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Introduction708 words
01 - Things Taken For Granted6,064 words
02 - Downward Spiral8,269 words
03 - Alone10,265 words
04 - Under New Management6,134 words
05 - Thunderstorm6,753 words
06 - Fates8,201 words
07 - Epilogue - The Fallen Angel of Thunderpeak1,039 words

01 - Things Taken For Granted

The salty smell of the sea, the cool breeze of the beaches, entered the room. The delicate forms of seashells, starfishes, and cute crabs in the curtain made dancing shadows on the bedsheets. Those were white and cyan, soft as Gallus imagined Silverstream’s belly to be. Everything in that place reminded him of the sea and of nice, comfortable things. From the colors to the shape of the furniture, everything was delicately curvy like the waves, a seashell, fishes, and stars. The hippogriffs owned their identity as the seafaring creatures they were, but also the ‘cloudiness’ of the Pegasi. Very much like the typical pony decorations which showed hearts, horseshoes everywhere, his room had a white ceiling with the top of the walls painted like fluffy clouds. Hippogriffs being half-pony and half-griffons seemed to hold the best of both worlds.

While stretching on his giant nest-like hippogriff bed, his neck popped, and he yawned a lungful. The bed was like someone had made a nest out of a cloud. The edges raised like a nest, fluffy and white like a cloud. A small regret crept up over him, though. It was not like he didn’t like the girls; he was sure he loved Silverstream, and even her cousin, but waking up and just staying in bed, without all the overexcited energy and fanfare over breakfast, was nice. He could just enjoy his wonderful bed.

The two royal hippogriffs were probably at the beach, doing beach things. Not fond of the sea, Gallus had told them not to wait for him before they went to their rooms last night. He turned on his back in one fluid, cat-like movement. The blue walls of his room invited some more sleep, but Silverstream would be cross with him if he didn’t join them, eventually. As always, his griffon brain told him it would be boring, but he knew it would be fun.

He flipped himself like a pancake again and stood on his legs with a groan, arching his back, and raising his wings all the way before he folded them and hopped off the bed. The perfect balance of breeze and cold air and made his feathers and hair stand. Whatever-that-stone-was on the floor was too cold, so he hurried his way to the bathroom.

His bathroom was significantly larger than it needed to be, filled with perfumes aligned with the salty aromas of the hippogriff islands. It maintained the cutesy pony-like sea themes with the seashells, colorful crabs, and laced curtains, reminding him of the froth of waves. His sink was literally the shape of a giant clam, and the little soaps all took their shapes after seashells. The bathtub? It was a giant seashell, and the water poured from an amphora held by the statue of a cute seapony baby. It was like a luxury hotel, except for free. But Gallus just yawned again and turned a bored stare at the sink.

He washed and vigorously rubbed his face before he took another gander at the young, barely awake blue griffon in the mirror. His feathers were a mess, and he pawed half-heartedly at them with little success in straightening them out. With a frown of mild annoyance, he gave his paw a good lick and began batting his feathers into submission.

Once he was tired of the game with questionable success, he walked to his bathroom’s window. Down below, way down Mount Aris and across the city, a passenger ship was coming into the port. Its steam horn blew a salutation to the beachgoers. Hippogriffs, ponies, even yaks, and some griffons cheered and waved at the ship, either from the sand or from the air.

Mount Aris was probably the safest place in the world. Among the options he had available, at least. The moment just struck him with just how fortunate he was. Lucky that Silverstream liked him, and that Queen Novo had sheltered him. Also, that Skystar liked him too, he supposed. The alternatives were going back to Griffonstone and lying low on Grandpa Gruff’s house, watching the paint peel off the walls, or… He rather not think about the other alternative. Harmony had granted him a gift to be allowed to hide away in Mount Aris with his marefriends.

Well, his marefriend Silverstream and her socially challenged cousin who couldn’t land a date to save her life. They even let her tag along and nobody looked strangely at them since the polyamory was perfectly fine for the ponies and hippogriffs too! Heh… Try that on Griffonstone.

