Adventure is nothing but other ponies having a terrible time somewhere picturesque. But you take what you can get, when you take the Princess's bit.
Gilda has been a fugitive, a refugee, a prisoner of war, and a bat-hen to Equestria's fussiest unicorn. But it wasn't until she took 'the Princess's bit', that she began to know something about what it meant to be responsible for the welfare of others, even if the others in question happened to be the pack of imbeciles, blackguards, con-ponies, and bat-ponies who had been fool enough to answer her captain's call to the standard.
A crystalline standard which had not been seen in the living world for over a thousand years.
And although Captain Gleaming Shield and her motley band of raw recruits and shifty bat-ponies aimed to do nothing more exotic and dangerous than put a foreign princess on her proper throne, there are other things stirring in the shadows.
Like calls to like, and the revival of ancient battle-colors may lead to the revival of other, darker memories upon which the rays of Celestia's sun lay lightly and infrequently.
Sweet, precious sleep was split, cut in three parts by sudden sharp detonations, the bomb-memories destroying themselves and everygriffon around them. In his dream, they sounded off, somehow like nothing so much as a door slammed in the night, strangely loud and clear from across the far side of the loch. The loch high up in the highlands he once had called home, the loch that curled between his mother's home and the clanhold, so close, and so far, muted and warped by restless water in darkness. In his dream-talons, the slugger shifted awkwardly, snagging despite all his best efforts to draw it out under his rough cloak. His fellows were faster, and swifter, and they fired while he fumbled.
The memory of the screaming crowd, and beyond them, the damned crab-backs falling like tenpins to their fire. Giles' slugger finally untangled itself from his cloak, and looking up to see his targets, they were gone behind a cloud of powder-smoke, and his fellow clangriffs were already away, charging and screeching with their long blades swinging. Giles saw an equine shape with a sword high over the heads of the shadowy crab-backs in the powder-smoke over the backs of his fading fellows, and he pulled his weapon around to fire over their heads. Before he got his sights on the smudge that might have been an enemy officer, it went off in his talon, wasting his shot somewhere high up into the air over the stinking cloud.
The dream-Giles sobbed, as his too-clumsy claws scrabbled nightmarishly for his black powder and the shot and the ram-rod, all while the high keening cries marked his clan's charge into the powder-smoke.
Then, as he tossed his ram-rod aside, he heard the cannon-fire from behind him, and as always, he looked up to see the powder-smoke cloud parted by the terrible passage of the grapeshot, and briefly, before the cloud closed in with reinforcements, the shocking bloody ruin of the flower of Aerie Tarvie blowing across the pavement-stones of Gilbert Square, and the crouching bluecoats with their spear-tips red with clan blood.
And as always, he woke to the second volley of the ponies' cannons' fire in the darkness of the powder-smoke.
Giles woke with sulphur in his nostrils, and looked wildly around the crowded workers' nest. It was still dark, but there was perhaps a touch of the slightest color of morning to be seen, darkly through the thin clear screens. Screens with which the masters had replaced the old paper windows, after those hens had destroyed them with their fighting the month before.
His own shift was asleep, those who were still in their bunks. Half the barracks were on sixth and seventh shifts, and off finishing up their night-work. Fourth shift must have woken Giles - they were stumbling around in the darkness, getting ready for their own work. Today was seventh-day for fifth shift, and Giles like the rest of the workers on that shift had noplace official to be; it was traditional, which is to say obligatory, for off-shift workers to not fill up the mess hall for those who had machines to tend, and piecework quotas to meet.
Giles wasn't hungry, anyways. He slipped out of the barracks between the fourth shifters muttering for their coffee. The nestmother didn't notice the skinny straw-blue griffon as he lurked just out of her view on the far side of a clot of fourthers.
They weren't supposed to go out on their seventh days alone. The masters said that 'prentices got into trouble by their lonesome. In Giles' observation, flocks of griffons were more trouble than singletons, but that was definitely a minority view among the Trottish. The Trottish were a flocking clan.
A great bloody huge flocking clan. Their flocks darkened the sun when they rose into the skies. Giles counted it good that the city-clan griffons weren't much for flitting about. He liked the light, and didn't relish it when some ruddy crab-back came flying over his head.
The Trottish city-griffons didn't like to be called clan-griffons, of course. The city griffons were a strange, vast clan, a clan where nogriff knew anygriff else, but for family and immediate kin. Half of Giles' shift didn't see their kith and kin but a month out of two. The long shifts in the factory took up all their time, and sleeping and food ate up the rest. One seventh-day a week allegedly to themselves made for 'prentices isolated from their families.
Not that Giles had any family to maintain connections with. None living, none in a day's flight. Not since the Bucket.
He had run like a panicked alley-cat when the charge had shattered. He hadn't been able to help himself. The shock of seeing all of his kin blown to haggis had been bad enough, but he'd dropped his powder-horn, and didn't think to do anything else.
MacGregors weren't worth a piss without other MacGregors around them, ta keep 'em honest. That was what his uncle Galt had always said. Usually with a laugh, after Giles' mother had sent him to collect his drunken uncle from the pub.
Galt had been their sergeant, before the grapeshot had turned him and six other McGregors to a ghastly pink ruin.
Right in front of Giles.
So Giles had run and run, and scrabbled and hid. Giles had clubbed down some blue-feathered griffon with a spear that had tried to stop him. Knocked the big tom down with his slugger, and then broke the delicate, worthless, horribly expensive wonder-weapon over the tom's partner's crest, and kept on running.
Giles had left the broken precious weapon behind him. It had come apart in his talons the one time he'd needed it.
Eventually, Giles had fetched up behind a pile of crates in an alleyway, and crouched, balled up, hiding from the ponies and their minions. Sharp spears, and terrible cannon-fire.
They'd talked brave talk, the griffons of clan MacGregor. Generations of bravery and bravado, of the conquering lords of the fallen pony city. Of Guillaume the Clever, and his tamed nag. Of how they'd seize the white duchess some day, and make her their nag.
They had been fools.
He hadn't been surprised when the clip-clop came out of the tumult of the battle's aftermath. Screams and howls and the clashing of blades and the terrible sound of the cannons' volley-fire… and somehow he'd known they'd find him.
He'd never had much luck, Giles MacGregor.
The ponies had magic. How had the MacGregors ever thought they could pitch claw against pony magic, and prevail? The old stories had to have been lies. No griffon living could possibly have won against that.
The clip-clop stopped, and Giles had looked up through the feathers of his tousled crest, through the cage of his arms and talons, protecting his cowardly head from the inevitable blow.
The pony was pink, pink and brown - a brown costume. Terrible blue eyes peered under a lank waterfall of pink, and in that moment Giles had seen his death drowning in those bottomless blue pools, the spring blue of the loch in brightest day. The loch that Giles' little sister had disappeared into, three springs back when he hadn't been watching her.
"Hello there, little birdie. Lost your flock? Don't cry, little birdie. You're a survivor, aren't ya? Smile, griffie! You didn't die today! You're a lucky little survivor, aren't ya?"
Giles had stared up at his death, and didn't understand. He still didn't. All he knew, walking into the Trottish dawn, on a spring morning he never thought he'd see, was that the strange pink Death had smiled madly, and patted the curled-up, cringing clan-griffon on his crest, and had dragged a filthy tarp over his head. He'd heard pony's hooves clip-clopping away from him, unseen, as Death passed him by.
His paws tapped-tapped-tapped across the cobbles as the sun warmed the chill out of the stones. Aimlessly wandering through the morning air led him to a dining room in the southern blocks of Halfpenny, a dining room which had set up an open-air cafe for the breakfast crowd. Giles didn't have the money for cafe food, but he stood there and watched the more prosperous Trottish griffons conspicuously consuming. There was a white pony eating with a flock of laughing, grinning journey-hens, her horn glowing blue as she made papers and objects float about in her pony magic.
Giles watched the workaday pony miracle, and thought about the pink Death, and what she'd said. The strange, dire promise the pink Death had given him before she'd left him to live.
Today was the day. Six months later. Six months spent as virtuously as Giles could manage, living first in the gutter, and then in the 'prentice hall. Six months pretending he wasn't exactly what he was. Six months like a chick in his shell, gestating. Of taking on town-bronze, of learning how to speak like a Trottish griffon. Of learning how to be… civilized. What a strange word. The pink Death had called it 'socializing', but the Trottish didn't really socialize. They worked and worked, and lived by the masters' clocks and schedules. Giles had obeyed every tick of the clock, every caw of supervisory journey-hens and toms, done everything he was told.
The terror of the Crab Bucket had faded, retreating into his night-terrors. The other griffons of his shift had grown used to his nighttime starts, although he'd absorbed enough blows in his early days, to have his cringe-reflex beaten out of him. Somehow, the beatings and the work had conspired to fix whatever the Bucket had broken in him. Giles didn't twitch at loud noises or screams anymore.
The pink Death had promised him this; but she had promised him something else, with that.
So Giles waited, and watched the breakfast-shifts wash away, and the luncheon crowd began to trickle in.
And then there was a darkness, and a shadow, and Giles looked up.
And there it came. The airship, descending. Smoking like the factory's stacks. It didn't look like salvation. It didn't look like much of anything, really. Giles had kept an eye out for airships ever since the previous fall, but even before then, he'd marvelled at the ponies' great flying ships.
Yet another pony miracle.
He shook out his stiff wings, and took to the air, to follow the airship with the Trottish arms painted on its rippling sails. He saw on the deck, another horned pony, and a huge griffon hen with strange coloration he'd never seen before. They were dressed in Territorial colors. The pink Death had said something about that, too. Nogriff saw Giles as he silently followed the airship until it settled in the city.
He almost shied in terror as he realized they were landing in Gilbert Square, and barely controlled himself as he realized that they were settling on the patch of paving-stones where the courage of Aerie Tarvie died screaming.
He remembered the deep blue eyes of pink-maned Death, and looked up into the unblinking eye of clearest spring sky. She'd promised him a new start. She'd told him what he'd had to do, and what to wait for, what to look for.
This was it.
He folded his wings and landed beside the grounded airship. He joined the marvelling crowd of griffons and ponies, and sidled his way through the press.
He almost didn't recognize the hen and her pony officer in their glittering crystalline magic uniforms. The huge hen with stripes on her shoulder met his eye, and he blushed, confused.
"You're not recruiting for the Territorials?" Giles asked, barely keeping the clan tones out of his words.
"Nah, my tom. No more Territorials for us. We're forming a new regiment, y'see? Serving the Princess, not the Duchess. You lookin' to take the Princess's bit, my pale friend?"
"If you 'ave the bit, I've got the toime. Can ya keep the guild-marster from comin' after me?" Giles asked.
"Tommy, the Princess's bit dissolves all apprenticeships. You look a bit old for a 'prentice, anyways. Not that I know much about that end of the guilds. Sign here, tommy, and start again."
Giles signed, and started again.
"...And that's the long and the short of it, Corporal," Gilda concluded, looking anywhere in the cluttered, ill-lit room than the half-convalescent sitting in his battered lounge-chair. "New regiment, new recruits, new problems. We'll be looking to steal some veterans from any unit that isn't holding onto theirs too tightly, but we want the right veterans, to get the Sixth set properly in her traditions. Begin as you'd continue, as they say."
It was the day after Gilda and her unicorn had crash-landed in Gilbert Square, and found themselves absent-mindedly recruited a corporal's guard for the new Guards regiment. Gilda had known they'd need help, so, she'd gone to see the old corporal.
"Who says that, Gilda?" asked Gustav, looking cross. "I never did. Winds, I 'ope you never learned anything from our lot. Thieves and slackers and scapegraces, the lot of us."
Gustav was staying with his sister's boy's family, since he'd never had time to start his own family. They'd plopped him in a back parlor, shabbily furnished, full of old furniture no longer good enough for the front parlor.
"If that's so, Corporal, then we're all in a great deal of trouble, because I learned everything I know about sergeanting from you and the others."
"I can't see 'ow! None of us ever were sergeants. Excepting the sergeant-major, and you could see as 'ow 'e weren't nogriff to be picking bad 'abits up from, now weren't 'e?"
"The Territorials always had sergeants, Corporal. They just called you 'corporals', because the Equestrians are a bunch of tribalist snobs."
"I don't care if you're in some brand spankin' new outfit with your shiny new duds, Gilda me 'en, you won't be bad-beakin' the orficers in me presence, you won't! Don't think I'm so crippled I won't wing-beat you to an inch of yer royal-crested 'ide!"
"Oh?" asked Gilda, provocatively, eyeing the old bird wrapped up in his blanket. "You can get up out of that seat, can you? I thought you were invalided. Retired. Useless."
"Like 'ades I'm useless! Those daft cunts can think what they want, but I'm bird enough to beat some respect into young tail-tuckers like you lot!" The corporal was out of his chair, and bristling, with one wing held threateningly over his head.
Only trembling just a bit.
"Yes, I can certainly see that, Corporal Gustav," Gilda said, suppressing a grin. "I knew when I saw you come out of that surgery that you'd be back and cawing at the grumblers inside of six months. Look at you! Ready to start PT again, aren't you?"
"Yer damn roight I am, I am! Bloody continentals, come over to tell us when and where we can serve our bloody duchesses! Medical retirement me blue-steeled buttocks! I got ten good years in me, I do!"
"You certainly do, Gustav. I wish I could do something about it, but I'm not in the Territorials anymore. Technically, I'm not even working for the Duchess anymore. Some might even say I never did, it was all some stupid mistake, can you believe that?"
"Yeah, well, Grippe. Everygriff knew she was dirty, we just didn't know 'alf 'ow dirty. Sorry about that, Gilda. I probably should 'ave said something, I should 'ave."
"Not your job, Gustav. Not your job. But it is my job to get old birds in place, to keep these new recruits in line. You're an old bird, and nopony's got a claim on you now."
"Not since they drummed me out of the service, they don't. By damn! You're right. I could do - anyfing! There was this young idiot from the militia wanted to talk to me, but I told my nephew to tell 'er I weren't in. You're lucky you were one of my 'ens."
Gilda thought that he was lucky that he'd let her in. That room smelled like death creeping up on the old bird. Inactivity was bad for injured old birds. Now to reel him in…
"So you'd be willing to come work for Captain Shield?" Gilda asked, carefully.
"Work for you, you mean, Gilda me 'en. Going to be a sergeant-major, are you?"
"I bloody well 'ope not!" Gilda squawked, surprised into an accidental Trottish outburst. "You were there when I was captured! I've barely got a year in the service."
"Less, dependin' on 'o you ask, these days, roight?"
"Exactly! We need to pull this outfit together out of nothing but baling wire, twine, and the captain ma'am's paper commission. It's an impossible job!"
"An' yet, ponies and griffons 'ave done it before. The Territorials, they ain't no older than I am, you know? I weren't there at the actual beginning, but I was for the Fifth 'erself. One more year, and I'd 'ave 'ad me pension, the bit-pinchin' barstards. There from the bloody beginning, and not a bit for an old veteran, can you picture it?"
Gilda certainly could. Nogriffon gave up a bit if they could keep it in their sharp claws. And none of the ponies were any better.
"Well, we want to pay better in the Guards, but in order to shake the money-tree, we need to be… plausible, you know? Shined up and impressive," Gilda said, vaguely, waving a claw in the air.
"Yeah, I can see it. Bronze and polish gets the bit-hens moist, gets 'em in a mood to give up the coin. Nogriff wants to waste their ready on a shabby trooper. 'Ave you thought of getting 'em drunk? I always found that 'elped when I wasn't lookin' my best. Which was most of the time when I was younger."
"Aw, come on, Corporal. You had to have been a hen-slayer when you were a fledgeling!"
"Awr, go on, Gilda. You know I'm an ugly old tom, and I was an ugly little kit. Do you have a nice set of duds planned for the troopers? Fancy duds always sells the troops."
"Lady Rarity is still hanging around town, and said she looked forward to fitting us out. Fancies the 'Crystal Guard' thing, she does," Gilda said, smiling.
"Lawks! I could see it!" Gustav said, looking into the distance, an answering smile on his beak taking ten years off of his weathered face. "Like every day was a crab-back march!"
He looked up at Gilda, and got out of his chair, and stretched, trying to stand as tall as she did.
"Damn me, but I'm in! Just promise me I'll die in the 'arness this time. Never say you'll 'and me back to my nephew to rot in this room again!"
"Corporal, we plan on going places. When you die, we'll bury you somewhere foreign. That's a promise."
Ping sat in the cramped foyer to the little office in the Duchess's Quarters in the upper reaches of the Trottingham garrison, his cover slightly bunched up and increasingly crumpled in his wing-grip. He'd escaped from his former squadron with only a modest amount of wailing and recriminations from his former commanding officer. Fishing Pole hadn't been able to deny that it had been his signature on the transfer orders, for it had, like most other documentation that passed through Lieutenant-Colonel Pole's alleged office, been signed off-hoof as the doctor with a commission had breezed through on his way from surgery to boudoir or drinking establishment or fishing-hole.
Not that the 93/1st had seen much in the way of fishing holes in the Isles up to the moment when Corporal Ping jumped ship. It wasn't that sort of war, the Griffish Rebellion.
Ping had gotten what he needed, the same way that everypony in the 93/1st did, by getting the pony who actually ran things to take care of it. That is, squadron clerk Two Pings, batpony and helpful hoof.
Ping wasn't sure who Fishing Pole would find to do his job for him now. Red Tail had been next in line for the squadron clerkship, but there was a reason they usually seconded her to the orderlies, being one part a fondness for Hawk Eye's rot gut, and at least two parts fondness for the company of anyone willing to top up her glass.
Such as Fishing Pole himself, who was never at a loss for drinking buddies.
It had come as a great betrayal to the pegasus when Ping had gently explained to him that the clerk was taking a transfer to a new unit, one where bat ponies weren't strictly regulated and kept out of positions of authority.
Like, say, running a medical squadron. But then, the 93/1st had been, itself, something of an outlier in the EUP. Experimental units designed to test new theories of battlefield medicine were not, evidently, as closely disciplined and ordered as the line regiments or frontline squadrons. Ping's fellow bat ponies being an example of said discipline and order.
Ping had been a tee-totalling, silent shadow in the midst of a barely-mobile bacchanalia. He sometimes wondered what his herd back home might have said if they'd seen their precious Two Pings among such sin and disorder.
Not that it was at all likely that any other bat-pony would have seen Ping among the shambles of Fishing Pole's vanity fair, unless they were wounded and carried in, insensate, on a stretcher.
It hadn't happened, although Ping had constantly been on the out-look for the sudden shock of discovery. There were few aerial squadrons in the theatre, and even fewer bat-ponies outside of the aerial squadrons, where they were carefully hidden among the real pegasi.
And even in the aerial squadrons, they'd been deliberately spread out, only concentrated when they were assigned in carefully-overseen penny-packets to the line regiments. Everypony agreed, and had agreed for generations out of mind, that there was no greater skirmisher party or finer night-picket than a flight of dragon-eyed thestrals, but nopony in their right mind trusted them to order themselves, let alone command themselves.
Memory was long in the service, but tradition was even longer, and long after the memories had faded and died, the superstitions persisted. Never trust a batpony. Never let them cut loose. Never let up on discipline.
Until it was time to set them loose in the darkness, and haunt the enemy.
Generations of veteran bat-ponies had returned to the ancestral caverns bringing their own traditions and superstitions. Never contradict a day-pony. Never take the part of a fellow bat-pony. Never organize. Never be seen, if you possibly could avoid it. Never allow the manuals' discipline to be broken. Never tolerate rebellion and mutiny. Always betray a confidence of disloyalty. Never betray the colony. Never admit that there is a colony. There is always a colony.
Yes, the strictures were mutually contradictory - aren't all traditions?
Still, Ping feared that the real bat-ponies would disapprove severely of Ping's late squadron, and Ping himself. The lack of adherence to the manuals, the unmilitary nature of the medicals and their hangers-on. True military bats were more Burn Salve bats than Fishing Pole or Hawk Eye.
And absolutely no Red Tails at all. Ping's ponies had methods for dealing with slackers like Red Tail. Methods subtle and secret, relentless and inexorable. And not even Ping's… peculiar status among the homeponies back in the colonies would protect him from his hypothetical fellows if they ever caught wise of the company he'd been keeping.
However wings-length the whole business had been. Ping had found that if you made yourself useful, few ponies noticed that you weren't actually their friends. They just assumed.
It made it easier for Ping to cut ties, but more painful than he'd thought for those other ponies who had, apparently, thought the little bat-pony was their friend.
Day ponies were strange ponies.
Ping thought about the orders he'd drafted, sitting in his pannier. Would the new colonel accept them as-is, without kicking? Ping wouldn't, if he were in charge.
Ping had, however inadvertently, been in charge of the last squadron, the proper running of it. Without really intending it to be so. His talents lent themselves to doing the job properly, although they hadn't been given him for that squalid purpose. Would that be the case here? The aunties had hinted as much, but Ping wasn't sure if that was true prophecy or just the auld night-haunts wishfully thinking.
Ping wasn't a leader of ponies, whatever the aunties said. But the aunties said, and, so, he went.
Well, the aunties and the dreams. They said it was his destiny, his strange, masculine destiny. Unnatural. Unsettling. Wrong. A stallion, dream-walking! Worse, a stallion, day-walking. Dream-walking was odd enough in a stallion, but for there to have been born into the colonies a stallion who walked the day knowing where his hooves would land before they did? Knew when and where without having the knowledge to know?
The aunties said-
"-I did give Cadance the paperwork, didn't I?" said the purple unicorn as she burst into the office, the door banging slighly as it bounced off its frame. "I made myself clear last week, right? I'm not just dreaming I did the paperwork, right?"
"I didn't observe the exchange personally, no, captain ma'am," said a familiar voice from the corridor outside. "But there are copies in the desk. Somewhere. I think."
"Wha- oh, hello, there. We'll be with you in a moment, corporal." The purple unicorn in the captain's tabs turned to the tall, gangly, scruffy griffon entering the office behind her, demanding out of the side of her mouth, "Gilda, there's a bat pony in my office. Why is there a bat pony here?"
"Oh, hey there, Ping, what does Colonel Pole want? I didn't think I'd see any of you after we left you in the sticks. You lot ever get your hocks out of the bloody slush?" Corporal- no, look at that! Sergeant Gilda had always been an amiable sort as far as Ping was concerned. If a trifle loud.
"The lieutenant colonel wants me under arrest. Or something about heads and pikes. He wasn't being clear when I escaped. I'm here under orders, sergeant, Captain Shield. Here."
The magenta glow of the officer's magic took up the orders packet from Ping's wing-grip, and opened them for said officer to scan, quickly.
"Transferred! We didn't have a battalion a week ago! This is dated three days ago."
"It took some time to talk myself out of the stockade, Captain Shield."
"This is signed by Colonel Pole himself!"
"He does that. Without looking. I suppose he was feeling betrayed that I'd slipped one past him."
"I rather imagine so. Can't be having a clerk who'd hoof you all sorts of nonsense to be fitted out under your chop!"
"The officer's own fault for not reading what he signs, captain ma'am," the lanky griffon said, looking disapproving. "On the other claw, there's a lot of damage an untrustworthy corporal can cause before she's found out."
Oh, look, the disapproval was of Ping. That look has locked cell-doors and shackles glinting in it.
"I agree entirely, sergeant. I was very much at fault, and it won't happen again. But I needed to be here."
"Whatever do you mean?" demanded the unicorn officer.
Ping gestured at the tsunami of papers and documents and detritus which was slowly drowning the little office.
"Military units operate by paperwork, and I could hear the grinding of the pulp-choked gears from all the way out there in Bridlederry. Like a thousand filing cabinets choked with refuse, crying out for my touch.
"Also, word is that you're taking thestrals," Ping continued. "Without tribal limits. Is it true?"
"Well, yes!" admitted the perplexed purple pony. "I said that we wouldn't be limiting recruitment by tribe or species. But I wasn't really thinking-"
"Transfers? Captain Shield, I don't think you understand what is coming. There have been regulations in the EUP for generations. Centuries. Strict regulations about how the squadrons can recruit nocturnes, how they can be used in the ranks. Will you be following those regulations?"
"What? Where? How? Gilda, can you go get the -"
"Staffing manuals? I'll have to go raid the division archive, none of this is ringing a bell. Captain, ma'am - you would know better than I. Wasn't this part of your fancy academy education?"
"Do I look like a pegasus to you, Gilda? Go, find the reference material. Corporal… Ping? You say we're likely to get more bat ponies?"
"An un-restricted regiment taking all comers? A Guards regiment? Yes, sergeant. They're coming. I beat them here because…"
"Yeah, I've seen you in action. Wasn't aware it worked on paperwork, too."
"I wouldn't be a clerk if it didn't, sergeant."
The little bat pony hadn't been kidding. Gleaming Shield's idealistic bureaucratic outburst of anti-tribalist harmonism had been, sadly, committed to paperwork before either she or Gilda had made the proper connections and realized what they were opening themselves up to with Shield's grand gesture.
It turned out that the EUP had a lot of really obnoxious regulations on the books about thestrals. Stuff that, in black and white, looked a lot more draconian than anything the books said about griffons. But, Gilda thought, the regulations had been written when there wasn't much prospect of griffons in the ranks of the pony armies, generations ago - no, centuries. Century after century of the pegasi tearing themselves up over the presence of something dark, and predatory, and dangerous in their ranks.
Looking at it all, Gilda couldn't understand why there were bat ponies in the armed forces at all. There were actual capital punishments listed for thestrals where the regular ranks got stockade or hard labor!
Things began to become more clear when the first couple thestrals reported with their transfer orders. Such a bunch of hardflanks Gilda had never seen. In point of fact, they were the first bat ponies Gilda had met other than the little clerk.
They were nothing like Ping. Big, grizzled, stony-eyed. Gilda knew killers when she laid eyes on one. And the first couple new transfers were definitely that. Two of the first dozen had more seniority in service than Gustav, if little in the way of experience with non-fliers. Or training. Or anything other than ‘night service'.
Over the weeks that were to come, Gilda heard her crop's worth about the ‘night service'. Griffons weren't especially nocturnal beasts, which explained to a certain degree why she'd never seen a bat pony other than Ping up to this point. And also explained why the EUP had maintained a continuous advantage in the long war in the Isles.
Gilda felt it was something like cheating to maintain secret corps of night-fighters like that. Even if the paranoid ancients of the EUP carefully kept these night-terrors divided up into penny-packet ‘skirmisher' units among the aerial troops of the pegasus regiments. Not even full troops, but rather double files assigned on a squadron by squadron basis. The equivalent of a single squad for a ground pony regiment.
Gilda and Gustav had a little head-to-head meeting after the first dozen thestrals were joined by another twenty the week after that.
"What in ‘ades is drawin' them out like this, Gilda me ‘en? I ‘aven't seen so much leather since we raided that bootleg parchment operation back in ‘91."
"The little I can get out of the clerk is that the thestrals have been waiting for an ancient Guards regiment to be reconstituted for… something like centuries? He was being shifty, and didn't want to answer the question straight."
"‘Ave you never spoken to a screamer? They take shifty in with their dam's milk, they does. Comes of lurkin' in shadows all yer inky life."
"Still, this smells of something nasty, don't it?"
"Most things in the service is smelly, Gilda me ‘en. They seem to be calming down, some."
"Well, they're not pushing for length of service, that's good. And they seem to be willing to bend to proper discipline."
"That's because I'm bending my head to you, you young guttersnipe. If I weren't here, sayin' yes marm and no marm, we'd be in the soup for sure."
"Helps I've got the captain's ear, I guess."
"That's another thing, we're going to need a major or two sometime soon. And more recruits. We're gonna have to scramble if we don't want to be a thestral regiment."
"We're barely a company as it is, Gustav. And the captain has plans which can't wait on a season. We've got obligations."
"‘ow can we possibly have obligations? The regiment's barely a month old!"
"Came before there was a regiment, old crow. You see, it's like this…"
Fish Eye sat on the roof of the coach and aimlessly polished her precious camera, staring unseeing at the greening fields bumping wildly past. She supposed she could be flying, but why fly when you could ride? Nogriff in her family had ever been much for flitting about, not even those half-forgotten fledgeling days before said family had packed up and taken her off into a year's exile.
It was now ten years and counting. And Hawk Eye didn't give a squawk! That crazy mare was happy where she was. Fish Eye could still smell the blood on her lunatic big sister, the hypocrite. She could call it surgery, but the younger hippogriff had grown up with her sister, knew that sadist. Who else would let that maniac dissect ponies and griffons and other thinking creatures on a table, right out there in public and in the sight of everygriff! The military, that's who.
And then that ass had the temerity to yell at Fish Eye for coming out to the Isles to find her way in the world. As if there was space for a grown hippogriff in Equestria. The school had kept her as a sort of mascot, or pet for the popular ponies. So long as she kept herself small, kept up the cute act. Fish Eye knew how to clown about, and play to the 'happy little monster' template that ponies had in their heads.
Even if most of the blunt-muzzled idiots mistook her for a griffon. And couldn't that get awkward? Nopony loved griffons on the mainland, what with the terror bombings and then the long, grinding war in the Isles. After a while, Fish Eye's beak got tired and achy from all the rictus-like grinning, and she started thinking she might as well jump into the griffish pool if she was going to catch all the grief for the shit those vicious cat-birds got up to.
Sometimes Fish Eye tried to remember a time when she wasn't alone among the suspicious and herd-minded. When she was a happy little fledgeling, and not just playing one for the herd.
She'd charmed her way all the way out to the Isles, out to Bridlederry, and it wasn't as bad as ponies said! Well, at least the ponies around here looked confused, rather than hostile. One thing about Griffish Isles ponies, they knew what a griffon looked like.
And Fish Eye didn't look anything like a real griffon. So that was nice.
Of course, it freaked out the real griffons. Whom Fish Eye hadn't actually had the chance to meet before getting on that freighter out of Baltimare. There'd been two deckhoofs working the sails on that slow lug. Deckclaws? Decktalons?
The thing about being mostly educated by ponies, your vocabulary got poisoned by their words, your world-view by their prejudices and peculiarities. Fish Eye barely remembered what lost Aris looked like these days. She'd been too young. There were some faded memories of the skies full of proud-crested, wide-winged hippogriffs like a luminescent cloud, or a volcano erupting pastel-winged predators on the wing for fish and the free air.
But just flashes. Like picture postcards in her head. If she was being honest, home was her room in that rental suite on the edge of the diplomatic quarters. The hippogriffs didn't rate an embassy anymore, after all.
There were no more hippogriffs, none that anypony could find, anyways, aside from a scattering here and there in the provinces and a few ports around the Celestia seas.
Just the damn yeti invaders and their mercenaries, ruthlessly sweeping out from wherever the heck bipedal shaggy piratical fleets swept out of, raiding here, burning there, and occasionally squatting, so the reports said, in scorched, empty Mount Aris. That's all the spies and the long-distance reconnaissance reported, that Aris had been abandoned. That the Storm fleets had complained that there had been no rapine, no plunder, no slaves. Just empty buildings and a ghostly abandoned island.
Over the years, things had become increasingly awkward for Fish Eye's mother, an ambassador for an abandoned country, an envoy for an empty island. A glorified consul taking care of the strays and singletons floating around the world and Equestria after home had gone away. The increasingly greyed Swift Eye was still lurking among the diplomatic corps in dull, boring Canterlot, taking care of the smaller and smaller matters that represented the pitiful scraps of the accidental hippogriffic diaspora, such as it was.
Fish Eye and her mother hadn't been able to find anything to say to each other at the graduation ceremony, so Fish Eye took her diploma, ran away from the ceremony, and hopped on the first eastbound train out of the city. She had been saving to join her friends on the traditional Grand Tour, but in that moment, Fish Eye realized that she didn't really know any of those ponies, and they sure as fish oil didn't really know who she was.
So she took her money out of the bank before her mother could catch up with her, and made her own Grand Tour. The berths she took were an abyssal depth of a lot cheaper than the plans her group had made, and so far it'd taken her to lots more interesting places than they'd made their plans for. Who cared about Tall Tale and Vanhoover and the more tourist-friendly Tenochtitlanian ruins? She'd seen the gritty docks of Baltimare, and the gritty docks of Manehattan, and then the gritty, rotting docks of Trottingham!
Fish Eye had to admit that so far her Grand Tour had included a lot of grit and perhaps just a few too many docks. But it was all in the pursuit of tracking down Hawk Eye! She had been so sure that she would know what she would do with her life when she found her big sister, who was off being brilliant and heroic saving ponies from the griffon menace!
That dream had wafted the young hippogriff across thousands of miles, and dozens of charmed co-conspirators, right up to that moment when the two sisters came beak to beak and Fish Eye… smelled that stench.
And saw the blood dried on her sister's claws.
She'd known her big sister was a surgeon. Which wasn't so respectable as being a nice internist, or a cardiologist, or even a pediatrician. But it was still a doctor!
Hawk Eye had smelled like a butcher shop.
Oh, her sister had squawked and shouted and yelled about 'wandering around war zones' and all that, but Fish Eye didn't know what the older hippogriff was so pissed about. Fish Eye wasn't the one who smelled like emptied bowels and dead things!
The lower depths with Hawk Eye. Fish Eye could make her own way.
She raised her camera to her eye and caught the image rolling past the coach, timing the shot perfectly, precisely. A griffon pulling something off of a burned half-skeletonized ruin, black and grey and brown in the middle of an achingly beautiful field of deep brown and spring-sharp green shoots. A pony standing a few lengths off, looking at the griffon with something in her expression Fish Eye hadn't even worked out when her claw triggered the camera mechanism.
That would be a good one, Fish Eye was certain. She wasn't a pony, she didn't have a cutie mark. But she had something in her heart that screamed this was what she'd been let loose into the world for, this was why she'd been cast loose from everything else she'd ever known.
It was a big world, and it needed someone to see it.
"So it is definitely the Crystal Guards, then, Sergeant Gilda?" asked the grizzled batpony, sitting at the counter of the recruiting booth.
"What else would it be, Fruit Salad? Right there on the commission and everything. And on the transfer paperwork, I'd think?" Gilda replied.
The batpony corporal was interrupting Gilda's break. She was sitting out back behind the booth, reading a newspaper, still wearing her finest feathers and finery, which Rarity had stitched her into earlier that morning. The first pass at Rarity's attempts to replicate Gleaming Shield's cracked illusions, they were. Gilda wasn't certain she approved of the new uniform, it was a bit… gaudy. Even by Stinging Needle standards.
It certainly brought in the would-be recruits, though. While Gilda was on the clock. Which she wasn't. At the moment, she was trying to concentrate on The Beak and Bone's surprising well-informed analysis of Cadance's 'Mustang' reforms to the Territorials. Which both Gilda and the captain had been strongly encouraging. If only the plan hadn't convinced the new duchess that she couldn't spare Gleaming Shield as a military advisor…
"All the rumors said, and the paperwork we got cut, said was 'Sixth Equestrian Guards'. Everypony assumed…" Corporal Salad said through the curtain, looking troubled.
"None of you blasted bat ponies will say what you were expecting, just that we haint what you were lookin' for," snarled Gustav from beyond the curtain.
The recruiting booth, squabbling non-coms and all, were set up by the Bridlederry Gate, in the hope of catching ponies heading out and griffons coming in. But business was waning on account of the two older non-coms cutting up at each other. Not that Gilda was about to step in, not for the life of her. They were actually talking. And talking over the bat pony problem, at that. None of the rest of the thestrals were talking, but up to this moment Fruit Salad had not been talking louder than the rest of them combined. He was younger than the other two noncoms that had come in with the transfers, but somehow Gilda had gotten the impression that he somehow ranked above the rest. Something hidden and opaque and obscure - like, she was beginning to understand, everything when it came to thestrals. They loved their secrets, bat-ponies
"Well, we haint much of anything yet," Gustav was saying, sounding a bit steamed, "But just you all wait and see. We'll be something yet. And the way we'll be won't be slinkin' about in th' shadders, a-knifin' those that need knifin'. But the way yer bats are pullin' us, we'll be 'alf thestral before we're done."
"You don't know me, old bird, or my ponies, either," replied the batpony, calmly. "Don't assume you know what we want."
Gilda peered out beyond Fruit Salad, and saw that the brewing argument didn't have an audience. No need to intervene, yet.
"Then bloody what are ya all doin', crowdin' our barracks? It haint to be th' Crystal Guard, that's clear as the beak on me face. An' iffen th' plan weren't ta be all shiny and obvious inna Crystal Guard, you and yer mango-suckin' demon-eyed night-haunts, alla ya a-'idin' in the shadders, waitin' for yer bluddy turn ta join th' Guard, can all go ‘ang!"
Getting closer, though, Gilda thought as she finished reading the council notes in the broadside. This next article was… huh
"…we ain't ta be a legion ov shadders, no, ner sneak-thieves, or silent gullet-slitters neither. Wave off, Fruit Salad, wave off, I tells you!"
"Not to interrupt a wonderful lecture, Gustav," Gilda interrupted her subordinate's hectoring rant, "but have you seen yesterday's Beak? We made the papers. Again. Has somegriff been talking to ink stained griffons again?"
Gustav tore aside the curtain with an oath, making eye contact with Gilda. "What? No, winds blast them all! I'll 'ave the barstard's tailfeather wot talked to that libelous rag! What do they say, marm?"
"Hmm, waste of taxes, stormtroopers of the peytral - the usual. Oh, somehow, they got the news about the captain's all-tribes recruiting standard."
"Well, that haint no secret, we've been trumpeting that to th' rafters. Tho some as only heard the 'not excludin' batponies' portion," Gustav growled, eyeing his fellow corporal.
"Yes, but that apparently means we're plotting a foreign legion, Gustav. A tool of bloody-hooved repression of griffons abroad."
"What, like Griffonstone? Who'd want it, let alone the Duchess?" smirked the older griffon.
"The Princess, now, Gustav, you've taken the Princess's bit."
"Pshaw. Same mare, same bit, same me."
"Gustav…"
Thankfully fate chose that moment to interrupt with a commotion over by the gate proper. Gilda got up and craned her neck through the curtain, trying to figure out what had gotten the 10th Territorials riled. Pony Territorials could be fussy about the strangest things. The word 'spy' wafted high and sharp over the general yammer, and that caught her attention.
"Toms, let's put a pin in this. Sounds like something interestin' is brewing over there on the daily coach," Gilda threw over her shoulder as she passed through the booth and and trotted in the direction of the furball.
Two Territorials had somegriff pinned to the cobblestones with their spears, while two more were digging through something just out of sight. The crowd was too thick for Gilda to see who they had on the ground until she was almost on them. Half the crowd were in uniform, the Bridlederry Gate was near one of the main garrison barracks-complexes, and there were a good many troops about.
Most of them better be off duty.
Gilda's eyebrows climbed into her crest, as her eyes fell on a freakishly familiar creature. It wasn't Hawk Eye, but damn if it wasn't a close first-order approximation. The pony-monkey-bird thing was squawking with two shafts crossed over her wings and neck, forcing her beak into a gap between the badly-laid cobbles. Over the twitching, wailing hippogriff, a pony corporal was looking at a sleek mechanical device.
Gilda squinted for a second, and realized she was looking at a photographic recorder. What were they called again? A camera.
"Shall we see what you were taking back to your masters, monster? Let me just pry this open, and we'll see the secrets you've stolen from us, the soldiers you're going to betray with your infernal device of espionage!" The crowing pony wasn't exactly the greatest advertisement for Her Grace's Service, in Gilda's opinion. His breastplate was more rust than plate, and his eyes had that bloodshot look that the drunker sort of NCO got after their third demotion-and-promotion cycle.
"No, no, it's not an instant, please dear sir, you'll ruin the roll!" cried the smallish hippogriff in the reedy accents of a young Canterlot aristocrat.
Gilda blinked at the incongruity. Hawk Eye had sported a somewhat more foreign accent.
"Here now, here now," Gilda blustered, fluffing up her feathers and trying to look like the senior non-com she technically was. "What's all this then? Why do you have this good… hippogriff in the fewmets?" The cobblestones near the Gate weren't exactly the dirtiest portion of the city, and even griffons were prouder than to leave actual filth in the streets. But it got the idea across.
The pony Territorials didn't quite know what to make of a griffon in an exotic, unfamiliar uniform. "Er, sir - ma'am, this spy was caught on the afternoon coach from the countryside. Surveilling right here, in the shadow of the walls!" The corporal looked proud of that ‘surveilling'. Score one for the former duchess's educational reforms in Trottingham!
Gilda briefly wondered if the pony actually knew what it meant.
"Oh, come on now, officer, what sort of agent would be photographing the countryside under Celestia's own sun? I'm a photographer, it's what I do! I was not hiding, I just thought that roofline with the two hens sunning themselves was a good frame, I wanted to see if I could capture the com-oW!" One of the Territorials stopped the flow of fruity Canterlotese with a sharp push of his spear, bouncing the hippogriff mare's head off the stones below.
"Corporal - sorry, what was your name?"
"Corporal Lamp Post, ma'am! I'm sorry, I don't recognize that uniform. Those almost look like sergeant major stripes. What regiment?"
"Sixth Guards, Corporal Post. I think perhaps we're over-reacting here. Let that mare up off the ground, I'm going to get a crick in my neck looking down at her."
"Mare? Mare? This mutant griffon is no mare!"
"Calm your tits, Post, that's not a griffon. Hippogriff, right?" Gilda asked the creature forced into a kow-tow by the now-nervous-looking rankers.
"Yeah, that's, pftf blech, ugh. That is right! Marvellous! I've never met anyone who's gotten it right without being told. Hello, I'd introduce myself, but all I can see of you is your talon-guards. Can somepony let me up so I can do the propers?"
"Colts, I think we're more likely to be raided by parrots than killed in our sleep by a random hippogriff. Let the poor bird up, I'll take responsibility. Corporal Post, send a copy of the report to the Duchess's Quarters in Garrison #5, would you?"
There was a bit of a shuffle, until the Territorials finally got over their sense of institutional self-regard. Gilda persuaded them to help gather up the slightly battered hippogriff's bags and camera, and let her carry off her new captive. The two of them walked slowly over to her subordinates, who had been watching the entire farce with an air of bemused confusion.
Gilda looked over the limping hippogriff, and made a decision.
"Come on, then, you're technically under arrest for carrying surveillance gear through a checkpoint. Take a seat here, and we'll find out why an unaccompanied fledgeling is wandering alone in a war zone."
"I'm not a fledgeling! I'm a proper graduate of Her Royal Highness's Farrow Polytechnic Institute!"
"Really! That's quite impressive." Gilda had never heard of it, and wasn't really sure what the hippogriff was claiming. She was sure Gleaming Shield would know.
After all, the captain had explicitly mentioned that she wanted to recruit hippogriffs. Why she wanted this, was the captain's business.
"What did you say your name was, again?" Gilda asked the hippogriff as she sat behind their booth, rubbing her bruised rear paw.
"Oh, hello, sorry, my lamentable manners, I'm Fish Eye, very nice to meet you…"
"Really! Any relation to Captain Hawk Eye of the 93/1st?"
The hippogriff stopped dead just in front of the recruiting booth, and gaped in astonishment.
"How did you know? That's amazing!"
"It's a small world, kitling… Let's talk about why an innocent little crabcake like you is rambling unaccompanied through this bad, sad world full of evil griffons. Like me."
"Depths claim it! I knew my sister was up to no good, if evil griffons know her name!"
"Kitling, you have no idea. Come on, I think you need to talk to my captain."
"Ooh! Oh! Am I being foalnapped? I've always wanted to be foalnapped."
"Think of it as more of a social engagement." Impressment could be very socializing, Gilda was proof positive of that. "Are you an adult, by the way?"
"Yes, I am! Fully grown, and graduated and everything! No matter what Hawk Eye says."
"Mmm-hmm. Gustav, Fruit Salad, see how many more actual recruits you can bring in by dinner. I'm taking this young lady into garrison, we're going to check on her claims, OK? Now tell me more about that degenerate Hawk Eye's background. It's always been a mystery…"
"Hey! Only family are allowed to call my sister a degenerate sadistic monster!"
"Really! Tell me more…"
Gilda would show the bloody Beak and Bone a bleedin' foreign legion! Now if she could only find some innocent diamond dog puppies to complete the set…
The two guardsmares arrived in a battered, utilitarian officer's gig that strangely belied the fineness of their uniforms, which were a glittering rainbow of all the shades of purple. The dock ponies scurrying around the cranes and the pallet-gantries parted around the settling gig, and left it alone on the wide dock beneath the aft cargo hatches.
Purse Strings eyed the mane and coat colors of the officer deposited on the dock beneath the Iron Keel, and wondered what kind of egotistical monster would order such extravagant, pony-specific variants on the Guards uniform pattern. The big griffon wheeled the gig out of the way of the scurrying dock-ponies intent on emptying out Purse's ship, parking it off to the side where it wouldn't impede the dance of the warehouse carts and the unloading sacks and pallets from the overhead gantries.
The officer took one look at the expression on Purse String's face, and turned to her charioteer, trotting up from where she'd left their vehicle, and wailed to the big cat-bird, "I told you we shouldn't have taken delivery of these monstrosities, Gilda! Look at him! He's laughing at me!"
"Captain ma'am, you look fine. You look better than fine. And if you'd just walk it off like you were born to the purple, they'd accept it without a quiver. It's the cringing that breaks the illusion, isn't that right, Mr. - what was your name? Stop gawking, you skinny tit."
"Ah!" Purse Strings replied, intelligently. The big griffon hen was more than enormous, a full head taller than him, and he wasn't a short stallion. "Ah - Purse Strings, ma'am."
"Don't ma'am me, I work for a living. You the ship's master of this beast?"
The griffon didn't give him the chance to object that she hadn't bothered to give him her name, either, as she breezed past the two of them and boarded the ship via the lowered hatch. Purse Strings and the embarrassed officer scrabbled in the guard-hen's wake.
"Sorry about that, Mr. Strings, I'm Gleaming Shield. Gilda is in a mood today, and feeling her oats."
"Griffons eat oats?" Purse String asked, even more intelligently.
"What? No, of course not. Crab and haddock if she can get it, rats and silly ponies if she can't. Oh, hey, it's dark in here."
Purse String eeped, and stopped in his tracks.
The purple unicorn in the very purple outfit turned around and squinted at Purse in the eternal twilight of the half-emptied cargo hold, nearly being clobbered by a massive dangling sack sailing by on the overhead gantry crane jutting into the hold from the dock outside. "No, no, stop that right now, I was having fun with you, Mr. Strings," she said cheerfully if a bit cluelessly. "You are the ship's master, are you not?"
"Eh? Oh, nah, of course not. Captain Blythe is working with the portmaster ashore right now. Couldn't come to meet you, told me off to do the propers, proper-like." Purse cringed as the unicorn barely escaped being crushed to a fine magenta smear across his aft hold by yet another pallet being pushed by a longshoremare with one of those fiendish new hoof-cranked pallet jacks.
Damnit, they were supposed to pull with those things, for that exact reason.
"Who taught you to talk like that, Mr. Strings? It sounds odd in a Manehattan accent. That is Manehattanese, right?"
"Nah, dose wickerbockers are too hoity-toity for us islanders," Purse Strings said broadly, exaggerating his half-forgotten accent. "I'm as honest as you get from ol' Hocklyn." He dropped the accent. "But please look where you're going, ma'am. It's an active worksite in here."
The mare looked at where she was about to walk under a lowering crane, and made a cute yipping sound.
She was much more careful after that.
They caught up with the big griffon at the door out of the hold into the gangway between the aft hold and the main cargo hold, which still had the troop-barrack fixtures stowed away, accordioned along the overhead. She was standing, looking distracted and beautiful, staring up at the folded-away quarters partitions and bundled-up hammocks and suchlike. The crystal ripple of fabric which had looked self-indulgent on the pony in the broad daylight outside, in the dimness of the interior of the ship set off the griffon's grey feathers and brown coat exactly right, as if she were born to wear them in eternal half-light.
Born to the purple…
"…light carrier. We were told your ship was the perfect conversion hull for what we needed." Wait, what had she been saying? Something about…
"You mean this ship?" Purse Strings squeaked, panicked. "You want to turn the Iron Keel into a-"
"A warship, yes," said the purple officer next to him. "We wanted to set out in a purpose-built airship, built with our needs in mind from the keel up, but there have been, well…"
"Our shipbuilder isn't quite ready to produce warships," growled the griffon, looking beautifully fierce, like a barbarian princess. "Not even close, as of three weeks ago."
"Now Gilda, they're working on it. They'll get there."
"We don't have time for them to ‘get there'. And it's your damn money they're wasting time with. Yours and George's."
"And it's a damn fine investment, I know we'll make our money and the time cost of the money, on top of it, at the very least. I can see the outlines of what they'll be, given time and encouragement."
"Time we don't have. You know why."
"Yes, well, that's why we're looking at Mr. Strings' ship, isn't it?"
"I keep trying to tell you, it isn't my-" Purse Strings tried to interject.
"Yeah, yeah, not your ship," said the griffon hen. "So why are you here showing it to us? Trying to sell us the Statue of Harmony? I hear tell that's a common hobby in Hocklyn."
"Nah, nah, that's the Hocklyn Bridge," Purse said, distracted by the spinal-reflexive opportunity to make fun of his people and his family. "I've got a cousin who's sold the Hocklyn Bridge to six different hicks from the sticks. One mare, he managed to sell it to, twice."
"How...?"
"You'd be amazed what a fake beard and a fake cutie mark can let you get away with, especially if you have somepony to cool off the mark the first time and direct her to the 'real owner of da bridge'. So nah, we do the bridge. It's those Stablen Island crooks that'll try to sell you the Mighty Mare."
"So…" drawled the griffon. "Why are we talking to you, Mr. Hocklyn Bridge?"
"Nah, that's my cousin Contract Bridge, ‘Hocklyn' Bridge. Used to be a real terror on the gambling circuit, until the law caught up with her."
"Mr. Strings, if you wouldn't mind, why are we…?" asked the unicorn, with remarkable patience.
"Ah, that's because I'm Captain Blythe's second in command, me. I'm her executive officer."
"You don't look like an officer," sniffed the big griffon, looking down at him. "You smell like the ranks to me."
"Well, I ain't exactly an officer, not by merchant marine regs, leastwise. But we had to let our actual XO go, so I'm filling in, until someone with the guild notices we're short an officer."
"Shouldn't there be a midshipmare to take over if you lose your lieutenant?" asked the pony officer, looking suddenly, sharply interested.
"Well, we never had any midshipmares. We've not all that much in the way of crew, none of the long haulers do, really, and the captain didn't have any connections making her take on extra apprentices we have to train out of their diapers into their big mare pants."
"So what are you?" demanded the griffon.
"Me? I'm the purser!" Purse Strings said, proudly.
"Well, that would follow," sniffed the hen.
"-also the boatswain, the quartermaster, my own cooper, harmonic councilor-"
"I've heard of jennies of all trade, but how in the world-" said the unicorn officer before -
"-chief steward, oiler-"
"Not chief engineer?"
"Nah, you see any horn on me? But I can help with the engine, and I does. Also chief mate-"
"What about cook?" asked the griffon with a creeping grin on her beak. How did griffins grin with beaks? She did it anyways.
"Nah, I can't cook worth a damn. And most of the troops we carry bring their own cookstaff with ‘em. We've got properly safed kitchen facilities bult along the back wall of each of the holds, the crew uses the ones that ain't being used by any troops we might be hauling on any given cruise. The regiments can feed their own fool selves."
"Have you forgotten any of your many hats?" asked the unicorn with a slightly pole-axed look on her face.
"I was told the ship had no guns!" objected the officer.
"I don't know about that, captain ma'am, that sign over there says ‘gun deck'," noted the griffish sergeant.
"Oh, that's not really a gun deck," Purse Strings said airily, waving his hoof in negation. "Might have been designed for it, but we use it to stow extra supplies. Mostly patches for the envelopes, you wouldn't believe how often we blow a cell or two in transit."
"So if you don't have guns, why are you chief gunner?"
"Well, cuz the table of organization says somepony has to be chief gunner. And we can't afford a useless gunner's mate sitting around eating her head off, taking care of literally no guns! So I'm the gunner. With my no guns to take care of."
"You can't argue with logic like that, captain ma'am," the griffon sergeant agreed. She looked around as their tour led them up out of the secondary hatches from the main hold to the middle deck, and the conversation turned to the dimensions of the ship, and how they usually stowed supplies, cargo, and sundry other things through the various compartments of the big converted freighter.
Purse Strings found himself staring at the glittering fabric as it cascaded over the griffon sergeant's shoulder like a crystalline waterfall in the sunlight of the open deck between the planks below and the envelope above. The sergeant's finery shone like starlight on the greywashed planks, setting her feathers to a perfect contrast. She was so beautiful, her finery so lavish, so grotesquely rich, he couldn't tear his eyes away. He and the captain had chosen the grey to hide just how much rot lay in the timbers under the paint; the color made visitors think of steel and aluminum and other metallic, solid materials. It reinforced the lie of the ship's name, "Iron Keel". He had become so used to prevaricating, lying, skimping, making do, making up, hiding the rot…
God, they looked rich. They were the perfect marks. It would work. They'd sell them this wreck and his debt would finally be-
"The next hurricane the Iron Keel sees will be her last," he heard himself saying. "She's five years past her last refitting, and two past when they should have sent her to the breakers. She's held together with twine and cantrips, and I'm not sure the cantrips will last us through the return leg to Manehattan, let alone into military service."
What? How? Why? What had caused that to come out of his mouth? What was he thinking? Was he thinking?
Purse Strings quailed to think what Captain Blythe would say when she found out that he'd… his debts! She'd sell off his debts!
"What do you mean, military service," asked the Guards captain. "I was told the Iron Keel has been in the EUP's employ for the last eight years. How is that not military service?"
"Well, I told you, didn't I? We're a troop ship, not an assault carrier. Or any sort of warship. We keep afloat in the air by never getting anywhere near a strong breeze, let alone actual weapons."
"The southern seas are full of pirates!"
"We never go south of Horseshoe Bay."
"Why were we told you'd be a perfect solution to our transport problems?"
"Well, who told you that?"
She named a name.
"Well, there you go, that pony is known for holding a grudge. When did you piss them off?"
"I barely know them!"
"That doesn't matter, now does it? They clearly know you, if they tried to get you to take the Iron Keel off their hooves. Hades, with the war wrapping up, they've got to be thinking there's less desperate need for rattletrap troopships."
The two guardsmares scurried into a cross-corridor to whisper desperately to each other. Purse Strings looked sadly at the big griffon. Such a shame, he'd have liked to have spent more time with that big beautiful girl.
He started making plans to lie his dock off, explaining to Captain Blythe why they weren't getting a payday out of this would-be scam.
"What do you think, Gilda?"
"I think this is a death trap even in a light breeze, captain ma'am, and we'd spend almost as much time bringing it into any sort of ship shape, as if we waited for the shipworks in town to produce a warlike airship."
"No, not the blasted lug, it's a hideous cog and I wouldn't use it to haul fish for diamond dogs. I mean the purser."
"What about him? Purse Strings is a repulsive little sleazebag."
"Yes, but he's an industrious little sleazebag, and strikingly straightforward with his knowledge of the dodges. And willingness to deal with them."
"We got our tails caught in the wringer bad enough when it was Grippe, and we didn't know she was up to no good."
"I think," Gleaming Shield said, thoughtfully, "that the best remedy for not getting scammed out of our armor or our gear, is to put a thief to catch out any thieves looking to cheat us of our proper supply and so forth. You know this, Gilda, I know you and Lady George have been playing at dirty for months and months by now."
"And you know it was only playing, captain ma'am. A griffon has to know where the lines are, even if nogriff else does."
"Yes, yes, very virtuous of you. And that's why we need a proper quartermaster to do… prophylactic scammery on our behalf."
"I don't have the time to keep an eye on a scumbag like Purse Strings," Gilda objected, her beak curling in disgust.
"You'd be surprised, Gilda, I think he's sweet on you. I know the look, I think?"
"Ick."
"Well, we already have a pony with a reputation for probity we can put him in tandem with, right?"
"Ping? As far as I know yes. Why can't we just have Ping double-duty like this loon is doing for the hilariously absent Captain Blythe?"
"Because just because a pony can half-flank two jobs, doesn't mean he wouldn't be more use doing one job, perfectly, instead. I'd like to think I'm not a Celestia-damned fool like this Captain Blythe!"
"You're definitely not that, captain ma'am," said Gilda, and then sighed. She looked over at the earth pony with the pile of bits cutie mark.
Winds damn it, he was making cow-eyes at her.
"You know he's probably going to be expensive, right? Nogriff works like a diamond dog like that without some sort of leverage. I'm guessing debts."
"That captain not even showing up like this is the sign of a guilty conscience. I'm willing to bet that my uncle in the Provost Marshals could find enough to distract the good captain long enough to get ourselves what looks to me like an industrious, effective and excellent quartermaster!"
"If you say so, captain ma'am."
"Now go soften up Mr. Strings while I work up a message I can send off to my uncle. Strike while the iron is hot! And the Iron Keel is unguarded."
"You do know we still need to find ourselves an airship to refit into a light carrier, captain ma'am?"
"I'm willing to bet that stallion knows where all the best prospects are moored, Gilda. Go recruit him! Shoo!"
Trixie stared at the transfer orders, and wondered whose prank they were. The forgeries looked convincing, and that certainly was Brigadier Deep Field's distinctive hoof-print, but really, who did they think they were fooling? Sixth Guards indeed.
Everypony knew there were four guards regiments. The four-cornered foundation of the EUP, famous and even glorious. The Firewatch on the Draconic Marches; the Meltstream Guards in their garrison-city beneath the glaciers of the Far North; the Sparrowfall Guards in the Vale of Tail; and lastly, the Royals in the celestial city, Canterlot herself. Even after nearly ten years of war to the knife's hilt in the Griffish Isles, those old moss-grown stones had sat, still, square, holding down the corners of Equestria like polished pebbles keeping an unrolled parchment map from curling up on itself.
A sixth regiment of guards, indeed!
Still, even bringing it up to her major might bring embarrassment to Trixie. She knew they were just waiting for her to report to the battalion staff office, to take it seriously, to expose herself to laughter and jeers. Hecklers!
Still…
Trixie's eyes crept to the bottom of the document, the details and direction. Captain Gleaming Shield, commanding; by the hoof of Corporal Two Pings, squadron clerk, 6/1st Guards.
How would anyone in the battalion know that Gleaming Shield was her old bête noire? That the blasted filly - she was still a lieutenant, like Trixie, damnit! - had tried to shake her down for black powder a while back. As if they had the sort of relations that allowed for such casual exchange of favors!
Well, she had directed that annoying bat-hen to the correct supply sergeant, and suggested the proper paperwork. It was only what was expected of her, as a commissioned officer in Her Royal Majesty's equally Royal Artillery!
Even if nopony else thought Trixie was worthy of the service. Thought she'd cheated or slept her way into her inexplicable commission. A dropout from PCSGU? Dime a dozen. And yes, she'd breezed through the artillery officers' candidate school with room to spare. Plus or minus a few scorched tail-hairs. But any idiot who could do low-order math like trigonometry and simple calculus could sleaze their way through that curriculum.
Trixie couldn't help it if most earth ponies were a little thick, and needed math tutoring. She'd tried her best not to lord that over them, but Celestia knew, it wasn't easy.
She leaned back on Big Bertha, and thought about the forgery. Was her paranoia running away from her again? There hadn't actually been anything she could point to, that proved her fellows were conspiring against her. At least, not in the last several weeks.
Months, if Trixie was honest with herself. Ever since her transfer back from the flying batteries to the siege gun battalion. Or before, not since the… incident.
Trixie knew better than to think the expression distorting their faces been respect or admiration. She was wiser than that. She knew she hadn't done anything worthy of either, so it must have been contempt and derision, however little it looked like it.
Trixie kept waiting for the other shoe to drop off its last nail, but the clang never came.
She looked at the forgery. This was the clang, wasn't it?
Trixie knew her battalion commander didn't want her, although she was almost certain the chief of artillery didn't even know her name. Some clerk probably had a cast stamp made of the brigadier's hoof.
But the major definitely didn't want her. Everypony knew unicorns were bad luck among the cannon - any and all of them, falcons, howitzers or the big guns. And since they didn't fire the great guns but twice a year - during the Princess's Birthday, and to herald the end of the Summer Sun Celebration - she was the least amount of bad juju here, in the harbor batteries. In between those ceremonial exercises, the siege battalion's job was to polish the big guns, keep them shining and uncorroded by the punishing salt air, and to stay out of trouble.
Trixie had never been good at that last bit. She was under orders to stay out of the dockside bars. On either side of the Blue Line.
Trixie got up off of the great barrel of Big Bertha, and went to report the forgery to her battalion major. She'd get in trouble either way, so might as well follow regulations and get in trouble by the manual.
The orders hadn't been forged. Trixie found herself staring at the hateful aristocratic features of Sparkle. Not that Captain Shield - captain! if you could believe it - would tolerate Trixie calling her by that epithet. But in Trixie's most secret mind, she couldn't help but call her nemesis by that name.
Sparkle.
The mare herself had long since abandoned her noble and aristocratic name, distillation of two hundred years of dedication and brilliance in service to the princess. Thrown it away like it was trash. Took up that ugly, stupid cutie mark as if she'd willed herself to be the perfect, idiot soldier. As if she'd conjured that lie upon her flanks by pure perverse will.
A prank played on destiny by a filly too poisoned with hate and cross-tempered ill-will to be who she clearly ought to have been.
Trixie Lulamoon knew something about lying cutie marks, she could see that falseness in others like a mirror reflecting her own twisted visage at her. Judging her. Knowing what lay beneath the silvered reflection.
"Trixie does not understand in the least why the great Gleaming Shield requires her humble resources. A pony of the illustrious House of Sparkle has no need of an artillery lieutenant. A captain of the guards, even less. What could you possibly want me to help you with, Captain Shield? To load griffons into the great guns and blast them at the harbor approaches like bonemeal grapeshot?"
The griffon sergeant beside Sparkle grimaced in disgust at Trixie's imagery. Sparkle said nothing, just waiting with her hoof on the not-a-forgery orders sitting on the desk in the Duchess's own Quarters. Why was Sparkle occupying the Duchess's Quarters in the garrison? If Trixie had any friends she could exchange gossip with, she might know why Sparkle was here, might have some clue as to why Trixie was here.
Burst barrels, if Trixie had only developed the habit of reading the powder-burned libels, maybe Trixie might know what the draconequus was going on here.
"Captain Shield," Trixie said, trying to not show the outrage on her muzzle. "Lieutenant Trixie Lulamoon of the Third Siege Battalion of the Royal Artillery Regiment, reporting as ordered according to transfer number 344215, this third day of May, year 199 of the Fifth Era of our Celestial Princess."
"Lieutenant Lulamoon, by this transfer, you will be accepting a commission in the Sixth Regiment of Guards. Do you so swear and affirm that this is your free will, uncoerced and acknowledged?"
Trixie tried to not gasp in astonishment. She wasn't being seconded?
"Lieutenant Lulamoon, do you so swear?"
"I- Trixie does so swear and affirm."
"Then by my senior commission in the Sixth Regiment, I acknowledge your acceptance of your new commission in the regiment. Welcome to the Crystal Guards, Lieutenant."
"But- but why?"
"Because I need a battery commander. And you were available. And everypony says you distinguished yourself in the Battle of Gilbert Square."
Trixie found her gorge rising, and fought her own body to keep it from vomiting the morning's breakfast all over that nice, clean desk. Who had Sparkle found to keep her office so spic and span?
"Are you quite alright, Lieutenant Lulamoon?" asked the big griffon, speaking for the first time. "You look sick. Do you need a bucket?"
The fucking Crab Bucket.
Trixie glared at the damnable griffon and her taunts. "Trixie has had enough buckets to last a lifetime, sergeant - what was your name again?"
"That's Gilda, Trixie. Talk to me, not her. You're in my line of command, not hers. So you didn't relish doing your duty? I have a commendation here in your file. And a recommendation for a medal. Marked 'refused'."
The stench of sulfur, and the dull red glow of her falcons through the stinking cloud blowing back in her gunners' faces. Number 3's barrel bursting, her number 2 falcon's rammer gargling out her last drowning wheezes around a ruined throat underhoof as Trixie took up the ram and forced down one last soaked charge before the barrel got so hot that it would flash on contact the screaming behind Trixie's back heralding one more rush by the griff-
Trixie blinked.
"Trixie has no interest in discussing such matters with anypony, ever."
"Not even your own commanding officer?"
"What do you want, Sparkle? Fu-fuck you, and fu-fuck your commission. I'm going to go find a stockade to report myself to, and you can take your stinking guards regiment and shove it up your war-crazed posterior."
Trixie fled the Duchess's Quarters and the present, falling into that terrible, horrible, endless second - that instant when she was turning away from her smoking, steaming falcons, glimpsing for the first time that shattered, smoky stage spread thick with fire and blood - and smelling what she'd made with her cannon and her hard work and the lie burned into her flank.
"Well, that could have gone better, captain ma'am."
"I thought I knew Trixie Lulamoon."
"I could have told you not to do that, just from looking at the file. Battle fatigue case if I've ever seen one."
"Gilda, you've been in the service for a year, stop talking like an old salt!"
"I'm still right." The blue mare's file had contained a draft of the medal citation. Her battery had dealt the majority of the damage to the rebels in Gilbert Square. The graves registry ponies had removed the remains of over a hundred and thirty griffins from in front of Lieutenant Lulamoon's battery's position.
"You didn't help any with that dig about the Bucket."
That's a wound that was festering. "She needed a sharp rap. Better for it to come out here, than in front of the ranks, or worse, outsiders."
"I know, I know, but I thought for sure that mare didn't care about anypony but herself."
"Doesn't take empathy to get hurt. Some things touch you no matter how callous you are." Gilda knew that well enough, herself. And she wasn't a squishy hearted pony.
"Blast. They didn't want to give me anypony else."
"They don't think much of us over in personnel, captain ma'am. All they're going to let us have are broken toys like Lulamoon."
"So you think this is it, this is what we've got to work with?"
"Captain ma'am, we need a great deal more than a cracked battery lieutenant. If we reject her, we won't be getting any other subalterns, not even ensigns for the platoons, not if they decide we're 'picky'."
"OK. So she doesn't want any buckets. I can work with that. What was her deal, what was her deal... damnit, I really didn't pay much attention to her while she was still at the school. Hades, she wasn't even in the academy, she was Gifted Unicorns... oh, right. Showpony family. Kind of a showoff? Smartass."
"Seems to like to refer to herself in the third person. Or is that some sort of psych thing?"
"No, she was always like that. Tartarus, Gilda, there's no point in cheating her into working for us. Let's go track her down before she turns herself into the MPs and demands a nice dank cell in the dungeons."
The cracked unicorn hadn't really gotten that far. They found her two floors down, sniffling in the mare's restroom. Gilda listened as Gleaming Shield tried to therapize her new lieutenant through a toilet-stall door.
"Look, Lulamoon, nopony blames you for what happened. You saved a lot of lives that day. It kind of ended the war."
"Horseapples! I don't pay much attention to things anymore, but I know the war isn't over out there! You can smell the smoke when the wind's in the right quarter!"
"Well, there's some burning and such going on out there, yeah, but it's in the last days. The rebels have lost, the raiders are just burning down all the barns and houses of sympathizers and the like. They're figuring it out. It'll just take them some time."
"It isn't a bomb."
Gilda blinked at the complete non sequitur. She exchanged perplexed glances with her captain.
"Trixie..." Gleaming Shield began, cautiously, "What isn't a bomb?"
"M'cutie mark. Everypony looks at it, says I'm a born grenadier. Or mad bomber. Or genius gunner. It's all Brokeback Mountain oysters. It isn't a bomb."
The powder-blue unicorn's cutie mark was a rounded black device with a flame coming out of a fuse, surrounded by a cloud of grey smoke blending into her blue coat. It couldn't look more like a bomb if it had 'bomb' written on it in twenty-five point type.
"What do you think it is, Trixie?" asked Gilda's unicorn.
"It's a damn stage smoker. A theatrical smoke - well, smoke bomb, but not like that!"
A pause. And just as Gilda started gathering herself to break down the stall door…
"My dad loved them," Lieutenant Lulamoon said. "Used them all the time in his act. Sometimes to escape an enraged mob, but hey, that's show business for you."
"Trixie," Gleaming Shield replied through the stall door, "You graduated from the artillery officer candidate school. Somehow. You became a lieutenant in a reasonable period of time. You would have been a decorated officer of the Royal Artillery if you'd just calm down and let them give you your medals. How can that not be your special talent?"
"I DON'T KNOW! Not everything is special talents! I don't even really understand how I ended up here, Sparkle. I wasn't supposed to be this."
A chill went down Gilda's spine, and she remembered a pink lunatic screaming in a dungeon.
"Should bes and would haves will get us nowhere, Trixie. What do you want to be, today?"
"Want to start over," the hidden mare sniveled, like a fledgeling.
Gilda snorted. Lulamoon should get in line.
"We can't go back, Trixie. You're an officer of Her Royal Majesty's armed forces. Hades, you just reaffirmed it, swore to it, not twenty minutes ago."
"I don't want to kill griffons anymore. I don't want to take my beautiful explosives and break things, ponies, people. It isn't fun. It isn't interesting. 'Life's short, and people are delicate.' That's a stupid truth, and I don't want to tell it."
"What do you mean by that, Trixie?"
"My dad used to say that the world's two things - stories, and truths. Good stories are lies that reveal good truths. Bad stories are lies that hide 'em, or distort 'em, or make ponies think that up is down and down is fire and out is in."
Gilda leaned in to whisper in Gleaming Shield's ear. "Wants to be a storyteller. With explosives. Think we can work with that?"
Gleaming Shield looked at her griffon, and shrugged.
"OK, Trixie," Gilda's unicorn said, smiling slyly, "Let's talk about how to tell good stories with the tools we have to hoof. Would you like to do that?"
The toilet stall's door swung open, and the artillery mare nodded her tear-stained muzzle at Gilda and her captain.
"My name is Turulorszag Hercegnő Gyongyi," said the shaggy looking griffon while her great tame pet monster looked curiously over her shoulder, "but ponies generally call me Lady George for short."
"I'd hate to think what they'd call you for long," laughed Lyra, trying to concentrate on the boring griffon, and not insult her by staring at the beast behind her. It wasn't often that you came across a Greater Roc.
And lived to tell about it.
"There's a list of titles as long as your left foreleg. Not as long as mine, or the list of titles belonging to your own princess, or so I'm told," the forgettable griffon said.
What was that they had strapped to the greater roc's head? Lyra wished she could look up at it and get a better look. Or even better, climb up that ladder over there and see if she could get a clean view of the great bird's wing-feathers. She'd heard that there were a good many 'roc's feathers' that had flooded the collector's market in the last year and a half.
None with any provenance to speak of, of course, which made them worthless for Lyra's studies, blast it all.
"I'm sorry, what, I was too busy staring at your roc. What did you do to get it so tame? I've never even laid eyes on a living Greater Roc! Let alone one that wasn't trying to eat everything on four hooves it could see!"
"Lyra Heartstrings!" yelled that stick in the mud from school wearing Lyra's old friend like a cape. "You know very well why you're here!"
"I do? Really? Have you ever met me, Twilight? When have I ever known what I was doing?"
"Lyra! Concentrate! Princess Celestia shipped you halfway across Equestria to help us with this problem. Can't you remember what you're about for five minutes?"
"To Human Hell with that, Twilight, I can't be bothered to fuss about what I'm supposed to be doing! There's a Greater Roc looking right at me! And I'm not seeing it from within its closing jaws! Not that I'd object to examining the anatomy of a Greater Roc from inside the gastro-intestinal tract - again! - but I suppose the acid and the chewing and the dying might be a bit of a downer."
"What! Why! How?" babbled Twilight Sparkle, the silly filly.
"Three very good questions," grumbled the other griffon from behind Lyra's sort-of-friend from school. This griffon was less boring than the one with the fascinating pet. Big specimen, clearly royal plumage.
That reminded Lyra.
"Oh, right, some sort of crypto-zoologic problem with princessly overtones, right? Is this about the griffish royal behind you? She looks young, I'm gonna presume some sort of heir from one of the lesser principates, or maybe a condado? Hey, there, cutie, what's your name?"
"Sergeant Gilda, you daft cu-"
"Gilda! Let me deal with Lyra. Sorry, Lady George, let me try again with Lyra. Give me a moment, and maybe I'll get that spell to stick on her this time… come on, Lyra. Let me fix you."
"Damnit, Twilight, you know I don't take 'fixes'."
"I know you claim you don't, Lyra, but - could you at least stop calling me by that name? Please? I haven't been Twilight Sparkle in nearly ten years!"
"Ugh. If you insist. It was always so damn morbid of you, 'Gleaming'. Like wearing the poor colt's mane-hair in a locket, or worse, something bigger." Would a winkie fit in a locket? Maybe more of a reliquary, like the old saints of Harmony. Lyra had once seen a mummified hoof that the Order of Order had claimed was Smart Cookie's rear left pronker…
"Lyra!" Gleaming Shield whined in embarrassment.
There was Lyra's old friend. Lyra almost paused in respect for that moment of real emotion, but screw that. "There you are! Come on, now, stop hiding behind that pose. Shiny would never have stood for it, you know!"
"Damn it, Lyra. Even Cadance doesn't call him that anymore."
"Well, you know I never did think she was good enough for him. I was going to marry him when I grew up! But no, he had to go mooning around after that big soggy pink blanket. She would have made him miserable."
"Lyra, you're the biggest fillyfooler I know."
"Eh, we could have made it work. He always had that twink thing going for him. I betcha I could have got him to dress up in a skirt and a saddle, and let me-"
"LYRA HEARTSTRINGS, YOU SHUT YOUR FILTHY MOUTH ABOUT MY BIG BROTHER!"
"Ha! Knew I could get you to take that stick out of your ass, even if it was only to beat me like a pinata with it."
Oh, hey, that wasn't a Greater Roc. If Lyra wasn't mistaken… "Is that a True Turul wearing a coronet?"
"What? How? Why?"
"Three very silly questions, Twilight. Your blasted counter-curse scrambled my brains. It just wore off. I told you I have an idiosyncratic reaction to curses. Your silly fix nearly knocked my sweetmeats out of my skull. Huh. Huh. Look at that."
Lyra spun on her hooves and looked around the room for the now-missing dull-blue griffon. Nope, just the one juvenile royal.
"Hey, you up there! Are you the Hercegnő Gyongyi that just introduced yourself to my dumb flank about ten minutes ago?"
"Why yes, Magus Heartstrings. Thank you for catching up to the conversation at last."
"Ha! That's great. Twilight, the princess said she was smart, but she didn't say that she had a sense of humor! However has she put up with you for this long?"
"The winds only know," snarked the other royal in the room.
"Hey!" yelled Lyra. "Only I'm allowed to make fun of Gleaming Shield! Step off, you blasted predatory hidalgo! And why are you in that preposterous outfit. Wait."
Lyra spun again, staring at her friend. "Twi- Gleaming Shield! What are you doing in that historical reconstruction! Did you invite me to a costume ball again and not tell me I had to get dressed up?"
Twilight Sp- no, Gleaming Shield closed her eyes and visibly if silently counted to ten. "No, Lyra. This is not cosplay. The princesses - well, princess, now - commissioned me in a really, really old guards regiment. This is, I'm pretty sure, the appropriate garb for a Crystal Guardsmare."
"Cool, cool. Wow, look at it glitter," Lyra said as she trotted around her friend, staring at the shiny cloth. "How did the clothier get that gemlike look to it? Oh, geez, I just made the connection - they literally turned you into a 'Gleaming' Shield. Hahahaha! That's amazing!"
"Lyra! Pay attention. And stop yelling at Gilda. She's not a hidalgo, she's from Griffonstone. I guess that royal bastards are as common as rubble in the streets there?" Gleaming Shield looked at the supposed Griffonstonian for confirmation.
"More or less, captain ma'am. Magus Heartstrings, good to meet you-"
"Oh, don't bother with that. I'm not really a doctor yet. Well, they keep telling me to go over to the academy and defend my dissertation, and it'll just be a formality, but those dotty old shelf-rags won't let me submit my real dissertation, so bugger them with a length of chalk. They want one of my boring, lesser compositions. Won't let me submit The Bipedal Ape In Central Marezonian Iconography. As if it wasn't my very best work!"
"Maguses aren't just academics-"
"Yeah, but they mostly are. And really, the thaumic part of the job is foal's play when you literally can't be cursed." Lyra paused, and reconsidered. "Except apparently by you. What's up with that, Shield? Yeah, Shield. That trips off the tongue better than 'Gleaming'. Especially with the way you're just gleaming, standing there. Seriously, don't you have an undress uniform that won't make my eyes water?"
"Our fashionista is working on it," Gleaming Shield said, defensively.
"A fashionista, really? I know you Sparkles are made of bits, but damn, filly, you're really laying it out. Wait, Crystal Guard. I've never heard of that. But I've heard something like that. Where'd I hear of that?"
"It's some lost city-state in the Frozen North. Disappeared-"
"Eleven hundred years ago! The Sombrean Domination! Damn, yeah, I remember that! There was speculation that Cadenza was somehow a harbinger of that old story, you know? That broken crystal heart on her hips."
"That was always an ugly rumor, Lyra. You know her cutie mark was a source of pain to poor Cadance."
"Twi-Shield, everything is a source of pain to that mare. She walks through a world with razor-blades sticking out of all the furniture and the fixtures. I know you like her, but I got tired of her routine a long, long time ago."
"That mare, as you call her, is now the Duchess of Trottingham, and the garrison you're standing in, Magus Heartstrings," said the griffon in the sergeant's stripes.
"Hrm. No ma'am for me?" Lyra asked, slyly.
"No, Magus Heartstrings."
"Gilda! Behave. I think she doesn't approve of you, Lyra. Come on, let's talk about this. You've broken through the curse, that means you'll be useful. You'll be coming with us?"
"Oh, I don't know, depends on where you end up going. Will it be somewhere dangerous and full of strange and unusual characters and critters trying to kill me?"
"Almost certainly, yes," said Gleaming Shield.
"Excellent! Count me in!"
Hurricane Heartstrings blew out of Lady George's stable like she blew into it, whirling and setting everything at cross-purposes from what and where it ought to have been. Gilda looked up at the bemused turul, picking at her coronet, then she looked down at her exhausted unicorn.
"Captain, ma'am, are you sure we need her?" Gilda asked, softly.
"Yeah, yeah, I think it'll be for the best."
"Captain, ma'am, she's the antithesis of military discipline."
"As if you're some paragon, Gilda! You've gotten very stuffy since I gave you that sergeancy."
"I'm not sure 'sergeancy' is a word, captain ma'am. And I've always been a bit stuffy, you just haven't noticed until now. But this mare - she seems to delight in setting your back up."
"And you think she's stealing your thunder?"
"I think she's at least three of the winds in a bag, captain ma'am."
"I… don't think I know what that means. I should probably look into griffish theology at some point, shouldn't I?"
"I wouldn't bother, captain ma'am. It's mostly about familial murder, silly babble about winds and elements and debts. Aside from the business on the subject of debts, none of it is good for much of anything, except a useful vocabulary when it comes to cursing things. A great wealth of curses, griffish theology."
"What were we talking about?"
"Crazed academics shipping out with a military expedition to put a cursed foreign princess on a foreign throne."
"Nest," interjected Lady George. "We don't have a throne, we have a nest. Big, messy thing, the Great Nest."
The big turul sighed, sinking on her haunches into a brooding posture. "I'm not sure if this won't all be for naught. We're so very late in the year. I had no idea how long it would take to put all this together back when I agreed to the delay last winter."
"It's debatable how much of an expedition we might have gotten together with Princess Cadance's direct aid," Gilda said, defensively. It had been Gilda's objections that had put a period on that abortive run towards a slap-dash charge into Bugbear Territory.
"Don't get me wrong, Gilda. You were right at the time, and you're right now. It would have wrecked the Duchess's relationship with her 'aunt', and bought me no favors in Canterlot. And odds are I would have been torn to pieces by angry guards, if we ran into my brother instead of, what, five or six singleton subjects hunting the fjords and the taiga. If we were lucky."
"So instead, we're looking at a dead run eastwards with a single squadron of undertrained guards, and a retrofitted 'carrier' on its first flight," Gilda said, bitterly. She wasn't feeling great about how slowly everything seemed to be moving. Somehow, it had felt faster when she hadn't been responsible for any of it, last time.
But then, she had been the only green trooper involved in all the great movements and hard-charging all-birds-full-ahead actions. Somehow, it was different when the barely-fledged birds were depending on you, rather than vice versa.
"As I understand the problem, we have to make a show this year, though," Gleaming Shield said suddenly. "Even if we don't do anything other than get chased out of Turulian airspace. Turulorszogian? What's the right adjective, L-Prinzesin G-Gyorgyi?"
"Hercegnő Gyongyi, Captain Shield. Or Gyongyike if you're being affectionate. Or, just call me George like every other bird in this foolish archipelago does."
"Gyongyike? It sounds like it means something."
"Little Pearl, in Equish," George admitted, blushing. "You can see why I went with George instead."
"Why? It's beautiful!" Gleaming Shield exclaimed.
Gilda rolled her eyes at the two crab rolls being innocent and silly at each other. "All that put aside, captain ma'am, Lady George ma'am, why is it important to get our tailfeathers singed off?"
"Because," said Lady George, slowly and sadly like a mother to her retarded child, "When my confused, horrible brother gets up off of the Great Nest and sits brooding on the real nests, the eggs that hatch won't hatch healthy turuls, but screeching monsters thirsting for sapient blood. And if I don't make a visible effort to keep that from happening - even if I fail horribly, even if they simply drive me off with a few tail feathers lost in the attempt - well, that's better than just letting big brother Mátyás's illusions that he should have been born Márta carry all of those turul souls off into roc-borne Pokol."
"They need to see the attempt," Gleaming Shield said, grimly.
"Even if I lose badly, yes. But I'd prefer not to die in the attempt, young Gilda. Captain Shield."
Gilda looked up at the great bird.
"We'll do our best, Gyongyike," the griffon promised.
"I'm dead sorry you missed Cid. Again. We owe the captain and Lady George more'n you'd know, but there's more business come in sudden-like than we can deal wif, y'know?" The griffon was a substantial bird, not fat, precisely, but solid in the gut. Older, too. "Cid and the others, they think they know what went wrong with th' Duchess Cadance's first few trials. T'last flight, wern't 'ardly any beakin' problems 'tall. Now everybird wants one. On order."
"Shame, that," Purse Strings said, looking over at the beautiful cruiser, crawling with a swarm of griffons and ponies and lit up with the dazzling sparkle of power tools in operation. "I got the impression the bossfolk wanted to ship out on the Duchess or something like her."
"Oh, yeah, Captain Shield's concept drawings! Fascinating project. Nothing like what we've been working on, ov course. Bigger than what the powerplant can supply. Cid says maybe two plants in tandem? But us, we barely have the current plant driving the train without crossgraining. Two in tandem! A project, a project it'll be. So! We'll be retrofitting this 'ulk you're bringin' in?"
"The' Daddy Longlegs ain't a hulk! Nor a nag, neither. She's a good long hauler! Better than the lug they hired me off of, leastways..." Purse tailed off, not sure how to get it across. "This here is the beauty I told the bossfolk would do. It will do, Grov, won't it? She's a bit shaggy in the stays and the paint ain't the best, but Daddy's got good bones!"
"Well, we'll see. Your ship master's bringing 'er into slip #3 over by the new building. Come on, let's go."
The two passed out of sight of the kicked-over bee-hive which was the main production floor of the Tenpenny Collective Cooperative, picking over the details of the crash retrofitting project that Purse Strings' new employers had somehow talked these busy griffons into. It felt rushed and overlarge in its demands, but the machinist didn't seem cowed.
Purse Strings was a bit worried. Some of the refittings were pretty ambitious, especially the gig hangar conversions, which felt like half of a good idea. The schedule had it written out in red, in the captain's fussy, copperplate horn-script: Deadline, June 1st. Zero leeway for slippage. On every page. And there were so, so many pages. There were two remaining copies in Purse Strings' saddlebags; he had delivered two others to Grov and his assistant.
So much to do, so little time…
As they came out into the sun, Purse blinked twice, as the bright May sky was almost immediately eclipsed by a vast, dull yellow cloud floating overhead.
Right on time.
"What I don't get," Master Machinist Grov said, looking up at the troop carrier, "Is why a ship callin' 'erself th' Daddy Longlegs 'ad to be canary yaller. Ain't daddy longlegs brownish?"
They were grey in Hocklyn. "What can I say? The last captain liked her yellow. Maybe a bit too much, y'know? Meant we got the Daddy cheap. And she's already rigged for troop carrying! Almost no internal refitting at all!"
"Aside from all the yaller?"
"Ah, well. It'll take time to repaint, and stink up the holds for Celestia knows how long." Not to mention Purse had had enough repainting troopships to last a lifetime. "Paint fumes, you know? Maybe they'll put the new recruits to scrapin'. She's older than she could have been, there should be some better base colors under all of that canary."
"'Ow long you say this yaller-obsessed captain 'ad her?"
"Uh, I think since they put her on the Baltimare-Trottingham run? So, eight years? But she was purpose built as a troop hauler. She's only nine years old. Younger than my old billet…"
"Yeah, so she 'ad 'er since she was laid down, or close as can be, leastwise. You haint gonna find anyfing under there but more yaller."
Purse Strings felt his ears sag at the prospect. The damn griffon laughed at him, as the big yellow hauler settled down into the external docks that laid on the far side of the big loose-seamed building on the north side of the property.
Purse had the impression that the building had been retrofitted from some sort of mass-production fabric plant, but when they'd ducked through earlier, whatever equipment was in there had been ripped out, and replaced by a lot of block and tackle, and the north wall of the facility had been crudely cut out, so that most of a ship could fit inside where the elements couldn't get at the workers.
Purse found himself staring at the peculiar apparatus hung far overhead. Beyond it, the tiny figure of the dockmaster could be seen coaxing an even tinier ship-master at the wheel of the big ship, encouraging her to push the envelope into the spiders-web of rope and planks and assorted delicate-looking ephemera dangling far overhead off of gantries.
"I don't get what that all is about, though," Purse said to the master machinist. "Usually when they put a ship in for refitting, they deflate the envelope or even replace it."
"Pshaw! As if we could do that, and not add a week to the refit! Yon mare in a 'urry, yer boss, says no slippage, so we're not slippin'. And Cid & the Stingin' Needle says they want to test out the envelope enhancement appyratus, so's we're testin' it out. On you-all."
"It looks like a crib mobile!"
"Kinda, don't it? Trust me, my stallion, she'll be faster than anyfing else in the air when they're done wif the enhancement appyratus!"
"I hope not, we're supposed to be getting a bunch of hot-stuff flyers to base off of ol' Daddy."
"Yew know wot I mean, Strings! Fastest thing 'er size! Or even a little smaller'n 'er! Ships and birds, we're two different beasts, we are. The day I can build a ship can outrun a racin' pegasus, is the day I declare myself king of the Pennies, and build myself a big castle right on th' corner of Guillaume and Flotilla, fer all to see!
"So, let's look at these gun decks you wanna rip out for gig 'angars…"
Ping was hiding from the other batponies.
Well, technically he was withers deep in work, and getting things done. But he didn't need to be here, watching the new quartermaster quarrelling with the civilian ship master they'd hired. Purse Strings was technically a civilian, too, but he had the look of a lifer to him. Ping had seen enough of the service to know a pony who'd taken the bit and run with it. Purse Strings had the bit between his teeth, and he was bunching like he was about to run.
And that's the thing about ponies who took the bit. They ran towards things, not away. The new pony was tall - ish. And gangly. And kinda ugly, even by day-pony standards.
But Ping knew the look.
"Look, you nag, I don' wanna hear about it. You have your money, and you have your contract, and ifn you don't want to fulfil your bits-damned contract, you won't have your bits, you savvy? I know this business, I can find the bossfolk a new ship's master almost anywhere."
"But! But my gundeck!~"
"What is it with captains and ship's masters and gun decks? Ain't none of the civvy ships ever fire off those heavy pop-guns in a proper broadside, and we'll be keeping the chasers and the swivels like we talked about. The bossfolk need this space for the hangers, Tailwind."
"It ain't a real warship without a gundeck!"
"It weren't a real warship to begin with, ya daft twat. You were a troopship! You hauled ponies for the princess on a civvie contract! Tartarus, at least my ship had a damned gunner's mate, you didn't even have that! Just the blasted guns!"
"I liked polishing them!"
"You were supposed to be helming your damn ship! Who ever heard of a ship's master with a fetish for carronades?"
"So shiny…."
"Ugh, she's going to be hopeless. Tailwind! Go moon over the chasers, I gots to talk to my colt Pings here."
The pegasus ship's master wobbled off astern somewhere, as the shipyard griffons boiled around them like a tide of industry. The master machinist sighed as he saw the little comedy skit break up, and rejoined the conversation.
"Oi can get you top bits for the scrapped guns, Strings, Corporal Pings," the griffon said.
"It's either Ping, or Two Pings," Ping corrected him. "And ordnance will be coming to take the broadside. It's against regulation to release properly registered heavy weaponry into civilian care, let alone in a technical warzone like Trottingham."
"Oh, heh. I didn't think about that'un," the griffon said, looking rueful.
Like hay he hadn't.
"So, no Sergeant Gilda or the rest of the bossfolk today?" asked Purse Strings, looking around hopefully.
"No, just me and the ship," Ping said, straight-faced.
"I saw you with the bosses yesterday. Two Pings, right? Why just 'Ping'?"
"I prefer Ping, actually."
"I heard those other dragon-eyed ponies calling you th' other thing."
"Yes, well. It technically is my name. I just don't like it."
"Yeah? This is Equestria, you can call yourself anything you want. Just go down to the hall and re-register."
"If you haven't noticed, Mr. Strings, you and I live in different worlds. You live in Equestria. Even though we're in the Griffish Isles. You carry your world around you as if it's hidden in your saddlebags. You could be in a Wasteland bog, or a freezing slope somewhere north of the altiplano, and you'd still be neck deep in Equestria."
"Yeah? So? Ain't that true for you, too? Last time I checked, batponies is still ponies."
"What you don't understand, Mr. Strings, is that I am a pony in Her Majesty's military service. We serve the realm, we aren't part of it." Moon and stars, listen to me. I sound like the uncles. "We keep our names, and those names are what we wrote down on our enlistment papers."
"Except yours is Two Pings?"
"Yes," Ping said, failing to keep the ice out of his words.
"You seem confused, Two Pings," the civilian observed, a devilish look in his slightly off-kilter eyes.
"It's a confusing world, Mr. Strings, can we talk about the refit now?"
"Hey, I'm easy. So, I'm thinking 'expanding the gangways', and that 'gundeck to hangars' refit, you with me?"
"The project is already planned, Mr. Strings," Ping observed.
"Yeah, but between the specs and the ship is many a slip, y'know?"
Yes, Ping was very aware of that. But he'd seen the ship in his dreams. He knew exactly how it was going to come out.
