back to the horizon. This time almost searching, rather than remembering. As if in focing hard with his eyes, he might find something. Or someone.

My response tumbled out as a breathless murmur.

"Official records say she died, and was buried in Washington Parish... But she always had something of a... Mystique, about her. There were always rumors."

The Dragon shook his head slowly, eyes still sweeping like LADAR arrays. His voice increasingly tinged with notes of nostalgia. And sorrow.

"All she wanted, in return for everything she sacrificed... Was to be the third Convert. Probably the only Conversion that Celestia was ever physically present for, in the same room. She took a new name, and Naval Intelligence quietly handled the rest. I would know her if I saw her, I suppose."

A long, long silence fell after that. I mulled over what I'd just heard. Little as it was, it completely reshaped my understanding of events. It was doubtful if there really were, as Taranis said, more than a dozen living beings who knew these secrets...

Finally my brain finished weaving together all the extrapolation it could manage, and I worked up the courage to prod a little. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

"And... The others?"

It was relieving, how relatively quickly, and calmly Taranis shifted back into the flow of narrating the story. In his own mystical, almost stage drama, vague sort of way.

"Ralph Konem and Samantha Calton were Innara's right and left hand. They did for her what Wrenn did for Korvan; Protection, intimidation, and handling... Special circumstances. After contact, Thornton and Flux became special circumstances."

I nodded slowly. It didn't take much to understand just how much of a target the development of Conversion would have put on their heads... If the predecessors of Echelon 12, and the HLF, had gotten wind of it...

...Taranis' next words synchronized so directly with my train of thought, that it took physical effort to dismiss a darkly humorous chuckle on my part.

"Running from ExCET, Thornton and Cal got themselves cornered. The Barrier was the only way out that wasn't staring down the maw of a railgun, and that first batch of serum Thornton and Flux had made was the only card they had left to play. At the time they had no idea it would be an irreversible change."

I whistled, low and soft, through clenched beak. Almost too many implications in those three sentences to even begin to unpack in one night.

Taranis continued unabated.

"In the end they survived. I only learned about their adventure here afterwards. I killed a ship's bridge full of people to cover their escape. I was... Very occupied with the consequences of that decision for some time."

I'd heard a rumor. And heard Hutch and Taranis occasionally toss around comments to the effect of what the latter had done to end his career as a Human officer... But hearing it in such red letter terms turned my stomach.

Reminded me entirely too much of things I'd seen Fyrenn do.

Things I hated to admit that I faulted him for less, and less, with each passing day.

I had to mentally shake myself and reacquire the thread of Taranis' narration, pushing past grim tailspins of thought and emotion to get at the pith of what he was trying to tell me.

Something he'd probably never told another living soul. Until now.

"Cal and Lawrence stuck together, as far as I know. Settled here with Celestia's royal backing, just like Innara. Land grant. New names... I suppose if they had foals, they would not even be foals anymore by now..."

His eyes swept across the city's outer wards. I followed his gaze and counted each family I could see in visible range. Watched countless parents and foals and yearlings moving towards dinner, or evening entertainment, or home for a warm cozy hearth...

"I was able to save Cal, and Thornton, in that moment... But it cost... Much more than my commission."

The way he says 'much more' brought my head back around, and my eyes to his, almost by magnetic force. He blinked, slowly, softly... I realized that he was holding back much deeper emotion. Doing a damn good job of it... But holding back nonetheless.

"Lana. Lieutenant Sorden. My lead VTOL pilot. My... Best and closest friend."

Something about the way he said those last words left me doubting. I had carried on a romance with a fellow officer more than long enough to infer... Quite a few things. If Taranis and Hutch had gotten as close as they had, they must be fairly alike.

It wasn't hard to guess that perhaps he and Lana had been a lot like Hutch and I.

But apparently not quite so happily ended...

Once again, Taranis opened his jaws to speak as if on cue.

"Her fate was... Much worse than death. She chose to place loyalty to the EarthGov over all else. We never reconciled after what I did."

It was my turn to fight back emotion. An unexpected onset of silent, gentle tears. I blinked furiously, and shook my head, leaning forward, and making no effort to remove the hint of insistence from my voice.

"And... You never looked for her? Even after...?"

He smiled then. Not a happy smile. A deep expression of ennui and longing. His voice dipped to the most Human, and most emotional register I'd heard from him since meeting him.

"Ignorance is a salve. A sweet opiate that allows me to indulge the fantasy that she perhaps made good of her life in the end, and managed to find reason to Convert, come here... Settle herself..."