Gallus was important. ‘Member of nobility’ kind of important, but nocreature cared about that in Mount Aris. Certainly not Silverstream or Skystar, who were themselves part of royalty, but that was beside the point. And Gallus wanted nothing to do with the political issues going on in Griffonia. The more he repeated that inside his head, the fresher the air going into his nares seemed and the happier the seagulls flying around sounded. He was perfectly fine with spending the rest of his still long life among ponies and hippogriffs and would be happy if he never had to see another griffon in his life.

Once he finished relieving himself in the squat toilet, he went back to his room. A complaining empty stomach directed his eyes to the door, but the bed seemed so soft. It was soft, like a cloud, and the sun was shining on it like it called Gallus back to it. It invited him to sleep just a little longer and before he knew, he was already splayed on the soft mattress, letting go a happy sigh through a smiling beak. What was the point of vacations if you’d wake up early, like in school season?

Hard knocking at the door made him jump. The sun didn’t seem to be so high that he had slept through the morning, or something. They banged at the door, more insistently, and haven’t even given him time to respond.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.” He said with a yawn, stumbling his way through the room. “I’m sorry I slept too long, Silvers-”

It was not Silverstream or Skystar knocking on his door. On the other side of the door was a big, lime colored hippogriff in golden armor staring down at him. The sleepiness vanished in an instant; the certainty of something going wrong hit him in the stomach like a baseball bat.

“Please, come with me, Gallus.” The soldier forgone a greeting and told him with a flat tone that truly did not fit the peaceful and relaxed vacation destination that was Hippogriffia.

What was he going to do? He followed the guard and, before he knew, he was standing before Queen Novo and General Seaspray. And none of them had the usual friendly, accepting smile of their kind.

It was a grand hall at the back of the palace, where an ample balcony replaced the back walls, all in bluish marble and white gypsum. Queen Novo, with her exuberant mane in multiple shades of purple feathers and magenta eyes filled with pain, looked down at Gallus from her throne at the top of the dais. A small table where an announcer would speak during meetings was empty and only the queen and her general met Gallus. It was too big a room to be that empty, much like Gallus’ stomach, which was now filled with butterflies.

The guard waited outside after closing the door behind Gallus’ tail. Novo’s frown and Seaspray’s insistent avoidance of Gallus’ stare clashed with the festive and pony-like beach themed decoration. The gold and blue curtains dancing in the breeze felt like a mocking slight. The seats flanking the hall, where important hippogriffs would sit to listen to the queen and her herald, were as empty as his hopes of a tranquil vacation.

He stopped before the hole in front of the steps. The guards used to say that was where Novo would throw her enemies and the currents would take them to a shark vivarium. It was nothing more than a quick way her water-bound subjects could just swim up and meet the queen. There was an underwater waiting room underneath the throne room for them, but those thoughts failed to ease Gallus’ worries.

“Did you call me, your majesty?” he sat and wrapped his tail around his legs.

“I am sorry, but I have some bad news for you, Gallus.” She said from her throne and keeping a neutral tone, staring at him squarely before she turned to her general. The sympathy in her eyes and her voice had the opposite effect of what she wanted. A shiver crawled up Gallus’ back.

“This morning…” Seaspray started, equally careful with his words. Keeping a serious tone, despite his warm voice, that reminded Gallus of Miss Sparkle’s brother. “This morning, I received a report from one of the palace guards. He witnessed another taking money from a griffon lady, confirming to her you are living here in the palace.”

Gallus gasped and stared at Queen Novo, but he saw no further reaction from her. Seaspray was not done yet. “There is more. This was not the first time, but now… she also paid him for information on how to reach your room and to leave the servant’s door in the pantry open.”

‘Oh, shit!’ Even though the words crossed Gallus’ mind, they barely even began to describe the gut-wrenching fear that twisted his stomach. They had found him in less than half a month. And Queen Novo probably noticed his apprehension because she spoke immediately after.

“Gallus, listen to me.” The hippogriff queen said, and he did. He did not like her anxious frown, though. “Normally, I would just scoff, brush this away and have the guard disciplined and replaced. But… worrying things happened at Griffonstone in the past days. General?”