I don't need to be here. Ping was suppressing his irritation, when the day pegasus who'd come along with the ship came stumbling back into the conversation three-hooved with a crude schematic shakily drawn out in an uncertain mouth-script.
"Please, sirs, just look at this. I can get you your hangars, without mutilating my gundecks. It'll even work ten times better! Your designs for these flying gun-gigs will be nasty, and cramped, and they'll get no airspeed to speak of out of the hangars the way you have 'em cramped out and up on the sides where the gun decks'd be torn out of the frame."
Ping glanced at the crude drawings of the mare's beloved ship, gundecks intact, and the fore hold hatches replaced by honeycomb-shaped patchwork, from which two little bee-like chariots were falling downwards. Bees, or hornets?
Ping's dream-memory of the finished airship wavered in his minds-eye, and he felt the quiver of change. What had she done? He looked closer at the ship master and her drawings.
Tailwind wasn't exactly a big mare, but she had some meat to her, and now that Ping looked past the day-pegasus flightiness, maybe more substance than he'd thought at first. He looked closer at her crude sketches, which had replaced the fore cargo hatches with segmented drop-doors, two on each side for the four planned gigs of the flying battery, and two more for the 'officers' gigs' that wouldn't have fit in the current plans for tearing out the gun decks.
Ping exchanged an astounded look with Purse Strings and the machinist, Grov. "How," asked the purser, "did nopony else see that? They just drop right out, like shit out of a chicken. That's…"
"Beautiful!" said the entranced Grov, looking at the gun-mad ship's mate with new eyes. "That's bloody brilliant. It eats up yer entire fore 'old 'atchframes, but then, you were plannin' on makin' that permanent livin' quarters anyhoo. And puttin' the gigs to th' fore gives you yer balance for the extra weight of th' retained guns an' gundeck!"
"The whole'll be an extra couple tons, won't it?" worried Purse Strings.
"Nah, those 'old 'atches are over-engineered to a fare thee well, 'eavy as 'ades, ta keep 'em from springin' free in flight. The 'atches we'd be replacin' would be 'eavier than this mechanism. Although I'm not sure if I got anyfing I can - nah, we can repurpose th' springs 'ere an 'ere, steal a couple more from the supplies we 'ave on 'oof, I knows a mare wot got a supply up on Eight Penny, can make that 'appen easy enough…"
They spent the rest of the afternoon tearing apart the ship master's crude drawings as Grov freehanded professional-looking schematics based on Ping's captain's meticulous plans and the new idea, Purse Strings arguing back and forth with the guild griffon over cost over-runs and 'the cost of bloody brilliant ideas'.
Ping forgot entirely about prophecies, and expectations, and the others. It was fun just watching a great idea come together.
"So," Purse Strings said afterwards, as they walked back to the office in the garrison. "That was a ball. It's always nice having a deep bag of bits to make things happen, and not have to cheat every pony I lay eyes on."
"Hmm," sang the little batpony in that two-tone way the thestrals had when they were in a good mood. "The captain will have kittens when she sees what we did to her perfect plans."
"She'll get over it when she sees the drawings for those new hangar doors. And be kicking herself she didn't think of it herself."
"In my experience, officers aren't particularly enamored of clever ideas that waste their time, that they didn't think of first."
"Don't be an ass, Ping," Purse said, smirking. He was almost certain he'd gotten Ping pegged. Well, not that he'd peg the little cutie. He wasn't actually into colts. Even cute little ones with their tails flaggin' and the widest eyes… Damn, I gotta get laid. Damn near anything is gettin' me goin' here.
Purse cleared his throat. "I think I got the measure of the new boss. She'll love the idea more than the hassle. And we'll make our deadlines, wait and see. Ponies work harder when they're being clever. This is clever."
"We'll have to all be on our hooves. Speaking of which, why are you following me, Mr. Strings?" The batpony was snarking at him, but hadn't taken wing yet to get away. "Don't you have places to be?" Was he actually flirting back?
"Colt, I got all the places to be, but why not pass the time with new friends?"
And that made the little pony's eyes widen in mild alarm.
Mebbe dial it back a tick.
"An-anyways, you know Captain Shield'll want her report in triplicate. Especially when we spring something like this on her."
"I am the captain's clerk. I can take care of that for you. I have my notes right here," Two Pings said, pointing at his head with a forehoof. "No need to clutter up the office with your presence, Mr. Strings,"
Hmm. Not actually trying to keep me with him, but isn't taking to his wings or hurrying back to the office. I wonder…
"Corporal Ping… are you trying to avoid somepony?"
"What? No! Of course not!"
"Then you just enjoy my company!" Purse Strings leered at the little cutie.
"Gah!" the bat pony grabbed his copy of the revised design documents, and shoved them into his own saddlebags. "Good day, Mr. Strings!"
And with that, Corporal Two Pings took to the air, leaving Purse to amble along by himself down the boulevard, the fizzle of new ideas and new possibilities bubbling in his head.
There was a mountain of requisitions in the left side of his panniers weighing him down, and three different appointments with suppliers, at least two of which he just remembered he was late for.
Damnit, I'd forget my own cock if it weren't stapled to my balls. Time to stop thinking with either of them!
Purse Strings ran off into the Trottish crowds, busier than he ever had hopes for, whistling a jaunty tune that might have sounded innocent if you didn't know the foul and obscene lyrics that usually accompanied it when sung aloud.
Two Workshops, Several Minions, and An Unintended Consequence
Trixie slowly withdrew the rifling bore caliper, watching the test coil as it passed around the measurement card. She wasn't positive it was as revolutionarily effective as the patent-manufacturer that made it claimed, but it gave a reasonably good baseline as to the quality of the rifling on used barrels.
Trixie's breath came in and out, smoothly, evenly as she engaged in the meditation known as 'focused work'.
And, though she was aware of the prickly gaze of the observing ordnance sergeant and Trixie's guards picking at the back of Trixie's neck, she was more concerned with the simple matter at hoof. And that this was not the most virgin of light cannon barrels.
The falcon's barrel was passing her assessment, but only barely, and only according to the tools she had to hoof. It was clean, at least, Trixie noted to herself as she took the tool entirely out of the falcon's muzzle. There was no blacking on the toothing or the surface of the caliper.
There was a slight sound of raised voices in the front office beyond the armory workshop's half-closed heavy doors, designed to be barred and barricaded in case of mutiny in the fortress proper.
Trixie bent over and grabbed the magnifying rig with her horn-glow, and peered down the barrel, lighting up her horn brightly so that she could see down the length of it, and look for the tell-tale glint of coppering.
Nothing. Nothing but Trixie's new commander's command sergeant screeching something irrelevant at the ordnance mucky-mucks. Nothing Trixie needed to concerned about.
Trixie was concerning herself with this gun in miniature, this falcon. Somepony had loved this gun not wisely, but too well. They must have run their wire-wool brush through it twice a week, and three times on Sundays. Not even all that much in the way of pitting. Better than the other five they'd let her evaluate. It would do, Trixie thought. Well enough.
And the third falcon's barrel, and the second one's as well. She'd have to rebore the second one sometime soon, though, if she had time, and the tools. One or two ordnance rankers were looking over her shoulder and muttering their own evaluation of the trash their superiors had given Trixie permission to evaluate and claim for her new battery. Well sort of, that was what the griffish guards sergeant was arguing about with these ponies' superiors, Trixie thought. The rank and file in the armory didn't hate Trixie the way the rest of the corps of artillery did, but she knew she always had to be careful of their measured eyes. The rankers were always, always jealous of their toolboxes and armory work-space.
Trixie sometimes thought they'd had her transferred out to the harbor batteries to keep her from monopolizing the midnight armory workbenches, messing with their tools, and burning the midnight oil. Then she conquered her irrational paranoia and remembered they were just rankers. It was the other officers that hated Trixie.
She was pretty sure that falcon #3 had been one of her project guns back in the first week of January, although Trixie had to admit that she'd been drinking heavily in January, and sometimes wasn't quite paying attention to which particular weapon she'd fussed with last.
Trixie marked falcon #5 on her paperwork, and marked it above the trunnion, boldly, with a piece of blue chalk, Trixie's. Then she looked up at her guards, and gestured for them to add the barrel to the stack on their heavy haulage cart. The earth pony looked bored. The small hen with feathers like a blue jay that had been buddy-buddy with the big brown and grey griffon sergeant hadn't taken her eyes off of Trixie yet.
Trixie wasn't sure what she thought about having a griffon audience again. But at least it wasn't a particularly flamboyant performance planned for today.
It took three more barrels before Trixie found the fourth falcon for the battery. The exhausted ordnance sergeant was more than happy to have some of his ponies bundle it into the cart that the guards sergeant and her 'ponies' had brought for Trixie, so long as the 'Crystal Guards' ceased to darken his door, which he could finally bolt and lock for the night.
Trixie was mildly surprised when a pair of the armory's minions threw their toolboxes into a second cart that had come, as far as Trixie could tell, out of nowhere, and joined the guards delegation and their cart full of heavy falcon barrels on their trip back to the guards squadron's warrens in the main garrison across town.
Apparently Trixie wasn't welcome in the fortress armory's workshops anymore? She wasn't clear on what had happened in that front office. But the two ordnance ponies were coming with them, and the ordnance ponies' toolboxes.
It was OK, Trixie could find her own workspace, so long as she had the tools.
And maybe a minion or two.
Even the excitement of meeting a living legend faded after the third day of meetings, and it was surprising how much sleep greater turuls required. Lyra got bored while she was waiting for 'Lady George' to awaken, and decided to go explore. Some inquiries revealed a former acquaintance other than Twi- Gleaming Shield in the garrison fortress, and she went looking to find good old Trixie.
Lyra found the artillerymare in the sub-basements. The Sixth Guards had taken over an industrial laundry in the guts of the garrison, the big boiling-cauldrons sitting unused, the long benches covered in bits of tack and carefully arranged tools, pots of unidentifiable substances, and here and there, small cannon resting in improvised cradles, supported by their barrels and cast trunnions.
There was some activity in the darker corners, additional tables and movement, but the spectacle of a full grown mare bouncing up and down on a light carriage, like a foal jumping on her mother's big princess-sized bed, riveted Lyra's attention. Two troopers held either side of the carriage, one in the traces, the other grasping the rear handles like somepony pulling tug-of-war.
Lyra waited by the steps down into the laundry floor, for somepony to notice her presence. The blue artillerymare climbed down off her bouncy carriage, and pointed something out to the panting stallion holding the back of the rig. Lyra's hearing was good enough for a unicorn, but she couldn't make out whatever vehicular wisdom Lieutenant Trixie Lulumoon was imparting to her trooper. They got the hen in the traces untied, and pushed the carriage over to join its twin beside the rear boiling cauldron at the back of the laundry.
Meanwhile, ponies in Lyra's peripheral vision did various industrious-like tasks that frankly didn't interest Lyra at all.
Finally! Trixie was walking up the stairs, and discovering Lyra blocking her way.
"You! I know you!" said Lyra, smirking down at her ex-classmate. "I never forget a muzzle. Wait a minute, the name will come back to me..."
"Buck you, Lyra Heartstrings. Why are you polluting my workshop? I've got falcons to recondition, materials to prepare, carriages to evaluate, and far, far too many other things to take up our valuable time. That aren't dealing with useless unicorns."
"What, no complaints about how I clearly remember your face, but I can't for the life of me remember your thoroughly unmemorable name? No wailing about the fame of a certain great and powerful dropout?"
The blue mare looked up at Lyra, dead-eyed and bored.
"Bug off, Lyra, I'm busy."
"OK, now I see why Twilight is worried about you, this isn't natural. Can you say your name for me, Trixie? Blink twice if you're not under a spell."
"Private Glenda, please go up there and remove that civilian from the stairs. She's clearly gotten past the guardpost up on the main floor. Blessed Bob Tail only knows how."
Lyra backed up hastily as the small, hard-bitten griffon hen loomed rapidly up the concrete steps with blood in her eye. The blue griffon's lack of bulk was somehow made up by her air of compact menace. Lyra wasn't sure what exactly might have happened at that point, because a series of sharp raps came from the freight elevator doors across the front of the laundry at that moment, sparing her from the wrath of Trixie's underling.
Said blue mare rolled her eyes, and trotted over to the freight elevator, pulling the lever that canterleaved the heavy wooden barrier on its counterweights and gearwork.
An earth pony in his own set of traces pulled a delivery cart out of the elevator onto the laundry room floor, and hoofed over his bill of lading to the artillery lieutenant.
"Don't think this is over, Lyra!" she yelled over her shoulder. "OK, what is this? We're getting a lot of deliveries this week… oh! My smoke bomb and pyrotechnic materials! Great! Hey, Tinker, Totem, leave off on the springs and those rigs, I could use your help down here, let's get this unloaded."
Lyra gestured towards the distracted officer, and the griffon silently rolled her eyes and turned around to join in on the unloading. She didn't even flatten Lyra when Lyra followed her down the stairs.
"Good, good," Trixie muttered to herself as she looked over the sheath of paperwork, the deliverypony waited impatiently and her swarm of subordinates unloaded various small crates, racks of ampules, and pots. "Be careful with that stuff, some of it is volatile, and some of it is highly poisonous. Don't use your mouths on any of it!"
"Wait, you, deliverypony!" Trixie suddenly said, straightening up. Lyra drifted over to read over her ex-classmate's shoulder, curious.
"My name's not deliverypony, it's Bu-"
"I really couldn't care less, minion. What I care about is that somehow this paperwork indicates that my potassium nitrate has been replaced by white phosphorus. It's got to be an error, nopony would be so-"
The two work-ponies carrying white sacks off the cart froze, and one of them slowly lowered his burden to the laundry room floor and reached over to grab the griffon hen, shaking his head at her to stop.
"Yeah, it's white phosphorus. They said you made a mistake, updated the paperwork properly. Smoke munitions in the EUP are made from white phosphorus. Why do you think I have this placard here?" The deliverypony pointed at a diamond-shaped device mounted on the back of his cart, with numbers way too high for Lyra's vague understanding of how the hazardous handling classification scheme worked these days. They'd just updated the system… there'd been some sort of memo at the Academy just before she'd left for this trip.
Well, at least the quadrant for 'magical hazard' had been left blank…
"No, by all that's holy in the sight of Blessed Bob Tail! Get this shit out of here! You brought WILLY PETE into my workshop! Are you mad, deliverypony?"
"I told you, my name is Bu-"
"Your name is going to be 'Burn Ward, 3rd Degree Section, No Direct Sunlight!' White phosphorus is frickin' dangerous! Where's your ridealong? You were supposed to have a ridealong for this class of material!"
"Oh, horseapples, this is the Griffish Isles, the rules are-"
"The rules are in place for a reason! And I will not work with white phosphorus! 'Willy Pete sticks to foals'," Trixie raged. " I ordered potassium nitrate for a reason, you hopeless foal! POTASSIUM!"
The two earth pony minions had settled into wait-and-see poses, watching the interaction with still faces. The griffon hen had joined them in their little row, see no evil, hear no evil, wait for orders to murder the evil.
Off to the side, the bat pony had been looking confused at a ten-kilogram white sack in his hooves, but that confusion was slowly being replaced with an ashen expression that sat strangely on his dark lavender coat, and he finally set his burden gently down.
Very gently.
"Well, we've mostly got it unloaded, don't we, Lieutenant Doesn't Want To Know My Name. And I was ordered to deliver this shit, not return it." He went to the back of the cart, and unloaded the last sack of white phosphorus. "There, all off the cart. The rest of this is mostly harmless, or at least, that's what the warehouse pony said. If your ponies want to reload it all, and take their lives in their own hooves by taking it all back to the warehouse themselves, well, that's between you and your privates, lieutenant."
The evil earth pony grinned an evil grin at Lyra's former classmate, continuing after a beat, "But if you do that, I'll report my rig stolen, and you can answer to the MPs. Princess knows, there's enough hijacking in this city that they'll certainly believe me before they do you. Ain't that many Equestrian cits hauling military dry goods in Bleeding Trottingham, now, are there?"
Trixie Lulumoon slumped, defeated. She let the evil deliverypony finish making his deliveries, the triumphant pony left, his tail flagging proudly in the air to advertise his cast-iron balls to the world.
Lyra found herself almost sympathizing with a mare she mostly remembered hating in school.
"What does a mare need to do to make a safe smoke round in this army?" Trixie mourned, looking back and forth between the deadly pile of white sacks and her minions. One of the two earth ponies shrugged noncommittally.
"What's so bad about it, Trixie?" Lyra asked, honestly curious at this point. What Lyra didn't know about chemistry could fill… well, chemistry textbooks. "After all, if the Princess's military is willing to use it for something as harmless as smoke rounds…"
"Poisonous fumes," Trixie began from her slump over by the now-closed door into the delivery docks. "Obscenely flammable. As I said before, sticks to pony flesh. Or griffon flesh. Or just about anything. Incredibly difficult to extinguish once it starts going. Ask around. It's nightmarish. Blessed Bob Tail's Incendiary Urination, I have nightmares about the damn stuff."
As the rest of them stared at the pile of white sacks, Trixie's earth pony minions started putting away the other deliveries, and began drifting off to whatever projects that had been interrupted by the delivery drama.
But hey! It was kind of fun playing the straight-mare for once.
Ha! 'Straight'.
Lyra thought for a second, trying to figure out how to play this… "Then why do you use it for laying smoke?" Lyra asked, reasonably reasonable-sounding, over the banging and shuffling noises of the stage-hoofs at work.
"Bloody efficient at makin' smoke, of course," said the small blue griffon hen for the first time. Lyra managed to not grimace at her lines being stepped on.
"Yes, yes, great gobs of smoke," Trixie rose to the bait. "Poisonous smoke, punctuated with impossible to extinguish bits of incendiaries. Trixie would tell you to go ask the Hayward Dragoons what happens when the wind changes, and your own fires blow back in your faces. The ones that lived, will be able to tell you, because even those pyromaniacal moon-lovers knew better than to cook with white phosphorus!"
"Well, you know, inclement conditions and all that rot…" the trooper said. Lyra's ears perked. Maybe the hen was better at the straight mare than Lyra was. And 'inclement'? Just how well educated were these Trottish griffons?
"Again, how often do we encounter 'inclement conditions' in the field?" the blue unicorn demanded, bitterly.
"Every time we set paw out of doors, yeah, right. Look, boss, I need to go 'ave a smoke and Nightlight and me have drill in a couple. You go ahead and finish 'aving kittens, we'll see ya bright and early tomarrer. Come on, Nightlight, I need to blow a cloud."
The two troopers filed up the stairs, off to do whatever it was that enlisted ponies did when officers weren't looking. Smoke? Lyra wondered what it was that griffons smoked… was it any good?
The little blue hen paused as she came up to Lyra, and turned to look at her.
"It sounds like yer some sorta china ov our Derry an' Toms. The sergeants said we were to clap a mince pie on 'er," the griffon guard said, very quietly. "Make sure everyfing's isles and wights? Keep a butchers out, you savvy? Now maybe she's prone to chuckin' a wobbly, or maybe they's just careful like of our dear Derry, but the lemon curd is she's Barley Rubble in the flesh. This 'ere ain't strictly barley, but it's 'arry o'moore to it, if you ken.
"Do ye ken?"
Not really. What? Was- was the hen calling Trixie 'Derry'? Lyra was so confused… maybe she'd hallucinated the hen's prior apparent erudition.
"Do you mean to say, keep Trixie company?"
The blue hen clapped one of her sharp-clawed avian mitts on Lyra's shoulder, and grinned, saying as she went up the stairs, "You've got it square, Canterlot Fair. Nightlight! Not so potater!"
Lyra watched the two guards leave the laundry, the batpony grumbling about the griffon's impenetrable nonsense, and then she turned back to look at Trixie slumped on the dirty floor, glaring woefully at the sacks of flammable poison. Quiet tinks and taps and mechanical noises marked the activities of the earth pony minions around the improvised workshop floor.
Lyra walked over. She sat down next to the pony who had never been her friend, but at least was a friendly- ok, well, a familiar face. "So, not fond of burning, poisoned foals?"
"I don't even like them when they're not on fire and screaming, no," Trixie said from the pool of pony she'd made on the floor, making a noise halfway between a raspberry and a disturbing giggle.
"I just wanted to make some nice, clean smoke bombs, you know?" Trixie sighed. Lyra was becoming mildly concerned about the pronounced lack of illism. The hen had been right, somepony needed to keep an eye on this mare.
"Trixie, you have with you, two of the best unicorns to ever graduate from the Princess's own academy. You think between Twilight and me, we can't transmute some sacks of white phosphorus into whatever you want?"
Trixie laughed at this from her supine position on the filthy laundry room floor.
"The only thing that could possibly make this shit more dangerous, would be to let Twilight fucking Sparkle try untested transformative magic on it."
"Wait, back up. What's the name of that last one?"
"Private Nightlight."
"That's going to be uncomfortable, my father's name is Night Light."
"Your father is a twenty-one-year-old gormless batpony named Nightlight?"
"Well, no, obviously… oh, look, one word, not two. That's probably how it got past the registry. I think that the batpony colonies are included in the remit of the Registry of Names? Oh, now that's going to bug me until I look it up…"
"Wait, I thought you told me your mother was also named Twilight something, right?"
"Yes, Dame Twilight Velvet. Third of her name - not in sequence, of course. Usually in rotation with Gleaming or Shining or Twinkle for the firstborn. I'll probably have to name my own foaI Twilight something. Or would it be Shining? Anyways, tradition."
"She married a 'Night Light'? What is he, her own brother?"
"What, no! Ew! You're worse than Lyra!"
"What is he, then, a cousin? Once or twice removed? Because there's gotta be some sorta family tie there, names never get that close with ponies without a family tradition makin' it so."
"We know our ancestries going back twenty generations! Ten in my father's case."
"Ha! So that's when they split off a bastard line, then?"
"Gilda, shut your damn beak and get back to filing."
The big griffon sergeant standing in front of the troop formation looked down at her clipboard.
"Last item of business! Private Nightlight! Step forward!"
"Marm!"
"You will now be known as 'Bob', per the Captain's instruction. Do you understand, Private Bob?"
"Marm, yes Marm! I answer to 'Bob'!"
The trooper in question went slightly crosseyed, and then looked constipated, and then… SKREEEEE!
"… And then she said the Captain—our fruitin' Captain—picked a special name for me! I nearly echoed right on the spot. It was all I could do to keep myself to a skree," Private Bob bragged to the others in the barracks.
All around Private Bob the other bats listened with intent focus and jealousy. Only matrons of the Night Shift got special names from command! Lucky bat…
Fish Eye didn't have enough time to miss her camera. She was too busy to really feel that itch in her hands that came when she felt most alone, most confused.
Back home, Fish Eye had never had a chance to enjoy dorm life like all of those lucky ponies whose families had shipped them off to board at Farrow in the glamorous capital. Her mother had never been the most warm of mares, and when her and Hawk's father had disappeared with their entire kingdom, Stiff Beak had disappeared behind that impenetrable amiable reserve which was her barding and her armor. Sometimes it felt like the youngest mare in the family was a dried pea in a gourd, rattling around their rented suites and making noise by herself.
When she'd gotten the camera, it had let her escape her mother's rented suites, and go out into the city and see it through the camera lens. At a remove.
The barracks were sort of like a boarding school dorm, in that there was zero privacy, little amenities, and shared bathrooms. And, like a good boarding school, they spent as little time in them as possible, having been herded by the corporals, put to running or flying or drilling or reading out loud from the stacks of manuals for the recruits that couldn't read for themselves.
All in all, being foalnapped into the military wasn't all that different from going to a prestigious pony preparatory academy. The biggest difference was…
Fish Eye wasn't alone in a herd of ponies. There wasn't really a herd of ponies at all. Regular ponies weren't even a plurality of the regiment she'd been stolen away by; a full quarter of the recruits and the older troopers were griffons, and nearly half of the rest were...
Well, they were ponies, but not any Fish Eye had ever seen.
Batponies! Batponies everywhere, making screechy noises, glowering from dark corners, squinting at the bright spring sunshine, sneaking their sunglasses whenever they thought the corporals weren't watching.
Fish Eye was so busy seeing new things for the first time, that she didn't need the lens to see them clearly. It was all right there in front of her!
Although about half of the corporals were batponies themselves, and they knew all the tricks their troopers got up to. More than once, Fish Eye had broken out into laughter at the profane rants issued against her fellow batpony rankers, and been ordered to get down and give a corporal 'twenty'. That had turned into thirty, the first time, because she'd had no idea what punishment exercise she was being given.
Wing pushups were kind of fun. It was cheating, of course - hippogriff wings have all the flexibility of pegasus wings, and all the strength of griffon wings. And even weedy underweight little Fish Eye had enough power and precision in her big wings to make a batpony non-com's cat eyes pop.
So yeah, the camera was staying safe in squadron storage for now. Safe from the mud and the rough-housing and the battering anonymity of life in the barracks.
Because every evening, there were two or three or a half-dozen new faces in the barracks. In the afternoons, the new lieutenant and that big griffon sergeant - Fish Eye's 'evil griffon' foalnapper - put the prospects through the obstacle course, and ran them ragged. The batponies always passed with flying shadows, of course, because they were mostly old troopers from the pegasus regiments, or so one of them explained Fish Eye's second night with the regiment. But the locals, and the regular troops trying to transfer into a flash new guards squadron?
They washed out left and right. The numbers were coming out a little uneven, because the captain and her sergeant had brought in a bunch of cronies from their old griffish territorial battalion, and various special-recruited, well, specialists. To do this and that.
But in the actual troops? Mostly griffons and batponies, and a scattering of Trottish earth ponies.
And almost all of them strangers to each other. Fish Eye wasn't the only stranger in the herd, here. Here, she was a stranger in a crowd of strangers, of little groups precipitating out of multiple fragmentary herds mixing for the first time.
Fish Eye had heard two of the corporals grousing about the lack of pegasi, when she was supposed to be on punishment detail, sanding down the planks of the corridor outside Troop Apple's barracks room. "Grind that down until I can lick a stripe forty feet long down this hall, wetmanes!" her corporal had yelled. But now the corporal had a new friend, and Fish Eye wasn't sure if they knew how sharp her hearing was…
"-I don't care what they say, no griffon is as good in the traces as a well-trained pegasus. Nor as good a climber."
"We've got plenty of bats…"
"Well, yeah, but you big-thumbed leather-firmament types hain't exactly power fliers, either."
"I don't see any wings on you, Mews Gate."
"Well, yeah, the battery lieutenant needs somepony to lay the falcons, and keep them in powder and shot. I can't believe they thought a lieutenant could both build and train up a battery by herself. Poor Lieutenant Lulamoon, they hated her back home. Broke my heart… and if I could fly her falcons for her, I'd do that too. Have you seen that trick the captain-"
After that night, the corporal was gone, and had been replaced by a Trottish bird with a thick accent Fish Eye could barely understand, and a new approach towards things.
Fish Eye never heard the rest of that tantalizing story about whatever 'trick' their unicorn captain could do, that somehow had something to do with flying, but she found out enough when she asked around about the situation with the 'battery'.
Cannon! They were going to be fielding a flying battery! That was so cool!
Fish Eye decided on the spot that she wanted to be a part of that troop. Or company? She was a little shaky on military titles and names and designations. She'd gotten in trouble more than once for calling a corporal 'sir' or the new lieutenant an 'ensign'.
But no, she was certain she wanted to be part of the flying battery. Because it felt like a team forming! They'd never let her play on any of the sports teams back at Farrow. Something about being the only big-bird flier, and it not being fair… she'd volunteered to be the manager's assistant - and in her senior year, the manager - of a bunch of pony sports teams. But being the 'pony' who cleaned the filthy tack and carried the water for the polo team and the pony lacrosse team and the pony rugby team - ponies liked to claim things by slapping the adjectival 'pony' on the front of totally species-neutral things - wasn't the same thing as actually swinging a mallet or a club or running with a leather ball under your wing.
And taking photographs as the team manager or the manager's assistant was a sort of way of being part of the team, but it was at a remove, distancing.
Her camera was in storage. She wasn't seeing things, she was going to do things.
So, Fish Eye was going to set out to be a part of that team. And set her mind to becoming the 'pony' that could be a battery horse.
Being in the army was kind of like being a team manager. Times eleven. If you think the tack for playing polo was excessive, just wait until you had to clean real working barding. And rugby uniforms didn't have a patch on the amazing filth that gambesons accumulated, no, attracted, like magnets to iron filings, were gambesons to mud.
She was so happy her camera wasn't part of the kit she had to keep clean of this ever-present mud!
But in between the cleaning, was the training! And that was a hell of a lot of fun. Splashing around in the mud herself! And running with all the rest! Just that would make Fish Eye happy.
So she was.
But she also felt like she should be a bit ambitious. A mare's reach should exceed her grasp, or what's a heaven for? And artillery-horse sounded like it was right up that alley!
She had a lot of work to get there. For one thing, she knew nothing about hauling gun carriages, let alone flying falcon gigs, like the stripped-down marvels the new battery lieutenant was rebuilding in an improvised workshop somewhere deep in the bowels of the garrison.
It wasn't good that she didn't particularly relish chariot training. Admittedly, it wasn't anything she'd ever done before she'd been impressed into the guards. They hadn't played Trottish-rules cloudball back in Canterlot. Apparently it was a thing here in Trottingham - fancy that, the Trottish fancying something called 'Trottish'! - and because she'd never done it before, Fish Eye was pretty clumsy at first.
Let's just say she wouldn't be winning any cups for the school display cabinet. Er, the regimental display cabinet? Do military outfits have sports trophies? She'd have to ask sometime.
When everything wasn't so rush-rush-rush hup-hup-hup.
Still fun! Just not so much with the spare breath for asking really quite vital questions.
No matter what the corporals said when she gasped said questions out.
And so, as Fish Eye ran with her training section from the chariot training field to the obstacle course, so consumed was she with the simple glow of communal exercise and puzzling over her inchoate desires for something cool to do with her young life, that she barely noticed the skinny Trottish griffon recruit running in step behind her, staring at the back of her head as the corporals sang cadence, something about loving wide-flanked alicorns…
Giles stared at the pinkish freak's tail, counted the steps between the airfield and the obstacle course, and closed file. Eighty-four hundred paces from airfield to course. Equestrian quick step of 140 clops per minute. The corporal's calling the cadence a bit fast, but these mixed units are murder on the march. They're sorting us into tribal units, they have to if we're not to keep stepping on each other's paws.
Bats and griffons and ponies could all get along like kits in a hammock sleepin' the sleep of the just, but they simply couldn't march in tandem. Their bodies weren't built to walk in lock step with each other.
It was easier in the air, but only by a bit, and winds help you if you tried to tie a griffon and a pegasus to the same cart.
Giles had concluded, by the third day of training, that they'd be setting up griffish and pony troops by the middle of May. He hadn't expected the influx of weird featherin' bat-winged ponies, though. That threw his expectations into a cockaded hat.
Or being made file closer as soon as corporals started precipitating out of the recruit-mass like maggots in week-old meat.
How many troops were they planning on putting into this oversized squadron, anyways? The Sixth Guards by the first of May was already bigger than his entire home town's militia had been. Not that Aerie Tarvie had been all that big of a place. They'd called the militia a 'battalion', but it hadn't been more than a double-strength troop by the measurin' sticks the corporals used for organizing this new home Giles' doom had given him.
As far as Giles knew, he was the last survivor of the Aerie Tarvie militia. He'd never heard of any other survivors, and had been too afraid to even display interest in whatever had happened to the captives in the big POW camps outside the city.
Aerie Tarvie had been on the right of the line, and had crossed right in front of the ponies' falcon batteries. There hadn't been time to run.
The sun had barely moved in the sky by the time the platoon arrived at the obstacle course. Wish they'd let us fly. These quick-march jogs are for the ponies.
As the griffish recruits scrabbled through the same old obstacle course in the same old way, Giles kept twitching, and losing his grip on this rope or his balance on that log or tripping over the other rubber tyre in the mud.
Every time that damned freak spoke and he wasn't looking at her, Giles heard his little sister squeaking. It was unearthly - feather-rustling, flank-pricklingly weird. The pony-griffon-monkey-thing didn't look a thing like Giles' long-dead sister, and her plummy, toffy-nosed Canterlotian pony accent didn't bear any resemblance to long-lost Ginny's lisping MacGregor tones.
But winds if it didn't sound like Ginny gone off with the ponies a changeling, and come back talking like the ruddy enemy. Like stories of the evil elves under their dark mounds, who'd take up kitlings and fledgelings and unwary hens from the hills or the darker moors, and haul them Under Hill to be - well, the stories varied about what happened to the elf-lost.
Ginny hadn't been elf-lost, Giles had found her body himself, grey-eyed and still and terrible. Nogriff who's ever found a corpse would ever mistake it for a living griffon. When life goes out of a body, everything that was them goes with it.
No, Ginny drowned, and no changeling myth could fix that.
But damn if the hippogriff freak didn't sound exactly like her.
The corporal let them rest for fifteen minutes after the second time 'round the obstacle course. As Giles billowed and heaved with the rest of the muddy, run-ragged training cadre, he stared at the back of the head of the freak until she turned around with that cheery, open-hearted grin on her freakish beak.
Maybe she looked a little like Ginny around the eyes.
The corporal squawked, and the cadre got up off their paws and dusted themselves off. Giles and the other file closers formed up their fellows into files, and flowed into the column.
2500 paces from the obstacle course to the shower stations outside the walls.
"Gilroy! Giles! Grant! And… Fish Eye! Front and center!" bawled Corporal Gwaine.
Fish Eye looked up from her cot, where she was cleaning the last of her file's filthy training gear, astonished to be called out along with three of the file-closers. Including her own. They followed the platoon corporal out of the barracks-room like four ducklings toddling after their momma duck.
The mess hall was full of ponies and griffons and, for some reason, a goat. At the head of the tables was that big, beefy pegasus lieutenant and Fish Eye's evil sergeant, taller than ever and looking hassled.
The evil sergeant yelled 'a ten-hup', and the room full of troopers formed into ad-hoc lines, braced to attention.
The new lieutenant, Lieutenant Bell strode forward, and crossed in front of the rough formation.
"Aw kay, you all! Listen up! The captain laid down the law, and we talked it over. You all have been trainin' in yer clumps of files for a while now, but it's time to shake out into real units. You all are, mostly, our better file closers. Most of you can write, and you all better have your letters enough to read a written order! Even if it's some idiot lieutenant's muddled fat-lipped scrawl in the heat of Celestia knows what balls-up mess.
"We've got more of you than we strictly need, on account of some of ya will wash out. It happens, we all know it, won't be a total shame, you just go back into th' ranks.
"Most of you all will be running twelve-pony sections in your respective platoons. We're gonna be callin' them 'lances' on account of it sounds damn stupid and confusin' to have squads inside-a squadron! You'll be answerin' to your platoon corporal, and through her, yer ensign.
"We ain't got ensigns yet, still talkin' that over with the captain and the sergeant here.
"Those-a you all who ain't got a lance when we're done givin' out assignments are gonna be runners for the corporals, and workin' for the ensigns when we got some.
"Apparently th' captain has some regular army notions about the dignity of officers. One of you is gonna be with me, and won't that be a kick in the head? I ain't never had a servant before. We never held with such things in the Marezonians. But this ain't the provincials, we're the Guard now!
"So hey, give a cheer, troopers! You all just became lance corporals. Provisional-like. Assumin' you don't piss off anypony more important than you all!"
Corporal Gwaine claimed his flock of new-hatched lance corporals, and led them back to the corridor outside of their platoon barracks-room. He was talking them through their new responsibilities, when Fish Eye heard herself ask:
"But Corporal, what about us flying falcons for the new battery?"
"Eye! The first thing yer gonna learn, is to nawt innerrupt th' corporals, or th' ensigns when we gets 'em! And we ain't gonna be the battery troop, that's nawt 'appenin'. They's sayin' that they need those as ain't raw recruits for that duty. Also, they's recruitin' special-like fer the battery. Is that to yer approval, Princess Eye?"
"Well, gol-lee!" Fish Eye cursed.
And blinked in surprise as the other lance corporals laughed at her.
"It don't 'urt none, Gil- Sergeant Gilda," squawked the little blue hen.
"The captain and I will be the authority in this regiment as to what does and doesn't 'hurt none', Glenda. We can't have you rhyming cant in front of outsiders and the ranks. Let alone officers."
"It's just a bit of honey, onion bhaji!"
"No, it isn't. It's incoherent and confusing is what it is. You leave a trail of incomprehension behind you as wide and muddy as the Bridlederry Pike."
"That were half a rhyme there, sergeant! Y'know, it don't feel 'alf right, callin' you that. Ain't you a sergeant major yet?"
"Get used to it, corporal, I haven't been promoted yet. And you seem bound and determined to prove you aren't worthy of yours." Gilda threw a corporal's patch at the former lance corporal.
"Marm! I'll do my best!"
"Well, yeah. I couldn't winkle any more experienced non-coms out of artillery, it took all the juice I could squirt just getting those two mechanics from ordnance. You seem to be taking care of your lieutenant so far? No problems I've not heard about?"
"Nawt of note, no. A bit of a wobbly over some chemicals, but we got it sorted."
"Glenda…"
"That weren't cant!"
"It 'weren't' the Princess's Equish, either. I need you speaking the Princess's Equish."
"Right, right, marm yes marm."
"Glenda, a battery ranks a sergeant. Keep your beak clean, and the words that come out of it clean-ish, and there's room to grow. That sort of thing happens in a regiment being stood up, you understand?"
"I ken- er, I understand, ma'am."
"Right then! Go take care of your Derry an' Toms!"
"Uh… yes marm."
Corporal Glenda left the little closet Gilda had filled full of manuals and a little desk, down besides the troops barracks. Gilda put away the little phrasebook some autodidact out of ponyside Trottingham had gotten one of the libels to print, titled Cockerel Rhyming Cant and the Trottingham Docksides.
Thinks she can talk her way around management, and spread this nonsense? Ha! Onion bhaji's ahead of you, Glenda me hen.
"So we're not getting our ensigns?" asked Big Bell, making diamond-dog-puppy-eyes at Gleaming Shield.
Gilda's captain was slumped in her office chair in the main office. The unicorn was pouting, and looking far too young for her uniform. "No, I didn't say that. I said we weren't getting them in time. If I wanted to wait until August for the next batch out of the academy, then we could have a full complement of fresh-faced colts and fillies all bright and cheery and useless because I expect to be somewhere north of Marapore in August!"
"That kinda sounds like the same thing, ma'am," the big pegasus said. She had to stand mostly in the door, opened to the corridor outside, because the office wasn't big enough for both her and the usual inhabitants without crowding uncomfortably.
"They told us again that we could have Captain Falcon," Gilda offered from her own desk.
Ping snorted his opinion from the back, where he was messing with the files.
"I don't get why you all are so down on Blue Falcon. At least he's an academy graduate!" Bell objected. "You can't be gettin' much traction from having me in here. Personnel and pony resources know better'n most that provincial regimentals ain't worth the brass on our belt-buckles."
"Nonsense, Bell!" Gleaming Shield said, straightening up and meeting the big pony's gaze with a serious expression. "I expressly asked for you, and for good reason. The Marezonians were one of the most professional and effective regiments we ever had to work with. You know your evolutions well enough, and you've really got a hoof for the recruits. I don't know what we'd do without you!"
Also, Big Bell hadn't said a word about the demotion to lieutenant or the endless, grinding work they'd dropped her, unprepared, into. Blue Falcon, aside from the whole business of being a terminal alcoholic, would have fumed at the prospect of rolling back to lieutenant and working for the pony he'd once bossed around as one of his ensigns.
"It's a shame we couldn't talk Minuette into signing up," Gleaming Shield said, regretfully.
"Yeah, no, that ain't happenin'," Bell said, apologetically. "Some mares have lives and careers t' get back to once their tours are up."
"You can't tell me you didn't have something like that," Gleaming objected. "With your leadership skills, you could write your own ticket!"
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Bell sighed. "But th' army's been good for me. Aside from ward heelin' for Cherries, I've never really gotten any traction back home. I'd probably be mule-skinnin' or haulin' freight again inside of a week."
"M-mule skinning?" Gleaming asked with a look of confused horror.
"Naw, it ain't what it sounds like- you know what, we can talk about it some other time, this is important. We need more officers, soonest. I can't keep drilling every troop as if they was my own. I gotta sleep sometime."
Gilda looked up at that, and saw what the pegasus was talking about. Baggy eyes, dull coat, the distinct stink of a mare who hadn't seen the inside of a shower stall in way too long. Bell was right, they were overworking her.
"Ping!" Gilda barked, making the batpony jump in his seat. "Give me three of the- What's this?"
The bat-pony was offering Gilda a wingful of three personnel files. "The files from personnel. The only files they'd give us, other than y'know, Lieutenant Lulamoon's. And Captain Falcon's, if you want me to fish that out of the trash."
He dealt them out like a three-card hoof of poker, and placed them on Gilda's desk, one by one.
"Lieutenant Rupert. Multiple harassment charges, two of which resulted in hung courts-martial.
"Captain Annuity. Seventy-six years old. Bad hip.
"Lieutenant Martin Gale. File full of commendations for efficiency."
"Well, what's wrong with that last one?" Bell said, looking a bit crosseyed.
"Efficiency is the word used in evaluations when the commanding officer hates the lieutenant, but can't find any reason to ding them on the merits," Ping said, stiff-faced. "Rumor mill has it that Martin Gale is a sadist and hates the enlisted."
"Gah! Captain! Ma'am! What did you all do to get personnel to hate us?" demanded Big Bell.
"More what the Duchess did," Gilda sighed, slumping. "They're really, really mad about Project Mustang. And they blame the captain."
"Of course they do, it was my idea," Gleaming Shield said, proudly. "It was exactly what the Territorials needed, and the whole system was unsupportable and grossly inefficient to boot."
"And we wouldn't have been around to catch the heat from the fallout, either," Gilda supplied, crossly. "Except we can't seem to get out of town!"
"Well, I did tell Cadance to not launch it until we were safely on our way east," Gleaming Shield said, shrugging. "I can't help it the details leaked."
Gleaming Shield leaned back, and put out one hoof. "Here, let me see Martin Gale's jacket."
Ping held out the relevant personnel file, and Gilda made a mental note of the apparent synonym. Gleaming Shield had been part of the military for the majority of the young mare's life; Gilda was still stumbling over aspects, linguistic and otherwise, that still surprised or confused.
The captain flipped through the 'jacket', muttering.
Meanwhile, the big, burly pegasus had a far-off look, like she was zoning out, or thinking hard. Gilda eyed the ticking time bomb that was, in her experience, synonymous with two officers thinking hard.
"Meh, she'll do if she's got a supervisor," Gleaming Shield concluded. "Shame she's got seniority on you, Bell. I think you could get work out of this Martin Gale. Wish I could brevet officers."
Ping held out another file, startling Gleaming Shield almost out of her chair.
"What's this?"
"Yesterday's correspondence. Reply from Guard House to our queries."
"Ping, did we have queries for guards headquarters? And did you send them?"
"You were going to have questions, and yes, I did."
"What did I tell you about anticipating my orders?"
"You'll tell me good job in three minutes."
"Why's that?"
"Because they say-"
"I really am the acting colonel of the regiment?" Gleaming Shield was speed reading again.
"Yes, captain ma'am. Also-"
"Breveting authority! Ha!"
"Once per officer on your own authority. Also, enclosed-"
"Ha! Gilda! I'm now Major Shield! Take that, Pinkie Pie!"
"Congratulations, major ma'am!" chorused Gilda and Ping together.
"And Bell, that makes you Captain Big Bell, by my authority as colonel of the Sixth Guards, brevetted Major Gleaming Shield, Esq. Ping, draft a-"
"Brevetting certificate, major ma'am. Just needs your hoofprint. There, and initial, there. Thank you, ma'am." Ping went off with the brevetting paperwork to file them in Gleaming Shield's and Big Bell's 'jackets'.
Gilda's head spun a bit from the whirlwind which was their squadron clerk in action. Ping was being very… Ping today.
"Well, why the sandy wastes don't we do that with the ensigns?" Big Bell finally asked, looking a bit poleaxed.
"We don't have any officers to brevet to 'ensign', Bell," Gleaming said, looking cross. "There isn't anything junior to the rank, other than 'cadet', and cadets aren't officers. Nor do we have a local academy to mint any cadets. Although I left Cadance a proposal…"
"No, not brevetting. Your new duchess's 'Project Mustang' thingamajig."
"We don't have any sergeant majors, and Cadance needs hers. Garry and the others are mostly homebodies, anyways. If there were any sergeant-majors with wandering star syndrome, the service generally beat it out of them a decade ago."
"No, not sergeant majors, we need tadpoles, not old toads. Corporals!"
"We need our corporals, Bell. You just made a herd of lance corporals because we don't have enough non-coms."
"More corporals are easier to find than officers, Capt- Major Shield! And there's a lot of talent locked up in the bat pony ranks. They-"
"Never allow batponies in the academies, no, they don't. Good reason, isn't there?"
"They don't let them into the Guards, either. You opened that door, Major. Might as well let the whole crowd in."
"Hrm. Like Fruit Salad?"
"Corporal Fruit Salad is far too old and grizzled and set in his ways to be a baby officer," Gilda said suppressively. "The same goes for Gustav, before you two get any bright ideas. Although I want them both for sergeants, since we're throwing around promotions left and right." They were going to steal all of her useful people!
Ping appeared with a wing full of corporals' jackets. The thicker ones.
"Captain, major ma'am, here you go. I suggest you start with the thicker ones, and work your way back."
Big Bell grabbed a chair and pulled it halfway out into the hall so she had somewhere to sit.
"Corporal Ping! Ah was lookin' for… where you comin' from? And why are you outta uniform?"
"Paperwork delivery, Captain Bell."
"At 3 in th' mornin'?"
"I am nocturnal, after all, ma'am."
"Are the ponies in th' other office nocturnal, too?"
"We have a system, ma'am."
"Don't think y'all can charm your way outta this because yer cute, corporal. Iffen you're on duty, why are you outta uniform? And sneakin' about?"
"Night Infiltration Pattern 63 is an authorized field uniform, ma'am."
"Ah have no idea what that is, but I'll look it up at some more ponylike hour. What do we do iffen that field uniform is authorized only fer skirmishers an' scouts?"
"I am a batpony, captain ma'am. According to the regs I am a skirmisher and scout."
"Yer a stampeded office clerk!"
"I am exploring the limits of my office, ma'am."
"By dressin' up like a stagehall comedy stagehoof, paintin' yer muzzle with coalblack, an' sneakin' about in the dead of night?"
"Yes, captain ma'am. You now have eight replacement corporals transferred from four different Territorial battalions. Also, Corporals Tinker and Totem are now officially Lieutenant Lulamoon's. Or possibly mine, Sergeant Gilda hadn't finished the support company organizational proposal as of the last time I saw my desk. Please excuse, I need to change out of this catsuit."
"Right. And go wash that gunk off yer muzzle, you look like a zebra."
The big pegasus shook her head and went to find that warm toilet seat she'd been out and about lookin' for in the first place.
"Colt needs a remedial course on two-consent bureaucracy, I swear t' apples..."
The auntie was standing there, just behind where the baku had been before Ping had split the dream-eating monster into two messy, gory halves.
Gore which had splattered the auntie in the face. And the mane. And the tail, and pretty much everything else in between.
The auntie's shadow-wings furled and unfurled, and the phantasmic gore disappeared into the dream-stuff it had once been.
Good thing it had been phantasmic, the auntie didn't look best pleased.
"Nephew! You are alone in the Walking. Where are your spear-carriers? Your shield-maiden?"
Ping felt like the scolded foal he evidently was. "I do not need to interrupt the rest of new recruits. I can and have been handling minor haunts like this for the better part of two years. By myself. Without an entourage, or a following, or overtrained, underpowered wet-wings who will never be able to do much more than hold up a baku-sticker and hope to not be possessed."
"Arrogance is not a good look on a youngling, even one as talented and full of potential as you." The auntie smiled, dangerously, and Ping almost cringed in the dreamscape in expectation of the inevitable- "COLT! FOAL! USE YOUR FOLLOWERS, OR-"
"You'll call me home? I'm sworn to service, auntie. Same as you all. And more substantially than the rest of you, sitting retired in those back caverns. I-"
"No lip, Two Pings! We need you to fold two of the younger matrons into your newfangled guards regiment! And I am far too busy to bandy words with a barely-whelped child! You are to meet them in the usual place in Trottingham, Picket Fire will secure the meeting, at noon, your time!"
"But it's a-" and she was gone, with a thought.
Ping looked around the gloaming that loosely represented the dreaming minds of Garrison #5. The new artillerymare Lieutenant Lulamoon attracted more than her share of psychic remoras and worse, but Ping's nightly job was complete.
If only he hadn't had to do it in so very few hours of sleep.
More forged paperwork! And matrons, that was impossible.
Ping awoke with a start, and looked over at the mechanical clock on the wall. He had very little time to deal with his morning necessities and slip out before something came up to keep him busy over the noon hour.
"Ping! Hey, Ping, get out here, I need you to check on- what the buck?"
"Oh, hey there, Sergeant Gilda, I wanna go out into the city today, check out the Cathedral of Labour, do you mind?"
"I don't care if you drown yourself in the harbor, Magus Heartstrings, have you seen Ping?"
"Who?"
"Little batpony. Our company clerk - well, squadron clerk now. Efficient little bugger. But I can't find him today!"
"Nah, never seen him. I think? This place is crawling with batponies. What's up with that, anyways? I've never seen so many batponies all together like they are here."
"You figure it out, Magus, you let me or Major Shield know. I tell you what, go ask Sergeant Gustav for a full file for escorts, and I don't care if you go bar-crawling down through the heart of the Pennies."
"Awesome! Do you know where the good bars are?"
"No, I do not. Good day, Magus Heartstrings. Ping! PING! Where the buck are you?"
The two matrons were barely that, in Ping's opinion. Picket Fire had let him into the catacombs from a townhouse a block and a half away, and they'd followed serpentine ways through the underground, avoiding the Rangers' old listening posts with care and stealth.
The two matrons had been secreted in one of the rebuilt bell towers far above the ground floor of the great Cathedral of Labour. Ping looked around at the empty cradles, the missing bells having not been part of the reconstruction, to all appearances. There was nopony to overhear or interrupt the meeting. Picket Fire knew his business, and he knew his temple.
Whatever the griffons wanted to call it, it was the batponies' temple. The monsters that it attracted made certain of that, for sure. And without Picket Fire's powerhouse of a wife to keep the dream-fires burning, it would be Trottingham that burned.
Moreso than that tormented city had up to that point, anyways.
The two matrons - or possibly aunties playing at being matrons - wore pegasus feathers, and innocent semblances, looking for all the dream-world as if they were fat day-loving tourists. Grossly out of place in this dark, gothic pile, even more grossly out of place in the heart of the griffish slums. You never even found Trottish earth ponies in the heart of the Pennies, let alone clueless Cloudsdale twitterers like the matrons were pretending to be.
There was a slight distant muttering from somewhere below. Ping blinked, surprised, and shuffled a few feet beyond the doorway, listening until he could hear two disembodied janitors gossiping.
Ping turned to his guide, and looked askance.
"Don't mind that, sar." Picket Fire and his shy wife had lived in Trottingham so long, they'd taken to speaking in the local manner. "That's the whisperin' gallery reborn, it is. The mad ponies, they managed to resurrect it from th' dead when they rebuilt this 'ere tower. I asked around, I did. Used to be famous, or maybe infamous. You could 'ear th' whole congregation whisperin' from one point or t' other up 'ere. They say the priests would place their spies in th' belfries, an' if they stood in exactly the right spot, they could 'ear this 'un or that 'un conspirin' in the pews.
"I 'ad it checked out wif the missus, 'ad her up 'ere flittin' about and kreein' up a storm, an' me down there in the nave, tryin' to 'ear a note of it, trottin' 'ere, trottin' there, movin' around, and never once 'earin' a squeak. Those earth ponies, they knows their rebuildin' techniques, they do. It's a marvel, it is. We're safe as 'ouses up 'ere, we is."
"If you two are quite finished, the End of Days isn't about to wait on your witterings!" shrilled one of the badly disguised matrons.
"How in the Mother's deepest shadows did the two of you get this far without being caught and burned as cultists? You couldn't stick out worse if you wore a set of dragon wings and lit the scenery on fire with your breath!" Ping demanded, provoked out of his usual equanimity.
"Show some respect, colt! We are the experts the Council has sent to deal with this situation."
Ping had to play along, lest the aunties sent worse. He swallowed his fear and outrage. "What situation is that, ma'am? I'm handling matters. The recruits are being integrated seamlessly, we're not threatening anyone. But I need all the help I can get not alarming ponies. We need to limit new transfers, we're already at a troop and a half - we haven't had a concentration of armed batponies this dense in a hundred and fifty years!"
"And it would have been worth it if we'd been able to reconstitute the Lunar Guard, now, here! So close to the return!" said the more fanatical-eyed of the two disguised batpony matrons.
"Yeah, well, that isn't happening, is it? I reported to the aunties. I told them, the Sixth isn't the Lunar Guard. It isn't the fabled Soldiers of the Night returned. It's barely anything at all at the moment, but what little of it there is, is a historical relic and a half-crazed adventurers' company being put together by a pair of overgrown teenagers. We were fooled. The Princess-"
The two disguised mares hissed, enraged at Ping's use of the title.
"Fine, the White Witch outmaneuvered us. It was a trick. A scam. We got lured off the mark, and put nearly six score of our best trained night-fighters into the mad start of an overprivileged, overpowered unicorn brat." It was almost too easy to slip back into this persona. To be the hard-eyed, bitter colt they all expected.
"No, young Two Pings, it is the White Witch who has outsmarted herself this time. The auspices are changing, the stars are shifting. The breach won't come in the Everfree on the witch's holiday like everypony thought." The disguised mare cackled, the sound emerging strangely from under illusion of the harmless-looking mare she wore as a disguise.
Oh thank the moon and stars, thought Ping. Sleep another hundred years, Mother of Dreams, and spare us from thy wrath.
"No, it is drifting, eastwards, faster every night. We currently estimate our Queen of the Night will emerge somewhere southeast of Griffonstone, right on schedule. With the White Witch and her preparations half a world out of position!"
"Until The End of Days!" the two mares caroled, looking transported.
"Until The Last Night," replied Ping miserably, along with a somewhat alarmed-looking Picket Fire. Night, did he hate this part of his life. And they weren't shutting up…
The muttering from below started up again, distracting Ping from the disguised matrons' blustering bigotries. That sounded like, it couldn't be- "BE SILENT, YOU OLD HAGS!"
Ping's brief screech achieved ear-bleeding decibels, simultaneously he reached out with a desperate, narrow blast of his shadow, slashing through their loud, flashy semblances. Semblances that stood out like flares in the night to anypony at all mana-sensitive.
The two matrons' disguises split like four halves of two rotten oranges, revealing the dark-furred, black-winged bitches hiding under the cheery pegasus semblances. Their sharp draconic eyes blinked in astonishment at his burst of power.
Ping got himself back under control, looking down between his hooves, listening, desperately, carefully. He walked a half-pace, two paces back to the right. There.
"What in the darkness-" began one of the old harpies.
"Shut your fool mouth, mare. That voice - I'm pretty sure it's-" and it was, Ping was sure now.
"We can't make another spark up here," he whispered urgently. "We have to be very, very quiet in the dreamscape. There's a magus under our hooves. I don't know where she came from, but I know Magus Heartstring's annoying voice when I hear it, even a hundred and fifty yards away through a whispering gallery made by oblivious earth ponies."
"A magus! We're discovered! We must kill her and her followers before all is revealed!"
The harridan wanted to kill a magus. In the cathedral. Under Ping's implicit protection, at that. He couldn't do anything with these lunatics. They were a threat to the entire squadron, batpony and daywalkers alike.
If only the magus walked away without finding them in their hiding place.
Lyra looked up at the vault, wondering what she'd just felt. Ghosts?
She shook her head, dismissing the thought. It was the middle of the day, nearly noon! Lyra looked around at the magnificence of it all.
"Mare, I knew this place would be worth the trip. Look at these vaults! Pristine!"
"That'd be onna account of the ponies rebuilding it not three months ago, marm," said the blueshell griffish tom. "Well, the ponies and billies like Billy-Bob," he corrected himself.
"Yeah? Wait, what?" Lyra said, turning her head back down to her escort. "You had somepony worked on this place, and they didn't send him with us? That's criminal!"
"Sergeants 'ave better things t'do with their toms than send 'em off t' play tourist," said the earthpony beside her griffish escort. A matched Trottish set! Public Choice would have been so jealous of Lyra's good luck.
Served that stallion right for being such a stay-at-home coward. This was where the true academic belonged! Out on the cutting edge of social science, always one step away from slitting your throat on that edge. And if a social alchemist like Choice refused to get out on the picket lines and the skirmish lines to do a proper bit of exploring, then he wasn't any sort of magus! Speaking of which…
"Shame I couldn't hit some of the other tourist options in the Isles. This was easy - the famed Cathedral of Labour! Half-shelled to oblivion! Haunted! Dark, mysterious catacombs. Speaking of which, how about we start making our way over that way, I think the caretaker said the stairs downstairs are over that way somewheres." Maybe she could get the locals to start talking about spooky places. Best way to winkle out interesting problems.
The two Trottish guards looked to the other two members of Lyra's truly excessive entourage. That nervous nelly Sergeant Gilda had insisted that Lyra take an entire file of Crystal Guards with her as a bodyguard! In a pacified city! Nonsense and stuff. And damn stuffy.
Lyra'd have to see if she could knock any of the stuffing out of that bird, she was too young to be so old!
Where was Lyra? Oh, right, batponies. Batponies all over the place! Well, not here, the only batponies in sight were the two that Gilda's fellow Sergeant Gustav had given Lyra. But from all accounts the underground catacombs were dark, and labyrinthine, and were exactly the sort of place you brought a corporal's guard of batponies plus friends for backup and to help navigate through the shadows and spiderwebs.
"I mean, I'd have gone out to Flint Island to check out the Cave of the Gorgons, if I could have talked Major Shield out of the price of a ship out to the outer Isles," Lyra said a little brightly, projecting, trying to fill up the vast gloomy spaces under the underlit vaults of the central mass of the Cathedral.
"Naw," said the Trottish griffon. "Th' Cave is a damn cheat. Everygriff knows it's a pony tourist trap."
"Says you," poked back the pony guard. "I 'ear it's a 'oot. All mummery and faffin' about. And there's dancin' durin' the festivals."
"Yeah, but it's a pony thing, and a bleedin' farce. Mares wit' seaweed iner manes all painted up like watery tarts, that ain't no sort of serious spookery naw, izzit?"
"I 'ear they's dead sexy when they's a-dancing, the mummers. And they get the cavern mouth all lit up, with shadows projectin' and dumb-shows and the whole nine yards."
"All I know is that me uncle Giminy went out to see the Cave, back when they'd let griffons on the pony islands, and the barstards beat 'is 'ead in and took 'is bits, and left 'im on the docks fer the ferrymare to scrape off th' pier and ship home. 'E always squawked ten bits for one, all about 'ow it were a cheat and a lark and nawt but bumf and suchlike."
"Yeah, but 'e drank out on it th' rest of 'is life, didn't 'e? Come on, Gillie, our families' as close as any pony 'n griffon's get can be got. Your ol Gim turned a stubbed claw an' a disappointed drinkin' session in the bars o' Port Flint inta the Tragedy of Old Maid Gharne! I oughta know, my uncle Strike Shaft was right next to 'em, drinkin' him pint for pint. As the both of 'em were most nights back on Halfpenny and Fuller."
The two Trottish guards' sniping back and forth filled up the darkness to Lyra's satisfaction, and she sighed in contentment as the silent, judgmental-looking batponies found the downward spiral stairs into the lower depths.
It was nice to not have to be the clown all the time.
The upper Cathedral hadn't had any of the markers its reputation reputed it - no heavenly iconography, no suspicious scrapings or dark hangings or tapestries. Boring, really, if you didn't care for politics or the sordid history of labor unrest.
This was more like it. Carvings had been scraped off every second turning of the stairwell, and clumsily at that. They had to bring their own light down with them, because the sconces had been smashed up, too, which meant that Lyra had to fire up the ol' horn-glow, strong enough to light up the hoofing for her and the daylight guards.
The two silent batponies moved a bit further ahead and down, where Lyra's green glare wouldn't ruin their nightsight.
"Night, that's distorted," Ping muttered to himself. The sound of the guards and the magus had disappeared out of hearing around about where he and Picket Fire thought the whispering galley corresponded to the stairs down into the catacombs. Ping's hearing was, of course, supernaturally impeccable, but Picket Fire knew the Cathedral like the back of his wing.
Ping looked up at the two barely-cowed 'matrons'. They were idiots, and they were opinionated. They might have knowledge and wisdom hoofed down from the ancients, but they were hopeless bigots, and there was no way that Ping could hide them in the squadron, let alone in the narrow confines of a crowded light carrier for what would probably be a weeks-long cruise.
At least.
"No, we're not doing this," he decided. "I don't care what the Elders of the Sacred Night want. Not on this." The aunties could scream at him in the sanctity of the Dream. They were half a continent away. Ping was here. He was the pony on site. They had no idea what they were asking.
"You two disappear," Ping continued, staring down the two eldritch horrors. "If you insist on making yourself heard, then write your proposals up, give them to Picket Fire or Hearth Fire, and Picket will make sure it gets to me and the veterans. This is a delicate business, and I can't have you two dancing sharp-hooved all over our covers. You stick out like clowns painted up like demons in a pantomime without the disguises, and we have not just one, but two powerful unicorns who will spot you at a hundred yards in the disguises. Maybe further. The light carrier’s gondola length isn't longer than two hundred and fifty yards!"
"But-"
"No buts! Go away, and then when you're done with your proposals, go home! I need to make sure you and Magus Heartstrings don't cross paths. Picket Fire, sit up here with these two shrieking night nags and listen for us coming back up, I'll figure out a way to get her out of the Cathedral without twigging to these two. Somehow.
"Make these two disappear after we're gone."
Lyra was having the time of her life.
She was also a little lost. Luckily, she had a light that would never go out, but she could hear the griffon sobbing in the darkness somewhere off to the left, and back a bit. She'd lost both the earth pony and the two batponies a couple turnings back, and now that wimp of a tom was crying like a kitling.
Lyra would find him in a minute, but there was a damn fitted-stone wall between her and the sobbing. How in the name of harmonic convergence had he managed to get that far away from his only light?
Lyra doubled back, and cast around for the corridor that had to be off in that direction. Oh, there he was, curled up with his wings over his head.
"Well, bugger me in Boreas's frozen bunghole, aren't you a sore sight, 'Gillie'. Don't get lost like that. Have you seen your friend the idiot earth pony?"
"'Aven't- haven't seen him in fifteen minutes, marm. Maybe go back the way we came?"
"And why didn't you do that yourself?"
"Thought I saw yer light through th' cracks in the wall. An' then you just… disappeared like."
"Come on then, you big strong tom you. Find your friend for me, and we'll find those blasted batponies who've let us to wander. You can't tell me that ponies with sonar and night vision can get lost even in this stygian ever-night."
They walked back the way Lyra had come. She was never quite sure why other ponies found it so hard to keep their bearings in the dark. It was elemental!
They found the other idiot up another corridor, sitting quietly on his haunches in the middle of the corridor. He wasn't making an ass of himself like his blue friend, but Lyra wasn't fooled. He was one more spooking short of wetting his fatigues with a yellow stain.
She was disappointed that she hadn't found anything interesting, though. No dark tombs, no broken idols or blasphemous chambers of fell, ancient rites.
Although there was something glinting off down that side corridor over there…
"Magus Heartstrings, there you are!" squeaked an unfamiliar batty voice.
Lyra looked over to the corridor leading, eventually, to the stairs going up into the Cathedral.
A little batpony stood there in the darkness, his slit-eyes enormous and glinting like dragon-gems in contrast between the darkness and Lyra's hornglow.
"Yes, I suppose I am," Lyra conceded. "Do I know you? You glitter like a Crystal Guard. But you aren't my missing batponies."
"Are you missing some batponies, Magus?" he asked. Celestia, he was kind of cute, wasn't he? In a mildly terrifying, diminutive sort of way. Like a tiny imp, or a small timberwolf.
"I came down here with two bat-guards, who immediately decided to fuck off somewhere, leaving the other two guards here dependent on my aimless irresponsibility. I'm fine, but I'm afraid that Trooper Gillie here -"
"Gilead, marm."
"Really? I never pegged you for a Gilead. What's your quivering friend's full name? It can't be just 'Joe'."
"Joe's dam named 'im Piccadilly Joe, marm, but most folk just call 'im Mickle Joe on account of 'e's so short."
"OK then! Troopers Gilead and Piccadilly Joe may never get over their trauma."
"We never, marm!"
"I know, dears, you're very fierce. But you see my dilemma- um, who exactly are you, again?"
"That's Corporal Ping, marm," offered the griffon, getting over his trauma a great deal faster than Lyra had expected. "'E’s the company clerk."
"Squadron clerk, trooper," the little batpony said, nettled. He frowned, looking around.
Then he let out an almighty horrible shriek, as if he was an entire troop of batponies screaming.
Lyra grabbed her ears with her hooves and cringed, fearing for a repeat. Her hornglow flickered a bit from the unexpected shock.
Then there was a fluttering of bats' wings, and her missing guards came bursting into view.
"There we go!" said the littlest batpony. "I think you all have had quite enough exercise for the day, haven't you, Magus Heartstrings? I'm sure the Major and the Sergeant would like to know where you've been."
"From what I heard the last time I laid eyes on Sergeant Gilda, I think it's you she wants to know where you got to, if you're the same Ping," Lyra laughed at the little bat-winged puzzle.
"Oh, crap," the batpony said, looking like a foal who thought he'd get away with filching a cookie from the jar on top of the fridge.
Do batponies eat cookies? wondered Lyra Heartstrings, as they all trooped up the steep stairs back into the living light of the world.
Gilda's capt- Gilda's major was practicing her speech in her quarters. Gilda wasn't sure why Gleaming Shield was being so- so Gleaming Shield about the little ceremony they'd dreamed up for the provisional ensigns. It wasn't even going to be a proper commissioning, since they would be provisional until the true officers and Gilda's non-coms were satisfied that their choices weren't going to shame the new regiment.
But Gilda supposed that Gleaming Shield felt liable, personally responsible for making new officers in the Princess's Armed Forces, that it touched her personal honor in a way that regular recruiting and the usual organizational grind did not. So she was going over and over that piece of foolscap she'd carefully inscribed with her speech.
Gilda, on the other claw, was almost giddy in her freeing irresponsibility. Nothing she did really mattered, so she could concentrate on making everything she did matter for the birds and ponies under her authority. This little conversation, for instance.
Gilda had lured the second of six - no, eight pairs into the valet chamber she'd commandeered outside of Shield's personal quarters. The hammock Gilda slept in was coiled in the bottom of the office desk which took up the majority of the little room. The chair itself was rolled outside in the hallway, which left very little room for the prospective new provisional ensign and the pink hippogriff with a recently-tacked-on lance corporal barred stripe trapped behind said probie.
"This ain't the first time I've told one of you ponies this, and it ain't gonna be the last," Gilda began, cracking her neck, standing in the doorway, subtly trapping the two of them in her lair. "This here isn't the way that these things usually go, and it isn't the way it probably will go once we're on a more orderly basis. But needs must when the draconequus drives, and the Major needs ensigns for her platoons now, and not six months down the line. That's you, Fruits Basket."
The batpony mare managed to not look cowed, despite Gilda's dark tone and looming threat.
The little hippogriff behind the bat pony managed to look at the same time both fascinated and a bit irritated. The latter confused Gilda, she'd have to dig into that afterwards.
"You see, Fruits Basket, you won't be an actual ensign until you prove to the rest of us that you're actual officer material. I'm not sold on the whole plan, to be honest," Gilda lied. "Officers are officers, and ranks is ranks, and you smell like ranks to me."
The mare's eyebrows dropped into an iron-browed stare, not frowning, exactly, but...
"Yeah, you disagree. That's a good thing. The last thing we need is a would-be sergeant pretending to be a shave-tail. You want this, Fruits Basket?"
"Yes, Master Sergeant Gilda, I want this."
"Why do you want this, Basket? Tell me in your own words."
"I'm the twelfth non-commissioned officer in thirteen generations, Master Sergeant. Time out of mind, Fruits ponies have served the Royals with honor and distinction. We've been EUP ponies since before there was an EUP."
"That ain't convincing me that you're officer material, Bowl. That's telling me that you're a mistsucker, and are from an ancestry covered by nothing more than mud and mist. You pegasi think you fly over everything else in creation, but mist or mud, it's all ranks, ain't it? What makes you think you can rise above your origins, Fruits Basket?"
"Thestrals aren't pegasi, Master Sergeant. We serve next to them, but we aren't them. There has never been a thestral officer. Not in living memory, not in oral tradition, not in written records. For almost a thousand years, we've been in the ranks or corporals. Once in a blue moon someone makes sergeant's stripes before they have to retire."
The little hippogriff was staring down at the back of her probationary ensign's neck. Gilda looked at that little pink pitcher taking in every drop, and wondered what she was thinking of this.
"There's the matrons of the Night Shift," Gilda pointed out, rhetorically. Not that Gilda really knew much about the matrons or the Night Shift, just what she'd been told recently, in the course of the other officers and lesser non-coms berating Gilda and her unicorn for making a mess of things with 'Bob'. That had been a heck of an education, and one that Gleaming Shield really should have known, being a Canterlot pony as she was. Gilda had the excuse of being an ignorant mud-daubed barbarian from Griffonstone.
"The Night Shift isn't a military organization, Master Sergeant. You know that. Their ranks aren't military ranks, their duties aren't soldierly, their enemies can't be fought with spear or blasted with falcons. For all of these years, across five entire eras, a bat-pony's only hope for recognition in this mare's army has been to retire, have two foals, and be accepted into the Night Shift. My great-great aunt Grape Shot was the sixth Witching Hour. My great-great-great grandmother Cherry Pit was the second Dream Razor.
"Master Sergeant, for a thousand years, the only ambition open to a thestral mare in service to Equestria was to be a matron. Rarer than roosters' eggs, one each out of five hundred, once in a generation. Your Major has given us another option. I don't think you know how much that means. I'll fly through fire to prove that this can happen, that this is real."
Gilda tried to stare down the burning-eyed bat-pony, and failed.
"Well, shit, this conversation went sideways. I was going to give the two of you the whole officers-and-corporals speech, but look at the thaumcast adamantine ovaries on Fruits Basket here, Lance Corporal Eye."
The hippogriff wasn't listening.
"Fish Eye! Eyes front and center!"
"Master Sergeant marm! Yes marm!"
"You ain't from Trottingham, Eye, I don't want any Trottish rot outta your beak! Speak the Princess's Equish!"
"Ma'am, yes, ma'am!"
Gilda resisted the urge to sigh, and stared across the now slightly cross-eyed bat pony at the hippogriff standing behind her. Say this much for the batponies, they were drilled to a fine precision. It didn't even occur to provisional Ensign Basket to look away from Gilda and eye her lance corporal.
"Ensign Basket, why do we give a lance corporal to every wet-maned Ensign? Are they pets? Little robin's eggs we give new officers to raise and prove that the troops are safe in their careful hooves?"
"No, Master Sergeant, they're bat-mares, assistants to the new officer, to keep their kit, follow their officer, run errands, run messages, and so forth."
"That is the manual answer, Ensign Basket. It is also wrong. We put children in charge of grown birds, grown ponies, because it's the only way we make officers out of overgrown foals. The academies do a great many things very well, but they're absolutely shit at making adults out of children. Only a good corporal can do that.
"Wipe that grin off your beak, Eye, I said a good corporal! You ain't a good corporal yet! The raising of this here ensign - your precious ensign, Lance Corporal Fish Eye - is in the capable hooves of Corporal Staff, the pony we're actually putting in charge of Platoon Five. You, my kitling dear, aren't even a foal! You're an egg, a robin's egg. You're Ensign Basket's robin's egg. She is to have the care of you, as you have the care of her kit and kaboodle. If she lets you break, then that's it for her. The platoon is as much Corporal Staff's responsibility as it is Ensign Basket's - and Basket was a lance corporal herself when she came to us, she knows how that goes, don't you Basket?"
"Yes, Master Sergeant!"
"Good, I think we're all in agreement here. Ensign Basket here has agreed to this demotion - and you know in your hearts of hearts it's a demotion, don't you ensign? And she's agreed to take up the care of you, you great gawky goof. Do you know why you're here, Eye?"
"Because you foalnapped me, Master Sergeant!" the pink idiot piped up.
"Did I give you permission to speak in the presence of your superiors, Lance Corporal?"
"No, Master Sergeant, ma'am!"
"Good, you are instructable. I was beginning to wonder."
Gilda looked down at the bat-pony trapped between the pink idiot and her own overlarge self. "Perhaps it will work out in the end, Ensign Fruits Basket. Because the truth is, most actual ensigns delivered by the academies are more like your idiot lance corporal here, than you yourself.
"The world's turned upside down," Gilda sighed, looking at the ensign and her gormless over-educated lance corporal. "Four winds blow us all home."
She stood aside, and waved the prospective ensign out of Gilda's little office."Go on, wait with the others, Ensign."
Gilda dropped her wing down in between the departing batpony, and the hippogriff following like a duckling waddling after her momma duck.
“Not you, Lance Corporal, wait a tick. Go on, Ensign, I have to drop a word in this bird's ear."
Gilda walked Fish Eye backwards into the office, and closed the door behind them.
“All that, Fish Eye? Was grade-A chickenshit. You know what chickenshit is, right?"
“The poo that comes out of those flightless birds ponies keep for their eggs, right? And object when you try to eat them?"
“Yeah, filthy, smelly little beggars, dumb as sump-rats."
“They live in sumps, don't they? Don't matter. Most of what I just said was for the benefit of your ensign. Not you. When I have something to say to you and the other bat-folk, I'll say it to your faces. And with nogriff else listening in. Which is the way things ought to be."
“You're here because you've got too much potential to waste you in the ranks, but you're too pig-ignorant to be trusted with the lives of others. You look, sound, and smell like an officer. But you have none of the training or the instincts. I think, I haven't had much time to pay attention, sorry about that, but I'm a busy bird."
“No, that's fine, I know you have other ponies to foalnap…"
“That's good. A good bat-hen knows how to sass her officer, and knows when to do it. When's the right time to mouth off at your superiors?"
“When you're alone with them…?"
“Exactly. And why would that be right?"
“Because… uh, you don't want to undermine them in front of the troops?"
“Gold star, Fish Eye, gold star. Now, another thing, the way you smell. I want you to get your stink on Fruits Basket."
“My… stink?"
“Yeah. The one big problem with Fruits Basket is that she don't smell right. She's going to be all over the officer part of the job, but is missing a lot of the polish. The gentlemare part of things. In short, you. Get your stink on her. Especially the way you keep your kit. I can see that much just looking at you. You'll be a great bat-mare. Just…"
“Don't sass her in front of others, keep her gear clean, make sure she smells like an officer."
“Gold star, Lance Corporal. Now go out there and make your ensign shine."
“Yes, ma'am, Master Sergeant!"
And the pink menace fumbled her way out of Gilda's office, chasing her new shave-tail mistress.
Four winds blow us all home.
Trixie glared at Sparkle, standing up there in her awful new regimentals.
“...honesty, the most important virtue in our role as the Princess's proxy among our ponies. If we can't be true to our oaths, how can we be true to anything else? This is why we are so very careful with which ponies we offer the princess's commissions…"
Utter nonsense, of course. Half of the provincial regiments' commissions were up for actual sale; the other half were commissioned by acclaim, literal elections, curried favor among the troops they were, eventually, sworn to protect, lead, and send off to die.
And were the regulars any better? Look at Sparkle.
“...the shield and the sword! We must be as firm and as flexible as good sword-steel, sharp enough to cut through to the heart, strong enough to take the blows meant for our fellows, our flock, our herd! We are the brandished sword, we are the burnished shield!"
Giddy war-mad fool. Trixie shifted uncomfortably in the new undress that white mare with the preposterous put-on accent had forced her to wear. Even the daily dress in this regiment would be gaudy and eye-catching.
Trixie's eyes darted to the left again, at the two pretend ensigns she'd agreed to make out of her new herd of corporals, their gunners standing proudly behind them.
“...going forth to fight those fights which can't be avoided, to right those wrongs which nopony else will right! The other Guards regiments stand fast in the realm's defense. They have their role! Our role will be to go out into the world, and…"
Cinder Cone glanced back at Trixie from behind the soon-to-be Ensign Ramrod, and smiled.
Trixie flinched.
When had Trixie started fearing being seen? Where did that thought come from? She had loved being the center of attention when she was a foal. Loved playing assistant for her father's shows. Had wanted nothing more than to go out there on stage and garner applause for herself.
Both Ramrod and Cinder Cone were gunners from Trixie's old battery. Promoted, of course. The Royal Artillery wasn't about to give up well-seasoned senior gunners to Sparkle's white elephant.
Oh, there's applause. What had Sparkle just said? The eight new ensigns were braced to attention, but the other officers and sergeants and corporals and so forth were applauding.
As were Trixie's entourage of corporals she barely knew. Trixie began belatedly applauding. The hauling corporal and the caissons corporal behind her smiled at Trixie and the ensigns beyond her.
“...every tribe, every species, every creature! We've been too tolerant of our own intolerances, too fixated on threats to see the fellow creature under the fur, under the feathers, under the… er, coat. Which is why we've chosen you six…"
Well, yes, Trixie would grant that to Sparkle. She'd picked a bunch of unexpected shavetails. Two griffons, two batponies. A unicorn and a pegasus among the other line platoon ensigns, and Trixie's two, of course, but those other four… Trixie didn't really pay attention to these things, but she was fairly sure that batpony officers were nonexistent, and for a raving bigot like Gleaming 'Kill 'Em All' Shield to have chosen not one, but two griffon ensigns?
Trixie ignored the rest of Sparkle's speech, and started at the big griffon sergeant standing over by the doors. Master sergeant, now. Was this her influence? They said, when Trixie had asked, that Master Sergeant Gilda was just Sparkle's ascended bat-hen, a lance corporal who'd hit the jackpot when it came to influence.
Trixie had gotten a good read on Master Sergeant Gilda as she and the new captain-no-lieutenant-no-really-captain-this-time and Trixie had hashed out Trixie's battery from all the equine resources they'd scraped up and piled in a tangle like a jackdaw's half-built nest. The few ponies who'd been willing to follow their disgraced lieutenant into the unknown of a new regiment. The recruits with any sort of technical education. Trixie's new corporals, Glenda - who was, Trixie was pretty sure, Gilda's hen in the battery - and an enthusiast named Mews Gate for the caissons.
While they argued and argued over the idea that simple gunners could stand ensign to a falcon section without the year of gunnery school, Trixie had taken the measure of Sparkle's griffon, and came to the realization that there was no way that that had been a mere lance corporal. Maybe she'd been hiding inside the shell of a lowly glorified file-closer, maybe she'd been sandbagging, maybe it was just some sort of accelerated late adolescent burst of personal growth but that… that was a big cat-bird. In all the senses of the phrase.
Trixie wasn't the most observational of ponies, prefering to be seen rather than to see. But even she could see that something strange was afoot in the command structure of her new outfit.
Trixie looked back at her new corporals beaming at the two new ensigns in their ceremonial ranks in front of Trixie, all of them glittering in the new regimental uniforms.
And why shouldn't they, and her by extension, be seen, anyways? Trixie swished her right foreleg back and forth a bit, and watched it glitter. Maybe the uniform wasn't that bad.
“...and that is why I am proud to welcome you eight into the sisterhood of honor, and challenge you to take up the Princess's good steel! Welcome to the commissioned ranks, and make the Princess proud!"
The lance of griffons beat their wings heavily, struggling to haul themselves and their heavy training barding into the sky overhead. Their padded spears drooped as they labored under the combined weight. Higher overhead, the great grey mass arrowed by at a significant clip, making another pass over the training field, before turning to lift into another gyre.
The griffons' lance corporal somehow had enough spare lung capacity to bawl out her files and file-closers loudly enough that Lyra could hear them from the little platform she and two officers were standing on to observe the exercise. The lance was slowly gaining altitude, but their rate of rise was also increasing, if slowly.
In the near distance, there was a rumble of booms and cracks, the sound of Trixie's ponies playing with their new toys in the ranges hidden from Lyra's sight beyond the juniper groves to the east.
Captain Big Bell, a big and burly pegasus mare that Lyra didn’t really know that well, stood placidly at the front of the platform. Standing slightly behind her was Lyra and the rest of the observation party.
Lyra shot an eye sideways at the new lieutenant, another pegasus, slate-blue-grey and black maned. Lieutenant Martin Gale's eyes were narrowed, and her muzzle pinched into a slight frown so natural that it must have been her resting nag face.
"They're impossibly weak-winged. I knew griffons weren't good lifters, but these Trottish birds are beyond intolerable. Why haven't you been running them in wind sprints?" she demanded of the much bigger pegasus mare standing on the far side of the observation post.
"Well, I was mostly usin' the standard manuals. Which says to keep the new winged recruits on the ground as much as possible, and weigh 'em down with weights if you cain't keep 'em from flitterin' about."
"Phfagh! The manuals are written for pegasi, and cloud-city pegasi at that. You can't treat griffons like pegasi with beaks, it won't fly, Be- Captain Bell. Especially not Trottish birds. Haven't you seen them in the city? Lazy birds, the Trottish. Never fly anywhere they can walk."
The lance of griffons finally found the elevation of the circling Turul princess, and at some signal lost to distance, burst out of their formation, three clots of blue spreading out on three diverging axes of movement, still rising to get above and around their target.
There came another chorus of falcon fire from beyond the juniper groves. Dark clouds of smoke began to be visible to the east.
"Hrm. Sluggish and predictable. You! Corporal! Get those retrieval troopers with the cloud nets in the air! Now!" bawled Martin Gale at a bat-pony lance corporal hovering on leathery wings off to the side. The lance of bat-ponies began following in the aerial tracks of the griffons before them, pushing fluffy white clouds ahead of them. Huh, pegasus-ensorceled safety nets?
"We usually let the training lance take their time-" Captain Big Bell began, uncertainly.
"She's about to knock at least two or three of your birds out of the sky. If you don't want them washed out on medical leave or dead, let's get those safety bats in place, yes?"
"Uh, yeah, o-of course."
Another crescendo from the artillerymare's hidden orchestra, and then the blue dots in the distance stooped against the much larger grey and brown flying arrowhead, like suicidally aggressive bluejays harrying a great crow out of their territory. They swooped about and baited and jinked and tumbled, but none of them were falling out of the training fight.
"Blast! Your roc is sandbagging. Why is the trainer letting her beast go easy on your recruits? They aren't going to learn anything like this. Pardon me, Captain, I need to get up there. Be back in fifteen." And the slate-blue-grey pegasus took off with a mighty thrust into the sky, rocketing towards the now-distant sparring session.
The falcons sang out their killing song once again, and the clouds belching above the juniper bushes began to vary by colors. Was Trixie using different powder formulations for each of her falcons or something like that? The darting grey-blue blotch of the new lieutenant finally reached the distant cluster of dots and the great turul, just as some silent explosion on the other range sent up a great clotting white cloud behind the bushes.
"Well, Martin Gale's something else, isn't she, Bell?" Lyra said, smirking. She wasn't a soldier, she didn't have to bow to this rank bullshit.
"Uh, yeah. Ain't wrong, though. I think ah've been goin' about this wrong. But…" The big, ugly, beautiful pegasus grimaced as she squinted at whatever it was the other pegasus officer was doing to her distant troops. The little grey-blue blot was flitting between the blue dots, and now was - doing a circuit around the head of the big arrowhead that was all that Lyra could see of the turul princess?
"She doesn't really have much in the way of filters, does she?" Lyra asked.
"Nah. And I'm not sure if her loose talk about lazy Trottish griffons is gonna fly, what with the Major and her… yeah."
"You think Major Shield'll have a relapse if she's working with this one?" Lyra asked, grinning.
"Maybe not? But ah can see sparks a-comin'."
"Bell - can I call you Bell? - the bigots you gotta watch out for aren't the ones who'll cuss out somebody they hate to their beaks. It's the ones that only cut them dead in the safety of their velvet-lined well-appointed clubs or offices, the ones who just make things happen where there's no chance of strife or conflict or controversy… those are the ones you gotta watch out for."
Far overhead, the pegasus lieutenant had gotten the griffon lance reformed into a flying wing, and had shooed away the turul on another raising gyre. She coaxed the blue dots upwards, gaining on their target in a stern chase.
Trixie's falcons settled into a rapid-fire series of detonations. Well, at least for falcons. A volley every other minute or two. Like they were providing a soundtrack for the aerial battle.
Until the turul turned on her tail and dropped like the wrath of Celestia.
After that, things got interesting. And the bat-pony retrieval team got busy pushing their fluffy white clouds under falling griffons before they hit the ground far below to the sound of the falcons firing.
High Trotski's Fifth Celestial Era Overture. We've got the cannons, just needs the brass section and the chimes. Wonder if they were using live steel up there, what it would sound like?
"Six wing sprains! Contusions in every griffish lance! I've never seen the flying platoons so demoralized!" yelled Gilda's major at the asshole pegasus they'd just hired on.
"Yes!" the blue-grey mare yelled back at Gleaming Shield. "And it's a crying shame they're this weak at this point in training! You all have been doing this all wrong! Bell has an excuse, the Marezonians aren't an aerial squadron, what does she know about breaking fliers to the standard? You should know better, 'Major'! You were a bloody Territorial officer, and by all accounts a passably good one! Why were you letting them coddle these birds?"
"Coddling? They were marching twenty-five miles a day! And running ragged through the worst obstacle courses we could come up with!"
"Poppycock! I told Bell, I'll tell you to your face, the Trottish theatre of operations is impossibly ground-bound, and it's all the fault of defective training standards among the Territorials! If the rebels themselves weren't a bunch of heather-sucking dirt-loving traitors and untutored infants, we would have lost this war in an afternoon!
"Nopony in theatre except the aerial squadrons know how to think in three dimensions, and high command insisted on keeping the pegasi on interdiction and deep patrols. The only really good scrap we ever saw was the Crab Bucket, and we only showed up in time to mop up the remnants. Any real army would have torn us to pieces here in the Isles, and we would have deserved it!"
"So what's your solution," ground out Gleaming Shield through gritted teeth, "To have George's roc beat all of my troopers out of the skies and get them all killed?"
"You train as you plan to fight, Major! Because you'll fight as you trained, and if you trained in a padded, silk-lined box, you'll find yourself cut to pieces when you hit something that didn't learn how to fight in a parlor! Bloody training, bloodless battle! And you're planning to go off and harry a race of enormous bird-monsters, with half-cocked, mis-trained ground-bound Trottish birds? It'll be a blue-feathered slaughter.
"If you're going to get all your birds killed, I'd prefer to do it here where we have graves-registration ponies on hoof to take care of the carcasses."
Gleaming Shield turned away from the new lieutenant, and Gilda almost sighed. Her unicorn drew a hoof over her lavender lips, and groaned.
"OK, start from the beginning. What are you saying we're doing wrong?"
"Using pony manuals to train griffons!" the pegasus squawked. "Pegasi aren't griffons, and griffons aren't pegasi."
"What about the bat-ponies?"
"Bah, the thestrals. They take care of themselves, they're not in the manuals. Did you see any batponies in the medical report from today?"
"No… not really. Hrm. None. Gilda, am I missing a page?" Shield asked her sergeant.
"No, major ma'am. But the lieutenant did have at least one bat lance on search and rescue."
"Ha! Because I knew that they could handle it," scoffed Martin Gale. "You have a great resource here, Shield. So many thestrals in a single unit? It's never happened before!
“But your griffons aren't going to train up to shock standards, not by the schedule you're operating here. We'll do what we can with the time you've given me, but you need to use your thestrals as front line troops, Celestia spare us all. Your griffons won't be more than second-line support until we can get them physically conditioned. You've already lost a month's training, we're running behind as it is."
"What do you think, Gilda?" asked the major.
"I think you just lost the lieutenant's respect for asking me, major ma'am. And she's probably right. The Trottish are far too fond of their cobblestones, and I should have seen it. Two-dimensional thinking will get us killed."
"Ha! Knew a treebilly would see sense," laughed the bigoted pegasus.
Gilda turned on the lieutenant, doing her best to restrain the rage that surged under her chest like a banked fire pulsing. "Thank you for your input, Lieutenant Martin Gale. We will take it under advisement. If you could please submit your proposal in writing by the end of shift, that would be greatly appreciated."
"Tha- that's in an hour and a half! I haven't had a shower yet-"
"Then you had best get to work, lieutenant. I'm sure it's within your capabilities, as such a sterling example of the pegasus aerial corps, isn't that so?" Gilda said, smoothly, staring the lieutenant square in her pony eyes.
"Ah. Yes, of course. Excuse me, Major Shield, I'll get that on your desk by-" Martin Gale said rapidly, hoof drawn up in a proper salute to their superior officer.
"Nineteen hundred, yes, of course." And with that, the pegasus disappeared from their office.
Gleaming Shield let her breath whistle through her teeth like the Borean wind rattling dead branches. "Yeah… what do you think, Gilda?"
"I think she is a loose-tongued sadist who enjoys hurting others. She's bigoted, and not afraid to show it. She's also opinionated and stubborn."
"That bad?"
"Major ma'am, that used to be what I loved about you. I adore this mare. I want to have her foals. She's perfect. Don't let her get away."
"Oooh...kay. Seriously?"
"Major ma'am, she's ruthless enough to get us where we need to be, and heartless enough to make it happen. Make sure she's got someone keeping an eye on her, and I think we'll be golden.
"Martinets," Gilda said, mildly, "are as necessary to an organization as likeable officers. She'll do."
"But we should probably get a medical officer before we go?" Gleaming Shield said, looking thoughtful.
"Oh, yes, ma'am. We need a squadron doctor."
"Ping!" the master sergeant yelled, trying to catch him by surprise.
Again.
"Yes, Master Sergeant?" Ping said, smoothly, pivoting on his swivel chair. He loved that thing, it was a shame it wouldn't fit in the carrier when the refit was done.
"Has Hawk Eye figured out where her sister got to, yet?"
"No, Master Sergeant. I made sure that her inquiries have been getting misfiled as you asked."
"Well, I decided that was cruel of me. Make sure she knows it was us."
"If you think that's wise, Master Sergeant."
"I do."
"Might I ask why?"
"We need a regimental surgeon. I figure this is the easiest way to get a competent one."
"Captain Eye is an accomplished combat surgeon. It would be an offense against good order and efficiency to bury her in a regimental position like that."
"I know! But we need a good doctor. We're going out where griffons and ponies are gonna get mangled, best have someone who knows what they're doing on talon."
"She's not at her best in regimented conditions, Master Sergeant. She'll drink like a fish, and fight like a griffon, and prank like an earth pony."