He didn't know it, but at that exact moment I found myself a new mission. For me... For people like me, and Hutch, most of the others too... There is always a mission. Usually more than one.

Sure I had plenty to think about in the here and now.

And more than plenty of reasons to survive the war. To win.

But now I had one more reason for the pile.

I was going to find Lana Sorden.

Dead or alive.

And if the latter, and if required, beat some sense into her damn fool head by way of a steel nine eighths inch wrench.

This time I fought hard to keep my emotions off my face. The ears were the hardest to corral, but I managed it in the end. Either Taranis didn't notice outright, or he was too busy with thought, and memory, to pick up on any telltale signs that I failed to suppress.

Either way his voice was so raw, and vulnerable... Yet somehow so stable. Resigned.

"I lost Lana. Konem and Flux both lost people as well. Before. And during the crisis. No one could ever seem to pin them down after the first public announcements. I fell out of touch with the investigation. That comes with the territory... Being discharged, and whatnot..."

He snorted before continuing. Amusement, yes, but not joyful. Grim. The sort of gallows humor of watching a forewarned storm crush those arrogant enough to try and withstand it, rather than get out of the way.

"...An old acquaintance of mine did find a few scraps of data on their post-contact movements. Nothing actionable enough for EarthGov to do anything. But enough to find it worthwhile to ask me quite a few questions. And from those questions, I gathered more than enough to surmise."

A horrible knotted twist developed in the pit of my gut. It was like I could foresee what he was going to say right before he said it. But my beak stayed welded shut, by force of shock mostly, as he vocalized what I had already begun to guess.

"I can hardly blame them for suppressing it. How would people feel if they knew the PER was originally founded by an EarthGov agent, and one of Celestia's court mages? And a chief architect of Conversion at that."

There it was.

It made so much... *Sense,* after hearing everything he'd said...

Given what he knew? What he'd seen?

It was a wonder Taranis, ex Marine George Fried Puller, was still alive.

My wonderment, and ashen shock, finally got up through my throat and into my beak.

"God *damn.*"

Taranis nodded slowly, paying for a moment of silent reflection, before bringing the thread of the tale back to his own life's story.

"Innara wanted to do something for me, before she left... But the nanite treatments keeping my cancer at bay made me fundamentally... Fatally... Incompatible with Ponification serum. I had supposed that was that. I would die like Moses. Seeing the promised land. But never setting foot in it."

I couldn't resist a smile as he chuckled again, but this time with a visible and audible warmth, and happiness. The sound and expression of remembering an old friend.

"But that magnificent creature... She never knew a problem that she could not solve unconventionally. Never once."

He raised an eye crest scale, and looked over at me with an almost-smile. I smiled back outright as he put the last of the pieces together for me.

"Can you imagine my shock when I was approached by the Draconic ambassador, bearing a letter signed by Innara..."

Taranis shook his head slowly, as if still in disbelief all these years later, forging ahead with only a little pause to contemplate here and there.

"She earned his trust. In turn, she asked that I be given... A chance."

I nodded. He didn't have to say anything else; I understood. But I didn't interrupt him as he spelled it out. It was good for us both, to hear it in his own words.

"Draconic serum, like Gryphon serum, is more potent than Equine serum. It was also fairly easy to see even from the early simulations that it would be... Uniquely dangerous. As you well know."

I offered only another silent nod for him to continue. He inclined his head. I caught the tiniest hint of gratitude on his muzzle.

"So they offered me a chance. To be a test subject."

He stretched, first his front legs, then his back legs, and then reseated his head on the former, eyes finally returning to the horizon again as he wrapped up the incredible tale.

"I survived. And now... I like to think that I am doing more than merely surviving. After many, many years of merely... Existing. I started to learn to live again. Little by little."

My eyes went back to the horizon as well, piercing the misty meniscus of atmospheric moisture lying between the tops of the most distant hills, and the edge of the sky. Another very long, silent, but not at all awkward moment passed.

It had never been puzzling as to why Hutch liked Taranis, and why Fyrenn had taken such an instantaneous shine to him. But now it made even more sense. And it made sense why he was growing so much on me, too.

He was one of us. Same kind of story. Same kind of pain. Same kind of drive to protect, and uplift.

He was... Just one of us.

That would have been the only way I could have described it aloud if you'd asked me.

I didn't say that out loud. Not in so many words. But at last, I was the one who broke the silence.

"Hutch would love to hear that. Fyrenn too."

He snorted again. Somehow Equestrian snorts, whether Gryphon, Dragon, or Pony seemed to have even more breath of emotion than the same Human gesture. This time the sound Taranis made was one of amused resignation.

I pressed ahead with a smile that reached my voice.

