The Sparrow in the Storm

by The 24th Pegasus

3-1 The Reluctant Empress

The town of Stratus was not a cloud city, despite its name. As a rule, cloud cities did not exist beyond Equestria’s borders. They were difficult to build and maintain, and without the magical density of a few thousand pegasi roosting within its white spires, they drifted wherever the winds took them. While many early pioneers thought that moving cities would help Equestria settle its western and southern frontiers, the reality of trying to grow self-sufficient settlements without developed resources to support them on the ground had soon soured many of the idea. That, and when rocs, dragons, and other flying monsters nested beyond the reach of the Legion, a floating town quickly became a wandering advertisement for an all-you-can-eat pegasus buffet.

In truth, Stratus was an unremarkable town with an unremarkable name made remarkable by the circumstances around it. Much like Dry Fens had only become a name on a map because of the blood spilled over it, Stratus only became something of note because of who lived there. For months, the small town that had once been a Legion veteran colonia served as the administrative center of Lost’s Legion, as much as his army needed the skeleton of a state to support it. But now, the small town clinging to a spit of rock looming over a fertile floodplain found itself host to royalty, or at least the pegasus take on it. For a fortnight ago, the first pegasus empress in a lifetime had placed her throne within the town.

As Empress Typhoon Stormblade woke up that morning from another dreamless sleep and looked around her accommodations in the town mayor’s manor, she certainly did not feel like royalty. Stratus had no accommodations of imperial stature (the term ‘manor’ was perhaps satire, but nonetheless it was the only building in town with three floors), and the thirty or forty permanent structures scattered across the rocky bluff and the floodplains around it were dwarfed by a legion of Legion tents that filled the dry ground. The town was larger than Dry Fens once was, but only barely, and it could hardly compare to the nexus of civilization in the frontier that was Boiling Springs. But the townsfolk, all veterans of the Legion who had been granted land in the Frontier to grow their families in exchange for their service, had readily accepted Lost Winds and his cause, and as it grew, had taken to the task of trying to grow the town with it. They had offered Typhoon the finest accommodations they had, and had already set about erecting a grander palace in the tallest vantage point in the surrounding countryside. When Typhoon looked out her window, she could see its frame taking shape with the rising sun as its backdrop.

The aging mare took a slow breath to savor the bed she’d been given a moment longer, and when she could no longer hold her breath, she rolled onto the floor with a clop of three hooves and a dull metallic thud of a fourth. The familiar aches and pains reminded her of their presence like somepony had slipped pebbles into her joints, and though her heartbeat was usually strong, she had noticed it liked to flutter a little bit when she woke up nowadays. When she looked into the mirror set in the vanity in the corner of the room, a weary mare’s face with bags under her eyes and gray in her mane greeted her. Even the hair around her muzzle was starting to whiten, and though her regular exercise kept her in remarkable shape for her age, the slow thinning of her neck around her shoulders meant time was beginning to reclaim what was hers. It was hard to believe that atop everything else she’d done in her life, that old mare in the mirror now had a throne to sit upon and an empire to rule.

“How did you do it, Dad?” she wondered aloud. Emperor Hurricane had ruled Cirra, albeit briefly, when he was twenty. His daughter, now approaching three times that age, found herself in the same position and perhaps feeling just as overwhelmed. Even on the other side of a lifetime of experience commanding the Equestrian Legion and serving as the pegasus triumvir for many years, politics had never been her strength. It was easy to study an opponent and assess the battlefield to give orders that she knew would be obeyed to the letter; it was a far different thing to shape the dreams of zealots and fanatics into a state from the ground up without just building a volcano to blast its destructive wrath across the countryside.