"Well, I don't know any other doctors I can foalnap without consequences. Unless you want Burn Salve?"
Ping involuntarily shuddered.
"No, I thought not. Wait, wasn't there a diamond dog in your old unit? Bones! Bones seemed like a good egg, and I was thinking we could use a diamond dog or two, y'know, for diversity."
"We're easily the most diverse bunch I've seen yet, Master Sergeant. And that's counting Captains Eye and Bones. But Bones isn't a diamond dog or two. He's six diamond dogs."
"Wait, really? I only counted three bitches in his harem."
"The other two - Bowser was on maternity leave, and Flopsy just was really good at never being found. She was around, trust me. She ate like three dogs. Bones' harem was a logistical nightmare, Master Sergeant. We've already got the griffons and bat-ponies' dietary considerations to take into account, I don't think Purse Strings will be wanting to be sourcing kibble on top of that."
"Well," Master Sergeant Gilda said with a triumphant grin, "That means Hawk Eye then, doesn't it? Make it happen, Ping. I want her in my office by Monday, fulminating and threatening me with the stockade or… hrm. What's a griff like Hawk Eye likely to do to the hen who foalnapped her little sister?"
"Cut off your wings and stitch them back on backwards, Master Sergeant."
"Excellent! I look forward to it!"
And with that, the master sergeant was gone. Ping sighed, and pulled out his fresh set of Night Infiltration Pattern 63. It was going to be another long night.
The uniformed hippogriff stared feathery doom down at Gilda. It was the first time she'd ever seen the doctor wearing undress greens. Hawk Eye, who was now one of the few creatures other than Lady George who could look down at Gilda since her recent growth spurt, almost looked like a proper, if overtall griffon in her black beret and padded jacket, with the trousers hiding her pony hindquarters.
But then the eye was drawn to that long, aqua-green pony tail, which, although it was lashing cat-like as one might expect from a griffish hen, was in no ways catlike in its volume or structure.
Then there were the pale yellow monkey-paws waving furiously in front of Gilda's beak, and occasionally poking clawed fingers in the direction of Gilda's vulnerable eyes, and while their claws were sharp and well-manicured - Hawk Eye was, after all, a working surgeon and clearly took care of her 'working tools' - they were not avian talons.
Gilda found herself distracted by wonder at how the birdlike hippogriffs had somehow came to sport such unbirdlike appendages. And having been so distracted, she'd completely lost track of whatever the furious doctor had just screamed in Gilda's face.
"I'm sorry, Captain Eye, I have lost my train of thought. Where did we get off track again?"
"SKREEE!"
"Really, captain ma'am, I've been echoed at by experts, you won't burst my eardrums that way. I'm fairly certain I know why you might be in our offices, screaming at me, but why don't we use our words?"
Corporal Ping had abstracted himself fifteen minutes before the hippogriff mare had burst through the door; Gilda should have taken this as a warning, but because the little batpony was constantly coming and going, the warning had gotten lost in the churn.
"MY SISTER! WHERE IS SHE?"
"Ah, we've graduated to cavegriffon levels of discourse. Excellent! Perhaps we might find our way through the later exhibits with all deliberate speed?" Gilda had never laid eyes on a museum, but only had read of them. She found herself suddenly saddened by this thought, and wondered what the exhibits in their concrete flesh might look like? The engravings she'd seen in books as a kit had looked nice…
"-weeks of lies and misdirection, and then YESTERDAY! Suddenly everypony was eager to tell me that you - YOU! Had my little fish all this time!"
"Well, yes, until two days ago, I did not wish that you be informed of this fact. Two days ago, I changed my mind. Two days ago, I thought that little Fish Eye might have finally forgiven her horrible sister for whatever it was that so offended her that she did not instruct us to apply to you for ransom."
"She didn't - offended - RANSOM?"
"Oh, didn't they tell you that?"
"No, just that Fish Eye had been ARRESTED for ESPIONAGE at the Bridlederry Gate! Which is ludicrous, who would she be spying for? We don't HAVE a country!"
"Oh, calm yourself, Captain Eye. I straightened it out with the guards at the gate. Odd looking sort of monstrous beasts brandishing modern photographic camera apparatuses tend to evoke over-reactions on the part of indifferently educated Territorial troopers - who knew?"
"Oh, by all the spirits of distillery… mother is going to have a squid. What are the exact charges? When's the arraignment?"
"Captain ma'am, this is Trottingham. It didn't even make it into the reports. Which is why you only heard about it yesterday."
"Oh. Good. Uh, where is- wait, what was this business about ransom?"
"Your sister is, if you haven't noticed, a bit of a character. She took my rescue of her from likely arrest and imprisonment as a species of foalnapping. She seems to think she's in durance vile."
"Corporal Gilda, is my sister imprisoned?"
"Ahem," Gilda cleared her throat, tapping her new stripes. "Master Sergeant, thank you very much."
"Master S- what madmare promoted you… two, three…?"
"Only twice, we're experimenting with significantly flattened ranks here in the Guard, since we're spinning the regiment up from scratch and all. And that madmare would be Major Shield."
"Maybe I should be talking to this- wait, you mean Lieutenant Gleaming Shield? Who did the two of you blackmail or rob to- wait, Guards?"
"If you insist on instructing me to wait, captain ma'am, we'll be here until the autumn. Yes, this is the headquarters of the First Squadron, Sixth Guards. The Crystal Guards. We're recruiting!"
"I - you know, I don't care. My SISTER! Why does she think she's imprisoned?"
"You may not have noticed up there in the rarified Olympian airs of a medical outfit, but here in the trenches, there isn't a great deal of difference between imprisonment and enlistment in the armed forces. So, Fish Eye has decided her enlistment was a sort of arrest. Which, I should note, she seems to be enjoying quite thoroughly."
"I- but-"
"Mind you, I don't see her all that often - I don't really have time to spend with the new recruits - but she seemed happy enough when I assigned her as a bat-hen-"
"Mare! My little sister is a mare!"
"I don't see as it matters that much. Also, bat-mare makes her sound like one of the batponies. One of which is her new ensign. Where was I?"
"My crazed little sister in prison. Or enlisted in some band of uniformed lunatics claiming to be a Guards regiment."
"Ah, yes, same thing! Honestly, if it were up to me, I'd press-gang all of our recruits. It seemed to turn Fish Eye up sweet. Easily the most cheerful lance corporal in the squadron!"
"No, that's Fish. She was always a happy fry. Is she making friends?"
"I don't know, I assume so. I have to tell you, captain ma'am, as a griffon, you pony-griffons are-"
"Hippogriffs! We're hippogriffs!"
"Whatever. You have to have noticed that you occupy an uncanny valley between ponyfolk and griffonfolk."
"Yeah, yeah. You all look weird to us, too. There's just an abyss of a lot more of you out here in the world than back home."
"We'll have to talk at some point about where it is you two come from, but for now I think, captain ma'am, we need to talk about your crab-puff of a little sister."
"Why's that, sergeant?"
"Master sergeant, please! Because she really is an innocent, and I did sort of press gang her. Less violently than my own induction into the service, but still and all, I'd be happier with some family input into the situation, post-facto as it were. Among other things - what does her family debt look like?" Gilda had only three days ago sent off a year's worth of payments to her mother in dear old Griffonstone. Or rather, had put a fat stack of bits in the hooves of a banker's assistant with instructions to remit the sum as soon as international banking relations with whatever surviving or emergent financial institution appeared to take such remittances for the ominously inscrutable world of fiscal greater Griffonstone.
"What the blue hades is a family debt? No, we're not impoverished, and even if we were, it wouldn't be Fish Eye's obligation, it'd be my blasted mother's problem."
"So you've both paid off your birthing and raising debts?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"You birds really aren't griffons, are you? Nevermind. Apparently I recruited a free hen-"
"Mare!"
"And I didn't need to worry so much about it. Excellent! It's so much easier when you don't need to worry about sending children off to die for Princess and Country."
"What! No, you're not sending my little sister to die. For anything! Or any reason! She's going to go home to mother, and we'll forget this entire foalnapping business-"
"Don't forget the espionage charges."
"-and the espionage- wait, I thought you said no charges had been filed!"
"Because I had them squashed before they could be reported, captain ma'am. That could be construed as a sort of conspiracy against the Peytral. Which you are now an accessory to, after the fact."
"What! Not if I report this conversation in the next several days! I just need to find the right authorities. Somepony has got to care that there's a lunatic in a sergeant major's uniform-"
"Master sergeant!"
"Master sergeant's uniform foalnapping innocent mares and blackmailing their relatives!"
"Blackmail's such an ugly word."
"This is an ugly business!"
"But since you bring it up… Who exactly knows where you are?"
The hippogriff mare suddenly looked nervous, glancing around as if she'd just realized that she'd walked into a very large, unhinged hen's lair. Even if the hippogriff was technically taller, it was all bone and feather, and Gilda felt with some confidence that they both knew that Gilda could take her, if it came to talon and beak.
"Uh, I left a note with…"
"Ah! I was wondering where Ping got this!" Gilda picked the note up off her desk, and waved it at the mare, who was going a bit cross-eyed trying to see if it was indeed the message in question. "Nah, not really, but really, haven't you noticed how easily paperwork appears and disappears with Corporal Ping in the vicinity?"
"And that's another thing! I heard that somehow you people stole our Ping! How does that even happen?"
"Only Ping knows for sure. But every squadron should have a Ping! They're positively indispensable. I suspect I'd be able to make my fortune if I could figure out how to clone him."
"Y-yeah. So, you know, if she enlisted under false pretenses, I can just take her back to mother, and no harm no foul, right?"
"Oh, no, no, no, I'm afraid not, captain ma'am. You see, she didn't enlist under false pretenses. Real name, real talon print, signed the paper and took the bit. And as far as I can tell, is fully of age. Which is more than I could say when they press-ganged me."
"You were pre-"
"Yeah, let's talk about you, Captain Eye. Because that's why we're here, aren't we?"
"I thought we were here because of-"
"Your sister's found a place, and looks happy. Why would you want to take that away from her? I want to know if you're happy, Captain Eye. Because the last time I saw you, you weren't looking too good."
"The last time you saw me, I was forearms deep in a stallion's open ribcage and reconstructing a left lobar vein before he hemorrhaged half our blood supply over my operating table!"
"Yeah, fun times, right?"
"Only if you're a complete sociopath! I'm just counting the days until I can get back to private practice."
"Oh, were you drafted?" Gilda's talon tapped on Hawk Eye's 'jacket'. Never ask a question you don't already know the answer to.
"No, of course not, Pony Bill was paying for- look, what are you hinting around? You know I'm stuck in the EUP for the next three years. Bloodsucking grant administrators…"
"You're stuck in Her Highness's Armed Forces. Not necessarily a frontline combat hospital."
"It's either that, or one of the recovery hospitals. I can't even get a place in the vet hospitals!"
"Thing is, Captain Eye, when I looked through the establishment tables for a Guards regiment, guess what I found?"
"A puppy? A golden ticket for a candy factory? Some shred of sanity or conscience?"
"No, Captain Eye, provision for a regimental surgeon."
"A what? Those went out with the pegasus cavalry! Does it come with a tricorner hat?"
"When do you think is the last time they stood up a Guards regiment, Captain Eye? The regulations are centuries out of date. Which is a good thing. Ask me why it's a good thing."
"W- OK, I'll bite. Why's that a good thing?"
"Because there's no Crystal Empire."
"Uh… what? You lost me on that last turn. Try again?"
"The Sixth Guards is the Crystal Guards, the household cavalry of the Empress of the Crystal Heart, the Princess of the North."
"Never heard of her."
"Of course you haven't, she died almost eleven hundred years ago. And the Crystal Empire disappeared a few decades after that."
"Bully for the lot of you."
"What I mean is, our duty post is currently buried under ten thousand feet of ice and snow. Which means, by inference, we're an itinerant unit. We've got a shipworks on the north side of town renovating a heavy troopship into a light carrier, that will be the home of the First Squadron. Later squadrons will, we hope and plan, have their own aerial barracks."
"Again, I don't see what this has to do with me. And I really hate the idea that it has anything to do with Fish Eye, because I'm starting to suspect that you're stark staring mad."
"We plan on being far away from the usual EUP support structures for significant periods of time, Captain Eye. That includes medical care. That means, by extension, that…"
"You need a doctor on staff. One with a lot of-"
"Experience with emergency care and combat medicine."
"What a bloodless phrase for such a bloodsoaked affair. That's me, is it?"
"Yes. Your sister is going in harm's way. There's nothing you can do about it, and nothing I will do about it. But you can do something to make sure that if and when she's hurt in the Princess's service…"
"I'll be there to stitch back together your broken toys."
"Precisely, captain ma'am. But I can't force you to take the transfer. But if I can't get you..."
"What, are you going to threaten Fish Eye with some cack-hoofed superannuated horse doctor?"
"I have here Major Burn Salve's service jacket. It's… superficially sufficient to our requirements."
"That walking malpractice suit? Ha! You'd never pry him away from Rose Hips' hot lips."
"Do you honestly think the both of them wouldn't jump at the opportunity to swan about in guards dress uniforms?"
Hawk Eye started long and hard at Gilda's garrison fatigues, which even in their subdued glitter and subtle color gradients still managed to put her own undress greens to shame. They both knew that the hippogriff surgeon's shallow, military-mad rival would lunge at the chance to be a 'Surgeon of the Guards' - any guards, no matter how jenny-come-lately.
"You know, there will come a day when your evil plots will cease to find fair winds and following seas, Master Sergeant Gilda."
"But that day will not be today, will it, Captain Hawk Eye?"
"I loathe you with the pressure of a thousand fathoms."
"Observe me crushed by your regard."
"I take it Ping's already written up my transfer papers?"
"If I know Ping, he's already snuck them pre-signed into your lieutenant colonel's outbox in Bridlederry."
"May you end your days stuck between the teeth of a well-fed great squid."
"I love you too, Captain Eye."
The bosses had an empty warehouse deep in the griffish slums. Purse Strings wasn't entirely sure why this was so, nor who actually owned the dark fortress-like two-storey, but he wasn't going to look too closely at well-secured storage space within convenient distance of the Tenpenny Collective's bustling shipyard. He and the ratings and other sailors that had been left at loose ends by the Daddy Longlegs's long refitting had emptied out those parts of the Daddy that had been scheduled for renovations.
The warehouse also made for a useful temporary headquarters for Purse Strings and his growing if temporary empire of procurement, supply acquisition, and the occasional bit of blackmail or minor theft. So far, the bosses had kept him well-supplied with credit - if not that much cash - so the felonies had been kept to an absolute minimum.
Although if the cart parts suppliers kept dragging their hooves in between their bouts of tactical deafness and shakedowns for kickback schemes, Purse might need to start planning out a campaign of last-minute grand larceny on an epic scale - enough to burn a lot of bridges.
They weren't planning on basing out of Trottingham, anyways. Although the Major hadn't settled on an actual base of operations. Purse Strings was pulling for Well Burn or Sip Tea in the New Territories, but his opinions and preferences were hardly anything anypony was planning on taking into account.
Purse Strings was in his office with the money-hen from the Tenpenny Collective and the Major when a hippogriff in an EUP uniform came bursting into their progress update meeting.
"-which is why I think that the inner hull reinforcements aren't strictly- oh, hello, Captain Eye. Gilda said you would be in Trottingham today."
"Did she? And how did she know- nevermind, I don't want to know. Pardon me, my manners. Good day, lieut- wait, are those major bars? That madhen wasn't just talking nonsense, they actually promoted you twice?"
"Yes, I am. Nice to see you again, Captain Eye. Major Gleaming Shield, Sixth Guards, at your service."
"How do you swing two promotions in… huh, it's been almost six months."
"Politics, Captain Eye. Also knowing the right ponies. And, of course, Gilda. Can't discount the use of a good prybar to get at the goods before someone snatches away the crate."
"Right… Your prybar has pried my crate open. I gather I'm going to be working for you?"
"Excellent! We needed a surgeon. Talk to Strings here, he should be able to get you set up with supplies and explain our plans for your surgery and the expanded sick bay."
The hippogriff mare stepped up to the table covered in schedules, reports, and blueprints.
"So it's true, you're basing an entire squadron off of a- what is this?"
"Converted heavy hauler and troopship. Big enough to carry the squadron and our supplies."
"How are you going to fit a surgery and an entire-"
"Here, under the poop deck."
"Isn't that where the captain's quarters are supposed to go?"
"Well, yes, it was. Back when this ship had a captain. What do I need with a ship's captain? I've a ship's master, and I don't need some pony thinking she's the lord and commander of my ship. A nicely subservient ship's master will suffice."
"Major Shield, if you own a ship, and don't have a ship's captain, I'm pretty sure that makes you the captain by default."
"You think so? You're an army surgeon, what do you know about naval affairs?"
"I'm a hippogriff, we've always been a sailing people."
"Well, you may be right, I've served on a few sailing ships, but we Sparkles have always been army horses. And I certainly don't need more than a hammock belowdecks on one of the troop decks, with Gilda and the office cubbies.
"Anyway! We're burning daylight here. Eye, we'll talk later, I can see I need to smooth a few ruffled feathers. But this meeting is officially overtime now, and we need to get back to work if Goldclip and I are going to keep this over-budget nightmare on track. Strings! Show the captain your medical supplies."
Purse Strings knew when he'd been dismissed. He led the puzzled hippogriff into the back of the dark warehouse, picking up a firefly lantern as he went. The medical supplies were on three or four pallets in the locked cage on the back wall.
Painkillers and distilled alcohol had a certain tendency to go on walkabout if you didn't keep them under lock and key.
"Here you go, captain. Everything that was in the Daddy's old sick bay, plus some purchases I've been squirreling away. I've got two light evac carriages on order, plus a stack of stretchers on another pallet up front."
"Hrm. Is that enough for a squadron?" asked the hippogriff mare as she started going through the top stack of perishable supplies on the pallet closest to the front of the cage. "I have to admit, I've never been on this side of the game. We always caught the casualties, I never thought about where the evac rigs were coming from.
"Also, this box of antibiotics are expired. These aren't new-purchased, are they?"
Purse Strings stared at the pallet. "Shouldn't be… nope, the swabs pulled the old pallets out and put the new ones in the back like I told them, good birds. I'll have to pony up for their next rat break." The Daddy Longlegs had a surprising number of griffons among its rigging-crew. Purse had no idea how they'd kept them separated from the troops they shuttled on a regular basis, but it had been done, somehow, obviously - because here they were!
"Don't you get bulk discounts on rations?"
"Hmm?" Purse was examining the list for the pallet from which the offending box of expired drugs had come. "No, not packaged food - rats. Rat onna stick. There are street vendors, it's a delicacy in the Pennies."
"A… how old are the rats?"
"How would I know? I'm a pony. There are things I'll eat, and they're more than you predators would suspect, but I draw the line at furry things with faces. Even mugs as ugly as you'd find on a rat."
"And it isn't because you feel a certain commonality with them?"
"What, rats aren't herbivores!"
"I was thinking of furry things with faces on 'em. Like what you see every morning in the mirror."
"What! Are you calling me rat-faced?"
"Uh. No. Of course not. More of a weasel…"
"Ha! You're too kind, Captain Eye. What's that short for, by the way?"
"Hawk Eye."
"Nice to meetcha, Hawk Eye. I'm Purse Strings. I master quarters around these parts. Let's find out how much of this junk I pulled off Daddy Longlegs is garbage."
"Daddy…?"
"Yeah, nopony else likes the name, either. We're working on it."
Giles' lance sat on the various padded chairs and assorted couches of the ready room down the hall from the squadron head office. He supposed in some distant past the room had been some rich lady's tea room, or audience chamber, or suchlike. The furniture's solidity and quality testified to its once-excellence of construction, and its significant wear and decrepitude to its age. Each of the lances in the squadron were, in theory, expected to spend a shift during the daylight hours here, awaiting the pleasure of the officers or, more likely, the sergeants.
Giles's lance was down two griffons after the previous day's training. That maniac blue-gray mare and her screeching, plus the sound of those hellish pony guns thumping away underwing… Giles had barely maintained his coolness and calm in the face of both stressors.
Two of his birds hadn't: one had an overextended wing, and the other a concussion. The roc's handler had apologized, but that didn't repair a head injury overnight.
Four of Giles' intact troopers had found some tarot deck in a drawer somewhere, some lady's fancy set of cards. They had pulled a group of overstuffed fancy hoofstools and lounge chairs around a side-table, and were trying to play poker. The occasional curses rose up from the players as they kept discarding major arcana that'd found their way into the deal.
And so it was, facing away from the ready-room door, that Giles was mildly diverted and not thinking about much at all, when he suddenly found himself unexpectedly facing the squadron's most senior non-commissioned officer before he even knew there was trouble on the wing.
That would teach him to not sit with his back to the door. He could feel the troopers sniggering up the sleeves of their gambesons around him as he found himself springing to his paws and spinning in place.
The master sergeant's voice was certainly penetrating.
"That's better, lance corporal. Whose bird are you, again? I don't recognize your beak." Her intense, large eyes scanned over Giles' gear looking for signs of 'moral laxity' or worse, 'slovenly deportment'.
"Gwaine, marm."
"Right, a new bird. Anyways, listen up…"
Giles tuned out his superior's orders with a slight glassiness, distracted in his head by musing on the subject of obscure instructions and standing orders. His world over the last week or so had been a constant sway between obeying the orders of the actual officers and senior non-coms, and paying heed to his immediate superior. Sometimes Corporal Gwaine sounded like he'd swallowed a thesaurus or an encyclopedia. One of those fancier books that taught high-toned birds to sound haughty. It was at times like that, that Giles had had to figure out what the corporal had been on about from context and clues and so on. Luckily, Gwaine did go on.
"Do you understand me, lance corporal?"
"Yes, marm! Collect a cart, and proceed with your- my toms to the warehouse on Ninepenny and Prybar, to collect a Captain Eye. Escort her to, to-"
"Bridlederry, lance corporal. Collect her things. Keep a close eye on her. Make sure she doesn't scarper."
"Scarper, marm?"
"Abscond. Disappear. Take Prench leave. Hie off for the high heather."
"Is… an Equestrian captain likely to desert, marm? In the middle of clanhold country?"
"Technically - technically! The road to Bridlederry is perfectly pacified."
"Weren't there a full fledged battle out that way last January?"
"Yes. Yes there was. Which is why you are escorting Captain Eye under arms. As a protective guard. Among other things."
"I… see, marm. So, full armor?"
The master sergeant looked him over, scowling.
"No, I think duty armor should suffice. If you encounter anything that shoots back, turn about and run like Boreas is on your tail and you just stole from the winds. Don't get captured. Don't let any of your toms or hens get hurt, or it's your neck."
"Yes, marm."
"Look, she'll want to bring back her still. Let her. It'll take up the most of your cart. I don't care. We could use the 93/1st's still, if they're fool enough to let us steal it. I'm pretty sure Eye's possessive of the damn thing."
"The… still. Like a whisky still?"
"Exactly. Except she specializes in gin. Reminds me, if you get a chance, see if the juniper groves south of town are berrying. We can always send a troop out to requisition a harvest before we go."
"The lieutenants had us practicing out by the groves yesterday, marm. The groves have got another week or so before they're ripe, I think?" Giles knew that smell. There had been a wild grove a quarter mile down the loch from Aerie Tarvie.
"Right. Let's see, under arms, cart out of the depot, Ninepenny and Prybar, Captain Eye, Bridlederry, don't let her desert, still. Have I forgotten anything?"
"Here into town, and then out to Bridlederry and back is a three day trip, marm."
"Blast, you're right. Wait right there." The big brown and grey hen disappeared back up the hall, leaving Giles to look around at the round-eyed staring members of his lance.
"Don't all stand there like blinkin' pillocks! Get down to th' barracks and get your day armor and yer ruddy ready packs! The bird 'oo don't have their bluddy rations in ten minutes when I get down there, goes 'ungry in a day an' a 'alf when we're 'alf a mile away from anyfing and eyein' each other's briskets with bleedin' surmise! Step to, toms and hens, step to!"
The ready lance scrambled for the door, rushing to get their gear in order.
"Don't forget your best spears, ladies! We want to march pretty for any lasses or laddies likely to be admirin' our featherin' forms!"
The master sergeant waited for the last griffon scrambling on the heels of said trooper's faster fellows, and then breezed back into the now-empty ready room.
"Here, signed orders, with a requisition for night barracks-space in Fort Guillaume. And you better not take three days for a two-day errand. Get your lazy crab-backs airborne, Lance Corporal G- what is your blasted name, again?"
"Giles, marm."
"Giles! I got enough of an earful from Martin- Lieutenant Martin Gale about lazy Trottish griffons who can't be bothered to exercise their weak and feeble feathers. Move fast, damn your beak!"
"Marm! Yes, marm!"
"Well, go on then, get going! Eye is probably still fussing over the supplies from the Daddy Longleg's old sickbay."
"Er, sickbay, marm?"
"What, didn't I say? You're escorting our new surgeon. See if you can't encourage her to 'borrow' as many medical necessities from her old outfit as you can get without getting arrested."
"Marm?"
The big griffon eyed Giles, and took pity on him.
"Oh, fine, we probably need Ping to go out there and straighten out the transfer orders personally, anyways. He usually seems to do it without anygriff noticing he was there or missing here, but it's probably for the best if he meets you out at the Bridlederry Gate. Safety in numbers and all that."
"Thank you, marm."
"Go on, get!"
Giles got.
Ping sat patiently by the Bridlederry Gate, waiting for his charges. He had a million things to do, and to get organized, but the master sergeant had said his hoof was needed in this, and nopony else's. And so Ping's valuable time had been debited to this single account, two whole days worth.
Less if they could get this goat rope in the air and outbound in the next ten minutes or so.
The short lance finally appeared overhead, gliding relatively quickly down out of the short hop they'd made over from Strings' den of iniquity over in the Pennies. A set of towngriffons fresh out of the stews, for some nightforsaken reason Master Sergeant Gilda had chosen these raw recruits to escort Ping and his charge out to their old squadron to extract Hawk Eye's possessions.
And that damn still. Ping wasn't sure why Gilda wanted it - she didn't drink, and darkness knew Ping didn't, either. And the juice of that hadesbound press had made Ping's life hades-like on far too many occasions for him to love, like, or even really tolerate it.
Lieutenant Colonel Pole had been far too fond of Hawk Eye's bootleg gin.
And there was the villain herself. Ping was pretty sure that Hawk Eye thought of him as a friend. Ping knew how to deal with that particular delusion, and had always been perfectly civil, even friend-like to the overtall blue-green-maned sort-of-mare.
"Ping! You little traitor! Where were you hiding earlier?"
Or maybe not.
"Aw, Hawk Eye, you know how it is. Spinning up a new squadron's a never-ending task."
"Why for the love of little blue fishes would I know that?"
"Oh, right, you were the last pony recruited into the old outfit, right after Rose Hips."
"More importantly, what makes you think you'll get in and out of the old 93/1st with your hide intact? You broke Pole's heart! He's going to be inconsolate."
Ping was pretty sure that was the master sergeant's game. He was to be the distraction as the griffon troopers got Hawk Eye in and out of the hospital before anypony could think to lay hooves on the doctor they were stealing from their inventory. Not to mention anything else that wasn't nailed down.
And a few things that technically were, like the aforementioned still.
"Corporal!" squawked the lance corporal leading his lance of crab-backs. "We're burning daylight!"
And indeed, they were. Ping quickly talked their way through the guarded gate, and the nameless lance corporal got his birds and the empty heavy cart across those few lengths of cobblestone before they were past the no-fly zone, and the whole cavalcade got back into the air, Hawk Eye included.
They set off towards distant Bridlederry, flying low over the metalled Pike with its slow-moving ground-pony traffic, the infamous 'Route Trottish'.
Ping interrogated the hippogriff as they lollygagged behind the sweating griffons in their armor around the cart, the poor birds stuck in the traces panting with their tongues out.
The new lieutenant was right, these recruits were lacking in endurance. Good thing it wasn't Ping's department.
But the slow pace meant that both Ping and his fellow former-mobile-hospital comrade had plenty of breath to argue back and forth. Not that Ping cared to defend his conduct to Captain Eye, but it was his job to turn up Hawk Eye sweet, and make sure she didn't make a break for it while they were in Bridlederry.
Also to get the lists of medical supplies it would be Ping's responsibility to have stolen while they were distracting the squadron's office staff.
A plan of attack having been assembled from Hawk Eye's list of requirements, and Ping's memory of how the supply tents were laid out - Ping was distracted by the smooth charcoal of the pike far below, interrupted by circular black patches of fresh asphalt, in the middle of a burned-out corpse of a town.
"Ginver's Nest," Ping said, distracting Hawk Eye from another sermonette on the subject of loyalty and the daypony virtues. He gestured at the remnants and reminders of January's dreadful battle.
"What? Oh, damnitall. Yeah. That's the place. Ugh, now I'm feeling nauseous. Way to ruin the mood, Ping." She looked over her shoulder, at Trottingham behind them, the walls still barely visible in the sharp spring air. "We were stuck here for a week and a half. Thought I'd freeze to my own scalpels."
The 93/1st had spent three weeks on Route Trottish, most of them here in a series of temporary camps around the edges of what had once been the only significant griffish town in the lowlands besides Trottingham proper. A little blot of the highlands in the middle of the rich ponish plain.
Now it was burned ruins. And Ping and Hawk Eye were surrounded by crab-back griffons in EUP uniforms.
If Ping wasn't fairly sure he could take all of them with one thumb tied behind his wing, he might have had a moment of fear at the situation his inattention and ego had led him into.
The brief moment of nostalgie du sang was dispelled by the thing that both of them saw at the same time, looking back at Trottingham. Piling high clouds blowing in from the northwest, casting the city in a premature late-afternoon darkness that invited a sort of waking prophecy of what was about to fall over the skies over the Bridlederry Pike.
And then they were just a detachment of the Crystal Guard again, and Ping forgot about dead griffish towns and angry, armed griffons. He hurried forward to brief the griffish lance corporal and his file closers with the plan that had already formed, full-foaled within Ping's racing, now-focused mind.
They could probably make this work, assuming that Hawk Eye didn't make a break for it in the storm that was coming.
Giles had assigned each of his closers to a target, and he himself had followed Trooper Gim and Gim's two hens behind the thestral clerk and their potential deserter.
The irony was almost physically painful, like actual hot irons laid across his flanks, or behind his aching eyes.
They'd picked up their pace once the hippogriff and the batpony had noticed the on-rushing stormclouds, leaving the entire party pumping their wings and catching every forward gust to steal another knot of airspeed from the electric air.
They rode the gust front for an hour and a half before it engulfed them, swallowing the formation whole, like a leviathan of the deep snapping up a tuna or a shark or-
Look, Giles MacGregor was not a fishing griffon, nor were the MacGregors a seagoing clan. It was damn spooky, was what it was.
They were soaked by the time they found the field hospital in a decidedly nonmobile facility in Fort Guillaume. Giles had, obviously, never been in the fort, or anywhere near it. Bridlederry and her escort of stonework blockhouses and fortifications had long been the heart of pony dominance of the highlands, a feather of the hated Duchess's wings embracing the rebellious griffish hills. Bridlederry herself squatted fat and sullen in the throat of the widest low-lying entrance to the interior, forcing clan raiding parties to work their way down lesser defiles and hollows towards either coast, before they could reach the fat pony lands below.
The Crystal Guard's raid on the 93/1st went far more smoothly than the average clan rampage. They had a Ping, after all, and inside knowledge. And they had both Ping and the loudly squawking hippogriff as a distraction, providing all due cover for Giles' and Ping's toms and hens descending on the doctor's former quarters and the supply 'tents' - which were in well-fortified buildings behind well-built doors.
Luckily, Ping had let himself be talked out of having Giles' disoriented troopers attempt the assault on the supplies unsupported, and Ping got them past the door-guard before leaving with Hawk Eye and Gim's file to beard the drunken dragon in his office.
Not literally a dragon, although once Giles got a good look at the personnel of the 93/1st, he came to realize that a dragonet wouldn't have been out of the realm of possibility.
And so, as the supplies party cleared out the 'tents' courtesy of Giles' only other sort-of-literate trooper, and the 'still' party pried up the captain's prized distilling apparatus, Giles and the rest of the command party stood in the squadron offices and listened to their former commander ramble incoherently.
They'd timed their arrival perfectly. Lieutenant Colonel Fishing Pole might have made trouble if he hadn't been four drams to the wind, and mawkishly inebriated. Mostly, it was mortifying.
Outside, the storm thundered and roared, a typical late-May gully-washer.
They managed to heap up the captain's effects, her disassembled still, and the stolen medical supplies in their wagon, and escaped in a brief if dark reprieve in between deluges.
They gave up trying to find a warm barracks, and instead piled together in an empty stables around the precious supply-cart, in an almost warm heap.
Giles kept a rotating night-guard, with two griffons for each of three watches. Nopony tried to steal back what they'd rightfully stolen.
The ride back into the city the next day was even slower, with the griffons hauling the heavy cart stuck on the pavement of the pike proper. It took twice as long this way, but they were burdened going back to Trottingham.
Giles flew cover over the cart, which the rather sad-looking hippogriff sat on, instead of flying with the rest of the air patrol. She'd mentioned the night before that Giles' pink ghost was Captain Eye's precious little sister, somehow press-ganged into the gang of rogues and rovers that the ponies called a guards regiment.
Giles wasn't sure what to think about that. The smaller hippogriff had seemed deliriously happy to be there, far happier than any other griffon in the ranks. But Giles supposed that one never did really understand what went on in other griffons' families, their inner lives.
It was far too hard to understand others' outer lives.
As they passed through the ruins of a griffish lowland town, Giles spotted a small hen - a fledgling still, really, half-starved - staring over a tumbled-down wall at the cart rolling by. She had a pile of rocks and broken cobbles sitting beside her, where a talon could dip down and flick them one by one at the passers by.
Giles descended silently behind the unobservant fledgling's back, shoving his spear into its carrying sheath on his back.
She was in his talons, struggling, and in the air before she could squawk.
"Leggo! Claws off, ye great gooby! Imma gonna cleft th' cowans' cresties in twain, I are!" she squawked.
"Like winds ya are, ya wee shitehawk!" Giles shook his prisoner roughly, rattling her beak, and making her drop the stone she'd had in her talons. "What's the story, half bit? Where's yer mum?"
"Bugger me mum, I was gonnae flick a rock at 'em, fer my da, and his broke wing, and our burnt hame! An… an my bruther…" the damn kit started crying in Giles' arms, and he nearly broke down.
She didn't look like Giles's sister, or sound like her, or even smell like her. But she was someone's sister. Or had been.
"Ach, shush, ya wee eejit."
Giles looked around, searching for something to do with his catch. He found a beak sticking out of a window in one of the intact buildings a street or two over from the main road. He beat his wings, keeping his height, and keeping the fledgling from escaping, and peered in the window through which he'd seen the griffon.
There was an old hen in there, staring, terrified.
"You there, old hen. This kit is lookin' for trouble. Trouble don't want her." Giles shook a squeak out of his captive. "You ken this kit?"
"Nar, yer wirship, ain't never laid eye on her."
"Well, I dinnae hae time tae deal wi' her, either. Look, I got yer address. Keep her indoors until we're gone, or I'll hae tae gie rough." Giles tossed the wide-eyed fledgling through the open window. He reached over to slam the shutter closed.
The shutter came off in his talons.
Giles sighed, and grabbed a ration bar out of his panniers, and flung it with considerable force after the kitling, shouting at the two of them, "And feed yer damn waifs an' urchins! This'un was underweight. If the next I catch doesnae hae any more flesh on her bones, I'll come back heer an' hae yer guts fer garters!" He flew off in a huff.
Hopefully Giles MacGregor and his half-forgotten hills-clan accent would never need lay talon in this winds-forsaken town again.
Giles the Griffon of nowhere in particular and the Crystal Guard flew to rejoin his troopers as they rolled northwards back to the squadron and home.
Ping sighed in relief as they cleared the Gate, cargo and captain intact in the bracing and enfolding darkness of true night. Not even the day-ponies' lanterns and streetlamps could lessen the batpony's sense of ease and accomplishment. The trip back from Bridlederry had been painfully slow, but uneventful. The lance corporal Gilda had given them had worked out just fine.
So Ping had been relaxing in anticipation of home when they cleared the lesser gate into Garrison #5 and he was greeted with two hideous old thestral hags camped out in the courtyard in front of the entrance to the squadron's section. Staring balefully at the evening guard, only one of which was a fellow thestral.
Waiting for Ping. In full view of Night and everypony.
Ping's eyes lingered on the hateful figures of his personal nightmares, sitting on the fitted stonework of the garrison courtyard, surrounded by their considerable baggage, utterly uncloaked by semblance or dream-magic. Every scar of age, every runnel carved into their hides by dream-magic gone wrong, dark magic over-indulged in, every compromise with morality or ethics or basic oneiromantic hygiene…
Disgusting.
Luckily, Ping was at the back of the small column, and it was the work of an instant to disappear from view, slipping into the shadows behind the doors, the heavy doors which the rest of the party had already passed through, to be brought up short by the obstruction of the two matrons and their clutter blocking traffic into the squadron's portion of the garrison complex. He stepped sideways, and flitted upwards to find a nook beside the decorative gargoyles along the wall outside, just below the patrol parapets. He dove into the implied space between a stone griffon, beak writhing with petrified horror, and a rock pony, her head eternally captured, rearing in disgust.
A mental gesture like a reflex, honed by a lifetime of need for rapid descent through the stages of unconsciousness, fired the stallion into the under-stuff like a rocket fired into a clear sky, or a corps-mare's needle, injecting him into the main vein of the dreaming world.
A quick spin in the gloaming, some few thestral souls gleaming like beacons in the early night hours, so few asleep among the mere day-souled sleepers. Those whose duties called for them to be awake later in the night, or through the whole of the daylight hours…
While Ping raced his anxieties, faster than they could catch him, and ordered his responses faster than he could think them, his mind on another level unpacked the impulse that had caused him to flee and hide. The impulse that had made his decision for him, even before Ping himself had consciously registered that there had been a decision to be made.
That usually meant that his subconscious mind had been playing with this problem for a very long time, and he'd just not let himself consciously register the moral calculations being performed under cover of his own personal ever-night.
First, the matrons had refused to be sent away, that was obvious, that was the trigger. They were too old in their evil ways, and too set in their personal self-regard; they wouldn't trust him with the exercise of authority in the matters which were to come.
No matter the practicalities and the possibilities.
But that was merely the naked, inciting fact. What was the thought-process that was even now making him pick out the dreaming thestrals available, discarding this one, considering that one but setting it aside as a weak reed, latching onto this one as a definite possible?
It wasn't simply that Ping didn't trust the two matrons, fools as they were. It was that he didn't trust the aunties, either. These two had somehow slipped the bonds of the Concordat, and were free of all restraint. How were the aunties covering for these two, anyways? Were they? The aunties, the Elders, were too detached, too slow-moving. They had pushed all these resources out onto a ledge, a ledge they had no conception of, no understanding of, no feel for. And it was possible they hadn't done their due diligence with these matrons. Or somehow had shuffled them out of the rotation, retiring them early, into the true retirement.
From the look of them, the two matrons maybe should have been properly 'retired' directly into the Plain of Jars. They were that disgusting-looking. It would only take a small push to get these matrons labelled 'corrupted'.
But no, it was vital that these two didn't have any sort of sustained contact with the leaders of Ping's new squadron. It wasn't as if anypony really knew what Gleaming Shield and her terrifying bat-hen were doing, least of all the two of them. Ping was morally certain of that fact.
Whatever it was they thought they were planning, the doors they were opening led into liminal spaces which housed great, unconstrained powers; one of which great powers Ping himself was pledged in service to, mind, spirit and soul. However queasy and terrified that prospect of servitude left him when he considered the facts lurking underneath the rituals of colony and home, kith and kin.
And those two lunatics down in the courtyard, like two ticking time-bombs.
Whatever was to come, Ping and his neglected thestrals would never reach there if they were all arrested for subversives here, now, in this moment, due to those imbecile matrons doing - whatever it was they thought they were doing. Playing the prophetess? Seeing if they couldn't get hired on as hierophants for the expedition? Ping had no idea, the resources of imbecility and incompetence were infinite - while matter was sadly limited, and magic constrained by emotional possibility & the strengths of the soul, stupidity was without limits, infinite in scope and possibilities.
Infinite possibilities, every one of them idiotic and undesireable.
The matrons were there, in the courtyard, in the open. From their posture, they had to have been there for a while, possibly as long as a day, although Ping rather suspected that Gilda and Gleaming Shield would have cleared the obstruction from their figurative foyer, sooner rather than later. So, fairly recently, but not too much so. A response had to be grinding through the bureaucracy of the squadron, somewhat slowed by Ping's own absence.
In time with Ping's lightning-fast calculation of time and space, he chose two options. That idiot Bob, to play the fool. Ensign Fruits Basket, who was both reliable, and already asleep, cautiously patrolling her platoon's barracks-room spirit traps, looking over her bats who were likewise sleeping on the early night schedule, to preserve their energy for daylight activities as expected by the day ponies.
The matrons would try to buffalo Gleaming Shield, talk her into hiring them on as 'experts' of the mysterious east, as if they knew anything of the continent of Beakland. Or present themselves as the emissaries of ineffable prophecy, which was somewhat more closer kin to the truth.
If Ping wasn't very clever and very good, the two matronly imbeciles would drag the entire thestral contingent into their idiot conspiracy. One which wouldn't fool the major, Gleaming Shield, in the least. Or rather, even if they fast-talked the major with gypsy piffle and cold reading blither, the master sergeant, standing behind her unicorn master, would see instantly through the grift.
The problem was, that if Ping tried to intervene directly, the griffon would spot it as just another, rival grift.
Which it was.
So, still calculating, Ping formed a dream-semblance, and appeared to 'Bob', the imbecile that Major Shield had accidentally gifted a Name of honor and distinction. For no good reason, of course - something to do with the imbecile's former name being too close to one of the major's elders - but it had implanted in the idiot the misguided idea that he was important.
So Ping gave Bob something to be important about. Wearing the cloak of the Mother, Ping appeared to the stallion Bob, and told him that there were fakirs, frauds, pretenders, heretics. He showed him a glimpse of the two matrons in the courtyard, and whispered that they were possessed of dream-monsters, warped in soul and spirit.
It was close enough to true that the idiot bearing testimony would cloud the matter, and make the matrons radioactive - they'd find themselves imprisoned in some spook's black site before you could say 'Nightmare Moon cultist' twice.
While setting that particular trigger, Ping considered why he was doing this, and how he could make sure that the trap only took the matrons, and nopony else. Why was he preserving himself and his fellow thestrals?
Well, for one, he didn't care to be imprisoned and subjected to the tender mercies of the White Witch's confused welter of secret services and counter-intelligence agencies. Despite what he'd said to the matrons, ponies didn't get burned at the stake in these modern, rational days. But they did get jailed indefinitely, subjected to mind magic to 'purge' the corrupting influences, or otherwise warped into 'good ponies'.
Assuming they were too compromised to be safely given into the hooves of the guardians of the Plain of Jars. Which, despite what the aunties and their agents within the Concordat told the White Witch, only contained safe ponies - those twisted by workaday dark magic, and unaligned dream-parasites.
Well, not safe by the definition of ‘won’t feed foals to dark dread monstrous abominations, eat pony flesh, or burn towns and villages in sacrifice to greasy black stone effigies of many-tentacled horrors’. Safe to the guardians of the inner mysteries.
The thestrals kept sub-colonies separate from the main colonies, for the benefit of batponies privy to the inner mysteries, those almost caught and subject to the ‘reforms’ of Celestia's inquisitors. Some few of those actually were too far gone, and were subject to the aunties’ own exorcisms. More than a few were beyond even the thestrals own rituals, and had to be returned to the custody of the guardians of the Plain. Even the successfully reformed could never again be trusted with the care of the dreams of others, and thus the sub-colonies.
Sometimes, though, the corrupted had to be sacrificed directly to the agents of the Concordat, so that they and their co-sponsor could feel that they served some purpose, conveyed some benefit to the balance of power. To prove to everypony that the Night Shift was trustworthy, and not corrupted by Nightmare worship.
As if there was a Night Shift without worship of the Mother of Dreams.
So! It was time to burn another pair of matrons. There wasn't a full inquisitorial team here in the Griffish Isles, for reasons which were obscure to Ping. The presence of the Temple of Hungers should have merited a proper detachment of inquisitors, if Celestia's guard dogs had any sort of wisdom in their approach to their job, riding herd on the unregenerate cultists who mared the ramparts of the dayponies' undefended dreaming minds, and the large if diffused swarm of batponies within the EUP’s pegasus squadrons.
Next - almost simultaneously - was Ensign Fruits Basket, who was from an ancient and valued lineage, and was as ambitious as she was admirable. Major Shield hadn't recognized what she'd offered Basket, but the master sergeant had, Ping suspected, figured it out. In a stroke, they'd made the thestral mare personally loyal to her benefactors. Oh, she was a well-indoctrinated follower of the Old Religion - you didn't get as far as she had in the EUP without being 'reliable' in that way - but her interests were aligned with the Regiment, not the Old Religion. And more importantly, she wasn’t an initiate of the inner mysteries.
And that was fine.
Ping appeared to Fruits Basket wearing his own soul, without adornment.
"Lord Spear-Stallion! Blessings upon your night!" she squeaked in her surprise, stopped dead by Ping's appearance before her, his shadows twitching despite his attempts at self-control.
"Blessings upon your nightly duties, shieldmaiden. How stands the ramparts against the formless dark?"
"Strong as we are many, lord," she said, bowing deeply. Ping had never talked to this one personally. In general, he'd avoided personal contact with other thestrals in the service. Their uncertainty in the light of day, and their obsequiousness in the dreamtime had made him prefer the company of day-ponies in the day, and nopony at all in the dead of night. "What has caused you to honor me with your presence, lord? Some dread thing for which you require an aegis to stand some half-second while you conjure its demolition upon your many-bladed spear?"
"Nay, lady. The line of dream-entrenchment stakes, of sudes are intact, the sudes stand tonight sentry for us all. There is a worse matter, which requires your personal honor to stand shield against our own follies."
"I- I have no idea what that means, lord. What worse matter…?"
"Treachery, betrayal, and subversion, lady shieldmaiden. Mares of great age and honor, betraying their oaths and their fellow-ponies, for ego, for self-satisfaction, for the corruption which their too-long stays outside of the sudes has left them half-souled, evil-spirited, or worse, corrupted entire."
The dreaming mare blinked, befuddled. "I thought those were myth, by the daywalkers who hunt us for any sign of disloyalty to the peytral. That it didn't ever happen."
Was that how she justified her oaths to the EUP, how she reconciled them with the rituals of the colonies?
"No, my lady. It is a very real thing. To lay eyes upon the naked flesh of matrons such as these, is to see their souls laid bare. It is never a pretty sight, even among the unfallen."
"You're saying they're here? Now?"
"Even now, at our gates. Petitioning for access to our sanctum. Plotting to promise our good major, certain secret magics, secret prophecies, imaginary wisdoms. All to lead astray the daywalking and the unprepared."
"Blasphemy!" she gasped.
And it was, of a sort. To those who were never accepted into the inner mysteries. Which most thestrals in service weren't.
And so, Ping bent his head down to the slight figure in the liminal gloaming, urgently speaking those things which must be done, to salvage the project of the Crystal Guard.
Giles led his griffons off to the side, away from the brewing confrontation just awaiting some sort of response from the ponies who ran his regiment. He knew trouble when he saw it, darkening the flagstones like pony-shaped holes in the waking world.
The foolish, overlarge hippogriff seemed likely to go confront the horrors, her give-a-shit no doubt overloaded by days of distraction and provocation. Giles got a good grip on the mare's wing, and dragged her out of the line of fire and the inevitable disaster.
Neither of the posted guards in front of the great doors moved a muscle, and Giles deduced by this stillness that somepony had already run for the authorities to intervene. If the official guard detail were holding their position so, far be it from juniorest of junior non-commissioned-not-really-any-sort-of-officer Lance Corporal Giles to put himself forward into the jaws of the beast.
Were these ponies fanged?
After an interminable minute, which may have taken up a single actual minute, or fifteen or twenty actual, ticking minutes, authority finally showed its pony face, as Captain Bell stuck her heavy, meaty mattock-head out of the main doors, staring at the black, scarred, bat-winged things sitting patiently between two small piles of - brightly pastel pony luggage?
It was incongruous, and Giles had no idea what to make of it.
"Hey there! You two! Can we help y'all with something? Guard detail said you wouldn't talk to anypony without th' rank to speak for th' regiment."
One of the horrors opened her apparently thestral eyes, and gazed up the stairs-and-ramp at the big pegasus mare.
"Be you Twilight Sparkle, of the Sixth Guards Regiment?" the horror ground out like every whispering, judging voice that had ever haunted Giles' troubled sleep.
"Cain't say that I am, ma'am. Nor can I say who the dickens that might be, neither. You sure you have the right city? Guard House is in Canterlot."
"We have the right city, Captain- Captain, what is your name, please?"
"You ain't said who you is, either, mare. I think yer a mare. Are you a mare?"
"They call me Witching Hour. This is my companion Wolf Time. We are here to see the lady and mistress of this company. You are clearly no such thing, so we would exchange words with your mistress. Bring her here, now."
"Well, then, Miss Hour. Since you all were good enough to give me yours, my name's Bell. Captain Big Bell. And I don't know any Twilight Sparkle. Name sounds vaguely familiar, but whoever it is, ain't the colonel of this regiment, on account of we ain't got one yet."
"She means me, Captain Bell, thank you," said the voice of Giles' commander, wafting over the shoulder of the thick-accented captain standing in the doorway. Said captain stood to the side, and let Major Shield pass by, with the master sergeant in tow. "Who are you, that you have the name of a dead filly in your mouth?"
"Well now… Major. It is, I am morally positive, a fact that the filly who was once known as Twilight Sparkle is very much not dead, not in the Elysian Fields, not in the Empyrean. Her dreams are known to us, although your face I must admit is the first in my waking seeing."
A chill went up Giles' back, as he watched the confrontation building.
Or maybe it was that batpony who blazed over the major's horn and hat, arching athletically as he burst out of the shadows of the unbarred doorway, rocketing towards the two unearthly mares sitting alertly in the middle of the courtyard.
Then the half-armored batpony impacted the two horrors, and scattered them and their luggage like ten-pins, knocking one aside, and spitting the other with his spear. A great screech arose from the impaled hades-mare, the weapon waving around like a lost boar-spear jutting out of a very living swine, struck but not fatally so.
"Charge!" bellowed Giles, his inaction broken by the prospect of violence in perilous proximity to his commanding officer. His griffons, startled by his sudden order, missed a step, only following him after a body's length had been consumed by his sudden darting advance.
Giles hit the unwounded mare with a full-body tackle, pinning her to the blood-sprayed flagstones, his weight sufficient to bear down on the smaller, terrifying monster. Her fangs scrabbled at his gorget, which was barely wide enough to spare his throat from her slashing sharp teeth. Mildly terrified, he raised a taloned fist and bashed her head in, once, twice, and - he didn't have to do it a third time, her demon-eyes gone crosseyed and vague. She collapsed into a heap, with his superior weight pressing her into the stones.
Giles looked up, to see what had happened to his lance. Two toms and a hen were holding down the other mare - Wolf Time? - and keeping her from opening up her wound deeper around the service spear driven into her side. The hippogriff doctor was moving forward with medical supplies in her talons, and off to the right, two more toms were holding down the mad batpony who had attacked someone in the presence of their superior officers. The madpony, his velocity spent, was lying peaceably beneath the pile of griffon flesh, his eyes on the insensate lump of pony flesh crushed beneath Giles' own bulk.
"Well, that was certainly a thing," observed Master Sergeant Gilda.
Fish Eye worked on her ensign's uniforms, trying to watch what she was doing with one eye, while keeping the other eye on the sleeping ensign herself. She had found that watching another person sleep was remarkably restful, as if she was the one doing the sleeping, and deriving the relaxation and repose direct from the source. But trying to look at two things at the same time gave Fish a bit of a headache, and she wished she had independently directed eyes like those underseas creatures she remembered vaguely from her foalhood.
The fact that Fruits Basket was not an easy sleeper, and intermittently tossed and turned, didn't help any. The batpony was as active in sleep as she was in the waking hours, or in command, and the constant motion kept drawing the hippogriff's eyes away from her work.
Command had come easily to the batpony mare, as if she'd been born to lead a platoon of hard-squinting troopers in drill and on the march. Fish Eye had scrambled to keep up with her new officer, being so very, very new to military discipline, and to the march as batponies practiced it. It was all Fish could do, to merely not be underhoof. Never mind keeping up.
Ensign Basket had yet to send a harsh word Fish's way, although she'd rained curses on her corporals and her troopers at first. Fish had felt that this had been excessive, but remembering the master sergeant's words on the subject of contradicting your officer in public, had held her peace.
The ensign had nodded when Fish Eye afterwards had dropped a few words on the subject of noblesse oblige and how Canterlot would-be nobles competed in their passive-aggressiveness towards their servants. Well, a few words, of course, disguised among a great many others on the subject of Fish's former herdmates back at Furrow, many of whom seemed to be less individual ponies, and more the banner-carrying colour-guard of their own little troops of maids, valets, hoofstallions and grooms. All of whom were bullied into submission by their masters with innocent-eyed trills of perfect politeness and iron-eyed glares of command and control.
The next morning, the ensign had removed all profanity and insult from her instructions to the platoon and the NCOs, and Fish Eye had noted the slight surprise and growing approval in the expressions of both. The platoon wanted the best for their new ensign, after all, and were willing to give Fruits Basket the space to become the officer they all knew she could be.
Ensign Basket was cool that way. Hay, she was cool any way you looked at her. Fish Eye knew she had to be careful about that - she'd suffered through numerous schoolfilly crushes at Furrow, and it had hurt every time they'd come to their inevitable, embarrassing ends.
But the little bat pony was so intense, and commanding, and handsome in her glittering new fatigues!
Fish Eye meditated upon the wonders of pony technology as she whistled as she worked over those very glittering fatigues with the heart-shaped unit patch on the sleeves. Didn't want to iron over the patches! Even if you were whistling, they were still delicate and you could tear them off their thread.
The magic iron Fish Eye was using was hardly a revolutionary piece of modern technology, but the method for tuning it was something else. She didn't quite have the talent that your average pony possessed for impromptu musical accompaniment, but then, neither did the average pony in her admittedly limited experience.
Few rugby players could carry a tune better than they could a ball, and batpony troopers were no better. You'd think that night-dwelling nocturnal ponies with preternatural hearing and the ability to tune their voices through an aural spectrum vastly deeper and wider than Fish's own, limited range would be marvellous whistlers and singers, but she supposed that the EUP recruited for virtues other than those that contributed to really well-harmonized barbershop quartets.
She shook out the ensign's fatigue trousers, and folded them before laying them down to join their fellow fatigue blouse. The thaumoactive weave faded as she let go of the garment, the bright streaks of the active threads releasing their load of magic into the mundane fabric surrounding them, subsiding into that shimmering harmonious whole which was the uniforms in repose.
In five minutes, they'd be inert piles of clean clothes, as the manual claimed. Well, once you waded through the fruity, romantic, hyperbolic wording and teased out the substance of the use and care precepts hidden deep, deep underneath. Whoever had written it was clearly misplaced, and should have been a writer of bodice-rippers. If only the uniforms were as impenetrable as the prose of the manuals, never would blade touch the flesh of their wearers!
But anyways, the whistling wasn't an affectation, it was ritually vital to the care of the fabric. You needed to do it, if you didn't want to reduce the efficiency of the weave, or worse, mangle it entirely.
As a result, many of the troopers in the platoon had already ruined their new fatigues, not in training or on the march, but in failing to clean them properly. Simply tossing them in the machines, or grimly hand-worshi- hand-washing them in a sink was enough to denature the sensitive thaumoweave. Fish Eye had already noted various dead patches on her ensign's troopers' uniforms, and she suspected she'd be asked to do something about it sometime soon.
When the ensign and her corporals noticed the problem, of course. Batponies had, Fish Eye was discovering, many and varied admirable qualities and talents, but great visual acuity in the daylight was not among them. They might not notice that the dour diligence of their troopers was damaging their marvellous new uniforms… until the damage was too severe to be repaired.
Fish Eye was thinking about the problem of uniforms, and paging through the section of the uniforms' manual on repair and re-enchantment (phrased in fruity arias on the subject of three part harmony and encomiums on the loving kindness of the washer-mare), when her sleeping ensign jolted wide awake from a dead sleep.
"Gah!" Fish Eye squawked, inadvertently.
"Eye!" yelled her ensign, jumping up from her bed and grabbing the first pile of clothing to hoof.
Not the uniform Fish had just finished cleaning, but the still-dirty fatigues from that day. She winced in mortification as her bat pony shrugged into filthy clothing, with very little ceremony or consideration of the dirt she was putting over her coat.
"I forgot something, Eye. Go tell Vine Staff to wake up Rock Mellon and the second lance." The mare kicked her hooves into her iron-toed shoes, and ran out of the narrow little nook they called Fruits Basket's 'officer's quarters'.
Fish Eye didn't even bother shrugging, she just went to wake up their salty corporal, who had already told the hippogriff that he didn't care to be randomly awoken by 'a damned pink daywalker who don't know better than to be a-constantly whistlin' like it was Sunday in the bleedin' service', but officer's orders were officer's orders.
She went running back to find her ensign when she realized under Staff's gimlet eye that Fruits Basket hadn't told her what she'd needed a lance of ponies for. She found her ensign had disappeared, and upon interrogating the half-hypnotized, bored barracks-guard, was able to figure out in which direction Fruits Basket had disappeared off to.
Fish Eye caught up to her officer just inside the great doors of the squadron's quarters' foyer, with some sort of commotion outside in the courtyard in the chill night air. She followed her superior's bat-winged posterior as it emerged into said night air, and paused in shock at the scene of chaos and desolation.
Well, that might have been an exaggeration, but still, Fish hadn't expected to find a swarm of griffons tussling with - no, fighting with a talon's-full of batponies on the flagstones, and blood all over the place. The chaos had barely began to subside when Fish Eye started to make sense of the mess, and her ensign having joined the commotion when -
Was that Hawk Eye? What the buck!
Fish Eye's eyes watered, and she stood, confused, staring at her big sister standing over a horribly injured pony whose red, red blood was spraying all over everything - including Fish's big sister, whose talons were closed around a terrible wound in the afflicted, horribly burnt pony's barrel.
Fish checked out a bit, watching the emergency surgery right in the middle of that garrison courtyard, and listened to her sister ordering about some poor tom Hawk Eye had found to play nurse for her.
It took several minutes for Fish Eye to tear her attention away from the specter that had risen up out of her day to day life, to shock her with the betrayal she'd initially felt over her bloody-taloned sibling, and the guilt she'd felt more recently over having run away from Hawk Eye in visceral, shameful response to that bloody shock.
Why is it that every time I see you, Hawk, you have some pony's blood on you?
Fish Eye's ensign was standing over another bat pony, held prisoner by another pair of griffons in crystal camouflage. On the flagstones beyond that, a third bat-pony, badly disfigured like the first, was lying insensate beneath the talons of - oh, hey, it was Giles.
"Hey, Giles!" Fish Eye heard herself saying, as if she was listening to a play back at Furrow. "What's up, haven't seen you in a while!"
This play sucks, give me my bits back!
The arguing ponies briefly looked her way in disappointment, before returning to their argument.
"No, I'm not kidding, those aren't monsters, those are matrons," her pony was saying to the other officer. Oh, look, officers. Hello, there, master sergeant! Fish Eye managed to not say to the big griffon.
"You know, I managed to live my entire foalhood in Canterlot, and never once lay eyes on a matron of the Night Shift," the major herself said, looking down at the unconscious, badly burned - wait, no, that wasn't burns.
What the buck is that?
"Are they all like this?" asked Master Sergeant Gilda.
"Mostly? Ma'am, sergeant, I'm hardly an expert on-"
"Look, we can't do this in the middle of the courtyard," objected the Major, looking around at the ponies emerging from the other parts of the garrison whose own entrances let out into the rather public space they were standing in - and Hawk Eye's patient was bleeding all over. "Captain Eye! Can you move that into somewhere indoors?"
"Not if you don't want her dying on the way inside, Major!" Fish's sister yelled back, not looking up from her cutting and stitching. A bloody spear was discarded beside the improvised open-air operating theatre.
"Fine, we can at least take the other two prisoners indoors, right? Captain Eye, is this unconscious one going to die if we move her?"
"No idea! Probably not a good idea, her spine might have been damaged, let me tie this off and I'll look at her!"
The major looked at the last batpony, the only one in custody who wasn't injured in some life-threatening manner.
"Well, buck it, we'll take this one inside. Gilda!"
"Yes, major ma'am!"
And the tide of chaos receded inside as the officers decreed.
Trixie sullenly stared at the other officers who'd dragged her out of her workshop. Trixie had been working with Totum on a new type of rocket mortar based on a crummy patent system they had in the arsenal inventory. They had been so close to ironing out certain technical problems... she didn't have time for this horseapples. Whatever it was about.
"Ensign Basket and Gilda are interrogating the conscious prisoner," Sparkle said, looking remarkably composed given the hour and what Trixie had gathered so far about the crisis, whatever else it was about. One bat pony had attacked two others, and there was some sort of mess as a result.
Nopony was dead, and supposedly, if their new surgeon was any good, nopony would be dying. That seemed like a nonevent to Trixie, but nopony ever asked her about her opinion on these sorts of things.
Except she was up here because somepony had, apparently, decided this was an all hooves on deck officers' conference thing.
Not that the ensigns had been called out, but if Trixie had been in charge, she wouldn't have dumped this sort of thing on the provisionals, either. Trixie's section ensigns were cack-hoofed enough as it was, they could use their beauty sleep.
One of the other ensigns emerged from the room they'd gathered in the hallway outside of, along with Sparkle's right-hoof hen.
"What's the word, Gilda?" Sparkle demanded.
"It's definitely Trooper Bob, major ma'am. As to why he just up and tried to murder two ponies, well…" the big hen's eyes turned to the much smaller batpony beside her.
"He had a dream, Major Shield," said the batpony mare. Trixie knew this pony's name. She'd seen her at the commission ceremony. What was her name? Something fruit-ish. All batponies had fruit-themed names. Except the ones who were all 'grr, ponies of the night, boo!'"
"A dream." Sparkle could do deadpan with the best of them, Trixie had to give her that.
"Dreams are very important to batponies, Major Shield," the batpony whose name Trixie couldn't remember said. Oh, hey, there was that hippogriff behind the mare, making googly eyes at her. That made her… well, the one with the hippogriff servant. Damnit, on the tip of Trixie's tongue.
"So he dreamed something, and went charging off to stick a spear in the nearest odd-looking pony he found?"
"It's because you gave him a Name, Major," the thestral said, reluctantly.
"What?!"
"Giving names is a big deal in the colonies, ma'am. Traditionally, even the matrons themselves only get new names when they are accepted by the Concordat, and generally speaking, they pass along the same traditional names, generation after generation."
"You said you had an ancestor in the Night Shift named Witching Hour, Ensign Basket," Gilda said.
Ahah! The Basket mare! What basket… what basket… Mango Basket maybe? No…
"Yes, master sergeant. The sixth Witching Hour," Ensign Basket agreed.
"The one laid out with a concussion or worse out in the courtyard said her name was Witching Hour," observed Captain Big Bell.
"Is that so?" asked 'Basket'. "That'd make her the ninth Witching Hour, assuming they haven't replaced the old one. I haven't been keeping up on the bulletins from home."
"Assuming she wasn't lying about being a matron, either," Sparkle observed.
"They certainly looked like the real deal, Major," Basket replied. "I don't know them, but that's… well, that's what being a matron does to you. Eventually. It's a hard life, working the Night Shift. It is a dangerous profession. You wouldn't believe the things they see, patrolling the dreamworlds of the leadership of Canterlot."
"Just the leadership?" asked Gilda, suspiciously.
"Well, that's the big part of it, but you know evil, it's attracted to power. The matrons spend a lot of themselves, getting into a position to protect the sleeping day, and doing the fighting when they get there."
"All this is new to me, darlin'," said Big Bell. "Explain it again to me like I'm a foal. Those two demonic-lookin' ponies-"
"The matrons, unless some crazed cultists decided to pretend to be matrons, and ritually scarred and mutilated themselves to just look like veteran matrons," Basket corrected her superior.
"Right, OK, these matrons just wandered off from their posts in Canterlot, crossed half the known world, and set up shop in our courtyard, demanding to see the Major, here, and promptly got curbstomped by one of our own, out of the damn blue?" The big, burly pegasus looked outraged at the irrationality of the scenario she described.
"Because Trooper Bob had a dream saying he had to do it, yes."
"What was this dream, Ensign Basket?" asked the Sparkle.
"The Mother of Dreams-"
"Th' wut?" interjected Bell.
"The great dream-mare, Captain. The Mother of Dreams is a batpony deity. It's not especially uncommon for thestrals to dream of the Mother of us all, but in general she doesn't speak unless it's echoing important."
"How do you keep bad actors from just pretending to have a dream of this mother?" asked the Sparkle, with a note of curiosity in her voice.
"Social pressure, and there are Elders of the Colonies who can extract memories - especially dream-memories - out of the minds of the accused."
"That sounds like something that the sheriffs would kill to have access to," Bell noted.
"Yeah, they try to limit the use of that particular trick, it's exactly the sort of thing that produces - well, you saw what the matrons look like. You don't play with dream-magic without consequences. Especially something as brute-force as ripping the living memories out of a pony's skull."
"And you grew up wanting to be that?" asked Gilda, skeptically. "It sounds wind-blasted horrible."
"More than anything else, master sergeant," said Basket. "But I'm ten more years in the service, and two grown foals away from even applying to the Concordat for evaluation."
"So all these grannies patrol the dreams of Canterlot's very important ponies, and it makes them monsters?" asked Big Bell.
"More or less. The older, more experienced thestrals are supposed to be less susceptible to dreamwarping, more stable, more truly themselves."
"If that out there is what protection age and experience gets you, I can't think what youngins might look like, then, playin' around with this stuff," Bell said.
"You're not wrong, Captain. The Plain of Jars is full of thestrals who thought they could be heroes, and intruded into Night Shift matters."
"Plain of wut?" asked Captain Bell.
"Plain of Jars. Kind of like Tartarus, except not set up to torment its prisoners. The guardians of the Plain put an afflicted pony into stasis, and they don't feel a thing."
"Forever, Lieutenant Lulamoon," the batpony ensign said, turning to look Trixie in the eye. "Or until the Mother of Dreams returns to redeem the dreamers. So, effectively the same. In theory, if there's a breakthrough in the treatment of dark magic and dream corruption, they might be able to decant some of the inhabitants of the Plain of Jars and restore them to Equestria. In practice, I've never heard of it happening."
"Are we going to have to worry about Bob?" asked Sparkle, looking vaguely guilty.
"That'll be up to the agents of the Concordat. Whom we need to contact, immediately," said Ensign Basket.
"And these are the bosses of these matrons?" Bell asked.
"Sort of," equivocated the ensign. "With as dangerous as working as matrons is, they need somepony to keep a close eye on them. You don't want corrupted matrons playing around in the unconscious dreams of a minister of state. Or worse, the Princess herself."
Trixie saw ponies' eyes' pupils grow enormous as they all thought on the possibility of evil, mad thestrals thrashing around in the vulnerable dreams of the sovereign herself.
"Yeah, like that," continued the thestral ensign. "So the Concordat sets a watch on their watchponies. That's the agents. If these matrons have gone off the deep end, we need their watchers here to collect them. Soonest. They could be very dangerous. Bob may have saved us from a great deal of trouble."
"Is it possible that they're totally innocent, and it's Bob who's 'gone off the deep end'?" asked Gilda.
"You've met 'Bob', haven't you, master sergeant? Do you think somepony as gormless and single-minded as that trooper is even capable of finding the deep end? There's nothing deep about that pony at all."
The Sparkle closed her eyes in mortification. Yeah, that's what you get for playing around with fools like this Bob, you pompous so-and-so…
"Where is Ping?" asked Gilda, suddenly looking around. "This is a thestral matter. Technically, the corporal's a batpony, right?"
The batpony ensign's eyes twitched, and Trixie was suddenly alert. What was that?
"I have no idea why he'd be relevant, master sergeant," the ensign said, smoothly, as if she'd not reacted at all to that sally. "Ping's a clerk, and a stallion. This is a matter for the marefolk."
"No stallions in the Night Shift?" Gilda asked, looking a bit riled.
"No, of course not, master sergeant. Dreamstuff is beyond the intellect of stallions. It's why I don't think it will turn out that Bob was materially affected by whatever this mess was, or is. We should just put him in the stockade, and keep the matrons under close, watchful eyes until the Concordat agents arrive to collect the two of them."
"Not Bob as well?" asked Sparkle, looking stern.
"Well, that's up to the agents of the Concordat," the batpony said, grudgingly. "I doubt they'll want him. For good or ill, Bob is probably our problem."
"Well, we'll see what they have to say. Fruits Basket, where can we find some Concordat agents?" asked Gilda.
Ha! Fruits Basket. Wait, really? What kind of a name is Fruits Basket?
"I have no idea, master sergeant. I guess we could track down Ping and find out if they have an office here in the Isles, but most likely, we'll have to summon them from… I don't know, Baltimare or Manehattan."
Trixie's eyes didn't leave the back of this Fruits Basket's head. The rest of the officers seemed satisfied with the decisions as made, but something was tickling at the back of Trixie's mind.
She hated it when distractions took her away from her work.
The great grey mass of Fort Gharne rose from the mists of a long, late spring morning. Gilda had left Gleaming Shield and a number of their underlings at the Tenpenny airdocks, getting ready to inspect the repairs and refittings of the almost-finished and allegedly deliverable Daddy Longlegs.
Or whatever proper warship name they could squeeze out of the damned superstitious sailponies who were getting starchy about the renaming. The quartermaster had even been joking about piracy and stealing the ship off the docks to get around the ship-ponies and their wittering on about 'old mare Amphitrite.'
Gilda's day wasn't shaping up to be nearly so interminably interesting, sad to say. She'd gladly trade long hours inspecting fittings, launch hatches, and envelope re-stitchings for yet another night in the midst of day, descending into the iron-barred hades which was the bowels of brooding Gharne.
She'd had enough of that when the Pies were still in town, and there were pink horrors to interrogate.
Other than Lance Corporal Eye, that is. And why was Gilda suddenly making that connection now?
Oh, right, procrastination. Hello, my treacherous old friend, it's terrible to greet you again.
Gilda took a deep breath and descended into the lower depths.
Gilda found the Concordat squatting in an office in the upper garrets of the administrative block of the fortress. She felt betrayed by the sunlight streaming into the wide, open windows facing out into the courtyards below, far away from any part of Fort Gharne designed to stave off angry unionists or raving clangriffons. Inquisition ponies ought to lurk in dark gothic basements, not airy aeries with plenty of sunlight.
They seemed well-established here - had they been in town all along? Gilda's experience with The Concordat for the Harmonization of the Heavens was heavily limited, very recent, and mostly mediated through Gleaming Shield and Ping. She'd never heard of them until Fruits Basket had suddenly started talking about them as if the shadowy organization was as fundamental to the Equestrian State as the Stable of Nobles or the Princess herself.
Gilda wondered how much else about the ponies had totally escaped her notice. It felt like a failing, not knowing so much about the state which she was sworn to defend. Technically speaking.
The agents of the Concordat - Concordotti, Gilda had heard them called, but not to their muzzles - had appeared with remarkable celerity as soon as the officers had tracked down Ping and had him send off the proper messages. The two mangled horrors had been tossed unceremoniously onto stretchers and carried off, and poor Trooper Bob had been hauled away in hoofcuffs not long after.
The mystery mares had disappeared into the bureaucracy without a ripple, rocks dropped into the lower depths, as Hawk Eye would squawk. As far as Gilda knew, the Concordotti had never given any indication as to whether the two had been who they claimed to be, or were some sort of impersonation, plot or conspiracy by warlocks unknown. If there was any way to distinguish any of that from a common garden variety matron, Gilda remained ignorant.
"We really don't know why you still care," said the batpony in the top half of a business suit, with a little heraldic pin of sun-and-moon interwoven on her lapel, sitting at one of the two desks in the sunny office.
"The late Nightlight is now our business," said the earth pony with what might as well have been the rest of the same business suit, as badly as it fit him, along with another heraldic pin, reversed, the moon-and-sun interwoven on his lapel. He was standing in front of the other office desk.
"Trooper Bob is our business," the batpony said, correcting her cohort, and looking disapproving from behind her uncluttered desk.
"Yeeesss…" drew out the unnamed earth pony, leaning back against his desk. "We do want to talk about that."
"The trooper believes in his story," said the unnamed bat pony.
"Which doesn't count for much. Ponies believe a great many things that aren't so," said the earth pony.
"Changeling conspiracies to steal the emotions of ponies," the thestral mare agreed.
"The existence of magic curses."
"The sea-goddess Amphitrite."
"Nightmare Moon," smirked the stallion.
The batpony glared at her partner at this last sally, and then turned to Gilda, composing herself.
"Why was this unremarkable stallion granted a Name?" the batpony asked in a flat tone, but her burning batty eyes belied the disinterest in her voice.
"The thestrals make such a great deal out of names, don't you know?" affected the earth pony in a labored attempt at a confiding tone.
"It rather feels like a setup," the batpony continued.
"Like somepony was priming this weak-minded colt for something."
"Or signaling his authorization for an incident like this one."
"Perhaps his authorization for this exact incident," snarled the earth pony without a single change in his placid expression. Gilda was impressed at how much emotion he'd gotten into that without moving a single extraneous muscle in his muzzle.
"Wasn't that in the last report we sent you?" Gilda said, for the first time since introducing her self. It wasn't really a question. She knew it hadn't been.
"No." "No."
"What an oversight," Gilda said, trying to feel confident, and failing. "Um, the major felt that she didn't want a 'Nightlight' in our ranks, and had the matter addressed."
"What did she have against a good batpony name?" demanded the thestral mare.
"It's not really a very good batpony name," the earth pony stallion pointed out.
"All batpony names are better than daywalker names!" the batpony insisted.
"Half of them sound like fruitsellers' get," the earth pony groused.
"This one didn't," Gilda pointed out, hoping to widen the discord between the two Concordotti.
"He's making fun of the fact that Nightlight is a timid pony's name, ignore him," said the batpony mare. Gilda tried to not look interested, and waited for one of them to accidentally give the name of the other, or even better, their own.
"Regardless," the stallion continued, ignoring the byplay, "Your commander gave a batpony a Name… based on her not liking his?"
"It was, by some bizarre coincidence, Major Shield's father's name," Gilda admitted, trapped into responding in a way that didn't increase the disharmony between these two agents of harmonization.
"Hmpf," sniffed the batpony.
"Not proper pukkah," agreed the earth pony.
"Not relevant, either," sighed the batpony.
"Priming by misadventure?" asked the earth pony.
"Perhaps," granted the batpony.
"Impossible to track down, regardless," sighed the earth pony.
"Which brings us to your other problem, Master Sergeant Gilda," the thestral said, turning to Gilda and focusing her hades-shades at the hen.
"Your continued association with the mortal alicorn," the earth pony continued.
"The lesser princess," ground out the batpony with a gritting of teeth.
"Now the Duchess," said the stallion, his eyes narrowing.
"Do you know anything of the history of Mi Dolente Cadenza?" asked the batpony with an unsettling intensity.
"Her unconstrained powers?"
"Her unsealed talents."
"The disorder and the disarray which her trajectory through Canterlot…"
"The destruction and confusion."
"Mind-warped ponies."
"Weeping crowds."
"Howling mobs."
"War fever."
"Mass outbreaks of irrationality and erratic public outbursts."
"Nightmares everywhere," seethed the batpony.
The earth pony turned to his partner.
"No, no, I'm fine," she said, waving off his concern. She looked again at Gilda. "The Concordat exists for one purpose only. The oversight over ponies with power and authority over the pony mind. The subconscious, the mind in repose and rest, the mind when the mind is not thinking. There are a cadre of ponies with the ability to intercede in the pony mind."
"Mostly thestral ponies," observed the earth pony.
"But not entirely. The Princess Cadenza is, evidently, one of those ponies. Except while some few bat ponies can walk the sleeping mind…"
"More than a few."
"The pink princess warps the waking mind. In the daylight. Without oversight, without restraint, without much volition on her own part."
"Only those idiot noble siblings of hers to remind her of her duty," sniffed the earth pony.
They're talking about the White Sisters.
"Sadly, our remit does not include the oversight of true alicorns," sighed the thestral.
"Not even mortal sort-of alicorns like the pink one," sniffed the earth pony.
"Truly an oversight," Gilda said, in a mostly failed attempt to be arch.
The two of them glared at her, not at all amused.
"Do not think that the fact of Candenza's elevation to Duchess of this domain," the earth pony returned to their theme.
"In the midst of the former Temple of the Haunted Night," continued the bat pony.
"Escaped our notice."
"Wait, what are you talking about? That meeting was in the Cathedral of Labour?" asked Gilda. She kind of knew what they were talking about, but it seemed best to be ignorant of those sorts of spooky details.
"As if the modern, secular, imbecilic uses the Trottish put their nighthaunt-infested architectural relics to have any effect on said relics' danger and potential," the earth pony said in an astonishingly long statement for these two.
"The Temple is under proper guard, lock and key," the bat pony said, quellingly, looking at her partner.
"A single hausfrau and her idiot husband is hardly a proper guard," the earth pony harumphed.
"All of our charges are, in a certain sense, housewives," the bat pony said, with the air of somepony returning to a well-worn argument.
"None of them as young as that mare," the earth pony sniped.
"No incidents to speak of since we arrived on this station," the bat pony carolled.
"This certainly qualifies as an 'incident'," her partner riposted.
"This occurred across town, in an EUP facility, between ponies we have no evidence ever set foot in the Temple," the batpony returned.
"That being said," the earth pony said, abandoning the brewing argument and eyeing Gilda, "We don't care for the involvement of the mortal alicorn in this matter."
"Duchess Cadance has absolutely zero involvement in the attack," Gilda pointed out. "She hasn't been to the garrison since the squadron formed."
"It is still her regiment," the earth pony said intensely.
"I don't see as how that follows," Gilda said, mildly. "She's not our ceremonial colonel, let alone an official royal colonel. It does require paperwork, you know. She certainly doesn't have the usual uniform."
"The Crystal Guard is clearly associated with Mi Dolente Cadenza!" the bat pony snarled. "It matches her cutie mark, and the elder princess-"
"The true princess," the earth pony corrected piously.
"The true princess," the batpony granted with a roll of her eyes, "gave the gift of those commissions to Cadenza, clearly with the intent of reviving the Crystal Household. Cadenza's physiognomy clearly shows her to be of Crystal descent."
"Debatable," sniffed the earth pony.
"Obvious!" snarled the bat pony.
"Regardless," Gilda said, trying to hold up her end of the argument, "Cadance simply gave the commission to Gleaming Shield. She's done nothing to exert influence or authority over the regiment, and has dedicated herself entirely to the governance of the Isles, and her own military establishment. Which we have nothing to do with any more." More or less.
"The two of you have been active enough in the new Duchess's employ, with this mustang business," the earth pony said heatedly.
"Which is most certainly not in our remit!" the bat pony said to her partner, with a note of warning.
"Bah!" The earth pony turned away, lighting up a tobacco cigarette, and walking to the window to look out over the inner yards of the fortress and blow clouds of smoke out into the open air.
"While my partner collects his self-control, I suppose I ought to wrap up this interview. Your position is that you have no idea what possible reason the Princess Cadenza might have for maddening a thestral trooper into attacking two of our own?" The thestral seemed to be taking up the slack for her smoking partner.
"Are they, in fact, our own? I've yet to hear either of you say anything about these mystery mares. Were they active matrons?" demanded Gilda.
"We will not be talking about that. To repeat the question, you have no idea why the alicorn was meddling in batpony affairs?"
"No! I mean, there was no meddling!"
"Cadenza had her pet officer create a refuge for thestral troopers," the earth pony barked out, grinding down his cigarette butt on the stone windowframe and flinging it out the window. "Opened the doors wide open. Gave them provisional commissions! How is that not meddling of the first water?!"
"Major Shield merely opened up recruitment to all tribes, without restraint or prejudice. The fact that the batponies poured in by the dozen was totally unforeseen," Gilda said in her own attempt at pious conviction.
"A likely story!" snarled the earth pony.
"No, that actually tracks," the bat pony said with a note of hesitation in her voice. "I've seen reports of… rumors. The mill's been on overdrive for months."
The Concordat earth pony turned and glared at his partner. He didn't say a word.
Gilda looked back and forth between the Concordotti, as the armed silence between the alleged partners grew. Then the silence grew trenches, barbed wire, and parapets, and it occurred to her that she might withdraw under the cover of the distraction.
"Uh, you two have issues that I seem to be… how about you let me talk to my trooper, and we can both be on our way?" Not the most adroit move the young hen had ever essayed, but the Concordotti were distracted.
Gilda got her dungeon pass before fleeing the Concordat office.
Hopefully it was good for leaving Gharne's dungeons as well as entering them.
Bob's spirits had been holding up better than Gilda had expected. Apparently the darkness and the dank reminded him of home.
"Oh, night, yeah, it's just like a week's pass back to the ol' colony. Except nobody wants to do my laundry and they don't have mom's sweet-tarts. I asked, the guards didn't think it was funny."
"You do know you're in a ton of trouble, trooper, right?"
"Yes ma'am! Mountains of it, for sure."
"You don't seem… touched by that."
"Well, it's all above my pay grade, isn't it?"
"Trooper, you got yourself into this. You took out your service weapon and you leapt over your commanding officer's head and impaled a random passerby, leaving her in a medically induced coma!"
"That wasn't a random passerby. That was a villain!"
"How could you have possibly known that? You didn't have line of sight. Your own lance-mates insist that nopony said a word to you, you were asleep in your bunk until you sat straight up out of a dead sleep and ran off with your spear and a helmet!"
"I was told!"
"By this mare of shadows, yes, so you've said before."
"Mother of Dreams, master sergeant. You shouldn't make fun of the Mother. She protects us all, keeps a wing over our sleeping minds, and recruits the heroines of the night to do her work for her."
"You're no heroine. You're not even a hero. You're a ranker in the files. You're not even a file closer!"
"The Major thought enough of me to give me a Name! That has to mean something. And look! The Mother of Dreams came to me! Told me I was honest and loyal, and that she needed an emissary in the waking world, to put an end to an evil plot! Told me where and when, and look! There they were, black as pitch and meaner than hades!"
He wasn't wrong. Gilda still got the douchechills thinking about the faces of those two 'matrons' - before Bob speared one, and that griffish lance corporal beat the ugly off the other one.
"Bob… Major Shield didn't quite intend for you to do… this, when she gave you a new name."
"Oh, I know, Names aren't that straightforward. It's more of a mark of distinction than a destiny, like, well - oh! Ha! Cutie marks! I never made that connection before!" He laughed like the idiot he was.
All Gilda could do was shake her head, and bleed inside for the poor fool.
Evenings came late in early June in the Trottish latitudes. Gilda looked around in the fading red light of the sunset as she emerged from the gullet of Fort Gharne, spit up by the proverbial leviathan, Gonah's great wind-whale.
Dealing with Trooper Bob left Gilda in a weirdly scriptural mood. Like everything, even the most trivial and meaningless of actions, had import beyond intentions, well-meaning or otherwise.
Gilda sniffed, and narrowed her eyes, carefully not looking around. She took to her wings, leaving the guarded gate of Fort Gharne behind her, and made for the nearest rooftop that faced away from the guards' eyelines.
"OK, Ping, I know you're out there," Gilda muttered to herself as she flew. "Come on out."
Ping was waiting for her on the opposite side of that rooftop, hidden from view in the direction of the fortress.
"Let's hear it," Gilda said, her eyes narrowing at her squadron clerk.
"What do you want first, ma'am? The inspection of the carrier just wrapped-"
"Not that bollocks. This Bob business. I know you're keeping tabs on it."
"Despite ponies' talk, I don't know everything that goes on in the squadron, master sergeant."
"Pigeonshit. This is thestral business, dark as the void and shriller than a factory-shift whistle. You are the big bat around these parts."
"Ma'am, you and the Major have appointed several batpony ensigns, a sergeant, and numerous line corporals-"
"Cut bait, Ping. That fish is too big for you. Start talking. What do we do about Bob?"
The batpony was silent, staring at Gilda in the darkness of the shadow of the rooftop peak, almost invisible against the red glare of the sunset-lit clouds behind him.
"Talk!"
"Ma'am, can you trust me?"
"No, corporal," Gilda replied instantaneously. "Not in the least. In my experience, when someone asks you to have confidence in them, you're about to be conned. Don't ask me for trust, give me something to trust."
"Bob is innocent," the little batpony said, intensely.
"Well, duh!" Gilda scoffed. "I know that. The major knows that. I think Fish Eye knows that. Why weren't you out there in the courtyard when it all went down? I sent you out with Hawk Eye and that lance of griffons to collect her stuff. Only the hippogriff and the griffons were there when Bob went spare and attacked the so-called matrons. Where were you?"
"I had a side errand I had to take care of, I was going to catch up later, but events interceded."
Bah. True enough, the colt was constantly running around, doing Gleaming and Gilda's bidding, usually before they knew it was necessary.
"Hrmph. We can't leave him in those bastards' clutches. They reek of conspiracy, and they don't intend our Bob any good."
"No, I expect not. They're probably planning on interning the poor colt in the Plain of Jars."
"They're going to kill him?!" Gilda shouldn't have been surprised. These ponies were so much more ruthless than Grampa Gruff's stories of sweet, harmonious ponydom… but still.
"Ah. Not exactly. What do you know of the Plain of Jars?"
"Not a winds-blessed thing. Never heard of it before Fruits Basket started blathering about the blasted Concordat and other weird batpony cultural touchstones I'd never even known existed. A cemetery of some sort?"
"It's not a cemetery. It's an artifact."
"It sounds like a place. Plains aren't normally things you can pick up and put in a pannier pocket."
"Places can be artifacts, if the artifacts are big enough. The Plain of Jars is a reliquary for ponies too damaged by the things they encounter to be left free in the open air."
"What, like Tartarus?"
"Tartarus is a hell of punishment and incarceration. A place for the worst of the worst, the true villains, the unredeemable. The Plain is… a sort of limbo. Ponies whose minds have been devoured by nightwalkers, souls corrupted by things I won't talk about in the evening hours, sorcerers and black magicians who strayed too close to the wards, or warded not carefully enough… the hope is that some day, when the draconequus's riddle is solved, and harmony is once more in our hooves, the souljars of the Plain can be opened, one by one, and the lost redeemed from perdition."
"They're going to put that poor stupid colt in a psychic prison for forsaken souls?" Gilda should have been more surprised… but it seemed somehow more pony than just murdering him outright.
"They say that the denizens of the Plain don't experience time. It's as if they are suspended in aspic. For most of them it's a mercy. And you'd be astonished at how many poor stupid colts inhabit the Plain of Jars. Stupidity is a great recruiter to the ranks of the corrupted and mind-warped."
This was an awful lot of esoteric, hermeneutic knowledge for a simple company clerk. Especially a male one, given batponies' cultural misandry. Gilda's eyes narrowed as she studied the batpony emerging from the shadows as the sunset colors faded overhead.
"Bob is an idiot…" Gilda finally said, measuring her words. "But he's our idiot. He took the bit, and didn't turn on any of ours, whatever the four winds that business in the courtyard with those matrons was."
"If it makes it any easier, I strongly doubt those nags had our interests at heart, ma'am." Ping's eyes didn't waver. Gilda could see him making the decision, to tell her something vital.
Everything else was just trivia, really. Obscure batpony cultural and magical knowledge, but nothing operationally relevant aside from Bob's predicament. But this… talking about the maybe-matrons whom even the Concordat ponies didn't want to talk about. Ping knew too much. He had just given her rope, rope that could maybe hang him. Could it hang Gilda? Did she now know too much?
"It is the absolute opposite of 'easy'," Gilda said, "And you know it, but thanks for playing. Can we get Bob out of their clutches?" Could she still pretend she didn't understand what he was offering her?
"The Concordat has no leverage points. Nopony can tell them what to do. They oversee the Night Shift like a hawk." Damnit. This was too much. And too blatant.
"What, nopony?" None of this was Gilda's business.
"Technically, they answer to Princess Celestia and the Elders of the Colonies in concordance. In practice, the Elders never meet with Celestia. Not in living memory, nor for at least… uh, maybe sometime in the Fourth Celestial?" Why was he telling her this? Why did Ping know this?
"Why the buck not?" Why are you telling me this, Ping?
The batpony looked measuringly at Gilda. Finally, he spoke. "Gilda, the Elders and Celestia hate each other. Furiously so. The Concordat is their neutral ground. Their compromise with each other."
"Uh." Gilda tried not to blanch. "OK. I have no idea what or why, but I get the impression that this is…"
"Deep dark dangerous waters, Gilda. Even asking the question can get you in trouble with the Concordotti. And they have zero sense of humor. About anything, but especially about the matrons of the Night Shift. And-"
"Anything having to do with dream magic?" What had he done? What was Ping's game?
"You've been talking to our local Concordat representatives." The little colt wasn't so cute anymore.
"Yeah?" Gilda asked, lost.
"I will not willingly go into a room with those ponies. If I am summoned, I will disappear." Fuck.
Gilda's eyes narrowed at her alleged subordinate. Was he saying that he'd desert before he gave himself up to authority? The Concordotti were insistent that their authority only extended over batponies. Ping was certainly that. And winds knew how much else.
"I won't go away, they just won't find me," Ping attempted to reassure her. Did Gilda want to be reassured?
Darkness rose into the skies from the dark rooftops all around them.
We're in deep with this colt already. He's running our books. Helped hire half the officers, and most of the NCOs. We don't have that many levers over the batponies. Do I trust him to not fuck us over? Fuck, this is how Hawk Eye felt, isn't it? I hate irony.
Finally, Gilda spoke.
"We're getting off track. Can you get Bob lost in the system?"
Ping visibly relaxed. "I have my limitations, ma'am. We might need to break him out of jail."
"Won't that redound on us?" Gilda was almost reassured by the naked proposal of common criminality. The brazenness of the suggestion was oddly comforting, but the consequences... "Shame he couldn't 'die in custody'."
"I thought you were offended by the idea of Bob being killed?" asked Ping.
"This is still technically a warzone," Gilda mused. "Bodies can be found. Pony bodies are more difficult, but a fire, a pony nobody really cares about except us… the Concordat are just being stubborn. They know Bob isn't a danger. They're possessive."
"Hrm. Have to be a winged body. Can't fake that," Ping said. "Let me check the morgues to see what's on hoof."
"When the time comes, would a distraction help?"
"Pretty much vital, ma'am. Hard to arrange on demand, though."
"They still arguing over the name of the light carrier?"