Maybe if he still felt like he had a floor under his feet, Gallus would have understood all General Seaspray was telling him. But the best he grasped was that Griffonstone was full of revolutionary griffons who wanted to replace Chancellor Gail with a northerner griffon lord called Gillad Ironfeathers. Gallus knew him. The griffon whose followers had called him ‘The Lion’ had been urging griffons to stand up against the supposedly corrupt griffonian government, sever relations with the Equestria and its allies, and proclaim him the new Griffon King. Of course, Gallus knew him. He was his half-brother. But it was not his half-brother that worried him. No. Not by a long shot.

“But what happened?” Gallus asked, opening his forelegs in surprise. “Griffonstone’s been like that for months.”

According to General Seaspray, a couple of nights ago, Celestia showed up in Griffonstone and spooked the northerner sympathizers. He spoke of sides being taken. Griffons being stabbed, shot, and kidnapped in the night. There was a bombing at a hospital—who does that?—skirmishes all over the city. Scary stuff!

Then Novo spared her general from delivering the kick. “Celestia and Luna have gone missing after their consort died in the fighting.”

“Well, that never happens, does it?” He said raising his voice with a frustrated frown. His sarcasm failed to hold the fears he had been hiding from for the last couple of weeks. They had come back with a vengeance. But Celestia’s consort had died? That was a next level of fear-inducing news. Gallus barely knew him, but hearing that the Princesses disappeared along with his death painted a horrifying image in his thoughts.

He let escape a deep sigh. There really was going to be a civil war in Griffonia.

Novo lowered her eyes. “Officially, nobody knows anything, but a couple of hippogriff officers in the Griffonian military informed us that Celestia’s consort’s death devastated her. Something scared her in a way no one’s ever seen before, and she teleported away in between ravings of doom and changeling infiltrators hiding everywhere. Luna… She just vanished after looking into a terrible crime in Ponyville.”

“Crime in Ponyville?” Gallus’ feathers splayed with his laughter. “The worst that ever happens in there is that somepony stepped on another pony’s petunias!”

Details then became fuzzy in Seaspray’s recounting of the intelligence they had received. Gallus could barely believe what he was hearing. While they knew next to nothing about what happened in Ponyville, there was a coup d’état in Griffonstone. It mostly failed, and the young griffon almost laughed, because Chancellor Gail was never in town, doing his damn job.

But that was not all. In the middle of all that, an old Second Griffon War general came out of the blue and started pulling some grim skeletons out of closets. The soldiers at Fort King Grover literally rebelled.

There was a mass exodus of northerner supporters, with help from the military. In the end, the military took control of the city on behalf of the northerners. The entire intelligence branch of the Griffonian Standing Army was… Gallus grimaced at the word Seaspray used: ‘purged’.

The rest of the world, with Princess Celestia’s disappearance, dropped Griffonia like a ticking time bomb and watched from a safe distance. And just because misery loved company, there were rumors of hippogriffs living in the griffon nation having to hide from the north-supporting soldiers that now controlled the capital. The first had arrived at Hippogriffia during the night. Novo’s eyes filled with horror as Gallus listened to Seaspray’s words. Too close to the Storm King’s attack that had claimed the life of her husband.

“I don’t know what is happening, Gallus. I don’t know what is going to happen, but I am afraid I can’t guarantee your safety here.” The queen finally said, but her beak twisted, and her lavish crest deflated. “I… You are a danger to Skystar and to Silverstream. You can’t be with them. I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to do.”

His puppy-eyed stare did not help at all; she avoided his eyes for a moment before talking to him again. “I can pay you a passage to wherever you desire, and I will offer you some money. But you cannot stay here. If you truly like Skystar and Silverstream, you will understand.”

Dammit, he understood. She was properly scared out of her mind. He just didn’t like it. He also agreed, but it if filled his stomach with acid.

Suddenly, they were in a hurry too, because since Gallus was going away, it would be better for all involved if he did while Silverstream and Skystar were away. Next thing he knew, he was in his room, hastily grabbing his things while Seaspray patiently waited for him by the door.

What was he supposed to do? Queen Novo didn’t really have to kick him away! She could keep him safe. How hard was it? Just keep all the griffons out!

Oh. Right.

He didn’t have the luxury to sit on his hind and be picky about the stuff he grabbed. A backpack with his identification documents already inside and a couple of rubbers. Beak rubbers and griffon-grade condoms. He rolled his eyes at his own denseness. As though he would have had the chance of actually having sex with his marefriends inside Queen Novo’s house.

