You Got Me

A Story By Tramping Pony

Remember yesterday, the day we met?

Well, okay, it wasn’t really yesterday, but close enough. Somewhere between ten and twenty years at that flight camp. I still have that moustachioed serjeant in my head, telling us how griffons and ponies were friends and would go through everything together. We did, we did everything together. We pranked every adult, fought every idiot and laughed at each other’s jokes.

You remember, right? Right?

I do, I remember the first time we spoke to each other. I knew I was going to hate this camp the moment they announced the bunk beds. Really, that was just inviting us to fight. No surprise when we started beating each other up over who’d sleep on the upper one. Oh, I remember that, how we argued, and how you lifted your hooves. They were so tiny and you puffed your cheeks up, trying to be intimidating.

Let me be honest, I’ve never been afraid of ponies or horses, and back then, our first talk ended with me laughing at the way you looked and you punching me on the beak. I remember that, and I know it sounds strange, but it’s one of my fondest memories. I retaliated immediately, but I underestimated you. I was stronger, you were quicker. You hit me more, but your punches didn’t hurt me, I never hit you until the end. Ten from you and I started crying, but then I got one through and that was it, you landed flat on the ground. I got ya good then.

That night, you told me that I could have the bed, since you thought that I had held back. By the songs of Heavenly Birds, I never laughed so hard before. Never had I expected to find a pony that I could like. Never would I have thought that it would be a pony who’d become my first friend outside of home, outside of family.

We did everything together from then on, my old friend. The griffon and the pegasus, the unbelievable duo. I told you about the loyalty that makes us griffon’s proud, you told me about the pony’s harmonious way of life, and I guess both of us took their lessons from the talks. I’m so sorry that I didn’t keep to it.

We did things as we pleased in the camp and then you went and saved that other pegasus, found something you excelled at in the process. I still wonder if you got your mark right. Was it really the racing that was your talent, was speed all you could live for? I don’t know, but I hope if that question ever occurred to you that there also was a satisfying answer.

Heh, but at least I can honestly admit that we really were the strangest sight. Oh, do you remember when you found out who I was? Do you remember when I sent you a letter a year after flight camp ended, the invitation to my home. My uncle, the painter, actually made a picture of your face, it still hangs in my bedroom. Everytime I felt depressed I would just look at it and think about our times together.

Nevertheless, do you remember my home? You only saw it once, but I like to think that it left an impression. The high mountains with their snowy villages atop, and the roads filled with beasts whose roars left us ever vigilant. Do you remember the way to there? The stony road with the steep cliffs, the gold deposits gleaming in the sunlight? Do you remember seeing the gilded roofs and stepping on the indigo colored carpets for the first time.

I showed you my corner. You go through the main entrance, keep to the left side, until you reach the librarian’s tower, you climb it until you reach the messenger post and then leap off it, in between the stables and the marshall’s office, climb through the hole in the wall and then the winds would blow across your face. I remember it, how we sat there at the end of your long journey, side by side, at the edge of the world. The mountains were to our sides and to our back was my home, and to our front was the green land your kind originated from, stretching out into the sunset itself. Oh, I remember your hoof taking my claw and how you looked at me. “Thank you,” you said.

Honestly, I remember the way your eyes were all teary. Your parents had told you all about that place, how the tribes had gone over the sea as they heard of the unicorns declaring themselves free from the Crystal Empire. I don’t know as much about your history as I should, but at the time I didn’t care about that at all. I saw you smile, and it was the best smile you had ever shown to me. All I wanted back then was that this moment would not end, and that we could bask in the light of the Brave Phoenix forever.

It didn’t last. The day went, just as you did and all we had then were the letters and occasional visits. In a way, we were friends for the longest of times, weren’t we? The pegasus and the griffon, still seems strange to say it out loud. But hey, that’s what made us so unique.

Then came the silence. Growing up as the lady of an entire household, having only servants and distant family to rely on was time consuming, but I tried my best, I always did, because I knew that you did too. You would achieve your dreams, and I mine. You’d become a wonderbolt and I …

No matter, I remember that you told me you’d become one of that racing team. How excited you were about it. Did you really want to go faster back then, did you really want to get better? Was your entire life really just building up for this one moment when your bones become brittle, your muscles weak and your flesh would start to sag? Would you live your life until you died mid-flight , breaking one last record?