"Uh, yeah?" Ping said, confused by Gilda's sudden left conversational turn.
"I have had an idea. I need to go see Cadance," Gilda said, smiling evilly. Time to share my pain.
"The Duchess? Why?"
"She owes me a favor. And I think I need something."
"Like…?"
"A letter. Of marque and reprisal."
Gilda had a sudden flash, as if Gleaming Shield was standing in front of her, her eyes full of disappointed judgment. She stopped dead, her wings half-unfurled.
"Er," Gilda equivocated, nervously. "Maybe check in with the major first?"
"No!" Gleaming Shield said, looking aghast. "No, not just no, Tartarus, no! What the buck is wrong with you two? You are not going to steal an embalmed pegasus corpse, set it on fire, or try to pass off the charred remains as a jailed trooper! How the blue hades were you going to explain how he got out of his jail cell? Or were you going to just burn Fort Gharne down?"
The two of them had found Shield with her entourage, returning from the airdocks. She was currently dressing them down in the courtyard outside the quarters. In front of the guards, and the major's own entourage, who were looking on with fascination.
"Well, I was thinking of arranging a breakout attempt, and then maybe lead them to a prepared warehouse-" Ping said, trying to explain his brilliant idea. Or maybe it had been Gilda's. Look, he hadn't slept for a couple days.
"Oh, my Celestia, no! Ping, I expect these sorts of wild starts from Gilda - although I thought you were getting better, Gilda, and we're gonna talk about that afterwards - but from you?" The major looked pityingly at Ping, and his tufted ears burned.
I thought it was a brilliant idea? Darkness damn it, he'd been trying to avoid the condemning glares of his night-time superiors, why was he getting it from his daywalker now?
"You look like death warmed over, by the way, corporal. So does Gilda, but I know her limits. How much sleep have you gotten?"
"Uh, maybe ten hours?"
"In the last week?"
"How long has it been since the first of the year?"
"WHAT?"
"Look, thestrals don't need much sleep-"
"Not as far as I can tell from the discipline records," Gilda interjected unhelpfully.
"Gah! No wonder. Ping, this is a direct order. Go get eight solid hours of sleep. Uninterrupted."
"But-"
"I don't care. I need a squadron clerk who isn't psychopathic from sleep deprivation. Go on, get."
Ping failed to get, and tried again. "But Major, what are we going to do about Bob?" He wasn't that bad, was he? It had been a while since he'd gotten a full night. Of the usual two hours REM. And it was a small price to pay, to not have to explain why he'd burned the matrons, cut their legs out from under them, fed them to the inquisitors… It's just that I can't remember why I thought it was a good idea now…
"I have an idea or two," snapped Ping's unicorn superior. "Why is it that every solution with you, Gilda, is some sort of felony?"
"This one was all Ping's," the master sergeant said, sulkily, like a foal in time-out.
Liar!
"Gilda, you've been a bad influence on the poor colt. He was a perfectly obedient and law-abiding pony when the 93/1st had him." Not so much, but what the officers and senior non-coms didn't know, wouldn't get Ping arrested and thrown into Liveryworth for the rest of his natural born lifespan.
"To our knowledge, major ma'am."
"Don't you start, Gilda, you're on thin ice!"
"But major ma'am…"
"If you hadn't had that clever idea, I'd be thinking of taking back those master sergeant's stripes."
"Uh, the one about the letter of marque and-"
"No, not that part, that was stupid. We don't need Duchess Cadance's permission to play wargames with our own ship and our own ponies. It's an EUP affair, we need to keep things separate. I meant the battle-capture thing. That's got promise."
"Uh, thank you, major ma'am."
"Which is why you're going to get together the officers and start making the plans. Just the lieutenants and Bell, for now."
"Isn't that your-"
"I need to collect Lyra, and go see my uncle. The way to deal with a pony stuck in the system, is to find your leverage in the system. Not burn it down and try to escape in the chaos."
Ping's major stared up into the darkness above the garrison's bright glaring lights.
"Embalmed corpses, I swear to Harmony…"
"Why do you need me again, Twiggles?" Lyra asked, fiddling with her official magus hat.
It always itched.
"Don't call me that. I need an authority, to trap the Concordotti into obeying the letter of the law."
And then it was time to shut up, as they were passed through the guarded gate of Fort Gharne with a minimum of fuss. Lyra sweated as the fortress’s own guards checked the Sixth Guards party through. She always felt like a prat wearing her stupid cloak and hat.
Gleaming Shield's escort of four griffons, smartly dressed in their sharp regimentals, were left in a waiting chamber just off the main courtyard of the fortress, instructed to wait on a summons, or Shield and Lyra's return, whichever came first.
"They hate being called that, 'Concordotti'" Lyra said, picking up the dropped conversation from outside the gates. "They prefer 'Agents of the Concordat'. Also, there is no letter of the law when it comes to batponies and the Concordat. It's all oral agreement and ambiguity. It's why everypony keeps a healthy distance from the Night Shift and oneiromancy. You know what the healthy distance from oneiromancy is?"
"Don't ever do it?" Shield snarked at her.
"Exactly! There is no minimum safe distance from the Concordotti. They're maniacs! They just disappear ponies. I'm kind of amazed that Bob isn't already as much of a nonpony as those two horrorshows are. Thanks ever so much for not waking me up and letting me know that there were some honest to Celestia corrupted matrons in the fortress, by the way. I wanted to see!"
They passed through another checkpoint, and began the climb up into the administrative block of the fortress.
"I thought you said there was no minimum safe distance?" Shield returned to the topic at hoof.
"You know me, 'Shield'. I have no sense of self-preservation. Why are we doing this, like this? Directly?"
"Because the other methods suggested were imbecilic, and the direct route is usually the fastest way through a mess."
"I heard a rumor that plan A was to steal a corpse and set it on fire or something like that?"
"You shouldn't listen to rumors. Rumor is a lying nag."
That wasn't a denial, Lyra thought to herself. "So, instead we're bearding the Concordotti in their own lair?"
"No, thankfully. There is no Concordat prison here. They're keeping Bob in the dungeons under Gharne. The dungeons that my uncle has authority over. There he is. Be polite. For a change."
"Shield! I'm always the very pattern of civility."
"Only if complete chaos is a pattern. Ah, Uncle Brassard, good to see you." Shield waved at a distinguished elder gentlecolt as they entered the front of a block of much less distinguished offices. "This is Magus Lyra Heartstrings, an expert that Princess Celestia sent us to deal with a serious problem she's helping us with. Lyra, this is my uncle, Colonel Burnished Brassard. The Provost Marshal for Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the Griffish Isles."
The elder member of the House of Sparkle was a well-seasoned old stallion, distinguished and handsome in his EUP undress uniform, his mane more silver than purple, untroubled by hat or helmet.
"Good to meet you, Magus Heartstrings. Twilie, I'm not sure that-"
"Uncle! You know I don't answer to that any more."
"Gleaming Shield…" the old stallion looked down at his niece, a conflicted look on his muzzle. "It's lovely how much you've done to keep the memory of Shining, but I'm not sure that-"
"Sir. I'm not that little filly anymore. Please, respect my choices. At least in front of others."
He sighed, and then turned to Lyra, who was trying hard to not listen to what had turned unexpectedly familial. She'd been a childhood friend of Twilight's, not a member of the family.
"So you're the expert that can determine whether this criminal trooper is corrupted? If you can do that, why aren't you working for the Concordat?"
"Dual-use technology, Colonel Brassard," Lyra extemporized. "There's a number of techniques which can be used to demonstrate whether this pony is hopelessly compromised, and thus grist for the Concordat's grinder, or just a misbehaving colt who is in need of correction and the strong right hoof of his loving superiors."
Actually, Lyra had been meaning to complain that none of this was in her wheelhouse, but she'd run out of time for that.
The provost marshal, his formally-dressed niece in her glittering felt slouch-hat and feather, and Lyra passed back down through the guts of the dark fortress, Lyra chattering a mile a minute about the supposed techniques she was going to use to prove that poor Bob didn't belong in the distinctly not loving clutches of the Concordotti.
Lyra would have to remember not to call them that to their faces.
And there they were, standing outside the cell block, the corporal of the guard standing with his cell-door keys in his mouth.
Better to not have to talk to the dread agents of the shadowy Concordat for the Harmonization of the Heavens, at all!
"Hey, there, Charleyhorse!" Lyra belted out cheerfully. "How're they hanging?" I guess we're not doing that, then.
The two stone-faced ponies looked at each other, and then back at Lyra.
"Not talking today? That's fine. We can catch up later."
"Do you know this mare?" the thestral asked the earth pony.
"No. Do you?" he replied, almost forming an expression.
"Of course not," the batpony mare almost sniffed. "You are Major Gleaming Shield?" she asked Lyra's friend, apparently deciding to ignore Lyra's attempts to wind them up.
"Yes, good to meet you, Miss…" Shield stood there with her hoof out, waiting for the Concordotti to shake it, or give her name, or to show any sign of basic courtesy.
She'd be waiting a long time. Lyra reached out and gently pushed her friend's foreleg down. They'd be here forever if Shield expected any sort of equine behavior out of Concordotti.
"OK, I think we have a stallion to evaluate, and hopefully send him back to his unit! Or, you know, send him into what black hell you maniacs reserve for your victims," Lyra chirped. "Colonel, can we go in and see the victim?"
"I think not," the earth pony said, stepping forward to keep Lyra from the locked door into the cell block. "We have full authority over this subject, and will not be allowing external evaluation or assessment."
"It is a violation of our charter," his partner chimed in.
"The trooper is ours," the stallion continued. "Go away."
"Funny thing," Colonel Brassard said, speaking for the first time. "I seem to be the pony who has custody of this particular subject."
"He is simply in your facility," the thestral mare said.
"His physical location is no more relevant than if he was in the high-security ward in the infirmary upstairs," said the earth pony stallion.
"I'm not Lieutenant Colonel Slow Drip, and this isn't the Gharne isolation wards. It's my jail. And I have possession of this colt's corpus. Gleaming Shield! What percentage is possession in practical military law?"
"Sir! 100%!" Shield barked out, bracing like she was back in the academy.
"I thought it was 90%?" Lyra said, delivering the straight line.
"In theory!" snapped Shield. "In practice, there is nothing else! Possession is the whole of the law."
"Sounds a bit extreme," Colonel Brassard said, measuredly. "But it's generally a quite large percentage, you all will grant? And I have this colt under lock and key. And that corporal over there answers to the Provost Marshal, if I'm not mistaken. Iron Bar!"
"Yeph fir!"
"Spit those keys out, Bar. Who do you answer to?"
"Lieutenant Hard Cheese, sir!" the stallion said, bracing like Shield. Lyra wondered if she should follow suit.
Nah, they'd think she was making fun of them.
"Corporal… who does Cheese answer to?"
"You, sir!"
"OK, I think we've established the chain of command, here. Do I need to start laying about me with it, sir, ma'am?"
"You will find it will go badly with you if you interfere in Concordat business, Colonel," warned the thestral mare.
"You will find that I'm one year from retirement, and my pension is quite thoroughly vested. I literally do not have to care what you think of me. You can't mess with my dreams, and you can't toss me into your mystery prison because I barely have any magic to my name, let alone any of the spooky crap you all claim is your bailiwick."
The aged stallion turned to his niece. "Major Shield, have your expert enter the cell, and conduct her evaluations."
"We insist on registering our objections!" the earth pony stallion barked.
"You have that right, and that authority," the unicorn provost marshal granted. "Report and be damned."
"We insist on observing these supposed novel techniques!" the thestral demanded.
The provost marshal turned to Lyra. "Do you have any objections, magus?"
Lyra turned her head to the side, thinking. "I can't see how it'd be a problem. Sure, why not. How much space is in there? It might get crowded if everypony troops in to watch."
"Corporal Bar, go move the prisoner into the large interrogation room. Uh, magus, will anything you do be difficult to see through silvered glass?"
Lyra thought over the tricks she was planning on using. "Uh,maybe? Let me know after we get going how things look. Some illusions don't make it through mirrored interfaces. Not sure how the techniques I use will propagate through silver."
"Illusions?!" demand the thestral.
"Well, yeah, I need some way to project my scans. I don't have the enormous ensorcelled apparati they have back at the Academy. And even those technically use projection magic, which is a form of illusion. But really, garbage in, garbage out. It doesn't synthesize fictions from nothing, I swear. I assume you two have actual Concordat proprietary tech of some sort, right? You aren't just randomly making shit up based on gut feelings or something like that?"
"Of course not!" barked the earth pony.
Lyra gave him the hairy eyeball. Earth pony sorcerers weren't totally unheard of, but they tended to be incredibly rare.
"Go get the spectacles," the thestral mare said, and Lyra thought the mare might actually have rolled her eyes.
Just a little.
One pair of errands, the jailor for his charge, and the Concordotti stallion for their equipment, and the group had regrouped in an interrogation room which managed to have enough space for both Concordotti and the three unicorns.
Well, and the prisoner, whose hoof had been chained to a heavy iron table in the middle of the room, his other three hobbled around a chair.
"Well, that's a bit extreme," noted Lyra, looking over the almost-spread-eagled Trooper Bob. "How are ya, Bob?" She walked up to her subject, and laid her heavy, sagging hat on the even heavier interrogation room table.
"Been beffel, Lyla," the thestral said through the heavy bit and bridle locked around his muzzle.
"Objection!" rapped out the thestral Concordotti. "The magus clearly knows the subject!"
"It's why I'm useful," Lyra said, talking fast, and pulling beads, braces, staves and clamps out of the pocket woven into her hat, below the crown but above the brim. "I already have a baseline scan of this guy. I've been evaluating most of Shield's squadron. It's why I'm here in Trottingham in the first place. Here, look."
Lyra took a glass bead from the scrambled pile of stuff, and used it to project the 'baseline scan' illusion she had stored on it. "See? That's Bob's soul from three weeks ago."
The rest of the group looked at it in varying shades of disgust, astonishment, and fascination. Lyra could never be sure how ponies would react to the projection of a pony's soul. As far as she could tell, it reflected the actual meat of a pony's nervous system, and that could be a bit unsettling to a herbivore unused to viscera and suchlike.
Still, it was essentially glasslike, so at least the scan didn't pulse, ooze, or look all that icky, tendrils and nodes and the like aside.
"This is Bob, baseline. Note how clear it is. This was very unusual for thestrals like Bob. Most batponies have a certain underlying or standard-issue curse-corruption going on. Even earth ponies and pegasi aren't generally pristine, but for some reason thestrals are usually crapped up like unicorns with academic-level magic talents. Bob was unusually clear for a thestral, he looks more like an earth pony, and a young one at that.
"This was before he had any contact with the turul whose cursed object was the subject of my investigations at the time. I was planning on taking another scan of Bob and the rest of his lance after they had interacted with the turul and her coronet, but I hadn't gotten back around to Bob before, y'know, the whole mess in the courtyard with the weird sisters we're not talking about anymore."
The two Concordotti glared at her, and Lyra carried on.
"Right. Normally, I'd expect a series of sprays of curse-affect over a soul after it had encountered an object like the turul heir's coronet. Looks like someone splattered affected souls with mud. Dried mud, if it's old, it tends to fleck off or fade with time.
"So! Let's take a scan of today's Bob, and see what we're looking at here. He's had contact with the turul, it should show that at the very least."
Lyra assembled the little projector from the pile of stuff scattered across the table. She cast the prepared spell on the trooper with the rickety apparatus, and the illusion burst out of his head like his brain exploding out of the back of his skull. The projection swirled a bit before it resolved properly, and then settled into a mostly glassy-clear colored floating model of Bob's brain and spinal cord. In faint pastels glittering in the stark half-lighted interrogation room.
"Now that is interesting," Lyra said, approvingly.
"You can see the mud, like you said," Gleaming Shield said, circling the floating, glowing illusion. "Layers and layers. Is this what my mind looks like?"
"Nah, you've got that mental block thing going, when it's active, it looks like your brain is encased in ice. When you dispel it, the 'mud' goes with it. Ah-ha! Look at that!" Lyra waved a magnifying glass over the projection, and brought the detail into view.
"The… it looks like someone was scribbling on his frontal lobe with a stick of charcoal. Or a pencil," Shield said.
"Exactly! That's not right. Definitely outside influence."
"What!?" demanded the thestral mare. She grabbed one of the spectacles her partner had brought with him, and put them over her cats-eyes. She squinted at the actual pony's forehead, her magnified slit-eyes made enormous behind the thick glass. "I don't see anything."
"Well, it is pretty faint," Lyra granted. "And it's starting to fade. Better take a snapshot before it's gone entirely, the next time I scan Bob here, I think it'll be gone."
Lyra picked out a fresh glass bead from the pile, and waved it through the projection stream with her hornglow, imprinting the image on the storage device.
"What does it mean?" asked Colonel Brassard.
"Mmm. Something dark-magic-ish interacted with Bob's brain. I have no idea what. Like I said, that cursed coronet leaves phantasmic mud on ponies' minds. Whatever this was, it was like somepony chalking up a sidewalk. Pretty minor, really. Like the chalked up sidewalk, the next big rainstorm will wash it off. Sorta."
"A rainstorm will wash Bob's brain?" Shield asked, skeptically.
"Well, metaphorically speaking. To be honest, whatever it was, was pretty minor. You wouldn't believe how messy Princess Cadance's influence can be, seen through this technique."
"He's clearly been influenced! We must have him, he's been compromised!" the earth pony stallion said, heatedly.
"Like I said, half of the population probably has influences like this, at least in places like Canterlot where Cadance and the matrons are in operation. Somepony maybe gave him a doctored dream, something like that."
"Is he programmed? Dangerous?" asked Colonel Brassard.
"Is anypony with Cadance-influence programmed or dangerous?" Lyra asked, knowing what a bomb she was throwing into the conversation.
The resulting shrapnel tore the discussion into pieces. Lyra almost regretted the mess she'd made.
But in the end, they got their trooper back, and that was the point wasn't it?
Shield's griffon guards were summoned from their limbo up by the main gates of the fortress, and Bob and his hobbles were extracted from the octopus-like entangled embrace of the interrogation room's table and chair. The guards took custody of Bob, his hobbles, and the keys thereof, and the entire procession moved upwards out of that mortal Tartarus, slow-marching to the pace of the slowest, hobbled member of the column.
As they escaped Trottish Tartarus, Lyra resisted the urge to look backwards, Eurydice-like, at the no-doubt-glaring Concordotti, and thought about her exposure from this little escapade. She rather suspected that now was probably a good time to get out of town, before it occurred to the Concordotti that it was a good idea to proactively foalnap her for her innovative new mind-mapping technology.
Before anypony else did, of course. For Lyra's own good.
Maybe she should have written her little trick up into a proper paper instead of just keeping it for her own studies. Less chance of being sealed away in some unharmonious secret agency's own dungeons, intent on monopolizing her idiot ideas for their own nefarious purposes.
Maybe she should have ‘forgotten’ her hat in that interrogation room, in the hope that the Concordotti could reverse-engineer her little tricks from the collection of kibble, rubbish and tools squirreled away in its pockets and leave her alone.
Nah, they’re not that clever. And I wasn’t that smart.
No, better to be somewhere those jerks couldn’t get ahold of her. Good thing she was currently embedded in an entire squadron's worth of bodyguards.
The pale blue mare stared at the racks of brass tubes sitting along the east wall of Purse Strings' warehouse. Lieutenant Lulamoon's purple eyes narrowed in irate contemplation of the unmounted swivel guns, one forehoof tapping in a classic tell of ill humor. She looked back up at Purse, and he fought the urge to make some unmasculine sound, fixed in place by her gimlet stare.
"What foal has been messing with these falconets? They look like they've been stored in a scrapyard."
"They do not!" Purse replied, stung. "They're perfectly well-cleaned and have been kept dry and out of the weather!"
"If anypony has reamed the bores of any of these weapons in the last five years, then Trixie is a breezie's uncle. It looks like someone just went after them with brass polish and ignored the workings. The vents are full of gunk, and where are the gunlocks?"
"Uh… gunlocks. That's the trigger thing, right? We don't have any for these. There's a box over there with the triggers for the carronades."
"What do you mean, you don't have any gunlocks for these things? How do you fire them?"
"I don't know, Lieutenant Lulamoon. This isn't my ship. My old one, they had different deck weapons, and we only fired them off on the Princess's Birthday and the Summer Sun. Big iron things as long as your rear leg, with separate chambers you loaded with the shot and powder into the back of the cannon."
"Marekillers? You had marekillers? That would be better than these idiot showpieces-" the mare stopped dead, a stricken look on her face.
Purse Strings waited for a second. Then a minute. Then...
"Lieutenant? Lieutenant Lulamoon, hello, are you in there?"
The mare shook herself, and then muttered something about her father and forgiveness. Purse felt that burn of embarrassment he usually got from accidentally walking into the head while another colt was taking a piss, and tried not to think about it.
"Right," snapped the artillery mare. "Show is the goal, must remember that. Right. And as I look closer at these things, they might not even take gunlocks. These might be old enough to take linstocks, Celestia save us all. Are there any polearms in storage, maybe long-shafted, but given how small these falconets are, might be about the length of a boarding axe, with posts and rings for holding slow-matches?"
"Oh, yeah, those things. The cords with 'em were kind of rotted, though, I threw most of 'em out and ordered some more. Over here, in the repair supplies. Didn't know what else to do with them."
Purse showed the artillerymare the dozen or so coils he'd found with what he'd assumed were, as she said, boarding axes. The boarding axes were stored with the other engineering tools and close defense weaponry. Mostly short-handled boarding spears.
"Bah, you're right, those fuses were marginal. You say you've got more on order?"
Purse Strings nodded. "Yeah, should be coming later today or tomorrow. Local order, no sweat. Only noticed it after someone else complained about out of date supplies in another department, and I combed through all the perishables."
The mare nodded in return, agreeably. "But these are definitely linstocks," she continued, looking thoughtful. "I don't know… it isn't as if I've ever done much with old-style linstocks. Just the once, in school. Barely enough to go through the steps, slowly. Hrm." She lifted up one of the axe-like devices in her purple horn-glow, examining its shaft and various sharpened protuberances.
"See this here?" She pointed to the nasty-looking spike on the bottom of the axe. "Vent or touchhole reamers. Neat little tool, really. If you were a cave-mare, and had never heard of snaphaunces or miquelets, and couldn't figure out how to assemble a proper gunlock." She sat back on her haunches.
"What the buck is a linstock, Lieutenant?" asked Purse.
"It's a linstock!"
Purse looked dumb, and hoped she'd explain.
"Gah! See this? That is where the slow match is held. You light it up, let it burn. This here is the touchhole reamer. It? Reams. What? The touchhole. Or the vent. The idea is that you shove a bag of powder down the barrel muzzle-first, ram it down firm, shove a bag of projectiles after it-"
"Not a bullet?"
"Nah, these things are too big for simple slugs. Usually a ball or two, and a bunch of buck. Easier to bag 'em up, and let it act like a big shotgun. Anyways. You use the reamer to punch down the touchhole, cut open the powder-bag, and hey presto! You've got a primed piece. Then you just turn your linstock around on its axis, and shove the lit slowmatch into the touchhole. And le BOOM! The piece is fired.
"Yeah, you see. Stupid. You can see why they got replaced with gunlocks, right? Pain in my flank." The artillery mare looked pensively at the linstock held in her magic.
"Well, shit. Those bitches will take Tartarus's own time to clean up and get working. It might be easier to just mount our supply of rocket-mortars on the decks, and hope for shock and awe to do the job that buck and ball couldn't possibly. Not with these silly props.
"Come on, let's see what the ship itself looks like," she barked, and trotted for the exit, the half-forgotten linstock, sharp and ominous, bobbing along beside her, captured in her glittering unicorn magic.
The pintles on the ship's upper decks were, if anything, worse than the brass falconets. The latter had at least been well-polished and carefully detailed, everywhere a pony could look to see on the outside. Even if the insides were full of old polish and impacted dust and verdigris.
The pintle mounts, on the other hand, had been freshly painted-over, and even under the fresh paint, the ball bearings were frozen in their fittings.
"No, this won't do. I'm going to need a lot of hooves if we want there to be bright shiny falconets mounted where the crowds can see them," Trixie said, as grandly as she could muster.
The scrawny yellow colt with the gold tooth looked askance at Trixie's broad gesture. "I thought you said you were gonna mount something else? Something about rockets or mortars?"
"Yes, definitely! Trixie had had more ambitious ideas for the rocket system, but in a pinch we can always use the boring, wildly inaccurate Soarin' patent designs. Which were so obviously the product of a featherbrained pegasus with no idea of how to control propellant or the basic principles of rocketry that- well, never mind all that. They will suffice for launching devices well away from the ship proper, and standard issue fused bombs should do the rest of the work for us."
"Uh," the colt said, with a look of apprehension on his face, "That doesn't sound especially safe. And this ship is pretty well-stocked and the refitting has fixed a lot of problems, but even the best-designed ships aren't exactly-"
"Oh, do be still. Trixie isn't an amateur. Her rocket mortars won't set our own ship on fire. Trixie knows a thing or two about radii of fire and minimum safe distance fusing!"
Trixie stopped to consider.
"But Trixie has to admit that her new gun ensigns aren't nearly well-trained enough to operate said systems without - no, best not involve them at all, for the time being. Clearly Trixie will have to operate the ship-side of the operation."
"Yeah…" drawled the Manehattanite colt. "About that. Nopony's been talking to me, aside from a note from Ping to show you around and start 'preparations'. What is going on, exactly?"
"What, you expect Trixie to be in the know? Trixie is many things, but a social butterfly is not one of them. Ask that lunatic Heartstrings."
"You knew enough to show up at my warehouse this morning, didn't you? What do you think you're doing here?"
"Oh, Trixie is getting the ship ready to be boarded and seized by the squadron. We're going to steal this floating heap of ill-designed civilian mockery of a proper warship, and turn it into the regiment's headquarters!"
The colt stared at Trixie as if she had two horns.
"Uh, you all know you paid for this hulk, right?" he said, slowly, as you would to a moron.
"Of course we did! Good bits, as Trixie understands these things!" Trixie did not, in fact, understand these things, but it helped to not be seen as an utter fool in front of the help.
"Who steals their own ship?" he asked, still over-patient and insulting in his affect.
"Ponies who want to re-name a ship that was clearly, once upon a time, named by the previous owner's precocious four-year-old daughter, of course! We can hardly go off to the Undiscovered East in something called the HRHS Daddy Longlegs. It's a matter of morale!"
"And they're worried about the naval superstitions, of course, yeah, I remember those arguments. I don't see how this nonsense addresses that."
"Is it acceptable for a warring nation to capture an enemy ship, and re-christen it in their own service?"
"Yeah, happens all the time. With surface ships. Defeated airships tend to be too torn up and battered or blown up to be returned to service except as scrap."
"And the superstitions are all surface sailors' myths and legends, are they not?"
"Yeah. Also, the superstitions are mostly about the goddess Amphitrite and her court. Sea goddess."
"Well, then. First off, the boggarts who enforce these silly rules, in the primitive sailors' imagination, might not even notice if we pull this off in the air, if the ship never lays keel in the jealous ocean's chill waters. And secondly, by seizing the ship by force majeure, we do a proper end-run around this 'Ledger of the Deep' nonsense. Who cares what it says in the depths, if we're never anywhere near it?"
"Why not just go with that, and forget this - what is it you're doing, exactly?"
"The squadron's going to form up, and we'll launch the ship, and the aerial ponies will drop out of the sun, or from a cloudbank, or something else properly flashy and dramatic and piratical, and storm the decks! It should be great good fun, Trixie is sure of it. She has a feel for these things, you know. It's in the blood."
"Riiight. Why are you here doin' this, and not that big griffon, or somepony else? You're just… what exactly again?"
"Trixie is the lieutenant of the regimental battery, of course. And somepony has to organize a proper defense of the ship, or else it'll all just be a mockery!"
"As opposed to the dog and pony show you're currently planning?"
"Exactly!"
"Riiight. Where're you guys planning on this stormin' of the Daddy Longlegs?"
"Oh, somewhere well within view of the city, of course. Can't leave dear old equinicidal Trottingham without a proper send-off. Why do you ask?"
"Thinkin' about goin' into partnership with a pony I know, maybe set up bleachers in the sun, sell tickets."
"Really! What a lovely idea! I could change up the charges in the shells…" Trixie thought about the possibilities of smoke and sparklers and thumpers and proper firework charges and...
"What is it, now?" Purse asked, snapping a hoof in front of her face.
"Oh, just remembering a show I once saw my father… not important. What were we talking about? Pyrotechnics, showponyship, and an audience, right!"
"Riiight. So this still sounds like it'll be kinda violent."
"You can't conduct a full live-fire exercise without a certain amount of danger!" Trixie knew the dangers! That was why she was here, to limit the exposures!
"You know this is likely to hurt a lot of ponies and griffons, right?"
How insulting! Well, she'd just have to show this rat-faced colt how good Trixie could be!
"Look, I didn't mean anything about - hey, what's your preference for the ship's name?"
"What?" Trixie said, confused by the left turn.
"The new name, we're going through all of this to rename our poor unfatherly Daddy. Me, I've been thinking over something like 'The Movable Feast', or maybe 'The Glittering Orgy'!" The damned colt waggled his eyebrows at Trixie, and she thought seriously about clotting him across the muzzle with the side of her linstock.
His eyes widened, and he backed up out of swinging range. "Chill, chill, just a bad joke. But seriously. Something nice and festive, is my choice. Cornucopia, that's the ticket. The endless provider of jollification and good provender!"
Trixie snorted at the hopeless sleazebag. "That would make you the procurer of said provender?"
"There you've got it. What's your moniker for the new girl? New fittings, new weapons, new names! Come on, where's your bits on the table? Give us a name!"
Trixie rocked her head to the side, thinking. What would she bring into the world, if she had all the bits in that world, and all the freedom in it. Something to make her father proud, something to bring a smile to his face. That one theater he'd never been able to play, before it burned down.
"The Golden Globe!" Trixie declared, with a properly theatrical flourish, in memory of her flashy father.
The skinny stallion looked confused. "I don't get it. What does it mean?"
"What it means is Mystery! The inscrutability of the Sphinx! The puzzlement of the ages! The splendour and terror of the sublime!"
"You're not going to tell me, are you?"
"You're damn right I'm not. What is a mare but mystery?" That was enough of that, time for a new subject! "Right! OK, next, show me these carronades, Trixie suspects they'll be as dire as the rest of the equipment on this bucket of clouds and ill intentions, but she should see it for herself. Then we're collecting my mechanics and oh… I'm thinking at least a full platoon of ready hooves. We have a lot of messes to fix, here, and some new ones to make before the doomed Daddy Longlegs is ready to be taken like a bridegroom on his wedding day!"
Giles looked across the cloud crowded with griffons and bat-ponies checking their equipment and their training weapons. His lance was posted next to the bat-pony platoon of his pink phantasm, who was in her own training-gear right next to him, looking over her blunted javelins with an intent expression.
"Fish Eye!" Giles blurted out, thinking of her expression when she'd showed up at the bloody scene of his last exploit. "How're the thestrals treating you?"
"What? Oh, hey, Giles, how are ya? Like a princess, it's great! You ought to find a bat mare to play batmare for! Or bat-tom, I guess. Sorry, we're getting ready to take off here, the target ship will be here soon. Did you want something?"
Did he want something? "Yeah!" Giles squeaked out, confused by his own impulses. "What did you put in the hat for the name?"
"The ship's name? Oh ho! Wasn't that a corker! The major knows how to make life in the guards a barrel of monkeymares! Yeah, I had a buncha ideas. There's traditional ship names, like Following Seas, or the Black Flag, or the Barque Royal, or something in the adjective line, like Glorious or Impervious. But I always thought that was begging for trouble, hanging something ambitious on a ship. Better something sweet and homelike, like Arcadia or Fiddler's Green, or-"
"What's that last one? Why Fiddler's-"
"Fiddler's Green? It's an afterlife for sailors. All those fishergriffs lost to wave or wind or terrible storms, the stories say that after the worst of ends, a safe harbor named Fiddler's Green awaits, full of calm and sweet waters, plenty of fish, and all your loved ones in their due time. But me, I like the sound of Safe Harbor. Less gloomy, all that death and loss. Better for a ship to be the safety itself, rather than the consolation from the lack of it, you know?"
"So, you put down…?"
"Safe Harbor, of course! What about you?"
"I haven't turned in my slip, yet."
"You better hurry! There's not much more time."
"Eye!" bellowed a batpony behind Giles' pink perplexity. "Get a wing on, the target's coming round!"
"See you afterwards, Giles!" Fish Eye chirped, flying off after her platoon ensign and her platoon.
Giles thought about it, as he triple-checked his griffons' gear and readiness.
A place for the lost… Fiddler's Green.
He knew what he was putting down on his paper. He'd have to make sure his corporal triple-checked Giles' spelling. His talon-writing wasn't nearly as good as his reading...
Lyra whooped like a wild buffalo bull as she clung to the leather straps straining across the grey and brown feathers of the royal beast, her ride rising and falling with each vast beat of the turul's vastly wider wings. The glittering illusion surrounding them both stuttered and flashed with each jolt, as Lyra's concentration broke and reformed, a cycle dampening as the mare gained control over her excitement and fear.
They were gaining height, and the brown wattle and stone tiles of a tumble roofs of griffon and pony homes in their half-gridded labyrinthine tangle shrunk beneath Lady George's laboring wings. The mixed wattle and tile gave suddenly away to pony roofing tiles alone, and then sturdier timbered commercial expanses, and then, finally, the heavy stone battlements of the great fortress beside the harbor.
Lyra whooped again, and reached back to whap her fellow unicorn across the withers, reaching down where Minuette was cowering in her own saddle, grasping the straps tightly with both hooves. "Don't say this isn't fun, filly! Come on, look up, look down! We gotta be going seventy if we're doing five!"
"If your roc-tamer doesn't want to be combing my puke out of her pet's tailfeathers, you'll leave me be until we're moving a bit slower and higher!" shrieked Lyra's old friend.
Who, clearly, had a few qualms other than her previously shouted demurral, 'it's not my Celestia-damned regiment, understand, monkeygirl?'
Well, who knew the blue unicorn was afraid of heights?
"I'm sorry, Minnie, I didn't realize you'd be so skittish about this! You should have said you were afraid of flying!"
"I did! Repeatedly, at great - urp - length! You just didn't want to hear!"
"Well, hold it in until we're a bit higher, and George here can get some space, we can tip over and let you boot right into the harbor, starboard, sideways!"
Lyra almost swore that the blue mare turned greener than Lyra herself at that suggestion.
Waters rushed beneath them, and glittered through the distortion of Lyra's stabilizing illusion. The projection was supposed to be a great airship, a sort of approximation of a gondola extending far behind Lady George's long tail-feathers, and far beyond her long beak and laboring head. Above them, the dome of the illusion mimicked, as closely as Lyra could manage, the even larger envelope from which the illusour gondola apparently dangled, and the insubstantial sheets and supports joining the two together.
At least in theory.
In practice, Lyra's attempt to portray the still-awfully-named HRHS Daddy Longlegs was very much a work in progress, and if she was being honest, looked rather like a crystalline pony brain and spinal column, folded in on itself. She had no idea what the griffons looking on from far below thought of this demented aerial display, racing enormous and incogruous overhead - whether they were laughing their flanks off at them, or screaming in terrified horror.
Lyra rather hoped it was the former. Better to be laughed at, than to terrorize. But she only had so many illusion-magics to work with, and it was easier to project her own mental state around the flying turul than to come up with something clever and showponylike. She tried her best to feel like an airship, but if there ever was a pony with a soul like a frigate, it wasn't Lyra.
Let alone a light carrier, whatever the buck that was. Lyra had been given a glimpse of the new ship in the airdocks. If that was a light carrier, she shuddered to think how big and massive a heavy carrier might be. She briefly pictured the Canterhorn set loose from the jealousy of gravity's grip to float proudly beside the Daddy Longlegs, and laughed in joy at the improbable mental image.
"I'm sorry that the lieutenant isn't enjoying herself," boomed Lady George, "But I'm glad you're having fun, Magus Heartstrings. Because here they come." The great and royal bird of prey twitched her enormous head in the direction of several nearby, low-hanging clouds.
Both mares looked up at the cloud platforms, and then Lyra looked back at her fellow passenger. The distraction was getting Minuette's hooves back under her, looked like.
"Better get those shield spells ready, Minnie. They're coming, not long now."
Lyra looked away from her uniformed friend as Lieutenant Minuette started going through the exercises she used for her ballistic defensive arrays. The distant cloud was disgorging its complement of griffons and bat ponies, who were kicking off in arrowhead formations, swooping out and towards the three of them in converging courses.
Lyra tucked her head back against her shoulders and withers, and tried to think like a frigate. Float, float, zoom. Float, float, zoom. Float, float, zoom!
Just as the nearest batpony lance was two hundred paces in front of them, lining up on Lyra's illusory airship 'envelope', Minuette finally manifested her anti-projectile shields, glittering like a blue soap-bubble in front of the turul's heavy head and, more importantly to Lyra herself, Lyra herself.
Although honestly, if the javelins missed Lyra and Minuette, but still managed to wound the turul enough to spill her cargo, they were dying of the fall, anyways.
The batponies and their sprays of blunted little javelins rocketed past, more than a dozen of the cloth-tipped training weapons tearing through the space that Lyra had been decorating with the phantasm of a glittery airship balloon. More importantly, none of the attacking guardbats intersected either the gondola, the stays supposedly holding the gondola under the envelope, or the envelope itself.
Lyra whooped in approval, waving at the departing unit's lance corporal. This made her miss the next lance in the stoop as another half-dozen projectiles shot overhead, and two loud 'plops!' as several off-target javelins embedded in Minuette's shields, which held them quivering in place like toothpicks in jelly.
Lyra looked up at the off-target shots, and laughed. "Not even close, you bunch! We can probably add them to the others, Minnie, they're spent. Oh, wait, no give it a second before you do that - here comes tailcheck Charlie!"
The last lance in the attacking platoon screeched by, thrown a bit by the noise Lyra was making. Only three out of the dozen struck the balloon-shaped envelope target, and the last lance corporal screamed something annoyed at her that was lost in the wind and the closing velocities.
Lyra managed to collect all the training javelins she'd been able to catch, which wasn't more than half of what had been flung their way. She wasn't really a powerhouse, and putting up this big a projection was taking most of her concentration. Lyra shoved the projectiles into the first of a series of empty bags strapped across Lady George's body, like panniers on a pony.
"OK, that group's done, Minnie, you can rest a bit. And you should get a breather, because we've got another platoon lining up on us in ten, nine, eight… Do you think I should start singing at them? The chatter seems to have thrown the last bunch a bit? Here they come!"
And then the air over the outer harbor was full of blunted javelins and cursing griffons.
After all of the aerial platoons had taken their passes against the 'envelope' of the racing target, they let the three of them return back down to their starting position, and the platoons to their own perches upon the high cloud-platforms. Time to reset!
Sort of. The balloon of the illusion now partially masked the three members of the 'red team', and the rest of the illusion hung half out of sight below the turul's belly. Lady George flew the same course as before, and the aerial ponies and griffons made their passes against the 'deck' of the illusory gondola, which now was hanging below the great turul by dint of Lyra's limited and rather strained imagination. The troopers' javelins glided through the target spaces, and Lyra got to yell 'splat' at the several bat-ponies and many more griffons who 'impacted' the side of the great imaginary gondola instead of flying over or beneath it.
Mare, they didn't like being laughed at, but that's what they got for flying through the projection of Lyra's funny bone! Or spinal column, as it were.
It didn't even tickle, which Lyra found a bit disappointing.
In a gap between platoons, Lyra looked back at her sweaty friend. "Colt, howdy, this is a hoot and a half. You know, I hope to make the whole trip out and back like this. Never a dull moment on the… Jolly Rodgerer!"
Minuette spluttered. "The bucking what?"
"Exactly! They're holding a contest, Twilight and her hen, to name the new ship. I'm trying out names. I figured they wouldn't go for the Flying Buggerer."
"I would think not!"
"Or the Cathouse. Despite all the griffons on board."
"Are you looking to get gutted by angry griffons?"
"I hear their mating rituals can be intense. How about the Merry Widow?"
"That's one for the superstitious!"
"Maybe say it was named after somegriff's mother, and call it the Gladys! Glad-Ass!"
"Oh, look, they're ready to try and kill us again!" Minuette said spitefully, eager for any escape from Lyra's nonsense.
Finally, the three of them turned a lazy spiral on a thermal as the trainees returned to their cloud base to rearm and regroup. Lady George spent some time grousing about how she wasn't a pony ship, fed by coal and magic, and was feeling peckish.
"Oh, chin up, Lady George. We'll spot you a nice big tuna or harbor shark afterwards. Minnie will help! Right, Minnie?"
"I don't know, Lyra…"
"Aw, come on, Minnie! It'll be fun."
"Maybe."
"Also, you should totally come with us eastwards, out into the Turulország."
"Lyra Heartstrings, I told you no, and I meant it!"
"Aw, come on, mare, have some fun for once in your life!"
"Damnit, Lyra, I have fun! I just like to have it back home, in Ponyville, at the local bar, or dodging the local wildlife, or the locals. I've had enough military life for a lifetime. I told Bell, and I'm telling you, this isn't a mare's life!"
"Aw, come on, don't leave me alone on an airship with that stick with a pony stuck on it, and Trixie Lulamoon. We're still a lieutenant short, everypony says!"
"Lyra, first of all, you're two lieutenants short, not one - Bell's doing double duty as a troop commander and executive officer, and second of all - leave Trixie alone! Don't you be bullying the poor filly! She's had a bad time of it, and I personally think she should be going home on a psychiatric discharge, not shipping out with you lunatics. Last time I saw her, she was three sheets to the wind and screaming at ponies in a grog shop in the harbor district."
"Yeah, well, you know what they say about falling off an air carriage. You just have to get back on the pegasus. Speaking of which, here comes the chariots."
"The what? Aaaie!"
Minuette's shields barely got back up in time, before they were swarmed by batponies and griffons hauling little two-pony contraptions bearing flightless members of the Sixth Guards flinging balloons full of - that better be water and paint, Lyra thought.
Whatever it was, it was yellow enough to be something else. And she had the distinct impression that the trainees were aiming at her and Minuette, instead of the envelope that was the official target.
The upper airs turned blue with Minuette's shields and Lyra's curses. The illusion of the airship turned a bit stormy and lightning-lashed with Lyra's wrath.
Shame Lyra wasn't powerful enough for the lightning to be anything other than the visualization of her ire.
After a while, the only thing Minuette would say was, "I want to go home! Get me off this crazy bird!"
After all was said and done, when they finally reached the still, solid soil of mother earth, Minuette still wasn't biting on the recruitment pitch. And insisted on shooting down all of Lyra's terrible, awful, salacious suggestions for ship names.
Lyra was going to have to report mission failure to Gilda, but she'd said at the start that she was a magus, not a salespony.
Oh, well, worse ways to spend a sunny day in June.
Lyra treated her friends to dinner as thanks for the good work. As Lady George tore into a harbor shark, and Lyra laid out the gourmet crab-meat salad and fixings, she found that for some reason Minuette wasn't all that hungry.
Hay, more for Lyra.
Gilda stared at the stone pot in front of the batpony colt.
"Couldn't you have found something less symbolic, corporal?" Gilda asked, irate.
"It wasn't my choice, master sergeant," Ping replied, looking down at the pot and the desk underneath it.
They both sat down, and Ping took the slit tin cover off of the pot, tipping it over.
A cascade of folded pieces of paper slid across the surface of the desk. "The major found it in one of the guest suites," Ping noted coolly. "Speaking of which, have you looked at the new lieutenant and ensign jackets sent over by personnel?"
"That's a left turn. I've had nothing better to do than approve Purse Strings' endless requisition forms, and eyeball your new officers' files. Do you know why they suddenly decided to open the taps?" Gilda put one of her talons into the pile of folded papers and stirred them like a sloppy pile of playing cards.
"I think they figured out that we're getting ready to move out, and thought they could dump their worst head cases and no-hopers on us."
"Joke's on them, we only need a lieutenant."
"We should have two more lieutenants." Ping picked out a paper, and opened it up. "New Hope."
"Start a pile for 'dull but unobjectionable'. We can get away with the captain skippering one of the troops, for the time being. We only need one." Gilda opened one of her own. "'The Brass Whore'. OK, that's a good starter for 'no way in hell, burn before reading.'"
Gilda kicked a wire trash basket out from under the desk and deposited the offending note. She left the trash can where they both could drop suggestions as they worked.
"You're not going to make friends with the officers if you insist on overworking them. 'Sweet Winds'," He put the suggestion on top of his first one.
"'Albatross'. Is that a bad idea pile, or another roundfiler?"
"Roundfiler. Nopony wants a curse for a ship name. Oh, hey, this one's interesting, 'Amphibious'."
"Let's see? Hm. I think I recognize that talonwriting. Hawk Eye. It feels kind of - why is it making my feathers stick up?"
"No, I think you're right, sergeant. It's a backhoofed reference to Amphitrite. Best be safe. Sorry, Captain Eye." Into the round file it went. “‘Orion’s Shoulder’.”
"Well, I've certainly pissed off enough of the officers, sometimes I feel like I might as well make the full set." Gilda flicked through a half-dozen boring Crystal thises, Heart thats. All onto Ping's 'boring' pile. “‘Twilit Gemini’. Pretty, but the major will get even more shirty. Sorry, my poetic friend.”
"The major will forgive us eventually for our little mis-step. 'Brass Monkey'."
"What the hey is that? Put it in the 'no idea' pile. You don't know the major, she's going to be mad for at least a month. 'Constant Gardener'." They looked at each other, and shrugged in bafflement. Into the 'no idea' pile it went.
"Are any of the jackets at least palatable? 'Golden Dawn'."
"One or two, I'll show you when we're done here. They're all ensigns, though. And something about that one makes my religion sense tingle. Roundfile it on general principles. 'Derecho'."
"You have a religious tingle? I thought griffons didn't have religion. And speaking of religion, oh my pristine darkness, no on 'Derecho'."
"Every tribe has some sort of religious tradition. Ours are mostly wind-related. What the buck is 'Derecho'?"
"Old pegasus cult center. God of war business. Seat of some sort of goddess of victory."
"Just the seat, not the goddess itself? Keep it."
"Meeeh. If you say so. 'Fiddler's Green'. That's pretty, let's keep that one."
"If you say so, it makes my beak itch."
"Pfft. We don't need you to play chaplain. Which is another officer we should have on hoof. We had one in the 93/1st. 'Heart of Iron'."
"I hate it, but it passes the smell test. And the 93/1st was a medical hospital. You needed chaplains for dying griffons and ponies. 'Elysium'. Too gloomy. Roundfile?"
"Almost as bad as 'Tartarus', yeah, roundfile." Ping flicked his own hoof-full of suggestions into the roundfile. "You didn't want to hear any of that. Some of the bat ponies can get a bit edgy and dark."
"You don't say," smirked Gilda. "'Blood Raven', 'Darkness's Kiss', 'Black Garrotte', that sort of thing?" Gilda tossed her talons-worth of slips into the trash.
"As opposed to obscenities about pony and griffon rulers, I suppose? 'Gharne's Cunt', 'The Knot Of Guto', 'Drowned Grosvenor'." All into the trash it went.
"Say what you will about griffons, they have a healthy disregard for the nobility and the royalty. We’ve yet to have any of our griffish recruits attack anygriff or pony over all the reasons for toms and hens have to get punchy. Unlike your blessed bats. Speaking of which, here are four more variants on 'Queen of the Night', a 'Mother of Dreams', and two of 'Nightmare's Moon', one so badly written it might as well be 'Niggit Mun'." All tossed.
"Don't they know that we're going to have to sail this benighted ship before all of Equestria and ponykind? ‘The Sunny Booty’.” Ping rolled his eyes. “Do they have Bob safely under lock and key downstairs? Also, 'The Crystal Heart'."
"'I'm Not Overcompensating, You're Overcompensating', 'She's One Of Ours, Ma'am!'. Anonymity breeds mischief among the ranks. 'Billy-Bob Was Here'. And some can't even come up with a decent joke. You’re working hard to justify my decision to have you play jailor for your namesake, Billy-Bob." Gilda tossed the goat's autobiographical suggestion and the rest of the jokes into the trash.
"Hades, no. It's a bad omen. 'Heart of Diamonds'. Hey, I like this one."
"Put it in the 'good' pile, then. 'Queen of Hearts'."
"You spotting a trend? 'Heart of Stone'."
"Ooh, edgy. I like it. And if our designer is going to put a heart design on our unit flash, you have to expect the troops will run with it. 'Trumped Heart'." Ping grimaced.
"Yeah, you're right, too much of the card game. Toss it."
"I think we can assume that was Magus Heartstring's contribution. Don't just throw that away, put it in a 'burn before the major reads it' pile." Gilda looked over at the batpony colt. "What was your submission, if I can ask? And 'West Wind'."
"I thought you said griffon theology was winds-centric? And only if you tell me yours. 'Golden Kite'. This suggestion, not my own."
"Obviously, you aren't the golden anything type. And it doesn't get theological until you start naming them, or cite the four winds. And yeah, no 'Fourth Winds'. Although… I did suggest 'Second Wind'."
"Ha! You hypocrite. If I find it, it's going into the trash. 'Wild Stallion'. What the buck?"
"That's what the 'what the buck' pile is for. And I told you mine. What's yours? 'The Hierophant'."
"Pfft, I think we know Fruits Basket's, that sounds exactly like her. That goes into the what the buck pile. And…"
"Come on, spill, Ping."
Ping looked up at Gilda over the mostly-cleared desktop. Then he looked down and whispered something.
"What was that? I couldn't hear you. Speak up, colt!"
"Daydream."
Gilda laughed her tailfeathers off as the soppy little colt made watery eyes at her.
"Aw, come on, you can't say that ain't funny! You bats and your edgy nonsense…"
Purse Strings looked across the harbor from the battlements of Fort Gharne. Archaic turrets and parapets all along the walls were crowded with equinity. The cool morning air was heating swiftly under the hot June sun, and the burbling chatter of a thousand ponies floated upwards, and out over the still waters of the harbor.
A stillness disturbed, cut here and there by the wakes of numerous boats under way. Skiffs, boats, and ferries were all in motion, skittering hither and thon across the increasingly crowded, enclosed waters of the harbor. More and more of them were moving out through the passages into the open waters, between and beyond the batteries, past the the wound-away coils of the great booms that the batteries stood as protectors, great booms that in times of danger were drawn across their respective channels to keep out the enemy. Channels through which the boats darted into the waters beyond the harbor, like schools of fish returning to their mother-sea.
The last few freighters and cargo ships were inside the harbor herself, making their approaches to the piers in the busy docks, or passing into the main roads beyond the harbor-channels, moving into the open waters.
Everypony, everygriff knew. Something was happening this morning.
The news had spread through the city and the working Trottish world. All the city bustled in the moments before the demonstration, the exercise - the assault. Paradoxically, working Trottingham was turning itself inside out, trying to get a morning's work done in a few scant hours.
Purse Strings heard things. And he felt the eyes of dozens upon him and his signal-station ponies.
How had he heard things? Contacts. Partners. Fellow conspirators. For instance, some few of those boats down in the harbor and the outer roads were licensed by Purse and his partners in crime. Oh, the rest of the harborfolk had quickly figured out that there was no way for the consortium to keep them from running passengers and lookie-loos without paying for the privilege, but they'd still made a bit of coin before the rest of them got wise to their lack of leverage. The ponies and griffons responsible for the wooden bleachers erected along the northwest side of the port on the other hoof, had establishments which tied them down in one place, and exposed them to Purse's partners' - let's not call it extortion, but rather, extremely aggressive licensing invoicing.
Also, that particular group was planning on putting the stands to future use that had nothing at all to do with a transient, if eminently exploitable military exercise. The loose talk of a revived Trottish cloudball league was, indirectly, helping finance Purse Strings' various schemes for today.
However difficult said loose talk made hiring or recruiting proper pegasi personnel. Purse had heard enough of that particular woe from the sergeants and the officers. Frankly, he thought that any pony so trivially-minded as to prefer pushing puffs of skystuff over soldiering for the Princess, were hardly the sorts to be useful in the military. Let the flitterers flit about, he'd prefer some ponies with thunderforged steel in their spines, standing between him and the trouble they were likely to find out east.
Purse looked around himself at the clots of ponies lounging about the battlements around him and his signal crew. Access to the walls and walkways of the fort and her harem of batteries was another thing he had no leverage over, and after the trouble with that bat-pony, it hadn't been politic to even try. So, the EUP had, on its own, decided to get in on the fun, and had opened up the fortifications to ‘reliable' subjects of the ducal coronet.
Which meant ponies. Lots and lots of ponies. Including a surprisingly large number of foals. A schoolhouse's worth of said foals were milling atop the turret next to where Purse's signalling station squatted on the adjoining wall parapet. They'd considered placing the bulky equipment on the higher turret, but it turned out that the angles favored this stretch of wall better than the slightly taller platform above. More paradoxically visible.
"Mif Octavia, is the tenty cale monster going to be back today?" a high piping voice drifted down over the edge of the platform.
"Young Master Pip, I have told you before, there is no such thing as tentacle monsters, and you would do best to not rile up the other students with such bosh."
"Yeah, and me mum said the same thing, but I don't know what else to call somefing what ‘as long fiddly streamers an' clear long tenty cales a danglin' about!"
"This is what comes of not attending your lessons, Master Pip, and if I'd known you were looking out the window instead of attending, you would not be attending this outing. Now do be quiet, I feel a headache coming on."
"Aw…"
Magus Heartstring's dubious projection had been from all accounts a highly effective training aid. Most folk who had seen it, had added that the projection was also very creepy and weird, and the unexplained appearance of an enormous translucent pony brain and spinal column had caused alarm and hilarity throughout the city every time it had made an appearance. The bossfolk had chosen to not explain anything, mostly on the basis of ‘we're too damn busy to deal with this shit'. All the press had been told was that it was an illusion, and part of the new regiment's training regime.
Purse ended up explaining a lot to his partners and the randomly curious. It had helped sell the whole endeavour. He had polished his delivery, repetition after repetition, until after a while he'd started to feel more like a carnival barker than a purser.
But in exchange, he heard things. Like that rumor of at least one new cult forming around the ‘signs and portents'. More than a few ponies and griffons he'd talked to had insisted that the official story was painfully obvious bollocks. And their speculations were sometimes more entertaining than his own patter.
He'd been informed that the smart money was on the testing of a secret weapon that the Equestrians were deploying in Trottish airspace as a sort of oblique threat against the Princess's neighbors. Purse had tried to explain that it was just the peculiar exhibitionism of ponydom's most egotistically weird magician, but that just made people laugh at him.
Purse sighed, and picked up his tin binoculars. He stared at the far distant clouds, still side-lit by the early morning sun. They were slowly moving into place. No flags, yet.
In the end, the real money maker for this had turned out to be rental binoculars. The long week of training had brought out the early viewers en masse, but there had been a near-riot about how hard it was to see the training soldiers darting about in the high distance. Luckily, Purse had heard about it, and had the solution close to hoof.
He'd found a supplier for cheap optics a good month ago, but the factory in question had refused to deal in the small lots that the squadron and the ship had required. The next best option was ten times the cost, and would have taken months of painstaking craftsmareship to create the necessary equipment, probably delivering in August or September.
So, Purse had found himself with over three thousand units' worth of rickety tin folding binoculars, with even more cheap glass lenses. They were barely worth using in a military setting, but were almost perfect as toys for rich ponies' foals.
Or, it had occurred to Purse, rented out to tourists and onlookers at an event.
And, strangely enough, sales to factory owner-operators, shop stewards, and so forth.
They weren't quite cheap enough to just sell and forget for most griffons and ponies, though, and it had been bore upon Purse's attention that perhaps they were just militarily effective enough that the higher-ups would prefer that he not inadvertently supply any surviving rebels or enemies of the state said ‘foal's toys', so the rentees were required to supply a deposit, and the ponies and griffons given the rental franchise had been strictly instructed to keep their goods in line of sight at all times.
Purse still didn't expect to get more than half of them back. Most of which would go to the toy-sellers on consignment, and the rest into squadron storage.
Nopony cared about the ones he'd outright sold to the factory ponies, and guildgriffs. And right now, he could see the glint of glasses trained on him and his signal-station from all over the garment district, and some of the factories beyond the Blue Line. Purse suspected that most of the sold binoculars deeper in the Pennies, deeper in the griffish ghettos, were trained on a certain set of airdocks on Tenpenny Street.
He swung his own pair of binoculars from the slowly advancing cloud-posts, to bear on those very airdocks. The Daddy Longlegs and her crew were almost finished preparing for liftoff. The decks were swarming with ratings, riggers, troopers, and artillery-ponies. The alien steel tubing, struts and supports had strangely distorted the squat airship lines of the refitted Daddy, making her look more like the spindly spider-ish insect she'd been named for in the first place. Instead of an aerial mattock-head, or a wedge waiting for a sledge, dangling from her enormous, glittering envelope.
It's some sort of irony that the old girl finally looks like a daddy longlegs only on the cusp of having a new name forced on her.
The ready flag rose over the rear of the ship, one of the ratings hauling the green flag up a sheet to join the other signal-flags twitching listlessly in the near-calm weather.
"Mr. Grog, we have ready from the ship. Please relay at once," Purse rapped out in a voice sadly lacking in authority, a fact he had long since come to terms with, no matter how much he struggled otherwise.
The signal-pony raised their own green flag on the left hoof side, leaving just the red flag dangling on the right hoof side.
Purse returned to his evaluation of the distant cloud-platforms, eyeing their signal-post. Purse's own signal-station was under observation by the Territorial battalions playing air-cop for the exercise, and the first green flag was the signal that sparked small gangs of griffish Territorials to start harrying wayward civilians out of the air over the harbor, and in a corridor between the harbor and the airdocks in the northern Pennies.
When Purse took his eyes away from his glasses, he could see the bustle dying down in the docks in the distance. He glanced around, and saw the change in the city everywhere he could see. The glinting of glasses trained on his position had gone away, from every other shop door, from those places his observers had lurked. Instead, ponies and griffons were trickling out of every door, joining together in streams headed for the bleachers and stands.
In the distance, steam whistles screamed their shift-change song. Purse suspected that the factories in the Pennies and elsewhere were disgorging their workers on early lunches or breaks. And indeed, when he looked, he could see flecks of blue on the roof-tops broadening into patchy carpets of distant griffonhood.
More closely, Purse could hear around him the tenor of the crowd's burbling shift, as they noticed the overhead crab-backs flittering about overhead, pushing out the toms and hens who had taken to the sky, thinking to fly along with the last flight of the Daddy Longlegs. The Territorials also had been watching for green flags.
All of Trottingham's libels and more respectable publications had been given fair notice of the event ahead of time, and more than a few had joined in the hoopla, whooping up a fair amount of excitement. It was the sniggering of the Beak and Bone, and the cheerleading of the Duchess's Post, more than simple word of beak or the training exercises which had brought all those bosses to buy Purse's binoculars, brought all these working people out into the sun, to crowd together on rough pinewood bleachers & slick fortification stonework, or even on their own factory roofs.
And there went the second flag, over a cloudbank northeast of the main harbor channel.
Purse gestured to Lime Grog, his head signals rating, and the ratings raised their right-hoof flag. Purse turned his cheap binoculars towards the airdocks, and saw them register the go-ahead.
The Daddy Longlegs began to slowly rise out of her slip, and Purse tapped Lime Grog's partner on the withers. The middle green flag was raised.
And their job was done.
The great long airship got underway with a belch of black and white smoke from the triple stacks at the Daddy's aft.
"What is that?" "It's so ugly!" "It's so slow!" "Waaa!"
"Children! Settle down. That is the new ship they have been working on over in the shipworks on Tenpenny. The proud product of patriotic Trottingham! Look at it soar!"
"Like a big ol' garbage bird, you mean!"
"Jam Sandwich! You be respectful! That fine piece of Trottish engineering is the pride of the city! No matter what it looks like! And sit down. Hay Rick, let Willow Bark have her turn with the binoculars."
"But Missus Octavia, there's only now anyfing worth lookin' at!"
"Still, it is her turn. And there will be plenty of time. They should take a good ten minut- oh, my."
The airship's engines kicked in just then, and it took off with a sudden start. Apparently the civilians didn't know to expect that sort of acceleration from anything as big and heavy-looking as the Daddy Longlegs.
Grov promised a lot of extra performance out of that envelope treatment, and he hadn't been talking up his sleeve.
The airship moved swiftly, impressively, crossing the Blue Line as Purse focussed his binoculars on her decks. The riggers came pouring down out of the rigging from the envelope above, and Purse watched them swarm down across the decks and through the open hatches. Meanwhile, ponies in glittering guard regalia bustled about, hauling shining brass tubes here and there, slamming them into sockets all around the edges of the decks.
Purse had just picked out the blue-furred artillery lieutenant on the rapidly approaching deck, gesturing in agitation here and there as her minions mounted the mare's falconets in the places they'd decided upon, when he heard a yell from one of his signal-ponies.
He looked away from his binoculars, to see Lime Grog gesturing into the distance. Hundreds of dots had detached themselves from the cloudbanks to the northeast, and were forming themselves as they fell out of the sky, joined by larger dots that would be the various air-carriages and gun-teams.
Cheers began to rise up from the crowded battlements, as the audience spotted the distant fliers, the second half of the day's entertainment joining the spectacle.
Looking back to the ship, Purse Strings almost missed it, as in the seconds he had been distracted, the Daddy Longlegs had doubled her speed once again, and the ship was passing directly over the squat turrets of the fortress.
The wind of her passage nearly knocked Lime Grog off of his perch on the signal station, and Purse could hear tiny screams from the unseen foals in the turret overhead as they were buffeted by that wind.
Purse cringed, his mind's-eye full of tumbling little bodies falling off the high tower onto the pavement far below, but apparently the unseen schoolteacher had corralled her charges well enough that she didn't lose any of them to the down-gusts as the Daddy Longlegs rushed towards her fate beyond the harbor's fortifications-line.
The gyring eddies subsided, and as the various ponies blown about the battlements reassembled themselves into an audience from their somewhat wind-blown and scattered disarray, Purse looked out to sea, to catch the soaring great ship spreading her cruising wings beneath the weak late-morning breezes. The sunlight shone savagely in Purse's eyes, lighting up the rocket-racks that the half-mad artillerymare had strewn across the sides of the refitted ship.
Beyond the racing airship, Purse could see distant sails dotting the sea out to the horizon. Had the fishing fleets come close enough to catch the show?
More immediately, the aerial troops of the squadron were now visible beyond the glittering envelope of their target, little black and blue and grey motes moving in carefully precise courses, converging on the Daddy Longlegs.
Purse had barely gotten his binoculars focused at the new range, when a series of flashes blinded him. He dropped his glasses and blinked furiously, trying to see what had happened.
A second later, the tearing sound of Lieutenant Lulamoon's rockets lighting off reached the ponies watching atop Fort Gharne, to match the blooms of black and grey smoke that had erupted out of the rocket-launching mortars.
Then, a silent series of explosions, in red, green and blue, and the on-rushing ponies and griffons of the Guard disappeared from view, hidden by the colored clouds of smoke.
Another second, and then Purse felt the detonations in his chest, almost in tandem with the sound of the great thumps. The falconets had rippled off a series of shots almost perfectly, if accidentally, timed with the arrival of the sound of the rockets' bursts. It was as if the little brass firearms had produced those great thumping booms. Cause and effect had been deranged by the distance, the decoupling of sound and sight.
Gasps of thrilled horror spread through the ponies in the audience, with some wails of confused terror from the unseen foals in the turret above. Even Purse, who knew exactly what he'd just seen, because he'd been in the planning for every bit of it, found himself unsettled and hollow-chested, a visceral trill of alarm running down his spine at the apparent slaughter of the bossfolks' troopers.
Then the little black and blue and grey dots tore through the colored clouds of gunsmoke, their headlong flight bringing them again, intact and alive, into the view of those watching. The troopers charged the great airship in perfect rank and order, their spearheads now visible and glittering, and the sharper-eyed would then begin to spot the even tinier dots pacing them as they flew. They've launched their projectiles.
Suddenly, the bigger dots became bigger still, as the troopers flared their wings and rose suddenly, catching the air in their straining pinions, flung up by magic and momentum to swoop over the top of the onrushing airship, and the tinier dots - the projectiles - continued in their ballistic courses.
Purse got his binoculars focused on the envelope of the racing ship, but the impact sites of the projectiles were on the opposite side of the ship from where he was sitting with the audience of Gharne. Only the slightest tinges of red and orange on the sides of the envelope showed where the dye-balloons must have struck.
The troopers swooped and swerved in the back-wash of the Daddy Longlegs's passage, and the falconets on the decks below fired again, soundlessly. More little explosions produced more tiny little detonations, and small colored clouds expanded with the delayed sounds of the fire of the falconets which had produced the clouds, confusing the senses once again as to what effect was evoking what sounds, the distance and the clamour making a perfect aural chaos of the event.
Then both the guncarriages of the attacking battery posted in the cloudy distance, and the ship's own carronades, fired almost simultaneously, adding yet more clouds of colored smoke and fire to the spectacle, and the sounds arrived in a perfect confusion of thunder absolutely divorced from the swirling spectacle.
So many charges expended… do there have to be so many? Every one, so many pounds of gun cotton, so many ounces of this precious substance or that, to color the explosion, make the great booming sound, produce this colored smoke or that. Lieutenant Lulamoon was a very expensive indulgence for a very young regiment.
Every bit Purse Strings and his partners had squeezed out of the presentation of this display, the rentals, the extractions from the tour boats, the bleacher rentiers - every bit of it was going to the very, very expensive Lieutenant Lulamoon and her appetite for explosives.
Purse had totally lost track of where the troopers were in all the welter of smoke and fire and noise, and if he, who had in his saddlebags the script to this staged battle, was confused, how better could the clueless ponies all around him follow?
The Daddy Longlegs took a sudden right turn, leaning on her side, and a sudden cross-breeze revealed the embattled deck of the ship to the wondering eyes of the ponies, those with, and without the cheap tin binoculars.
Struggling figures dotted the planking barely visible between the swaying envelope above, and the main body of the gondola below. Brass glints and figures in crystalline fabric swung here, rushed there, and every now and again, some maniac was still firing off rockets from the long, spindly mortar-guide tubes.
Finally, some sort of odd struggle on the poop deck was resolved, and the whole ship shuddered as new hooves on the ship's wheel changed her course, once again. New carriages approached the half-captured airship, and little figures leaped from the back of the chariots onto the tumbled decks, covered in struggling griffons, ponies, and assorted other people of various tribes.
That is a bit more than what was planned. Some of the ratings and riggers decided to make a fight for it?
Purse squinted his eyes through the crummy optics of his cut-rate glasses, and looked for the tell-tale sign of real blood, real damage. The ship was too wreathed with smoke and mess for Purse to be certain.
Then, the large flag of the Equestrian merchant-marine flapping from the rear of the great ship twitched, jerked, and then suddenly was struck.
The audience roared with realization, as the torn-down colors were quickly replaced by a new, unfamiliar flag, a sunburst in magenta and lavender. The voices of ponies and griffons, from rooftop, from battlement and bleacher, from factory-roofs and shop-doors and the streets and the boats and the docks in and around the harbor - it was as if all of Trottingham had spoken the same ineffable word, deranged by distance and place and time until one's ears were hopelessly dazzled by the sheer confusion
The Daddy Longlegs was captured, taken in prize. The crystal privateers had overcome their foe, and the ship was theirs!
And as the clocks struck noon, the Trottish crowds screamed in approbation, ponies from the battlements, and the griffons from the bleacher stands along the port and the harbor-side, to see one band of Equestrians conquer another in the neutral skies of Trottingham.
Gilda tried to not stare at the smouldering fire in the rigging overhead, threatening to set alight the brand-new envelope which Gleaming Shield's family's own fiscal reserves had paid the Tenpenny Collective so many bits for. Martin Gale and a mixed pick-up crew of riggers and baffled-looking griffish troopers were wrestling with an impromptu wisp of damage-control cloud, wet and new, pegasus magic strange in the talons of toms and hens not born to the use of any of it.
The club in Gilda's own talons was heavy and filthy, and she tried to not think about the idiot rating who'd charged the major as they'd come off the chariots. Everygriff's blood had been up in the midst of the cannons' roar and the smoke and flash and fire, and Gilda had been obliged to percussively discourage the pony's excessive enthusiasm with two judicious taps.
Now that mare's blood was on Gilda's clubbed stick, and the care of the pegasus herself was in the talons of the surgeon, who was down in the new infirmary that had been, in another life, the Daddy Longlegs's captain's quarters, triaging the various battered and perforated casualties of this allegedly bloodless exercise.
Gilda stood guard behind her major, behind and to the right. The 'prize crew' had command of the ship's wheel, the great ship's sail-wings, port and starboard, were furled and out of sight from where they stood, and the ship was turning on her great beam, slowing in the midst of her own smoke and filth.
Most of the squadron, and all of the undamaged troopers of the line platoons were either on the deck below the forecastle, or were descending, the fire in the rigging having just gone out. Martin Gale was leading her griffons into a sort of formation as they touched down onto the deck among their fellows. There was Lulamoon over there, supervising one of her gunners, who was hammering at one of her peculiar munition-flinging devices which had caught a wheel on one of the assault carriages and was jammed up around a hinge.
Lyra Heartstrings, who had ridden into battle like a damn fool on the offending assault carriage like a mere private, was talking to Captain Bell, both of them standing around the wreckages of said broken cart.
The two batpony platoons - with one very pink hippogriff in their midst, like a burnt-over field of purple, grey and charcoal with one wayward poppy bobbing head-and-shoulders over the ashes - were coming into formation to the right, while the griffon platoons were still finding their places. The ranks of the third troop were thinned, between those detailed to the signal team with Purse Strings, those left back at the garrison with Ping, guarding the squadron's effects and prisoner, and several aloft with the damage control crew, who were still pulling down smouldering ropes and canvas.
And behind them all, the gunners of the regimental battery, their gun-carriages parked somewhat haphazardly at the back of the erratic, still-organizing formation.
The sound of pony cheers arose from far below, indicating the location of Battery Garner as they passed over that fortification. It was pretty much the only way Gilda knew where they were, sight and smell having been blinded by the billowing sulfur clouds of colored stink and flare, the brief battle having created an astonishing amount of smoky chaos in the skies over Trottingham's sea-roads.
The 'captives', that part of the crew not engaged in making sure the engines didn't seize up, or aloft smothering the sparks and coals of that near-disastrous fire, as well as the troopers detailed to reinforce the crew as 'marines' and thus 'captured' along with the rest, sat cordoned in corners of the tumbled deck by 'guards' from the third troop. In between the 'squadron proper' and their 'captives' were an expanse of deck cluttered with weapons and detritus, tumbled here and there by the disarray of those last few wild moments in the career of the HRHS Daddy Longlegs.
It occurred to Gilda that they had all gotten far too deep into their roles in this cock-eyed performance. As Gilda looked around, she counted the winds' blessings that nogriff had gotten fatally spitted by spear or blasted by gonne or carronade.
Wait, Lulamoon had called the brass things something else? Not falcon, that was the big carriage guns. They'd have to make sure that everything had gone right with the artillerymare's ensigns-
At that moment, they came out of the sulfur-clouds, and the bright sunlight lit up the assembled squadron and the ship under their talons.
With the sun and its light, returned the Trottish world below, the city and her forts and her port and her citizens, arrayed in their rapt thousands and tens of thousands, perched on rooftops and battlements and even those bleachers Purse Strings' hoodlum partners had built down by the harborside.
Gilda's unicorn took their return to the world as her cue.
"Ponies and griffons of Trottingham!" bellowed the major's thin, clear soprano from the vast panels of the envelope above, pre-arranged by ensorcellment and a clever little farspeaking spell of Gleaming's invention.
"Thank you all for coming out this fine morning to observe the final training exercises of her Royal Highness's newest household regiment, the Sixth Guards, First Squadron! We were so happy to have all of you fine people to watch our final evolutions, here, in the skies over Equestria's most valued friend and ally, the Duchy of Trottingham and the Griffish Isles."
The ponies and griffons on the forecastle around them, and down below on the major decks, came to attention, victors and captives, ratings and riggers, troopers and gunponies, guards and sailors.
"This new unit is Equestrian, as Equestrian as any provincial regiment from Baltimare or Marezona or the Vale, and yet! We have been organizing, and recruiting, here in battered, proud Trottingham, where every pony and every griffon knows in their bones that while they are our friends, they are not the Princess's, neither her subjects, nor her people. These guards you see before you, beside you, are free ponies, free griffons, come to the standard by their free will, by their own accord."
Well, most of them.
Still, Gilda looked down at the troops in their varying orders and disorders, ponies and griffons and that blasted goat and even that silly hippogriff mare. The crew were a mix of Trottish and Equestrian, yes, but even the guards themselves were a tumble of thestral and Trottish griffon and Trottish pony and winds only knew what else in between. This was the moment. This was it. Either they had them now, or they never would.
"And Trottingham is the only place where we could have brought into the world a band such as this! Where the service of a princess wasn't a foregone conclusion, a thoughtless emanation of fellow-feeling, national pride, or affection for the mother of our people! For the Equestria of our heart isn't a growth of blood and soil, flesh and fruit, family-love and mother-love. Equestria is, it can be, it ought to be, it must be, an- an-
"An idea!
"An ideal. A belief in the spirit of harmony, a belief in concord, in comity - a generous and hopeful desire for that faith, that love that can bring us together, in spite of difference, in defiance of tribe, and against all those other loves - for species, for tribe, for family and soil and blood - which pull against that harmony, that concord, and that unity.
"Because love of family, and love of soil, and love of the great who govern our soil and our lands and our families, isn't enough when we step beyond our front doors! Love of one's own nation can not be enough, not be sufficient, when we step out to face all the nations, on their own front stoops, on their own soils, before their families which are not our own!"
Gleaming Shield paused, and looked around at the sun-dazzled troops in their half-dressed, half-disordered ranks. And she smiled like the sun, a wicked and confiding grin.
And she spoke for the townfolk below, who couldn't see clearly anygriffon, any pony on that half-crowded deck.
"Oh, my friends below, and my friends before me, I look around at my troopers' smoke-smudged faces, and see they're not having any of my political speeches. It's a good thing I'm not running for city council, isn't it? And nopony ever goes off to war for silly philosophies, or political speeches. Or rather, they shouldn't.
"We go for a promise, and we stay for the friends we find along the way.
"A new regiment is no better than a promise, a parchment assertion from a distant princess; an assertion that this particular paper so establishes one Sixth Guards Regiment, that it shall be subject to military discipline, and that it shall be governed by honor, and worthy of loyalty. The parchment can't do anything. It's only paper! It is only the promissory note! And anypony who has dealt with banks knows what value to put on paper money!
"No, my friends, every pony and every griffon knows that you only put your faith in coin, the true metal, good, honest gold. The bit on the barrel! This is why, when a pony or a griffon enters the service, we call it taking the Princess's bit! We give the recruit a proper coin, and she puts it in her purse, and we call her a soldier! Or a sailor! Or a trooper of the regiment!"
And the deck was washed by the sound of filthy ponies and griffons roaring their approbation of this well-planned applause line. She and Gilda had war-gamed this bit, long into the night.
"Which brings us to today's exercise. The Sixth Guards is a household regiment, but it will not be bound to house or hold! We have no homes! We will have no walls to hold, territory to command. By design! Few but scholars of ancient history remember anymore, but the Sixth Guards of legend was once the household cavalry of the almost-mythical Crystal Empress, and the Sixth's home was a legendary palace of diamond and quartz and other precious fruit of the deep mines of the north. The Crystal Empress, Princess Amore, whose great dominion over the North now lies today five hundred miles to the northwest, beneath more than a thousand yards of ice and snow.
"So, now, re-established, we required a new home! Or rather, a perch from which to be what we will be. Ambassadors to the world! An armed host for the ideals, well-wishes, and hopes of Equestria for the world outside our door. Harmony Militant! But to be that, we needed a ship.
"Well, we found one. Built of Equestrian ironwood, and ensorcelled fabric, and thunderforged steel. Rebuilt and modernized by the industrious workers of the mighty arsenal that is Trottingham!"
Gleaming Shield waited for the distant cheers of the griffons now visible below, on the factory rooftops, and in the cheap stands lining the side of the harbor, and, more closely, the ponies covering the battlements of the batteries and the harborside port behind them. The filthy, colored clouds had been left far behind, and even the smoldering in the rigging above was hardly putting out any smoke. The whole of the city was focused on the now-nameless airship come to a stillness above her harbor, between land and sea, an airship with Shield's soprano broadcasting across the entire city.
"But there was a problem! Every good sailor knows that you can't rename a ship - can't make her truly yours! - without offending the goddess of the waves, in whose fearsome respect we bow our heads, humbled by the wrath of the seas. It is to challenge that nameless goddess's ire, to invite her fury, to just buy a ship off the shelf, like you were purchasing a hat, or a cloak.
"Oh, we could have had a keel laid, a ship built from the ground up, for our future career through the upper airs. And we will, some day, when the griffons of the Pennies can supply for us the great argosies of the air we all know they are planning! But that day is not today, and we have obligations, duties, which call us abroad!
"No, no. We couldn't wait. So, instead, today, as our first act as the Crystal Guard reborn, we took a ship. Took her like the griffons of old, by force of arms, and the bravery of my toms and hens and mares and stallions, here bloodied before me!
"Because that is the escape clause. That is the exception before which the respected guardian of the registry of the deep bows her seafoam head. That captured ships give the conqueror the battle-won right of renaming!
"And so, we stand before you, battle-scarred, besmirched, and bloodied-" and Gleaming Shield's horn-magic reached out, and drew the blood from Gilda's stave, and twisted it into a gyre, a helix of gore that caught the sun's light, sparkling crimson and bright, clear enough to be seen from below. "We stand upon the decks of our dear-purchased, captured ship!
"Because, in the end, a ship can't be bought. She can only be taken! The more roughly, the better. We stand before you soldiers, who now know something about taking something precious from monarchs. Because it's the only price worthy of giving our everything in return! Not promises, not words, not assertions, not ideas. The coin itself! The bit!
"Well, we've taken our Princess's Bit, and we aim to take her into the shadowy places of this world. She's a bit smudged at the moment, but just you watch. We'll have her shining like a piece fresh-coined out of the mint before we both sally out into the black to light up the dark! Thank you, and Harmony bless the Princess and her beloved ally the Duchess, both!
"I give you all, Her Royal Highness's Ship, the Princess's Bit!"
And the roar of hundreds of troopers and sailors drowned out the distant cheers of the civilian crowds below.
"So what did you think, Gilda?"
"Very good, ma'am. Much better than the last speech. I was particularly moved when you told them that a ship's name can't be purchased, but a soldier-hen's honor can be bought for a bit."
A large shadow fell over Purse Strings' desk, and he looked up from his loadout checklists.
"Captain Bell!" he squawked, surprised to find the wrong oversize female darkening his door. "You weren't the Crystal Guard I was expecting. What can I do for you?"
"Hey, there… you," the big beefy pegasus said. Big Bell was nominally Major Shield's executive officer, but Purse had hardly dealt with her at all. She and the other officers - those that existed, the organization being somewhat lacking in adult supervision on that front - had been off in garrison, and out on the training fields outside of the city, while Purse Strings and various non-coms had handled most of the running about inside the city.
Well, aside from Trixie Lulamoon and her explosively odd starts.
The point being, he'd not really dealt with the big light-purple mare, not directly anyways. And here she was - when he'd been expecting Sergeant Gilda.
"Hey, there, captain," Purse said, trying for an easy charm. Her lip twitched, and not in a good way. "Uh, I'm getting my ponies ready here, We've got a lot of pallet loads, and I think I've got enough hoofs to make it light work, but have you seen the sergeant and the rest of the-"
"Yeah, Ah've got all these heavy carts with me. Also, two lances of troops in full armor. Also Martin Gale. Hey! Martin! Get in here!"
The dull-colored head of a stern-looking mare stabbed into the doorway of his now-almost-crowded office. "Captain?"
"Purse Strings here is our quartermaster, he's in charge of the loading. Mister Strings, the lieutenant here is in charge of security. We don't want these carts or the stuff in 'em to go a-wandering in the chaos. Can the two of you handle this end of the mess?"
"Er… yeah?" Purse looked between the heavy-featured captain and the sharp-muzzled lieutenant with poisonous disapproval already brewing in her eyes, and quailed at the prospect. "Where's the master sergeant? Or the major?"
"They are very busy mares, Quartermaster Strings!" the lieutenant - Lieutenant Martingale? - snapped out. "We are here to lighten their load, not assuage your feeble insecurities. Is that the plan? Let me see it!" She pushed past her superior officer and started poring over Purse's paperwork.
"Ah'll leave you two to it, Mister Strings. Ah gotta run back to the ship. Tailwind's got her docked out at the airfield outside of the city. You two know where that is, you can get loaded carts in convoy out that way?"
"I can read a map, captain, and I trust that this colt knows his job and his kit. Don't waste any more time on us," the darker, smaller pegasus said, absently, her eyes darting over Purse's work. "Tell the major when you see her that we've got it under control."
And with that, the squadron's executive officer left Purse alone.
Trapped with this pony he neither knew…
"Your penmareship is atrocious. What is this word, Mister Strings?"
Nor particularly liked. He looked to see what she was sniffing at, and wondered where all the fun mares were today.
"Come on, can't you tell me where Shield-kins has got to?"
"The major's not here, Magus Heartstrings. I haven't seen her in hours," said the griffon corporal in charge of the guard on the Princess's Bit, which was sitting on the tarmac of Trottingham Air Field, all of her hatches open, and swarming with activity. He didn't even blink at Lyra's new nickname for Twilight Sparkle, edgemare extraordinaire.
"Well, who has seen her?" asked Lyra, silently vowing to find something to call Twiggles that would make her minions react.
"I saw her taking Bob out of the stockade, just before leaving the garrison," came wafting down from above.
Lyra looked around her hat and up into the hatch leading into the Princess's Bit. A batpony was hanging there, lifting a sack of something or other - even after more than a month with the air cavalry, Lyra didn't always have the right words to go with the day to day stuff in use. Like those big heavy haversacks the troops were carrying around today.
"What was she doing with poor Bob?" Lyra asked, a bit perplexed.
"I dunno, magus. You could ask her, herself."
"And where would I do that? I thought she'd be here!"
"It's a big ship, magus. I barely got here myself."
"You said you saw her in the stockade!"
"Ain't no stockade no more, I was packing it up when I saw the major."
"Well, I'm not wasting an entire trip out here!" Lyra shifted her own bags on her back, her hooves aching from the weight of carrying all of her stuff the several miles between the garrison and the airfield. "Does anypony know where my cabin is?"
The griffish corporal exchanged glances with the thestral trooper leaning out of the ship overhead, and they shrugged at her.
"Gah!"
Trixie stared at her table full of disordered paperwork, and wondered if any of it meant anything. She was ensconced in a small nook beside the main foyer leading into the squadron's half-emptied portion of the garrison, trying to not tap her hooves in anxiety as the vigilant batpony guards allowed their fellow troopers to pass in and out of the open gates.
Theoretically now was the exact moment when security should have been at its highest, as ponies and griffons and other creatures scampered here and there, with half-lances, and pairs, and singletons tromping all over the place. Theoretically everypony was supposed to be sticking together with their units, and packing up in a nice, organized fashion.
Theory could go suck on a sack of white phosphorus. Every time a pony forgot her iron, or her dirty laundry, or her photographic apparatus, another lance lost another mare to the spreading chaos. Out in the crowded courtyard lances, not being able to find free carts, were leaving on hoof with less than half their files, lugging their kit bags, bedding sacks, and assorted luggage piled high on their backs. Others, having grabbed the carts intended for full-roster lances, were leaving with partially-empty cart-beds, the rest of their ponies or griffons having been left behind or gone missing. A more organized unit in a more civilized country would have cab ranks of baggage carts lined up in the courtyard outside, so that they could haul the troopers' effects out to the airfields in a nice, organized fashion.
Instead, the troops were trickling out by file, wobbling as they went, interspersed with the few that had gotten their luggage-carts before somepony else could steal them.
The best that Trixie's guard detail could do was make sure that the ponies and griffons leaving with carts were actually in the right uniform, and at least looked vaguely familiar. The squadron wasn't so large that you couldn't remember every face, but it was young enough that not everypony had met everypony else, yet.
If it was this bad out by the gates, Trixie couldn't imagine the mess they must be leaving behind upstairs…
Trixie cringed at a horrendous clattering crash, and looked out into the corridor to see the mess made by a griffish trooper having apparently lost her load all over the middle of the passageway. Trixie watched the hen's fellow-griffish troopers move out of the way of the rest of the traffic and set their bags down in a more controlled fashion against the far wall. They all bent over the mess their fellow had made, picking up the spilled armor, tools, and dishware. Had it been their lance's designated cook?
Trixie got the broom out of the corner of her little officer's nook - which in better times had served as a janitor's closet - and went out to go help clean up the broken crockery and glass.
The glamorous life of a mare in the Guard!
And so it went.
Trixie was still out in the corridor when the reliefs for her bat-ponies arrived, and she looked up from her brooming to find a skinny crab-back with a lance corporal's stripe looking at her. She dumped one last dust-pan's worth of broken dishes into a nearly-overflowing trash bin, and returned to her actually assigned duty.
"Ma'am? Have you seen the officer of the watch?" the tom asked. Trixie looked behind the junior NCO, and saw he had a full file and a half behind him, in garrison gear. Behind them, the batponies were looking anxiously at her, restless and no doubt eager to go upstairs and clear out their own lockers.
"You found her, lance corporal… name?"
"Er, excuse me?"
"I'm the officer of the guard. What's your name, soldier?"
"Giles, ma'am. Reporting for duty."
"Dried Durian, your ponies are dismissed," Trixie said over the back of her replacement lance corporal, to the lance corporal commanding the originals. "Go rejoin your-"
And they were gone, like that.
"OK, then," Trixie said, trying to figure out how a half-dozen ponies could disappear like that without smoke bombs. "Giles, I'm Lulamoon, is this all of your troopers?"
"No, ma'am. The rest are back on the Bit, claiming our billet, and protecting our gear until everygriff settles down."
"You have your stuff stowed?"
"For the most part, yeah. We're yours for the next eight hours."
"Hopefully not, we were supposed to be out of these quarters by nine," Trixie said, putting away her broom and dustpan, and looking out into the gathering darkness. "Who sent you?"
"Sergeant Gustav said to come back here and find you, ma'am. Make sure you had replacements and anything you needed to expedite your end of the move."
"Ha! My end of the move was done before we took the blasted ship! I've been sleeping on the Daddy- the Princess's Bit for the last five days. And I got my ensigns and corporals to pack up their shit last night. Tonight's for the ponies who can't organize themselves to save their lives."
"As you say, ma'am. We're squared away, and yours for the night. Do… you have any idea where the other officers are?"
"Trixie thinks we have two or three ensigns running around upstairs like chickens with their heads bit off," Trixie sniffed. "At least, I let them through several- no, that was four hours ago. Including the pony responsible for those guards you just replaced. I don't know where she got to. For all I know, the mare just teleported right past me. Walked through shadows. I have no idea. Her bat-mare went by about… an hour ago? It might be a bit - make room, there, Giles, here comes another batch."
A small cavalcade of support ponies and griffons came thundering out of the mess hall, weighed down with sacks of food and clanging saddlebags full of pots and silverware. Trixie suspected that more than half of that actually belonged to the facility itself, but she wasn't going to shake down the squadron's own cooks.
She had to eat, too, you know?
Trixie eyed the overburdened cooks as they streamed by her and her corporal's guard. "Say, you didn't bring any baggage carts back with you from the airfield, did you?"
"No, ma'am. I hear that the quartermaster and the lieutenant disappeared with everything we had piled up by the Bit an hour or two before Sergeant Gustav sent us your way."
"Well, that doesn't sound like a good sign. And might explain where the major and the other officers disappeared to, maybe?" Trixie squinted, trying to figure out what was going on.
"Ma'am, where do you need us?"
"Oh, right. You and one other here at the doors. Two more out at the gate on the other side of the courtyard. The rest keeping some sort of order out there. Try and keep them from bashing each other's heads in, people? Thank you."
And as the lance corporal got his griffons sorted, two ponies Trixie didn't recognize emerged from the murk of the courtyard, and tried to get past the doors into the half-emptied squadron's quarters. The doors her troopers were supposed to be guarding.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa there, partners!" Trixie squealed, stepping in front of the two stallions in EUP greens and ensigns' bars. "Where do you two think you're going?"
"Reporting for duty, obviously - what are you, an idiot?" snapped the little one, and Trixie craned her neck to look him in the face.
"Look, you inflamed little hemorrhoid, I know I don't look like an officer, but you will respect the bars, you hear me? Stand to attention!"
"Wh-what?"
"You heard me, brace, you little red twat! You too, ginger. You made the mistake of bringing short and smart-mouthed into my house!"
The commotion had brought half of her guard detail into supporting distance, behind the two stallions now desperately trying to look like they weren't complete and utter buck-ups. Somehow, the traffic from upstairs had died off, so Trixie had some time to blow off some steam and haze the new colts.
She tried not to smile, and only managed to convert it into a sneer.
"Names! Now! You first, Ginger-Can't-Find-A-Razor!"
"Ensign Sunburst, ma'am! From the 12th Tail Highlanders!"
"A Vale colt! What is a Vale colt doing in Trixie's house? Who sent you!"
"Personnel, ma'am! I'm a transfer!"
"Well, we don't need more ensigns. We've got plenty of them, more than we can handle! You smell like Academy to me. Are you an Academy pony, Sunburst?"
"Gifted Unicorns, ma'am!"
"What's that? That's not a real school, is it?" Celestia, Trixie hated horn-knockers. What was a PCSGU alum doing in a grotty provincial highlanders regiment?
"Ma'am, yes ma'am! I'm a dropout, anyways."
Oh, hey, a fellow buckup! Trixie was sure they'd be best friends! Not. "Why is Trixie not in the least surprised? Well, it isn't her problem, is it?"
"Ma'am? Who's Trixie?" asked the orange unicorn with the pronounced five o'clock shadow.
Trixie ignored the dropout, and turned to the angry-looking little pegasus. "And?" she demanded.
"Short Fuse, ma'am! Ensign! 14/3rd Air Cavalry!"
Trixie blinked at the name, and wished that the uniforms didn't hide cutie marks. Was he artillery material? Pegasi rarely were, but with a name like that…
"And? Who sent you?"
"Command, I guess?"
The other stallion elbowed the little ensign.
"Oh, right, I guess personnel. They transferred me."
"At least you can't be another PCSGU horn-knocker. Why has G-1 gifted us with your cut-rate presence?"
"Uh… they said you needed officers?" Sunburst said, looking confused.
"I was told to get over here if I didn't want to be on the next boat to Baltimare," Short Fuse said, looking like he was working himself up again.