The problem, or silver lining depending on the point of view, was that he didn’t really have much more than that. He grabbed a couple of issues of Super Ponies that Skystar had gotten him interested in and shoved them inside his backpack. A few Bits he had saved along the years. Not much. Why would he save money? Princess Sparkle practically took care of him, and he even had an allowance. Grandpa Gruff always took care of him since he arrived at Griffonstone, money his half-brother sent him. Even then, Queen Novo said she would give him some. But he took his money, anyway.

He shook his head, putting the pouch with a hundred or so Bits in his backpack while he raked his brain for where to go. Maybe Ponyville. No, no. He shook his head again. The school was closed, his friends had gone to their homes, and he’d be alone. He could ask Princess Twilight Sparkle for shelter, but she was away with her own problems to deal with. Griffonstone! He had to go to Griffonstone and stay with Grandpa Gruff! It could be dangerous, but then again, so was Ponyville. Queen Novo said Luna vanished while there! Northerner agents could be looking for him everywhere, but at Grandpa Gruff’s house, he would at least be safe. Kind of. He didn’t know and his grimace at his thoughts showed it. Grandpa Gruff would shelter him, wouldn’t he? He was the one that had taken Gallus away from the north to begin with.

General Seaspray watched him from the door, and he never tried hurrying him, but Gallus could see he was not comfortable. His frown showed it through his composed military pose. Head held high, wings tight by his flanks against his golden armor, and an apologetic stare in his blue eyes.

Gallus sat in the middle of his comfy room. The soft breeze teased his feathers as he looked one way and another. Nothing there that really belonged to him. He frowned… No point in delaying the inevitable, even if his eyes filled with tears.

“I… I think I’m done.” He told Seaspray, donning the backpack behind his back. Gallus was a big boy, and crying wouldn’t help. He could see the pained respect in the general’s eyes.

Things happened fast from there. Even faster than before. The general walked with him, and Gallus noted the guards standing in places they normally wouldn’t. He and Seaspray took the servant’s exit from the palace and there was an ordinary carriage waiting for them. A pair of hippogriffs waited hitched to it while Seaspray opened the door for Gallus. All that was hidden under a shed meant to shelter carts bringing supplies to the palace. It hid a fleeing griffon tom from his marefriends and the creepy griffons from the north just as well.

The carriage had a decent but squeaky spring suspension that kept it stable and comfortable enough in the well-cared for streets winding down Mount Aris. The interior smelled of the sea breeze like it had impregnated on the stuffed bench. They were a creamy white in the interior’s cyan satin finish with little seashell prints. Gallus and Seaspray sat in silence in the back, but Gallus looked out the window, to avoid looking at him. The sunny, clear skies hurt his eyes, and during a turn on a cliffside road, he let escape a sigh. The beach protected by the bay and the Hippogriffian Archipelago beyond opened for him to see past the buildings of the city.

Seaspray called his name to the jingling of coins. A pouch hung from his talons, brown and inconspicuous, and on his other paw he held a white and gold ticket. Gallus lacked knowledge about the different shipping companies, but the blue sailfin logo should be easy to find.

“Five hundred Bits ought to get you anywhere.” He spoke. “We booked a passage under the name of Gaius for Beachhome. There you can take the teleporter and go wherever you must. I should not tell you, but her majesty struggled the whole night with this decision. She even told me that if you asked, she would let you stay, and we would find a way.”

“But that would be dangerous to the girls, and they are already looking for me in here…” Gallus concluded for him.

The large hippogriff nodded. “Secret Service is spreading a rumor that you, the princess and Silverstream will be dating away from the queen in a luxurious beach cassino. The news outlets fell on it like it was a fresh fish in the market.”

Gallus shot him the ‘really?’ stare and the General shrugged.

“That ought to get their attention and keep the northerner agents off your back for a while. If they are so concerned about their precious prince dating hippogriffs, at least they are predictable. It should let you board the ferry without them bothering you.”

Gallus thanked him, and his attention returned to the window. He was not in the mood for much conversation. Outside, hippogriffs started the morning routine in the touristic capital of their nation. Not too different from Canterlot, with its cafes and fancy bistros. That was another door fate had simply closed for Gallus. If the princesses hadn’t vanished at the worst possible time, they might give him some shelter. But there was no use crying over spilled milk. He rested an elbow on the window’s frame and his chin on his paw. A sigh escaped. He already regretted not going to with Silverstream and Skystar to the beach that morning. One last time.