You had a willpower beyond any other pony, a strength of mind that carried over to every other part of your life, and you only barely recognized your own weaknesses. I thought that everything would come crashing down once your realized this.

I don’t know why I put so much thought into you, but I decided to see you again, back then. Do you remember, that day in Ponyville when I met you and your friends? There was one more reason why I came, but I never got to tell you. My uncle, the artist, died. Old age got him in the end, and I guess I just needed to see some life after that. Strange how things can work out, right? I guess I was still a kid back then, barely able to control my emotions, barely getting that there were other people in the world but me. I even thought that you had betrayed me back then. ...

It took me quite a few years, but I wrote you a letter. Do you remember it? It was one day after my Coming Of Age ceremony. I had promised to have you there, but since I thought we were still at odds, I had decided against inviting you. Well, I wrote that damn thing then. If I have it correctly, then I told you the color of my dress, told you how me and one of the chambermaids changed outfits for a whole afternoon without anyone noticing, and then I also wrote about the night I had to spend alone on the temple grounds, reflect on my life and find my path forward.

We believe the sun is The Divine Phoenix’s egg, while the moon is the cage of the first Windigo, and your alicorns were cursed by the elder gods to be the jailers. So our entire religion is build around the circle of night and day, along with the changing of seasons. I guess it’s half the reason why our churches are the closest things we’ve got to forests in the mountains.

I sat beneath the winter tree, the big white one whose leaves would grow into a pale blue once winter came again. I remember sitting in the one place where there were no summer snows, under the light of the moon, and all I thought about for hours was what kind of meat I’d have for breakfast.

You remember the letter, don’t you? I think I finished all that with an, “are you okay?”

I hope you are, Dash. I hope it doesn’t hurt for you, because it doesn’t for me. A bit sleepy by this point, but that just comes from talking. I’m tough, I’ll get up again. Our queen even thought that I was the ideal material to become this land’s high marshall. Three years ago that was.

Dash, we started writing letters to each other again, but we did so with a distance and I always had something to deal with. Here I was, high marshall to a queen who had grown to hate the fact that the sun and moon were in ponies’ hooves. In her mind, the honour belonged to her, and she would take it by force, because there is never any other way to cleanse dishonor. I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t doubt her, but I had my reasons, we all did.

You ponies hold a power in this world which eliminates any kind of balance. You have no idea what that small window of time of Nightmare Moon’s rule had on the world outside of your home, you have no idea what Discord’s vile plan did on the larger scale of things. Oh, we had jungles and fertile fields before he arrived, and we would have never lost good king Cedric to the yeti had the sun come up on time.

I don’t hate you, or any other pony, none of us do. All we want is to ensure that some catastrophes aren’t repeated, that this kind of paranoia cannot happen yet again.

Three years ago, I made the first move in this damn war. I took ten thousand conscripts across the sea and occupied your Manehattan, but never had I thought that it would end the way it did.

Remember us, the pony and the griffon? We pranked the teacher’s at that camp together, we laughed, we cried, we were friends. I remember now, and I remembered it back then, but they didn’t. They hated us, and so they resisted. All I wanted was to show off our strength, prove to the world that there was someone who could stand up to Equestria’s mighty princesses.

I didn’t know how to respond when they began to fight, but I never wanted that city to burn.

I don’t know anymore, I don’t remember anymore. Do you? What did you think when you heard the cry? Did you think that I had become a monster, did you accept me as the villain in this story? Gilda, who first bullied your friends and then killed the citizens of your country?

Oh, it’s there in your eyes, you do believe that. I don’t blame you, I’m well aware that I crossed a line back then. I don't think I came back, either. We all turned mad that day. It makes me almost glad that in the next year, you had defeated Lord Kastor at Canterlot and took the fight past the ocean.

When I heard you were one of the generals for the pegasi, I remember throwing up. I feared for the worst, but I never got to fight you.