"You're actually assigned to us?" Trixie asked, feeling skeptical. "Where's your kit? Why did you show up without your batmares?"
"Our what?" asked Short Fuse.
"Your officer's servants. There's supposed to be somepony that keeps you from soiling yourselves and embarrassing the uniform. Where are they?"
"Ain't no such thing in the air cavalry, ma'am," Short Fuse said, looking suspicious. Like he thought she was having him on. He looked at his fellow ensign, who shrugged in shared confusion.
"Squibs take it!" Trixie cursed. "Look, here comes another rush, go over there, there's a bit of space through that door." She moved out of the way of the bat-ponies as they started streaming down the passageway. "Don't touch my papers, and wait until Captain Bell shows up. Do you at least have your shit packed and piled somewhere accessible?"
They nodded, looking a bit nervous as they pressed against the corridor wall, streams of thestrals heavily burdened with bags and spears and spare javelins and every other thing under the moon thundering by.
"Trixie supposes that it's Captain Bell's problem. She should be back… sometime. Stay out of trouble until then."
As Trixie worked her way through the crowd, she faintly heard from behind her, "Who the hay is 'Trixie'?"
She smiled. Sometimes there were perks to the job, weren't there?
Lyra had just stolen a bunk and a pair of lockers in an unclaimed corner in the forecastle deck, and was looking for someone senior in the Bit's crew to ask forgiveness, when she came out into the night air and found Lady George crouching in the middle of the main deck, her crested head stooped low to keep it from catching in the ropes and stays leading up into the balloon overhead.
Overhead being a more constrained resource when you were an eighteen-foot-tall turul, of course. Lyra looked up, and estimated that the royal bird had at least six yards' extra space under the balloon, but George was still cringing a bit in the unfamiliar space.
"Look, I'll do what I can, sergeant, but letting that great pony-eating monster nest on my open decks is beside enough! Are you sure your friend can't… just stay here in Trottingham? They're not part of the squadron, right?" Lyra looked around the turul's flank, and spotted the ship's master and the griffish sergeant looking mulishly at each other. "Look at it! I don't have space to carry something like that, let alone the food we'll have to haul!"
The other griffish sergeant.
"Ship Master Tailwind, Lady George and 'er charge are why we're planning this run east. We cain't 'leave them in Trottingham', they're the bleedin' reason we're leaving at all!" The Trottish sergeant looked down at the bristling pegasus mare with a perplexed look on his beak.
"Gertie here can feed herself, Mistress Tailwind," the big turul rumbled in an amused tone. At least George was taking this well. "She can hunt the open seas, so long as we're over open seas. What she can't do is roost herself. This is a big ship, there must be a garage or a stable available?"
"Well, yeah, we have that converted cargo hold they knocked an airhatch through my damn deck on the first- wait, is that why they did that?"
"Most likely, Mistress Tailwind. My bits did contribute to this ship's refit, I'd hoped that they had remembered to include quarters for one of their biggest investors. Oh, hello, Lyra. Have you seen Sergeant Gilda or Major Shield? The ship's master here has some questions."
"Gyongyike my dear, if I'd seen either of those mares, I'd be the first pony I've found tonight who had seen either of them. I was sort of hoping you had."
"Rumor 'as it that the major's still at the garrison," Sergeant Gustav said, turning around with a slight frown to stare at Lyra. "Corporal Ping was 'andling most things around 'ere for the big 'en and the major up to about thirty minutes ago. 'E was goin' back to garrison to straighten some kinks back in the line somewheres, last I heard."
"Well, I'm not stumbling back to the walls in this," Lyra said, looking out into the abyssal dark beyond the ship's blazing lights. "All of my shit is here, now. I just want to know why they both decided to disappear in the middle of all this confusion?"
"Lance Corporal Giles, have you seen Major Shield or Sergeant Gilda?"
Giles looked up from the manifest a harried teamster was waving under his beak, to see Corporal Ping staring glowing-eyed at him in the half-darkness.
Giles would never get used to the way the thestrals' eyes shone in the dark.
"No, corporal. There's a rumor that the major is above stairs somewhere, but I've not been able to get away from the front to investigate. Assuming the major's whereabouts were any of my ruddy business. And I'd 'ope that somegriff knows where the master sergeant is, but I've been taking my orders from Sergeant Gustav today. As I ought to, being' a lowly lance corporal and all."
"Well, dreamnuts. I've been handling things out at the airfield, but I need to finish getting my desk and the files packed up and shipped over to the Bit. Can you reserve me a cart for the office?"
"No, corporal, I cannot. You'll have to take Hobnob's choice like all the rest."
"Darkness take it, where's Sergeant Gilda?" screeched the frustrated little batpony.
Later that night, on an airship grounded in the airfield north of the city, a hippogriff silently waited near the stern. Eventually, a head of seaweed, wrapped around wooden wrack and stinking of foam and rotting fish, lifted itself over the aft gunwale, sly in the bright moonlight.
Fish Eye brought her ensign's polearm to guard, the sharp spike pointed steady at the sea-thing's most protuberant portion, now raised headlike in the half-light. The thing stopped, and turned its regard in the young mare's direction. Elsewhere on the ship, the bright lights intended for the day-ponies had been extinguished, and the darkness rumbled with batponies active into the dark hours, putting away this and that in the quarters, preparing the storage holds for the cartloads due from the warehouses in the morning from the dayfolk.
Here, it was quiet, and still. It was, no doubt, what had drawn the thing of seaweed and shadows.
"Daughter of the deep, good night to you," it said with a mother's voice. "You swim leagues and leagues from where your tribes lurk, battered, beaten, and afraid."
"Good evening, Lady Amphitrite," Fish Eye chirped. "Something told me I should wait for you, or something like you, after all the talk last week, and our little scrimmage over the harbor the other day."
"And they chose to send you? Brash griffons, to taunt me so, and send a seapony to make their apologies. What foolish geas did they trap you with, for them to make you their beast of burden?"
"I don't think any griffon sent me. I mean, I work with some of ‘em, and some of them are nice, but I work for the ensign, the master sergeant, and the major, in that order, or so the master sergeant says."
"The master sergeant? Oh, young Gilda de Griffonstone. She drowned, you know. Almost one of mine, but a pony took her back in her time, before her time. And the winds whine so when I take a child of stone."
"Huh. You know, I forgot the master sergeant was a griffon? You're right, I guess a griffon sent me," Fish Eye said, her head tilted to the side, and thinking about what had brought her there, standing on a darkened ship's deck, threatening a goddess with a sharp stick.
Then the thing of foam and sea and shadows began laughing. Loudly.
Fish Eye looked around, wondering where her batpony fellow-troopers were. The two of them were making a great deal of noise.
"Oh, no need to wonder, my little priestess. We stand in the space between spaces, the moment between moments. I have been summoned, and you are, tonight, my chalice. Let us talk, you and I, and while we do, no equine voice will drown us, this I promise, this I swear. By the tide and the moon, by the shore and the sun."
Fish Eye nodded, and brought her ensign's spontoon to port, saluting the sea goddess.
"So I witness," the hippogriff mare said out of some instinct she didn't even try to understand.
"Ah, this is why I love the seaponies. Even miles from sea, you remember the rhythms of the wave. Why are you so far from the sea, child?"
"Why are you here with me, Lady A?"
"A! Are we already at such close terms, that you give me such a light name, little fry?"
"Well, I could call you Lady Amphi, but it seems a bit on the nose. And your full name is such a tongue twister!"
And being so serious was giving me a cramp.
The darkness laughed, and the scent of salt and rot made Fish Eye want to sneeze.
"Call me Auntie A, then, if you must. I won't be the only dread thing with nieces in this mess, will I? To business, little niece, to business. Somegriff has blotted my register, has she not, has she not?"
"The registry of the deep, of course!" chirped Fish Eye. "Only thing the toms could talk about, in between the training sessions. I mean, I only caught some of it while we were all waiting for our turn at the roc, and the griffish platoons were around, but twitter-twitter-twitter, like a flock of robins gossiping in a tree!"
"So glad to be the subject of rumor-mongering among the damnable get of the wild winds. There was a reason I gave your people the rule of my waves, little fry, and it wasn't because I loved your amphibious nature."
"Ha! I just got that! Amphibious!" laughed Fish Eye. "Is that where we got the word?"
She wouldn't have thought that a thing without eyes could glare, but the goddess of shadows and sea proved her wrong, there in the darkened corner of a place that was both the squadron's ship, and nowhere at all.
"Exactly," the goddess continued. "They have to follow rules, the griffons and ponies who trespass upon my waves. And yes, before you rules-lawyer at me, little priestess, the winds above the waves as well. I've had millennia to get used to the wiles and cheats of the trickster winds. The registry. This ship has been renamed! Why should I not mark it with the death of wood and canvas, linen and hemp? Why should I not curse this two-faced barque with the doom of all turncoats and liars and frauds?"
"Well, your worship, the prevailing theory is that there are exceptions to the renaming thing. Caveats and suchlike. I'm no scholar-"
"Of that, every wind, mountain, and backwater bay has heard, or will in their day, as your shadow touches upon them, my little fry."
"So nice to be famous! If only ponies and griffons knew me like you know me, Auntie A! But like I said, I'm no scholar, but the ones who are tell me that there are three exceptions."
"The keel, the reconstruction, and the battle capture."
"And I didn't really understand the keel business - if it's a new ship, why is it an exception at all? Why a new keel?"
"Because people will reuse their damnable names for their fool ships. Bad enough that they try to hide an evil crew with false names, but they stretch true names across new hulls! But I was lured into making allowances, and this is the one for transfer of names. The breakers must break the old ship, or I must be able to find her bones on the floor of one of my seas, or else the false-flagged bit of land on my sea will join the bones of the rest below my seas."
"Right, right! The second is the reconstruction, so changed that it is no longer the same ship!"
"Theseus was a lying cur, and the fact that his bones lay ash beneath the foundations of his town is enraging. I will never love the dogs of Perroneus, and their cunning, divine bitch-goddess."
"So you can rename a completely rebuilt ship, or re-launch it under the same name."
"Yes, damn Athena to Tartarus. But this barque of frailty is not that. Not so greatly changed as to be covered by that exception to my rule, my registry."
"And nogriff was trying to claim that! They have too much respect for you, Auntie A! Which leaves-"
"The capture, yes. And there is the point upon which the get of the winds would cheat me. What theft can compare to the price of battle upon the open sea? It was sly cheats like this that made me give that swaggering bastard Grosvenor into your people's talons, little fry. The arrogance of the imperial west wind! Who thought to call itself emperor of all my seas. I drowned that braggart's precious son of destiny, didn't I?"
"I don't know about any of that, Auntie. I'm sure he was a bad tom, Gilroy wanted to name the ship Drowned Grosvenor, but I didn't understand what it meant, just that they were competing for the most offensive and silly names they could get on paper!"
"Ha! Your people's greatest victory, and you don't remember it?"
"Well, as you say, Auntie, I'm not a clever fish."
"You surely are not, little fish. And I suppose that pain is a better reminder than victory. A people remembers the agonies of that which they barely survived, better than the transient successes that they pass through, from victory to victory. The Field of Crows, the Brown Church by the Sea… and I see you don't know either of those, either. For the nations you broke, they were everything! For your people, they were a long Tuesday, or a busy weekend.
"Well, little fish, the hippogriffs have had their soul-defining, crushing defeat, haven't they? They will remember the shadows of their conquerors for a thousand years, as they cower within my bosom. Well, let them hide, and remember that they are my little fishes, my little fries - and cease to be so proud of their wings and their faithless flirtations with the fickle winds."
Fish Eye listened patiently to the aunt of sea and shadows as she ranted about Fish's absent relatives and her relatives' neighbors. Fish was too young to remember much of Aris and the hippogriffs. Before her mother had taken the family to Equestria and the diplomatic mission, before the great retreat that slammed the doors, emptied out the houses. The things that her terrible auntie of wrack and ruin told her, there in that darkness between the ticks of the sea-clock, condensed the news of an entire decade of worry, and confusion, and fading hope, into one long terrible litany of defeat and failure.
Finally, the goddess Amphitrite's long-winded sea-foam rant wound down, like the turning of the tides.
"And you've gotten me monologuing, little fish. Clever fish! Enough of your feckless, foolish race and their travails. We were talking of falseness, and ugly plays to fool old goddesses."
"Oh, good, I had hoped you'd take the demonstration in the spirit it was intended, Auntie A! Were you entertained? Did we do well? We tried our best to make it an even fight!"
"It wasn't a fight at all! It was a spectacle, a great deal of flash and bugger-all! No bodies falling into my hungry waters, no feeding of the sharks! Just your damnable ponies firing off their silly pop-gonnes and blowing smoke in my face!"
"But there was blood! The major showed it to the crowd, I saw it glitter in the sunlight. The infirmary has a half-dozen casualties recovering over there, under the poop deck. Heh, ‘poop'."
The goddess of sea-wrack's featureless black head turned in the direction Fish had indicated, and rumbled, discontent.
"Feh. All that sulfur and chemical stink had covered the scent. True blooded?"
"We had some ponies holystoning the decks this afternoon where the blood stained our fresh new finish! It isn't done, you can probably find a few blotches here and there."
"Bah, I tell you, bah. It's a cheat. I'll remember being cheated, little fish."
"Don't think of it as gains and losses, or thefts and… losses I guess. Think of it as a performance Auntie A! We trained our hearts out, and gave you the best show we could manage. And it will be a warship, really! We're going off east to do something violent to the turul, whoever they are."
"Ha! Pestering the darlings of the East Wind? I could see that proud bastard taken down a peg or two. Hrm."
"What can we do to calm your waters, Auntie Amphitrite? We want you to be happy!"
The shadows spread, rising up over the still moon-swept decks of the Princess's Bit.
"An offer? A promise? I heard your Major Shield talk about the value of promises, and of gold. You fools have taken your fool's gold from your fool princess, who strides the world's stage in the cloak of a god! Who lives upon the pap of the heavens and calls herself nothing more than royal heir, as if we, the true gods of the firmament, do not see her for what she is! You heard all that, that cynical, lying speech, and you dare to talk to me about promises?"
"Yes! And I believed the Major! I think she means well, and we mean to do well! What can I do to make you happier, Auntie Amphitrite?"
The darkness shrunk in on itself, and took the form of a shadowy hippogriff.
"Fine. Build me a shrine, and bless it with a trained priest. You can use that colt who thinks he's hiding his nature from the day, we of the darkness know him well enough. Tell your batpony mistress I want to borrow the Spear-Stallion, her Pumpernickel for the blessing, she'll know what I mean. And, when it's ready, a carved figurehead upon the bow, in my likeness."
"Uh, you mean a blob of shadows with bits of sticks and seaweed sticking out of it?"
"No, you daft niece, look in the mirror, and use that."
Fish Eye felt the shadow-goddess staring eyelessly at her.
"On second thought, use your sister as the model instead."
"No! Those papers go into that trunk. This one is for my spell components!"
"I thought that unicorns didn't need doohickeys and sticks and stuff to do your magic, ma'am?"
"You're a bat pony, don't try to understand high-level thaumaturgy! Just keep my work papers out of my workings trunk. You shouldn't be mucking around with this stuff, anyways. Go finish packing up my armor tree and my spare uniforms!"
"Yes'm."
The harried major turned away from the trooper she'd claimed from the stockade earlier that day, reportedly saying, if Ping had heard the rumor properly, that they didn't have space to spare for useless bats, and she needed another batpony.
Almost nopony had gotten the joke until she'd actually pushed Bob into her cluttered quarters and started demanding he help pack it up. Ping had been sort of vaguely aware that something had been going on, but with Gilda missing and allegedly on leave-
"There you are, Ping!" the major yelled, her eyes bugging out. "I need you to go retrieve Gilda, we don't have time for her to be goofing off."
"Ma'am?" Ping asked, trying not to frown disapprovingly. Somehow, the major's hoofprint had gotten onto the day-leave paperwork that Ping had found on his desk as he'd been working on packing up the files. He had no idea what was going on between the two of them, nor why it required that the hen take off on a sudden overnight leave just as they all were in the midst of Operation Cockatrice With Its Head Turned To Stone.
But apparently the major's ill-considered attempt to turn a trooper into an officer's servant while they were packing up to move had put an end to whatever leverage the griffon had exploited to get the night off.
"Don't ma'am, me, Ping. I've been ma'amed by the best. Go get Gilda back. Tell her - buck, don't tell her anything. Just that her leave is revoked and she needs to get back here ASAP."
"And where will I find the paragon of bat-hens, that sergeant among sergeants? Ma'am?"
"Oh, hayburgers, it's spreading. You remember that big building in Tinker's Alley where your medical squadron had its mess hall and kitchens?"
Tinker's Alley? What is she… Oh.
"You mean the tinkers' guildmaster's mansion, ma'am?"
"Yes, yes, she'll be there, most likely. If not, ask them if they've seen her. Go on, get going, I need to keep an eye on Bob every second, or he'll destroy - no! Bob, put that down before you spill it!"
Ping went.
Ping remembered the guildmaster's mansion, of course. They'd spent several harried months there, making messes and patching ponies and griffons back together. He'd never thought he'd ever darken the cobblestones of 'Hope Floats Street' again, or the mucky back alleys behind Tinker's Alley.
He'd tried the front door of the mansion, through which he'd passed many a time when the building had been their combined surgical ward and squadron kitchens. A very stiff-beaked and very old griffon servant answered Ping's knock, and frostily informed the batpony that 'trade was seen to around back, in the alley.'
Ping kept his temper, as he usually did when things truly didn't matter. A quick flight over the three-storey house put him in front of the rear entrance. It was a strange affectation in such a low-rent district, but Ping supposed that even slums had their class distinctions.
The exact same ancient tom answered the kitchen door, and let Ping into the house. A quick exchange of grumbles left the tom doddering up the stairs that led out of the kitchen upwards into the master chambers overhead.
Ping looked around the kitchen while he waited. Several scullions and a cook were working on something that smelled… rather good to him, actually, but it wasn't quite clear why they were working so late at night. Did griffons get the midnight tummy-rumblings, too?
Ping could hear the squawk from down in the kitchen. A series of thumps and heavy-taloned footsteps marked the action above, and he wondered what cowpie he'd stepped into this time.
The master sergeant came tumbling down the stairs, looking disheveled and blushing surprisingly red for someone mostly covered in feathers and fur.
"She sent you?" Gilda half-squawked, as she tried to settle her undress uniform's various parts into the balanced, layered whole they were supposed to approximate, at least when you hadn't just shrugged into them all in a tearing hurry.
"She did, sergeant. Your leave has been revoked, we need you desperately in the garrison."
"You must, if she's sending you at one in the morning. If you'd arrived an hour earlier, I'd have carved your eyes out and used them for cocktail olives, Ping. You're lucky I'm in a good mood. I-"
A distinguished-looking older griffon had followed the master sergeant down the stairs from the apartment above. Greying, but not from ancestry like Gilda's greys - these greys had been collected the honest way, through suffering and age.
"Were you going to leave without saying goodbye, Gilda?" the distinguished tom inquired in a rich, cultured voice.
"Awk!" the sergeant squawked. "Gar- Guildmaster Garrick, thank you ever so much for the cocktails and the lovely dinner and the conversation-"
The tom moved fast for such an aged specimen, and stopped Gilda's beak with a sudden, mortifyingly passionate kiss.
Ping turned around to spare the master sergeant's blushes, but it was too late. As he did his best to ignore what was going on behind his back, his wings grew embarrassingly tense, if not actually stiff.
Ping managed to keep them firmly clamped to his sides. Eventually, the guildmaster and the sergeant completed their goodbyes, spoken and otherwise, and Gilda appeared beside him, doing her best to keep a straight beak.
Ping turned around, acknowledging the other griffon in the room. The servants had long since scurried off, he didn't know where.
Ping bowed his head, "So nice to meet you again, Guildmaster Garrick. And may I extend the thanks of the 93/1st once again for your hospitality over the winter?"
"You may!" said the distinguished tom. "I have met you, haven't I? The clerk with that mobile hospital. Ping, wasn't it?"
"Yes, sir, thank you for remembering. And I am sorry to be calling like this so late at night."
"Can't be helped, can't be helped. And Gilda did say that she could only steal a few hours. And that her major would be regretting having given her the night, before the night was out. Didn't you, Gilda?"
"Gar- Guildmaster, I'd love to talk, but if the major ma'am is asking for me-"
"Oh, of course, of course. Give my love to your major. And tell her I'd love to see her again, the next time your squadron is in Trottingham. It was such a shame she couldn't come tonight."
Ping couldn't help but look at Gilda, to see what this sally evoked.
The answer was, apparently, a full-body blush, and wings stiff and straight.
It was sometimes hard to remember that the big griffon hen was barely out of adolescence. She towered over griffons and ponies twice her age, let alone stallions like Ping.
Sometimes full-grown didn't mean 'tall'.
But at least Ping was capable of controlling his emotions and his reactions. After a bit more of stuttering on the part of the young hen, and teasing by the older gentle-tom, Ping was finally able to extract his charge from the guildmaster's den of respectable iniquity.
After she'd gotten her wings back under control.
As they passed out of the mansion, into the darkness of the alley, they didn't say anything for a long moment, trotting along until they found a wider spot where they could take to the air without running into eaves or gables or other architectural obstructions.
"You will say nothing of this, corporal, you hear me?" Gilda said, looking a bit scared and uncertain, despite her bullying words.
"I saw nothing, master sergeant," Ping said, trying for coolness and calm. "But you might want to consider that Major Shield knew exactly where to find you."
"Well, of course she did. She knows where Garrick's house is. But I don't want rumors circulating in the squadron. I know troopers, and I know troopers' gossip."
"I am not," Ping said stiffly, "a common gossip. I can keep a secret. Especially one that I don't know the half of."
"Yeah, that's right. T-that's fine. So- so the major's learned her lesson?"
"What lesson would that be, master sergeant?"
"She said that any idiot could be a bat-hen, an officer's valet."
"Oh, I think that might have been overdetermined, master sergeant. Did you have to prove it on the weekend of our move into the Princess's Bit?"
"It wasn't my choice! She just blew up at me!"
"So instead you went to go see your tom-friend. In the middle of all this chaos."
"We're not in that much of a hurry," the hen said, looking mulish.
"Master sergeant, if you don't want to be treated like a child, please don't sulk like one. Now can we go back to the garrison before Bob sets the major's belongings on fire and burns the barracks down?"
"OK, OK- wait. She chose Bob?"
"Apparently she took 'anypony' as a sort of challenge."
"We need to get back, now!"
And Ping followed the griffon rocketing off into the night air.
Gilda looked at her unicorn in the dawn's early light. The unicorn was standing stubbornly on the aftcastle of the Bit, staring off to the east, where the Princess's sun had just broken the horizon. Something smelled rank and wrong, like food gone off, or a dead thing wedged in a corner. Had they skipped the aftcastle in the post-assault cleaning that the major had ordered?
Gilda and Ping had returned to the garrison to find the major and her new idiot - er, officer's servant - had reportedly disappeared along with a cart’s worth of the major's stuff, apparently piled quite hap-hazardly. They'd have never found the occasional bit of kit and paperwork left behind the major and Bob if Ping hadn't been along to spot them where they'd blown off the back of the cart in the darkness.
It was nearly dawn by the time the two of them had caught the other two wheeling onto the tarmac beside the grounded airship. Gleaming Shield had sniffed at the appearance of her squadron clerk and master sergeant, and walked off stiffly with the cart still unloaded.
Gilda and Ping, left with poor, dumb Bob, got to work helping the hapless, overmatched bat-pony unload the major's effects into a heap just inside one of the rear access hatches, in preparation for hauling the boxes and bags and other impedimenta back into the body of the ship, one deck up and back beside the engineering block. If Gilda hadn't seen the major choose that dreadful cabin herself the week before, she'd have assumed that Tailwind or Purse Strings had had it in for their employer.
Once they’d gotten all the stuff into the major’s cabin, Ping had wandered off to do whatever it was he did when he wasn't in eyesight, and Gilda had left Bob down below, bouncing off the walls of Gleaming Shield's tiny closet of a cabin. Now, having found where her unicorn was sulking, it was time try and figure out how to deal with the mess the two of them had made, without actually apologizing.
Because it wasn't actually her fault, Boreas damn it.
Gilda looked at her unicorn, and wondered at how fast the breach had opened. Gleaming Shield was peeping over her shoulder at the griffon hen, who was standing one step from the top of the stairs leading up from the main deck, not quite having invaded the unicorn’s space.
"Major, ma'am-" "Gilda, I-"
"No, no. Me first," Gleaming Shield said, stiffly. "I didn't mean to imply anything when I said that anypony could deal with my kit and my cabin. I didn't mean to denigrate your service."
"Bloody right, you didn't, ma'am," Gilda said, almost eagerly. "And I shouldn't have flounced off like that. I'm sorry, ma'am. I just got so mad when it felt like you were talking about-"
"Replacing you? Gilda, you were promoted months ago. You're our squadron NCO. You don't have time to pick up after me. And I've mostly been able to keep things in order on my own hook. We've all been crazy busy. But packing and organizing is a two-pony job, and I just got frustrated. We're… leaving, you know? We're finally doing this."
"I know, ma'am. Why do you think I went there? Didn't want to leave town without… I don't know. Getting a little of that confidence. Old birds who know how to deal with surprises."
"You just up and leaving like that scared me, Gilda. I said one wrong thing-"
"You say wrong things all the time, ma'am. It wasn't that. You know that. You're not the only one getting a little weird. We've been here so long, it felt like it was going to be forever. We'd always be here, working up a squadron that never left-"
"Trottingham. Purgatorio aeternium. Well, fitting enough. Life, or something like it."
"They say bat-hens are servants for life," Gilda said, laughing.
"If their officers stay lieutenants for their entire careers? Yeah. But the good ones, you can't waste on fetching and carrying and running baths. Eventually you have to go on to the next thing."
"Or maybe not. Everygriff knows you love your bubble-baths."
"Ha! Shiny used to love bubble-baths. Maybe you'll be surprised some sudsy day," Gleaming Shield said, trying to look saucy, and mostly looking like a dork.
"Won't Bob be the one surprised?" Being a servant wasn't the only way Gilda could relate to her unicorn.
"As if! I'm not getting all wet and hot in front of that idiot."
"Speakin' of wet and hot, the guildmaster sends his love."
The unicorn blushed as red as the stripe in her mane.
"Gilda Grizelda Griffonstone! You shut your filthy beak."
"That isn't my name. And he did say he wanted to see you again."
"I thought you'd go to him. But he's your tom-friend, Gilda, not mine."
"He said he wouldn't mind."
"Well, I would. It isn't proper." And now the blush was fading.
"You're missing out. Old tom's a great kisser." And there it was again.
"Gilda!"
"Thanks for letting me see him before we left."
"It wasn't exactly my choice! I just didn't refuse to sign the leave." The unicorn turned to look directly into Gilda's eyes, and added, "just tell me you used protection."
Well, that got real.
"We ain't like you ponies. It'll be fine."
"I'd hope not, it'd be damn awkward running this insane asylum with a pregnant senior NCO."
"Major. Ma'am. Nothing that would result in an egg happened."
"I don't want details!"
"Are you suuure?" Hello, my friend magenta-blushes!
"Gilda!"
"Yes, ma'am. Lovely sunrise. Now, where were we before we got side-tracked?"
"Getting everypony on-side and on-ship. What say we go find our underlings? And get this deck washed. It smells like those rats you keep in your desk for afternoon snacks up here. They didn't clean up here like I asked."
"I never! I keep them well-wrapped!"
"That just means they stink up the whole office after you unwrap them. And everypony knows you were sneaking food…"
Lyra leaned against the rails on the left side of the ship - no, not the left side, the… port side? No, larboard! - the larboard rails. Her forearms stretched out on either side along the second-to-highest rail, and she let her mane splay out against the top-rail. She looked at the crouched body of her subject humped up over the forecastle, the turul's head and some of her shoulders out of sight, shoved in an odd porthole the refitters had cut into the foredeck.
A pair of ratings trotted past Lyra with rope coiled between the two of them, the coils bouncing as they went. The ratings gave her a strange look, as if they'd never seen a mare on two hooves before. Were they already getting used to having a tame 'roc' on the ship?
Further down the main deck, two lances were standing at attention, with what looked like most of the ensigns and that humorless lieutenant, who was yelling something at her charges. Lyra had no idea what was going on there, other than they weren't down below getting the cargo stowed away or the quarters ship-shape.
The sound of the colliers emptying their loads into the Princess's Bit's bunkers had finally come to an end a few minutes before the meeting which Lady George was occupied with had begun. For all Lyra knew, that had been the signal for the grand planning session to begin.
Nopony was telling her anything today. Twilight and her griffon had appeared out of nowhere around about dawn, or so Lyra heard afterwards. She'd slept in, and had missed breakfast down in the galleys, if they'd even served a meal at all. It had been difficult to tell, with most of the cooks and kitchen-ponies running around the pantries and storage-lockers and generally banging about.
Much of the morning had been taken up with deliveries to all of the open hatches, and for a while Lyra had amused herself by watching the military-naval equivalent of a troupe of greasepainted clowns crowding into the same carriage. Canvas, tar, paint, black powder, bundles of javelins and spears, hammocks, spyglasses, shot, bales of cloth, uniform fabric, towels, pallets and pallets of cleaning supplies, timbers cut to varying lengths, loads of iron bar and aluminum plate and spars. More pallet-loads of foodstuffs than Lyra cared to think about.
And of course, the colliers, snuggled up to the stern of the ship with their terrific thundering roar as they poured ton after ton of anthracite into the Bit's huge fuel bunkers. That had been… impressive. Lyra had never really thought about just how much coal an airship's powerplant devoured, let alone mechanical monsters like the three in-line thaumram boilers that powered this 'light carrier'.
Imperium might ride the fickle winds of the upper air, but she was fueled by endless mountains of black coal. Speaking of which…
The turul princess suddenly reared up, extracting her beak from the porthole she had been using to sit in on Gleaming Shield's planning conference. As Lady George blinked in the bright sunshine, the door leading into the chart-room burst open, and Master Sergeant Gilda appeared in a flash of brown and grey and beak and glitter.
Lyra turned her head and followed the streak of griffon as the hen took to the air, clearing Lyra's horn by barely a yard.
"Where's she going, and who lit her tailfeathers on fire?" Lyra asked.
"There's a courier ship leaving in a few minutes for the New Territories, they wanted our notice to precede us at Well Burn if at all possible," Lady George answered, leaning over Lyra and following her line of sight. The sergeant disappeared rapidly across the air-field in the direction of the control tower and some other, smaller ships bobbing under their respective envelopes. "They have these little racers to carry dispatches and letters and so forth, don't you know?"
"What's at Well Burn?" Hay, for that matter, where's Well Burn?
"Easternmost coaling station in Equestrian hooves, or so I'm told. I've never been there, they don't have a reputation for being fond of birds on Celestine. You Equestrians might be friendly ponies at home, but the Newfies are… well, let's say it's not a friendly neighborhood, and in the Gullet, you ponies give as much as you get. I mostly shipped through Marapore and Roanakesh."
"We're not going overland?"
"Ha! No. If I were by myself, I think I would? But our little skiff here is a hungry chick, and the quartermaster and the ship's master both say we'd be very short of fuel by the time we arrived in the vicinity of the Great Nest. Or, they did, once I told them exactly where it was.
"Not as if my mother or her mother ever really encouraged pony visitors. Or anyone else who needed coal for their airships."
"Celestine… I guess that's New Territories?"
"From the pony perspective, I suppose. From our point of view, it's an old Abyssinian outpost. Parrots burned out their factories a while back - two centuries ago, I think? And your white princess moved into the vacuum. I don't know if you've noticed, but she's not fond of piracy. And I suppose there was something about the Iles de Prance, but the details escape my memory at the moment."
Most of the time, Lyra could forget that Lady George was a princess of the blood, and theoretically educated towards that end. And then she started talking like this…
Lyra looked up at her cursed charge, and pondered the princess's coronet.
"So even if your contacts remembered you-"
"Not a given, given this damnable coronet."
"We're not going where they'd be?" Lyra asked.
"Well, allowances have to be made. It's an Equestrian expedition, we'll be needing Equestrian resources."
"I guess the Parrots or griffons wouldn't care to sell coal to an Equestrian warship?"
"The griffons of Griffonstone would sell rope to their own executioners on the day of their hanging, but no, there are no coaling stations in griffish territories. And the hidalgos are a bit less advanced than their cousins to the west."
"Well, I've always wanted to see Prance," Lyra said, trying to see the bright side.
"Plans are to move fast. We don't have much time until high summer, I'm afraid," the turul said, looking pensively off to the east. "The earliest clutches might hatch - well, it depends on when the mothers start laying. It was a long winter, we might get lucky…"
Lyra didn't know what to say. She hadn't been there when they'd decided to delay the expedition until late spring, and only had the vaguest grasp of the reasons for why this group - so very green, so very disorganized - had pulled the short straw, had been chosen to accompany the cursed princess eastwards to reclaim her throne.
Or do their level best to make the attempt.
"All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, Gyongyike."
"Is that so, magus?" the turul said, her eyebrow arching in skepticism.
"An old poem I read in school. Quoting an even older prophetess. Talking mostly about the education that suffering gives you as a compensation for all the pain. And the impossibility of travelling back in time to address old evils and past failures. Let's see…"
Lyra closed her eyes, and conjured the old words from her memory.
"If I think of a queen at nightfall, Of three mares, and more, on the scaffold And a few who died forgotten In other places, here and abroad, And of one who died blind and quiet, Why should we celebrate These dead mares more than the dying? It is not to ring the bell backward Nor is it an incantation To summon the spectre of a Rose."
Lyra blinked, surprised at what came out. "Funny, it was less dry and academic in my memory."
"Really? I'd call it gloomy and dark," said the turul, looking unenlightened.
"Well, True Frock was a stuffy poet, I suppose. Every poem an epitaph."
"You are a gloomy fool this morning, Lyra Heartstrings."
"I didn't intend to be, princess! I swear my material usually is less doleful. Maybe I woke up on the wrong side of my fool's cap?"
"Is that what you call that hideous thing you were wearing yesterday."
"Yeah, I - no! That was my Wizzard's Hat! It's traditional magus gear!"
"It looked like you were wearing a burlap sack on your head."
Lyra puffed up her cheeks, exaggerating to play up her pique at having her headgear mocked.
"I maybe should have gotten it updated a bit… you think I missed my chance, with that clothier you and Twiggles have on retainer?"
In the distance, a small, sleek airship with a modest envelope and an enormous pair of propellers to its rear rose from the gaggle of similar small craft collected around the control tower. It turned ponderously around, gaining speed as it circled the airfield.
Lyra and her charge followed the courier packet as it curved past where the Princess's Bit was moored. As soon as it lined up on a course east-southeast, the unseen skipper of that little ship opened up her engines, and it took off like an arrow.
"Well, here's hoping that Twiggle's sergeant caught the mail before they left."
"I'd never bet against Gilda de Griffonstone, if I were you, magus."
"...never done a single hour of night drill. I have no idea what command is thinking."
Ensign Basket had been going on like this for nearly an hour now. Thankfully, she was doing it in a furious whisper, into her pillow, but Fish Eye, laying in her hammock strung under her ensign's bunk, was close enough to catch the whole of her diatribe. The thin hatch which separated the ensign's tiny cabin from the crowded barracks-platoon ought to be enough to keep the troopers from hearing Fish's ensign's ravings, but after this much, even Fish Eye was feeling a bit demoralized.
She's winding down. Time to bring the subject up.
If it were up to Fish Eye, she'd never say a word about it to her ensign. Figure out how to satisfy Auntie A on her own terms, without any official recognition. But Fish was fairly sure that although she might contrive some sort of slapdash 'shrine' in the forecastle, there was a good chance that someone in the crew would just 'clean the mess up'. Let alone what hoops she'd have to jump through to get an abyssal figurehead attached to the front of the ship. Ponies tended to notice that sort of thing! Not at all subtle, not something you could sneak onto the ship in the dead of night and hope nopony noticed.
Here goes nothing…
"Ensign, ma’am, what's a 'spear-stallion'?"
"-so short nopony in the ranks- wait, what? What did you say, Eye?"
"Spear-stallions. A relative said that I needed to talk to the squadron's 'spear-stallion'. But every one of our troopers who isn't a mare has a spear, don't they? Comes with being a male. Or do you think she meant their weapons? I mean, their other weapons? And everypony has one of those in the ranks, mare or stallion. Why talk about it like there's only one of them?"
"Relative. Have you been talking to the squadron surgeon, Eye? Your sister?"
"Oh, no, ma’am. We're still not talking to each other. She's being stubborn, and I… guess I'm being stubborn, too. I don't even remember why I'm angry at Hawk! But I was! And it feels like I should stick to my gonnes?"
"Eye, focus, who was asking about the Spear Stallion? Er, spear stallions. You said a 'relative', so it wasn't any ponies you didn't know asking questions?"
"Oh, no. It wasn't a pony at all. And I guess I knew her? Sort of? I mean, not to ever speak to, but of? Well, not that, either." Fish's mother and sister had never been particularly religious, and it had been years since the last time either of them had talked about Auntie A. She sometimes thought that they both blamed the sea goddess for whatever happened to all the other hippogriffs. "But Auntie A said I should talk to you about finding a 'spear stallion' for a thing I have to do. Actually, she said something else. Something about a plump nickel?"
"Plump- do you mean Pumpernickel? An AUNTIE? Was this a batpony you were talking to?"
"No, of course not. She wasn't a pony at all."
"There are hippogriffs here in the Isles other than you and your sister?"
"No, of course not. She wasn't a hippogriff, either. Auntie A is… well, it's hard to talk about. You know?" Maybe she ought to talk to her sister about the other things Auntie A had said? It kind of sounded like the other hippogriffs were alive, somewhere under the waves?
"No, I have no idea what we're talking about. 'Aunties' is a bad, bad word where I come from, Eye. Well, not bad - don't tell anypony I said bad - but it's a big word. Do you know what I mean by big?"
"Oh, yes, of course I do! And Auntie A is a big word sort of relative. I mean, she is big. I suppose she could be as big as she wanted to be. Bigger than you, bigger than me, bigger than either of the princesses. You think I could get a look at Princess Cadance before we leave tomorrow? I came all this way, and didn't get a chance to see the second princess."
"No! There will be no pestering the new duchess! And what in darkest night are you-"
"She said to tell my batpony mistress that she wanted to borrow your spear-stallion and pumpernickel for this errand I have to run for her. Why do we need a loaf of bread?"
"The Pumpernickel isn't bread, Eye. What errand? Why do you need a spear stallion? And that spear stallion?"
"Oh, I need to build and bless a shrine to Auntie A. In the forecastle, somewhere. I suppose we could put it in a cabin underdeck somewhere, just so long as it's near the keel? I don't know how I'm going to talk the crew into letting me put a figure-head on the ship, or where I'm going to get a piece of wood big enough. Oh! Or a carver. But they're sailor-ponies, don't sailors like to whittle?"
"EYE!" shrieked Fruits Basket, loud enough that Fish Eye was pretty sure they'd awoken most of the bats in the bunks nearest their cabin. "WHO IS YOUR AUNTIE A?"
"Oh, didn't I mention it?"
"NO!"
"Amphitrite. She's every hippogriff's favorite aunt. Mostly because if she isn’t our favorite aunt, things go really badly. I never thought I'd meet her. I guess I know now why hippogriffs don’t rush to family reunions?" Hey! Maybe there will be family reunions again! Fish had a very fuzzy recollection of the one reunion her mother had taken her and Hawk to, when she was very, very little.
And was a seapony. Fish remembered that part vividly.
"Amphi- the sea goddess?"
"Well, yeah. Did you think we'd get away with taunting her without Auntie coming around to make her expectations known?"
"I thought she was a MYTH!"
"Pfft, before you met me, you probably thought the same about hippogriffs. Now you know better. And I need help from a 'priest' to get this blessing done. Who's our spear-stallion? Is it an officially appointed position?"
"I need to talk to some ponies… and don't you talk to anypony else about this. Don't… don't go anywhere. She was here? On the ship?"
"Yup! Crawled right up on the aftcastle. I had this whole conversation with her. She's pissed, but persuadable. And I got us a pass! I just need to start satisfyin' her conditions. The figurehead I think she's willing to wait, but this shrine business, we need to get on top of, y'know? It'll be a pain to do the ritual while we're moving…"
And Fish Eye's ensign went rocketing out of the little closet they called her cabin, presumably to find this 'Pumpernickel'.
"Major, what is going on up on the forecastle?"
"I am not exactly sure. I was hoping you could tell me, Gilda. I came up on deck to find this going on. I asked Tailwind, but she just looked pale and waved me off."
"Is that Fish Eye up there? Wrapped in seaweed? Where'd she get it?"
"I have no idea. When I was up there a minute ago, Ping was with her. At least, I think a small batpony matching his general description was somewhere under that mass of seaweed and rubbish they've got him kitted out with."
"Sounds like singing?"
"Sort of, yeah. When I asked, Tailwind almost spat at me. And said something about needing to stop in Maretonia on the way out. I guess we forgot to order a figurehead?"
"A what?"
"Figurehead. Big wooden effigy of a mare? Nailed to the front of ships?"
"I thought that was a sailing ship thing."
"Well, Tailwind has thrown a fit, and now we need a figurehead."
"We're going that way, anyways, right?"
"I suppose."
"This little song and dance isn't going to delay our launch, is it?"
"I don't think so. Let me know if they set the ship on fire."
"So I'm delegated to keep an eye on the crew's outbreak of superstition?"
"You most certainly are. I'm going to go get breakfast, Gilda. I'll tell them to warm up a rat or something for you."
"Oh, would you, major ma'am? You're the best. I'm going to go up there and get a better look. Has anypony told the magus this is going on?"
Giles led his lance as they launched off the gunwales, following the second lance as they dropped ahead of them in the grip of gravity. First lance was already rising in the thermals curling around the edge of the airfield, their broad griffon wings beating to keep their stolen velocity as they spread out into the planned formation.
The Princess's Bit accelerated next to them as his rankers and file-closers dropped in turn, wrestling that ancient foe, that force that says, remorselessly, blindly, stubbornly, all things fall in my grip.
Giles dropped like a feline stone in that wicked force's talons, feeling that sinking dread that all things that fly must defeat every time they take to the air. The further they fell, the faster their part of the formation would fly.
That was far enough.
His wings snapped out from his barrel, catching the loving grasp of the whistling air. He felt that jerk in his shoulders as his wings cupped the fullness of the wind, and he felt gravity's grasp stretch, pull, and break.
Giles and his lance rose like rockets in their fellows' train, gravity's spite thrown back in its faceless fury.
Not today.
The batpony platoon followed his, flying in their own peculiar batty fashion. Sharper, lighter, more agile. Griffons battered gravity into submission. Thestrals behaved as if gravity was simply optional.
Their opposite numbers were now coming into sight on the other side of the airship, the other platoons spreading out from their launching-points on the port side of the Bit. They knew that there were eyes on them as the squadron headed out, and the lieutenant and the ensigns had ordered a full wing deployment.
So long as Trottingham was in sight, they'd be showing the colours.
And there was the lieutenant herself, rising at the van. One single pony at the apex of forty-two griffons, her wings beating twice for each of their own. Lieutenant Martin Gale was saying something to Giles's ensign - Ensign Gerald's head bobbed twice, and then the pegasus was darting off towards the other platoon in the distance.
The orderly came flitting back along the column, and by the time she got to Giles, he'd already figured out the order, and as her wings and head twitched in the exaggerated gestures which signified the intended movement, he and his rankers were already conforming to the rest of the column, left incline and dress left.
As the griffon platoons advanced in front of the ship, the two columns converged in a single front, meeting the lieutenant at the true apex of a new two-winged formation. Giles was tempted to look back to see if the thestrals had followed them, or if they'd formed rear guard behind the Bit.
He knew better than to do that, now. The lieutenant had screamed that habit out of him and the other lance corporals, and they'd screamed it out of the rankers. It'd be terrible for discipline if his own griffons caught him breaking order like that.
The pony fields and lanes far below continued to drop further below their talons, and their wings beat to keep them ahead of the ship, which was still rising and gaining speed as she left behind the moorage and the air-field.
We're really doing this. Leaving Trottingham.
The city wasn't Giles's home. He'd come here to pull down those walls, and had never fallen in love with the stinking alleys and nasty natives, griffish or ponish alike in their cheapness and their hostility to back-country hicks like Giles MacGregor.
But he'd been there for almost a year, and you get used to damn near anything, given time. And he'd had nothing but time after the Crab Bucket.
Well, time had run out, and now his new home was floating in the sky behind him, her engines roaring and rumbling as the engineers ran them full-out, figuratively clearing her throat. Like troopers crying cadence.
The lieutenant hated cadence singing, but she'd not been able to beat it out of the corporals. And the ensigns had just told everygriff to ignore her grumbling. There were certain things in the traditions of the service which lieutenants had no authority over, and cadence calls were definitely one of them. Territorials, EUP, or the Guards, it didn't matter.
Troopers called cadence. If the corporals didn't want those calls to be obscene, they led the cadence. And Giles had heard some sniggering about certain NCOs who curried favor with their troopers by leading them in positively filthy cadence rhymes, but their sergeant had reportedly laid down the law.
Lieutenants might not have any control over matters like cadence, but sergeants certainly did.
And here it came…
Granny Gharne sang of maidens true! came the baritone singing voice of Corporal Gwaine, cutting through the noise of the wind.
"Granny Gharne sang of maidens true!" Giles and his griffons bellowed back, in time with the beating of their wings.
To the toms who her throne pursued!
"For every tom that'd sit the golden seat!" cried out some singleton wag over the others giving a proper response.
Queen or Duchess, or pretty maid!
"Queen or Duchess, or pretty maid?"
Soldiers only care they're getting paid!
"Soldiers only care they're getting paid!"
And the Sixth Guards left Trottingham, singing a song of six bits.
Trixie looked back at the stage she'd broken, and lit off the rockets.
The stubby finned blackpowder devices flared and shot up their rails, launching to port and starboard. They'd only extended two of the rocket mortars, leaving the other four folded along their storage racks beneath the gunwales.
Purse Strings had run a peal over Trixie's head for all the ordnance she'd expended in the 'battle', but she had felt that they couldn't leave town without at least one volley in salute. She'd purpose-built these two bombs with modified thumpers and star-shells doped with the right colors. If she'd gotten the mix right…
The first stage dropped, about two hundred yards over the heads of the trailing batpony platoons. She'd warned the ensigns of the thestral troop, but if they didn't get those earplugs in, in time, there would be a lot of angry bats…
THUMP! THUMP!
Well, that ought to draw the eyes of those griffons and ponies out and about to take the city's morning air.
The second stages lofted her bombs' charges another two hundred yards beyond the batpony escort, who were barely wobbling in the wake of the flash-bangs' enormous, chest-thumping aural assault.
And the star bombs exploded, with much more modest thumps.
The skies behind the rumbling airship lit up with terrestrial star-stuff, pink and purple with yellow and red highlights to starboard, and its twin in lavender and purple with highlights in magenta and blue. They weren't quite correct, but hey, you try to get fine color control doping chemical explosives on the first try.
Trixie Lulamoon saluted the city that broke her, and turned away to oversee her gunners as they cleaned her mortars and locked away the rails.
Purse Strings looked up at the sounds of mortar-bombs going off above-decks, and frowned to himself.
She just couldn't leave without throwing away more bits, could she?
He looked back to his work. The cargo holds were a tumbled, jumbled mess. His checklists were a galaxy of red-penciled corrections and scribbled notes. He was still finding lost sacks and boxes, but most of the pallets had been located and marked down in the loadout maps now sitting in his left pannier.
He looked at his assistants, and wondered who they really were. Weird as it was, he had mostly been working with the actual front-rank troopers, consultants, and outside suppliers in his time with the regiment. Now that they'd pitchforked themselves onto his ship, Purse had suddenly found himself in charge of an actual company of supply-ponies.
Well, mostly ponies. A few griffons here and there, and you know he'd be working those birds to the nubs of their worn-down talons, once things came down to deliveries and retrievals. Not to mention the stretcher-birds.
His carter birds would be doing double duty as the surgeon's corpstoms. And they were mostly toms, for some reason. Some smart-mouthed hen with the griffons' troop had told Purse that your average tom just didn't have the killing instinct, but enough troopers in ear-shot had rolled their eyes at the hen that he was about fifty percent sure she was having him on.
But by and large, the other sections he had been given were full of Trottish ponies, thick-voiced and neigh-unintelligible in their provincial palaver. Luckily, Gilda and Sergeant Gustav had also given Purse the pony who actually would be ordering around all of these uniformed grunts. Corporal Chain Gang had been running the various support sections - the cooks, the carters, the supply squad, the cleaning crew, the chariot pool - for weeks on his own hook, and he clearly didn't think that he needed the authority of an officer to get things done.
Not that Purse Strings was an officer, thank Celestia. He was just the quartermaster. Nopony had asked him to swear an oath, and though he'd taken a bit - more than a few, if he was being honest - he'd never taken the bit.
To be even more honest, he lived in fear of the major dropping in one foggy day and demanding he clarify the relationship between himself and the regiment. But that moment just kept not happening, and if Purse had his way, it never would.
Felt better this way while he got his business done. Fewer qualms about 'peculation' or 'misappropriation' or 'kickbacks' or… whatever fresh Hades the law-ponies came up with this week.
He was pretty sure that the officers didn't want to know all the laws he'd broken getting all this mess onto the ship. Nor how much he'd cheated and crimped and skinned to preserve the regiment's increasingly limited funds.
Purse Strings had always known that airships were howling money-pits, but he'd had no idea how deep the hole that guards regiments dug beneath their hooves. Excavate that abyss below the existing void which was a refitted 'light carrier'?
They might just bore their way to Neighpon, the hard way.
Purse looked around at the cramped, stuffed-to-the-ceilings contents of cargo hold #4, and hoped it would be enough.
He'd been most everywhere, but even he had never been east of Sip Tea. Their first voyage, and they were sailing over the edge of the world.
Or Well Burn, whichever they hit first.
Fish Eye waved to her ensign as they landed on the main deck in front of the aftcastle. The griffons had been given the first air patrol, which left the nocturnal batponies at loose ends. Fruits Basket occupied her platoon with a dress inspection right there on the main deck, with that big roc looming over them with what looked for all the world like an amused smirk.
Rocs weren't people, were they?
Fish couldn't get her ensign's attention, but Fruits Basket knew that Fish Eye had other duties now. They'd just be doing the manual of arms for a few evolutions, just to remind everypony that they were on duty even when they weren't flying around like acrobats in a circus.
Fish wandered forward, passing through several lances worth of griffons milling about doing abyss knew what. She climbed the stairs onto the forecastle, which was only occupied by a single rating doing something or other with a mop.
Fish Eye stared at the suspicious-looking sailor, and walked up to the bow to make sure that her work from the other day hadn't been washed off. The chalk and the stains were still in place, and she nodded her approval.
She turned back to the pony now leaning on his mop.
"You know you all aren't supposed to touch any of this?"
"Yes'm. The ship's master, she was verra clear. No touchee the bitch-goddess's warpaint."
"No! Don't ever call any goddess that but Athena herself. That's bad, mister - what's your name, colt?"
"Sneaky Peat, marm."
"Our Auntie here is being very tolerant of our shenanigans, Sneaky. If looked at in the wrong way, the renaming battle could be taken as a terrible insult by the sea-foam goddess. Calling her by another goddess's epithet would be even worse."
She looked at the rating, and wondered why he was up here pushing a broom around.
"Actually, if I talk to - who is your officer?"
"Well… it ain't like that in the merchant marine. We've basically got the chief engineer, and the ship's master, and the purser. Except Rolled Bits took Prench leave when the Captain brought on Purse Strings, and it don't look like Purse Strings is part of the crew, is 'e? More of a regimental, that pony."
Fish Eye gave Sneaky Peat the hairy eyeball. She somehow doubted that there wasn't any pony who had authority over this pony other than the ship's master. She'd have to look into it.
"Well, until I figure out who you answer to, you stay the hay away from Auntie's shrine, you understand?"
"Yes, marm! May I be excused?"
"You may. By which I mean, scram!"
Fish Eye sighed as the sailor scampered off, and looked at the crude paintings. It wouldn't do, she needed to carve something more permanent into the space she and Corporal Ping had sacralized. Maybe Purse Strings knew where the woodworking tools might be?
She paused at the top of the stairs heading down onto the main deck, and realized she couldn't see the smoke of the city in the receding distance.
They'd left Trottingham behind, and she'd not even noticed.
The Princess Bit had left Sandstone behind around about noon, and outside, eventide was greeting the airship steaming high over the deep blue sea. The last stubborn sparks of the setting sun were setting the sky aflame. The first night-winds were starting to sing in the rigging, and crackling in the stiff membranes of the ship's steering wings, spread wide for cruising and to add just that little bit more of lift.
Inside the operations room, all they could hear from outside were the engines grumbling deep in the guts of the ship. The flat, dead, artificial light from the unicorn-lamps washed all the romance out of the scene.
In the harsh, ugly light, Major Shield was staring down a shaggy-looking ensign.
"Why can't you shave properly, ensign? What is that growth on your chin?"
Gilda had long experience not cringing in public at the things her unicorn said when her Canter was up. And Gleaming was in a mood that night.
"Ma'am! Provincial regulations allow for a short beard of less than an inch and a half, in three approved patterns."
"A regulation mustache. Or sideburns. This is the first time I've ever encountered a Provincial wearing a goatee. Let alone one so shamefully uneven and patchy."
"I think it's finally growing in, ma'am? You should have seen it a year ago. Most ponies claimed they didn't realize I was even growing one, until I told them."
"Why are you so desperate to wear facial hair on your muzzle, Ensign Starburst?"
"Tradition, ma'am!"
"Tradition? What tradition?"
"All wizards are bearded. Except those who are completely bald, like Morari the Maneless. And I wasn't ready to shave my mane every night."
"You fancy yourself a wizard?"
"What unicorn colt doesn't grow up wanting to be Starswirl the Bearded?"
"The ones that end up an ensign in Her Highness's armed forces? Most of them."
"But the romance! The history! The long nights researching the romantic depths of the past! The-"
"Yes, yes, romancing the past, yadda yadda hey! You're not a wizard. You're not here to do research. Hay, from your jacket, you aren't even particularly talented in magic. I see you were part of the Gonne Research Group."
"Yes ma'am!"
"I helped found that group. I don't remember you from the meetings."
"I… I was there. We met!"
"And yet, I don't remember you. And I remember all the ponies who trained in the new shielding techniques. Why don't I remember you from those sessions?"
"I… I couldn't handle the evolutions. Not even the initial prep work."
"Washed out of Minuette's basics course? That must have taken some work. They were very basic."
"Yes, ma'am," said the dejected ensign with his silly tuft of chin-hair.
"Well, command isn't about how much talent you have for magic. And most of Charlie Troop isn't even horned. Almost none of them, in fact. Do you know why you were transferred here?"
"I asked to be, ma'am!"
"Yes, it was because we needed- what?"
"I requested transfer!"
"Why would you do that? Personnel hates us."
"I don't know about any of that, ma'am. But you're a relic of the storied past! Amore's crystal lances! The glittering shield of the north! The Ice-guard!"
"You realize it's just a name, right? We don't have any of the old records, or artifacts, or anything like that. If they exist, they're buried under a billion tons of ice and snow."
"I don't care! It's the romance of it all!"
"Ma'am," Gilda interceded. "Leave the colt his starry eyes. Not as if enthusiasm is an actual detriment to performance."
"Hrumph," Gleaming hrumphed. "Reason I called you in here, Ensign- Sunburst was it? The reason I asked you in here is that I wanted to get your measure. You'll be one of three ensigns in Charlie Troop, and you'll be taking the command of the troop and the respective platoons in turns as I evaluate your individual performances in each of the roles. Along with the other ensigns. You supposedly have over a year's worth of experience as an ensign. On paper you should be the obvious choice for the lieutenancy.
"Honestly, what I care most about is getting Charlie Troop on an effectiveness basis with the winged troops. I expect you and the other Charlie ensigns to work out how you're going to operate out of an airborne base."
"Are there any attached charioteers for Charlie Troop?"
"You should know that, if you've been spending your time with us up to this point with any sort of diligence, ensign. Don't waste my or Gilda's time with stupid questions. Find out from your fellow ensigns, your corporals, and your sergeant.
"Show me something impressive, ensign. Dismissed. Tell the other one to come in on your way out."
The orange colt scampered out, his indifferently-tailored Guards uniform flapping behind him like a cape.
"Who did you assign him as his bat-hen, Gilda? His uniform is a disgrace."
"Haven't yet," Gilda grunted. "Been busy. I'll get on it. You want a griffon for him?"
"No, no. Pull someone from supply or Charlie Troop itself."
"We're starting to run out of lance corporal material. I still say Bob was a mistake."
"Bob has always been a mistake, but he's my mistake. He'll settle."
Gleaming Shield turned to the next ensign. And then looked around in confusion at the emptiness in front of the desk she was sitting behind.
"Gilda, where's our next ensign?"
"Down here, ma'am."
Gilda watched with a stone face as Gleaming Shield leaned over her desk with a puzzled look on her muzzle, and caught view of the tiny red pegasus in aerial regimentals.
"Gilda, are they commissioning foals now?"
"I'm a grown-ass stallion, you-"
Gilda growled a wordless warning.
"-your worship! Ensign Short Fuse, reporting for buckin' duty!"
"You'll need a step-stool if you're looking to buck either of us, short stack," snarked Gilda. And then blushed in embarrassment.
I didn't mean to say that. Out loud.
"Oh, yes, let us all abandon all decorum and sense of restraint, why don't we?" the major asked rhetorically, getting up and walking around to the front of the desk so that she could see the little pony without leaning over a piece of furniture. "Would you two like to go out on the main deck and have a swear-off in front of everypony? We can have the sailors evaluate your respective profanity!" Gleaming Shield stared daggers at the both of them.
"Now are you both quite finished?"
Gilda and the little red pony nodded.
"Good. As I was just telling Ensign Starburst-"
"Sunburst, ma'am."
"Telling Ensign Sunburst, we had personnel send you two to us to fill some gaps in our leadership cadres. You're assigned to Baker Troop."
"She means Bat Troop," Gilda explained.
"I mean Baker Troop, we're not naming the blasted troops by ethnicity."
"You assigned him to that troop because he had wings."
"Well, that's just practicality, Gilda."
"Could have put him in with the griffons."
"Able Troop already has Lieutenant Martin Gale and a full complement of ensigns."
"You just think it's funny to have the bigot running the griffon troop."
"I do not think it is 'funny'. I think they work together well. You said it yourself, Gilda. Griffons respond well to open contempt and hostility."
"I can do hostility!" piped up the red midget.
"Shut up, Fuse, I was talking to my griffon," Gleaming Shield said without looking at the pegasus ensign.
Then she turned to look at him, and he quailed.
"You are not the most polished soldier I've ever come across, Fuse. You're short, you have a bad temper, and your jacket is a litany of disciplinary actions and demerits. Actually, now that I think about it, why did we accept Ensign Fuse, Gilda?"
"We needed an experienced pegasus officer, and they wouldn't give us anyone else, major, ma'am."
"Right. Fuse, you're going to be an ensign with Baker Troop. You'll be commanding thestrals. You have any problem with that?"
"No, ma'am! I've never laid eyes on a batpony in my life, but it's not like I don't live in a glass cloud, ma'am!"
"Well, that's not the worst attitude to take, going into a situation like Baker Troop. Your fellow ensigns are much more experienced than the rest of our junior officers, who are largely provisional. We just managed to draw the ensigns of Baker Troop from some particularly experienced and capable troopers."
"Mustangs, ma'am?" Short Fuse asked, looking interested.
"Exactly. You and they will be cycling through command of the troop, as conditions warrant. Show me something impressive, Fuse. You have real competition in Bat- Baker Troop. But we need a lieutenant, either way. Dismissed."
The pegasus turned on his heels in a relatively crisp display.
"Wait! Haven't they found the spare uniforms yet down in supply?"
He turned back, with a look of disgust. "They have, ma'am. But there wasn't anything even remotely in my size, let alone cut for wings."
"Hrm. Gilda, make a note? The other ensign's uniform wasn't satisfactory, either. Shame we couldn't get Lady Rarity to join us for our cruise."
"She'd have gone mad inside of a week, and made us all into ponyform dolls for her fabric experiments after two, ma'am. It would have been a very bad idea."
"Well, we need somepony to do alterations, don't we? Find that somepony, Gilda."
"Yes, ma'am. Ensign, the major dismissed you. You can go now."
Twitching his wings with irritation, Short Fuse fled, slamming the door behind him.
"Well, that could have gone worse," Gilda said, slumping into her Gilda-rated chair.
"Shame that the unicorn is such a wet squib," Gleaming disagreed, throwing herself back in her own chair. "I mean, Starswirl the Bearded. Come on!"
"Never heard of him."
"Never heard of- Gilda, you need to read better books! I have at least two good biographies- wait. No I don't, I left those in Canterlot."
"I was going to say, major, I've read all of your books. Some, twice."
"When do you have time to sneak my books?"
"When you thought I was cleaning your uniforms, mostly."
"Pour another dram?" Purse Strings asked, slouching in one of the seats built into the back of the infirmary, next to the ship's new still.
"Take it slow, my pony friend. You're half my body weight, you don't want to meet me drink for drink," said the surgeon. "Also, I only have a single gallon ready. Was too busy with inventory to get ol' belchy here fired up. Also, getting a still nailed down in a moving facility is a challenge I haven't actually had to answer before."
Purse looked at the contraption, a bit alarmed. "You haven't? Is it safe?"
"Yeah, found somegriff among the sailors with experience. Don't tell anypony else, but I think he operated the last still this kite had before the refit."
"If it was that rattle-trap the Tenpenny griffons pulled out of this thing, I might regret having drunk this. It was a sad excuse for a distilling rig," Purse said, looking into his empty mug.
Hawk Eye leaned over and splashed another measure of gin into the empty mug with the jug she held in her strange hippogriffic monkey-paws. "Nah, no still looks good after it's been torn out and kicked about, he sounded like he knew what he was doing. And it was mostly about mounting it on shock dampeners - see those? Keeps the engine vibration from over-stirring the mash."
"Huh. Well, thank you for the honor of taste-testing the first batch."
"You're welcome! I owed you, and I figured, well, fishsticks. Better the quartermaster get blinded by bad hooch than the chief engineer, or somebody important."
Purse Strings stared into the dead-eyes of the hippogriff mare, half a swallow in his mouth.
"Hahaha! Abyssal depths, your face, Purse! Don't spit it out, don't spit it out. It's beautiful, trust me, it isn't my first gallon of gin!" She splashed a shot into a martini glass, and tossed it back. "Any still owner worth her mash knows to toss the first five gallons before you bottle a finger's worth of anything worth drinking. I'm not an idiot, I swear. Got a sheepskin and everything from a pony medical school says so."
Then she took a beakful straight from the jug, and closed her eyes as she swallowed.
"We've been moving for hours," she said.
"Yep. Top me off?"
"Should you be getting this shitfaced this early in the tour?"
"I've got nothing to do until we eat up some of the crap I've got piled up in the holds. No place to unload and move things around. What am I gonna do, use up paper and pens recording where everything is mis-stowed?"
Hawk Eye splashed more gin into his mug.
"Fair enough. Don't you have a support company you're responsible for, though?"
"Ha! You see any uniform on me? I'm a civilian, damn it. Haven't chased me into chaplain's trap yet, the service hasn't. Haven't said the words, haven't taken the bit."
"They get you one way or the other. You think I wanted a commission?"
"You didn't? I thought they didn't draft doctors."
"They don't. My mother's a damn vulture. Squawked at me and squawked at me until I agreed to go to the recruiters."
"Really? Damn. You hear stories, but you wouldn't expect a foreign bird to get all 'return with your shield or on it."
"Politics, Purse. Dear old mom is a political bird. With the nation disappeared beneath the waves, she didn't have much leverage. All we could offer were port-birds donating their services to the petryal, and birds like me. I had a mostly-completed internship, and the EUP wanted doctors. Hey presto! Instant Captain Eye!"
She looked into the neck of her jug. "You'd be surprised how many other non-pony doctors in the service have stories like that. Those damn terrorist birds set off their firecrackers, and it was 'More Equestrian than the Equestrians' or get the depths out of your country.
"But hey! No point in getting down. We're lubricated, and we're on the way! To wherever the fuck we're going now. Where are we going?"
"Well Burn, in the New Territories."
"Never heard of it! Want another drink? I need another drink. My goggles aren't thick enough, you're still ugly."
"And you're still a loudbeak, Hawk. Sure, top me off."
Purse Strings passed out before Hawk Eye was gin-goggled enough to drag him into her little cabin and have her way with him. He woke up the next morning stretched out on one of the cots in the recovery ward.
The next time Purse looked into a mirror, he'd found that the hippogriff mare had painted a mustache on his muzzle with iodine stain.
They passed over Rust Island somewhere in the darkness, the distant roar of the orebreakers hopelessly lost in the Princess's Bit's own rumbling engines. Perhaps the bat-ponies saw that red-stained streak of granite and pine spinneys that marked the end of the Griffish Isles, but no other waking member of the regiment did.
The dawn broke bloody and fey over the Bight of Iron, greeting Giles and his lance as they climbed to the top of the Bit's envelope. Two posts marked the aft and fore lookout posts perched on the crest of the envelope, little partially-enclosed porch-like structures called 'aeries' by the sailors. In a normal airship, these would be mared by proper sailors, sharing the precious old spyglasses which were the tools of the trade.
They'd decided early on, the ship's master and the master sergeant, to put members of the flightless troop to this task. Charlie Troop was the odd tom out in the squadron, immobilized in the air by their lack of wings, dependant on pegasi or griffons or bat-ponies to haul them around in heavy, awkward chariots. The idea was that they'd be used to take and hold landscape features, to protect the guns of the battery, to clear the decks of heavy ships, and to control the decks of the squadron's own ship, the terribly vulnerable Bit.
But as a result, the mares and stallions of Charlie Troop were often stuck in place, locked down by doctrine and their inability to just pick up and flitter off. A file of watchponies clambered along with Giles' lance, the dawn watch come to replace the early morning watch. The rope ladders leading up around the fat bulk of the envelope was an easy climb for a talon'd race, but apparently it was kind of a mane-raising effort for the poor hooved races. He tried to make allowances for the wingless ponies.
Giles had intended to launch from the fore aerie, where the redness spreading across the horizon just above the ponies' princess's still-unseen sun heralded the advent of day. The earth pony that held the watch looked up from his cheap binoculars, and blinked his astonishing dragon-eyes at Giles and his normal-eyed relief.
"By the brown-stained tartan of MacDoo, what 'appened to you?" Giles gasped out in surprise.
"Wot? Nuffin', corporal. What are you on about?"
"Your eyes, Pill Box," said the relieving Charlie trooper. "Yer glowin' like a bat."
"Oh, right, yeah. Rippin', ain't it? The major, she gave us these!" Trooper Box held up a cheap trinket necklace with a fleck of crystal glowing in its grasp. "Night vision 'exes!"
Giles glared at the giddy Trottish pony with envy, and began plotting how he could steal one for himself.
He was still turning it over in his head when he and his birds threw themselves off the leading edge of the Bit and soared into the heart of the sunrise.
The Bight of Iron was vast and empty in mid-June, the shoals of fish and other creatures of the deep long since run north for the arctic upwells and the rich green algae of the continental shelves. The only moving things in that great emptiness were ships, ships racing from one populated place to another. It was a desert of water and air, a void through which objects hurtled hither and yon. The Bight wasn't a place to be, but a space to traverse.
The Bight of Iron was nowhere, but it was the way to everywhere. And a great bird was tearing through the empty, cloudless void over those empty endless expanses of swift-currented waves, dropping in front of Giles' weary griffons.
"Gertie's found somefing!" one of his file-closers yelled at Giles as she belled her wings and dropped back from the fore of their patrol.
"You don't think!" Giles waxed sarcastic. The roc was a great distraction from the unpeopled void they were attempting to patrol. He understood it was a sort of practice for the days ahead, when they entered the crowded spaces over the archipelagos and peninsulas that crowded the complex around the mouth of the Gullet.
But actually doing it in the here and now was painfully dull. There was absolutely nothing in the air over the Bight, and endless fathoms below the low waves that barely marked the surface of the Bight.
Giles twitched his wings and shrugged to signal the rest of his two-file patrol to rise and cover his movement. They would ascend, and lay in wait to pounce on any 'enemy' that might approach Giles and the roc and the roc's handler.
The roc was stooping on an empty expanse of ocean, far away from either of the two surface ships in view, carving shallow furrows as they raced off to their respective destinations. As Giles dropped along with his fellow flier, he lost view of said sailing ships, his world shrinking from the vast enormities of the empty Bight, to a smaller vestibule of that particular empty stretch of the general emptiness.
As Giles got closer, he saw what the roc had spotted. A great white shark - more of a dingy, dirty beige, despite the name - had risen to the surface and was moving swiftly. The shark, like everything else in this void, had tried for speed, hurrying out of the empty, fishless starveling trap it had somehow found itself within, to some place with something to eat.
It was, instead, going to be something to eat, as the great talons of the enormous raptor-bird knifed into the waves and seized upon the great predator of the deep.
Giles' eyes widened in astonishment. It was a huge fish, and although the roc was enormous, the weight of the shark was great, and to pull it out of the jealous grip of the sea - he thought for a moment that the cheering roc-handler was going to lose her charge, and her life in a single ill-considered impulsive predatory start.
And then the water let loose its grasp, and the enormous wide wings beat, once, twice, victoriously! Salt water sprayed everywhere, as the twisting great fish twitched and spasmed desperately, trying with flailing flippers and tail to find purchase in the dry, alien air.
The roc couldn't get her beak around to give the struggling shark a killing bite, as she fought against that old villain gravity and her captive's own coiling spasms, and the roc's handler for some reason didn't take to the air with a knife or spear to aid her charge.
Giles finally met his fellow flier, and pulling his spear out of its sheath on his back, curved hurtling beneath the roc's beating wings. He used his speed and his spear, lancing one of the great fishy beast's eyes shaft-deep.
He came to a complete stop, cupped wings and forearms and haunches around his spear and the shark's alien monstrous bleeding head, and pulled his spear-shaft out of the unsettlingly flexible eye-socket of the beast.
The blow hadn't killed the shark, and he nearly lost his rear right paw to the gnashing teeth of its saw-toothed maw, sized just right for the devouring of stupid griffons. Re-directing his spear, Giles stabbed again for the other eye-socket, and buried it deep, deep, stirring it around, looking for the idiot fish's tiny brain.
Eventually, the shark stopped struggling in the roc's talons, and Giles could breathe again, drawing in that salt-tang stink of dying fish.
"Thank you, little bird," said the smug voice of that idiot roc-handler. Where was she? Why didn't she help? "My Gertie appreciates your help. If you could get off the shark, it would lighten her load a bit."
"Oh, right, sorry," Giles said, taking to his wings once again. His glittering armor was stained a bit with shark's-blood. He hadn't thought about sharks or fish having blood, but they certainly did. He'd never been a naval bird, not in his civilian life, not in his half-life in the stews of Trottingham…
"You're going to have to wash that off, lance corporal," the roc - no, the roc's handler said. "It'll start to smell right off if you don't."
"I… don't know how to wash in the sea, without getting so wet and heavy that I sink."
"I'll show you how, after we get this baby back to the Bit. It's more than I can eat in a sitting, I think we'll have the cooks do a proper cook-up, what do you think?"
"I think that sounds fine, Lady George. What do you think it was doing out here? I don't see any fish it could have been chasing."
"Only it knew where it was going, my fierce little friend. And now nobody else will ever know. Let's go home, and clean up."
You can go into the great empty, hoping to find some distant shore. But there are no promises that you'll ever find that farther shore. Sometimes, the only thing a shark - or a griffon! - will find is some unimaginable surprise awaiting them in the unknowable deep.
The redesign had resulted in a number of auxiliary hatches built into the main deck along the center line, which theoretically could be used to access parts of the engines and the drive shafts to the aft of the ship, and the cargo holds and workshops to the fore. They'd also been overbuilt in several cases so that underneath the smooth-surfaced 'top' hatch were a set of ceramic fitted forms built to take detachable open hearths.
Four ponies could join hooves and flip the hatch cover over, revealing the ceramic base and sockets. Another team brought over the hearth and the fuel, and socketed them in place. The wood was cooked until a bed of charcoal formed, and then came the chowder pots.
A single shark, even a great white shark like the one that Lady George had brought home for the noon meal, couldn't possibly have stretched to feed the whole ship if they'd cut up the remnants into steaks; it wouldn't even have fed the griffons alone. They had to stretch it out for the rest of them.
So, chowder. Eventually, nine boiling chowder pots were putting up their savory steam over the gathering heads of the sailors and the troopers crowding the narrowed confines of the main deck. Diced potatoes, corn, beans, powdered milk and assorted fresh vegetables were thrown into the pots along with the shredded flesh of the great fish.
Lyra drooled, staring from the railing on the forecastle down into the foremost chowder pot, and watched one of the kitchen ponies stir the milky chunks as it slow-boiled.
"You know," said the turul as she picked her beak with one of the shark's ribs, "you ponies are a lot more carnivorous than I expected when I came west looking for aid. I pictured these vast fruited plains, full of field crops and pastures, with somehow sapient ruminants grazing placidly among the bobbing grain-heads, pausing now and again to argue philosophy over the chewing of your cud." She was sitting above the half-butchered remnants of the shark, having donated the remains to the squadron's lunch.
"Could you possibly conjure a more offensively pastoral picture, Gyongyike? You make us sound like a bunch of cattle." Griffons and ponies were engaged in butchering the great fish, and ponies were carrying buckets of shredded and flensed shark-meat down the stairways to the chowder pots steaming on the main deck. There was hardly any blood left to drain through the gutters underhoof, to be eventually rinsed away and the planks holystoned by well-fed troopers or sailors after all was said and eaten.
"And you don't think that sounds offensive to cows? Ah… cows are thinking creatures, aren't they?"
"Don't they have cows in Beakland?" Lyra asked, looking up from her slow-cooking lunch in the nearest chowder-pot on the deck below, and tried to forget how hungry she was.
"Not as such. There are prey animals in the steppe which I think are similar - big, juicy ruminants. As far as I can tell, they don't talk. Or, at least, I've never gotten one to say anything sensible before I stopped playing with my food and put it out of its dumb misery."
Lyra swallowed, a little sickly, and not feeling that hungry anymore.
"I didn't really think about how much meat a species your size must eat. They really aren't sapient?"
"I've never had a successful conversation with an aurochs, no. Or the long lizards. Most turul think that the long lizards are more likely to be thinking beasts, but again, no signs of tool use, or speech."
"Just to be sure… don't just ask your prospective meal if they're a person. Ask anyone around them if they think so, too. I've known ponies who are mute."
"If it ever comes up, Magus Heartstrings. I've mostly subsisted on fish and sharks since coming west, anyways. Though I'm told that pigs are dumb beasts, I've only had pork once or twice."
"Well, yeah, don't eat any cows. They're idiots, but they're talking idiots."
"I'll take it as gosling truth, magus."
"So… do you miss the Great Nest?"
"I barely ever spent any time in the capital. Few turul do. It's more of a place to gather for roosts and to brood. We spend most of our days flying the steppe or the taiga, or the polar shores."
"So that's a no?"
"No, magus, I miss it desperately. All my journeys are a passage to, or from home. All distances are calculated, in my heart of hearts, as distances from the Great Nest."
"How far are we today?"
"Closer than we were yesterday, Lyra Heartstrings, closer than yesterday."
The Princess's Bit motored over the Straits of Highclaw the next morning, southward currents rushing far below between the red-streaked coral of the Great Farrier Reef to the west, and the murderous lee shore of southern Griffonia to the north and east. Few surface sailors took the straits in the evening hours, and the dawning of Celestia's sun had been a sort of signal-flag for a gathering of three or four surface barques and schooners, who'd dropped anchor to the north of the straits to await the Running of the Claw.
Fish Eye looked over the railing on the starboard gunwale, watching the tiny wooden craft boil with activity as their ponies or griffons scrambled up and down their masts, rolling out their sails and sheets and so forth.
One of the sailors had told Fish about the Running of the Claw yesterday, and she wanted to see it for herself.
The first runner of the morning had spread her sails wide, and caught the early, savage winds dancing around the sharp blooded coral of the Reef and its outriggers, little spires of living stone rising up out of the waters below, pointing bonily towards the sky and the Bit. The treacherous predawn breezes tossed that little schooner around like a waterdancer in a pond, but generally and sweetly drove her north-eastwards, towards the shattered granite teeth of the opposite shore, where, so the sailor had told Fish, the underwater rocks were thick with shipwreck, detritus, and the innumerable bones of those foolish sailors who'd judged the winds of the strait wrongly.
Such would be the fate of the impatient schooner's ship's master and her crew, if she'd set out too early and too soon.
But soon! Soon! The counter-winds were coming. They always came, fitfully and slowly, but inevitably, as the east-facing slopes of the Griffonian highlands warmed under the heavy rays of the morning sun. Especially now, in the sunny days of June.
And though Fish Eye couldn't feel them up here, two thousand feet above the troubled waves below, the little schooner's full reef of sail caught those counter-winds, and shuddered, jinked - and turned!
The bravura two-master's sails belled as she caught the upland westerlies, and pulling from both quarrelling winds via the mundane magic of her intricate rigging, rocketed down the middle of the strait, until Fish Eye lost sight of it as it passed below the bulk of the Bit's own gondola.
In the distance, the heavier and less nimble three-masted barques were getting under weigh, their anchors stowed and their less-extensive sail rigs stretching for that subtle mix of dying ocean breezes and the upland westerlies that would keep them from joining their bones with their sisters in eternity.
Fish Eye turned away from the spectacle of the sunny world, and only thought of it after the drama was over, that she should have gotten her camera. When did she stop trying to capture all of the wonders that went on around her, in negatives, or developed stock?
Since the last time she'd had access to a developing lab, if she was being honest with herself. Since before being arrested for espionage.
Fish Eye looked over at her platoon's sparring session, shifting her ensign's spontoon to her other shoulder, cupping it in her wing. The batponies were now engaging with two lances of Charlie Troop, getting some hoofwork in with flightless opponents. The corporal was dancing with that goat, what's his name, Bob something or other? No, that was the black sheep of the thestral troop, the major's new orderly...
The goat wasn't very good with a spear, to be honest. None of the ponies and creatures of Charlie Troop were. Speardancing was a flighted person's sport, hooves or claws, talons or frogs, the extra pair of wings and three-dimensional mobility made all the difference.
Corporal Vine Staff spun his spear-shaft in a counter-clockwise spiral, pulling the goat's own shaft from the grey creature's hooves.
Or not? Goats apparently had extra-sticky hooves, or something, because the goat stumbled forward with the spear instead of losing his grip. Until the colt - billy? Buck? - stopped dead, whatever goatish magic that had kept him from losing his weapon, locked him down to the planking under his other hooves.
Not that it helped the goat - while he was sticking to everything he touched, Vine Staff had reversed his shaft and clouted him across the side of his neck, right below the goat's right horn.
The goat went down like a sack of potatoes, and Fish's ensign ran over to stop the fight. All the other spars dotting the wide length of the main deck likewise stopped, as everypony looked to see if Vine Staff had broken a trooper.
Fish shoved her ensign's spontoon into the sheath laying across her back, and went over to help move the stunned goat on back to the infirmary to get looked over by her jerk of a sister.
"This is a bit much for training," Hawk Eye groused, holding open the goat's eye and shining a light into his weird squared-off pupil. "Depths take it, how am I to know if he's concussed with these preposterous eyes? Billy-Bob! Can you see how many talons I'm holding up?"
Fish Eye looked on sympathetically, as the goat tried twice to get out the right number. Goats were many things, but they were terrible stutterers.
"Take it as read, Sis," Fish intervened, after the fourth attempt by the billy-goat to get out 'three'. "Check his skull, back behind the jawline on the right."
"I know how to evaluate a patient, Fish. Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs."
"Eww. And I don't really remember grandma. Either of them."
"Yeah, well, it's been a while. Wherever they all are."
"Auntie A says they're safe as houses, under the sea."
"That's just guesswork, there's no guarantee- wait, Auntie who?"
"Auntie Amphitrite. When I talked to her a couple days ago. Didn't I tell you?"
"Fish Eye, this is the first time we've talked since… did you say something to me back during that thing with the crazy batponies?"
"Which thing with the crazy batponies? Thestrals are always kind of unreasonable."
"The one with all the casualties! In the courtyard of that garrison!"
"Oh, yeah, that thing. Maybe? I thought I'd talked to you since then. Huh. You know, I was supposed to ask you something, tip of my tongue…"
"Fish! Focus! Which aunt have you been talking to? Where did you find a relative that isn't us? Wait. Amphitrite? You- you don't mean-"
"Oh, that's easy," Fish said over her sister's slightly pole-axed stuttering. "Auntie Amphitrite! Every hippogriff's favorite auntie! Oh, right. She wanted her figurehead modeled on your profile. She was sort of insulting about it, if you really think about it-"
"FISH!"
"Whaaat?"
"You met the seafoam goddess?"
"Yes!"
"And she didn't kill you on the spot for being you?"
"Ruuude!"
"Following seas preserve us. You met the Auntie and she didn't eat your bones. There is grace in the sea."
"Right! Now I'm her priestess. Or an acolyte? Maybe a deaconess. I'm not sure, I don't remember all the rules and regulations. But I'm maintaining a shrine for the ship! And she wants us to carve a figurehead, to represent her. I guess she's claimed the ship as her bounty for not smashing us all onto the rocks below and drowning her in her merciless waves?"
"A figurehead. Sure. What was that about-"
"Yeah! We're gonna use you as the model. She wanted a hippogriff figurehead. I don't know why!"
"Right now?" Hawk Eye looked down, and remembered that she had a patient in front of her.
He was sitting on the examination table, and looking back and forth between them like he was wishing he had a bag of popcorn.
"You, Billy-Bob. You seem fine. Don't go to sleep for another eight hours, and check in every hour with your lance corporal, so you don't pass out and die from some hematoma I'm not finding right now."
"I aaaam a lance corp'r'l, Caaaptaain!"
"Then order one of your file closers to keep an eye on you! Go on, get out of here!"
The goat got.
And then the lectures started.
Fish Eye finally escaped her sister's tirade, a boiling diatribe which apparently had been building up pressure for weeks. She didn't think that she'd been that remiss in avoiding her sister, but Hawk was the older sister, Fish supposed she knew best.
When Fish got out onto the main deck, she realized what that change in sound she'd heard about five minutes ago had meant.
The sparring session had come to a screeching halt.
In its place, were dozens of onlookers surrounding two figures pointing spearheads at each other, their blades unsafed and deadly-naked.
As Fish Eye took in the scene, the tableau broke.
And the purple unicorn leaped high over her ensign's head, her sharp-edged spear lancing downward at the batpony's unhelmeted head.
Fish's ensign blurred sideways, her spear trailing and striking sparks from the thrusting shaft of her opponent as she dropped from her leap.
Why is Fruits Basket fighting the major?
The rapid dark blur bounced off of the back of an onlooker, and Fruits Basket was suddenly halfway to the ship's balloon overhead, her webbed wings stretched wide, and her spear shaft spinning into position.
Major Shield's own spear was spinning in defense, as she crouched, waiting to take the ensign's charge.
Instead, the batpony shot towards Fish Eye, trying to get behind the unicorn's rear. The two of them spun in a spiral dance, naked blades glinting and blurring like steel ribbons twisting in the air in between their strikes.
Then they both leaped, and separated, each flying towards one end of the long main deck.
Why does the major have wings? When did she get wings? Oooh… they're pretty.
But the butterfly-winged unicorn wasn't nimble or skillful in the air, and when they came back together in a clash of rapid strikes, a blow tore through one of her gossamer wings, leaving her to tumble gracelessly to the deck below.
Fish wasn't certain, but it looked like the unicorn's own spear had caused that accident.
By the time Fish's confused ensign had furled her wings and took one apprehensive step towards the crumpled major, their superior was back on her hooves, not much more worse for wear.
"Come on, then, let's try that again!" yelled Gleaming Shield.
"Major, that was a proper strike."
"I know! Two out of three, come on, come at me!"
Fruits Basket skree'd in irritation, spun her spear, and charged.
The unicorn didn't try for an aerial attack again, and the two of them were soon breathing like billows, the deck below them slick with sweat and slippery. They struck at each other again and again, their science breaking down with exhaustion and exertion, until -
The major's spearhead struck the ensign's spear-shaft well behind the metalled langets, and the sharp thunderforged steel cut right through the haft, leaving the ensign's own spearhead to go flying off on a wobbling tangent until it was lost overboard somewhere far below.
The accident left the ensign's suddenly lighter spear-shaft unopposed and continuing on its initial arc.
Which happened to terminate squarely upon the major's forehead, right under her horn.
For the second time that day, somepony dropped like a sack of potatoes.
Fruits Basket winced in sudden self-awareness, clearly having just realized that she'd knocked her superior officer in the head.
Fish Eye looked over the poleaxed purple unicorn, and smirked.
"I'd say that was two out of three, ensign ma'am? Here, I'll take the major back to the infirmary. Also, here's your spontoon. If you're going to fight like you're using a spontoon, you really ought to use it. Longer langets, you know?"
By the time the master-sergeant burst into the infirmary, the two hippogriff sisters had come to the obvious conclusion that the major was definitely concussed.
The sergeantly lecture that came after that was positively epic.
Fish Eye took notes. She'd have to up her game if she was going to keep her own officer under better control. Giving superior officers concussions was definitely not good ton.
Another fine sunny morning had shifted with the westering sun, until noon shifted all of her shadows, of envelope and rigging and the occasional flitting fluffy cloud, directly overhead, and left the remnants pooling below one's hooves. Lyra had discovered the new ensign's inability to cast simple shielding spells, let alone the newfangled workings that her aptly-renamed friend had invented over the winter.
Somehow, that discovery had evolved, until she'd found herself in full magus mode, twirling on her right rear hoof and coaxing under-employed troopers to take up various javelins and throwing spikes and implements of destruction, and throw them at her fool self with all the strength those big griffon hens and beefy earth pony stallions and wily thestrals of both and either genders could muster.
The two enlisted unicorns had been chased out of their respective hidey-holes, and made to attend to Lyra's presentation with all the attention her considerable force of personality could evoke, while a greater crowd of troopers, winged or otherwise, looked on from their various perches in the riggings above, the railings around, and a pair of hatches propped up in the deck itself, below.
"Now, mind you, most of the horned races aren't magus material. Hup!" Lyra spun, and caught the flung javelin in a fragmentary variant on the spell Gleaming Shield had described in her Gonne Research Group paper. It hung, quivering in the kite-shield-shaped bit of jellied air, not stopping the weapon dead, but rather allowing it to hang, wobbling, like the javelin had struck an actual wooden plank-shield like the ones used by hill-country hicks up in the feuding back hollers of the Smokey Mountains in their endless idiot skirmishes.
"If your average unicorn - your J. Random Hornpolisher - was asked to do the things we are taught in the academies and the Princess's own school, well, their poor horns would crack, flare, and catch fire like the wick in a jack-lantern." Lyra had been fascinated to discover the jack-lanterns of backward Burrostan, west of Somnambula on the fringes of the Undiscovered West. The donkeys' lack of 'free' magic had led them well along the road of mechanical and chemical innovation, which ponies of discernment and wisdom knew to keep close tabs on.
Where else did a clever pony get ideas? Her own noggin? Ha!
"So what is the answer?" Lyra asked, rhetorically, and caught three throwing spikes thrown by one of her griffon assistants from her blind spot, way up in the riggings close to the envelope itself. "Nice try, Gwaine. See this?"
Lyra swung around her jelled cantrip-shield around, the three iron-headed darts stuck haft-deep in the surface of the mana construct.
"This isn't that. You don't have to be a credentialed magus or a wizard to cast this beauty. In fact, it's less taxing than the old rigid-shell shields. Which is why your regimental major is a certified genius, my colts and fillies. Not because it's a difficult spell, but because it's so easy. You could learn this in a morning's singalong! And you should have, Sunburst. You were a student at the Princess's Gifted. What happened?"
"Well, er, magus, you know, I just -" And as he stuttered out his embarrassment, three troopers flung javelins at Lyra, who had stopped dancing about to give the ensign her proper attention.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! went the three implements of destruction as they met two different shard-spell constructs, spinning around Lyra's otherwise-unprotected corpus.
"GAH! Could they stop doing that while we're talking?" yelped the shaggy orange colt.
"It wouldn't be an exercise if it was easy, Sunny," laughed Lyra, dropping her new catch ting - ting - ting on the pile of other captured weapons. "And hello, have you met me? I never stop talking. So, where was I?"
"How easy what you're doing is," prompted one of the other unicorns. Lyra hadn't bothered to learn either of their names, yet. They were very, very young, both of them.
"Right! You don't need to be Celestia's gift to harmony, to learn how to shieldcraft, especially not the Gleaming Shield method. So, what are the steps?" Lyra dismissed her floating kite-shields, and let her horn grow dim.
"EVOCATION!" and then let her horn go two-shrouds bright.
"Concentration", she whispered with stress, and formed the glow into a less showy single shroud.
"IMAGINATION!" and Lyra was surrounded with the distinctive oil-sheen shimmer of Gleaming Shield's reactive barrier spell.
"You see," Lyra continued from inside of her shimmering protective shell, "when you layer the idea of a nice gelatin sorbet over the feeling, you shall not pass, you get the Gleaming Shield. A collapsing-reactive protective layer, which unlike the old math-heavy diamond-shell casting, gives easily when struck. Gwaine, come down here and give us a stab!"
And Lyra's helpful corporal assistant dropped out of the rigging with his spear, striking slightly off of her center-of-mass. He'd have missed her if he'd gotten through her shield.
He didn't get through her shield. His sharp spearpoint slipped sideways on the spherical construct, creasing it like a balloon punched by a painter's brush. The tom, caught off guard by the sudden sideways reactive force, turned end for end, bouncing off of the shield by his rear right flank, and ending up, spearless, tumbling into a pile of surprised onlookers.
"Oops, sorry about that, Gwaine. You ok over there?"
A talon stuck up out of the tangle, thumbs up.
"Right, that's a lesson for another day. Make more room, ya lookie-loos! Or else you might be the next to get a muzzleful of griffish flank!"
Lyra turned around, looking as the rest of the crowd gave them another cable or two's worth of space.
"Right, where was I?"
"'Ow 'imagination' makes a spell?" prompted the third watching unicorn, a half-grown filly who was probably too young to have signed up, but somehow, here she was.
"How else would a spell be made?"
"Uh, maths?" her filly student said, scoffing.
"What is mathematics, my little apprentice, but imagination in a very firmly laced saddle? You can use math to lace in your will and your imagination, or you can use feeling. The better the feeling, the better the constraints on your imagination! I'm not talking about these mean sorts of feelings, jealousies and dislikes and angers and dire vengeance! Will! Be! Mine!"