Although, had he done that, he might already have been caught.

Owners and waiters pushed tables and seats outside, others watered the plants or set up the ubiquitous ‘remember, we are a beach town’ decoration. Tourists and residents were already out and about in the easy-going city. Mansions, stores, food places, restaurants and cafes, snack bars… Things scrolled past his window, but he barely registered them. His thoughts were a cold fog of worry and denial. It was a good thing they had given him a ride, or he would still be sitting in front of the palace’s doors.

Too soon the buzz of mana battery operated cranes and winches filtered through the glass. On the other side, the cargo port had full docks with kirin and pony sea-fairing sail and steamships waiting while they waited for clearance to continue their trip to Beachhome.

The carriage made a turn to the left, towards the passenger terminal, and once it stopped, the general held Gallus’ shoulder.

“Good luck, Gallus.”

He thanked the tall adult and made sure his backpack was secured on his back before he hopped off the open door and didn’t look back. Maybe if he put on a brave face and did his best not to look like he had just been kicked out, all the northerner spies would miss him. Hopefully, they’d fall for the distraction the hippogriffs had come up with.

Past the large glass doors, the white marble on the floor and all the sculptures pretending they were waves reminded Gallus of Cloudsdale’s cloud sculptures. Literally, clouds made of clouds, except waves made of stones. But Gallus was not there to see the decoration. He kept avoiding stares while making a beeline to the line of check-in desks at the back.

Most of the queueing creatures were off to the left where the ticket selling desks were. Without a queue in the way, Gallus walked straight to the check-in desks by the back wall. The plaque of the blue sailfin was easy to identify, and he kept his eyes below the chest line, walking among hippogriffs going to their own desks. Only once he arrived, he looked up to see the adorable and cheerful honey-colored hippogriff lady behind it. Yellow curious eyes all over him and a perky, loud greeting.

“Hi, mister! Welcome to Flying Fish Freights and Ferries! How can I help you?!” she quipped while her bouncy manners made her little cyan cap jump from her head.

He held his grimace back and gave her the ticket, speaking almost as though he was sharing a secret with her. “Hello. Beachhome, please. It’s already been paid for me in advance.”

She took the white and gold slip, hummed while her eyes scanned it and Gallus coughed into his fist. She turned it around and nodded. Finally, she piped and grinned again. “All righty! Beachhome, single, medium class, no luggage! You can proceed to the lounge number five, Mister Gaius! You almost missed you ship! Aren’t you a big boy traveling alone?”

‘Mister Gaius’ glared at the perky attendant. “I’m not a child, you know. I’m almost seventeen.”

“You sure are not!” She said with a giggle and returned his ticket to him. “Bye! Have a delightful trip, Mister Gaius!”

Annoyed, but sufficiently in a hurry, he let it go, and walked past the desk while he put the ticket in a side pocket of his backpack. A large, gray and white griffon wore a little cyan jacket about to burst open with all the fluff and muscle in his chest. Gallus avoided staring at him and hurried past the door he opened for him and into the corridor on the other side.

It was a simple corridor with magical illumination fixtures on the ceiling, elegant milky globes shedding a comfortable light in the mostly unused hallway. Gallus shared it with hippogriff and griffon security, watching as creatures streamed out of a door. A red carpet strip and a sign asked them not to linger and to follow it to Arrivals while Gallus read the signs, looking for Lounge 5. A mercifully short and uneventful walk took him to an open glass door waiting for him.

Cyan dominated the lounge, closely followed by white, and Gallus was sure someone meant the things looking like clouds were sculptures of waves. Posts and ropes separated the long hall into different lounges for individual companies, each decorated with different colors, but most of them had the same furnishings. Coffee tables, sofas, sitting pillows, like they all bought at the same store, and just painted in their colors.