Typhoon’s morning ritual did not take long, though she savored every minute of it knowing that the moment she walked through the bedroom door the demands of a fledgling empire would seize the hooves of its reluctant empress with a steely bite and not let go. When her stretches and coat and mane brushing were finished, she donned her armor with practiced ease, grunting slightly under the weight of the heavy steel peytral Hammer had forged for her in Boiling Springs. Instead of taking his helmet, however, she left it on its stand, where it had spent most of the previous two weeks since arriving in Stratus. In its place, she flipped the golden laurel wreath Stratus’ newly-arrived goldsmith had forged for her behind her ears, flapping and turning them a few times until she could get it to sit comfortably. Though she would have preferred the helmet over the wreath, the regalia was part of the costume, and if she wasn’t going to dress in robes and silks like a real empress, the least she could do was concede the tiny touch of jewelry to give the pegasi whose worst impulses she was trying to corral what they wanted.

She looked again at the mirror when she was finished and narrowed her eyes at her reflection. Tsch. Wasn’t she too old to be playing dress up for the ambitions of stallions?

Her tail flicked once and she turned away from the mirror, returning to her bed only long enough to fetch her sword from the weapon rack she kept within a wing’s reach. Once the scabbard was securely hooked to the left edge of her armor, she made her way to the door and stepped outside, ready to start another day of being an upstart empress.

Armor rattled to the left of the door as she pulled it inward, and the night guard that had been stationed outside her room stiffened into military posture and tried to push the sleep out of his eyes with a neutral, forward stare. Though Typhoon had initially been resistant to the posting, it was yet another of the things she had relented on to satisfy the new Cirrans she now found herself to be a part of. But once she got used to the idea, she did feel a little better knowing she didn’t have to sleep as lightly—not that her sleep ever grew particularly deep anymore. Even still, sleeping in an actual bed with somepony to watch her back while she did so made her wonder why she hadn’t tried to be an empress earlier.

“At ease,” she told the soldier. When he relaxed, she nodded at him. “What was your name again?”

“Windthistle, ma’am,” the stallion said. Like most of Lost Winds’ soldiers, the stallion was barely more than a colt, maybe a year or two older than Sparrow, an adventurous youth throwing his young vigor behind an army that promised to make the Frontier safe again. Her guard changed nightly at her request so she could try to get to know the soldiers that called her empress, and also to try and break down the distinctions between Lost’s soldiers and the volunteers from Legate Sparrow’s legion. She needed to homogenize the army that swore loyalty to her to make sure factions didn’t compete for her favor and make rivals of each other… though she knew that was far easier said than done, when the bulk of the new Cirran Legion was made of two legions that had fought each other almost to the bloody end only a few weeks ago.

“Windthistle,” Typhoon said, making an attempt to commit face and name to her memory. “You’re dismissed. Go and get some rest. I’m sure your centurion will want you on your hooves soon enough, no matter that you’ve spent the night standing outside my door.”

“I will. Thank you, ma’am.” Windthistle opened his wings in salute, hesitated for a second, then followed the salute with a bow like he was bowing to the unicorn queen. Typhoon’s tail flicked again and her eyes rolled at the submissive pose, but she didn’t say anything to him as she walked past. The only royalty most ponies had ever known was the unicorn queen; only the truly wizened pegasi who had flown in the Exodus sixty years ago would have remembered the last time a race other than the unicorns had royalty of their own, in as much as the Cirran emperors considered themselves such.

Beyond her bedroom, the mayor’s manor bustled with all the activity of an army headquarters, and though the early hour of the morning muted the activity, it did not stop it entirely—matters of war and peace were not bound by the waking hours like ponies were. Even as Typhoon made her way down to the kitchen where she knew the chef was already preparing breakfast for her, the empress spied a couple of messengers sitting in the lounge idly chatting while they waited for their superiors to wake up and receive the non-vital news they had for them, while a few other early rising centurions had left their rooms to find a table or desk somewhere in the house to draft up plans for the day’s schedule. As Lost Winds had told it, officers had been detached in Stratus to continue the administrative efforts of his new Cirra while the bulk of his fighting force had been bogged down besieging Dry Fens, and now that the fighting had finished the legion could shift its attention back to the bureaucratic apparatus that had been running in the meantime. Such a development was welcome news to Typhoon, as it meant she could quickly shift her focus towards understanding just what exactly she had to work with in her new Cirran Empire and asserting her control over the system to make sure it behaved in the way she wanted it to.