You ponies aren’t warriors, you are beings of harmony, but hatred can transform most beings. I had never thought your worthless prince could transform himself into that leader I saw at the Old Dragon Peak. Suddenly the fight was on our home ground, and suddenly we were fighting a losing battle. The corpses piled up more and more, day after day, and we couldn’t stop, driving ourselves onwards for something, I don’t even know what.

I remember how one year ago I saw the queen, for the first time since the war started. I thought her a different person from when all this started.

I remember planning our last battle, while using small strike forces, enabling guerilla tactics to weaken the enemies until they’d reach the west of our capital. It worked, it worked really well. And so we met again, finally, on this field.

It’s been three years for me, since I started leading armies. I killed hundreds with my lance, quite a few with my claws, and countless with but a few words. They called me one of the ten greatest warriors of the kingdom only a year ago, hailed me as a genius, the little hatchling without parents, with the boring life in a hall of gold. It felt good, and even seeing the banners of my opponent fluttering the wind, I couldn’t help but feeling a bit of pride. Strange, it also feels empty. Everything in my life played out like it just had to be this way.

I only had my uncle until I met you, and then I lost you both. Suddenly all I could do was to do something with what I’ve been given, and there wasn’t even any options with it. I could only win, I could only keep winning, there’s never been any other way. I guess my entire life was really just building up for this one moment when my bones became brittle, my muscles weak, and my spirit began to sag. I guess I lived mid-flight, though I didn’t break another record.

It’s been a wonderful two days for me. Whoever your tactician is, send them my regards. I’ve never seen somepony utilize an equestrian army quite like this. Well, I also never expected a single pegasus to break through our formation and strike at our general. Heh.

You looked wonderful, like a phoenix whose blaze scorches the landscape, a whirl of steel and iron, a rainbow haze. It’s a bit sad, but I’ve got to admit, you’ve gotten stronger, just as I’ve gotten quicker. For every time I hit you, you got me twice, but this time I felt every single one of them. Honestly, I find it strange that it’s you who’s crying and not me. Be proud of yourself, Rainbow Dash …

Ya finally got me.

Screams echoed across the distant fields, the shouts of Gilda’s own lieutenant breaking through their flank, just as Rainbow Dash had already expected. Rickard, a guy whose brute strength was beyond even Twilight’s strategies. Well, that was there, and Applejack would take care of it. She was steady, her soldiers good at defense.

But none of that really did matter, and all Rainbow Dash could do was look down on the ground before her. Gilda had finally closed her eyes, and her beak was turned to a smile. She looked so much older than back in Ponyville. Had it really been decades already?

The battle was raging above them, but the griffons wavered, their general having fallen in a duel. Their code of honor decreed that they had lost the battle, and griffons valued honor and loyalty well above everything. One death might have just spared a thousand more lives.

Rainbow Dash could do nothing but look at her friend, however, not once trying to assert the situation around her, whether anypony else was coming. Twilight had told her to flee after she had killed the enemy commander, but she couldn’t just run. She remembered that snobbish griffon girl smiling wryly before she tried to answer Rainbow Dash's punch. That bunk bed hadn’t really been worth the trouble in the end.

The puddle of blood was reaching her hooves and she eyed to the end of the valley, where the walls of Windzipfel, the griffon’s capital rose into the sky. Only one more battle to go.

“No more friends left to kill,” she muttered, one last tear falling from her eye. Only then did she stand up, picking up the tip of Gilda’s broken spear for Twilight, as a symbol that she had done the deed. Her own sword was broken, so she left it there. Rainbow would need another, maybe inspired by a general's blade. That was why she took a look at the tip, since every griffon general had a very exquisite, unique blade of starmetal or magical stone, worked by an artist's hand and sharpened with a magician's gift. Considering this and that she did remember Goldenhall, Rainbow Dash expected to find that Gilda's blade was one of unbelievable worth.

Yet all she found was a simple blade of steel, and the only art were words engraved, written in the tongue of the griffons:

DASS ICH ZURÜCKKEHRE

ZU MEINEM FREUND

DEM RASENDEN REGENBOGEN