"Family makes a good foundation... For those of us who wanna start trying to..."

I couldn't resist a small wink as I threw his own words back at him. Great blue scaly lunk.

"...Live again."

The way his smile changed caught me off guard. Not amusement, or derision, or any number of deflecting emotions that I'd expected. Instead sadness, gratitude, and catharsis.

Well holy shit.

Apparently being in this new family was damn good for teaching old dogs new tricks. It was starting to become a catching trend.

I chuckled, and averted my eyes, changing the topic quickly and making a concerted effort to lighten the tone of my voice.

Thaaaat's entirely enough mushy emotional vulnerability. For the moment. I'd cried enough tears for one day.

"Speaking of which; They'll start to think we both found a better party and left them out to dry. So we'd best get a move along."

Taranis rose, stretched his wings, smiled, and gestured with one claw.

"By all means."

Fyrenn

Skye jumped ever so slightly when I brushed her with one wingtip. I winced, but didn't pull away. She grinned over one shoulder sheepishly as I reached over her head and placed the warm cider vat onto the table.

"Sorry. Still... Jumpy. Sometimes."

I nodded, and patted her gently on the shoulder with one claw. Just two brief taps. Baby steps with the physical connection. In spite of her emotion-filled moments of closer familial embrace with many of us, I'd certainly not failed to notice her occasional hesitation at contact.

And if I was inferring correctly, that wasn't all down to recent nightmares and traumas either.

I smiled warmly at her, completely cloaking my internal train of thought behind the mask of genuine love and comfort. Not for the first time I swore a thousand vengeances, and castration with a dirty railroad spike besides, on whoever was responsible for Skye's pain.

For my sister's pain.

I wanted to start a conversation... Something teritarilly related to how she might be coping with the horror of everything that had just happened... And then let that naturally change orbits into a direct discussion, and maybe a little catharsis...

But my plan was foiled by the arrival of Aston and Taranis.

Hutch got into a raucous backslapping contest with the Dragon, Aston popped open the enormous case of donuts that they had somehow acquired on their return journey, Kephic and Varan started bringing the rest of the food over from the heart...

And that was that.

For a good few minutes it was all pleasantly light banter, and jokes, and laughter, and the busy chaotic dance of a family around something that strongly resembled, in tone, and atmosphere, a Thanksgiving or Christmas meal.

Damn. Christmas.

That was coming up fast...

I smiled and thrummed deeply in my chest as Alyra caught me by one foreleg, and Neyla wrapped me from behind with her wings.

Damn.

This was going to be the best Christmas I'd ever had, at this rate.

And that was *with* the end of the worlds looming over our heads.

As we all managed to load up plates and mugs, and take up positions around the table, a somber silence fell. No one suggested it, nor put forward any kind of proposal, or even gesture to bring the silence...

It just... Happened.

A somber pause. Mutually agreed.

I scanned each downcast face in turn. All thirteen of them.

Taranis. Aston. Hutch. Stan. IJ. Skye. Kephic. Varan. Shierel. Miles. William.

Alyra.

Neyla.

There was grief.

There was remembrance.

And, most importantly...

There was hope.

I pressed my head up under Neyla's chin, and pulled Alyra tightly to my chest.

And just like that, the moment of reflection, and remembrance, was over.

The room exploded into motion again as we scrambled for seating, mixing haphazardly with each other as we found comfy positions on rungs, pillows, and stools, piloting heavily laden dishes and drinking steins over, under, and around each other until we'd all settled at last.

Relative quiet descended again as everyone tucked in; The inevitable need to eat after a period of grief-induced self-starvation. I knew it well. I'd done it a hundred times alone.

Never again.

Never alone again.

Alyra snatched a skewer of broiled shrimp... How the hell had we gotten those here in Canterlot? From off of Varan's plate, and took a beak-first dive under his right wing, threading past Taranis, and over IJ, to alight beside me with her spoils.

She nestled in close to me again, smiled radiantly, and spoke around her first beakfuls of seafood.

"So... We're gonna do this all the time now... Right?"

I raised an eye crest, and made a mock glower down at her. She shouldn't talk with her beak full. Not that it much mattered for someone with a syrinx, but the reflex to open and close the beak to talk was very real, and provided a very nasty window onto what was happening to that shrimp as it was minced on the inner sharp secondary edge of the beak.

Our much better stand-in for teeth.

My expression did little but amuse her even more. My heart wasn't in it; At least, not as a reprimand, it wasn't.

I ruffled the feathers of her crest with one claw.

"Family dinner, you mean?"