Though of course, beyond stopping the fighting in the Frontier, she was still trying to figure out how exactly she wanted her brand-new nation to behave…

As had become custom, by the time Typhoon made it down to the kitchen, the chef already had breakfast waiting for her, a simple omelet with cheese, onion, and peppers alongside toasted bread and some flowers to snack on. She took it from her with a wing and made her way over to a table in the adjoining dining room, where she sat down and began to pick away at it with her fork. She didn’t get more than a few bites into it when another pony poked his head into the room, and Typhoon gave Legate Lost Winds a small nod before he joined her at the table. At least he had the courtesy to salute instead of bow, even if the idea of making Typhoon his empress was his idea.

“I hope you slept well, ma’am,” Lost Winds said, making small talk as his quiet, almost ghostly voice strained to be heard over the hissing grease in the chef’s pans in the kitchen as she prepared breakfast for the other officers in the building. “It took some time, but I feel I finally shifted myself out of the deployment mindset now that I’m no longer at the front.”

Typhoon gave him a curt nod in understanding, and she set her utensils aside for the time being. “It is nice to let my guard down a bit after being on the road for so long, yes,” she acknowledged. “I never took the time to seek enjoyment in being a triumvir. My thoughts were always toward my duty, first and foremost. But it is nice to be reminded of it in more pleasant ways after spending such a long time on the road.”

“I know that all too well,” he said with a nod toward Typhoon’s plate.

A light breath of air made it out of Typhoon’s nose, like the first half of a chuckle. “It certainly beats trail rations, though my stomach didn’t appreciate the sudden heartiness after so long eating grains and flowers. So long as Stratus is able to provide while also keeping an army fed, I’ll allow myself to indulge. It’s not the fare that used to be made available for us in Everfree, but it’s far more than what I’m used to.” Her feathers wrapped around a tin cup of water and frost crept out from the vanes a few seconds later. Then, taking a gulp of the ice-cold water, she set it aside and picked back up her utensils. “I know idle chatter isn’t your hobby, legate, so I’ll spare you the exercise. I take it you have news for me?”

“Nothing pressing, otherwise I’d have interrupted your rest to deliver it,” the legate said, and soon his feathers produced a scroll from one of the pouches on his armor. He set it down between them, and Typhoon noted that the wax seal had already been broken. “The census results, tallied and finalized. Your empire has the support of twenty-six towns ranging from small farming settlements to more robust settlements like Stratus and, once it recovers, Dry Fens. In those towns and across the homesteads scattered between, roughly six thousand and seven hundred non-combatants live under your protection, with five thousand soldiers between my legion and Singing Sparrow’s volunteers at your disposal.”

“Almost twelve thousand lives,” Typhoon mused to herself, and she thought on that for a moment while she chewed on her breakfast. “I’m not well studied in economics and demographics since that was never my job as triumvir, but as a commander I don’t think any nation is particularly balanced when there’s almost as many soldiers as civilians.”

Lost Winds’ response to that was a shrug. “We’re piecing together a nation from scratch, spearheaded by pegasi who have grown sick and tired of being cast aside and forgotten by Queen Platinum. Our Legion is our core. But in a week, these records will already be outdated. Your reputation means more towns are joining us and more capable mares and stallions are enlisting. A message from a town called Green Glade in the east arrived this morning declaring their loyalty to you; they’ll need to be counted in the next census.”

The name cocked Typhoon’s eyebrow. “Green Glade? I stopped by there on my journey west. I chased away a dragon that was preying on them and starving the ponies in the area to grow her hoard.”

“Then I suppose we can count on more towns around Green Glade to declare when they spread the news.”