He stopped and gasped. Not only he was probably the last passenger to arrive, given how full the lounge was, but that place was full of griffons. Of course it was. The line connected Griffonia and Hippogriffia. Every single catbird that had business in the hippogriff islands probably used that line. And every single one of them stared his way and gave him a weird stare. Instead of blocking the door with a grimace, he coughed into his wing and walked with his head down to sit on one of the pillows close to the entrance. It gave him a good view of the lounge and thankfully, nobody seemed to mind his presence anymore.

Only then he noticed how stiff his posture was and how much his paws trembled. There was no need for that. It was not like some northerner agent was going to try and nab him in the middle of a lounge full of witnesses. Kidnapping was still a crime. Thus, he did his best to slow his breathing down, but his stomach never stopped hurting. Everywhere he looked, a pair of eyes stared at him. Pretending he was not seeing anything, Gallus took off his backpack and picked up one of his comics to read. He could not care less about Mane-iac and her plans to undo every mane-do in the world; his eyes kept glancing over the edge of the comic. Making sure no one was sneaking at him.

Wide glass panes allowed a glorious view of their ship. A magnificent early steamship berthed to a dock under the sun in the clear sky. Hippogriffs flew everywhere, busying all over the steamship and carrying ropes and random things. Designed to allow the passengers to lounge about on an upper deck, it was basically a flat seafaring structure with what looked like a two-story house on top. Most distinctive were the cyan painting, the sailfin painted on the bow, the tall twin exhaust towers, and the paddle wheels.

Gallus frowned behind his shield. No griffons worked on the vessel, at least.

“How do you fare, lad?” a masculine voice rattled him. His comic dropped from his shaking paws.

A mid-aged griffon stared at Gallus. Large and imposing, he was crimson like blood with golden feathers. The hen next to him, elegant and motherly, was turquoise and gray. He wore a fancy black waist coat, shiny with the pristine and quality material, complemented by a top hat. His wife, Gallus assumed, wore a bare-back cyan dress with white frills she must have bought on Mount Aris. Both shared a concerned stare over him, and he imagined his reaction to being addressed didn’t help.

“Goodness gracious, child.” She gabbed and raised a paw in a calming gesture, showing fingers adorned with gold and sapphire. “You look rather faint, as if you were about to swoon. Pray tell, what ails you?”

“Could you tell us where your parents might be?” The male asked right away, just as concerned as she was.

“I ah… I’m kinda traveling on my own. I know what I’m doing. But thanks. Yeah. Thanks. I’m just kinda nervous.” He concluded and offered them an awkward, strained smile.

While the male nodded at his words, the female chuckled and smiled warmly at him. “It’s alright, sweetie. You can travel with us if you—”

“No!” he cried and startled her. His wide eyes could barely convince anyone, and his stuttering let his dread at being found too evident. His face contorted into a frown; he hated his clumsy reaction and changed his expression into a grin, a forced and false one. “I mean… No. I don’t need it. It’s not a good idea. That is… I don’t want to be a bother. And… Uh…”

“All aboard!” a yellow hippogriff in the company’s colors yelled from the door leading outside.

Gallus hastily collected his comic book and excused himself, carrying his backpack on his beak and leaping from his seat. The couple tried talking to him again, but the blue griffon ignored them. He rushed to the exit in between other passengers and ended bumping against one of them as he talked to the company’s employee. It earned an angry stare, but he managed to put some creatures between him and that couple.

Thank the heavens nobody made an issue out of it either. After presenting his ticket, he rushed past the hippogriff as soon as the griffon in front of him was through the door. Outside, Gallus put on his backpack again and hurried across the cobblestone platform, cutting in front of several passengers and ignoring their complaints. Before stepping on the boarding ramp, another hippogriff employee of the company gave him a stern frown, but said nothing to his sheepish, apologetic grin. Upon getting Gallus’ ticket, the hippogriff shook his head and stowed it away, gesturing the griffon onto the board.

What mattered was that Gallus seemed to have lost the couple and was boarding the ship. It swayed softly in the calm waters of the Hippogriffian archipelago, and the steel and wood ramp rocked with it. Below, the water was so clear Gallus could see the colorful corals on the seafloor and a team of seaponies making the final verifications of the painted wooden hull. Several round windows dotted the front half of the ship. But that was not all. Several hippogriffs in the company’s uniform kept watching the boarding passengers and at least one of them kept his eyes on Gallus too long for comfort.