Lyra looked around, her features crumpled into a saturnine scowl, doing her best to look like her least favorite instructor at school, Celestia's Gifted's infamously grim potions master.
Then she grinned, dispelling that old bokor's dire memory.
"But that's the sort of thing that leads to doomsday devices and the magi coming by your tower with an assault team and a horn-restraining ring! Also, it's rarely all that effective. Harmony is a real thing, my little ponies and not-so-little griffons! Harmony sings in every spell, and if you sing a discordant song, you'll get rotten miracles."
"OK, you three, give it a try, why don't you? Sing it a bit, let's see what you get. EVOCATION!"
And the three of them lit up their horns, Lyra following along after making sure they were glowing.
"CONCENTRATION!" Their concentration-glows weren't much more obvious than their initial horn-glows, but they were all frowning, fiercely. Even the Gifted Unicorns' School dropout with the goatee.
"IMAGINATION!" And Lyra tried to not laugh as all three of them screwed up their lips and their brows, trying to picture the mental image she'd painted of dessert and determination. But....
All three of them had the oiled-glow of that distinctive shielding quivering around them. The smallest of the three, his construct was shaking like a beaten dog, and Lyra wasn't certain what was doing it - was he just that excited?
Lyra picked up Gwaine's discarded spear, and stabbed at Ensign Sunburst's shield. It distended, warped - and wrapped itself around her spearhead, deflecting it away from his right forearm.
"Not bad! How about you, sweetling?" She stabbed at the little filly's gleaming globe, and the spearpoint skittered, shifted - and was knocked back into Lyra's grasp as the filly's shield burst in a rain of red horn-light. "Interesting. Not really what it's supposed to do-"
And then the last unicorn's shield just failed, for no apparent reason, the colt gasping and breathing like a bellows.
Lyra looked at him, and looked deeper at his eyes, which were a bit - ah.
"Children, you have to remember to make your shields air-permeable. You want to keep out things that will put holes in you, not that stuff whose absence will make you a dead pony!" Lyra bugged out her eyes and leaned her head back against her withers, her tongue stuck out like a suffocated pony.
"Right! That's the basics, my horny friends! You can't fly - well, aside from Major Shield, damn her brilliant eyes - and you can't take a hit like our earthy friends here. But you can bloody well learn how to shield, yourselves and your fellows! Because some day, and it might be some day soon, some crazy parrot or hidalgo griffon will be coming after you with a slugger or a bigger gun - and try to shoot you, your fellow trooper, or the ship itself."
Lyra turned to the earth pony who she'd gotten to stand over by one of the falconets with a lit slow-fuse in a linstock. "Everypony, make a hole for Mickle Joe. Mickle Joe, whenever you are ready, my friend!"
The crowd looked back at the pony with a lit fuse in his hooves, and wide-eyed and more than a little panicky, scattered out of the way of his line of fire.
And more importantly, from behind where Lyra was standing, her horn lit up three-shrouds deep, and collapsing back down into a proper double-layered 'Gleaming Shield' special.
"FIRE!" Lyra yelled, and all she saw was a bloom of fire where the open mouth of the falconet had been.
Very little of what happened after that stayed with Lyra, until she looked up at the envelope above her from what must have been a bit of decking not far from where she'd been standing before she'd had a pony set off a cannon in her face.
There was some twittering noise, and Lyra tried to focus enough to figure out where the birdies were…
She lifted her aching head a bit, and realized that the blue blur overhead was her dear, dear friend Trixie.
"-you Bobtail-blasted foals ever touch my gonnes when I'm not here, I'm going to have the ship's master keelhaul you! Twice! All the way around! You could have killed her! You could have killed yourself, you idiot! I'm going to have you cleaning every single one of those things in storage, with your tongue if you can't get them perfect with a tooth-brush first!"
"Not his fault, Trixie darlin'..." Lyra tried to say through a mouthful of cotton. Why did she have cotton in her mouth?
Oh, that was her tongue. Ouch
"And you!" continued the angry, scorched-looking blue unicorn, staring down at Lyra. "What made you think that was a good idea, you lime-green imbecile!"
"What? Iss what the spell is fer. Far. Four. For. Had two shells runnin', shoda been nuff."
"SPARKLE- that is, Major Shield designed that spell to take slugger volley fire. Not cannon fire! You used a load of shot and powder four times the weight it was rated for!"
"Nonfeenfe, a fil' of for firin' oughta been th' favme as tha."
"What? Could you repeat that? I don't speak imbecile!"
Lyra worked her mouth a few times, and tried again. "A volley. Fire. Oughta been the same af a falconet."
"Concentration, you dolt! Not to mention you took it point blank range! And Trixie has been told you weren't using the safeties that Sparkle built into the spell to keep it from feeding back to the caster!"
"The what?"
"SAFETIES! The original construct would feed back on the caster's horn!"
"That wasn't in the writeup!"
"Not everything is in the initial writeups, you loon! The final manual certainly had it laid out!"
"I… oops?" Lyra tried for a 'my bad!' and managed to just punch herself in her horn with a wobbling forehoof.
"Stretcher!" yelled Lieutenant Trixie Lulamoon, as Lyra went down for another rest, her horn screaming at her.
Where had Trixie been, anyways? was Lyra's last woozy thought before the stretcher-ponies hauled her off to the infirmary.
"SPARKLE!" roared Lieutenant Lulamoon as she burst into the office behind the operations room.
Gilda looked up from her paperwork, and narrowed her eyes at the artillerymare.
"You! Hen! Where is that idiot we call our master and commander?" demanded the unicorn.
But not Gilda's unicorn.
"I'm back here, Trixie. What's the problem?" came a voice from the cot wedged behind the major's own desk.
"Trixie demands to be heard!"
After a beat, the other unicorn's voice rose over the edge of her desk, wavering a bit, "OK, I hear you. Was there anything else?"
"Trixie also wants to see you, Sparkle!"
That was more than enough, Gilda thought, and rose from her desk to toss the artillery lieutenant out of the office.
And then paused, taking into view the soot-scorched coat and tattered field uniform the lieutenant was wearing.
"What happened to you, lieutenant?" Gilda asked, instead of laying her talons on the officer.
"What didn't happen to Trixie?" she demanded. "A disaster of an exercise, and then some butterhooves dropped a lit fuse into a nearly-full caisson, and then we had two gunner's assistants injured putting out the blaze, and what does Trixie find when she returns from this nightmare of a day?"
Gleaming Shield had finally gotten up from her cot, and was staring blearily and heavily bandaged over the edge of her desk.
"What happened to the caisson?" the major asked.
"NOT RELEVANT!" Trixie screamed. "We put out the fire! And the mechanics and the pool ponies can probably put it back together! What I would like to talk about is PONIES MESSING AROUND WITH MY STUFF WHEN I'M NOT HERE!"
"What stuff would that be, lieutenant?" asked Gilda. "And if you would, kindly modulate your tone. Some of us are walking wounded."
"Yes, they ARE! Trixie has NOTICED! Trixie is, if you haven't noticed, A BIT SCORCHED! Also, she may have DAMAGED HER HEARING A BIT TODAY!"
"OK, calm down, lieutenant. Here, have a seat." Gilda got up out of her chair, and let the shaking blue unicorn sit down. Or rather, pressed her into the chair.
"Trixie thought everything was going so well… The teamsters had put the targets into place, the escorts were on their game, it was such a good exercise, when it got started…"
"Wait, first things first," Gleaming said, looking concerned. "What's this about ponies using your stuff? And does this have something to do with that backfire the engines made about twenty minutes ago?"
"You need to pay closer attention to what happens on your own ship, Sparkle. Also, Lyra Heartstrings got one of your troopers to shoot her with a double charged falconet with, as far as I can tell, a double load of buck and shot. She's lucky to be alive!"
"Lyra did- how badly is she wounded?"
"Bah, that mare could be thrown off the Canterhorn and not break a leg. She's mostly very badly horn-burned."
"Well, perhaps Trixie is exaggerating for effect. The surgeon didn't look that concerned. She just over-extended. I think. She's supposed to be some sort of magical genius?"
"Oh, blast. Gilda, I should look in on her. What was she doing to have her horn-"
"She apparently didn't read the full writeup on your new spell, Sparkle. Or else she didn't read it properly."
"She- did she get the horn safeties wrong?"
"She didn't seem to think there was such a thing, but she wasn't fully lucid, so Celestia only knows, Trixie doesn't. Not fully relevant! Trixie would like to return to the issue at hoof - ponies MESSING WITH HER STUFF!"
"Trixie," Gilda said, provoked, "you can't leave the ship and expect the rest of us to police your department. That's why you're lieutenant, the battery is your responsibility."
"Horseapples!" spat Trixie. "Trixie isn't just your battery commander. Not anymore! A battery lieutenant just has to take care of her caissons, and her gun sections, and that's it! You've got me running a pocket armory, enough falconets to arm this entire, preposterously huge hulk you call a 'light carrier', and a gun deck!
"We're lucky so far that nopony's taken it into their heads to start messing with the carronades. But there's the rocket-mortars, too! And it feels like I need more help out and about, the caissons were a complete mess on today's exercise."
"So, not hitting your targets?" Gleaming Shield asked, meanly.
"Of course we did!" Trixie said, proudly, her nose in the air. "We just also blew up a caisson afterwards. A little bit."
The artillerymare shook her head, and looked down at the major.
"Trixie's point is that she's understaffed. She either needs another sergeant and a reliable corporal, or - and this is the important point! - another ensign."
"Trixie," Gleaming groaned. "Don't get started again. We don't have any more ensigns. We have no more prospect of new recruits until we hit Well Burn at the earliest, and we're not planning on a long stay in the New Territories. As if they'd have officers to spare out there on the frontier!"
"Nonsense! You recruited two perfectly serviceable ensigns just before we left!"
"We did?" asked the concussed major. "Gilda, when did this happen?"
"The lieutenant's talking about Ensigns Sunburst and Short Fuse, major ma'am," Gilda reminded her.
"Yes, but what's this about perfectly serviceable ensigns? Those two are idiots."
Gilda winced a bit. Gleaming Shield's concussion had loosened her tongue a bit, and they were still working on getting her filters back on line.
"That's as may be, but Trixie needs another subaltern, and has a good feeling about this 'Short Fuse'. It's a lovely artillery-pony sort of name."
"Trixie, you know that isn't his talent, right? As far as I can tell, the name was earned by his temperament," Gleaming Shield observed.
"Nevertheless, Trixie likes the cut of his jib! And he seemed to know what he was about while he was supporting her exercise out in the field. Did a fine job helping put out the fire! Trixie adores a colt who knows when to drop a raincloud on a conflagration!"
"We wanted him for Baker Troop…" Gleaming Shield equivocated.
"Nonsense! The bat ponies can govern themselves. As far as Trixie can tell, they've been doing it for time immemorial! And TRIXIE NEEDS ANOTHER ASSISTANT!"
Gleaming Shield cringed in pain.
"OK, lieutenant, we'll take it under advisement. Thank you, good day," Gilda said, as she pried the mare out of Gilda's chair and chivvied her out of the office.
Gilda slammed the door behind the artillerymare, and looked at her slightly-ashen major.
"You take another pair of aspirin, and lay down again, major ma'am. I'll get Bob to look in on you, and see how much of the ship's been damaged, and look into whether we're down a caisson chariot or not."
Gilda went to get Bob, and wondered how many walking wounded they'd have before they reached Well Burn.
Not fire nor flood, but rather, the ice this time.
An empty moon hung over a frozen world. No comforting dark shadowed memory of their mother, no unicorn silhouette to remind all who gazed upon it of a promised return of the rightful Queen of the Night. Only the dead, boney whiteness, inequine, strange and blank.
The stars failed to twinkle, their light steady and still in the airless chill. Something felt wrong with the air, the windlessness of it, the lack of - flavor, taste, anything, really. If he had lungs to take breath, would he have been able to draw one? Or would it have ripped the moisture out of his flesh, lung, throat and tongue, flash-frozen him like these frozen dead that littered the forest floor all around him, leaves long since blasted off the limbs, undergrowth as dead as everything else?
From time to time, between the branches of the dead trees above, he could glimpse white spectral things, floating high above. On what, with the wind frozen and dead on the ground, in drifts of snow bough-deep, he did not know.
Spite? Terror? Fear?
His attention, drawn by objects moving in this motionless world, flew upwards on wings of thought. Higher, higher through the void, where winged shapes with horses-heads hung on winds he could not feel.
More like clouds given form than creatures of flesh, they drifted, empty-eyed and unknowing. Whatever had birthed these things had long since ceased, leaving them to continue on their paths through the upper regions, in motion because they had movement, in flight because nothing acted to bring them down. Gravity had no purchase on these ghosts.
Windigoes? This was nothing like the daywalkers' tales. Was this what they were, when Equestria nearly died in the cradle? Would this be what they would have become, if they'd drunk every pint of strife, eaten every ounce of hate, drained the land and the ponies as dry as the husks in those snow-drifts?
There, one drifted downwards, looking itself drained, wasted. The bits of cloud-stuff that made up the maybe-windigo were crumbling, and it left a spectral trail behind it as it slowly fell out of formation.
Is this their fate, in turn? To have consumed the last bit of what killed this world, and to fade away once their plunder was spent?
His attention was drawn by a great ice fortress, far below, towards which the dying windigo was circling. Spires of black ice, overlying lesser stone ones, jutted into the darkness, glittering darkness for darkness.
Within the fortress, deep within, past dead thestral guards, dead pony servants, dead prisoners for all he knew, dead rebels perhaps, or just refugees from the frozen, half-burned hamlets and villages that lurked in the buried lands outside the fortress gate… all dead.
Further, further, through the hall, through the great door which gaped open, half-smashed in, surrounded by more dead guards, dead ponies with spears in their hooves, shields dropped where they fell.
And a great throne, in a great receiving chamber, covered in ice. Embedded deep within the ice, entombed in ice, encased.
And deep within that great block of ice, perched on her last throne, sat the alicorn.
Eyes burning, flaring within the ice. Still alive, still furious, still raging against the dying of the night. Burning blue, in a dark-featured face, slit-pupiled, under a helm of mithril, her mane frozen in the ice like the rest of her.
The dying windigo floated through the ice, struggling to reach the throne, reaching for that aura of hatred and fury.
It got too close, and something struck at it, slashing out of the heart of that icy imprisonment.
The windigo exploded in a cloud of cloud-stuff, and was gone.
The Mother of Dreams sat on her icy chair, and hated.
The hate was all that was left.
Ping shook himself in the antechamber, and began the ritual that would open the seven and seventy locks that kept anything from passing from inside, out into the greater world beyond the door. He shivered from the memory of the Mother's dream. No, not a dream, not a prophecy, but… a possibility. So many possibilities, there at the tap-root, the heart of the dream. And they were never exactly the same, each time he passed through this door.
But so many are like that one, hopeless, horrible and final.
Would the elders be so eager for the return of the mother of dreams, if they knew what she dreamed of, in her moonlight exile? What the Last Night looked like, in that bitterest possible fulmination of the dream? When Ping considered that this was what She dreamed of, when She dreamed Her revenge… what did Her fears look like?
He'd never found another pony who had been as far inside the heart of the dream as he. Not as deeply as he'd just gone. Some had, he knew, but rumor held that none that had were still sane. To the Plain of Jars they were sent when they returned, wild and screaming. All matrons and elders had to dip their hooves into the inner mysteries, but shallowly, shallowly. They splashed quickly through the edge, the margin of the Mother's dream, scooping up power and insight, and swiftly fled for the relative safeties to be found outside these black walls. The great black fortress Selenemeer was not for the faint of heart.
Ping thought about what he'd seen this time, and wondered if the maddened matrons, the ones who had been sent to the Plain of Jars to await the return of their queen, had, like he, seen that particular, frozen tableau in the heart of the dream, or something like it, and despaired.
He wasn't quite sure why he was spared that madness, but that resilience gave him power and authority. He could walk through the heart of the dream, and not be crushed by it. That gave him respect and authority, it was true, but it also gave power, true power within the dream.
And to gift that power, in turn. No meditating for long daylight hours before the great portal, lapping at the whispering mist that trickled from underneath the safely sealed doors. No rushed unlocking of the portal, and a pell-mell charge through the corridors within, while the guards held the gate perilously open for the matron who hurtled back with her prize. Not for Ping, or the ponies for whom he served as a water-carrier.
On the other side of the door were the ever-guard, two spear-stallions, and two shield-maidens. Waiting with them were in addition, two elders, three matrons, and one of Ping's own ponies. The matrons stood stone-faced as he opened his dream-wings wide, and released that thing for which they were waiting.
Behind him, the spear-stallions and shield-maidens hastily slammed close the great dream-doors, spinning the tumblers and closing the locks.
The three matrons, their eyes glowing with power, turned on their hooves, leaving wordlessly. The older of the two elders looked Ping in the eye, and sneered.
"It seems as if your faithless participation in an alien ritual failed to result in your demolition within the dream, nephew," said one of the elders. "You live to return, as you have in the past. What news from our true princess?"
Ping tried not to react to the jab. He hadn't been any more sure than the elders that he'd compromised himself by cooperating with the giddy hippogriff, but Ping had to, in the end, put his faith in his own purpose, and the virtue inherent in respect for the Mother's fellow-spirits of the darkness. What Fish Eye had said of her own ‘auntie' had resonated with Ping's own feelings about his people's dread patroness.
He wasn't sure what it must be like, for your demon goddess to be free and coherent, and walking the darker ways of the world. He'd not had more than the slightest twinge of feeling from the hippogriff mare's rather silly ceremony; whatever was her link with the goddess of salt and rot, it didn't carry much beyond her, not even to her ritual-partner. What little feeling he had felt, seemed to signify that the feral goddess of the sea had no interest in thestrals.
Ping was leaving the elders hanging. Right.
"She was not lucid this time. The dream was larger, and emptier. No real sign of activity, aside from the destruction of something that might have been a figment, or perhaps a captured and half-dissolved nocnice."
"You think she's subsiding into another long coma?" asked the elder. "That the prophecies will not be fulfilled?"
"I… can't be sure. I suspect she's husbanding her resources. I saw her eyes. She's not moving, but she's also not gone away."
"Hrm. Curious." The elder looked pensive. "Your ship is on course?"
"Yes, auntie. We are on schedule."
"You realize that you are still in a great deal of trouble. Ambushing your fellow dream-warriors is not something that the college will soon forget."
"I stand by my actions, auntie. Those two were behaving irrationally, and they were reckless. I am not happy about how much of our intentions were revealed, however unintentionally, by them trying to force their way into the expedition. My choice made it something alien and external, an incursion. Made it something we helped repel. Made us the protectors of the regiment, and not the betrayers of our fellows."
The silent elder snorted behind the one who'd done all the talking.
"You are not helping your case, Spear Stallion. If I were you, I'd talk less, and deliver more," continued the one who'd done all the talking so far. "You buy a great deal of tolerance with your skills and your efficiency. But the treasury of your merit is not inexhaustible."
She narrowed her eyes, and sniffed.
"Until The End of Days, Ping."
"Until The Last Night, Auntie," Ping said, trying not to smile in bitter irony.
The elders left, going off wherever ancient mistresses of conspiracy and cultic mysteries go when they're not dressing down their minions. The portal-guard stood stonefaced. Their enchantments rendered them deaf while they were on post.
Sometimes things whispered through the locked door. There had been… incidents, before they'd rendered the guard deaf while on watch.
"That was… are you sure I should be here?" asked Fruits Basket, looking in the direction the dignitaries had disappeared into the gloaming. "I shouldn't be here. This is above my pay grade."
Ping looked at her. The guards ensign didn't have the deafening enchantment that the usual guard wore. More's the pity.
"This is above their pay grade, let alone ours, ensign," Ping sighed. "Here, this should suffice for the week's work. Pass it along to the others." He repeated the ‘blessing', opening his wings in benediction.
"Thank you, Lord Pumpernickel," she said, bowing, her eyes alight with the same dreamstuff that the mares of the Night Shift had carried off.
"Don't call me that, ensign. It is not my name."
"It isn't. It is your rank. I can't believe we had a Pumpernickel within the EUP all this time, and nopony knew!"
"It is imbecility, is what it is. I'm not Pumpernickel. Nopony remembers him, the real stallion. They just remember the damned stories."
"You might as well say that we don't remember the Mother of Dreams, either. Is… is she in there?"
Ping hesitated, afraid to encourage her, but even more afraid to draw the rage of the aunties on this mare if he poured even a dram of the ugliness behind that door into her virgin ears.
"Don't start, ensign. It isn't safe. It is the absolute opposite of safe. I don't know why I can walk within that gate and not be torn to mindless pieces by what's inside there, but nopony else does, not the way I do, not in this generation."
"Not for centuries! How did they keep this secret?"
"They're the aunties. Secrets is what they do. You've been trusted with this, ensign. Be wary. More than one mare has gone to the Plain of Jars because they couldn't keep themselves from sticking their curious muzzle too far inside that door, or opened the mouth under that muzzle and spread around the aunties' secrets."
"My lips are sealed! I'm an ensign of the guard, not a spook!"
"You're a shield-maiden, ensign. Don't forget that. We are our dream-selves while we dream, and our day-selves when we wake. Mixing the two always leads to tears. What's on tonight's schedule?"
"Lulamoon patrol. As always."
"Good, good. I'll be taking the major, and the other officers. The other maidens will handle the troops?"
"Yes, sir. There were more monsters last night."
"There'll be more tonight. We're getting downdream from old Griffonia. Lots of psychic poison in the soil up that way, things get up and walk in the nightscape."
"You've bought us plenty of power, Lord Pumpernickel! No baku or nocnice will break our lines with this to hold the perimeter!"
"Ensign, please…"
"But sir…" she gave him those puppy-eyes, which from the slit-pupiled gaze of a full-grown thestral mare, could be nothing but risible.
Ping glared.
"Spear-Stallion Two Pings, sir."
Ping nodded, satisfied, and went off to look in on the major's dreams.
The battlefield was swept with smoke and stink and the weeping of the wounded.
Bodies laid along the line of advance, and many wore the faces of ponies Ping knew. Gwaine, one-winged and shivering, as a pony held a compress against the terrible wound. A pile of bloodied pink feathers that must have been Fish Eye, unmoving. A winrow of thestrals crumpled where something terrible had passed through their ranks.
Sergeant Gilda, half her head gone, staring accusing at him from one remaining dead eye.
There she was, standing among the spiked guns. A corporal's guard surrounded the bloodied dreamer, screaming her rage at the fleeing enemy, and beating at a blue unicorn mare who wouldn't get up from where she had dropped, catatonic. The dream of the artillerymare was lost to the dreamer, unresponsive. Their surviving artillery ponies shuffled around stupidly, as subordinates do in anxiety-dreams, never doing what they're supposed to do, never getting it right, never working.
In the near distance, guards, griffon and pony, fought and died, and were overrun by shadows, half-seen enemies, or trampled the enemy in turn.
And here came an officer, a tall, faceless brigadier.
"Very good work, Twilight. Top marks! Lovely pattern. You did so very well! Now gather your troops, and do it again!"
"General! We can't! There's nopony left, we can't…"
"Nonsense! You were the top of your class! You have the very best we can give you! Look how well you did!
"Now do it again."
And the filly fell on her haunches, and screamed at the brigadier wearing her own face.
OK, that's enough of that, reset! Ping thought.
And the dream popped like a bubble, leaving the dreamer's psyche trembling. A little anxiety was good for a pony, but despair was probably the wrong lesson to take away.
Probably.
Ping concentrated, and tried to conjure something cheerful and happy.
He wasn't sure what it had evoked in his charge, but the dream-bubble was nicely pinkish, trending towards a blushing red.
None of his business, so long as it didn't develop those black-green-purple streaks again. Ping couldn't be certain that these nasty little dreams were the result of psychic proximity to the nightmare-prone Trixie Lulamoon, but it seemed likely. The two mares were more alike than the major would care to know.
And then suddenly the new dream-bubble popped, and with it, his charge, fallen right out of the dreaming.
Huh. Someone woke the major. Wonder why?
"Come on, Gleaming, you were whimpering."
"I don't know what you're talking about, Gilda. I don't remember anything."
"I know a bad dream when I see one. Twitching hooves, tossing head, sweating."
"I swear, I don't remember anything. Well, nothing much. You were there. And then there you are! Shouldn't you be in your own bunk?"
"Still not sure we should be letting you sleep the whole night through. How's your head?"
"My head's fine, Gilda. It was barely a concussion at all. Where are we, anyways? What time is it?"
"One bell about ten minutes ago, so we're into the middle watch. Which should put us near Maresailles. Or thereabouts. You sure we don't want to put in there?"
"Just for fresh fruit? I wouldn't think so. We need to make better time, Gilda. We're on schedule for Perroneus in three days."
"It's not an allied port. I'm not thrilled about the idea."
"Oh, come on, Gilda. Haven't you ever wanted to look at the Kokonipolis?"
"I'm a winged creature, Gleaming. I don't do well in tight spaces."
"Well, I won't make you come."
"Wait, why are you suddenly blushing?"
"Never you mind! Now go away, and let me sleep. We have a long day tomorrow."
A loud explosion woke Purse Strings from a dead sleep in his hammock. He didn't rate a private cabin like the officers or the master sergeant had - although as far as Purse could tell, Gilda used her 'cabin' as a squadron office, and it didn't even seem to have so much as a hammock to go along with the hammock-hooks the griffish builders had installed in the space.
If you wanted to find the master sergeant, you would do better to look in the operations room, or the major's cabin, where she'd installed her hammock to hang over the major's bunk like a Hen of Damocles.
No, Purse Strings slept in the front office of the number two forward hold, hanging over pallet-loads of dry goods and spare coils of rope. Which meant that a banging noise like that couldn't be the ship's engines back-firing. It was far too back in the ship, half the squadron would be yelling right now if…
And there's the shouting.
Purse kicked the door to his office open, and went stomping off astern, looking and listening.
Through the second hatch, there was his number-one suspect.
"Lieutenant Lulamoon! What have I told you about-"
"Strings! Has anypony been in my storage locker-"
They blinked at each other, stymied.
Then Purse looked down, feeling that shift in the- no, that absence of the reassuring rhythm of the engines purring, vibrating through the decking.
Bugger it sideways, that's the engines!
He looked up at the blue mare, and snarled. "Nopony's been in and messing with your weaponry again, Lieutenant. You feel that?"
"Uh, sort of? I don't really know how this thing-"
"Yeah, nopony else does, either. But so long as Black Gang and the rest of the engineering ratings do, I didn't have to. That is, until it starts making this noise."
"Trixie doesn't hear anything?"
"That's the problem. We're supposed to be one-third steam ahead. Does that sound like one-third steam ahead?"
"Trixie's going to go out on a limb and guess no."
"You're damn right. It sounds like they've emergency-blown the engines."
"Is that a bad-?"
"Very bad, yes.“ The griffon geniuses of the Tenpenny Collective had wedged three full modern engines into the space that the old Daddy Longlegs had held two decrepit last-generation organ-grinders. The sleek new machinery were, with the state-of-the-art enchanted envelope overhead, what made the Princess's Bit a warship, and not an overbuilt lug with reduced stowage capacity. “I'm sorry, lieutenant, I need to go find Corporal Dam."
"Good luck, Quartermaster Strings?" he heard her say, timidly, as he ran off in the direction of his chief mechanic's shop.
Trixie caught up to the quartermaster just as the yelling began. She had followed him deep into the backquarters of the ship, the dark and crowded subdecks where the vast machineries lurked that in theory thrust the Princess's Bit through the skies on mighty wings of ironwood, canvas, and thunderforged steel.
It was eerily quiet, the normal thrumming - which Trixie, not being the sort of pony to pay attention to these things, hadn't noticed until they were gone - were, well, gone. She had always imagined these quarters to be stained as coal-black as the ponies that lurked within, since they almost always were just that - coal-stained ponies, filthy and dirty. The ponies of the artillery corps dealt with materials just as filthy and contaminating as the common gear-jades and wrench-monkeys of the engineering herd, but you never saw Trixie and her commissioned peers dirty like an engineering-pony.
Unless something truly horrible had happened, or the artillery-mares had happened to somepony.
At any measure, Trixie had expected the engine bays to be grease-slicked nightmares, but the Bit was too new, too recently-renovated to have collected the expected layers of filth just yet.
Except where the disaster had occurred. There, outside of the afflicted engine bay, the overwhelming sensation was the stink of burning, of carbon, and things burnt before their time. The back-corridors leading the engine compartments were crowded with underdeck ponies standing or laying down in various states of nervy exhaustion, concern, and confusion. The emergency had brought out the damage-control detachments, ponies from throughout the ship, and multiple unrelated sections. There were corporals and rankers and ponies too humble to be called 'rankers', and there was an omnipresent waft of smoke and stink and the burnt smell of lubricants set ablaze and quickly put out. Trixie spotted three of her own gunners laying with their opposite numbers here and there in the tangle of first-responders.
Trixie had been briefed about the battery sections responsibilities for contributing to the damage control drills, and the accident with the caisson had been a bit of a practice-run for this exact sort of thing. But otherwise, she'd not been involved in the planning, that had been all ship's master Tailwind. There she was, over there, with a gaggle of corporals and ship's mates.
It looked like the damage control parties had come through with flying colors. If Trixie had the slightest bit to do with it, she'd have been proud.
She and Purse Strings followed the sound of the yelling into the darkness of the middle engine bay, between two other, much cleaner compartments. All three bays were missing more than half their magelights, ill-lit by what Trixie guessed was emergency jack-lantern lighting, harsh and flaming.
Within the half-lit, scorched, blackened, grease-splattered middle compartment, was a cabal of dark shades, a coven of engineer-witches. The engineers were gathered, glaring at each other across a tumble of scorched, unidentifiable machinery and the sort of mess that Trixie's imagination had always assigned to 'the engineering herd'.
The ponies crowded within were exactly as filthy as engineers were expected to be, coated more in grease, coal-dust, and filth than properly groomed pony coats. If they ever had cutie marks, the grease, coal, and filth had caked them so thoroughly over that they might as well be donkeys. It looked like a gathering of demons, or umbrum, or some other underworldly shade of spook.
But still, no matter what they looked like, there were ponies under the filth, some head-hung and humbled, and some, equally filthy, with what looked like authority hung loosely about their withers, and the rest looking like they weren't quite sure what was happening.
There were more unicorns in that huddle than Trixie thought they had on the whole ship. Where had they been hiding?
"-didn't destroy the bearings, sergeant," a blacked unicorn mare was squeaking. "And the thaumic coupler is completely intact. Untouched, really. See? Here, and here, the blowout linkages worked like a charm."
"That's because they are charms, you daft bint," grouched one of the other horned lumps of grease and coal-dust in the shape of a pony.
"That's good, trooper, but I am not seeing a functioning-" growled the biggest horse-shaped shade, which by the way they were arranged around his dominance, Trixie assumed must be the sergeant - Black Gang? Also horned, although with a protuberance so short and stubby it might well have been a wart under all that grit and grease.
"Still, the hoppers are shattered, sir."
"I still work for a living, Huddle. How badly shattered?"
"Still, we've put out the fires back towards the bunkers, sergeant."
"Still? Still? Why are you grinning at me? My hoppers are busted, my engines are dead, and you're smiling at me! Why is that a good thing?"
"It means the ship's not on fire, sergeant!"
The big blackened sergeant snarled, and turned to the others.
"What's the status of the engines?"
"Number two's a bleedin' mess," one of the blackened ponies said, grimly, glancing back into the gloom that hid the dimly visible hulk of what must be the rest of the engine. The parts that weren't piled up around them in a half-wrecked state. "Will need better lighting to see what's salvageable. We were able to scram it, mostly. At least one piston's blown out. We'll see 'ow many more are up an' operational or recoverable once I get me lights."
"Number one was off-line," one of the other two said, eyeing her unfortunate fellow. "We were going to do the first thousand-mile overhaul at first light."
"Three was idling," the last one said. "Panic switch worked, doesn't look like we caught any back-blast from the scram. All linkages intact."
"Well, that is good news," said the sergeant. "Good job, Tie Rod. You'll have a job in the morning. So I'm hearin' I've got two workin' engines, is that right?"
"Yes sir." "Yessir."
"No, sir," disagreed the dirtiest and most subdued of the engineers.
"What does that mean, Silk Smooth?"
"I'm the hopper chief, sir."
"For now, yes?" gritted the big stallion, his blue eyes staring out of his blackened face.
"Well, number two, it blew out all our feeds, sir, when it scrammed."
"Why does he get to call Black Gang 'sir'?" asked one grimy pony, sotto voce.
"Because he bucked up royal, that's why, shut up, you jackass," replied another in the half-light.
"And those feeds won't…"
"Feed the engines, nosir. We need to rebuild the whole mechanism. It'll take a couple days."
"Number two needs some parts, Gang," said the pony who'd been yelled at before. Who was he? Trixie frowned at the second-most-blackest and most grease-befouled pony in the huddle. Was that one 'Huddle'?
"What kind of parts? We just launched! We should be able to rebuild every single part of this system!"
"Linkage gems, some mechanical gearing, thermal buffers. The gearing we have on hoof, but the rest we don't actually have in the supplies, sergeant," said maybe-Huddle the engineer in the diamond-dog house. He rattled off a couple more words Trixie didn't recognize or even understand enough to parse.
"Why don't we have any of that, Strings?" the sergeant bellowed.
"Buck you, Gang," the stringy, clean earth pony snarled. "We were going to load those lots before somepony decided they wanted to fill hold number five with broken-down supply carriers and spare scouting rigs and other nonessentials. We thought our newly-renovated engines would last at least one long cruise before burning out bearings and piston-heads. We might be able to repurpose some gems from the uniform supplies for your linkage sparklies. The gaskets and the watsits and the doohickies I got in storage. The hopper feeds? That I definitely need to tap external supplies."
Purse Strings hadn't actually said 'watsits' and 'doohickies', but it hadn't sounded like Equuish, and Trixie wasn't sure exactly what she'd heard.
The sergeant's blue eyes rolled in his blacked face. "So you don't have what I need. Who'd likely have it? Where do we get the replacement parts, Flywheel?"
"I don't know, maybe a proper yard."
"Hey, Strings, where's the nearest proper yard?"
The quartermaster twitched, and looked up. "Nearest yards are in Barkalona, and then next somewhere in the New Territories."
"So Barkalona?"
"Yeah, probably. Unless somepony else cleaned them out, Fort Bing oughta have a fully supplied yard. What the hell happened, Gang?"
"Celestia, I don't know. We're talking fixes right now, aren't we, ponies?"
"I think it was bad fuel, quartermaster," said the hornless hopper pony, Silk Smooth.
"You don't know that!" yelled the number one engine pony, Flywheel.
"What else could it be?" asked the grimy pony beside her. Huddle?
"I don't know… maybe bad parts."
"You think the griffons bucked us?"
"No, but…"
"How would we even know?"
"Needs a rockhopper to look over the damn fuel…"
"Do we even have a rockhopper on board?"
"Don't look at me, I'm from Detrot," said the hornless Silk Smooth. “We need a real rockhopper, I can work these gears and machining, but buck me if I know what good coal looks like.“
"It's your damn business to know whether the coal is good, you plothole!" yelled the horned Flywheel. “Why do you even have a job, Smooth?“
“Ask Gang and the ship's master, you stripped screw! I’ve got a mechanical mark, not a stonemason’s! I can't go into a chrysalis and come out a glittery gold-shod rockhopper with butterfly wings! I'm not the Major!“
“Shut up, the both of you!“ bellowed Black Gang, his blue hornglow holding up a blackened spanner threateningly.
OK, things getting a bit heated in here…
"Look, Barkalona had a rockhopper, last time I was in port!" yelled Purse Strings, moving forward to restrain the pissed-off unicorn stallion. "We can figure it out there!"
"Not if we want to run the other engines with this crap!" snarled one of the other grimy engine ponies. "Even if we did, the feeds are buggered. We'd have to feed it by hoof. Or bucket brigade."
"No! Buck it, no! No putting more of that dodgy crap into my engine!" yelled one of the other grimy engine ponies. Tie Rod?
"Well, buck," swore the sergeant, tossing the ruined spanner into a corner. "If you ponies don't want to use our fuel bunkers, and the hopper ponies say the feeds are buggered… how are we getting to Barkalona? Purse, how far are we from Perroencia?"
"A quarter-day's cruise with engines," said the quartermaster. "Celestia only knows how long using… well, buck, how are we gonna move this great goldplated hulk without engines?"
"Shank's mare, my stallion," said a voice from behind Trixie.
Trixie spun around, looking to see who'd snuck up behind her.
"Shank's mare," said Lieutenant Martin Gale, standing smugly in the hatchway with a gaggle of damage-control ponies peering over her shoulders at the confrontation inside the engine bay. "We've got the wingpower, and the rigging. We can get this hulk into port. It will simply take a bit of lather and bottom. My birds can get you into port. Can you get this rubbish rebuilt when we do?"
The deck stunk of coal badly burned. Giles and his files stood about, checking each others' rigging, their stays and their traces. The lieutenant passed by them as she checked each squad along the deck. Giles looked much more closely after that terror Martin Gale had passed them by, tugging on each harness, carefully following each set of traces, making sure that all of them were properly, cleanly coiled.
Then, it was time for the lieutenant to come abreast of Giles and his cats. She checked each harness, each stay, each knot, and each coil of traces. Giles and his ensign looked anxiously over her shoulder, nodding as she did, wincing as she frowned.
Finally, the inspection was over. The lieutenant and the ensign led each squad out through the gaps between the envelope and the deck, keeping their traces from tangling among the stays holding up the deck, keeping the griffons from entangling themselves with each other. Each squad was passed carefully through the gaps, until it was time for Giles and his squad.
Once they were off the deck and in front of the stricken ship, Giles was able to draw a clean breath. Somehow, the air in front of the drifting Princess's Bit was cleaner, easier, more sweet than the stillness left over that smoky deck.
Whatever had happened below decks to the engines and the fuel, Giles knew it wasn't anygriff's fault who was still on the ship, but still, every griff felt the guilt. Some-griff had done something, somewhere, that had let down the regiment. Somehow.
It was their turn to make it right.
The last squad emerged from the depths of the deck, below the idle envelope. For whatever reason, only the griffon troop had been asked to do this. And somehow, the griffons had responded to that demand.
Nogriff knew what exactly had happened, but everygriff felt that they had to keep up the side, prove the home team was equal to the crisis.
Whatever the crisis might be.
Lieutenant Martin Gale gave out an unearthly screech, like a roc on the hunt. It ended into a most unpony scream which might have been, if you didn't think too hard about it, 'set forth!' in a pinched squeal.
All the griffon squads beat their wings, and leaned against their stays and traces. Giles himself felt that iron pressure against his shoulders and withers, and pushed the harder against the immobility of his harness. He screamed his determination against the heavy, immoveable weight of his harness, and all his squad-griffons screamed back at him.
Their wings beat, once, twice, three times. And the slightest breeze blew against his beak.
He beat his wings again and again, singing a wordless cadence, one-two-three, and then, once again, one-two-three.
And again and again, until the breeze was unmistakable, and the Lieutenant was floating by as the massed griffons strained and screamed and pushed, and bit by bit, mere griffon muscle moved that enormous, idled mass of ship and envelope and broken engines, slowly, slowly towards some distant port which nopony had told anygriff about.
And some foreign land passed, acre by acre, yard by yard beneath the wings of swearing griffish guards, and the bobbing, floating hulk that was drawn behind their sweating wings.
She was looking down at the green fields and stands of trees and other, organized-looking bits of land in between the bare, orange ridges and rock-falls, looking down from her perch in the forecastle beside the goddess's shrine. The landscape below moved surprisingly swiftly. The griffons had unhooked their lines and shrugged off their harnesses, returning by files to avoid cluttering up the deck.
The ship had retained its momentum, with a following wind still filling the steering-sails. To the rear of the ship, some handlers were getting the big roc into her own improvised harness, and from what Fish Eye could see, it looked like they were planning on getting the enormous bird to back-wing the ship as they rapidly approached the port city in the hazy distance, slowing the speeding half-crippled craft.
A distance that was getting less hazy, and considerably less distant, with every hurtling moment they spent unpowered and wind-tossed.
Fish wished the goddess wasn't talking back to her, for that matter.
"-it's only what you unfilial fry deserve, you know. Always neglecting my holy places, never thinking to propriate my august self until some disaster reminds you of your obligations and allegiances." There was a shadow of sea-foam and shore-wrack within the holies, a box of scrap and slightly rotten sacrifices slowly decaying in the shanty that Fish and some of the sailor-ponies had knocked together in the hour or two they'd had to work with just before the dedication ceremony.
Fish Eye hadn't had time to improve it much since then, and the way Auntie A was carrying on, she wasn't sure she wanted to, now.
"Look at this! It's barely fermenting. You should get some more fish-guts to spike these offerings, Eye. Even now, when you need my blessings, you are slighting my worship."
That's it. Fish pushed down her ire, and got into her persona, struggling to not be mad.
"Did I ask for your blessings, Auntie? I didn't. Did I? Oh, dear, oh, dear - did I get confused and ask for something? Oh, tell me I never asked for that, Auntie. Nopony asked me to ask for anything, I promise, I didn't mean it! Only to witness!"
The shadows stilled, and then started swirling the other direction, slowly. Not a great many - not in the daylight like this - but just a few tufts of darkness in the rot and the ooze of the box of holies. "No, child, you didn't ask for my blessing. You may talk like a fool, but you aren't one, are you?"
Fish Eye blinked at her goddess, trying her very best to not look clever.
"Oh, yes, you know better than to play Odd Seabass in front of Poseidon's old ball and chain, don't you? That cleverness never won favor from the gods, only spite and fury and our curses. You can stop tearing up at me, and looking innocent. This isn't my doing, as I have said, and said again. Three times I tell you, I did nothing to your blasphemous flying vessel, or its land-fruited infernal engines.
"If you want to blame a god of the elements, look to the elements which had a flipper in the construction and operation of those mechanical monstrosities. Fire, that tempered the steel, and earth, that filled its ravenous maw, and air, that fed the flame and the earth and the magic that made it all work in supposed harmony. Ask the earth-gods, the spirits of the volcanic vents, those treacherous tarts of the upper airs.
"Or, for that matter, the magical puppets of damnable Harmony, who think to rule over us all, those tyrants of order and conceit and partiality. Your false princess, whom you have sworn allegiance, against all obligations of priesthood and tradition. Look you for priestesses of dirt or metal or fire or air, who might have been offended by your mechanical toys, and caused them to break.
"Priestess Eye, what are you looking at, instead of your goddess?"
Fish jerked, scared and embarrassed that she'd taken her eye off of her goddess, if only for a second. "T-the port city is coming up fast, Auntie. They've taken in the sails, and the roc is straining against the ship's momentum. It- it's surprising. Distracting. Interesting." Fish's mind turned, irrelevantly, to wondering where her equipment had gotten to, the scene cried out for photography.
"What? What's it look like? You know I can't see out of this shrine in the dead of day. Show me! Lend me your eyes, Eye."
Fish looked down at the tiny swirl of shadow, which had tightened, and gotten smaller, more compact, more intense.
She wasn't sure she wanted to do this. But the goddess needed to be reassured. Given something.
And nothing was worse than not seeing. Fish knew she shouldn't, but she felt bad for her goddess.
Fish Eye blinked, and stared hard at the darkness of her Auntie.
And the darkness filled her sight.
Much better, Eye. Go ahead, blink until you can see again. There you go. Fish looked around, her sight slowly returning to her. The goddess's voice was gone, but she could still hear… no, it wasn't sound.
That's the stuff. Ah, the sunlit upper airs. It's been too long since I've seen you with a priest's eyes, Mother World. Oh, it's the Perroencian coast. Is that Fidolentia?
The goddess was thinking at her.
"Uh, no, Auntie A. That's Barkalona. There's a dockyard at Fort Bing that they say we can fix the engines and figure out if the coal in our bunkers is all bad."
Nonsense! If it were all bad, you'd have fallen out of the sky back in Abalone, long before you arrived here. If there's a problem, it will be some little fragment of the supply, you mark my word. Your Auntie Amphitrite has been through these straits a thousand thousand times.
"Several questions, your divinity. One, what's Abalone? Two, we're nowhere near a strait, this is some sort of large peninsula or something like that, I'm a bit turned around right now."
Fool! You were living on the Isles of Abalone for months! How do you- oh, that's right. The foolish surface-dwellers renamed them, didn't they? This is why gods become wrathful, and send the terrible storms and lightning! The falsification of names! The way you mortals endlessly attach a stream of novel NAMES to every thing over wave and under moon. Well, the isles are not mine, so I care not that the ponies and the damnable griffons chose to rename them to - what is it now?
"Uh, are we talking about the Griffish Isles?"
Yes, those. Egotistical birds, they put their names on everything. Griffonia. Griffonstone. The Griffish Isles. Almost as bad as the ponies and their endless self-centered puns.
There was a slight thrumming that transferred through the deck, and Fish Eye looked back across the whole of the ship's upper decks, her eye drawn to the roc and the roc's mighty wings, beating backward against the Princess's Bit's great mass.
My sacred word, is that a royal turul? How extraordinary! Ahem. Damnable, of course, as are all creatures of the upper airs. Not worthy of my time. But… look at that. I've never seen a royal laboring like a common longshorepony before. Eye! Why is there a turul princess in harness attached to your ship?
Fish looked around, confused. "Turwhat? What's a turul? We don't have any of the griffons harnessed up anymore, and we just have the roc working at the moment-"
Roc! That is no corrupted roc I see through your mortal eyes, Eye! What nonsense are you- oh, look at that.
Fish felt a terrible stabbing sensation just behind her left eye, like she'd just tried to look into her own brain.
Well, that won't do, will it? Here, hold still, unasked or not, I am going to GIVE YOU A BLESSING.
Then it hurt a great deal, and everything was surrounded by halos of lambent pain.
Oh, do stop being so dramatical, Eye. It should only hurt for a little while. I swear by my holy name, you mortals and your frailities. I've exempted you from the curse that princess carries around on her head, that's worth a bit of strain, isn't it? Now do stop whimpering and let me see more. Eye? Eye?
Gilda looked down at the shivering hippogriff laying on a cot in her sister's infirmary.
"What happened?" Gilda asked the older hippogriff. "She just keeled over beside that pile of wreckage she calls a shrine, is what happened. The ensign here had to haul her down from the forecastle. Is it an aneurysm?"
"How would I know? Do I look like a neurosurgeon to you? That was Bones' speciality. I'm a meatball surgeon. Looks bad, but not get-out-the-trepan-and-start-drilling bad. Given it happened in the shrine, I think maybe she angered the goddess. Sea and salt, I hope she didn't anger the goddess."
"No, she did not anger the goddess, my faithless niece,", said the hippogriffish lump on the cot with a voice that sent shivers of terror down Gilda's back. The batpony ensign hovering beside Gilda and looking down at her servant with concern jerked back in alarm, knocking over another cot and bouncing off the bulkhead behind Gilda.
The pink mare rose from her bed like something… unearthly, a dead look in her unseeing eyes. "My blessing took my priestess in a way that I was not expecting. She will be fine… in a bit. I believe?"
"Fish? Fish, are you feeling OK? Talk to me, little sister!" squawked the terrified-looking doctor.
"Try and be less of a damned fool than you absolutely have to be, my most idiotic of nieces. How is it that my priestess is, according to her, the disappointment of the family? She knows her goddess when she hears the voice of divinity. Bah, I'm stressing her even more by doing this, stop bothering me, and leave your sister to rest. Griffon! I will want to talk to you about this turul princess you're harboring on this abomination of the winds you call a ship, but I need to find a less taxing method of communication. When my priestess recovers, discuss it with her!"
Then the younger hippogriff just flopped down upon the cot, and started snoring. Fruits Basket stared slit-eyed from her tangle of tumble-down cots and blankets, and Gilda and the thoroughly alarmed doctor looked at each other over the stentorian snores of the little priestess between them.
"So, that happened. I guess she really does have the favor of a hippogriffish goddess?" Gilda asked. The.. she… that whatever that was had suddenly seen through the turul's curse suggested that something ineffable was happening.
"Either that, or it's early-onset schizophrenia," Hawk Eye said, looking angrily down at her sister.
"Is that… something that happens with hippogriffs?" The ensign, Fruits Basket, asked, cautiously, as she extracted herself from the mess she'd made in the corner..
"No, drown it. I just don't want to admit that my sister's been possessed by one of our crazy tutelary deities. At least it isn't the shark-god. I'm not sure how I'd explain the transformations and the obligate cannibalism."
"The what?" asked the ensign. Bug-eyed looked downright peculiar with thestral eyes.
"Never mind, it won't be a problem. Abyssal depths, Fish might even be able to exorcize shark-possessions, if the Lady Amphitrite likes her this much. I'm gonna have to go sit down and think this through, Sergeant Gilda. Can you excuse us?"
"Uh, yeah. We have a lot… I have a lot of work. Right. Later."
Gilda turned around and left the ensign with the hippogriffs and their suddenly terrifying religious issues.
Religion was officer business, wasn't it?
Purse Strings looked back at the stricken Princess's Bit as the batponies and others tried to get her back up-wind from where she'd come to a halt several thousand yards past the dockyards of Fort Bing. He was riding a chariot back to the Equestrian enclave courtesy of a pair of bats assigned to him to get the work started soonest. The port of Barkalona proper extended inland beyond the long, narrow headland upon which the Fort squatted, that held a tangle of dockyards, jettys, piers and repair facilities sheltering between the heavy masonry walls and the rest of the harbor.
On the far side of the harbor squatted the dog city, and Purse could smell the funk from up here. He'd never been fond of diamond dogs, and the Perroencian breed always struck him as especially dirty and inhospitable. They hadn't been planning on visiting this particular Equestrian protectorate, but any port in a storm, you know?
The major had been planning a port call in Perroneus, which was just as much of a dogtown as Barkalona, but at least the Kokoni liked to perfume themselves, you could barely smell the dog on them. This repair jaunt probably put a pin in the purple unicorn's proposed tourism. Thank harmony for small favors.
At least the Equestrian enclave around Fort Bing had been mostly ponies and hangers-on the last time Purse had been in port, and they made the filthy dogs that worked for them wash themselves. Why couldn't it have been a griffon town? Purse liked griffons. Even when they weren't washed, their stink was… reassuring.
All the baths in the world didn't keep the smell from blowing seaward from the inland neighborhoods of the city.
Dogs, bah.
The bats brought Purse's chariot into the courtyard outside of the overseer's office in the dockyards. Purse had dealt with this pony before, and their facilities. They were always willing to do what needed to be done, if you could grease their frogs with the right amount of bits.
It was Perroenica, the right amount was rarely all that much.
The door opened, and a huge buck-you bitch came out of the office. Purse's gaze went up, and up, and - damn, that was a big bitch. Enormous, black, and shaggy, Purse couldn't even see her eyes.
Bipedal, why do they have to be bipedal? Makes me feel like they're always about to pounce.
"What pony want? You come from that big airship cluttering up Mindy's offshore approaches?"
"Uh, what, yeah, what? Er. Yeah, that's the Princess's Bit. We had engine problems over Bayhon. I need to make arrangements for supplies and repairs. Uh, where's Pyrite Glitter?"
"Ha! Pony haven't been to Perroencia recently? Pyrite went home year and a half ago. Caught some pony bug, said he was tired. Retired to Territories!"
That was awful news. Everypony knew that Pyrite Glitter was an easy touch, and more importantly, an easily bribed source of cheap supplies and equipment. And they'd replaced him with… this diamond dog? A local?
"Haw! Haw! Mindy knows that look. We can do business, pony. The docks are open for business, just like it was in Pyrite-pony's day. Who you think balanced the books for cheating pony? What you need, scrawnier pony? What you name, that matter? Mindy vaguely recalls your pony muzzle, but not your pony name. Parrots have you tongue?"
What kind of a name was 'Mindy', anyways? Damned dogs…
"The quartermaster says that we can get the work done here, Major ma'am. Might even be cheap, apparently it's a low-overhead port." Gilda looked over her notes, sitting in her chair beside Gleaming's cot.
"Wish I could have taken the meeting. When does the damn doctor say I can return to duty? I feel fine."
"Head injuries aren't anything to play around with, Major ma'am. Leave it up to us. And this isn't anything really command-centric, anyways. It's engine repairs."
"Do we have any idea what caused the damage? What about that rockhopper they were going to find to check our fuel bunkers?"
"I'd normally send out Magus Heartstrings to dig up a specialist, but, well, given-"
"Yes, yes, we're rapidly running out of uninjured unicorns. We need to do better on that front. Rockhoppers aren't unicorn business, anyways."
"They aren't? You know I don't always quite get the division of labor among you ponies, Major ma'am."
"Harmony, no. Rockhoppers are thoroughly earth pony, through and through, stem to stern. I'd say send somepony from the engineering section, or Purse Strings, but, well…"
"Yeah. Those dweebs are all busier than a butcher after a stampede. Hrm. We don't have a lot of earth pony officers right now. Lieutenant Lulamoon's two ensigns. Maybe Ensign Ramrod?"
"Go ask Trixie to pick her officer most likely to know a rockhopper from a chiseler, and both of them go to find us our stone-sniffer, Gilda."
"Yes, Major, ma'am."
"Also, get that damn hippogriff to clear me for duty, I'm tired of this room. I stink like three-day-old fish. I'm tired of my own company, and I want to run my ship like I ought."
Trixie's hooves hurt her. She and Ramrod and the gunners had been in and out of five different dives in the last three hours, and they were running out of Barkalonan pony bars to trawl for rockhoppers. It wasn't as if there weren't any ponies in Perroencia! The Princess's Bit had limped over enough cultivated fields and groves, the country wasn't a blasted wasteland like the Dragonlands or Burrostan.
And they'd found enough earth ponies drowning their sorrows, that wasn't the problem.
Noo. Noone o' oor kin been fool enough ta go underhill in generations. Noot but Perros and woe beneath the sod, yer ladyship. The soil's for us, dry an' white, or crumbly and brown, or oorange-tinted an' stubborn, alla it waitin' fer hooves to coax it black an' sweet an' healthy-like. Haint never laid eyes on clothes like zhat, yoor ladyship. Yoo movin' into town? We could use a majicker in these parts, ze garrison never sends us oot noopony to doo the necessaries. Noot nearly ooften enoo.
Bah! Hicks! Worse than the swampfolk back home. The further Trixie and her minions got away from Fort Bing, the thicker the accents got, and the dumber the patrons, but still - no matter how incoherent and hickish the ponies got, nopony would admit to rockhopping.
Wasn't Perroencia some sort of mining country? Trixie thought she'd heard something about that. The hills around Barkalona were full of coal mines, and phosphate mines. She knew that you could get Perroencian saltpetre, quality sulfur, and good copper compounds - copper oxychloride and the cheaper carbonate- all of them marked 'Producte de Perroencia' on the packaging.
The sixth dive was no better than the rest. They'd moved from the district along the causeway called Ponytown to the public streets lining the old walls, where the farmers from outside of the city came in with their loads of produce and pigs on the hoof to the markets and the butchering yards 'ultra vires', 'outside of the walls'. Trixie had thought that maybe they'd catch word of a rockhopper pony out that way, since none could be had for love or harmony around the fort itself.
"Ensign, is Trixie doing things the wrong way? Half of them snigger at me like I'm playing three-card mounted with the queen sticking out of my mane where everypony can see the cheat."
"Dang if I know, lieutenant. I don't know why the master sergeant thought I'd be of any help. I'm as much of a dunghoof as the rest of these here hicks. What do I know about rockhopping?"
"We 'icks knowt more 'n yo metropolits and yoor mainlander ways, sparkler," sniped a particularly drunken farmer from the end of the bar, near where Trixie and her gunners had huddled up. "Taint noopony fool enoo ta play in the dark an' Perroy depths when ze Princess's zun's oop over-head in ze air ta give us light!"
"Ze perros is what yoo warnt, yer screwheadedship," nodded the drunkard next down the bar from the loudmouth. "Doon underhill's dooggy work. Nowt place for ponies, doon underhill."
The rest of the bar nodded, like the drunkard had stated a truism, something too obvious to be mentioned by unlubricated adults.
Trixie looked at her minions, and saw them wincing in embarrassment. Just to make sure I understand this…
"Are you saying that there are diamond dogs in this city who work as rockhoppers?" Trixie asked the drunks, trying to meet their wandering, unfocused gazes.
"Wh- whay, why woodn't zher be, yer screwship? Hoopin' is bitches work. Haint zat soo, Wet?"
The sober barkeep behind the cheaply built, badly cleaned bar nodded her head at her customers.
"Zee? Perro's work, roock-moongerin. Hoopin' and hollorin' and a-mookin' aboot in the colliers an' ze like. Noo pony woort zeir cud'd be coot dead underhill!"
"Bobtail blast us all to the moon, why didn't anypony say this the last bar we hit? Or the three before that?"
"Oo doo I knaw, yer screwship? Noot like hai've been in anny ov zose poobs. Wait, Wet, zere's oother poobs in this alicorn-versaken perro-hole yoo ponies call a zity?"
"None zat yoo'd want to darken zeir doors, 'Herd. Yoo knoo 'ow yoo and the coolts get when last cooll coomes," said the now-cross barkeep "An' yoo lot, yoo goot yer answer, didna yoo? If yoo're noot goon buy a beer, goo awn, get oot!"
Trixie and her minions got, Trixie cursing the whole time, and mourning her poor, aching hooves.
Diamond dogs! Where were they going to find a diamond dog rock sorcerer without any contacts?
"...and that's why Trixie came back empty-hooved. There are no rock farmers in Perroencia. As far as Trixie can tell - and this is the first time she's ever been on this side of the Celestial Ocean, so take that with as much salt as you can afford - there have never been rock farmers in Perroencia, or, for that matter, anywhere with settled diamond dogs. Trixie doesn't know why she didn't realize it before - it's right there in the name, isn't it? 'Diamond'."
Gleaming sniffed, looking cross. "Not all diamond dogs call themselves that. The Kokoni certainly don't, and the Chiens profondeurs of Île Minière-"
"Major, have you met any of those dogs?" asked Lieutenant Lulamoon, rudely.
"Well, no, of course, I've never met a dog in person, but in books-"
"You've met diamond dogs, Major, ma'am," Gilda interrupted what was sounding like a typical Gleaming Shield time-wasting stem-winder developing. "Bones and his harem from the 93/1st. Never did quite figure out which warren-duchy they were from. Purse Strings!"
She turned to the guilty-looking earth pony, who was doing his best to fade into the wainscotting. "I thought you knew this place, we came here on your recommendation."
"I did!" he protested, drawing himself up from his slouch. "We shipped out of here for six months straight! Across most of the western Inland Sea. Shipped all over the place."
"Six months? Then why am I hearing nothing but 'I can't find anypony to work with' and 'it'll take time and-"
"Look!" he interrupted Gilda. "It was six months… five years ago. We got scared when that rash of parrot raids seized all of those ships, and we thought we'd be next. I jumped ship in Manehattan, and ended up on that barge you two saved me from not long after. Apparently everypony I knew here has moved on, or retired, or been I don't know what. I don't think the parrots raided Barkalona proper, but I can't find anypony.
"Well, other than that big black bitch."
"Quartermaster!" snapped Gleaming. "Language!"
"What? Naw, ma'am, it's just their name for their fillyfolk. Bitches for the females, an' curs for the colts. Believe you me, you want to deal with the bitches, nine times out of ten. Curs are some of the laziest, meanest people I ever did meet."
"Quartermaster…"
"Fine, fine. This big black female says she remembers me, but I swear I never laid eyes on the shaggy bint before this. Know her or not, she's taken over the local 'yards, and I gotta deal with big boss Mindy because nopony else will give me the time of day without one of Mindy's runners with me. She's got this place locked down so tight it might as well be called Fort Knocks."
"Is it going to affect our budget?" asked Gleaming, looking at the ledger on the table between them. "We're not made of bits."
"Nah, not really. So far her prices have been reasonable. More reasonable than ol' Pyrite, tell the truth. No demands for expensive apple brandy or cheroots or any of the usual bakeesh. I'm still waitin' for the other horseshoe to drop."
"Diamond dogs don't wear horseshoes," Gilda objected, mostly just for the record.
"Well, hadesfire, whatever you call those heavy steel-toed things the dogs wear around the heavy equipment. Looks like hoofboots, actually," Purse Strings conceded. "The equipment and supplies are already on board or comin', and we have a team of dogs who're workin' with Black Gang and his ponies. That's that smell you're smellin', by the way. Locals don't believe in bathing."
"Quartermaster!"
"Yeah, whatever. But I don't know what happened to the old rockhopper who used to run the collier yard here. There's some other dog down there now, and a buncha other dogs I don't know from Apple. I ask about a pony inspection team, they just tell me 'manyana'. Whatever the buck that is. Last time I was here, it mostly seemed to mean 'never', when I heard it."
"Purse…" Gilda drawled, disappointed. "They're setting you up for whatever this Mindy has in store for you. Go ask her."
"Ya think? She's a yard boss, not the coal boss. Or anything like that."
"You know anything about her family?" Gilda asked. "About any of these dogs' clans or family ties?"
"Naw, why would I? I was an assistant purser on the old Tocsin. Never dealt with the dog employees of Pyrite or Moist Towel or any of that lot. They had pony assistants when they came around the ship. Can't find any of those assistants now, not sure where they got to; found ol' Moist, or rather, found somepony knows where she was buried."
"Wait, one of your contacts is dead?" asked Gleaming, suddenly alert.
"Naw, nothing like that, boss, ma'am. Old age. Old Moist was mostly dried up and ancient back in the day. Like a blackened mummy with two polished pieces of coals for eyes."
"Yeah, if no-dog is talking to you on the coaling side of the port, Purse, you can be sure, your yard dog is looking for a handout," Gilda said, interrupting their little diversion before it got too far down a Barkalona blind alley. "Look, can I help? You want to introduce me to your big black bitch?"
"Tartarus take it, Gilda, I don't want you picking up Mr. Strings' bad habits."
"We'll keep the frank talk away from your tender pony ears, Major, ma'am. Will she talk to me, Purse, or is there some weird local custom I'd be walking all over?"
"None that I know about, sergeant. But apparently I don't know nothing, not even what I don't know. Hades, come on, I'll bring you down to the yard."
She was as big and black of a bitch as Purse had promised. Gilda could have looked the dog in her face, eye to eye, if the yard boss's bangs weren't so long that all Gilda could see was black shaggy fur.
"So you hold pony's leash? Mindy was tired of dealing with weasely little lap pony. No one can trust a cur, they have no head for business, curs."
"Hey! I ain't nopony's lap-stallion!"
"Stallion can sit in corner and stop yapping. Mindy don't need distraction. You alpha bitch, big bird?"
"Well, something like that. As big a bitch as needs to deal with chiseling little cheats like you. Mindy? Really? What kind of crime boss calls herself 'Mindy'?"
"My dam named me Mindy. Mindy proud name. When my cur told me he give me new name, for new family, I held him up by his tail until dumb idea fall out of his cur head. There is cur business, and there is bitch business. Names is bitch business, and so is business affairs. No need for curs in either. Stupid ponies never get this right. Which is why stupid ponies never have enough pups, and never seem to be satisfied with bits ponies get."
The big dog strode over to the grimy window, and opened it up, revealing the bustling shipyard beyond.
"Big bird see all that? Mindy made it happen. Old pony, he knew to put work in Mindy's paws. Work bloomed, bred. Had many litters. Mindy and other bitches shovel bits back into business, bought many favors across port. Money never important, favors matter, work matters. We charge you exactly what perros need, to keep business running, perros paid, pups fed, supplied paid for. Bits only matter for books. Keep books balanced, books keep perros in kibble.
"But Mindy's business? Needs more than books. Needs to keep family. You have family, big bird?"
"Not as such," Gilda said. "Family's a different sort of business up in Griffonstone. A contentious sort of business. And all about the blasted bits."
"Big bird from Griffonstone? Mindy has dealt with Griffonstone birds before."
"You have my condolences."
"Ha! Ha! Ha! Mindy sees big bird knows self. Is good. Much can be done, when bitch knows who bitch is."
And isn't that the truth., Gilda thought. "So, what does your family demand, that has to do with why we can't find any rockhopping coal-masters to check our bunkers, and find out why our coal blew out one of my engines?"
"My cur, Mortimer, his sisters, they run coal mine up in hills. Big mining family, my cur. All my sister-wives, they my bitches, not Mortimer's bitch sisters' bitches. Nothing to do with Mortimer and his arrogant family. We solid. We united. We keep Mortimer around because Mortimer knows his place, and has good seed. Good litters. But good cur more than good seed. Once we rearrange Mortimer's thinking, he settle down. And never was like some curs in Barkalona, do nothing but sit around getting fat, eating bitches' pay, doing nothing useful. Once we break in cur, Mortimer becomes good cur."
OK, that's more than I ever needed to know about this dog's family dramas… "I'm hearing a 'but' coming right about now?"
"Yes, but. Mortimer's sisters owed many favors. Annoying favors. Mindy spends half her time lining up contracts for Mortimer's sisters' substandard coal. Would like to cut losses on that. Needs big favor. Mindy needs big favor from you, from fancy new pony airship, fancy new pony regiment in town."
Why do I think I'm not going to like this? "OK, I'll bite. What can we do for you and your sisters-in-law that would result in us getting our rockhopper inspection?"
"Is simple, big bird! You let Mindy's niece do inspection!"
Ok… what am I missing? "So what's the catch?"
"You take Mindy's niece! Give her nice cushy job! Get Mindy's annoying, spying niece out of Mindy's fur for next, let say, six months? Year? Longer, if possible? Mind you, don't kill or disappear Mindy's annoying niece. Defeats purpose if niece killed. But Mindy needs bad-example, irritating niece somewhere where irritating niece not get other pups in trouble, turn other pups heads, give other pups ideas. Big bird understand?"
"Is this niece trained as a collier and rockhopper?"
"Perros don't call it rockhopping, but yes, niece has màgia terrestre. Has far too much of la màgia. Would stand to have less of la màgia. If big bird and ponies could see to draining annoying niece dry, without killing niece, would be best. Isn't that right, Reina?"
It was at that point that Gilda spotted the smaller dog who'd been staring through a cracked-open door at the back of the office, spying on their discussion. Her limpid brown eye, visible through the door with her black bangs brushed to one side, watching the big black bitch and Gilda, widening at having been discovered.
Watching the little perro's future be decided. Gilda suddenly felt vertigo, like she was on both sides of that grimy door, the full-grown foreign sergeant, and the scared, scrawny fledgling hiding in corners, and looking for a way out of someplace an awful lot like here.
Gilda de Griffonstone turned to the crime boss and/or put-upon, irritable aunt, and smiled.
"I think you have a deal. What kind of a name is 'Reina'?"
Well, that wasn't true. Her horn hurt, and her head ached, and she didn't feel up to going and finding something to occupy her somewhat-scattered attention, but she was rapidly getting tired of the back room of the infirmary with its still-stink and silence. The doctor had her on some sort of opiate that stretched out time, or collapsed it, or made time into an accordion.
Whatever, it made time weird, and Lyra was tired of it. She couldn't think, and it was boring her to tears. She didn't think she'd ever turn junkie, if this was what being stoned out of her mind was like.
Lyra was thinking of spitting out the next pill the doctor gave her, or refusing medication, or whatever you did to stop being pumped full of pain meds. Had there been needles involved? She couldn't remember. She'd just overstressed her horn, it wasn't like she was missing a hoof or a leg!
"Oh, look at this, yet another fool. Where do you find them all, priestess?" muttered something in a horrible whisper.
There was someone in Lyra's room. When had they come in?
"What, Lyra? She's nopony important, Auntie," said the somewhat-subdued voice of that pink hippogriff from the batpony troop. She was barely recognizable without the cheerful bubbliness.
Lyra concluded that there were two someones in her room.
"You will let your Auntie Amphitrite determine who is and is not 'important', Eye," the other voice said eerily.
Lyra slowly turned her head towards the voices, and there the pink hippogriff was, lying on the other bed in the room. Cot? Was this a cot or a bed? It seemed too substantial for a cot, but it wasn't what she'd call a 'bed', either.
The hippogriff was staring back at Lyra. Why were they still 'griffs' when they had ponies' rears instead of cats'? Shouldn't they be bird-horses? Wait, no, that was pegasi. Raptorpones?
"What is wrong with her? Why is she staring at us?"
"Uh, I don't know. I can ask. Mistress Lyra? Magus Heartstrings? Oh, I don't know how you address a wizard. Auntie, what form of address do you use for wizards?"
"Fool of a Fish! You address pony wizards with javelin barrages. It is never wise to allow a pony wizard as close as you are now."
Lyra's half-focused eye wandered, searching for the second speaker, and failing to find it. Or her? Lyra's thoughts chased each other like cartoon mice around the feet of an equally stoned cat. Horse. Thing.
Do pink hippogriffs eat cartoon mice?
"Well, we can't do that, she's part of the regiment. Well, a friend of the regiment? Some sort of volunteer? Missus Lyra, what's your actual relationship with the Crystal Guard?"
What? They were asking her something?
"Uh… a bit more than a one-night stand, but not quite engaged yet?" If Lyra was in a relationship with the Guard, why wasn't she getting more sex? Sounded kind of hot, actually, being the darling of a cavalry squadron. Maybe she could talk Sparkle and her big hen into something fun, put on a show for the troops...
"Your wizard seems disoriented, Eye. Perhaps you should get your incompetent sister."
OK, that voice definitely didn't have a body to go with it. Or else it was hiding behind the lance corporal.
"Hey! There's no cause to be so nasty to Hawk Eye!"
Or maybe she had a mouse in her pocket. Maybe it was her lunch? Lyra was glad she was a herbivore, she didn't think she could handle food that talked back to you.
"I rather thought that you were cross with your sister."
It was a particularly evil-sounding mouse, if it was one. Maybe Lyra could eat talking food if it sounded… evil. Wicked.
"That's that, and this's this. I don't want you bad-beaking Hawk in front of others!"
"The wizard is unlikely to remember this conversation in her altered state. I know drugged ponies when I see one. Or rather, when you see one, Eye."
Damn it all… "Would you stop talking around me like I'm not here?" Lyra tried to say. It came out something more like woobya stahp takakhin rund meh laik haim here naught?
She really needed to stop taking whatever Hawk Eye gave her. This stuff wasn't just an opiate, it was some sort of muscle relaxant.
The pink hippogriff got up off of her bed, and came over to loom over Lyra's bed.
"Wizards have become much less impressive since the last time I visited the sunlit world, Eye," she said in a creepy dead-eyed monotone.
Wait. That definitely came out of the hippogriff's beak.
And her eyes, what was wrong with her eyes?
"Perhaps your wizard is defective?"
"Hey! No insulting the major's friend, either!" the hippogriff said, turning her head and looking like what Lyra had remembered of the beaked mare, her eyes back to their usual selves. "Or our volunteer magus. Or whatever it says in the paperwork on file in Corporal Ping's office."
"You are becoming quite assertive for a mere mortal, Priestess Eye. I rather like it. Do go on," the pink hippogriff said, and the eyes were back.
Lyra really wasn't enjoying her first bad trip.
Dogs. Why did it have to be dogs? Master Sergeant Gilda had made the deal, and fixed Purse's mess for him, but why did it result in smelly, stinking, looming dogs all over his ship?
He knew it wasn't actually his ship, but you got attached, you know? Possessive.
The team of rockhopping Perroencian dogs were big, and shaggy, and smelly, and they knew exactly what they were looking for. Purse had gotten his three ratings to lever open each bunker hatch as they went, and the damn dogs went digging into the coal like… he didn't know what metaphor to use. Dolphins porpoising in the open sea was what came first to mind. But dolphins were noble, and beautiful, and strange.
Purse had once watched a pod of dolphins, far, far away, colored powder blue and pink and orange, racing each other towards the sunset, so tiny and graceful in the distance, like darting sea-birds in a flock.
This wasn't that. This was thrashing claws, and fountains of crumbly coal, and clouds of stinking coal-dust, which somehow was drawn down in an unnatural, very un-dust-like fashion, dispersed before they could form a flash-fire threat from any wayward sparks.
A dog head poked up out of the coal, near where Purse Strings was crouching beside the bunker hatch.
"Found it, buck-toothed pony. Here, catch." The older dog pulled something out of the coal, flinging it at Purse's head.
He caught it by reflex, before it caught him in the face. Purse looked down at what the damn dog had tried to put his eye out with.
It was a lump of coal.
"What am I looking at, fellas?" he asked, confused.
"Harriet not a 'fella', pony. And that carbó thauminós."
Purse tried to parse what little dog-speak he knew. Carbo- that was coal, wasn't it?
"Yeah, it's coal. Isn't it supposed to be coal?"
"Cavall ximple! That not antracita, that carbó thauminós. Pony put carbó thauminós in vaixell reactor, pony get un esclat, o un incendi."
A smaller dog head popped out of the coal, next to the larger, incoherent bitch's head. "What my esteemed mentor here is trying to say, my dear stallion, is that you've been feeding thaumically active coal into an engine rated for simple anthracite. Judging from the paperwork. Too much oomph for modern engines, if they're built to burn common coal, like yours are. Where did you get this coal?"
This was bunker number 3. "I think it's from the original load that the old Daddy Longlegs came into the refit yard with. We've been burning through the newer coal. I'd have to check the consumption logs."
"Well, we haven't finished looking yet," said the smaller one. "Oi, senyora?"
"Oi, Reina petita. Seguim buscant. Podria haver-hi torpedes de carbó o alguna cosa així sota tota aquesta merda màgica."
Purse gave up trying to follow the dog's barking, she'd entirely given up on Equish. He looked back to the little black bitch with the big vocabulary.
"Yeah, we not done looking. Could be something worse under all of this magic coal. Either way, you'll have to dump it, this stuff will make your engine blow out. Again. I get you a deal on replacement anthracite. Cheap!"
Purse knew a come-on when he heard it. "We'll see, I want to talk to Boss Mindy first. What did you say your name was, girl?"
"Tia Mindy will tell you the same thing I just did!
"And I'm Reina. You can call me Queenie! Tia Mindy says I'm shipping out with you ponies!"
The little bitch talked like it was a done deal.
Purse was afraid it was.
Storm take it, you know they're gonna saddle me with her, he thought as the toothy bitch grinned up at him, her bangs hiding her doggy eyes.
A queue of collier boats were idling for their turn beside the Princess Bit's port side hatches. The carrier hadn't been designed to dump out the contents of her coal bunkers - coal was supposed to be consumed via the engine boilers, not pitched over the side like a pony vomiting up perfectly good sharkmeat.
A few beats of Giles's wings, and he was over the deck, looking down in the first of the boats, which the port-dogs were anchoring in place, below the mouth of the jury-rig some of the Bit's sailors and the rest of the port-dogs were fussing over.
Didn't want to dump that stuff right into the harbor, after all. It was magic, whatever that meant, and Giles certainly didn't know. Winds only knew what might happen if you left magic coal to steep at the bottom of an active bay. Maybe giant mutant crabs?
Giles looked down at the stove-bed over which Giles' shark had been ruined, a metallic affair the sailors called a camboose. (Giles was still salty about how the cooks had wasted his catch. Stupid ponies, not knowing how to prepare shark. Giles wasn't even a sea-shore griffon, and he knew that you needed to soak the stuff in… he wasn't sure what. But it shouldn't have tasted like it had. And that great shark chowder cookout had started so well…)
The camboose was tipped over, now, its iron and stone lining pointed westward, the hatch upon which it was mounted propped open, exposing the bunker below and Giles' griffons waiting for the signal to feed the improvised bucket-chain-and-sluice rigged to carry up out of the bunker, over the deck, and over the side of the ship.
It was better than a bucket brigade, but not by much.
Some of Giles' griffons were leaning on their coal-shovels, beside the deck-side rig, waiting on the ensign's order to start again. The rest of the squad were down in the bunker, standing on top of the pile of coal, or gathered around the bucket-chain dangling through the hatch. Giles dropped down into the bunker, to make sure the ones out of sight weren't getting into mischief during the delay. The dogs and ponies were still fiddling with the bucket-rig, and its wheels and gearing, and cursing in two languages.
"Lance Corporal, why haint the bluddy bats doin' this dog's work?" demanded Giles' laziest tom, looking down into the hatch and doing absolutely buck-all. "We was the ones pullin' the Bit inta port, and befor' that-"
Giles flew back up through the hatch, and poked a talon in the trooper's face, getting ready to ream out the trooper.
Then the ensign started waving from the huddle by the sluice.
The ponies and dogs were done with their fiddling and the jury rig, it was ready to go.
"Shut your bleedin' beak, Gillie," Giles snarled. "And get down in that bunker. You have time to talk, you have time to dig. We need this bunker for actual coal. Unlike you'd like to 'arness oop again and haul the blessed Bit around for us for the rest of the tour? We could all sit on the forecastle an' cheer you on! No? So get to work, before you get us all on work detail for the rest ov th' month!"
Giles pushed the trooper into the open hatch, grabbed his coal shovel, and followed him down into the coal-blackened mouth of Tartarus that passed for a bunker.
They put their shoulders into it, and made the magic dust fly.
Purse Strings felt like he was going to cough up a lung.
"Queenie! Can't you do something about this dust?" Purse demanded. The bucket-chain creaked and moaned, four ponies and two griffons working the gearing and treadmill that brought the buckets up out of the bunker, another two griffons minding the long funnel taking the spill over the side of the ship. The sound of the griffons down below shuffling was tapering off. They were stuck deeper in the manky mess than the quartermaster or the rest of the laboring troopers, who were standing close enough to catch some of the effect. He was afraid of what might be happening to the troopers at the bottom.
"Oh, per amor a Proserpina, am I to be a dust-setter for the rest of my days? How far the noble get of Casa Negra falls, that she reduced to doing what a decent mister or spritzer rig could do - without any màgia terrestre whatsoever." The arrogant dog bitched, but at the gesture of a paw, the dust fell out of the air, and the griffons down below in the bunker could be seen again. "Why don' they have masks on? You lot! Get some Plouton-damned bandannas over you idiot beaks, before you grow new head, or turn into breezies!"
"I'd like to become a breezie, marm! Nogriff'd be askin' a wee little pony-bug thing to shovel coal wit their delicate leetle hoovesies, wouldae?" smarted off a damned smart-beak from below. Purse guessed it was the one the supervising lance corporal swatted across his back with a coal shovel.
"Laugh it up, you silly birds!" barked the little queen. "See what happen when fool bird get small enough to be swatted like horsefly!"
"Is it likely to actually mutate troopers, or the crew?" Purse asked, quietly.
"What, nah, nah. Just give them the cancer, or the pulmó negre, or Proserpina know what. Where did you ponies get your ship, in box of crackerjacks? Like you never sailed before."
"A lot of them haven't. And I can't be everywhere," Purse said, defensively. He was just the quartermaster, melody take it.
"Yeah? Sounds like ponies need someperro to take charge of this mess of a ship. Good thing Tia Mindy bulldog you into taking Reina on, wasn't it?"
Purse wasn't sure whether he wanted to glare at the little tyrant, or shake his head at her nerve.
"Come on, Queenie. I need to introduce you to the Major. The pony who actually owns this ship. And could turn you inside out with a blink of her eye, 'magia terryestria' or no."
"Yeah? We'll see, pony."
"Call me Quartermaster Strings, Queenie."
"Only if you call me Reina, Oncle Stallion. Queenie's for friends. You want to be Quartermaster Strings, I'm Reina."
Purse snorted. And led the little tyrant back towards the squadron offices.
"She's not just talking to mythical goddesses, your lordship-"
"Corporal. My name is Corporal Two Pings, ensign." Ping looked at the closed hatch behind her. They were alone, and nopony was likely to overhear, but ponies were going in and out of the small, cramped offices all the time, especially with the ship full of repair-perros and mechanical contractors. Although as long as the master sergeant was using her cabin as additional office space, Ping supposed it wasn't as big of a danger as it might otherwise be.
"Your corporalship, sir-"
Sigh. Well, foalsteps.
"-but they're talking through her now. It's so creepy!" the mare whined, the whites of her eyes showing around her slit-pupiled irises.
"Plenty of ponies show signs of split personality disorder after contact with the dream world. Are you sure it isn't nocnice possession?" He knew it wasn't, Ping was just feeling contradictory today.
"She hasn't had contact with the dream world! I don't think I've ever seen her have a nightmare!"
"All ponies have contact with the dream world, and most sophants as well. I can look into her dreams tonight if you like."
"If you don't mind, s- corporal. And the eyes! I've never seen nocnice possession, but unless one of my mentors forgot to mention it, I thought they didn't go black-eyed." She knew it wasn't nocnice possession, Ping knew it wasn't nocnice possession, but the mare clearly wasn't ready to talk about her bat-hen housing a literal goddess.
"Well, no, generally they don't. It's mostly personality changes and an increase in sociopathic behavior. You do know it is probably just that sea-goddess of hers, and nothing worth our worrying over it. We know enough about the travails of dealing with overbearing aunties, don't we, ensign?" Ping looked at his not-underling. Not a minion.
Shadows take it, it's daylight. Do I not get any time off anymore?
"Uh. Yeah. So, I have a joint patrol with that company of the Northern Languedockiens," Fruits Basket said, evasively, her eyes darting around.
Mother take it all.
"Yes, you do, ensign. You know perfectly well what's expected of you, don't you, Ensign Basket?"
"What, aside from what the captain said in the briefing?"
We're not talking about the blasted patrol, you-
"No!" Ping spat. "No... just that. Um." She was staring at him with puppy-dog eyes. I've got to stop using that metaphor with an actual dog on board. "Look…"
She quivered at him.
Ping gave up. "Fine. Follow the briefings. Don't get attached, don't get involved, don't get lured into any alleyways, make sure your files don't separate." Ping almost snarled at the relief in the ensign's eyes.
"Your basic urban patrol rules, yeah. We have done this before, corporal." And there she went, all duty and junior-officer swagger.
"Not as the Guard, you haven't," Ping said, trying to puncture her role-playing. "Remember that. We're not colonial troops, whatever those time-servers at the fort think."
"I never even knew there were Equestrian troops in this part of the Inland Sea!" And… the conversation was over. If only she'd leave.
"Well, yes," Ping said, suppressively. He looked over her shoulder, trying to give her the hint. "Can't say any of it is in my experience, either. You're going to be late, Basket."
"What? Stars and shadows!"
And she was gone.
Ping returned to his invoices and expenditure reports. The company clerk's job was never done, unless the company clerk wasn't doing his job.
And he wasn't doing his job as long as Baker Troop didn't have a proper lieutenant. He'd have to drop a word in the Major's ear.
Eye - Fish Eye's hovering sister finally let her out of the smelly back room in the infirmary. Hawk had nodded her head condescendingly when Fish had shared her concerns about the injured unicorn's mental state, and the sickening swirl of oily contamination she'd had all over her head and shoulders.
Hawk Eye looked different, too, but the slight, warm glow she'd taken on wasn't nearly as upsetting as the way that the colors sluggishly surged and yawed around inside the green pony, like a jug of milk going spoiled.
Fish moved slowly across the main deck of the Bit, looking at all of the sailors and troopers and big doglike locals trotting here and there under the envelope above, and up and out of the hatches below.
The goddess's running commentary was subsiding to a querulous rumble at the back of Fish's mind, like a second internal monologue, but the funny lights and colors weren't going away, and if anything, were getting more distinct.
And wow, that was something. The big, big bird that Fish had always thought of as 'Lady George's roc' was roosting just in front of squadron headquarters, glowing like a fairy light the size of an apartment building.
Well, maybe a Canterlot rowhouse. Bigger than the goddess's shrine, that was dang sure.
It was still a big bird, same as before. Maybe the eyes and beak were more intelligent, less bestial?
And then there was the big golden hat, dripping clouds of black ooze like something… not nice. Not even not-nice in the way that the goddess's shadows were kind of a bit icky, if you thought about it for too long, or were eating, or just generally let your gorge get away from you.
Not nice clean rot, but something… wrong.
Although as big as the roc-bird-thing was, even a golden hat as big as this one was barely a jaunty chapeau, cocked over its crest.
A nasty, drippy, nauseating chapeau.
"Why are you wearing that ugly thing?" Fish asked the not-roc-thing, before she thought better of it.
Wait! Eye! We were going to-
At least Fish had figured out how to keep the goddess from vocalizing using Fish's own vocal cords.
Mostly.
The big not-roc thing was looking down at Fish, and its eyebrow was crooked in a positively hippogriffish expression of confused interest.
"Which ugly thing, lance corporal?" it- no, she said in a deep, rumbling, feminine voice.
A rather pretty voice, now that Fish could hear it.
Wait, that's Lady George's voice! Fish thought, surprised.
"Why do you sound like you ate Lady George? Did you eat Lady George? Why didn't anygriff say anything! Poor Lady George! Give her back!"
The big not-roc-hen reared back in astonishment, her expression quickly shifting to something that looked alarmingly like offense taken. The rest of her glowed golden like the setting sun, warm and comforting and rich and deep… except where the black tarry filth from the golden hat stained her noble head and dripped down her back.
Eye! Don't provoke the turul into eating you! I just blessed you, I don't want all that power wasted in the inefficient digestion of an irritable greater raptor!
"I'm pretty sure you didn't just accuse me of eating myself, little morsel. You want to rephrase that? And stop staring at my roc."
"I have it on good authority you're no sort of roc, Miss Greater Raptor or whatever yo- yes, yes, auntie, I remember. You. Big scary bird thing, why are you a turul?"
First rate, Eye. Remind me never to try and use you for negotiation with anything more powerful than me. You say you are the scion of a diplomatic family? How my hippogriffs survived the surface world as long as they did with diplomats like you, I cannot imagine.
"The same reason you are a hippogriff, lance corporal. I was hatched this way. Are you always this foolish?"
"No, I think I've gotten worse recently. Comes of bad company, probably. The house matron at school always said I'd come to a bad end."
Well, this is an opportunity, we might as well take it. Eye, ask your new friend about the cursed artifact.
"My auntie wants to know why you're wearing a curse that looks like a big blotch of black tar with a golden hat somewhere in the middle of it?"
"Your auntie, is it? Do you have a mouse named Auntie in your pocket, lance corporal?"
"No, I have a goddess in my head! Or maybe my eyes. Auntie A, are you mostly possessing my eyes, or my soul?"
Little of one, bit more of the other. Concentrate on the big sylph-get, Eye, and stop worrying at the mechanics of my blessing.
"A goddess. Right. You hippogriffs really aren't much like your cousins, are you?"
"Which cousins are that? The ponies, or the griffons?"
"Either. So you can see through my curse, can you? When did this happen?"
"Day or two ago! They've been keeping me in the infirmary since then, but now I'm out. Which is more than you can say about poor Miss Heartstrings. I wish I knew more about medical matters and such, but Hawk Eye says it'll just take time, and all Auntie A says is that healing isn't in her remit."
"Right… so you can see my coronet? And the curse isn't affecting you?"
"Not anymore! Auntie A blessed me! Sea and salt, that hurt. I don't recommend being blessed by your goddess, if you can avoid it. Well, it's true, Auntie. I don't care, we're all mortals up here above the surface. Wait, Miss Turul, are you mortal?"
"Yes, little lance corporal. I can't keep calling you that, and I certainly don't want to be called 'Miss Turul'. Call me George. You are?"
"Fish Eye! Oh, fine, Auntie. She says I should start introducing myself as 'Priestess of the Almighty Goddess of the Depths and the Storms, Great Amphitrite!'"
The big turul crooked another eyebrow at Fish.
"Yeah, that's what I thought, too. I'm Fish to my friends, and, apparently, Eye to my goddess."
"Charmed. Nice to meet another - well, you're not a princess, are you? Or any sort of royal."
"Oh, no, we Eyes are as common as smelt. Well, I guess the royals liked us well enough for Mom to get that appointment to Canterlot, and I suppose Mom rubs wings with the pony nobility and their Princess and all that, but nopony ever thought much of me at school, or anywhere else, either."
"Huh. So… it's a religion thing? You think you can maybe use that on the ship? Some sort of… I don't know, sermon or something, to break the curse? I'm tired of pretending to be a stupid animal."
"Hey, making ponies think you're a dumbass is the best, Miss George! You shouldn't knock playing the fool. I find it gets you all sorts of places without too much fuss."
Yes, Eye, I have noticed a certain trend…
"Don't interrupt, Auntie. I'm making progress!"
"You have some issues with speaking the silent parts, and forgetting to say the out-loud portions, don't you-"
"Fish Eye!" Fish insisted, staring up at the turul.
"Miss Eye, yes," the turul agreed.
"Aw, so you're going to join Auntie A like that? Fine, I can deal with being ganged up on. She wants to talk to you, anyhoo. You mind her talking to you?"
"Why would I object to communication with the divine?" asked the great bird.
"Most likely because your own divinities would smell my scent upon your royal self, turul. Do you not have any gods of your own to beg help or blessings?" Auntie A said through Fish, in her pushy, godlike way.
The big bird recoiled like Fish had just tried to stab her in the face. Rude!
"Well, that's disturbing. You're a goddess, milady…?"
"Amphitrite, mistress of the depths and the sea-touched storms, yes. And patroness of these foolish fish the surface world knows as hippogriffs." Fish felt the strangeness of her throat and beak moving without any intent on her part. She'd learned to not tense up, so it didn't hurt anymore, but it felt weird.
"I wouldn't know," said the turul. "You don't see many hippogriffs these days. I think I've met one stallion in the months and years since my exile, other than these Eye sisters you have here."
"Yes, well, problems, you know. Politics. Surface issues. Not really my remit, surface politics. They are by and large safe now, my children."
"You do safe, goddess? You can do safe?" the turul asked.
"Not for you and yours, wind-child. Nothing against you, or yours, but I have no purchase on the greater raptors, your mountains, your high thermals, or your frozen aeries. The high winds and the spirits of the upper airs should love you enough for your own purposes, or what's an affinity for? Do you not have gods of your own, wind-child?"
"Religion is rather out of fashion in the modern world, if you have not noticed, oh wise and ancient goddess of the deeps," said the turul with a voice full of irony.
"Pfft,” Auntie A buzzed with Fish's thickened tongue, rattling against her beak. "The influence of that white pest up on her own high mountain, no doubt. I hear tales, so many stories. But mountains are as far out of my remit as your aeries, Princess Gyongyi. Did I get that right?"
"Close enough, your divinity. You know enough to address me by my proper name?"
"I am a goddess of proper names, princess. Ponies, griffons, hippogriffs and all the rest of the lesser mortals, they think to hang this name or that on a thing, and assume that nogod is paying attention. But some of us - or, as it may be, at least one of us - is paying attention. Before Eye here gave me a view on the surface world, I couldn't see much of anything. But names? Names I read, names I hear, names I can - not see, but know.
"Names matter, Hercegnő Gyongyi, little Gyongyike, Lady George, so many other false names… you have too many words you use like masks. You should look to that. Do you wish to be nothing to nobird, or trash to everything?"
The big bird looked down at Fish and her goddess, troubled. "I would be queen to my people, goddess."