Typhoon shook her head. “They’re on the other side of Boiling Springs, and that city was hostile to legionaries in general. Green Glade may have felt they owed me something when they sent their pledge of allegiance, but siding with us likely means the end of any trade they had with Boiling Springs. I don’t think the other towns would sever those ties lightly, as I didn't visit them like I did Green Glade.”

“If I may, Empress, I think the opposite is likely to happen,” Lost Winds argued. “When enough towns surrounding Boiling Springs and the other holdouts pledge for us, the remainder will be faced with a choice. They can either try to maintain their ties to Equestria, whatever remain in its crippled, decaying state, or they could invest in a new opportunity. The city is a trading hub with a prominent service industry with their many springs. They’d have the chance to position themselves as the foremost economic force in Cirra. As pegaphobic as they seem to be, they’ll sing a different tune when the opportunity becomes lucrative—and the alternative is certainly economically ruinous.”

“I don’t want to be competing with Equestria, Legate,” Typhoon reminded him, and the tone of her voice also implied a warning in her words. “Nova Cirra is here for the protection of the towns on the Frontier that can’t rely on Equestria to address their concerns. If they want to join us, they can. But I won’t be pushing for actively trying to pull settlements away from the Crown that don’t want to join us.”

Though Lost Winds deferred with a bow of his head, his quiet voice belied the submission. “I understand, Empress. But I think it would be wise to consider the benefits of consolidating territory and encouraging more settlements to join us. Nova Cirra cannot survive as a fragmented mess of small towns, and if we can’t survive, then the Frontier won’t have its protectors. We can have negotiations with Queen Platinum over Boiling Springs’ fate if her rule even survives the turmoil beyond Everfree. Until then, we should encourage them to join us. We might fall apart without their resources and influence, especially if they work against us.”

Typhoon grated her teeth together and frowned at Lost Winds’ logic. It was sound and reasonable; Nova Cirra couldn’t survive in the long term without incorporating larger settlements like Boiling Springs that were currently hostile to it. But the part that concerned her, just as it always had from the beginning, was just how different her idea of long-term and Winds’ were, and what that would mean after she was gone.

In the end, she gave the legate a curt nod. “I see. In that case, we should organize an envoy to discuss their concerns and try to work around the current… misunderstandings between us. We should be cooperative and amicable, not domineering and threatening. And if we succeed, them joining with us would actually give us an actual economy to speak of, not to mention double our population overnight,” Typhoon said, and she used her wingtip to roll the scroll back toward Lost Winds. “I’ll look at this tonight if I need something to read before sleeping. Do you have anything else for me?”

Lost Winds shook his head. “Not at the moment, ma’am. I am, however, expecting our scouts we sent west to report back with the latest updates on the situation out there. I’ll admit, I haven’t been keeping tabs on the situation further west with the recent… issue with Dry Fens. If we’re going to address the Mustang Clans and the Free Cities, we need to know what we’re dealing with first.”

“I agree.” Typhoon tossed her utensils down onto her empty plate and pushed it aside. When she stood up, Lost Winds mirrored her, and she subconsciously gave her feathers a small ruffle when he bowed his head. “When the scouts return, direct them to me. I’m very interested in what they have to say. In the meanwhile, I need to assess the readiness of the Legion. I have a feeling we won’t be able to make bandits and slavers stop their ways with words alone.”

“If we etch our words onto our swords, they might have enough time to read them before we take their heads,” Lost Winds quipped, and if it weren’t for the little flick of his wingtips, Typhoon wouldn’t have realized he was making a joke. “That’s about the only way we’ll get them to understand our words.”

“How many swords do you think it would take to hammer out a treaty?” Typhoon asked back, the corners of her muzzle twitching upwards.

“We have five thousand pegasi with five thousand swords. If you keep it brief, we might get the message across.” Typhoon snickered lightly at that, but the levity lasted only another moment before Lost Winds gave her a salute. “I’ll return to the war room, ma’am, if that’s all.”

Typhoon dismissed him with her wing. “Go. I’ll be in the camp if I’m needed. Just follow the crowd.”