She nodded. I took a long, slow sip from my cider mug, and scanned the room again. Thirteen joyful faces, each and every single one lost in the enjoyment of family, for a single blissful moment, forgetting the horrors of war.

"Oh. Hell yes."

Earth Calendar: 2117
Equestrian Calendar: 15 AC (After Contact)
December 16th, Gregorian Calendar

Lindstrom did not need an analytics AI to tell him what even the most uneducated of eyes could have clearly discerned from the wall-sized stack of drone feeds.

And Lindstrom was anything but uneducated.

Nonetheless, he allowed the almost nasal, atonal, genderless voice to cite endless grim statistics and summaries as he trawled the feeds with his eyes. Each worse than the last.

Here an image of the stripped out hulk of Mumbai's central city core; Naught left but a gray ash cloud, forks of static electrical lightning, and soft gray radioactive snow gently falling betwixt the bone-like twisted remains of the strongest components of megaskyscrapers.

There a feed showing a refugee group being herded *away* from the road to a JRSF aid camp, at gunpoint, but EarthGov army forces, themselves only days away from starvation, judging by the anemic size of their logistics convoy.

In one corner a surveillance image of EarthGov officers. Dead. Stacked in neat, and growing rows as Gryphons moved to methodically, and humanely, yet clinically, and mercilessly execute them by firing squad.

Their subordinates were being marched in arrow-straight lines, armorless and weaponless, hands bound behind the backs of heads, feet shackled together on short carbon fiber wire leads.

Made to watch the fate they were being spared, as a kindness for accepting the first warning to surrender.

Soon to be set free, most likely. As long as they swore the right oaths. And their captors believed them.

But free into what?

A prison of ash. At best.

"Particulate count has reached critical threshold in upper atmosphere. Sunlight intake reduced from baseline by ninety seven point six percent. Radiation readings in primary affected NorthAmerizone territories from the Serranilla/Shenzhou Blast range from two hundred to four hundred millisieverts. Radioactive fallout from conventional nuclear strikes is appearing in Northeast Eurozone region, Southeast Asia region. Asia Pacific region. NorthAmerizone region. SouthAmerizone region. Maximum dosimeter readings in primary blast zones; Seven thousand millisieverts. Average readings equate to five thousand millisieverts."

Lindstrom did not need the overly helpful graphical overlays on the central holoscreen to tell him just how bad even five thousand millisieverts was. He had read more war simulation reports than, in his estimation, any Human alive.

The utter stupidity of what had just happened would seem to be facts in-evidence for that hypothesis.

Perhaps if anyone in Military Command had paid the slightest sliver of a damn to the data, they would have at minimum grasped the age old wisdom; No one can win a nuclear war.

If you added Equestrians to that mix...

In another corner of the screen, a firefight between an EarthGov Scalebuster unit, and a multispecies JRSF attack group raged.

There were Humans on both sides of that battle...

And in spite of the specific anti-Dragon equipment in their arsenal, the EarthGov was losing.

As always.

As they inevitably would in ninety nine out of a hundred engagements.

Not enough cybernetics, or heavy weaponry to fend off a military of equal numbers, acting from multiple better supplied bases, with multiple better equipped, better trained, and just... Better soldiers. Physically. At a raw biological level.

There was no competition.

E12 and the HLFs best efforts aside? There never had been.

And none of what those factions had produced remained available at-scale.

To make matters worse for the EarthGov troops, their very world was turning ever more hostile by the minute. Climatologically. Because of their own damn fool actions.

At five thousand millisieverts per hour, one in every two exposed Humans would die within weeks. One in every five thousand exposed Ponies within months. One in every hundred thousand exposed Gryphons might die slightly earlier than normal, if death in combat didn't take them first.

And that was assuming the Unicorns didn't have some sort of magical way to cleanse radiation once back in Equestria.

They probably did.

The Equestrians had every possible advantage.

Only the best heavy armor and mechanized strike suits provided the kind of radiation protection needed to survive long duration exposure to nuclear fallout for a standard Human.

There were a lot of troops moving through heavily irradiated fallout zones.

Unsheltered, unlike the majority of the civilians.

There would only be heavy armor, or a strike suit, for one out of every ten thousand of them. And even that would be useless if overexposed. And many surely would be.

Most would be.

Most Human troops, and a small but significant number of civilian survivors, would soon be facing a grim choice. The same choice as always. But with a new twist.

Convert.

Or die.

Not from a rail slug, or a Gryphon claw, or a Dragon's tooth.

Not even death from the interminable march of the Barrier.

But from the silent, oldest, and most primal killer of organic carbon based life.

Radiation.