As soon as he stepped on the tightly fitted planks of the deck, its openness seemed filled with eyes searching for him and it wrecked his nerves as badly as the crowded lounge. Griffons that did not disembark and lounged about the deck, crewmember hippogriffs, and even a pony family, all watched him. With all those griffons embarking after him, he decided he wanted a roof over his head, because the crewmember hippogriffs too were making him nervous. The entrance to the superstructure was mercifully lacking in griffons, and a couple of cute hippogriff attendant ladies greeted the anxious and hasty Gallus despite being ignored.

The inside too reminded him of the lounge. Wide windows showed the deck outside, and comfortable seating waited for the passengers, but eyes everywhere still looked at him. A bar sported a plaque saying they dealt with underdeck cabins. That seemed like a good idea, but he decided for it when he glimpsed the fancily dressed couple looking around the deck outside. Gallus used all the self-restraint in his kernel not to gallop like a stampeding panicked pony to the reception desk.

Short of crashing against the fancy varnished wood and golden strips of the counter, he squawked and coughed while startling the older hippogriff mare on the other side. Before her dark gray self could complain, Gallus raised a finger.

“Cabin! I need one!” his voice came out too loud and earned him an awkward stare.

“Is everything alright, young sir?” she asked, raising an eyebrow and her voice showed concern more than anger.

He half-hid behind the counter when the rich griffon hen looked his way through the windows. His words blurted out at the attendant. “No! I mean… No. I’m just. Tired. Exhausted. I gotta take a rest. Like… Right now!”

“I see.” The hippogriff on the other side didn’t seem particularly convinced, looking the way he was looking. “Do you need me to call security?”

At his negative response, she asked him for his embarking card. At his confusion, she quickly explained she understood he had no reservations, but that it was not a problem either. She turned to look at the key rack behind her with a single, solitary set of golden keys. “I do have a canceled reservation for the Royal Suite. That will be two-hundred Bits.”

“Two-honking-hundred?!” Gallus yelped and immediately clacked his beak shut as all the nearby passengers turned to him. “I-I’ll take it! Here!”

Almost slamming the golden coins on the counter, he urged the mare to hurry. She laid the keys for him to take them, but gave him a worried sideways glance. “Sir, are you sure you don’t want me to call security?”

“No!” He cried and yanked the keyring from the table. “Just… Ah… Nothing!”

He held it in his beak and turned around. Only three ways out of the lounge. One was a door at the back marked ‘crew only’. Another was the glass door through which the rich couple was about to enter. He dashed for the stairs down and found an internal corridor with a couple of chatting hippogriffs. A plaque showed the Royal Suite was past the double doors at the end of the corridor.

He galloped, barely restraining his impulse to take flight, and shoved a hippogriff mare out of the way. Someone complained about him running, but Gallus ignored them. Did not even look back, slamming against the doors and struggling to fit the key. Once he managed to open the doors, he jumped inside and locked them. Finally, he stood with his back to the door and breathed.

“Dammit, get a hold of yourself, man!” he shut his eyes forcefully, holding his head in his paws. “They were just some nice creatures worried about you. I probably drew more attention to myself than I would have gotten.”

Having said that, he raised his eyes to his room and his beak hung open for longer than it would have been acceptable was he staring at Silverstream’s hindquarters. It was not a room. A room had a bed, a wardrobe, maybe a window and some lighting. That place had a giant bed, three windows with a secluded little office, which even had a safe and a set of sofas. And the office was secluded because it was hidden behind the room’s own bathroom, and the bathroom had a shower and a squat toilet. It even had a small bathtub. It was almost as good as his room in the palace.

He even had a phone with a handwritten paper, in exquisite penmanship, with the numbers for a kitchen, room service and the laundry. Beyond all that, the place was full of shiny whites, cyan arabesques, and golden metals. The room even had fancy magical light fixtures, an elaborate Saddle Arabian rug and garment holders like elegant statues of velvet in the shape of hippogriffs.

Gallus was awestruck. The ship didn’t even seem that large to need those things. Well, he may spend the entire trip secluded inside his room, but he had a pleasant view out of the ship’s bow and all the luxury he could ever want. For better or worse, all he had to do was wait until they arrived and keep those doors shut. Just in case, he closed the curtains in front of the windows.

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