The legate’s wings twitched and one of his steel shoes scuffed the ground as his legs fidgeted, but it took Typhoon’s raised eyebrow to get the words out of him. “Are you sure I can’t convince you to have a more proper escort, my empress?” he finally asked. “There are many skilled and veteran legionaries who would be willing to protect you. And we still don’t know if we can trust everypony that Singing Sparrow brought along…”

“I don’t need protection,” Typhoon insisted, and when she shifted her stance, the sword at her side rattled just enough to let a wisp of frost escape the gap between guard and scabbard. “I’m surrounded by ponies who swore an oath to me and Cirra. And I may be gray in the mane, but I’m not as slow as I look.” Then her features hardened into a more sour frown. “And I don’t need you second-guessing Singing Sparrow and his soldiers. I understand your concerns given the animosity between the two of you, but you need to cut it out and get over it. Consider that an order.”

“Have you seen the pillory in camp, Typhoon?” the legate asked her, and rather directly, Typhoon noted, given his usual deference for rank and title. “Attacks and violence from Singing Sparrow’s rabble against ours have ended with a lot of ponies bound and whipped. Hooves will turn to knives, and then to graves. They should not be allowed to camp with my soldiers while serving a stallion who was until two weeks ago our enemy.”

“Your enemy, Winds. You would be wise to remember that,” Typhoon shot back, but when she frowned at the stallion, he didn’t turn his head or avert his eyes. “You both serve me now. Your soldiers serve me. You will do as I say, and when I say you two will camp together and make your legionaries get along, you will do so. I’ll consider it a slip of your tongue for now, but I know that the undisciplined fighting between his legion and yours is not always instigated by his soldiers, and I know that you know it, too. So I will remind you what I’m going to tell Legate Sparrow, and what I’ve told you before as your empress: knock it off.”

Imperial authority thus exercised, the challenge in Legate Winds’ eyes flickered into something else. “Understood, my empress,” he finally relented.

“Good.” Typhoon narrowed her eyes, and her tail flicked with irritation. “That will be all, Legate.”

The stern dismissal left no room to argue, and Lost Winds gave his empress a stiff salute before pivoting about and leaving the room. Typhoon stared at the door he’d slinked through for several seconds, working her jaw side to side, before finally shaking her head and following him through it.

While Lost Winds disappeared to sulk in his office elsewhere in the manor, Typhoon made her way through the front door and stepped outside into the warm morning air. The legionaries at either flank stiffened in salute as she stepped between them, but her attention was instead focused on the morning sky that was just beginning to deepen to its crisp blue and the promise of clear skies ahead. The days were growing longer and morning came earlier and earlier, and the heat so early in the day promised that the height of summer was just around the corner. Despite everything, despite how much she didn’t want and never sought the title she now held in her hooves, despite how much the bickering between Lost Winds and Singing Sparrow threatened to unravel everything if it wasn’t stopped sooner rather than later, a part of Typhoon felt ascendant like the last days of spring before the apex of the sun’s season. She had left Everfree to find a cure for her hex, but she had sworn to herself to stop and help wherever she could on her journey in atonement for the mistakes she made in Equestria. The irony was not lost on her that she stood on the cusp of doing just that on a scale larger than she could achieve as a wandering sword by abandoning her father’s creation, at least temporarily.

As Typhoon’s business lay in the camp beyond Stratus, and not particularly feeling like smiling and waving to the ponies wandering the streets that morning, Nova Cirra’s empress took wing from the landing of the mayor’s manor and climbed into the sky. At least in the air she could still be herself, just Typhoon, and the pegasi on the sentry clouds hovering over the city gave her salutes if she flew close but otherwise paid her no mind. It was a peaceful atmosphere to submerge herself in on her morning flights, to wake up, clear her head, and ready herself for imperial duties with nothing but the wind in her face and the air under her feathers.