Facing days or weeks of grueling suffering, ending inevitably in a horrendous death by total cellular breakdown, with many major medical centers obliterated, and the rest under JRSF control, scrambling madly and ten times overburdened?

Too clogged with triage cases to even contemplate treating enemy soldiers, when there were innocent civilians to tend to?

Millions would suddenly be finding out that it was certain explosive cell death, or a small cup of purple tangy nanite gelatin.

Lindstrom doubted very many of the poisoned would refuse Conversion, whatever the species, as long as it ended the hemorrhaging and the blisters.

As to the Dragons? Few that there were in the combat zone?

No one had found a radiation dosage that Dragons could not shrug off indefinitely, so trying to guess on that front seemed approximately as pointless as the sham 'war' that EarthGov still seemed desperately intent on carrying to its conclusion.

Or at least... What was left of EarthGov.

Yet another advantage to the Equestrians.

Specialized troops that could move right through the heart of radiation clouds. Unscathed. Undetectable. Unstoppable.

Lindstrom shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose, and then swiped with one hand, collapsing the camera feeds to one side, and calling up a TacMap.

The ECP had fared well.

As 'well' as could be expected in a 'limited' global thermonuclear exchange, at any rate.

Their facilities were far from urban centers, deeply buried, and mercifully though most were coastal, all but one had been well outside any projected tsunami paths. And even the most impacted facility had reported no personnel casualties.

If they had been discovered, then no one had yet found the time, or impetus, to act on the information. Lindstrom was not naive, or childish enough to 'prefer' to think of the operation as remaining undiscovered.

It was a fifty-fifty chance.

Best not to play dice with the future.

He'd already begun preparations to move up the launches.

There was no future on this miserable rock anymore.

For anyone.

The ships they had, crammed with the people and supplies, and knowledge that they could, would have to be enough.

At very least, he mused, as he perused the faint smattering of remaining orbital tracks, the war had given them one advantage.

Everyone else was too busy trying to commit genocide to notice the ECP.

A few hours before, the JRSF had launched a massive anti-satellite barrage of railgun fire. Their Gryphon-based cyber warfare AI... 'Chuck' so called... Had crippled EarthGov command and control at a global level.

EarthGov had responded by rapidly decentralizing and quantum-encrypting whatever was left.

The JRSF had taken a 'scorched orbit' approach to stop any further orbital intelligence or C&C on EarthGov's part.

Kessler Syndrome was in full effect.

No one would ever be launching anything into orbit again. Not without the payload ending up looking like tinfoil swiss cheese.

No one, at any rate, except the Genesists, who had already launched two dozen small payloads on those fascinating 'Shrike' craft of theirs.

Probably command, control, and intelligence platforms.

ELINT seemed to think that the Genesist energy nano-armor was more than capable of plowing through orbital-velocity debris fields. Yet another advantage for team JRSF.

Pity ECP would not have time to study the technology further using Terran computers.

Further analysis would have to wait.

Lindstrom eyed the small map icon signifying Lucapa facility with a small, sad smile.

He wished them well. In all genuine honesty.

Their task had been gargantuan before. Now it would be all but intractable.

With luck, they might manage one more flight of ships, with the hulls they already had half completed. With luck.

Lots, and lots, of luck.

Lindstrom did not like to trust fate to luck.

'Better that fate be a thing that man makes.'

The ex-Councilor groaned, and massaged his temples, casting a wry glance at the DaTab on the situation room's main console, just out of arm's reach where he had slid it.

He was stalling, and he knew it.

The tablet's contents had to be dealt with.

Cam drummed his fingers on the console for a moment, then tapped a small practiced speed-dial beat against his earpiece to open a communication line.

"Do you still have the recovery beacon?"

The familiar voice came back from the other end, somehow all at once a mixture of professional, calm, collected, and yet the tiniest sliver of cocky. Requiem's constant trademark.

"It is getting fainter, but yes. We have local jamming setup. No one else is coming. What's the call? Save him? Or let him rot? The radiation in this area will kill him long before the starvation, or dehydration for that matter. Or so Korvan says the dosimeter tells him."

Lindstrom exhaled, and nodded to himself, his mind at last made up.

Never throw away a piece. Pawn or no. Distasteful or not.

"Begin recovery operations. Acquire, sedate, stabilize, and transport back here."

There was a half second pause, before an entirely expected query came back over the line.

"And if there are other survivors with the Councilor? High or low ranking?"

Lindstrom shook his head, and scratched under his chin, regarding the TacMap thoughtfully as he delivered his reply with absolute certainty.

"I only need Xaelus. If there are others with him? Terminate them."