"An admirable desire, Hercegnő Gyongyi. And you labor under a terrible curse, whose fault, I know not. I am neither omniscient nor omnipotent. I will never claim otherwise, and you and yours, so high up into the airs, on mountains with nothing of the sea about them, have little touch with my element or my realm. But I am sympathetic. It is a terrible thing, to be separated from your people, those who by all right are yours to protect, taken so far from where you can protect them. Insofar as I can help, and your absent gods touch not upon the mortal world, I will help in their stead.
Fort Bing had a firing range. And copious supplies of black powder, shot, and targets. Not to mention no locals who would object to the endless thunder of target practice.
Lieutenant Lulamoon was in Elysium.
Her four falcons, arrayed in battery, fired a proper volley, hardly rippling at all. Each barrel slapped back on their respective carriage. The squeal of their trunions as they rubbed, barely, within the proper orbit of their well-aligned respective cap-squares were lost in the violence of the detonation of the powder-charges. The sledges, braced against the range-bench by lightly driven spikes and skid-chains, and weighed down by the carriage-ponies squatting upon their trails and re-rigged harnesses, barely recoiled.
Prolonge was for cowards, something mean and unyielding said, deep in the artillery-mare's blackened soul. Lieutenant Lulamoon didn't let her falcon crews prolonge-fire in practice. It was bad form.
I only want them prolonging if I order it. Accuracy is better than safety, and I don't want my ponies trained to flee the things they kill.
So long as the falcons fired, Lieutenant Lulamoon had no give in her, and would not see any give in her gunnery.
Her horn glowed, and the long-sight cantrip brought the target barrels into focus. What was left of them.
"Three out of four hits!" said Lieutenant Lulamoon. "Unsatisfactory! Crews, swab and re-lay!"
She turned to her range ponies.
"You lot, get out there, lay another spread of target barrels! Do you see those white ones? I want them spread through the formation, with the brown ones. Go!"
The assistants from Charlie Troop scrambled, collecting the hooped targets so helpfully provided by the garrison, along with the roundshot and powder Lieutenant Lulamoon was working through with profligate abandon. The Crystal Guard isn't paying for any of this, unless one of my fool crews lets one of my precious falcons burst.
That thought occurring to Lieutenant Lulamoon, she walked the falcon line, and eyed her crews as they worked through the manual of arms.
For once, she didn't need to yell at any of her troopers, or even her ensigns.
Not even Short Fuse.
She'd asked for the little red colt. No, stallion. And there he was, sweating alongside the number three falcon's crew, stripped down like a common falconeer, and dry-sponging away.
Lulamoon'd thought the little stallion would do, and he was. Wings or not.
"Falcons ready!" shouted Ramrod.
"Hold in place, ware the range!" Lulamoon shouted back. The Charlie troopers were scrambling out of the range. They needed to be better trained; in Lulamoon's opinion, Fuse's fellow Sunburst had his work cut out for him.
"Battery! You have five targets! I want to see at least four destroyed targets! You also have multiple non targets! If I see any of those destroyed, you are in my doghouse! This is Perroenica, there are very, very many ways to be in the doghouse here! Aim for the brown, not the white!"
As Lulamoon was lecturing her falconeers, the last Charlie trooper made it into the trenches, and Lulamoon nodded.
"Range is safe! The falcons are yours, ensign!"
"The falcons are mine! Gunners ready!"
"Gunners ready!" The gunners and the second gun ensign took out their looking glasses and round-rules, eyeing their targets and spinning the slides on their rules, estimating the distance of the targets floating in their respective flooded ditches.
"Load falcons, solid shot!"
The loaders and the rammers did their dance, and in less than the fifteen seconds demanded by the manual, they were ready.
"Lay falcons!"
The four gunners slapped their glasses and round-rules into their half-saddles and sprang forward to adjust each falcon's aim according to their rough calculations. Their target barrels, brown and white, bobbed in the distance.
"Clear falcons!"
"Fire!"
And there was another roll of thunder, and Lieutenant Lulamoon thrilled to the sweet unified sound of a battery in harmony, no ripple whatsoever.
Four brown barrels shattered downrange, the last remaining target and the white innocents untouched by her falconeers' fire.
"Swab falcons!" her gun-ensign bawled.
"Ensign!" Lieutenant Lulamoon shouted. "Rotate crews one position! Once again, target the white barrels this time!"
They'd do another full cycle through the crews, then they'd take the falcons out of battery by the numbers, and it would be the turn of the Charlie troopers and their falconets, stored in a row of carriages, along with their mounting pivots.
It wasn't as good as having them work the swivel guns from the ship's own swivels, having them practice out here on the range, but there wasn't any chance that the major and the master sergeant would let Lulamoon moor the Bit on the range.
Not while they were repairing the engines and the feeder hoppers.
Lieutenant Lulamoon observed her falconeers, and revelled in the freedom of the manual of arms, rigidly, carefully, whole-heartedly embraced.
Meanwhile, the Lieutenant was purging all of Trixie's embarrassment and mortification over her failure in the city.
There would be time enough for Trixie to find some place afterwards, to be Trixie. Into a bucket, perhaps.
The weakling.
"How did this happen, Basket?" Ping demanded of his best shieldmaiden. "We were supposed to be keeping her dreams locked down tighter than the ship's armory in the waking world! This is the pony with the keys to all of our most destructive devices and possession of the most dangerous toys on the Princess's Bit. What broke containment?"
"I don't know, your lordship! There wasn't even a nightmare last night! The posted bats didn't report a shadow-blasted thing, not a twitch, not a shudder." Fruits Basket looked confused and ashamed. "You said that we were out of the bight of night-poison, after we got into port! That the high mountain ranges to the north would block all of the cursed things we'd been fighting against."
"Well, just because I say something is safer, doesn't mean it's harmless, shieldmaiden. And you should think for yourselves. I'm not here to do all your work for you, now, am I?"
"No, your lordship. And the maidens on patrol should have… I don't know what even happened. Just that tonight's pickets can't get inside, and say there's something nasty in there. And everypony agrees that Lieutenant Trixie was - I don't know. Different. Strange."
"Yes, yes. Classic possession marker. Who was on last night's Lulamoon picket post? We need to check them out, make sure they weren't suborned first. Who was it? Are they on call?"
"They're off tonight. Sleeping naturally. Uh, Nightfang and Starfruit."
"Those two. In the number three dream-berths?"
"Yes, sir."
With a thought, both Ping and his subordinate were standing in the dream of a dream, the protected spaces laid out for batponies not working on the 'night shift'. The dreams of those so placed in the night-world were hidden from the powers and predators, warded safely by magics renewed by Ping and his shieldmaidens on a weekly basis.
The two shieldmaidens, sleeping their nights off away, looked unaffected by any adverse curses or mind-magics, but Ping looked closer, looked for some sign of subornation.
"Well," he sighed, giving up the attempt. "I don't see any problems. Do you? These are not the minds of corrupted maidens."
"I already looked before I came for you, Lord Pumpernickel."
Ping rolled the eyes of his night-self at the unwanted title. "Look again, Fruits Basket. I'm not infallible, and you should always double-check your work."
She followed his orders, zealously, crawling into the dream-bunks with the sleeping mares, examining them like she was looking for nits, or fleas. To be honest, Ping rather wished the besotted mare would kick more at his petty tyrannies.
It was a tartarus of a thing, being worshipped.
"Nothing I can find, sir!"
Oh, grapenuts. Ping sometimes missed being the silly little company clerk. Missed leaving this sort of horseapples to someone more… not him.
You're the one who didn't want the matrons, with their craziness and their baggage. Mare up, stallion.
"Wake them up, Fruits Basket. We need the numbers. And Lieutenant Lulamoon needs exorcising, before she does something unforgivable. Or, I suppose, whatever night-hag has gotten past our pickets, and is now wearing her like a hat, does in her stead."
The two rudely awakened shieldmaidens were much less worshipful than Fruits Basket. It was almost endearing.
Until Ping thought on how their failures had made a mess of his nice neat night-scape.
The night-hag had made a mess of poor Lieutenant Lulamoon. When they'd blasted their way inside of the corrupted membrane of the lieutenant's infected mind, they had found anxieties and embarrassments strewn across her psyche like a roll of toilet-paper torn up by a misbehaving pet, tossed about, shreds of this and that hanging, dangling, clotted up and scattered in the unicorn's befouled mindscape.
Ping, looking into the tangled space over the carefully held shield-constructs deployed by the maidens, hooving his night-lance.The night-hag - or rather, the creature which was acting like a night-hag - was crouched under the mystical equivalent of Lieutenant Lulamoon's living room couch, fiery eyes glittering like an affronted cat in the tight gap it had squeezed itself, hiding from the bat-ponies filing into the cluttered dream-scape.
"That," Fruits Basket said, frostily, "is the great and sly monster that defeated your wards and slipped behind your backs, Trooper Starfruit?"
"I don't know, ensign-"
"Shieldmaidens!" snapped Ping. "We are in the night! No day-ranks here! And you are equal in the eyes of the Mother of Dreams!"
"Yes, Lord Spear-Stallion," muttered Starfruit.
"Yes, Lord Pum-" began Fruits Basket.
"Spear-Stallion!" snapped Ping. The other shieldmaidens knew he was something special, but he didn't need that damnable title escaping into the wild.
""Lord Spear-Stallion, sir."
"Very good. Nightfang, move your section around the flank. It's not big, but it's clearly clever enough to have slipped past you last night. Ambersweet, take yours to the other side. Cut off its retreat into the deeper night!"
They moved in concert, shifting to block the night-hag, or nocnice, or whatever the hay it was, from fleeing.
Just as the shieldmaidens were crossing the open space, everything went wrong, in a crack of rolling thunder like -
Falconfire!
Dark shadows darted across the cleared spaces like angry bees, or screeching rockets, or -
One of the shieldmaidens was struck, and her dream-self was torn open, her spirit-self shattered by the impact. Her scream almost drowned out the sound of the-
What was happening?
Ping moved forward to cover the stricken shieldmaiden, and his own shield caught strike after strike, wavering and quivering, nearly broken like the wailing mare behind him, sobbing in agony.
If he hadn't paid attention to the demonstrations of Magus Heartstrings, and absorbed the techniques of Major Shield and the Gonne Research Group-
The other shieldmaidens placed their own shields firmly, and braced. The stream of streaking dark projectiles came to an end, and with it, the fire and the noise.
But not the smoke. Ping knew that smoke.
The damn nocnice, or night-hag or - it had fired cannon at them! Dream-cannon!
How had it known to do that? Where had it learned to do that?
The night-hag suddenly darted out of its hiding place, dragging a falcon-carriage behind it like a cart-horse, racing for the exit.
"Basket, take her!" Ping yelled, leaving the wounded shieldmaiden and charged to cut off the night-hag.
The other shieldmaidens followed him, converging on the strange dream-monster.
Ping got in front of the night-hag, and it recoiled, at bay.
The dream-carriage swung about, as the nightmare collapsed into a spray of tentacles and hostility, swarming around its strange dream-construct.
Tentacles bristled with rammers and sponge-rods and linstocks, moving around the dream-falcon.
That's enough of that, Ping thought, and sent his lance telescoping through the cloud of shadow and tentacles, before the night-hag had re-loaded its night-falcon and turned it upon him.
It screamed in agony, echoing the wailing, mangled shieldmaiden being protected by Fruits Basket on the other side of Lieutenant Lulamoon's psyche.
Ping's lance licked out again, and took the nightmare's legs out, dropping it away from the dream-construct of the 'falcon'.
He reversed his lance, and clapped the wailing night-hag on the ganglia, rattling its sensorium.
"Quickly! Bind it!" Ping yelled, his voice going higher in his excitement.
The shieldmaidens converged in a group tackle, turning their shields into tanglers, catching up the quivering mass of tentacles and pain in a web of duty and stubbornness.
The formidable night-hag struggled, spasmed, and screamed in a hopefully mindless fashion. Ping squinted at it, worried.
No, not a full tulpa yet, thank the Mother, but it had been feeding furiously on the Lieutenant's insecurities and self-hatreds. It was a bloated little tick, their captured night-hag. Look at the fight it had put up!
"What are we going to do with it, Lord Spear-Stallion? Regulations state that we should be putting it through the chipper, and adding it to our feedbags," one of the shieldmaidens said.
Night, she sounds like The Pearl of Mother Dusk. Chapter and verse.
Ping looked down at the glaring little monstrosity. It had almost a sort of awareness in its angry little coal-chip eyes.
"I think perhaps it's too mature for that. We might do ourselves damage, trying to eat that, no matter how much we mulch it. And, I think, it already has too much of our lieutenant in its bloated stomach, given the performance it just put on. Perhaps this is a time for Rectification ceremonies."
"Really?" asked Shieldmaiden Nightfang. "You want to bleed a fully-fed night-hag into the dreams of a pony who was just possessed by the damned thing?"
"Yes, shieldmaiden," Ping said, carefully. "There's too much of the Lieutenant already in it. She'll be lessened if we don't return her soul-stuff to her. Look at this thing. It's already eaten much of her self-worth and pride, and a good portion of her professionalism and skill. And you two let it in here."
He stared accusingly at the offenders, who had enough shame to wilt under his glare.
"Right. Go look up the ceremony. You'll be doing most of the heavy work, Shieldmaidens Nightfang, Starfruit."
He noticed that Fruits Basket was looking a bit smug, from where she was tending to the shieldmaiden who had been mauled by the night-hag.
"You too, Senior Shieldmaiden Basket. You were supposed to be supervising these two."
It isn't their fault. They're soldiers, not fully fledged dream-warriors. Trained but not experienced. You have them doing matron work without the seasoning, the experience. Your fault, Two Pings.
Fruits Basket looked baffled, not sure whether to smile at her sudden promotion, or shrink under Ping's accusing tone.
"Either way, we have let Lieutenant Lulamoon down, and we must make amends.
Gleaming Shield sat happily in Gilda's clever new chair, and spun around several times, enjoying the smooth motion of the swivel mechanism. Gilda had gotten one of the ratings to kitbash the uncomfortable original heavy bench-style seat, re-mounted onto a spare swivel-gun pintle and installed in place of the cabin's removed bunk.
Gilda was standing in front of her desk with Captain Bell, as the major sat in Gilda's chair, with sheaves of papers and files spread out over the desk, and a summary held lightly in Gilda's talons.
"Done yet, ma'am?"
"No."
spin, spin.
"OK, now I'm done. Go on."
"Right," said Big Bell. "Lessee, where was we… yesterday's shootin' practice. From al' accounts, a very successful wasting of the fort's supplies, gonnepowder, and hearin'. The whole harbor got proper deafened, and a lot of really top-notch coopers' fruit was smashed up real good. There's a lotta dog coopers got a lotta work to do, replacin' the fort's supply of barrels. Not to mention the gonnepowder."
"All accounts? How many accounts did you get?"
"Several," Gilda interjected. "But the longest was from an understandably proud Lieutenant Lulamoon. Came surprisingly early, and frankly, it didn't sound much like Trixie. I don't know if she's recovering from her known issues, or is covering or compensating or something, but it's something to look out for."
"Because she's scarin' her gunners?" Captain Bell demanded. "I'ud think that'd be a good thing. She's finally cheerin' up inna way that doesn't give ya the douchechills. I've known cheerier asses."
Gilda and Gleaming exchanged a meaningful look.
"Something like that, yes." Gleaming said. "It's the curious case of the perro bitch in the night-time, isn't it, Gilda?"
"Oh, yeah, the new hire!" Big Bell said, smiling. "She seemed nice. And eager to learn."
"Be careful of that one, ma'am," Gilda disagreed. "I'm not sure what to make of her yet. Her family is terrible, and while I am sympathetic…"
"Victims aren't sainted by their circumstances, no," Gleaming agreed, sighing. "Well, we'll put a pin in the matter of Reina, then, until we get a better read on her. Is she settled into her berthing, Bell?"
"I've got her in the second bunk in Magus Heartstring's stateroom, Major. I haven't had time to check on her yet. Lyra isn't there right now, of course…"
"Yes. What is the sick and injured list looking like? How is she doing?"
"We supposed to be meetin' tomorrow afternoon with Doc Eye. We gotta talk about alla the officers passing through the infirmary so far. Three unicorn officers or almost-officers -"
"Wait, three? Who's the third?"
"Trixie was reported sick this morning," Gilda said, looking down at the report, "with a high fever and general lassitude."
"I thought you said she filed a happy, well-adjusted report last night!"
"And this morning, she was reported sick," Gilda continued. "She's under the doctor's care."
"Well, that's disturbingly vague. Did anypony else with the gunnery trials-"
"Fine, whatever, training. Did anypony else come down with something? Is there something going around port? We've got perros and ponies coming and going all over this ship, and if there's sickness in the city-"
"No other reported illnesses. Yet. Well, those two griffons who inhaled too much coal dust the other day, but that's a known issue. I've got a proposal from Purse Strings about supplementary safety training for ‘dust handling procedures'."
"Make a note for Martin Gale to take it in wing."
"Yes'm. Oh, wait, there is another illness on the list. One of the thestral lance corporals is down sick with something."
"Were they part of Trixie's shooting party? Bell?"
"Oh, ahm sorry, was ah part of this meetin'? Nah, ah don't think Dried Durian would have had any reason to be with the shootists yesterday."
"I can't see why she would have been," Gilda agreed. "I can enquire."
"Do that, please. What's next?"
"Let's see," Gilda continued. "The offending bunkers have been cleared out, that operation is complete. They're dismantling the jury rigs today. The galleys have taken possession of the rock lobsters-"
"Wait, what? They took what?"
"Rock lobsters, ma'am. Apparently they go well with butter and garlic."
"What does shellfish have to do with my coal bunkers?"
"The perros found a significant rock lobster infestation in bunker number five, the other load of magical coal we inherited from the previous version of this ship."
"Rock. Lobsters. Literal crayfish made of stone?"
"No, ma'am. I asked. Apparently they just favor magic rocks. Such as what was hiding in our bunkers. There was apparently quite a scene when the perros found the nest. The lobsters had eaten half of the contents of bunker number five, we would have had issues fairly soon even if we hadn't broken down. The lobsters were eating our fuel at a prodigious rate."
"I thought we wouldn't have issues with rats because of all of you griffons on board."
"I take offense at that, Major, ma'am."
"I saw you eatin' a harbor rat yesterday!" Bell objected, smirking accusingly at Gilda.
"Just because a stereotype is completely true doesn't mean it isn't hurtful."
"...Y'all're having me on, ain't you?"
"Perhaps a bit. Ahem. The perros ate a number of the rock lobsters on the spot, raw. Apparently it's a tradition. But they left the cooks the rest. The galley promises to do better with the lobsters this time, than they did with that shark."
"Ah would hope so. Y'all excuse me from tryin' predator cuisine again just yet."
"Yes'm Captain Bell," Gilda said, smugly. "More for us. Moving on… they should be finishing the loading of the replacement anthracite by tonight. They're topping us up, as well."
"That should give us a cruising range of…" Gleaming Shield said, thinking.
"We could fly directly to the Great Nest and back to most of the Equestrian bases in the Inland Sea without refueling, now. We technically don't need to stop in Well Burn."
"Ain't they expecting us on Celentine?" objected Big Bell.
"Technically," Gilda conceded. "I believe we can leave a note here for the next packet ship. The governor-general has his own infestation up at the fort, they want us to transport some excess diplomats to Roam if we can."
"We're not a cruise ship," Gleaming Shield said with a frown.
"Unfortunately, you did have the shipwrights put in those extra staterooms, ma'am. We have the capacity, and we're going in the right direction."
"I'm never getting to see the Kokonipolis, am I?"
"Not on this trip, ma'am."
"Well, Roam. That's even better, isn't it?" Bell said, looking interested. "Ah never thought ah'd get to see Roam."
"I've read that the ruins were mostly cannibalized. They tore down most of the Great Circus to rebuild the walls during Bellicose Rose's wars against the Ostergriffs, as well as all of the Perrotine Hill temples."
"Yes, Gilda, I know, those were my books," Gleaming said suppressively.
"Not all of them. We did have books in Griffonstone."
"In vaults like Celestia's central reserve."
"Knowledge is precious, major, ma'am."
"We're gettin' off track," Bell objected. "Where were we at?"
"Hrm. Diplomats. Roam. Rock Lobsters. Trixie sick in med bay. Coal loading. New girl. Am I forgetting anything?"
"How would I know?" Gleaming asked, pettishly. "I just got off the sick list Tuesday. Where is Ping, he should be here."
"There's some sorta problem with the batponies," Bell said, looking at her papers.
"There's always something going on with them, isn't there? Where is Bob, for that matter?"
"Up here, ma'am!" the bat-colt squeaked from overhead. He'd been clinging to Gilda's cabin overhead, quietly waiting for his turn.
"Bob, what are you doing up there?" the unicorn demanded.
"Darning, ma'am!"
"Darning? Darning what?"
"Your socks, ma'am!"
"I don't have socks!" Gleaming objected, her neck craned upwards, staring at the batpony overhead.
"You do now!"
"Shouldn't that be knittin'?" asked Captain Bell.
"Was knitting. Then I bucked up. Trying to fix the mistake. That's why I'm darning it. Darn it!"
"Bob, what's going on with you bat-ponies?" Gleaming demanded of her dangling, darning valet.
"Oh, I don't know. Nopony ever tells me anything. Would you?"
"Of course not, how foolish of me." Gleaming Shield heaved herself out of Gilda's office chair. "Come on, Gilda, Bell, let's go look in on Trixie and Lyra. Think we'll need medical masks?"
"I doubt it, Major, ma'am," Gilda said, making room for the ponies. "Idiocy is catching, but I've never heard that it was airborne."
Fish Eye was slowly working her way through the platoon's laundry. You'd think it would be simple, but the ship was filthy with coal dust and assorted messes, and the ship's laundry was crowded with officers' servants, detailed troopers, and a few sailors here and there doing their own wash.
Ugh, could you possibly find a duller way to amuse your goddess, Eye? If I see one more thaumically doctored garment, I will… I do not know, perhaps call down a shore-scouring hurricanoe, to drown the red-tiled steeples of this benighted dogtown.
"Now Auntie, don't be in a pet. The seas have always been full of boredom and tedium, you must have found ways over the eons to endure a period of nothing exciting happening. Don't you have a shark somewhere you can watch eat a tuna, or maybe a school of squid you can play with? You don't have to hang out in my eyes while I clean the troopers' uniforms and unmentionables."
They are ponies. There is nothing they own that could possibly be unmentionable. Not clothing-wise, anyways. I swear, I have tried five times over the millennia to invent swimwear, and none of you mortals ever take me up on it.
"What, not even the other hippogriffs? If you like, I can try out this swimwear business, when I have time. And some spare thread and fabric."
Fish Eye pulled a load out of the specially-tuned industrial dryer (guaranteed to not denature thaumic cloth!) and waited for the goddess to volley back.
She was left waiting for a while, as she folded her pile of uniforms, and tagged each carefully for return to their respective owners.
"Auntie? Auntie? You still there?"
Yes, Eye, I am here.
"I've noticed that you've stopped talking about the other hippogriffs. Since you took my eyes."
Eye, I have not taken your eyes. Rather, you have given me your sight. Never say that they are not yours.
"Well, that's sweet, but that's not what I was talking about. You were saying some things about the folks back home, when we started, before we left Trottingham."
Yes, well, I was new-summoned and perhaps a scale irate, back in Albacore. I have had time to remember the rhythms of the world above wave and below moon.
"You're deflecting again, Auntie. Why aren't you back home, taking care of the others?"
What makes you think I am not with your kin even now, tending to my home waters as I should? I am a goddess, little fry. I contain multitudes.
"How can you get bored, if you contain multitudes?"
How many people, in a nation, are doing the exact same thing, at the same time, thinking the same thing, experiencing the same thing?
"I haven't the foggiest fog bank of an idea, Auntie. But you'd know, wouldn't you?"
Silence, tempered by the folding of magically infused, annoyingly glowing clothing. The new magic-sight made it hard to see mundane stains, but at least it was now easy to spot fraying enchantments, so there was that.
"Auntie? The others?"
My abyssal sanctuaries are not the joyous halls of song and delight they ought to be, Eye. Let us say… you are a welcome distraction.
"Auntie… what happened to them?"
I think I will not say. I would not infect you with their… my other children's…
"Auntie, you're scaring me."
I do not mean to, little fry. Be of good cheer. They are safe. They are sound. Well, they are intact.
More silence, and Fish Eye hugged her ensign's spare uniform, terrified by the goddess's uneasy pauses.
The seaponies are not good company these days. And the more time I spend with my reduced people, the smaller I become. I would not grow any smaller, Eye.
Fish Eye looked at her own shadow against the laundry bulkhead, and watched the halo of green-black not-light flicker around the shadow her head cast on the studded ironwood, and worried.
The platoon berths were empty of waking bat-ponies. Over a dozen hammocks were full of sleeping thestrals, and Fish Eye tried to not let her talons click or her hooves clop as she walked down the aisles, returning uniforms to chests and shelves as she went.
All of the sleeping batponies were mares, and that was strange. The rest of the platoon was out on patrol, she thought. Fish Eye had barely seen her ensign since getting out of the infirmary. Her ensign looked different now that Fish had the goddess in her eyes. All of the batponies had a bit of darkness to their auras, but Fruits Basket and some of the other mares had it deeper and richer than the rest. A darkness so deep and rich it was almost purple, and sometimes they pulsed slightly, like a beating heart.
Those thestral mares looked more like unicorns than pegasi to her new sight, and Fish was starting to wonder if thestrals were actually pegasi at all.
The mares sleeping the day away in their hammocks were mostly - one, two, three, four - no, actually, they were entirely from that cadre of unicorn-aura'd batponies.
Fish wanted to talk to her goddess, ask her some questions… but she hadn't figured out how to talk with her Auntie without speaking out loud.
Not yet, anyways. It was making her something of a spectacle among the crew and the squadron. Nopony had approached her yet, but she'd seen griffons and ponies making superstitious gestures at her when they thought she wasn't looking.
Her peripheral vision had always been excellent, and the blessing had only sharpened it.
Anyways, Fish didn't want to wake the troopers. That would be bad.
She went back up front to the duty station, and looked at the assignment log. The other troopers and the ensign were out in the city and on the port approaches, detailed out to the fort's security screen. But… the sleeping mares in the hammocks were marked down ‘internal security NP'. She thought she'd seen that before, but never really remarked upon it, since Fish was a bat-mare, not an officer or command NCO.
But that was a lot more ponies on ‘internal security NP' than she'd ever seen before. Almost nopony was off duty according to the duty roster.
Giles kept an eye on his second file. Gillie as usual was being Gillie. Gillie's file leader was more inclined to follow his lead than the reverse, but no coolie worth his salt would trust that featherbrain to lead a drinking party to a bar. They'd transferred old Gilead into Apple as part of the reorganization - and to get him away from his mate and fellow trouble-maker Mickle Joe - but Giles swore it had just made him the worse.
And now he was talking up one of the local hens. Ciutat d'Ales was, contrary to the wishful expectations of the troopers of Apple, not a bar district, but rather the local griffish neighborhood. Not quite desperate enough to be a ghetto, but there was griffish daub and wattle beneath all the red tile that, at a distance, otherwise made the district look like the rest of Barkalona.
That meant that the local market, instead of being full of dogs and ponies, was full of grey-feathered, brownish, and yellowish griffons, some of them a breed Giles had never seen before. The grey ones looked a bit like the master sergeant, if none of them quite so towering or imposing, but the yaller ones were short, slight, with narrow beaks and sly expressions, like they were up to something.
And none of them spoke a word of Common. It might as well have been another Perroish district, for all the griffons of Apple Troop could converse with the locals. Gillie's attempt to get in trouble with the local bints was as futile as he was trifling - the hen was trilling laughter and incomprehensible yips of the local brand of foreign, and not having any of it.
Giles gave a wing-swat to the file leader and jerked his head at the would-be lothario. Then he flitted off to find the sergeant.
Sergeant Gustav was standing at the gate leading into the market, his chest proudly displaying, his crest nodding as he talked with the local boss - the alcalde. Giles joined the gaggle of other coolies and well-turned-out troops that the sergeant had collected, all of them posing like bloody Crab-Backs On The March. They all had their best regimentals on, buffed and the enchantments turned up to Maximum Glitter. The line of coolies and troopers Giles joined glowed like fancy jewelry in the southern sun, outshined the bright red roofing-tiles, the lackluster goods, that sad little market itself, and the sad little continental griffons that couldn't even speak common Trottish.
Well, aside from the alcalde, the sergeant's fast new friend, who had a bit of Equish. Which was close to Trottish. Or vice versa, if you asked the ponies.
They'd been sent out with orders to make a brave show of it, so the Guards were all gussied up, and were not digging through stalls looking for contraband or rousting the local toughs or, otherwise indulging in any of the usual tricks of the trade. The Langdockiens with whom they were patrolling jointly weren't taking it any more seriously.
In fact, the Dockiens had considerably more game than Giles' griffs. The Langdockiens didn't have fancy uniforms or good equipment, but the grey-brown griffons and pale-pastel ponies had something much more important - they could yip the local patois.
Giles thought he knew where at least some of the younger grey-brown fledgelings and kits running around the market had come from, if the Langdockiens had been stationed here as long as he'd heard they had been.
He did his best to look brave and noble for the little crowd of said kits and fledgelings, peering awestruck at the line of griffon Guards from the safety of doorways, windows, and around the corners of market-stalls. They weren't here to impress the kits, but their elders, and hopefully their old-enough-for-trouble elder brothers - or sisters.
Giles sometimes wondered what might have been if there had been recruiting parties come through Aerie Tarvie, to offer them the duchess's bit and take away the adventurous, the trouble-making, the brave. But then, the Guard wasn't marching up country out of Barkalona to recruit in this country's Aerie Tarvies, were they? Just in the city, where it was convenient.
The lieutenant came trotting by with the sergeant from the Langdockiens, and the lieutenant took Sergeant Gustav and the alcalde off somewhere outside of the market, talking a mile a minute. Gustav took a coolie and two troopers off with them, leaving the rest to collapse from a line to a gaggle.
"Ah! Lance Corporal-" the tall Prench sergeant began, holding out a hoof to prevent Giles from rejoining his squad. "What was it? Jiles?"
"Giles, Sergeant au Vin."
"Ah, yes, you Islanders, such traditionalists. 'Ow do you evar keep your zelves straight when evarypony's names zhart with ah 'g'? Even your sergeant, I knew ah Gustave, you know."
"Gustav is a brave name for a brave tom," Giles said loyally, suppressively. Never take sides against the regiment.
"Hmm, yes, but zis tom was a baker. Ah proud one, moved to zhe imperial capital, proclaimed himself ze grande. I worry about old Gustave, eet is not a good place for arrogant griffons, Canterlot during, how you zay, the wars? Not even ones that just laik to brag on their eclairs."
Giles turned to look at the tall, yellowish unicorn with the thick accent.
"As I said, a name for brave toms. What can I do for you, sergeant?"
"Ah, not much, not much. This is an easy posting, Perroencia. We keepez ze Princess's peace, and ze recruiters, zhey snatch up the angry young curs, the eager young toms, the adventurous colts, and zhey go elzewhere. To peacock about, with zheir zilly spears and zilly hats, and keep compleat ztrangers from keeling each other over the boundary line between zis burrow-mine and zat olive grove, or whose gran-tante ran off with whose granpere and left a burrow full of angry zister-wives with no cur to call zeur own no more. Neutral-like, you zee.
"You zee, zhis is how the empire, zhe works when we all do our parts. Languedock zends 'er foals to Perroencia, Perroencia's bitch pups to Bitalia, an' whatever they breed in Bitalia, zome fourth provincia I don't even know.
"Lance Corporal Giles, ze Griffish Isles, zhey never participated in zee gran imperial cotillion, did you? Well, not until zee Princess, zhe starts zhipping captured rebels to ze New Territories. But zhen, one day, zis beeg bristling ship limps into harbor, full of Islanders. And I have to ask:
"Have you finally come to join the dance, Islander? Or is it some other jig you're planning, to pipe us all? Where will you be taking the pups and foals you take from my zity?"
Giles had no answers for the possessive Prench sergeant, but thinking it over, later, he was sure that he hadn't been expected to have any. Giles was just a lance corporal, a coolie. He was a messenger.
So, after they returned with their small catch of winged recruits, and Charlie returned with their pack of furry bipeds drawn from some dog district, Giles went to find Sergeant Gustav, and deliver the message as expected.
What the sergeants and officers did with it, he had no idea. But he'd be watching, to see what Death had delivered him into all those months ago, had spared him for.
That night Giles dreamed of the recruiters who never came to his little hill village, to take away his kin before they went to the big city to die.
Purse Strings watched the hopper feeder gears turn, as the slight screeching of underlubricated teeth grinding against each other slowly faded before the oilcan ministrations of Corporal Smooth.
"So far, so good, boss!" the hopperpony said to Sergeant Gang. "Hey, Queenie, I think we're ready to open the feed from number six!"
The dog grinned that unsettling toothy grin of hers, and threw a lever. The mechanism clanked loudly, and coal - mundane, common Perroencian anthracite coal - tumbled out of the gravity-fed screw onto the bucketed conveyer belt in a thunderous roar that filled the access gangway with a tooth-rattling avalanche of sound.
The dust from the shutes, which normally would have been carried along by the gasketed conveyor, threatened to come billowing up out of the unbolted access hatches. Reina's claws tinked against the nearest metal frame, and the clouds pulled back on themselves unnaturally, leaving only the terrible noise.
Black Gang looked at the casual display of dog geomancy, and shook his head.
"It's weird seeing that without shielding," he screamed. "How have I never heard of dog magic before?"
"Queenie don' know, cavall negre," the little bitch screamed back. "We always been here. An' the cavalls locals, they know."
"Rock affinity's always been an earth pony thing," Silk Smooth bellowed. "But buck it, it weren't none of mine, and if she can rockhop, let her bop. I say she's just a dog-shaped earth pony. So long as she don't mess with my tools, we're harmonic."
"I don't give a liquefied horseapple about any of that," Purse roared irately, itching from the coal dust and the dog smell in the close quarters. "Is it working? Are the engines feeding and working?"
"Well, this here is a good start," Black Gang yelled. "Come on, honorary earth filly. Let's go see if number two is taking what you're sending."
The bipedal dog bounced back out of the way as Silk Smooth replaced and bolted the access hatches, and the mind-rattling noise returned to the grumbling hum that Purse knew to expect from this part of the ship.
The number two engine was taking what they were sending, and so were the rest. The coal emergency was at an end.
Finally.
Purse Strings went to go find the boss folk and report the success.
And then he'd get a Celestia-damned shower, and wash all of this coal dust out of his coat.
Ping looked down at the unresponsive mare, whose peaceful sleeping face told nothing of the mysteries she represented beyond the veil.
"When was the last time anypony saw her?" Ping asked Fruits Basket. The ensign's pink outsider had brought Nightfang's unresponsiveness to her officer's attention several hours ago. The bat-hen's sister was the ship doctor, they wouldn't be able to keep this quiet.
"Her wingmare went blind around about 0430, on a basic perimeter sweep. She was ghosting cover, it could have been any time within a forty-five minute window."
"Sunlight! They're supposed to rotate every half hour. What in Hades, Basket?"
"These aren't Night Shift matrons, corporal. It's something they do on the side. They might have been cutting corners."
"Well, Nightfang cut her throat on that cut corner. She's crapped up beyond all belief. Something jumped her but good. We're going to have to break down her field, and do a full dress assault. Whatever got inside knows how to bar doors, it'll be clever. You saw what happened with that night nag and Lieutenant Lulamoon. And Durian's still in the infirmary, we're down two mares now."
"You want to-"
"Yes, shadows take it. Activate the next cadre. We need more dreamers on the line. Quantity has a quality all its own."
"They're not as well trained as the first rank shieldmaidens. And we're barely weekend dream-warriors as it is. They'll be tripping over their own spears."
"Good thing they'll be holding the shield wall, then. This can't wait. The longer we leave Nightfang go, the harder it will be to stitch her back together."
Ping fell silent, expecting the ensign to leave and make preparations. Where are they coming from? There's nothing visible for tens of miles, no known nightmare fields in the region…
He looked up when she didn't move.
"Go on, move!"
The assault was an absolute clusterbuck. Two more mares were injured, not enough to put them in the infirmary like Durian and Nightfang, but bad enough to take them out of night patrol. Luckily, both of the casualties were second cadre, and thus no great loss.
But now Ping was fearful of what else was lurking out there, invisible, traceless, in ambush for his shieldmaidens.
Mother of Dreams, they say you're coming. If you can help us, come quickly. But if this is some sort of harbinger… Mother, hear our prayers.
Gilda joined the major at the gang-plank as the Very Important Ponies worked their way up the narrow reinforced ironwood contraption. Properly winged individuals could have just flown up from the jetty that the Bit was moored beside, but apparently diplomats didn't often come in winged varieties out here in the imperial backwaters. The diplomat, whose name had already left her over-taxed short-term memory, was an ochre unicorn mare with a perpetually discontented expression, a resting nag face that said volumes about her attitude towards the world and, presumably, her job.
"Ambassador Flare, let me welcome you to the Princess's Bit," the major said, as warmly as she could manage. "We are so glad to be able to carry you and your entourage the last stages of your journey to the Imperial Court at Roam."
Said entourage looked around the ship as they filed one by one aboard her. Mostly unicorns and earth ponies, but there was at least one gawky green pegasus in the gaggle, just as earthbound as the rest of them. There was a small honor guard of Crystal Guards arranged in a line beside the gangway, carefully chosen to show off the diversity of the new regiment.
Plus Ensign Sunburst. Gilda wasn't sure why the new ensign was here. He’d just said that it would be 'necessary if you don't want any tantrums later on.'
Whatever that meant.
Now that Gilda looked at the diplomat, who was exchanging empty niceties with Gleaming, and their newest ensign, it was sort of obvious. The coat colors, mane styles, and general facial features...
Well, wasn't that awkward.
The diplomat's eyes arrogantly skimmed over the braced line of Guards in full formal uniforms, until her gaze was arrested upon the orange stallion, looking frozen and stolid in his at-attention rigidity.
"Sunburst Fiery Firebough, what in the endless flowing mane of the eternal princess are you doing on this ship!" Ambassador Flare shrieked like a fishwife.
"Major, ma'am, permission to address the ship's guests!" barked the terrified-looking ensign.
Gleaming, looking illuminated and clearly suppressing a lip-curling smirk, said, "Granted, Ensign… Firebough is it?"
"No ma'am! My name is Sunburst!" The stiffly mortified ensign turned towards the ambassador, still not meeting her burning glare. "Good morning, Mother. You look well as always!"
"I look like a mother who has just discovered that her truant son is twelve hundred miles from the last place I left him, and has somehow joined a different regiment, to judge from that clown suit you're wearing. What happened to your father's regiment? What are you doing here? What happened to your tour in the Isles?"
"Mother, ma'am! I volunteered for the new establishment! It was an opportunity I could not resist!"
"You've always been so good at taking opportunities… that you never live up to. What happened? Did you offend your superiors again? How is this different from your previous three false starts, Sunburst?"
"Ahem!" the major interrupted. "Ambassador Flare, would you care to examine the state rooms we've opened up for you and your ponies? We also have put the forward ward room to use. The view from them should be quite spectacular when we get aloft and are moving."
The ambassador looked around, realized that she was airing her family's dirty laundry in front of her entire herd of assistants, several dozen sailors within ear-shot, and the honor-guard, and managed by heroic effort to not blush.
The boarding ceremony broke up at that point, most un-ceremoniously.
Gilda marked it a success. She hadn't been this amused since the engine had blown out.
Lyra was miserable. That stars-benighted doctor had been right, coming off the stuff cold tofurkey had been a rough road. But Doc Eye had agreed with Lyra that it was time, one way or the other, and Lyra refused the lesser draught, with its reduced spacey promise of not-pain in exchange for the curse of muddled thinking.
Not that pain didn't do its own job of muddling thinking. Oh, Celestia, did her horn hurt. Her whole skull, really, like little cracks radiating pain from the misery of that central, throbbing blunt stick she called her Alicornual diverticulum. And it didn't help that her stomach was still dry-heaving from the after-effects of the narcotics.
Lyra laid on her cot, and tried to pretend the agony and the world away.
Buck it, this isn't helping.
She got up, and opened her aching eyes to look around the room. Still the same boring, dull, vapory chamber of dullness and pocket distilleries.
As if I could keep down a cocktail right now. Yech.
Lyra stumbled out of her chamber of despond, and wandered into the main ward of the infirmary. Where the good doctor was nowhere in evidence, but there were multiple ponies laying about the ward, tucked into bunks here and there.
Wonder why they didn't bring them back to stew in the still-stink like they did with me and the jolly pink nightmare?
Lyra looked closer at a blue shape under a linen sheet closer to her side of the room, and realized from the fall of off-white mane and the horn that it was Trixie. Lyra walked around the sleeping or insensate blue mare, and peered at her sleeping face.
That doesn't sound like a healthy mare. The artillery-pony was breathing with a rattling, congested wheeze, and looked rather poorly, her mane all stringy and sweat-stained, and what Lyra could see of her coat was slightly lathered.
"It presents like an ague or yellow jack, but it isn't," said a sharp feminine voice from right behind Lyra, and she damn near stepped on her own tail, jumping at the fright.
"Hawk Eye! Don't sneak up on a recovering mare, you're going to give me palpitations!" Lyra whined.
"If you keep having ponies shoot swivel-guns at your own head, you won't live to die of a heart attack, Heartstrings," the doctor sniffed. "Never mind you, you're recovering. Maybe I can get back my still-room now? But yeah, I'm not sure what's up with Lulamoon here. Or the others."
"You said it was malaria, didn't you? This is flyder country, I could see it."
"You'd think so, wouldn't you? She had her battery and lots of other ponies besides out on the gunnery range the other day, and you'd think with all those shallow pools of standing water, it would be prime mosquito breeding territory. But she was the only one of that batch who came down with this, and it came on too quickly for malaria, or yellow jack. Whatever the abyssal depths it is, it can't be either of those."
"She is - rest of the batch? What do the other ponies have?"
"Pretty much the same thing, Heartstrings."
"Well, then, that's your huckleberry. Malaria, or some magic quick-set version of it, and they all caught it." Lyra got distracted imagining thaumically poisoned flyders who could infect you instantaneously with a wasting disease, and felt her headache worsen.
"Only problem is that Dried Durian over there was nowhere near the shooting party and their pools of mosquito-breeding still waters. And Nightfang hasn't been off the ship at all, to judge from the reports I've seen. Also, the tell-tale enchantments for malaria and yellow jack are coming up negatory for all three. So are sleeping sickness, the feather flu, the pony pox, and leprosy."
"Leprosy!" Lyra jumped back from the other ailing unicorn, and then regretted the sudden movement greatly.
"Relax, Stampede Sue, like I said, negative. And honestly, I was just cycling through the tests at that point. I'm starting to suspect it's psychosomatic."
"A fever and night-sweats is psychosomatic?"
"Did you take a course of general medicine while you were conked out in my back room keeping me from working on my mash, Magus Heartstrings?"
"No, but I know a bit about states of mind from my research… I guess it's possible for a disease of the mind to mimic some symptoms, maybe any symptoms. Huh. Would you mind if I brought my apparati back here and took a look at her brain?"
"Her brain? With what, the EKG machine you keep in your bags?"
"Well, sorta. It isn't medical-grade, but I've got a pile of thaumic sensors you wouldn't believe. Comes in handy for diagnosing curses and mental magics."
"Why is this the first I'm hearing about research-hospital-grade medical equipment on this ship that's not in my infirmary?"
"First of all, it isn't yours, it's my stuff. Mine. I can let you borrow my stuff, if you promise to be gentle and don't break any of it. Can you even use my stuff? The interfaces are optimized for unicorn magic, I never bothered to enchant it for general pony use. Also, again, not medical-grade. They're tools for my research."
"I'd still like to see what you've got, yeah, go get it."
Lyra, still aching and miserable and sick to her stomach, wasn't feeling charitable, so she waited, patiently, through the pain.
"What?"
Lyra glared at the hippogriff through pain-narrowed eyes.
"Oh, fine. Please, Magus Heartstrings, can you retrieve your equipment, and examine my perplexing patients which all my medical magic have failed to diagnose?"
"Yeah, much better. Be right back."
It took a great deal longer than Lyra had expected. Apparently a lot had happened while she was in hospital. And everypony wanted to catch her up on events. Like the ship blowing out its engine, stopping in some diamond dog city she missed entirely, and leaving that city again, all while Lyra had been wasting away in the bipedal-ape-be-damned hospital.
But somehow, nopony thought to warn Lyra about her new roommate, so when she stomped into her state room in a foul mood over having missed her chance to see Barkalona, and unexpectedly found a short-ish black Perroencian dog going through her stuff, she might have over-reacted.
A bit.
The steaming heat of the afternoon was fading into evening as the guests and officers filed into the Captain's Mess. Although it had been retained from the original ship's design when they'd rebuilt it into the Bit, it had been left mothballed due to the Bit's technical lack of a 'Captain' and an apparent lack of interest by the Major in the more performative aspects of being a commanding officer. Fish Eye had overheard a while back some table-talk in the mess from the former Territorial griffons about their young commanding officer's time in that Corps, and the wasteful, drunken 'officers' messes' she had endured. And with all the work and endless distractions of spinning up the squadron, the tradition of organized, regimented meals had not yet had time to find itself way into the traditions of the… regiment.
But anyways, with the advent of VIPs on board the ship, the master sergeant had felt obliged to order the gallery staff to open up the mothballed Captain’s Mess, so as to have somewhere to offer hospitality to their guests.
Ponies didn't actually use mothballs, of course. Fish Eye supposed that the hypothetical smell from mothballs would have put everypony off their feed. As it was, it barely smelled like preservational magic at all, and the opened portholes helped air out whatever stuffiness might have remained.
Aside from the stifling heat, of course.
Anyways, the mess was open, and they needed somepony to play servant for the they'd-like-to-think-they-were-aristocratic diplomats, and their officer-hosts. The ponies and other people designated to likewise play servants to the play-nobles at the table, were of course, the officers' servants.
That is, Fish and her fellow bat-mares and officers' gentlemares and valets and whatever it was that Bob was calling himself tonight. The other week, he'd been trying to get the others to call him 'the Major's shinobi', whatever the abyssal depths that meant.
Fish Eye had discovered that most of the other servants had no idea how to do this - be servants, that is. At the table. It wasn't really that sort of regiment, not yet at least. But the lack in their training was clearly a glaring lacuna, one that she'd have to close. How did you get this far without working out that being 'servants' meant that they'd eventually have to serve at table?
Luckily, living at a boarding school had provided plenty of education in the abuse of juniors, the arrogance of the seniors, and the behavior expected of hoofmares and serving wenches before the gimlet eye of their betters.
Fish Eye had played servant and grand lady alike in her time. She'd had this one house matron who had insisted that every well-rounded lady of quality should be equally capable of serving at the humblest of tables, and ruling over a noble house teeming with servants and courtiers.
But the timeframe hadn't given Fish enough time to drill her fellow lance corporals thoroughly in the necessary etiquette, so she'd just told them to follow her lead, try to not pour anything hot in anypony's laps, and watch out for spillage.
At least they weren't under way, yet. The porthole hatches in the mess had been opened to allow a desperately needed breeze through the otherwise-stifling mess deck. They'd managed to get the place settings out without too many accidents, and as much drink and food pre-positioned as to avoid the undertrained servantry having to pass spillables over their guests. More than absolutely necessary, anyways.
After a good deal of clumsy bumbling about, Fish and the other batmares and valets got out of the way of their principals and their guests, and the officers and VIPs were seated at their tables, waiting for the Major and the Ambassador to exchange speeches and toasts.
The Major delivered her remarks with a stiff, solemn rictus that Fish suspected was the unicorn's notion of what dignity and gravitas looked like. It mostly came across like the young mare needed to go find the head. The other unicorn, a middle-aged mare gone slightly stout and cross in that ill-tempered mis-employed way that bad diplomats wore like badges of shame, delivered her own remarks with competence but no joy.
The ambassador reminded Fish of her own mother. It wasn't a pleasant sensation. She didn't envy poor Ensign Sunburst, whose predicament had struck like gossip lightning through the squadron and crew.
Not long after the dinner got started, Fish felt the goddess leaving her, with a voiceless sentiment that parsed rather like bored disgust. Something to the effect that the goddess had suffered through enough political dinners for a seapony's lifetime, let alone an immortal's.
Fish rather wished she could check out, too. At the ripe elderly age of eighteen, she'd already had a lifetime of empty platitudes and diplomatic bombast beside her mother in Canterlot's crowded diplomatic scene. To get through this particular event, she resolved to concentrate on keeping an eye on her fellow lance corporals as they all hovered over the shoulders of their dining principals, and made sure that Fruits Basket and her dining partner's mugs were kept full, and the courses were swapped out on time, and with grace.
"My word, and you say you're not just somepony from the ranks that some prankster thought they'd try to pass off as an officer? An actual, for real, Guards officer?"
Not that there was much in the way of grace being displayed at this particular table. Nor would that resolution last much longer at the rate that guy was getting on her last nerve.
"I did not think to bring my commission with me to the dinner-table, so I cannot show you documented evidence to that fact, but please, take it upon my thestral word of honor, sir, I am a properly commissioned ensign. There was a ceremony."
"Yep!" Fish chimed in as she leaned over Fruits Basket's dinner-partner's shoulder, and refilling his already-emptied wine mug. "It was this whole big thing. New regiment, new officers!" She managed to not pour it all over his head instead.
"Ah, mustangs. That explains matters. So it's that sort of Guards regiment, then."
"And what does that-"
Fish deliberately made a clatter with Basket's own very-much-not-emptied wine glass, and splashed enough around that the hippogriff was forced to dab up the mess with her handy linen towel.
And poke Fruits Basket unobtrusively in the face with one of her primaries, to keep the flushed thestral from finishing that probably-inflammatory reply before she got both of them in trouble.
"Oh, hey, is that a Farrow tie-pin?" Fish asked, trying to distract the diplomat.
"Oh, yes, of course it is. Class of '85. Pip pip, hurrah! And all that rot."
"Tolu, tolay, hip-hip, hurray!" Fish responded with the proper refrain.
"I say! Where did a ranker like you hear that one?" the already-tipsy unicorn asked. "Listening in at other officers' messes, I wager!"
"Oh, no, no. They never let me play at the games - something about being half again as big as the other mares - but I was always allowed to cheer!"
"You. You went to Farrow."
"Yep! Class of Two-Double-Ought. Just graduated last fall."
"And you ended up here. In a jack-leg 'Guards' regiment from-"
"Oh, it's a real Guards regiment," Fish said, obliviously. "They have the princess's warrant framed up in the squadron offices. Signed by the Princess Herself."
"First Blush! Are you drinking alcohol?" demanded a voice from behind Fish's flank. She turned around to find an older unicorn stallion up and on his hooves, having left his place further up the table with the senior diplomats.
Or other senior diplomat, it wasn't that big of a delegation.
"You know that your employment waiver prevents you from indulging! I can't keep covering for- look, you, whoever you are-"
"Fish Eye!" Fish Eye chirped, helpfully.
"Don't give this pony alcohol, he can't handle it. Can you handle that?"
"No booze for my fellow Farrow alumni, got it!"
"What? No, don't tell me, I don't care." The other unicorn's horn flared suddenly, and a halo briefly formed around the already-inebriated First Blush. He suddenly turned green - well, greener - and his cheeks bulged like he was trying to - oh, right.
Fish led the nauseated diplomat towards the nearest head, to purge his system the old-fashioned Farrow way, like all the fillies did with their first fifths of whiskey smuggled into the dorms.
In all the sticky, disgusting fuss, Fish Eye missed the moment when they left port.
Gilda was pulled out of the diplomats' dinner by a commotion. She had never been so glad to escape a 'function'. She'd never really had the opportunity to use her mother's preposterous, theoretical 'etiquette' lessons, and most of them weren't operative among herbivores, anyways. So she'd mostly sat there at Gleaming's left hoof, and pretended she wasn't envious of Bob, Fish Eye, and the other valets as they played footmares and servers and didn't have to answer stupid, ill-conceived questions about the current, murderous state of affairs in Griffonstone, or about what the new Duchess of Trottingham was really like, or what Gilda's opinion was on this or that point of imperial policy.
Four winds, Gilda hadn't really been aware that the ponies even had an empire until the planning for this trip had brought it to her attention.
What did they want? A hen's education would naturally suffer gaps when it was entirely self-directed, and built upon whatever books she could beg, borrow, or steal, the table-talk of griffish Territorials, and the assorted results of interrogations of villains, street-trash, and raw recruits. What Gilda knew about the world had holes in it you could fly the Princess's Bit through.
And the more she tried to talk to these chatty diplomats, the more obvious those gaps became. To Gilda, and probably to her partners at the table. The dinner crept on, hour after hour, every course lingered over until the food was as cold as it was inedible to Gilda's griffon palate.
So when the commotion interrupted hour four of that endless 'dinner', Gilda was overjoyed by the interruption. Great! There was an emergency that the master sergeant must go take care of, immediately. So sorry to leave, enjoy your sixth variant on some stinking peat mash filth or other such- au revoir, my new friends, must go!
The actual crisis turned out to just be Lyra Heartstrings and the new bitch rubbing up against each other.
"That little thief was paw-deep in my Hat when I found her!"
"Queenie just looking for spare towels! Wasn't taking nothing!"
"Like human Hades! Who keeps a towel in one's hat?"
"Queenie doesn't know. Ponies are strange people. There weren't any other in shelves Queenie found."
"And that's another thing, all my stuff was tumbled about and scattered, it looked like a herd of bison had stampeded through my room!"
"Gilda, what's going on back here?" asked Gleaming as she came trotting down the corridor, where the two griffish troopers held the spitting, squint-eyed Lyra Heartstrings and a very guilty-looking Reina de Some Damn Place by the scruff of their respective necks. "Lyra? What are you doing out of the infirmary?"
"My job! Or I was going to, before I found this little sneak-thief breaking into my room and messing with my equipment! When I caught her, she dropped my apparatus. I-I need to get back to my room! What if it's broken?"
Was it her Hat, or her apparatus? Not important.
"Calm down and forget the bucking equipment, Lyra," said the major. "You're supposed to be on convalescent leave, and not doing any work at all. You look like the south end of a northbound yak."
"Well, I don't feel great, either. But I wanted to get my scanning rig to go take a look at Trixie and the other casualties that Hawk Eye has in her infirmary. Something's rotten in the Duchy of Great Danes."
"Kingdom of Rottweiler, these days," Gleaming corrected absently. There had been a pegasus mare who'd been going on and on about the political history of the northern littoral of the Inland Sea which, because it contained remarkably few griffons and a great lot of dogs, ponies, and parrot raiders, Gilda hadn't really paid too much attention to, to be honest.
"What's this about Lieutenant Lulamoon and your 'scanning rig'?" Gilda asked. "Is that those magical whatsits you used on Bob back during that Concordat business?"
"Yeah! I was talking to the doc, and we realized that my experimental equipment had a lot of diagnostic and maybe even therapeutic value for whatever's up with Trixie! But then I come back to my room and find this little bitch muzzle-deep in my inharmonic hat!"
"Ananr a beure volar cendra purins, cavall!"
"Gwaine?" Gilda prompted the corporal holding the struggling little perro.
He obligingly shook Reina until she stopped spouting Perroish insults.
"Yeah, I'm very disappointed in you, little girl," Gilda said. "You're going in time-out. Gwaine, introduce her to the - what do the sailors call the stockade again?"
"Th' brig, master sergeant," he grunted.
"Yeah, that. Let her cool her head overnight. At least. Lyra, I want to see what these toys of yours can do." It was an excellent opportunity to avoid the diplomats for the rest of the night!
The other griffon dropped Lyra, who dusted herself off. The two troopers left with the little perro to introduce her to 'the dog house', and Gilda went to follow Lyra back to her state room to collect the equipment necessary to avoid dealing with pony diplo- er, find out what was wrong with Trixie Lulamoon.
Gilda heard another hoof-step behind her, and turned around to find her major quietly following in their train.
"Major, ma'am, don't you have a diplomatic dinner you should be hosting?"
"Do I have to, Gilda? It doesn't seem to be ending, and this sounds much more promising than another hour of listening to High Flyer go on about the houses of Bullhunden and Bichon in Rottweiler und Grosdannermark. I think I might go cannibal and eat my own left forehoof if I have to-"
"Major. Ma'am."
"But Giiilda…"
"The obligations of command, ma'am."
"Fine!" Gleaming Shield flounced off to her diplomatic doom, and Gilda went off to play hooky. Or possibly doctor.
Nah, Lyra was looking too rough and salty for that sort of banter.
Lyra's state room wasn't nearly as big of a mess as the unicorn's rather overblown complaints had led Gilda to believe.
But the wizard's apparatus was well and truly buggered. Gilda left Lyra Heartstrings muttering over her bunk, poking and fiddling with the bent rods and impact-starred bead that supposedly made the device unusable. Well, tonight, anyways.
Gilda reluctantly returned to the dinner party, or rather, the clean-up as they had finally chased the diplomats out of the mess, and the bat-hens (and -mares, and -stallions, and ninja) were clearing the tables.
Gilda claimed the right of rank, and left the lance corporals to that thankless task, and went to find her hammock in the Major's quarters.
As the ship cruised eastward over the northern-most reaches of the Bight of Bullmastifia, the ponies and griffons of the crew and the squadron slowly dropped off one by one into sleep. The relative quiet opened up an opportunity for the recovery of the lost.
Ping had called it a rectification ceremony, but it had many names in tradition, and many variants. Tonight, they had three victims who needed to be made whole: one who had merely been wounded, and two who had been fed upon, and chewed up, and spit out.
Rhetorically speaking, of course.
The real challenge was bridging the dreamscapes of the three to be restored, rectified, made whole. Dried Durian was the least weakened, the most strong of the three, having been simply mangled, rather than parasitized. And she was also, in a sense, conscious, or at least aware at some level. Unlike the utterly inert Lieutenant Lulamoon, or the in-stasis Nightfang.
Nightfang wasn't actually in the sort of stasis that they could maintain for any length of time, which was another reason to get the job done tonight. They didn't have the Plain of Jars to preserve and sustain her or the lieutenant for much longer.
Ping felt the relative absence of his echoes as the shieldmaidens slowly worked through the first faltering measures of the restoration dance, and the stallion musicians kept the time and the beat. It had been becoming more and more plain, the longer this trip went on. At first, he hadn't needed his special sense, his talent, because they were on a ship, moving in a rigorous line, without deviation or choices of any real import.
It had only revealed itself when they'd come to Barkalona, and suddenly there were choices to be made, other than 'try harder' and 'rely on your ponies'. Neither of which were any sort of choices, if he was being honest with himself.
Where was the choice? You prayed to the Mother, you did your duty, you killed the night-haunts, you protected the Day from the things that crawled in the Night.
Choices meant looking. Looking meant seeing. And seeing meant…
So no, he hadn't noticed the fading of his echoes. He hadn't had to.
Until the fights got worse, and the breaches multiplied, and they needed him to see where they were coming from, what was slipping nightmares through his regiment's wards.
They had a greater concentration of dream-warriors in one place than this world had seen since the Fall of Night, outside of Canterlot and the home caverns. They should have been invulnerable, impenetrable, a perfect armed camp on the move.
The mares moved faster in their paces, circling and entwining, their leathery wings stretching and closing and furling in time to the beat of the colts' music.
The three dreamscapes approached, merged Lulamoon to Durian, Durian to Nightfang. They became not three bubbles of identity, but rather, a long-hall in the night, warm-lit with the emotional weaving of the shieldmaidens in their protected safety, as Ping held his weapon upwards, holding the strongest wards he knew to make, tentlike, over the dance.
He stared vengefully at the black bubbling sub-bubble, held within the space which had been Durian's dream, held now in the heart of the long-hall, where in another world, the long trench, the long pit-fire would have burned to keep out the night.
With a trill of the pipe being played by Fruit Salad, a sparrow suddenly flitted into the dream of the night-hall, come from Mother knew where, crossing under the shadow-beams with one, two, three, four beats of its little wings, before it returned once more to whatever unimaginable world from which it came.
Ping knew he should have been astonished to see his wards of invulnerability affronted so effortlessly, mocked by a little brown thing. But somehow, in the throbbing beat of the music and the dance, he couldn't find in himself the fury or the terror or even the curiosity.
Somehow he knew it wasn't relevant. That it had just been a voyager, a passer-by.
A reminder that there were worlds beyond the dream of the long-hall, a dream which could all too easily become one's whole world, as the beating drums throbbed to the rhythm of their united hearts, and the skirling pipes shrieked against the beat.
In the long trench, the bubbling blackness turned, shifting, becoming first a sort of brown, then a sort of grey, and then brown again, thread by thread, bubble by bubble boiling out of the dream-magic-infused solution.
The bubbles turned colors, turned light, turned rich, turned glittery and golden and mauve and purple and, increasingly, a pale pastel blue, and an even paler hue which was only white beside its fellow-blues.
As the dream-stuff boiled, and lost its nightmare character, it released those bubbles, which flowed in the heavy hot steam of the long-hall, the mares thrashing through their measures more and more feverishly, sweat flinging in moist arcs as their wings snapped, their legs lifting and falling in the quickening patterns, the wildness of the skirling pipes, the rhythm of the beating heart-drum.
Now holding each other by the grasping hoof, the cupping wing, the mares paired, sweat-slick and slightly foamed, as they bent and danced, and jumped and leaped, and poured that dark harmony which was the dances of the night into the center of the hall.
The bubbles of purified night floated in the air-currents, sluggishly, wafted this way and that, finding their way in ones and in pairs, and, over the now-lengthening measures of the song the musicians played, drifting eventually into three groups of bobbing, congealing not-matter along the spine of the hall.
The players allowed the dance-music to weave wearily, sluggishly to their scripted conclusions, and the dancers came to the end of their dance, stopping, finally, in stillness.
The pipes fell silent, and only the drums continued, softly thumping.
"I said to my heart, be still," Ping said, shifting his spear-head to a point over the central mass of bubbles, grey and yellowish-grey and brief flashes of the occasional bright emerald green. "Those who wait, lie in wait. They wait to guard, they wait in stillness. Stillness is a virtue. Learn ye to be still, and stalwart!"
"We wait in stillness," said the dancers, reformed into a chorus, and the bubbled dream-stuff shot to the walls of the center of the hall, lining them with Dried Durian's essence, her colors.
Ping walked down the now-empty trench which had once held the corrupted dream-stuff, and now was dry, walked to the second floating mass, in the arm of the hall which once, and would once again be Trixie Lulamoon.
"I said to my heart, be patient," he said again, in the ancient words of the ritual. "For patience is a virtue beyond all else. Evils may come, but evils will go, and those also serve, who endure what cannot be fought with blade or spear."
"We endure what cannot be fought," the stallion-musicians agreed, and the colors of the stricken artillery-mare, purified, streamed from the mass to the walls of that end of the hall.
Ping swung his spear about with a flourish, and stalked back down the trench to the final mass, the purples and greys and navy blues of the fallen Nightfang, whom they desired so ardently to return to their ranks.
"I say to my heart, be valiant! For though the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting, we would at last be done with waiting, and stillness, and patience, and we would have back our sisters! Cast off the darkness!"
"Cast off the darkness, so that it becomes once again, the light!" sang the chorus and the musicians as one, and the last mass of dream-shadows rushed outwards, and the hall was a tunnel of lights in the darkness.
"So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing, So the skies, full of her stars, shall be the night everlasting!"
"The night everlasting, under the light of her stars!"
"So mote it be," Ping concluded, and the hall broke into three, as one collective heart became three.
"So shall it be," the chorus and the musicians agreed, as they were carried off, each to their respective dreamscapes, and the ceremony concluded.
And that was that. A debt repaid, a failure… not justified. Not even redeemed. But, Ping hoped, devoutly, a little bit of restitution, a little bit of grace, in a night that he increasingly found baffling and dark and worrying.
Because now that he stood with the few others carried along with Durian's dream-scape, he'd realized that with the ceremony at an end, he couldn't see the other dreamscapes.
His sight was almost entirely gone. What would he do, when he was just another stallion? No longer the special colt?
Could he hold this herd, this string together, when everything else that made him special leeched away?
When Fish Eye woke up, the batponies were oddly chirpy and happy. It had been a late night for Fish, who usually was sleeping when her ensign and the other bats were out and about and being all bats-of-the-night active. It was a bit odd being diurnal among the habitually nocturnal, but it usually meant that Fish could finish up her chores and take care of her ensign and the rest while they were safely asleep and not underhoof.
So yeah, for a change, Fish was on the same consciousness cycle as her bats, and they were being kind of… not batty. Or not as much as usual. Her new vision was new enough that she couldn't be sure of what she was seeing, but they looked different, too. A lot of the streaks of darkness and the fadedness had, well, not faded - that would be silly - but they'd filled in, and the scatteredness had un-scattered.
They almost looked like regular ponies, the morning after that awful dinner party. Uniform, smooth auras, just like the ponies in Charlie Troop, and sort of like the griffons in Apple. Well, not exactly - griffons didn't really look much like ponies, but they were all smooth and even in their auras; whether they were dark-tinged and feathery, or they were bright primary colors and deep, rich pastels, they were continuously, uniformly so.
The weird splatter-colors and streaks that some of the batponies usually sported were gone. And it seemed to match up with who was being bouncy and happy.
After the third time Fish had found herself roped into an impromptu little swirling dance by a giddy dark-winged thestral, she mused to herself that even a fool like Fish Eye ought to be able to tell that something was up.
The question was, who to ask?
Auntie A was back behind Fish's eyes, and she could feel the goddess snickering over something, but her matroness wasn't in a sharing mood.
"OK, Auntie, that's enough of that. What's so funny?" Fish demanded. Maybe she was getting entitled and pushy, but you couldn't share your eyes with a vast, awe-inspiring power that could squish you like a water-bug for this long, without losing some of your fear of retribution. Fish couldn't help herself.
Oh, little Fish, sometimes you mortals tickle my fancy. Someone took my name in vain last night, while you were cleaning up the messes of your silly VIPs. I failed to see all of it, but what I felt was enough, and I can see the residue all around you, everywhere you look.
"Your name, Auntie? The batponies called on you? I didn't think they could do that."
Well, they did not think they were calling on me. Sometimes, our lesser epithets draw old gods like myself, as petitioners call on us unaware. Or even, sometimes, just our lesser aspects. Your cute little doom-mammals were trying something fancy. A full dress ceremony, song and dance. Well, spoken-verse and dance. Your short coltfriend is not one for singing, is he? And he has terrible taste in poetry. I gave him the boost he asked for, although I did not quite understand all of it. That can happen, when they accidentally call on you, rather than their own gods.
"Well, that's all quite cryptic, but if it makes you happy, and makes them happy, it must have been for the best, I guess?"
Too soon to tell, little Fish. But we will see. They are floating on unearned confidence right now. Just because you accomplish what you attempted, does not mean that the attempt was wise, or productive, or not something that will bite you in the end.
One of the worst curses in all the lexicons of the divine, is this: 'may you receive what you desire', little Fish.
When Trixie awoke, the brightness threatened to overwhelm her senses. Memory was as slow to return to her as her eyes were to react to the glare.
When Trixie's eyes finally constricted enough to make sense of her surroundings, she found herself looking up at an unfamiliar ceiling.
Overhead. They call them overheads here on the ship.
And with that thought, Trixie remembered she was living on a warship. The Princess's Bit. And that she was the commander of a battery in a new regiment. The Sparkle's new regiment.
Trixie was trying to patch together why she wasn't in her narrow little bunk beside the workshops when a beaked face stuck itself into the view, and surprised Trixie.
Just a bit. If she were feeling more herself, she might have recoiled.
"Oh, look who else has rejoined us, Dark Wings. It's a Hearthswarming miracle!"
Hearthswarming? How long was I out? Trixie thought, confused.
"It's almost six months until the next Hearthswarming, Doctor," said… somepony that Trixie couldn't see. Someone squeaky. "You mean a Summer Sun miracle. Not that there are such things."
"Oh, I don't care about your stupid pony festivals, Wings. They're all coming back to us! That's worth a celebration. Go pour me a gimlet!"
"It's nine in the morning, Doctor. Don't you think you should pace yourself?"
"Oh, what do you know, you're just a corpsmare. Abysses below, they're all back, I don't care. Welcome back, Lieutenant Lulamoon. Can you tell me how many talons I'm holding up?"
"What's a talon?" Trixie asked the not-a-pony which she'd finally placed as the regimental surgeon.
"Well, that's not as good. Lieutenant, can you tell me who's princess?"
"Celestia? It's always Celestia. She's been princess for… when was Equestria founded again?"
"Well, the patient remembers who her princess is, but seems foggy about her history."
"That's a pony thing, Doctor. Nopony cares to dwell on the past. Lieutenant, how many hooves?"
A brown-grey hoof on the end of a brown-grey arm thrust itself into Trixie's view. "Uh, just the one?"
"See?" squeaked the mostly-unseen batpony. "Not freezer-burned at all."
"Well, not as much as I'd thought," conceded the hippogriff, as she pulled back out of Trixie's view.
The change caused Trixie to rear up a bit, and try to see more of where she was. Presumably the infirmary?
She was laying on a cot or bunk or something up against a wall. The pony who had been speaking came into focus, a bat with combat medic flashes on her uniform collar. Two other bats were squeaking at ponies laying across the room. It looked like a busy day in the med bay.
Things were starting to come back to Trixie. She'd gotten the battery squared away, and filed her report, and then there had been a great exhaustion, that she'd held off long enough to find her bunk next to the workshop.
Then Trixie remembered some of the things she'd written in that report, and felt her gorge rising.
She heaved, dryly twice, and then felt something coming up.
"Whoops! Get a bucket, quick!" said the hippogriff doctor.
Trixie's spasming stomach found something, finally, to throw up.
"Huh, would have thought she'd not have anything left to toss," said the batpony, Dark Wings.
"Never can tell," said the doctor. "But yeah, we should probably get some more fluids into her. Trixie, you want to rinse out your mouth?"
"I-" Trixie coughed, her throat hurting. "I want to know what's going on."
"Oh, Lieutenant, if I knew what was going on, I'd be a happy fish-bird," the doctor said. "How about you hydrate up, and we'll go through the checklist, OK?"
A flurry of great grey-brown wings in the air in front of the ship briefly drew Fish Eye's attention away from her afternoon service, and then she forced her focus back on the ritual. A ritual which had barely been attended, by two sailors and a bored-looking trooper from Charlie, and wasn't honestly going all that great. She'd been mostly reduced to free-associating in front of the altar, and the goddess kept making snide comments as Fish stuttered in her attempts to solemnly praise her glory in front of an audience.
"-and all the waves of your bountiful seas, and the sweetest breezes of your gentlest storm-fronts, amen," Fish intoned as she waved her sea-wrack mitre over the offerings the sailors had brought her. Or was it a crozier? She never could keep those straight. Anyways, that's enough for today. Now for the blessing.
Fish turned to her worshipers, or whatever they were, and raised two talons in benediction over their heads. Which were notably unbowed. Should I say something?
Figuring it was too late now, Fish drew a vague squiggle over each pony's head, and muttered "Tooloo, tolu, tolay, be blessed by her beneficence, today and all - always!"
Finally, the three worshipers bowed their heads, acknowledging her attempts, and got up and left, presumably to their own duties.
Fish, did you just use your private-school cheer as a blessing over my worshipers? Amphitrite asked in the sanctity of Fish's own head, as she turned to sweep the offerings into the Box of Rotting Stuff.
"And what if I did, your luminousness?" asked Fish out loud. "It isn't as if you delivered a manual when you made me your priestess."
Fair enough, the goddess replied, as a sudden vast shadow was cast over Fish and her little sanctuary to the goddess's cult.
Fish Eye looked up, and blinked in surprise at the turul crouched low over the forecastle. "Hello, your highness! Did you have a nice flight?"
"Didn't find anything big enough to eat, for what that's worth," said the enormous royal bird. "I can't get used to the schooling patterns in these waters. And I'm getting peckish."
"You're not likely to find any big fish in these waters so late in the spring, child of the winds," Auntie A said with Fish's vocal chords. "You'd have to find the shallows they're retreating to. You know, I could guide you, if…"
"What if?" the big hen asked. "I'd appreciate the guidance, your divinity, if you have it to give."
Fish could feel her Auntie thinking. It felt like cold down-drafts in a deep lake.
"You know I can only do so much for non-worshipers, especially ones of the wrong element, such as you, wind-child. There are penalties, karmic harms I can and will cause my divine self if I simply do for children of another god."
The Hercegnő Gyongyi looked down at Fish, and the goddess inside of Fish's eyes. "You want worship, your divinity? I'm not even sure how to begin doing such a thing. And although I do not follow the faith of my people-"
"And you most certainly will have to change that, when you ascend to your high aerial throne, lest you invite the wrath of your winds. They are flighty, the sylphs, but not mindless. Those that have survived these atheistical times, that is. I have not had much touch with the courts of the air in recent years."
"You haven't? And the Courts of the Air aren't just myth?"
"I, you foolish hen, am myth. Make not mock of myths and legends, for we lurk in holes and lay in wait for those foolish enough to slight us, to deny us the respect we are due."
"Why in holes, Auntie? Can't you afford houses anymore?"
"Do not start, you fool of a Fish. Auntie is negotiating with the nice avian, heathen infidel. Be a good priestess, and leave the talking to your Auntie. So, wind-child, you neglect your own altars, and yet you expect to take up the queenhood of your people? Tis no wonder they fell under the rule of - what was it you said the other day? A cock who likes to pretend his testicles produce eggs?"
Gyongyi snorted in offense, and Fish did her best to not cringe from the huge predator that could eat her in a single bite. Or perhaps two.
"If you think that enrages you, imagine what your gods will say, when you come before them unwilling to lay offerings before their intangible talons. You best get into the religious habit, princess of the winds."
And still, the big bird didn't have anything to say to Fish's goddess.
"Why couldn't you take her as a worshiper, Auntie?" asked Fish, trying to help.
"Nothing of the sea about her, little fry, for one thing. You do not become an amphibious bird merely because you eat the occasional shark." But Fish could feel her goddess thinking.
"What about the legend of the Binding?" Fish asked her Auntie.
"Clever girl!" the goddess praised her, through her own beak. "Ah, it is a good thing that you also lack testicles, little Fish, if you care to reenact the Binding. We do not have all that much time, although you all lay about as if you have all the time in the watery world."
"The… Binding of what?" asked the perplexed turul, turning her head sideways.
"I have not bound a new people to my worship in almost two thousand years, oh royal bird of the mountains. How would you like to move some of your eggs out of your solitary mountainous basket, before the gods of the air overthrow that basket in their rightful wrath? I'm offering a discount on water-baskets, half off. Just this week!"
And as the turul and the goddess dickered like fishwives through the medium of a Fish Eye, she began to feel something very funny going on in her nether regions. Something very funny indeed.
Giles' lance banked on his turn, following his lead. The heavy covered carts and their pegasus drivers fell behind the griffish guards as they accelerated away from the completed intercept. A flying weather circus they'd found transiting the open waters between Horseica and the mainland, the ponies' papers were in order, and their story made a modicum of sense.
If you had gotten used to pony logic, it wasn't so strange that a travelling nomadic clan of scruffy winged ponies could make their living flying from region to region, selling their weather-making services to anyone with the bits or ducats or thalers to make it worth the circus's while. Giles had never seen a pony weather team in the Sandstone highlands, of course, and if in his time in the workhouses of Trottingham, he hadn't heard his fellow apprentices tell of the days when the lowlands had been safe enough that the pegasi could make the circuit of the rich districts around the city, this flying circus would have left him completely baffled.
And so, he and his troopers left behind the cheerfully mercenary weatherponies and their heavy burdens, unmolested. All but a few of the pegasi had been harnessed with their household belongings packed into cloudformed airy chariots, half wicker frame, half compacted cloudstuff. Giles had gotten a look inside one of the cloud-carts, and spotted crates and sacks and locked shelving-cabinets piled deeply and compactly within the shelter-vehicle.
If every day, the weather-pegasi got up and hauled their homes, their whole lives, their entire worlds across the skies in their little carts, it was no wonder the scruffy pegasi were such impressive physical specimens. Though few pegasi were as large and inherently powerful as even the scrawniest, most starved griffon, these ponies had packed a lot of muscle and bulk around their naturally narrow, slim builds, the better to carry their homes across the heavens.
Still, for all that weight, they flew like they hadn't a care in the world.
The Princess's Bit came into sight in front of Giles before the flying circus had fluttered fully out of sight behind him. The clear late June sky was vast and cloudless that afternoon, and the tiny little airship that held everything that made them the Sixth Regiment of Guards was made even smaller by the lack of anything nearby her to give any sense of scale. The light carrier grew quickly as he and his griffons flew on their return course to their home ship.
And the Bit was moving rapidly indeed. If Giles and his lance had missed their intercept course by more than the slightest bit, they would have found themselves labouring mightily to catch up to the hurtling velocity that the light carrier had put on, in the course of more than a day and a night of running the engines nearly flat out.
Giles had heard that they wanted to stress-test the rebuilt engines, or the fuel feeds, or something like that. He was a trooper, not a mechanic, and hadn't had any more interaction with the process than the dumb labour inherent in the digging of coal that had been asked of him and his. Whatever they'd loaded to replace the 'magic coal' the griffons had muscled out of the bunkers, it worked like fire.
Or burned. Combusted. Something like that.
Giles and his griffons caught air over the envelope lookout posts, the 'griffon's nest', and dropped neatly, two by two, into the landing-square provided there, in between the lookouts' benches. In the near distance, he could make out the lieutenant and one or two of the other coolies working the new recruits on speed trials, running rings around the ship. The recruits, yellow and grey, now on the rearward arc of their circuit and chasing the ship from behind, were working mightily as Giles and his own griffons grabbed water ladles from the tanks at the rear of the landing platform, to slake their thirst.
Giles dipped another ladle's worth, and poured it over a panting, shamming Gilead, laying at Giles' talons with his legs sprawled out, and tongue stuck theatrically out as if the tom was about to expire of heatstroke.
"Get up, ya clownish cat. An' come on, ye lads an' ladies, it's enough laying about you 'ave 'ad. Geet yourselves up and out, kitlings, we 'ave another circuit of our own to fly. We found ourselves a bloody flyin' circus on the last turn around the van, who knows what further wonders lie in our paths, in the deep blue distances?" Giles demanded, leaping upwards, his wings beating for altitude.
He laughed as his griffons followed in his wake, beating back towards the vanguard in the deepening east.
Purse Strings looked through the bars of the brig's other cell at the little black dog. She was sleeping, just like the earth pony trooper sleeping one off in the other, other cell. Where Mickle Joe kept finding his rotgut was a matter for debate, but Purse was inclined to blame the regimental doctor. He had no evidence that Hawk Eye was selling her stuff, but once a still was put in operation, you couldn't control where the product ended up.
Purse had been the security 'officer' for his last ship, and somehow, he'd thought that this would continue on the Bit, but he'd not taken into account the army's tendency to professionalize all operations having to do, however obliquely, with force. Instead, the new boss had assigned authority over the 'provost' and the brig to a rotating slate of officers, which, in the early days when they barely had any officers at all, meant that the lance corporal assigned to internal security had mostly overseen herself. Which meant that Purse was called in whenever there was something going on, because the officers nominally in charge had real jobs.
But officially, Purse Strings wasn't in charge of the brig.
And yet, look where I am. Just like Cousin Contract, I can't stay out of stir for long.
“Hey, Queenie, wake up!“ Purse barked.
She didn't stir.
“Hey, Fife, where are those keys? Prisoner's asleep.“
“I can poke 'er through the bars with me stick, if you like, gov'.“
“Or you can unlock the door and let me kick her awake, can't you? Put away your stick, Fife. Go bug Mickle if you want to poke at somepony.“
“But Mickle'll not let me into tomorrow's game if I mess wif 'im!“
“Mickle Joe's not hosting any more games at all if he's going to keep stealing the doctor's hooch and drinking himself square-eyed.“
“Ain't no proof it were the hippogriff's juice.“
“I don't believe in the Bit's Nectar. This ship is not even a month old, how did we develop a story that demented so soon? They're just raiding the medicinal gin.“ Frankly, Mickle was in his cell as a way to get him to give up his contraband supply. Whether it was stolen from the doctor, snuck on board from Barkalona, or the operation of yet another still somewhere in the depths of the new ship, they needed to get it under control before someone got knocked up, fell off the side, or started a fight with casualties.
And meanwhile, the little perro he'd been forced to take on board was shamming behind a locked cell door, pretending she couldn't hear Purse and the jailer. Gaoler. However they were spelling it, officially.
With a light 'clunk', the lock opened, and Purse moved into the narrow little cell. Which still was larger than most bunkrooms in the barracks-quarters.
Reina jumped up and plastered herself into the far corner like a trapped cat.
“Bitch, shut UP!“ Purse yelled, interrupting the little dog's incomprehensible stream of yips. “We both know you speak Equish. Speak the Chairmare's Equish, and spare me that gibber of yours.“
“No, I meant - talk. Don't yammer. I'm not a mind reader, that's my cousin Tarot Card. I wouldn't even know how to read you, you don't have frogs.“
Purse waited, and waited.
“You can start now,“ he prompted. “Less than a hundred words a minute.“
“I didn't - I wasn't - I never even saw the pony!“
“That's not helping. Were you trying to steal her stuff, like she said?“
“No! I just, I didn't even know who she was, you know?“
“First time meeting?“
“Yeah! I mean, there was all this stuff laying aroun' but no cavall! Just stuff! An' I didn't have no business to get up to, noperro tellin' me what to do.“
Purse had been avoiding the little dog, on general principles. And also, having full-to-bursting lockers and holds to work through and get the inventories set down proper.
“Yeah, that's my bad,“ Purse conceded. Idle hooves were the draconequus's playground, after all. “I shouldn't have just left you sit and simmer. I shoulda had somepony - you're some kind of magic, right?“
“What, you mean màgia terrestre- er, dirt magic? Yeah, you know that. You seen me.“
“You're what, twelve?“
“What, my burrow-age? Eleven. I think you ponies say burrow-age-plus-twelve-moons, so… yeah, about that.“
“So you ain't fully grown yet. Who's been teaching you?“
“Eh, you pick things up. Here and there.“
Oh, Celestia, she's never had a mentor. Or a teacher. Or master, or whatever rockhoppers have.
“I shoulda had somepony teaching you to be a proper rockhopper. But since we don't have a rockhopper, best I could do would be - I dunno, some kinda sorcerer.“
“You have a sorcerer?“ asked the little black dog, her eyes wide behind that curtain of black bangs. It was about as close as the little bitch got to 'cute'.
“Nah, but I have a magus. Who caught you pawin' through her shit. I think the officers thought she'd take you under her wings.“
“Pony wasn't winged, was a screwhead.“
“You- look, you can't say shit like that. Don't call unicorns 'screwheads', no matter how screwy they are! That was your mentor who tried to stomp you through the deckplates!“
“Queenie sorry! Per l'amor de la proserpina, estalvia'm!“
“Stop that! Chairmare's Equish! And apologizing to me won't cut it, I ain't the one you need to be apologizing to. Come on, you've had your night in here, that's as much as the regiment wants out of you. Now we go make good with the mare you were violating the sanctity of her shit. Let's go apologize for your shit-stirring. And from now on…
“We're gonna keep your paws busy every hour you're awake an' alive, Queenie. Because clearly you need some supervising.“
The empowering bead was not powering anything. Lyra took it out of its cradle, and fiddled with it, then slotted it back in, backwards, in hopes of something sparking.
Nothing.
Her friend looked up between the struts and rickety connectors that made up the projection rig, a certain sort of damaged, hopeful patience in her purple eyes.
“Just a sec, Lula-baby. I've almost got it running. We'll see what was wrong with you in just a minute.“
Lyra yanked out the empowering bead, and swapped it out for the last of her supply. A bead which she was like, 85% sure that the little diamond dog hadn't touched - they had been deeper in the shelf, still wrapped up in their velvet Peytral Royal bag.
The velvet bags that northern-provinces sipping whisky came in were absolutely brilliant for storing stuff.
Nothing. Not forward, not backwards, not sideways. Nothing Lyra did, could get that damned bead working.
She even tried feeding thaums directly via her aching horn, but the pain put an end to that before she got anything more than a false image of what looked like a dark forest lodge.
“Anything, Lyra? The feeble and confused Trixie is getting a bit anxious, here.“
“Just five minutes, Lula-darlin'.“
“It was one minute, five minutes ago, Lyra. If it isn't going to work-“
“It'll work! I just had it working like a charm a couple weeks ago with Trooper Bob. In front of an entire audience! Twilight could tell you. If, y'know, she was here.“
“I thought it was a charm?“
“Meh, more of a sorcerous tool.“
“Where is the Major?“ Trixie asked, looking around the infirmary nervously.
“Busy keeping this circus in the air!“ boomed a scratchy, griffish voice from behind Lyra. “Somepony has to! How is it coming, Magus Heartstrings?“
“Gilda! Good to hear you. And not well. That damned dog of yours broke my diagnostic apparatus.“
“I thought you said it was an experimental academic jury-rig?“ the griffon asked as she came into view in Lyra's peripheral vision. “Are you sure you didn't just put it away wrong, or didn't keep up on upkeep?“
“No, I'm not!“ Lyra barely kept herself from dashing the nonfunctioning bead against the wall- no, the bulkhead. “I can't be sure of anything, and my horn is killing me!“
Lyra turned to stomp out of the wardroom and yell at the hippogriff doctor working in her office the next room over. “Doc! I give up, give me the good stuff! I'm ready to be spacy again!“
“Nope, nope, nope,“ said the Griffonstonian as she grabbed ahold of Lyra's tail and dragged her back to the table where Trixie and Lyra's malfunctioning testing apparatus laid. “No more drugs for you, we need a thinking magus, not another drunk tearing up the decks of my winds-damned light carrier. We haven't even started payments on the refit!“
“Aw, come on, I wasn't going to get sloshed! Just something to kill this headache, come on, Giiildaaa…“
And that was when Lyra turned around and saw that skinny git of a quartermaster, with the nasty little dog who'd she'd caught breaking her shit, hiding behind the stallion's narrow hindquarters.
“You! You little shit! Get over here so I can take my frustrations out on you!“
The talons were back, or rather, they'd never let up their grip on her tail, so instead of rocketing forward to pound the little furry menace into the deck-plates, Lyra landed on her jaw, the painful tug on her dock and tail adding to her litany of miseries.
“Now calm down, magus. Purse Strings, why is that shameless little perro out of her cell?“ the griffon asked.
“Hiya, Sergeant. She's had her night in stir, Queenie, and she has something to say to the magus, she does. Don't you, little girl?“
“Yessir. I really do. Yip!“
Gilda had grabbed Lyra again, keeping her from her rightful vengeance!
“Go on, Queenie,“ the narrow-flanked ugly male so-and-so standing between Lyra and her target said.
“Missus Magus, Imma really sorry I touched your shit. I didn' mean to break notting. I swear I puts everything back in its place, de veritat! It just, you startle me, I drop that last meravella...“
“I knew it! You did get into my empowering beads, and my backup gemstones, and everything that isn't working!“
“What, you mean that bag of àgates? I just look inside. They looked OK, if raw. You don' wanna leave those in the crushed velvet, it give 'em a charge.“
“That's the whole idea! They're supposed to be thaumically chargeable!“
“No' if you let them get una càrrega elèctrica, it make for the desnaturalitzat per receptivitat màgia.“
Lyra squinted as she tried to make sense of the tumbled mix of Perronese and Equish. “You're saying that a static electrical charge ruins my beads?“
“Yeah! Eve'tually. Might take un esclat taumic major. Like, I dunno, an engine blowin' out?“
Human Hells take it!
“What is your deal, anyways? Why do we have a pubescent perro bitch on board, sergeant?“
“Magus Heartstrings, let me introduce to you our… new rockhopper, Reina- Reina- Queenie, what was the rest of your name again?“
“Reina de la Negra, as it please your highness.“
Lyra almost smiled at the inappropriate form of address. “I don't think either of us are worthy of a royal address, little queen. You say you're a geomancer?“
“Yes! I have la màgia terrestre. I, how the cavalls say, hop rocks.“
“Coolness! They kept throwing me out of old Land Grant U, and wouldn't even tell me where the EIR campus was located, let alone let me into it! I have so many questions!“
“Ahem!“ the powder-blue unicorn, laying on the table on the other side of the room with Lyra's nonfunctioning apparatus hung around her head like the world's worst hat, said. Like, exactly that, 'ahem' spoken like it was an Equish word. “Could we get back to my diagnosis? Or get Trixie out of this torture device?“
“Oh, geez, Trixie, I'm sorry we forgot you. Hey, you, rockdoggie, come here and tell me what's going wrong with my empowerment beads, or help me get this thing working, we need to…“
Gilda turned away from the reconciling magicians as they bent their heads over the sorcerous mess Lyra Heartstrings called a 'projector'. She grabbed the skinny quartermaster before he said something and interrupted the touching little scene of autistic scholarship, and they slipped out of the medical bay.
Mission accomplished.
The damned stallion looked like he was about to start chatting Gilda up again, so she was delighted when they were interrupted by the other hippogriff on board.
“Fish Eye!“ Gilda said, grinning widely. “I was looking for you! I'd like to talk to you about this goddess scam of yours. Sorry, Purse, we can pick this up later, good bye. Come on, lance corporal, I haven't had time to look at this shrine of yours…“
The two of them left a sputtering earth pony behind them, as Gilda fled bow-ward, and up the stairs of the forecastle.
“Awk! Hi, yeah, Sergeant Gilda, can we slow down now?“
“Is he still in earshot?“
“Uh, no?“
“Then yeah, we can stop. So really, what's the deal with the funny voices? I keep hearing goofy things…“
“I rather take offense at your mockery of my speaking voice,“ the pink hippogriff said in a haunting, unnerving voice. “I am neither a scam, nor a con, nor any other sordid thing your wind-born corrupt mind can conceive of. Make not mockery of the gods, windchild.“
Yikes, Gilda thought.
“Look, Fish, all I ask is you don't ask for money or favors, OK? I don't want to get into an argument with your imaginary friend-“
“The gods are not imaginary friends! We're not friends at all! We are the embodiments of the magical underpinnings of the living world, you blasphemous bird!“
Then the hippogriff mare turned around and started arguing with herself. “Now look, Auntie, we agreed I'd do the talking here. No smiting my superiors! Play nice!“
“I am never nice, little fish. Nice! Bah, you're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice. I'm not nice, I'm not good, I'm just right.“
“Yes, yes, your divinity, you're very, very right. Can I continue?“
“You may,“ she said to herself in a sulky, unnerving voice.