She drew out the flight as she always did, but eventually the proximity of her destination as well as the weight of the heavy armor on her shoulders forced her back to the ground where the realities of her situation caught up to her again once more. Her hooves had barely touched the trampled dirt before a sentry called out in a full-bodied shout “Hail, Empress!” and any and all nearby ponies stopped what they were doing to face her and bow. The forest of spread feathers and bowed heads made Typhoon pause, but only for a second, and after acknowledging it with a nod she parted the sea of colorful ponies to enter the camp itself.

The camp around Stratus was not too much different from the waning days of Camp Stratopolis in the campaign for Dry Fens; the legionaries who walked between the tents as they moved with their gear to the day’s assignments were in high spirits and looked on at Typhoon with awe, much as they had in the weeks prior. But with the merging of Singing Sparrow’s legion, the resources of Stratus to support the garrison, and the steady influx of fresh volunteers ranging from new recruits to seasoned veterans bolstering its ranks, this legion camp felt like one of the great camps Typhoon commanded during her days campaigning in first the Cirran and later the Equestrian Legion. Though most of the sprawl was dominated by field tents, permanent structures supporting the mess hall, the armory, a storehouse, and a smithy had emerged at one end of the camp, and a century of legionaries had been given the unenviable task of paving the main road through camp with broad, flat stones chiseled from the surrounding bluffs. The tents had been grouped by century and cohort to make organizing the army simpler and more efficient, and some of the fields around the camp provided enough space to train and drill a dozen or so centuries at a time on grass cut short by blade and scythe. A wooden wall protected two sides of the camp from attack, while the side facing Stratus was built of stone and mortar with a gatehouse, and the side facing away from it was left open to accommodate the growth of the camp. Even to Typhoon, who had seen many camps from field camps on the ground to the massive sprawling legion camps around Cloudsdale, the camp under construction in Stratus was impressive and a reassuring solid foundation upon which the strength, security, and safety of the Frontier could be built upon.

Even though it was a sprawling site, Typhoon navigated it easily, having designed the layout of her new Legion herself. Groupings of tents had their century’s standard in the middle, with each one bearing a number, making it simple for officers to find a centurion or even individual soldiers as necessary. It had taken some time for Typhoon to commit the numbers and at least the centurions associated with each century and cohort to memory, but she was hardly alone in that. When she merged Lost Winds’ and Singing Sparrow’s armies into her new Legion, she’d spent a great deal of effort trying to mix centuries and cohorts to homogenize the former enemies.

Of course, as Legate Winds had reminded her this morning, it wasn’t proceeding without issue. Though no shouting or fighting erupted within her sight or earshot, she knew that was because awareness of her presence in the camp that morning had quickly spread from soldier to soldier. Doubtless the nightly report would detail a list of unruly incidents between the two sides; she just hoped that it wouldn’t come bloodstained. As she glanced toward the pillories in the center of camp, a wisp of smoke emerged from the fan of feathers on her wings when she heard the snap of a whip and a mare’s cry as a centurion meted out punishment on a legionary for some offense while a small crowd of onlookers watched. Which legion the mare belonged to, Typhoon didn’t know, nor did it particularly matter. Until the hatred had finally been flushed out of both sides, the whippings would continue. It was just a matter of figuring out how to do so without splintering the tenuous alliance between the two sides in service to her, a feat far more easily said than done.

Soon, she found who she was looking for. Sitting on some of the grass that had survived the trampling of thousands of hooves, Sparrow sat with her breakfast in her tin, happily chatting with a young stallion sitting next to her. Typhoon recognized him as Chinook, one of the few of Lost’s pegasi that got along with the unicorn, and she also recognized the gap—or perhaps more accurately, the lack thereof—between their flanks as the two laughed between bites of oats. Of course, she barely had time to shake her head or comment on it before Chinook spotted her approaching, and his wings momentarily popped open first in surprise and then for balance as he hopped to his hooves to salute his empress. “Hail, Empress Typhoon!” he exclaimed as he saluted, assuming strict military posture and leaving his tin on the ground, momentarily forgotten.

Sparrow hardly reacted, instead finishing the bite of breakfast in her mouth and then setting her tin and utensils aside with her magic. “Oh, hey. Morning,” she said in a far more casual and familiar tone. “What’s up?”

Of the two, it was Chinook’s reaction that ruffled Typhoon’s feathers, and the old mare rolled her eyes and waved him off with her wing. “Cut that out. I’ve already had enough of it today, and the sun’s barely out.”

“I… of course, Empress,” Chinook said, and when his shoulders threatened to follow the bow of his head, a sharp tut from Typhoon arrested that motion as well. “Apologies.”

“You’ll live,” Typhoon assured him, earning a snicker from Sparrow, before her ruby eyes shifted to the unicorn. “What does Tern have you doing today?”

“I don’t know… drills, I think?” Sparrow asked, and when she turned to Chinook with a questioning tilt of her head, the stallion nodded. “Yeah. Drills. Marching and stuff, because that’s apparently going to scare the Free Cities enough that they’ll let us march right on past them.”

“Drilling is useful for instilling discipline and training soldiers to receive and execute orders in unison,” Typhoon said. But then she added a shrug. “But as for the Free Cities, you’re right. That, and formation flying is far more important than marching as a cohort when it comes to fighting as the Legion fights.”

“It’s like the marching of the sky,” Chinook not-so-helpfully added for the benefit of the pony without wings.

Sparrow’s tongue poking between her lips was her retort, though Typhoon clearing her throat put a stop to her silliness. “While I know you would benefit from the drills, Sparrow, you can forget them for today. When it comes to fighting the Mustang Clans or the Free Cities—and believe me, I fully expect it to come to that eventually—I need you to be able to fight alongside me. Which means I need you to be able to fight.” At Sparrow’s surprised blink, Typhoon offered her a reassuring nod. “When you fought me in Boiling Springs and when Tern made you spar with Drifter, you fought with creativity to stay competitive when you were obviously outclassed. I don’t think fighting in formation would suit you, and without wings, you can’t fight how the Legion usually does. To put it another way, you have the makings of a great duelist with the right training. When we cross swords with the Free Cities and everything further west beyond them, I want you to be able to hold your own without me.”

The unicorn was up to her hooves in a flash, and the grin on her muzzle could not have been wider. “Fuck yeah! Now that’s what I’m talking about!” She spun about as she darted into her tent, her short tail smacking Chinook in the nose in the process, and she emerged a few seconds later with her sword in her magic and her pink aura fastening armor pieces to her frame. “I’m ready! Let’s go!”

“Hey, what about Tern?” Chinook asked once he’d spat the last of Sparrow’s tail hairs out of his mouth. “He’s going to be pissed if you miss drills!”

“Sorry, Empress’ orders!” Sparrow chirped and gave him a playful punch on the shoulder.

Chinook groaned. “Somehow, he’s going to blame me for it. I just know it.”

“Then come along,” Typhoon encouraged him. “I think a second blade would be useful in polishing each other’s skills. Besides, sparring is tiring and I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“Like that has slowed you down at all,” Sparrow said with a laugh. When she saw Chinook hesitating, she grabbed his shoulders in her aura and pulled him closer. “Come on, are you really going to turn down an opportunity to learn from Commander Hurricane’s daughter because you’re scared of Tern?”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

Comments

[CopperTop]

Aww, Sparrow's got a crush; adorable.

Also nice to see that Ty is still committed to keeping her promise, despite the drastic change in circumstances.

[Mr Swanky Hat]

Can't protect the frontier like you want Winds, if you're too busy infighting

[Farenth Vega]

Was thinking about this story recently and just wanted to say how much I enjoy it. Hope we get more sometime soon. Keep up the great work!

[The 24th Pegasus]

11879760
I'm hoping to continue it soon but my 2024 got completely derailed pretty much as soon as it started. Trying to work up the willpower and time to write again has been far far more difficult than I thought it would be