“Great! Hey, yeah, sergeant, sorry about all that. No, I don't take money, and I try not to take favors. Not for the shrine stuff, anyways. Just 'offerings', which trust me, nogriff would ever want to eat. Not even you griffons with your iron gullets.“
“I rather fancy the mortal remains they've been providing…“
“Auntie! Anyways, no exploiting the priestess thing. Honest!“
Gilda looked at the self-appointed hippogriff 'priestess'. “Well, fine. OK. And I'm sorry I insulted your figmentary divinity. It's just… you know that the winds are all made up, right? There are no gods.“
“The fact that your gods of the air haven't blown you off the face of the planet suggests strongly that you may now be right about that, wind-child. I have been looking for my kin, and finding no sign of them here above the waves.“
“Good to hear… you agree. Your figmentariness,“ Gilda said, cautiously. “Did you… did you two want something?“
“Oh, yeah,“ Fish Eye said in her 'herself' voice. “I wanted to take a leave of absence!“
Gilda looked around at the open air, and the open seas below, with no land anywhere in sight. “To where? We're three days out from land, and four from Roam!“
“Auntie A, Hercegnő Gyongyi, and I need to go on flyabout!“
“A vision quest, little fish!“ she corrected herself in her goddess-voice.
“Yeah, that! I already ate everything fishy in the larders that isn't rock lobsters. Auntie A says they're too 'earthy' for the magic, even if they do look like shellfish. We need to go fishing in open waters, me and the princess, and eat up! I'm apparently expecting!“
“Fishing- you're what?“ Gilda yelped.
“Fish, I've told you twice now, it isn't actually an egg. It's just gestating where you'd usually keep an egg.“
“I don't see the difference, Auntie! I'm hungry all the time, you've put something in my inner mare parts, it's growing, and I need to pass it through my other lady parts. Sounds like a magic pregnancy to me!“
“An undignified manner of speaking, and you really should be more circumspect. I will get a worse reputation than Zeus if you keep talking this way.“
“If you're going to keep using my lady parts to make your miracles, Auntie, you'll have to put up with how ponies whisper about you behind our backs!“
“You know what?“ Gilda said, weakly. “I don't think I want to be involved in this conversation. Fish, you aren't actually pregnant?“
“Well… depending on how you look at it-“
“No, she is not. No living thing will come of this, hidden princess of the high stone trees.“
Yeep.
“Uh, so long as one of my troopers isn't knocked up - mostly - I don't care. Do what you want. Just - you're taking Lady George with you? Will you be able to catch back up with us?“
“How many days are you going to spend in Roam?“
“I think they're planning on two days, to deliver the diplomats and touch base before the drive inland to darkest Beakland. But we can't leave if Lady George isn't with us! She's the whole point of the expedition!“
“Well, Auntie A and the princess have ginned up some sort of scheme, which-“
“Fish!“
“-which I'm not supposed to talk about, but we'll catch up to you all in Roam in, one, two, carry the three - five days from now!“
“Uh. Er.“ Gilda blinked at the baffling hippogriff, who she had once mistaken for a younger her. She would never have sprung something as crazy as this on Gleaming Shield! “Yeah, just bring Lady George back to us at Roam. And don't… don't… look, I just don't want you coming back with an egg, or a fledgeling, or a tadpole, or whatever it is that you hippogriffs reproduce with.“
“Oh, no worries about that, Sergeant Gilda! I trust my Auntie Amphitrite!“
The pink hippogriff trotted across the forecastle deck to where a smiling turul had been resting her great head and watching the proceedings.
“Ready to go, Hercegnő Gyongyi?“ Fish Eye asked.
“You know you can call me George or Gyongyike, Fish Eye,“ the big bird said.
“Nah, I'm not royalty. I'm just a little fish!“
“If you say so, little fish. Let's go.“
And the two of them leaped off the port side of the cruising Princess's Bit, and dove down towards the glittering open waters of the middle of nowhere, Inland Sea, as Gilda craned her head over the side to watch them disappear into the distance.
Giles' lance had drawn the short straw again, for the last reach and the approaching descent into Roamish airspace. The Princess's Bit had spent the night racing over the darkened Bitalian swamps and farm-lots that had replaced the open waters when they'd come to the eastern end of the Inland Sea. They'd passed over the coast just as the Princess's sun had just finished falling somewhere over the western end of that near-endless stretch of salty waters, and the dark hours had been the business of the troopers of Baker Troop.
With the dawn had come the hoof-over, and Apple Troop had set up a lance every hour on the hour to fly a combat air patrol in front of, and on the approaching vectors around, the Bit in the morning light. The easterly light of the Duchess's sun had cast the long shadows of farmhouses and vineyards across the foreign land streaking below, but now the countryside was being left behind, and City was taking their place.
The ensign had taken Giles aside, and ordered him in the pre-dawn hours to get his griffons shined up and polished. They'd worked feverishly to get their enchantment gems sparkling, and the cloth of their best uniforms properly charged. Because they were to be the last combat air patrol before the Bit arrived at her anchorage, the CAP that greeted the City Herself.
And the Equestrian anchorage in Roam was over the embassy, in the heart of the City, at the crest of a steep hill facing the central heights which held the vast, sprawling palace which was the Imperial seat and the centre of all. As the Bit's engines ran at full reverse speed, the great bulk of the light carrier decelerated smartly, leaving Giles and his troopers to break and separate, like a blooming flower in front of the ship's bow over the streets and buildings below.
The great imperial City spread all around the grounds of the embassy like the fifth wonder of the world that she was, or so Lieutenant Martin Gale had explained to her corporals and lance corporals the night before.
Gwaine had whispered to Giles the rumor that Martin Gale had indulged in this uncharacteristic bit of education for the senior enlisted, as an excuse to skip out on the last diplomatic dinner in the officer's mess. Giles had no idea if this was the truth, or just a vicious slur on the lieutenant's good name.
Since the lieutenant didn't have any good to her name, he figured it didn't matter much.
But dodging her social responsibilities, or just making sure that Martin Gale's griffons didn't embarrass her before the watching eyes of antiquity, it didn't really matter to Giles. Because the stiff-winged old buzzard had chosen to lecture her griffons, Giles was able to put a name to that glittering mass of marble and roofing tile and ancient stone. The Domus Garañón, re-built by the founder of the current dynasty and re-named as was their right. The gold and purple and white marbles had been a donation of the Duch- no, the Princess Celestia and her stone-masons, to the new dignities of the revived Imperium.
The marbles had been put to use by Perronese workers, and Rocinantean architects, and other strange, foreign names that Giles only half-remembered after a night of strange dreams. The pegasus mare's main point had been that the court into which they were delivering the Bit's payload of Equestrian diplomats was the result of Equestrian patronage of the ancient, doddering empire.
The signs of the decay of the once-mighty Roamish Empire were visible in every direction that was not the palatial hill in front of which the light carrier now came to a complete stop. The palace herself was new, and glittering, and rich, and beautiful, but the tumbledown neighborhoods stretching in every other direction were more… like old Trottingham, than the stolid red-tile-roofed prosperity of Barkalona. Giles' sharp eagle eyes could pick out the collapsed roofs and rotting, abandoned buildings that spoke of deep-down, generational poverty everywhere he looked that was not the Domus Garanon, or however you pronounced that.
Giles spotted the great city's airborne guard, as they approached from the northwest. He directed his first file to help the sailors with the mooring sheets, and told off his second file to follow him. He and his troopers rose on a thermal rising above an unusually warm building just north of the Equestrian embassy, to greet the representatives of the garrison.
However late they were in approaching the huge aerial warship that had gotten within storming distance of the heart of Empire without challenge.
"Hail Celestia, Protector of the Imperium!" shouted the foremost armored bird as the strange band of griffons stooped to meet Giles and his glittering troopers. The lance-sized unit broke lazily around Giles and his file, as the shouty bird backed his wings and came into a hover in front of Giles.
"Hail the Emperor, Donkey Hotay, third of his name!" responded Giles, with the ritual words that the lieutenant and the ensign had drilled into him. "The Equestrian Sixth Guards brings his Imperial Majesty the new Equestrian envoy from her Royal Highness, the Princess Celestia, and her Court!"
"Wonderful!" said the other griffon, as he grinned widely. His feathers were poorly groomed, and stuck out slightly from under his heavy helm. "I'm Lieutenant Grigario, of the Eagle Guard. Good to have an Equestrian representative in the city again. You… wouldn't know if the new ambassador brought the year's tribute?"
The lieutenant had explained that the enormous subsidies which Princess Celestia used to underwrite the newly revived imperial pretensions of her client, the Emperor of Roam, were technically and pompously referred to by its recipients as 'tribute'.
She hadn't mentioned that the garrison troops in the city were likely to be griffons, nor that they would speak with an accent like… well, the master sergeant's. Nor that their armour was likely to be tarnished where it wasn't spotting with rust.
"I certainly wouldn't know about that sort of thing, lieutenant, sir."
"Come on, tom, your name, now!" the slovenly Griffonstonian said, insistently.
"I am Lance Corporal Giles, if you must. May I escort you onto the ship? My troop commander would be able to speak to these matters."
"What, you're enlisted? Dressed like that? What do they pay you birds?"
"Again, sir, my lieutenant would be the one you'd want to talk to about that."
"Ha! Aren't you a boring bird. Fine, take me to your leader, Jeeves."
"Giles, sir. This way, if you would."
Giles twitched his wings, and his file-leaders directed the Crystal troopers in a smoothly executed move to envelope the mercenary griffs of this so-called 'Eagle Guard'. Giles couldn't follow behind the supposed 'officer' as a good NCO ought, but only because he was obliged to lead the garrison soldiers to where Lieutenant Martin Gale was standing, placidly, below in the griffon's nest atop the Bit's envelope.
Let the lieutenant deal with these birds. Giles had some things to think about.
Among other things, how this Griffonstonian tom compared with that Prench officer in Barkalona. How could the same 'Empire' contain both officers at the same time? One had been just a pony, but protective of his district's dogs and griffons. The other… made Giles ashamed of his beak and bone.
And yet, the one was a simple provincial officer, and the other a lieutenant of the Guard in the Imperial capital. Well, a guard, and really, what was in a name?
How could you call yourself a guardsgriff, if you weren't worthy of the name?
And with griffons like Lieutenant Grigario taking the Princess's bit, what would it take to keep griffons from looking at him and his, and seeing that slovenly mercenary smiling greasily back at them?
"Fife, wake them- oh, hello, Ensign Fuse. I see we don't need to get the bucket of piss." Gilda frowned thoughtfully down at the most junior of the squadron's ensigns.
"Oi! I don't keep buckets' ov piss in my nice neat brig!" yelped the earth-pony jailer.
"Shut up, Fife. Go look in at our other guest."
"Guest? Wot guest? I keep a nice orderly correctional institution 'ere, serjant! None ov that mockery, I ask you!"
"Shut up, Fife, and bugger off."
"Yes, serjant. Buggerin' ovv."
"Right, Fuse? What were you thinking?"
"You met me, Master Sergeant Gilda? You seen my jacket, haven't you?"
"Are you the sum of your records, Ensign Fuse?"
"Looks like, don't it? What made any of you think I was 'diplomatic dinner' material?"
Gilda almost sighed. He wasn't wrong. They'd tried to cycle through the officers, to keep the diplomats amused, but they'd gone one too many ensigns, it would seem.
"Do you have regrets?"
"Do I have regrets? Sarge, I am nothing but regrets. I regrets not being able to apply to the Wonderbolts. I regrets being assigned to the 14/3rd instead of the second or first or the squadron of some other regiment that didn't get sent to the buckin' birdy isles! I regrets getting half-cashiered, and told I was good for nothin' but the jumped-up imaginary regiment of a pet of the princess's! I regrets-"
"Fuse, shut the buck up. That wasn't an invitation to free associate. Are. You. Willing. To. Apologize?"
"What? Oh, buck, yeah. If I can get through the apology without decking him again."
"Let's see, then," Gilda said, and turned the key in the cell-door's lock.
Ironically enough, the diplomat was still dozing when they turned to the much nicer cell at the front of the section they'd built out into a brig. And he stank of booze.
Gilda looked back at her nominal superior officer, and shrugged, dismissing him with the wordless wave of a wing.
"Your lieutenant should be out of the infirmary, and ready for duty."
"What lieutenant is that? Baker is still being run by us ensigns."
"Didn't she tell you? Lieutenant Lulamoon wants you for her battery. You're to move into the artillery's quarters. Go get your shit. I'll deal with your drunken opposite number, here.
"Go on, you little dweeb, get!"
Gilda shrugged the snoring unicorn over her shoulder, and went to go find the ambassador before the diplomatic delegation escaped the ship and left their alcoholic liability in the rueful possession of the Guard.
Sadly, Gilda failed to find the diplomats before they'd decamped. By the time she'd tracked down the major and the ambassador, they'd fetched up in the ambassador's new office.
Which, honestly speaking, put Government House back in Trottingham to shame. The wainscotting was some obscenely rich looking carmel-colored wood with beautiful grain, carved by some clever talon or hoof into delicate mythological friezes. There were ivory stands the size of small ponies in each corner, likewise scrimshaw'd into fragile-looking artwork in some savage style beyond Gilda's narrow base of experience or limited capacity for art-appreciation. The rest of the office was likewise extravagant and intimidatingly expensive-looking.
"-can't believe somepony laid out for this- this- waste!" the major was hyperventilating. "I've been to the Palace in Canterlot, the Princess doesn't surround herself with this sort of excess! Who authorized all of this- this- taxpayer abuse!"
"I really couldn't tell you, Major Shield," drawled the middle-aged orange unicorn. "You do realize that this is my first posting to the Superb Ouverture? I didn't lay out the bits for any of this. However much I approve of it."
"Approve of it! It's grotesque!"
"My dear major, this is what the courtiers of the Imperial Court expect of Equestrians. We are, after all, made of bits." The ambassador turned to acknowledge Gilda's existence, facing towards her and her burden. "Ah, the royal sergeant!"
Gilda snorted in offense.
"What may I do for your dubious excellency, master sergeant? We are, as you might have noticed, somewhat busy."
"Your Excellency, ma'am. You left so quickly, you seem to have forgotten some of your baggage," Gilda said. "Perhaps you might tell me where I might deposit this particular parcel. I haven't had a chance to go through the rest of your delegation's quarters on the Bit, to make sure you haven't forgotten anything else. Like, perhaps, the subsidies we were transporting for you."
"As if I'd forget the subsidies! They're my entire purpose for being here!" exclaimed Ambassador Flare. "If I dared present myself to his Imperial Majesty without the bits, I'd be summarily executed!"
"I rather doubt that, ma'am," drawled Gleaming Shield. "After all, if they kill an Equestrian ambassador, I'm fairly sure the princess would never send another 'tribute' again. And the Emperor's well-armed neighbors would swoop in and execute him in turn."
"Yes, yes, to put another donkey on the throne that would keep the subsidies flowing, but it'd be too late for me, wouldn't it? Yes, master sergeant, I'd like my bits, please."
"I'll be sure to send you a well-armed guard, with a reliable sergeant to keep them honest," Gilda promised, shifting the snoring drunk on her shoulder. She trusted Gustav to stay bought by the honor they'd ladled on his aged, one-winged shoulders. "Meanwhile, where can I decant this wine-skin you left in our brig?"
"Right back where you found him, master sergeant!" the ambassador said, smiling. "Mr. Blush's employment has been terminated. He was told that this was his last chance, and he chose to take it, didn't he? I don't care what you do with him. Pour him into the alley out back. Throw him into the Terrier River. Sell him to the garrison out at Castel d'Aramaspi for their meat-larder. I honestly do not care. He is no longer my responsibility."
"Gilda, let it go," Gleaming said, repressively. "Bringing the topic back to what we were talking about, Your Excellency. We cannot stay as long as you've requested. It's completely out of the question. We're on a very tight schedule, and I cannot spare three weeks to 'show the banner', whatever that might mean. And anyways, aren't you putting the trooper before the chariot? You haven't even presented your credentials!"
"What do you think all this is, Major Shield?" the ambassador waved a hoof at the enormous, beautifully carved desk she sat behind. Which was covered quite impressively with half-unrolled scrolls and scraps of paper. "The return of my predecessor did not end the importunities of the Superb Ouverture upon our credit and arms. And I do not have the surplus 'subsidies' to afford a proper mercenary army to send up into the Roamagna to cow the Bulldognese into a proper acknowledgement of their Imperial allegiances."
"That is not my problem, Your Excellency. Imperial politics is not the business of the Crystal Guard. We delivered you and your funds intact - or we will as soon as Gilda and I return to the Bit and get your bits out of the vault. That's the whole and complete mission that the governor-general of Fort Bing forced upon me, no more, no less. I will not be bulled into one thing after another like this. I have obligations!"
"You will concede that an Equestrian ambassador to the Imperial Court outranks a mere governor-general of a humble EUP port fortress!"
"I do not concede. There are many alleged imperiums in the world, and the old Roamish court only has precedence due to age and their peculiar ability to survive disasters that would have swamped greater kingdoms. And the governor-general had paperwork from Canterlot giving him the right to divert us onto this sub-mission. And it was in our general direction, anyways. Now you ask me to neglect the very purpose which sent my regiment out this way! I won't do it."
"But Major, if you could only see it my- oh, master sergeant, you're still here. Please take that sot out of my presence. He's no longer an employee, and his security clearance is revoked. Good day!"
"But-" Gilda objected.
"No! This conversation is over, until you get him out of here! I think he's waking up."
Gilda looked over her shoulder at the little horse as he dozed on. "I don't think-"
"Master sergeant! You're not paid to think! Take him away! Now!"
"Your Excellency," the major drawled again, a dangerous look in her eyes. "You do not, in point of fact, pay my sergeant at all. Only I have the right to order Gilda about."
And the major turned to Gilda. "Sergeant, please take the prisoner back to the brig. We'll figure out something we can do with a discharged diplomat. I will return to the Bit shortly."
Gleaming Shield smiled, dangerously, turning back to the almost-ambassador. "If I do not return shortly, send a fully armed troop to retrieve me. Tell them they won't have to be gentle if they have to come. Go on, Gilda. I've got this under control."
Gilda left, hauling her burden of inebriated diplomacy back to where she'd found him in the first place.
The ritual high was fading among the thestrals, but the others still were chipper and feeling positive. None of the patrols since the performance in the night-hall had turned up an infestation or an incursion. Not a baku, not a nocnice, not a hag, not even any free-ranging minor nightmares. The night before, in common agreement between Ping, Fruits Salad, and Fruits Basket, they'd stood down the enhanced night-patrols, returning the volunteers to the day-lances, and making Baker Troop a fully-staffed organization again, just in time for their enhanced night-CAPs in the real world, as the Bit cruised over the dubiously-controlled and bandit-infested swamp-country between the Bitalian coast and the city of Roam.
But Ping, whose sight in all but the most grossly physical of senses had weakened or faded entirely, could not join his people in their cheer and optimism.
He could not see!
From his foalhood, Ping had been accustomed to see the ghosts of what could be, a melange of possibilities and probabilities, skeins of this-that-should-be and that-which-could-be. The real was always sharp beneath the phantasms of the possible, but overlaid over the mere present was always a luminescence of could-be and should-be.
That luminescence had been fading since Trottingham; it was now completely gone. And with it, that penetrating vision within the dreamworld, that let him keep track of his shieldmaidens, his bats. And the bigger, nastier dream-boggarts, when they'd been detected. All of it, gone.
So yes, while Ping believed his shieldmaidens when they said that they weren't finding anything, and the palpable lack of entity-spawned nightmares which otherwise would indicate the presence of malign shadows seemed to argue that the crisis was past…
Ping could not see.
And that was terrifying in a way he'd never felt outside of the Selenemeer.
He stumbled through his own patrol half-blinded, reduced to the same echolocation that the shieldmaidens used in their own passages through the dreaming night. Every step he took through the dream-made-strange carried with it now a sort of terror of the unknown which was quite unsettlingly new to him.
He had never known the unknown before, without should-be and could-be. How did ponies tolerate this?
Ping glided awkwardly through the dreaming, crowded night of the city of Roam, and wished he had asked for a wingmare, despite his pride and his unwillingness to let the others know that there was something wrong.
Ping flew with his treacherous pride at his side, as his only partner. And tried to ignore that creeping sensation that he was being followed by something he could not see.
Trixie took a deep breath as she stood indecisively in the corridor outside of the hatch that led into Lyra Heartstrings's state room. Trixie had spent the day after their arrival at the Roamish moorage posting her mixed teams of sailors and troopers from Charlie Troop around the sides of the Bit, with their swivel-guns properly mounted and charged with powder. Not loaded, of course - they didn't want the swivel gunners popping off at any sudden movements, or shooting some poor embassy employee coming to work late, or returning from lunch, or any of a thousand other possible sources of murderous accidental discharge.
But she'd also made sure that each side of the ship had a trusted gunner with a properly secured locker with prepared powder reloads and projectiles for their assigned swivel-gun crews. And the gundecks were posted with members of the battery, likewise supplied with grapeshot loads and powder, and strict orders to only fire in case of general insurrection or the return of Grogar the Father of Monsters, whichever came first.
Every preparation brought to mind that terrible, horrifying progress report she hadn't remembered writing in Barkalona, product of some stranger, some evil gleeful beast that had bragged about the killing machine she had been polishing that half-forgotten afternoon at the Fort Bing gunnery range, a monster that had signed the report Lieutenant Trixie Lulamoon, in Trixie's own horn-writing.
Trixie took another fortifying breath, and knocked on the hatch.
The hatch thumped twice as someone undogged its latches from within, and creaked as it opened.
"Dang, we really need to oil these hinges, don't we? Heya, Trixie, how's tricks?"
Over the green unicorn's shoulder, Trixie could see into the state-room, which was now crowded with a great deal of stuff, shelves, workbenches and one small black diamond dog. Strange lights lit up the space from angles Trixie couldn't see from her position out in the corridor.
"No rejoinder? Aw, come on, Trix. It'll be alright. Come on in, we've got something ready for testing."
Inside the state room, two hammocks had been hung overhead like a pair of stuffed crocodiles in a wizard's study, and below them, the luxurious bunks which had once graced this larger-than-usual-for-the-Bit space, had been converted into storage on the one hoof, and an impromptu work-bench on the other.
"Have you gotten out into the city yet? It's a great place to play tourist, you know! My second time here. Managed to tag along with a tour group three years ago, right about when you were getting kicked out of the school. Oops, uh, forget I said that… right, Roam! We have a great view of the Stadio Maximus. Or so we should, we're floating over the Equestrian embassy, right? I haven't been able to get out of here since the engines powered down… I assume that means that we're in Roam, right? Come on, Trix, give me something to work with. You've been out and about, and I've been stuck in here with the little hellhound, working on your cure!"
Trixie looked up at the sudden break in the unending stream that was the Lyrabrook. "Trixie isn't sick, she doesn't need to be cured." She wished that sounded more convincing…
"Nah, of course not. My mistake, I said it wrong. But we want to get a better look at that noggin of yours! Strip down, we'll have you… Queenie! What's all this crap on your bunk! We need someplace for the lieutenant to stretch out!"
"Use your own bunk, cavall magia mestre. We're using mine as a workbench, remember?"
Lyra snorted, and began clearing off the boxes and bags and other detritus, piling them on an unoccupied corner of the narrow deck-space not otherwise already cluttered. "Are you done with that last bead, Queenie?"
"Yes, Mestre. Queenie's just been polishing it the last ten minutes to keep pony from assigning her some other silly time-wasting exercise."
"They're not silly! You need the basics, you mop-headed hellion. And go get your bangs cut! I need to look you in the eyes when you say things like that! And cut it out with the illisms. That's Trixie's gig, isn't that right, Trix?"
Trixie blinked, wary at being drawn into yet another little squabble between the two mages. "Trixie is not a selfish mare. The little dog may refer to herself in the third person if she so desires. Trixie is nothing if not generous and magnanimous."
"You see that, Queenie? That's how you do illism in Equish. Take notes! And it's good to hear you sounding more like yourself, Trix. Just lie down here, and get comfortable."
Trixie followed her instructions, laid down on her back, and tried to think of nothing at all, as the two mages reassembled the rickety, spider-like construct around the artillerymare's head. It looked somewhat different from the last version that had so signally failed to produce any results earlier that week in the infirmary.
"What you're looking at here, Trix, is the soul scanner 2.03e. It was going to be the soul scanner 2.0, but we had some teething issues."
"Queenie told you those quartz lumps weren't proper àgates!"
"That's not what you said at the beginning!"
"Well, Queenie was wrong. She was lookin' over everything quick-like, sue this perro if she gets a few thing' wrong time to time. And the others were proper pedres taumiques, once we got 'em charged."
"A likely story!"
"Not like you knew what you were doing, Mestre, either."
"The more often you call me 'mestre', the less I think you mean it, Queenie."
"Queenie is nothing if she is not sincere, cavall magia mestre."
The pony magus turned and gave her strange new assistant her best stink-eye.
"Trixie hates to be a bother, but she has duty in the morning, and would rather like to sleep tonight at some point?"
Lyra turned back to her patient - or study subject - and looked apologetic. "Sorry, sorry, Trix. Just a second, and we'll have you strapped in. Then, we need at least a half-hour baseline of waking thought from you."
The magus returned to her assembly of the apparatus, and indeed, began wrapping straps and braces around Trixie's head, and fed through her mane.
"After that, you can go ahead and doze off. It'd be preferable. I have some theories I'd like to test out, and getting you while you're dreaming would be pretty much ideal. But try not to drift off until then, OK?"
Trixie would have nodded, except that she now couldn't move her head. "Alright, Lyra. Be gentle?"
"Ask anypony I've gotten into my bed! I'm the gentlest mare there is in the sack!"
Trixie's eyes shot to the right, where the distinctly adolescent diamond dog was fussing with something or other on the bench across the room. Both ears twitching furiously.
"Lyra…"
"Oh, come on, don't get all starchy on me, Trix! Queenie comes from a polygynous, depraved society. I couldn't scandalize her if I tried!"
Trixie could almost hear the little black dog's eyes roll from across the room.
Ping looked around at a dreamscape of unfamiliar black pearls.
He didn't want to admit it, but he was lost. None of the pearls sounded like any of his charges' well-known dreams. He was supposed to be alerted when he approached or crossed the wards, but somehow, neither his echolocation nor his now-absent farsight had given him his expected warning.
It was sometimes hard to tell by time elapsed within the dream-night, but Ping was fairly sure that he'd been going this direction for too long for him to be still within the carrier, or even the embassy grounds.
Even his weakened senses could detect the gloaming to the east, a great dark shining mass of shadows, which had to be the Imperial Palace. They were supposed to have their own team of matrons taking care of the courtiers and the Emperor and their assorted hangers-on.
None of his business, really.
But somehow, it vaguely occurred to Ping that the Imperial Palace was supposed to be north-east of the embassy, and also that if his other senses were fading, gone, or mistaken, then perhaps his internal compass was also out of commission.
There was no way to avoid facing it, he was lost.
Ping had never been lost in his life. He had no idea what to do.
Just go to that dark mass of nightmares, and ask for help. The night matrons are there for a reason. You know they are there.
No, Ping wasn't going to do that.
Why are you afraid to show your dream-face to your elders, little horse?
Ping wasn't afraid! He was proud. And he'd already refused the help of the aunties.
Have you now? How childish of you, little bat.
OK, that wasn't how Ping's internal monologue sounded. That was one of the prime warning signs of…
Took you long enough, little bat. Squeak, squeak, squeak. Fear me! I am the night!
Ping frowned, satisfied that he'd detected the intrusion, but irritated at the mockery.
Am I an intrusion? Am I, gasp, a nightmare? Oh, deary me! You had better exorcise me!
Ping had never in his life been compromised like this. He drew his dream-wings about him, and tried to meditate, in preparation for the-
Is that supposed to be doing something?
He couldn't feel the darkness. Couldn't smell it. There were none of the telltale signs, no extra shadows, no green or purple or black glows.
Look over there! Maybe I am that!
And there it was, a creeping nocnice, its horrible appendages stroking the surface of one of the nearby black-pearl dream-globes.
Ping drew his spear, and charged, headlong.
The night-haunt splattered like the faint, weak parasite it was, coating the lower surface of the dream it had been probing for an invasion.
Oh, very nice! Quite valiant, little bat. I approve heartily. But that was not me, either.
"I will find you, monster, and destroy you utterly!" shouted Ping into the shadows of the dream-night, breaking his silence.
Oh, that might have been a mistake. You are outside of your wards, are you not? Interesting, what I find in your surface thoughts. You know more than you are willing to admit to yourself, did you know that? Of course you knew that, or else I could not know that.
Ping had been slowly spinning, pausing every quarter-turn to search the shadows thrown by the dream-pearls. Nothing else had been moving, before his accidental vocalization. But now…
And here they come. Really, I am not sure why you all do not hunt this way. Just scream, and let the haunts come to you.
They were distant, and dispersed, but they were approaching. One, over by the great darkness that had to be the Imperial Palace. Two more, the other way. Was that maybe the Terrier River basin? Well, gorge, really, in the city proper...
Why are you afraid to go to your aunties? Have a complex about your aunts? Oh, I see, they are not actually your aunts, are they?
"Shut up, nightmare!"
Oh, little blind bat, I am not your nightmare. I am nogriff's nightmare, honestly. Would you believe this is the first time I have ever truly explored your world?
"No, I would not, liar! Get behind me, night-hag!"
There I am, right behind you.
"Gah!" Ping whirled, stabbing blindly behind him, sending out echolocation screams as he spun.
Boo! Hahahaha!
"Stop mocking me!"
You cease talking first, foolish, blind bat! And maybe I was lying. This is not my first time inside your twisted little world.
"Ha! I knew it!"
Better start moving this way, if you are not going to find sanctuary in that dream-fortress over there. You will be flanked if you stay in place.
"You can see them?"
Of course I can see them, little bat. I am not a blind little bat. Like you.
"What do you know about that? Are you the one who did this to me? Are you stealing my vision?"
Oh, what a question. A good one, though. Yes.
"Aha!"
And no. No, I did not take your farsight from you, your future-sight.
"What? But you just said-"
Do not interrupt your Auntie when she is in a helpful mood, little bat.
Auntie? One of the aunties?
Ha! No, not that, either. And I did not take anything from you. You gave it to me, foolish little bat. Threw away what you would not use, though your world is ending. What use is sight, to he who would not see? What use is knowledge of the future, which you refused to know? So yes, I have custody of your farsight, and your future-sight as well. Someone must take care of gifts like these, when they are spurned by their possessors.
"Bold talk, of possession, when you're possessing me, demon!"
Demon am I? That takes me back centuries. Millennia, even. I do not need to help you, little bat. It is not in my nature, nor my inclination, but I have put much upon my worshiper this week, and she asked of me a boon.
She? Worshiper?
Ah, the light dawns. Perhaps this is not quite yet the end of days, is it?
"The Goddess Amphitrite?"
Give that colt a kelpie doll! The bit finally drops. You should get moving. There are three coming that way.
"What way?"
Your right. No, your other right. Look, your wards are over that way. Hurry up, little bat, and find your way to safety. No amount of strength and power will protect those who will not see.
"I didn't ask for this! I didn't throw away my sight!"
You did not ask for anything, you stubborn little colt, you gave it away freely. And my patience is almost at an end. What do you want, little bat?
"I want my sight back!" Ping shouted, as he scrambled blindly to his left, following the voice's directions.
Do you? What would you give for it?
"I knew you were a demon! I would give nothing!"
Well, are not you the very mural portrait of a stubborn mule. But I promised my Eye… see, little bat.
And suddenly, Ping did. He could see the three spirits creeping up on him, and the four further out, racing in his direction.
He charged the unprepared three, stabbing once, twice, three times - and tearing through their substance like the shadows they were.
The nocnice died screaming.
After the last of the four spirits in their outer hunting-ring died on the blade of his dream-spear, Ping looked up, and saw, in the gathering luminescence of his much-missed future-sight, the blurring of the wards around the Bit.
He flapped his wings, and flew as fast as he could towards the wards.
Before you slip behind your wards, and I have to drop this connection, turn and talk, little bat. What I have done is only temporary, an intervention. It hurts me terribly to do so, gifting you, an infidel, with my grace.
Ping stopped, just outside of the wards. He looked up, still seeing nothing. "What do you mean, temporary? I thought you said you stole my sight from me!"
Fool of a bat! I said you gave it to me! You may not have intended it, but it was what you did. You did not want to see, so you blinded yourself.
"Why would I put out my own mystic eyes? I am not mad! I am not a lunatic, to blind myself! And I most certainly would have remembered deciding to do it!"
Your lack of decision is what decided for you, little bat. Your refusal to see what was in front of your muzzle is promising to damn you. Why were you and your bats so besieged for so long, little Ping? Why so many infestations inside your wards? Did it never occur to you that they should not have been inside the protections of so many powerful thestral shieldmaidens, so insidious, so pervasive, so overwhelming?
"We had it under control!"
Did you, now? Or did she have you under her control, dancing to her tune, marching in her measures?
"Her? Her who? Who is this demon that was bedeviling us? Aren't you confessing to your own wickedness?"
Oh, foolish little bat. I am not your goddess. I am merely a passer-by. A rubber-necker at your wreckage. The evil goddess whose worship is destroying you is not me, foolish little bat.
"What goddess? We are Equestrians! We have no gods!"
Do you not? What was that little ceremony earlier this week that roped me into your measures, blind little bat? Whose grace were you propriating? What do you call her? Mother, Mother of- what was it?
"The Mother of Dreams? She is not a god! Don't, don't-"
What, blaspheme? I am a goddess, foolish little bat. I cannot blaspheme, I can only mock other, foolish gods. And your goddess is as foolish as you, little bat.
"She is not our goddess!"
Well, whatever you like, blind little bat. My borrowed power is waning. Though my priestess is full of grace, and we are deep in my aspect's embrace, I can only do this for so long. Would you like to see, foolish little bat?
"Of course I would! What are you offering?"
See me, little bat, and give me your heart.
"It sounds to me like a demon's bargain, ma'am."
You will find, as you grow wiser, that the distinctions between gods and devils lay mostly in what is done with our grace. It is you, foolish little bat, who make of your divinities good and evil. And I fear for your race, that their spear-carrier is so wedded to his own blindness. See me, little bat, or be damned. I care not which.
Ping turned, finally, to the spot in his blindness, and saw the thing he had been conversing with.
It was great, and black, and full of rot and decay and the sharp stench of the sea. There were holes in its essence, and ten thousand eyes staring out of it like despairing, hungry ghosts in a bottomless abyss.
Ping screamed in terror, and recoiled, kicking himself away from the horror, across the line of wards.
He must have blacked out for a minute or two, because when he heard Fruits Basket's voice, he found himself laying prone upon a familiar dream-pearl, a pearl that smelled like that sodden reprobate Mickle Joe. Never had a random trooper's dreamscape sounded so much like home.
Ping looked up, trying to find his subordinate shield-maiden, and warn her of the greater dream-demon lying outside of the wards, with her lies and her corrupting influence.
And Ping found that his sight was gone again, and worse. He could barely make out Fruits Basket's features in the dark of the Bit's dream-night.
Fish Eye looked up at her client, who roosted on a sea-rock. The waves broke below Fish, the turul’s enormous talon rested on the rock above her. The turul’s other talon held the half-eaten remnant of a small shark, and the great bird chewed on another mouthful of the morning’s meal. The Bitalian coast dusted the eastern horizon brown and green, and here and there, extending into the distance parallel to that coast, other sea-mounts and tiny little islands dotted the blue sea as the sun crossed the sky.
Above and overhead, stretching into infinity, spread a pellucid blue heaven of deepest summer, come a few days earlier than expected, searching, lost. Not that days or nights or time made sense out here. The only time that the sea held was ticked out by the half-broken metronome of the tides, the splashing of the waves, and the beating of her heart, in hypnotic half-harmony. Not a moment touched the water, while clouds hid from summer in their infinite skies.
The turul crouched between waves and that infinite sky.
Far below all of this vastness, on a rocky shelf between the turul's perch and the sea, Fish Eye sat, and worked at her own dinner. Well, with the sun middling-high in the eastern sky, it wasn't proper dinner-time yet. Call it 'second breakfast'. Fish couldn't eat a third of a shark in a single bite like Gyongyike could. George? Fish was still trying out the various methods at her disposal for thinking of her quest-companion.
Hercegnő Gyongyi was far too much of a beakful, and Gyongyike was almost as bad. But somehow, knowing her for a princess, 'George' was just too… familiar. And didn’t sit right on the great bird perched between heavens and sea.
And then there was that feeling again, the goddess behind her eyes.
"Auntie! You're back. Did you speak to the bats that called on you?"
I did as you asked, my priestess. I offered them what I could give them.
"They gave you quite a bit, didn't they?"
I can only offer what my nature allows me to offer, little fish. What would I have left for you, or mine, if I gave to those who are none of mine?
"Reciprocity is a thing, Auntie. Where would me and Hawk and Mom be if the ponies hadn't given us shelter when everygriff else disappeared into your depths?"
Hmm. I offered, he declined. Violently. Let us move on. Are you eating your fill, little fry?
Fish looked down at her shrinking heap of smelt. She could gobble up these little fish all day long, and as long as the pile of little blue-silver fish lasted, she would. It had felt a little uncivilized at first, just biting down on the living creatures, but after the third or fourth one, and that sensation of the aching hollow in her gut being filled, she'd gotten over herself. And today? After days of feasting like this?
Well, if it wasn't for that empty feeling that always reappeared an hour or two after a feeding...
Fish Eye ate another smelt, and wondered if they really were smelt. Were they still smelt when you moved to another ocean? Or sea?
"Auntie, what am I eating here?"
What a boring question, little fry. Atherina. A common snack fish in these waters.
"Well," Fish started, before popping another bite-sized morsel in her beak, and chewing. "Mmm, I can see why. Are we going to talk about why I need to be eating half the Inland Sea today?"
I have the same answer I have every morning, my priestess. You have been too far from the sea for too long. I need every salty measure you can pass through your little self, little fish. You are still too much of a fry. Eat more!
As she chewed, and held another 'atherina' in her right talon, Fish fingered a loose lock of her pink-streaked lavender mane. Her severe military mane-cut was growing out.
"Will I still have my mane, Auntie?"
You will see, little fish. Do you not remember your festival-days in the deep, in the seas under Mount Aris?
"It was a very long time ago, Auntie. I've been a bird for so long…"
Eat up, little fish, eat up.
Fish Eye choked down beakful after beakful of little blue-silver morsels, until she laid on her salt-encrusted rock shelf, bloated and listless. Above her, the great bird looked down, smug in her gastrointestinal superiority, her shark long since devoured.
"Are you feeling quite yourself, lance corporal?"
Fish's eye rolled upward at her client. Was she feeling herself? No, not really. "Call… me priestess, Princess." Yes. That was right. Not a time for intimate names. She was… "Names are important, titles, epithets. Names are how the world sees us, Princess. Titles are how they know us. My goddess is a goddess of names, as well as storms."
"Is that so? I have gotten used to this cursed crown, that keeps every bird I meet from knowing me for who and what I am."
Fish felt the goddess rising in her like her gorge. "The curse of Hera, who was once the mother of us all. Your curse by the child-lost mother, whose stolen get was taken by the wind-courts. You, the turul, who were the wing of the courts, who took infant Eurus from her divine mother and hid her among your highest, most secret peaks, were made monstrous as penance for your wind-blown sins until you worshiped the nameless Mother in mockery of your mothers-roosts. She did not even leave you the names or the aspects or the understanding in your crippled memory, only the Act itself."
"Is that… my mother never said. I never learned…" the great turul asked, looking faintly horrified.
"There is much that the mortal world has forgotten, of the sins of their foremothers," Fish's goddess said with Fish's mortal tongue and beak.
Fish herself laid limp, her torso spasming and her nethers aching. The magic of the sea was in her, and like drew to like, the waves below stretching unnaturally upwards along the sea-rock upon which she and her client roosted.
"The old gods were jealous, and without morals, little bird. Their sins wrapped around your ancestors' sins, until the braided wreath, gifted through time, fell in its turn upon your brow. I am now an old god in my own turning, little princess. And I have very little time to make things right for my hidden, frightened, broken childr-."
All Fish Eye's muscles locked at once, and the pain, the sudden, omni-present muscular pain escaped her beak like steam through a boiling kettle, cutting off the goddess's lecture.
She twitched on her rock, spasming again and again, trying and failing to find a posture that would ease that throbbing agony.
The Princess looked down from overhead, alarmed.
"Th-the essence of the sea, little t-turul, is change. The sea is nothing if it is not change."
And Fish Eye and her goddess screamed in two-part harmony, startling Lady George aloft for a brief, wide-eyed second.
By the time the turul had returned to her rock, the pain was more manageable, and Fish could give her goddess back her beak.
"And change… hurts."
The great bird, her eyes as large as full moons in the sky, stared down at them. No doubt terrified of the display.
"Let… me take over, now, Auntie," Fish Eye said, her attention inwards, probing for the return of those transient, alarming aches. And the goddess retreated, leaving a warm feeling of understanding, affection, and encouragement.
"Auntie has one myth for you, Princess," Fish Eye said of her own accord and inspiration. "This is the myth that keeps you and your people imprisoned, locked on what was it, Auntie? Their mountain? Chained like Prometheus on his rock, waiting for their own children to come and eat their livers?"
Something like that, child. You have it now. Bring it home. It's time for you both to come home, the goddess said, silently, in her inner-ear, just for her Fish.
"Let me sing you a different myth, Hercegnő Gyongyi, heir of the turul, lost princess of lost children, long-forgotten, hostage to the whims of the winds, and the jealousies of dying gods."
Fish got up off her rock, and, spreading her wings, dropped. After falling a few short feet, her wings caught the warming air, curving out into a spiral just over the thrashing waves. The tips of her feathers caught the twisted sun-warmed thermal, gyred in the heat-carved groove in the moist air around the seamount.
Fish Eye sang.
Amphitrite! Terrible queen of the sea! We sing, we fleeting fish, our love and fear of thee!
Child of Wisdom, child of Time, From foam to abyss, dominion be thine. Hear, O Goddess, thy priestess’s plea: We call, petty mortals, in deference to thee!
From your inky waters all creatures were born, And though from your bosom these children were torn, As the river inexorably flows to the sea, Our hopes and fears return inevitably to thee.
Fish Eye stooped from her rising spiral and struck, swiftly, at her wondering, wide-eyed audience. She cut a bloody furrow across the princess's brow, just below the turul's cursed coronet, and darted away before the startled bird could respond.
By blood and nail, I call thee, sister. By beak and bone, I bind thee, sister. The freedom of the winds constrains us. The yoke of the depths shall relieve us.
The turul swayed, astonished, more surprised than harmed. Fish continued her flight, and banked into another tight, spiraling turn.
From the waters you rose; to the waters return. Home to her arms as the tides against you turn The tempest whipped up by ephemeral storm May rage against earth and howl over blacked loam May soar through the measureless mansions of air, May hate and love without heart or soul or care. But in time, when its transient fury is spent, Shall settle again and in cool waters repent.
Fish Eye broke from her tight spiral, and rose into a hover, above the bleeding turul, whose blood dripped drop by drop into the disturbed waters below.
Your scansion and meter is lacking, my priestess. I am astonished that the audience has not gotten up and left in protest. Especially given that wound you have given her.
Fish squelched her impulse to snap at her patroness. It wasn’t her fault Aunt A’s full name didn’t scan in any proper meter! But Fish couldn't spare breath or words to react to her divine heckler while she was in the grasp of song. She felt the blood of the royal turul staining her talon, stinging, cooling, her own blood boiling in return. There was power in the blood, but only for so long...
Fish opened her beak again, and the song poured out of her once more.
Our storm, spent, flows liquid through the land, We trickle at last over delta-watered sands. Winding our way back to you, mother-waters, Exhausted and weak, your prodigal daughters. Take us back into your watery embrace, Dark and deep is your infinite grace.
Oh, dearie me. Well, if all my priestesses were poets and singers, I suppose I'd be Apollo. Poor, poor Apollo.
Proud we rose, on thermals of conceit, To conquer the heavens, out of our reach. Roaring like thunder, lightning's white heat, We charged their gates, without a breach. Your storm-birds we flew, the skies to unseat, But every battle cry was a failing screech. Receding over the sands now we retreat, Beating like your waves upon a stony beach. And today we recoil, spent, in defeat, Weary daughters your refuge, beseech.
Fish came, at last, to her talons, settling in front of her bloodied client, who was staring down at her. Fish could feel the last of the changes happening, the goddess's gift like a stone settling just above her most maidenly seat.
Amphitrite, adored All-Aunt! Beloved crone, lay down your skein! Bind us again by love's chain. Let not our heartfelt prayers be in vain Great with our race, thy womb to increase Into that womb, take your humbled niece As thou art ever-change, be our surcease As the sea’s daughters return to thy peace.
And still, though in your waves be found Nothing but rest, to cease, best then to drown Expire, release, and in your bottomless womb Sink forever, fall into silent, lightless tombs If we, laid upon your loom, unraveled and torn, Find no woven self, remade, to return, reborn!
The Priestess, pink-coated and with lavender and streaks of fuschia and salmon in her mane, looked up at Gyongyike, burning with inspiration in her blue eyes.
"Ok, I think that’ll do it. Gimme a sec, I'll be right back."
And the transported Priestess of Divine Amphitrite dived backwards off of the sea-mount without a glance, and fell into the raging sea. A fish's tail streaked in lavender and shades of pink broke the surface of the stilling sea, and was gone.
The Princess of the Turuls sat for many long minutes on her lonely sea-mount in that endless nearly-summer afternoon, gazing pensively into calm, mirror-surfaced waters, waiting for the sea’s niece to return from the deep.
Fish Eye lay boneless across the princess's neck, right behind where the ornament sat which had consumed the cursed princess's coronet.
Below them in the light of the rising sun, unfamiliar orchards and low mountainsides streaked by, as the Hercegnő Gyongyi beat her mighty wings, flying low and swiftly across central Bitalia. Fish never would have been able to keep up with the great turul, even before her exertions had drained all energy from her, and left Fish a limp, wrung-out rag draped across George's shoulder.
It was peculiar, living alone in her head, again. Fish had gotten used to sharing rooms, as it were, with her crotchety old Auntie. The dread divine dowager hadn't even said goodbye, before she'd decamped from Fish's head in the heat of the Binding.
Fish's eyes turned again to the diadem that had been birthed of Fish's departed roommate, Fish's own energy, and more raw fish than she cared to remember.
Well, and a mountain's worth of magic. And a brief sojourn within Fish's reproductive facilities. She wondered frivolously whether the magic had taken her potential with it - would she ever have fry of her own, or had this taken that, consumed it via the ritual she'd so carelessly agreed to, in the heat of… excessive amiability?
Fish had to admit to herself, in the now-unaccustomed privacy of her own head, that she'd always had an issue with being too agreeable. Her mother had always told Fish that her inability to say no would someday lead her into trouble.
Was this trouble?
Weak-armed, Fish reached out a quivering talon to touch with the narrow tip of one claw, the back orbit of the new diadem.
-in the night skies are almost perfectly aligned, it's tonight, or possibly the night after tha- Oh! Fish Eye, my little fry! whispered the inner voice of Auntie Amphitrite, smaller and weaker than Fish had ever heard her before. I never thought I'd have the opportunity to talk to you again, my priestess. How are you feeling?
"No-uh. Not poorly, Auntie. Sorry. My throat's a bit sore. Can you hear me?"
Yes! Yes I can! I suppose it works like bone conduction. Ironic, because there's almost no bone at all in this! It's all cartilage! Well, other than the pearl. Pearl's sort of like the second cousin once removed of bone, isn't it? Not strictly living, though. Like me, now!
Well, that wasn't disturbing. "What do you mean, Auntie? The dead don't speak, here you are, aren't you?"
Ah, well. Turning yourself into an artifact is a better afterlife than most available to the divine. No Elysian Fields for us! No, not even Proserpina, that pale pretender.
"You never said that my idea would involve anything so permanent-sounding, Auntie."
Well, well. I didn't want to upset you at the time. It will be well, little fry. I am ever-change, after all. A century or two as matter, infused, will do me a world of god. Good. Hahaha!
Fish smiled. "You sound happy, Auntie. Did I do good?"
You did great, little fish. All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Can you feel the changes, radiating out from us like the stirrings of prophecy affronted?
"No, Auntie. I think that may be a divine thing."
I'm not strictly divine right now. The prices we pay, little fry!
Fish frowned, worried by the implications of that statement. "Aren't the others going to miss you, Auntie? I don't want to think that I've taken our goddess from the flocks, for my own selfish ends."
Selfish! If this was selfishness, then may the wild, miraculous world be overrun by selfish fish! It would be better for us all, to be drowned in such selfishness. No, the nation is safe, secure, and deep-dwelling in my mansions of the abyssal depths. As I have taken up a new residence, they laze about my former home. It was getting crowded, with so many house-guests. It's good to take a dower-house in this newfangled diadem of your design!
Fish's eyes roamed across the surface of the thing she and the princess and the goddess had made between them. The great pearl's upper surface was barely visible over the turul's crest, tucked within the circuit of the artifact. Fish still couldn't believe that such a large stone had come out of her own nethers. Wrapped around the great pearl was the gold of the old cursed coronet, melted over shark-cartilage and rock-splinter alike.
Which brings us to this one last thing. As I have taken my people into exile, into safety, so I too have gone into exile. I send myself on an errand into the wilderness, I launch myself at the heavens. I cannot do that as a god, so I will, for a time, be a slave. A myrmidon, a mamaluke, a janissary.
This is not the thing. This is the reason that the thing must be, if you can. One last time, little fry. You have been such a good priestess, such a loyal little fry. Though I no longer can give blessings, leave with my best good wishes.
And this one last thing: be yourself. No matter what else happens, no matter what evils unfold in front of you, that tempt you to be a hero, to be noble, to be righteous.
That is not you. You are the mare who says yes. To dying, disgusting old gods, to narrow-minded sergeants, to misguided bat-ponies, to all the ponies who ever insulted you, mocked you, or made you do their laundry.
When they ask, little fish, say yes. I will not be there to support you, or protect you. I have been dedicated to this one, single task, a task which is, you will see in time, vital and necessary.
But it means I cannot be there for you in your time of need. And, if my borrowed sight is not mistaken, and it does not misguide me in my turn as it did its prior owner, I could not help you if I could.
What is coming to you must needs come, but having come, I trust in you, little fish. If you can remain yourself.
Be yourself.
Say yes, if you can.
Fish pulled herself up onto her elbows, and leaned forward, and kissed the back of the diadem.
And said nothing else.
Gilda stomped out of the meeting, and through the hatchway onto the main deck. The ambassador and her embassy-guard were being obnoxious, and Gilda was getting tired of the wheedling. They'd come up onto the Bit after the presentation to the Emperor and his court of the ambassador and her subsidies. Gleaming had managed to avoid being present for that event, but they were running out of reasons why the Crystal Guard hadn't moved on from its mooring above the embassy, if not to support the delegation in their political and military goals.
Lady George and her weird little cult-chaplain were a day late, and it was making Gilda and her major look foolish. It made them look like Gleaming was holding out for a bribe, or considerations of some less immediate dubious means, and was intending to do the bidding of the ambassador and the Superb Ouverture, once her price was met.
Gilda was almost positive this wasn't true, but her trust in her major wasn't really an argument that bought any favors from Ambassador Flare or the rest of them, and Gleaming could argue for herself.
A sudden commotion on the port side of the ship broke out, among the gun-crews maring their swivel-guns. Gilda looked up, trying to see what they were fussing about.
Whatever it was, it was hidden by the gunwale on that side of the ship, so she hurried over to see what the fuss was.
Below them, in the lower airs above the slums to the north of the embassy, the combat air patrol was swirling around a strange sight, flying with great wings set to glide over the city below.
It was Lady George.
And yet it wasn't Lady George.
Gilda had always seen the great turul as two images, superimposed. The true bird herself, and the griffon-and-roc lie the cursed coronet wove around her. The former almost always dominated the latter, but they were always both present, except that one time that Gleaming had tried out her special anti-curse spell on Gilda, who didn't really need it.
The figure in the distance wasn't doubled. It was just… a turul. And for a half-second, Gilda panicked that some would-be subject of Lady George had come looking for her - when the bird was gone!
And then Gilda saw the pink figure laying recumbent behind the distant bird's crest, and she recognized Gilda's missing lance corporal.
It was them.
Gilda ran down the line of mared swivel guns, and shouted belaying orders at all of the confused troopers, swatting one slowly-reacting crew's gun-barrel envelope-ward, although the mechanism that prevented gunners from shooting out their own ship's balloon rang as it recoiled from the shock of Gilda's blow, kept from fully elevating by mechanical contrivance.
"Hold fire, hold fire! Those are friendlies!" Gilda cried. Then she gathered her breast, and boomed as loudly as she could towards the approaching lance on combat air patrol. "CORPORAL! ESCORT OUR SHORE PARTY ABOARD!"
After a great deal of confusion, Gilda's will was finally done, and the bats on patrol brought their turul client into the Bit's airspace. Even Trixie appeared, to shout at her swivel-gun crews and reassert discipline and good order.
When Lady George touched down in the middle of the main deck, Gilda was able to get a good, close look at the turul princess's new look. The old, cursed gold circlet had been replaced by… something new. And more than a little villlainous-looking, a webby, broad head-covering that looked half helm, half crown, all white and grey and gold, with an opalescent, glistening white stone in the middle of it like a blind eye.
It looked an awful lot like Gilda's late grandfather's blind eye, in point of fact, all milky and uneven.
To complete the ensemble, Lady George had Gilda's missing lance corporal draped around her shoulders like a stole, or a hippogriff skin worn by some barbarous cannibal tribe of the south seas.
Gilda could hear the lance corporal snoring, so her first fear upon seeing that had been proven groundless, but still…
"Lady George!" Gilda said, greeting the turul with a bow, "I presume?"
"You presume rightly, Master Sergeant Gilda. My apologies for the delays, it took somewhat longer than expected. We return… with solutions in talon."
"So… I see?" Gilda tried to agree. "You seem to have… traded in the old coronet. Is the new one- you, private first class, what do you see here?"
One of the troopers looked away from the turul sitting in front of his swivel-gun position, and gulped. "A big bird, sarge?"
"That's master sergeant, private! What kind of big bird?"
"Uh, master sergeant, ma'am. A really big bird, with a fancy ‘at? Maybe bigger'n the ship's roc? Different colors, though. And the roc didn't have a fancy ‘at. Wait. Didn't you say-"
"That's enough, private first class… Joe, wasn't it? Do you know Magus Heartstrings?"
"Yess'm! I know ol' Lyra!"
"Go get the magus, Joe. And… the rest of you, secure those guns. And keep your eyes on your arc, look lively!"
Gilda turned back to the turul, whose hippogriff stole was waking up and rubbing her eyes sleepily. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Lance Corporal Eye. I see you overstayed your leave by almost a full day!"
"Awk!" squawked the bat-hen. "Master Sergeant! I didn't mean to- I mean, reporting for duty, Master Sergeant! No excuses!"
Gilda stared up at the turul's shoulder. "We'll talk about it later, lance corporal. Get down from there, and stand at attention, we have matters to attend here."
Gilda's attention returned to the turul princess, as her subordinate clambered down from her royal perch, too wobbly, it looked like, to use her wings.
"So is your solution that you've broken the curse, somehow?"
"More like… transformed it, Gilda. I found answers in the sea," the princess said, looking somewhat pensive.
"Some birds do that, I hear, on long voyages," Gilda said, cautiously. "Some just go mad. Uh… that looks like bone. Is it… somebody we might have known?"
"What?" the turul asked, confused. "You mean the diadem? No, it isn't bone, this is shark cartilage. And I didn't ask the shark, but then, I didn't think sharks talked. I've been eating them for years…"
"No, your highness, sharks don't talk," the lance corporal said out of turn, still braced to attention as Gilda had ordered. "Nor do octopi, squid, or most fish that aren't… well, seaponies. Some dolphins, a few porpoises-"
"That's enough, lance corporal!" Gilda said, sharply. "So it's just fish bones, fine. And you… used up the old cursed artifact in making it. And ponies and birds see you for yourself now, wonderful. That's half the game, isn't it, Lady George?"
"This is not a game, Gilda. But yes, it is a start. I've also been given some… advice. And a few ideas. Speaking of which… I need to talk to your mistress, and the ship's-master. We need to change direction."
"We're not going to the Great Roost, ma'am?" Gilda asked, looking up at the barbaric-looking princess.
"We are, eventually. But I have been given some clues. We head north, first."
The princess and the master sergeant were joined by an increasing gaggle of officers, sailors, and diplomats as the chaos grew. Everyone seemed to forget about Fish Eye, but she continued to stand to attention, until somegriff ordered otherwise.
It wasn't a griffon, though, who eventually remembered her, but rather her ensign.
"You went out of the chain of command, Fish," Fruits Basket said, sadly. "You went over my head."
Fish remained braced, not daring to move.
"You may speak."
"I am sorry, ensign, ma'am. I didn't think-"
"Yes, you don't do that very often. Certain things happened after you disappeared."
"I didn't disappear, ensign, ma'am! I took leave, the master sergeant should have-"
"Yes, I didn't mean that, Fish. I meant things which- well, we can't talk about here. This is bat business."
"I… am not a thestral, ensign, ma'am."
"I don't care about any of that. You're in my command. That makes you part of Baker Troop. Will you accept our discipline, as the troop sees the right of it?"
Someone had finally asked her a question. Fish remembered what Auntie A's last request had been. This mattered.
"Yes, ensign, ma'am."
"Then come with me. There's somepony who needs to hear you."
"Don't you mean see me?"
"No, Fish, I mean hear. Did I say you could talk back?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
"What?!"
"Sorry, ma'am, I've made a promise, to always say yes!"
"Ping! I need you to check against the budgetary files, I have a sheath of signed vouchers that- Ping?"
Gilda looked around the squadron office, which was neat as a pin, as always, but was notably lacking the usual Ping.
Then a batty head popped up from underneath Ping's desk.
"Hi, Sarge, what can I get you?" the bat stallion asked.
The wrong bat stallion.
"Bob! What were you doing under Ping's desk?"
"Looking for a pencil I dropped?"
"Are you telling me, or asking me, Bob?"
"Uh… telling. I think?"
"Bob, why aren't you in the major's quarters, doing… whatever it is you do when you're not doing your job like you should be doing?"
Bob tilted his head to one side. "Why would I be in the major's quarters if I wasn't doing my job?"
"Why are you here in the squadron offices?"
"Oh, that one I can answer. I'm covering for Ping."
"You are? Why?"
"He's away from his desk?"
"Yes, I can see that. Why are you the one covering for him?"
"He asked me?"
Gilda threw up her talons. "Fine! I don't care! Do you know where the budget paperwork is filed?"
"Another one I can answer! No, I do not."
"Gah! Here, make sure Ping sees these, when he gets back."
"Yes, master sergeant!"
Gilda left Bob in the squadron office, and hurried off to deal with her next problem.
Trixie looked over the job her gunners had done. The swivel guns gleamed like silver bullion in their cases, each latched securely against the shocks and disruptions of shipboard stowage.
Say what you would about Trixie's evil alter-ego, she'd put the fear of Blessed Bob Tail into the troops. Although, admittedly, they'd not actually discharged any of the weapons, so the cleaning had been more performative than strictly necessary.
But still, the gleam of gun-oil well-polished always set Trixie's heart aflutter. A clean gun was one that hadn't recently been used to…
Trixie turned her head away from the implements of mass murder and stared at the bulkhead until the moment was past.
She'd mostly gotten her breathing back under control when Short Fuse returned with the last of the swivel guns they were putting away, and as Trixie talked her new ensign through the procedure one more time, her voice didn't hitch even once.
It was going to be a good day.
As long as daylight lasted.
Trixie shook herself, and returned to her harangue of the red-faced ensign.
"Ping! I have these inventory lists and bills of lading that I need fil- you're not Ping."
"No, sir, I'm not. Quartermaster Strings, right?"
"Yeah, that's right. You're… Weave something?"
"Bob, sir."
"I'm not a sir, I work for a living."
"You're not a sergeant, either, sir, so you don't get to use that line. And you're sort of like an officer. Just one without a commission."
"Whatever. Where's Ping?"
"Out of the office, sir."
"Since when did Ping have an assistant?"
"He doesn't have an assistant."
"Then what are you doing in here?"
"Covering for him."
"Isn't that what assistants do?"
"I don't know!"
"What do you know?"
"I'm supposed to file anything you give me in the 'In' box."
"It isn't going to get lost, is it?"
"Has Corporal Ping ever lost paperwork?"
"When I ask him to lose paperwork, yes, he has."
"Oh. Uh." The thoroughly average looking bat pony looked pensive, and then looked up at Purse. "Do you want this lost?"
"No, file it properly."
"OK, Mr. Strings. I will. Do you need anything else?"
"No. Uh. Carry on, I guess?"
"OK!"
Giles watched one of the other lances launch from the griffon's nest, and leaned against the gunwale. The whole ship was bustling as the sailors ran about casting off lines and tying down loose gear all over the place. Giles' own lance wasn't up in the rotation for another four hours - eight bells, the sailors insisted on calling it.
The big bird, which rumor said was the same critter as the missing Lady George's roc, squatted behind Giles in the middle of the main deck, looking for all the world like a queen sitting placidly on her throne at the fore of some ancient royal court.
Giles was doing his best not to stare at the big bird. For some reason, it felt rude. Even though her appearance was impossible to ignore, impossible to not look at.
Giles had hunted with Lady George and her roc. Had fought with them, in a manner of speaking.
Except they had never existed? If what the magus had explained to him was true. That there had never been a Lady George. Just the roc. The roc and some cursed artifact that the officers had been… not keeping secret, but not bothering to explain, either.
Giles looked up at the enormous, royal-looking bird with the savage-looking crown, a crown that seemed to stare at him with its one, milky, cyclopean eye.
The royal bird was chatting with the magus and her new apprentice, the odd little perro they'd picked up in Barkalona.
What even was going on anymore? Giles was so confused.
"Bob! You're still here?"
"Yes, sergeant! You just missed Ping!"
"Really? Which way did he go?"
"Uh, out of the hatch? He didn't say where he was going."
"Did he say what he was doing?"
"Not to me, master sergeant!"
"Don't you have some valeting to be doing? Who's keeping the Major's kit straight?"
"You used to do that job, master sergeant! She mostly keeps her own kit, you know that!"
"Are you saying I was essentially useless?"
"Of course not, master sergeant! That would mean that I, also, am essentially useless!"
"Can't argue with logic like that. Tell Ping I was looking for him, won't you? Again."
"Yes, master sergeant!"
The Princess's Bit was leaving Roam, and Lyra hadn't had a chance to go play tourist. The puzzle of Trixie's noggin, and the challenge of straightening out the education of a type of larval magus that Lyra had never even gotten the most rudimentary of instruction about, had thoroughly distracted her.
And now here was a brand new puzzle! Lady George had returned with that strange pink hippogriff, with a new, less cursed crown in the place of the old, seriously cursed one.
Or possibly just differently cursed, Lyra wasn't exactly sure yet. Lady George kept moving her head around, restlessly moving and darting glances here and there and the other place, watching anxiously as the many sailors and troopers of the travelling circus which was the Princess's Bit rushed about and around them, sitting like weathered stone statues in the eye of a hurricane.
"One more time, your excellency, you say it's-"
"Divine, yes, magus. Why do you insist I keep repeating this?"
"Because divinity isn't an acceptable explanation among my peers. I need details, better descriptions, clearer ones. For one thing, this ghost inhabiting your new artifact-"
"The sea-goddess Amphitrite, my new patroness, yes."
"OK, I can write this down, anthropologically. I mean, my dissertation committee keeps yelling at me that doing that is also unacceptable, and that it isn't scientific or proper. But it's at least a framework…"
"So glad that I can conform to your tribal superstitions, Magus Heartstrings."
"Hey! I'm supposed to be the funny one here! Stop being better at it than I am!"
"If you insist, magus. Ah, Ship's Master Tailwind, thank you for coming."
The sallow pegasus had snuck up on Lyra while she'd been arguing with the turul princess. "H-hello, ma'am. Uh, they say you were-"
"Always was Lady George, yes. Hello, Ship's Master. Nice to finally meet you, in the flesh as it were."
"Yes'm! Uh, sorry about the crack two weeks ago about fat, stupid cows of the skies…"
"Ship's Master, I entirely understand, I am quite big and often in the way. But I thank you for your care until now. Have you the course I described to your helmsmare?"
"Yes'm! But… I don't understand. Turul country is due east of us, not on the northerly line you have us taking."
"Technically, it's more north of east than true east from Roam, but at this distance, that's close enough. We have a long wind from here, Ship's Master, and there are other things we must do, before leaving Bitaly."
"What things, princess?" Lyra interrupted. "This is the first I've heard of such a thing."
"Mestre, you've been inside our room for three days," whispered Lyra's pest of a roommate and sort-of-student. "The sun-dogs coulda pulled down the sun and eaten her, you'd be none cap més savi, yeah?"
Lyra turned her head a bit and whispered back, "Put a cork in it, Queenie. Mama's working.
Lyra turned back to the others, saying, "Right, I was interrupting you, sorry. What was I saying?"
Lady George looked down at her with one eyebrow quirked. "Things I must do before leaving Bitaly. And I don't see what business it is of yours, magus."
"Aw, come on. I came all this way to study you, princess!"
"I thought you were sent to help me."
"Little of column a, little of column b. What's changed?"
"My curse is lifted."
"Yeah, everypony noticed! What's that got to do with the price of Marezonian cherries?"
"I've been told - look, magus, I just have a… call it a hint from somebird that gets premonitions. I have subjects who need my help."
Lyra squinted at the turul's new artifact. "Is that what the thing does? Your new hat tells you where other turuls are?"
"In a roundabout way of speaking, sort of, yes. Ship's Master, can you get us to those coordinates?"
"Six and a half miles north-east of Bulldogna?" asked the ship's master. "Yeah, no sweat. We'll be there before you can sing all five verses of 'Land I Love' falsetto!"
Lyra frowned. "Wait, weren't there just four verses?"
"Ha, if you're a landlubbing pansy, there are!" laughed the yellow pegasus as she trotted back towards the aftercastle.
"Wait, what?"
"You again."
"Me again, master sergeant!"
"I don't believe you, Bob."
"Believe me about what, master sergeant?"
"I don't believe you're covering for Ping. Where have you hidden him?"
"Me! You think I could hide the P- the squadron clerk?"
"Bob, it wasn't that long ago that you were in chains below the old fortress in Trottingham, accused of treason."
"I wasn't ever actually charged!"
"Bob, I moved winds and sea to get you out of stir. Why would you lie to me like this?"
"Master sergeant, I have the greatest respect for you, and I haven't told a single lie!"
"You can't pull that one on me, Bob. I invented the falsehood told entirely with meaningless facts! Just tell me where Ping is!"
"Have you tried the engine rooms?"
"Yes!"
"Armory?"
"Yes!"
"Number one and number two forward holds?"
"We pulled those out for the launch bays!"
"We did?"
"You didn't, you're just a trooper, but yes."
"Huh! I didn't know that!"
"You've been through those on inspection! I was with you and the major!"
"Oh, is that what those were? Huh. Was Ping in either of the launch bays?"
"No! Wait, I only checked the port bays."
"Maybe he's in the starboard bays, then!"
Gilda left the squadron office, cursing.
Ping rested in his darkness, a compress over his worthless eyes, his ears straining for every scratch, every bump, every change in the Bit's engines as the ship moved through the… well, Ping wasn't sure anymore whether it was day or night.
He supposed it was all night, now. His blindness had transitioned from lack of seeing in the dark and the night, into lack of sight in the day, now.
Ironic, wasn't it? He had always been so ambiguous about the doctrine of the End of Days, and now, he was looking forward to a personal night of darkness that promised to last forever.
Or, at least, the rest of his nights. No day for him, no light, no understanding…
"-I was saying, ensign ma'am, that you didn't have to - oh, OK. Just don't tug! I'm coming."
There she was. Ping had asked for the hippogriff. Asked for the source of his torment.
"Is that you, Fruits Basket?" Ping asked the darkness.
"Yes, Corporal."
"Have you brought your valet?"
"Yes, Corporal."
"I can't see her, bring her to me." Ping groped with his wing, trying to find the - there it was, the hippogriff's muzzle - no, her beak. "I never really thought about your face, when I could see it, lance corporal."
"What happened?" she asked with that flighty, innocent voice. "Auntie was supposed to-"
"Yes. Your aunt," Ping… said. "You're here to explain your aunt to me. How is it, Fruits Basket, that you harbored this diabolist in our midst for weeks, without ever reporting it to m- to the council?"
"Pu- Corporal Ping! I had no reason to think that-"
"Have we ever asked you to think, Shi- Ensign Basket? Or to-"
"Thinking is why we have officers, Corporal Ping," interrupted the pink menace. "You can't ask an ensign to stop thinking, that's Corporals 101. Sergeant said."
"Be silent, Lance Corporal!" Ping barked. "You are a prisoner."
"Am I?" she asked - was she asking Ping?
"Yes, you are, Fish," the shieldmaiden said, in her own patch of darkness. "That's why we have you in restraints."
"Oh, OK, I thought this was some new game."
"Is that what this is to you?" Ping demanded. "A game? You brought this monstrosity, this evil into my camp, and you call it play?"
"No, Corporal Ping," she said. "I wasn't playing anything with you."
"You dare to claim-"
"I hardly thought about you at all, Corporal. I'm sorry, maybe I shoulda paid more attention to you. He really can't see?" she asked, suddenly, interrupting herself.
"Since two days ago, yes."
Three, actually…
"Damnit, Auntie. I asked you to help, not to do… did I do this?"
"THAT IS WHAT I WANT TO-" Ping's wrath seized him, and his words were swallowed in a coughing fit. He could feel the webby comfort of his shieldmaiden's wings, holding him up as the phlegm worked its way out of his throat. "You had me play in that mummer's farce. It must have been when the demon slid through our defenses."
"She did not!" the prisoner objected from the depths of Ping's darkness. Ping peered in the direction from which the objection had come. "Auntie has only ever tried to help us! She's always been concerned about Lady George, and the turul problems, and the ship, and the ponies, and- and- a thousand other things! Corporal, I know you're hurting, but Auntie Amphitrite isn't your enemy! The only reason she would have come to you was that I was worried about- well, not you personally, I didn't realize it was you, personally, but I knew there was something off about you bats. And I was worried about you all! I just asked her to help!"
"Your help has stolen my gifts, hippogriff, and broken our defenses, left us all exposed to the shadows that lurk in the night!"
"We only wanted to help the turul-"
"I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR MEANINGLESS DAYLIGHT PIFFLE! None of it matters! Your imaginary turuls, the griffons, the Roamans, the dayponies - only the night matters! And you have brought a demon into my night! Take her away, Basket!"
"Yes, Lord Pumpernickel!"
Ping was too tired to bother with correcting the shieldmaiden's lapse of operational security. He was so tired…
"Take him, Gwaine."
"Master sergeant! Wait, you don't have to-"
"Bob, I'm putting you under arrest, on suspicion of having foalnapped Corporal Two Pings. Gwaine, Grant, take him down to the brig. I'll be by in a minute to begin interrogations. Ensign Sunburst, can you make sense of this mess?"
The orange unicorn looked around the no-longer-neat-as-a-pin office. "He's been missing for only two days? It got this bad in two days?"
"This is your introduction to the font of chaos which is Trooper - wait, we made him Lance Corporal Bob, didn't we? Damnit, Gleaming…"
The unicorn ensign stared at Gilda, patiently.
"Right, sorry. I only noticed Ping was missing two days ago. I haven't seen him in… I don't know how long. I'll have to check my log. We need to figure out if he's still on the ship, or if we somehow left him back in Roam. Look for evidence, while you're straightening out this mess. Can you do that, ensign?"
Sunburst looked around at the scattered piles of paper and the numerous half-opened filing cabinets.
"I guess I can? Yeah. I think I can…"
Gilda left the officer to clean up Bob's mess, and stomped off to interrogate her prisoner.
The barbarian birds rose to the challenge with savage, feline screams. As Giles and his lance stooped in a gathering flock overhead, their opposite numbers struggled to ascend to their altitude.
This was why the Princess's Bit was cruising at a higher altitude than they normally essayed. The birds of the Eagle Guard had warned them about the tribes that lurked in the higher peaks of the Pinions north-east of Roam, and sure enough, here they were. The slopes they'd been sailing over had gotten steeper and steeper as they'd motored further and further from the nominal imperial capital, but even here, the rolling terrain was still mostly vineyards, groves, and pastureland. In fact, the vinyards and groves seemed to have been crowded out in the last few miles by pastures full of grazing quadrupeds, both people and pigs alike.
But those pastures were cut off, just ahead, by slopes too steep to be cultivated, all rocks and twisted, stunted, piney woods, and, apparently…
Griffons. Aside from the details of their dress and their coloration, they might have been highlanders from back home. Just swap out those narrow-brimmed black hats for tammies, and dye their feathers a pale blue, and-
And the attacking flock was among Giles' lance. His birds struck the labouring, heaving griffon-folk with their spears reversed, as Giles had coached them. The blown birds quailed under the Crystal Guards' attack, and they broke, one and all, falling back down the way they'd come.
Pitiful.
Well, not all of them. One of the locals, a yellow-feathered older tom with a raptor's eye and browning crest, curved away from the brief clash, and circled back around, club in his talons.
"Indietro! Indietro, mannaggia a te! Get back, forestieri! You no feed on Cinquepiume! I kill you, me!" the tom yelled, racing straight towards Giles.
Giles jinked, dropping below the bravo's swing, and, retaining his velocity, curled around until he was now on the local's tailfeathers, or near-about.
"Do we look thin enough to you, that we'd be 'unting on this starveling wasteland?" Giles demanded, dodging the backward swipes of first one, then the other rear paws of the local. "Back off! Back off, and let us pass, you bluddy maniacs!"
Giles' blasted, lazy troopers fell into a loose sort of formation around him and his opponent, apparently content to let the lance corporal do the fighting for the lance.
Damn their citified tails.
Giles and the local danced, their sweeping strikes with talon and wing punctuated every now and again with a thick, oaken crack as their improvised clubs rattled off of each other, instead of a limb or a beak or something more breakable. As Giles came around for another exchange of blows, he caught in his peripheral vision the rest of the locals, cruising along lazily a hundred yards or so below his own birds, as if they had conspired together to encircle the fighting toms in a loose globular arena walled in flesh, wings, and idle weaponry.
Finally, Giles caught the cursing local a crack across the wing with his clubbed spear, and the tom spun out, falling down towards his compatriots gliding beneath the combatants.
Giles glared around at his own troopers, and snarled, "Well, were we entertaining enough for you lot?"
"Sure enough, lance corporal darlin'," sniggered Trooper Gilead. "And you dance so loverly, we all are quite in love, are we not, gentlegriffs and ladies?"
"Put a pony-sock in it," Giles snarled, as the locals' panting champion rose again to his lance's elevation, carried by two younger griffons, a hen and a smaller tom. "You back for more, sir? I haven't had the 'onor of yer name, which I think is rather little to ask, don't you think, Trooper Gilead?"
"Uh, er, I-" the trooper stuttered, not expecting to participate in whatever he thought Giles was doing.
"Trooper? Trooper, real?" asked the local, regaining his breath in the grasp of his own griffons. "No pirates, non siete predoni?"
"Pirates! Don't you recognize the Equestrian colours?" Giles asked, gesturing at- oh, they'd gotten pretty far from the ship. Then, recovering from the gaff, he gestured at the device on his sweat-stained tabard.
"No say yes, forestieri tom trooper, no. I is word no, trooper. You Equestrian? You no Equestrian. Why no pony?"
"Not every trooper in the Princess's employ is an 'erbivore, Mr. Bitalian Nobody. Does Mr. Bitalian Nobody have a name, or should I just keep callin' you that?"
And after that, the conversation contained a great deal more broken Equish, and considerably less wrangling.
"-they're so riled up because there was an… incident two days ago, in some place called- Gillie, how did he pronounce that?"
"Pascoladellydotorey, or somefing like that, Lance Corporal."
'Pascolo del Duetori", said the captive-griffon, who was being held by two of the Apple troopers.
"Right, Pascolo somethin’ or other. Two big damn birds, twice the size of a griffon, struck some sort of festival or ritual or somethin'-" the lance corporal continued.
"Called it th' course dey torey, he did!" Gillie said, brightly.
"La corsa dei tori," the captive said, correcting him.
"Right, that, and killed and dragged off a couple locals. Pissed off the whole neighbor'ood, it did. Sounds like it made a bluddy mess ov the Sinkpeemeh-"
"Cinquepiume," said the captive-griffon.
"Look, do you want to tell this story to 'er 'ighness, or can I finish?" the lance corporal snapped. "Where was I? The locals' reputation. Roight, made a mess of the local birds' reputation, it did. Now they're strikin' at anything that flies over'ead. On account of they don't eat if they don't show they're protecting their 'erds."
Lyra looked up at the princess's expressive face, trying to interpret what exactly it was she was looking at.
"How many locals were eaten?" the turul finally asked, sitting on the griffon's nest on top of the Bit's envelope like a queen on a throne.
"Uh, the local says - and 'is Equish wasn't the best, roight? But I think 'e said something that sounded like two, but it might 'ave been 'few', right?"
The turul hen looked steadily at the griffon troopers and their griffon prisoner, and finally turned to look down at Lyra, whose attempts to get more details out of the great bird about her new artifact had been interrupted again and again - first by briefings of the senior staff and the ship's crew, then arguments about courses and distances and schedules, and finally, this - what was it, an interrogation by proxy?
"I think I will need a pony witness to this - are you interested, Magus Heartstrings?"
"Wait, what? What am I witnessing? Do you think that-"
"Magus, you're not this stupid. Why do you think we're out here?"
"To get to Turul country, and take back your throne?"
"To get back my people, Magus. There is no throne. We've never had thrones, little pony. Thrones are for the people of the earth. We were always birds of the skies, and mountains. My ancestors have never sat on thrones."
"What's that got to do with a couple monsters in central Bitalia? Yeah, they might be-"
"Rocs. They're rocs, Magus Heartstrings."
"What if they are? They sound too big to be recent hatchings, right?"
"No, you're quite right. Some failure of my mother's in her dotage, I suspect. You never can tell when some hen might get separated from the flock, or hide that she'd dropped a clutch away from the brooding grounds."
"So, not your fault, right?"
"Magus, these birds are not my fault, they are my people."
Lyra cocked her head, and stared back at the great turul. "It's going to be a hard life, your highness, if you start claiming all the world's injustices for your own."
Damn, but she hated getting serious.
"All the world's injustices can account for themselves, but this is the beginnings of mine. I have something to prove, and those ferals are my… what do you call a tool you use to open a seam, a crack in a wall?"
"Uh, a… crowbar?"
"Just call me the queen of crows, then, Magus. Do you want to come watch me pry open fate's crate of injustices?"
"Do I? Do I?" Lyra asked, getting excited.
"Yes, Magus, that's what I asked you."
"Heck, yeah!"
The great bird turned back to the trooper. "Lance Corporal, which way did the prisoner say the rocs escaped?"
"There's a range east of 'ere, maybe they think the rocs are roostin' out that way. If there are any other attacks, I didn't get it out of 'im, sorry."
"Excellent! Can you get a unicorn-cart or something for the magus? I think we've some hard flying this afternoon, and I don't want to lose her off my back.
"Are you coming, Magus Heartstrings?"
"Yeah! Just let me go get some goggles!"
Gilead got his just deserts, as Giles chose him to shrug into the yoke of an officer's gig, to get the magus off of her usual perch on the royal back of not-really-a-roc-and-never-was. Getting the gig out of storage and Gilead rigged out felt like it had taken far too much time, but by the time they'd gotten it ready, the magus and the royal turul were still untangling the local tom's baffling knot of Equish and the local creole.
Giles managed to get in place just before the princess looked up. If he'd gotten it right, she might not have even noticed he'd left in the first place.
Her eye twitched once, faintly, and Giles suppressed a reciprocal twitch.
"Lance Corporal, Signor Mandriano and I have come to a conclusion. His only concern is my motivation."
"As you say, yer 'ighness," Giles said as stolidly as he could muster, looking to avoid getting entangled in… whatever this was.
"Why, he asked me, am I hunting monsters in his hills?" She turned to the Bitalian bumpkin.
"Distruggo i miei nemici quando diventano miei amici," the princess carefully said in a close approximation of the local's creole.
The Bitalian griffon looked much struck by this bit of unintelligible Bitalian gibber. The princess looked as self-satisfied as a royal the size of Giles' childhood eyrie could look. Everyone else looked as baffled as Giles felt.
Giles frowned, and followed the princess as she waved him away from the others into a huddle.
Or at least, as much of a huddle as a modestly-proportioned griffon and a towering turul princess could manage.
"What did you say to him, your highness?" Giles asked.
"What, you heard me! Don't they teach you birds the classics in the Griffish Isles? No? Ah, well. Old Roamish proverb - 'I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends'," she said grandly.
Giles frown found even newer and deeper furrows upon his wrinkled brow. "Sounds Equestrian."
"You see? Wisdom is universal."
"Eh. Equestrians are over-fond of talk of friendship. They say in the Highlands that an Equestrian will sucker-punch you, beat the shit out of you, pick your saddle-bags, and call it 'friendship'."
"Well, then, you get the general gist of my plan, lance corporal. Come on, then. Let us go make friends, the Equestrian way."
"By beak, talon, and lance?" Giles asked, smiling despite himself.
"My beak and talon, your lance. Two rocs. I can only deal with one at a time. Can you and yours keep the other off my back?"
"Yes, ma'am. Let's go befriend the 'ades out of them."
Lyra narrowed her eyes behind the flying-glasses the trooper had hoofed her before taking off in the wobbly contrivance these jarheads called an 'officer's gig'. Somehow all that open space below her hocks felt so much… emptier without a substantial turul or airship imposing themselves between Lyra and the vast depths of the upper airs.
She would not be sick, she would not be sick, she was a magus of Her Imperial Majesty's Own School…
Lyra distracted herself from the prospect of bursting like a unicorn-shaped water-balloon on the rocky slopes so, so far below by trying to remember the school chants.
It might have helped if she'd ever gotten around to going to the stadium on game-days.
The lance of griffons and the princess had been joined by a curious flock of armed locals, a rough and raffish bunch whose language Lyra didn't know. There had never been any interesting stories that came out of this part of Bitalia, and she had always had something more important to do than learn yet another degraded, decayed, decadent variant on Ancient Roamish. The rubbish they actually spoke in Roam proper was tedious enough as it was, and having to listen to it brought out all the snobbish Canterlotian worst in Lyra.
There! Shame and embarrassing conceit was more than enough to distract her from her impending doom-by-rapid-unplanned-descent!
And now she wasn't distracted again, blast it.
"Gillie, say something."
"Somefing, miss."
"Very funny. What's it like, knowing that you can't die from falling from a great height?"
"Who ever told you that one? Pull the other talon, it's got bells on. Griffons die when they fall, same as anygriff else. 'Onestly, I've more on me mind than that remote possibility, miss. Like the prospect ov bein' eaten by an achual roc. Seein' as we've only 'ad a shammin' one with us all the while."
"Oh, that shouldn't be a thing. Look at the princess! She eats much better than a pair of starving hill-rocs like these two'll be."
"So yer sayin' I ought take 'eart, wot our monster's bigger than theirs?"
"Exactly!"
"Roight. Sound logic, that is. Oh, look, 'is nibs 'as spotted somefing."
Lyra followed the trooper's gaze, and saw the lance corporal diving from his high overwatch position above their impromptu aerial circus.
She followed in turn the arc of the lance corporal's dive, and eventually spotted the crease in the mountain ahead. And two tiny brown streaks breaking out of that wooded crease.
Tiny, only until Lyra matched their size against the little twisted twigs which must have been great gnarled Norneighan spruces…
Somehow, the rocs had sensed them coming. Spotted, from their mountain holes? Something mystical? Lyra couldn't be sure.
Lyra squinted, barely making out anything of their quarry, made miniscule by distance. At this range, they might as well be turuls for all she could see. Or sparrows, for that matter.
Really, really big sparrows.
But the brown specks, rocs, sparrows, or griffons for all Lyra could see, were fleeing. And the princess was following, moving faster than she’d ever seen Lady George move before, her golden-and-bone diadem glittering like a bit of whitened sun in the burning afternoon glare of the very last day of Bitalia's long spring.
And Lyra and Gillie were chasing all three monsters, as if any of the griffons (and Lyra!) could have done anything against any one of them, if they chose to turn and swipe their mere mortal selves from the dubious support of airy nothingness.
Lyra gripped her rickety wooden cradle and hoped for the best.
The lance corporal was ahead of the rest of them, having taken a strong lead from his steep gliding dive, but the princess herself had shot past even him, her great wings devouring the emptiness in between.
As the two growing streaks of feral brown turned over the shoulder of the on-rushing mountain below, Lyra lost track of them.
Not to mention how she was suddenly distracted by the granite sharpness of the suddenly threatening crags that promised a terrible sudden stop to her and Gillie's racing course.
By the time they'd gotten around the grasping Norneighan spruce limbs and the shattered, stabbing granite spires, they were once again in the lovely, abyssal openness of the air, past that close call with the mountain, and Lyra had definitely lost the rocs and the princess, and even the lance corporal.
Everything was dazzle and sunshine and darkness and sea.
So much sea.
The rocs' mountain hideaway had hidden their view of the Haydriatic Sea beyond its heavy, wooded bulk. But now it wasn't.
And there she was, the narrow, constrained, blue-washed waters of the Haydriatic.
And a terminally dazzled Lyra was horribly disoriented.
The mountain below the rays of the westering sun was darkness in her sun-struck eyes, blending into the sea-rocks and the sea itself below, until the rays of said westering sun finally touched the Haydriatic miles to Lyra's east.
And then there was a sudden sun-struck flash of enormous mad-eyed brown feathered death and it was RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER AND-
A spearhead of silvery salvation struck the Brown Death in a glittering red arc, and Gillie spun Lyra, the gig, and himself out of the way of the Brown Death's great beaked doom.
As they recovered from their sudden turbulent brush with Brown Death, Lyra finally saw the form of her savior, as the lance corporal continued poking the enormous roc with his little bladed stick.
She suddenly remembered she was a unicorn, and mustered enough telekinesis to yank on the Brown D- the roc's tail-feathers.
Sue her, Lyra wasn't a battle mage.
The distraction was enough for Lance Corporal Giles to disengage, and for the rest of the lance to join in the harrying of the great monstrous bird.
In the distance, the princess had grappled with the other, larger roc, and the two of them were plunging towards the darkening seas below.
Lady George wasn't struggling in her terrible, uninterrupted plunge towards the ocean depths. The roc, on the other hoof, was - desperately trying to escape the larger turul's wings and talons, held for all the world like a mother-hen, protectively to her breast.
A breast which was bleeding from the pecking of the smaller monster, and wasn't doing a blessed thing to keep her and her captive from dropping into the Haydriatic Sea like a volcano-launched pyroclastic rock.
To shatter, no doubt, just like those did when they hit unforgiving water at terminal velocity.
Lyra watched in horror as they did exactly that.
And the princess of the turuls and her captured roc cut through the dark waters like a knife through gelatin.
Fish Eye listened around the constricted-but-open space she'd been spirited into. The thestrals had blindfolded her, but they apparently hadn't noticed that hippogriffs retained a certain sonar sense from their alternate physicalities, and Fish Eye was closer to her fishy nature than she'd been… well, for most of her (admittedly short) adult life. Her brief sojourn through Auntie A's realm had reminded her senses of how to see with squishy bits other than her eyes.
And her other squishy bits were telling her that they were in a large, long, low space, like the insides of one of the lift bodies in the Princess's Bit's envelope… except you couldn't go in there, because it was all thaumically excited air, and you'd suffocate in minutes.
"Where are we, anyways?" she asked the pony-shaped lumps in the open space around her.
"Shut up, Eye!" said the lump with the ensign's voice.
The recumbent lump that Corporal Ping's voice had been coming out of laughed with Corporal Ping's voice.
"Lovely, isn't it, you pink disaster? I always knew that if I needed something hidden on this ship, I'd just have to put it in-"
"Where can they have hidden him?" Gilda raged at her major, who was laying back in her hammock with a compress over her eyes. "I've arrested Bob and three other troopers who've been seen coming in and out of the offices. I'm thinking we ought to start arresting corporals next!"
"Why not just jump the queue and arrest the ensigns and Fruit Salad?" Gleaming Shield said around her migraine headache and the compress that was failing to reduce it. "The rest of the bats can't possibly have spirited Ping away without them noticing, or authorizing it."
"Because I don't want to admit that the entire troop is on the verge of mutiny, which is what that'd mean if Fruits and the ensigns were in on it."
"You don't want to admit it? Does that mean you think it's true?"
Gilda didn't say anything. If she said it, and made it true…
"Gilda, we're half the way to Bitalian nowhere, chasing some mystic quest of George's, with half of our griffon troop scattered the other halfway to Neighpon and the other half on guard duty. If the bats are going to mutiny…"
"What the… the…" Gilda stuttered, bereft of any profanity sufficient for the occasion. If they crossed this line, if the bats had crossed that line…
"What are we going to do?" Gleaming completed Gilda's horrified thought. "I suggest setting the Bit down and getting ready to turtle up with Charlie Troop and call in what's reachable of Apple Troop."
"If we don't know where they're all forted up, we could set down, and find out they've all just absconded."
"At this point, that would be good news, Gilda. This is a-"
"Disaster!" snarled Sergeant Fruit Salad. "All the prophecies say that tonight is the night! We're two thousand air-miles from the caverns, the dream world is leaking nightmares from every crevice, the Mother is due to be released at midnight, and we're hiding in the envelope stowage closet!"
Ping silently admitted that the grizzled old sergeant had a point. Everything Ping had tried to do to bring order to their world had just made things worse. Conspiracy against the matrons, night-assaults, sacred rituals, half-hearted flirting with demonic bargain-hunters… each move had rebounded on his punch-drunk head.
"Be calm, sergeant. We are here, because she will be here. The Mother was never to return to us in the trap which is the caverns, she's far too canny for that. The White Princess knows us, knows those caverns. It had to be out here, where the snares of the Enemy couldn't entwine around the Return, and bring one more dawn down to day."
"But sir!" objected Fruits Basket. "The dreamscape is becoming overrun. Nightfang has relapsed, and Durian…"
"I can't find Durian," Ambersweet said with a quaver in her voice. "She was missing from her bunk, and nobody's seen her in the dreamscape. I'm afraid she crawled off into some corner and- and-"
"Hold it together, Private!" Sergeant Fruit Salad barked. "We'll find her yet. But damn the day-ponies for taking us here. Everythestral knows that central Bitaly is littered with the tombs of dead gods and neglected battlefields. Prime nightmare-spawning territory!"
"That's a myth, Sergeant!" objected one of the other ensigns. "Places don't breed night-hags and nocnice, ponies do!"
"It might be a ruddy myth to you matron-trainees, but every soldier knows that graves leak nightmares, like rot breeds maggots. Especially untended ones. And dead gods? Damn big nightmares."
As the sergeant and the shieldmaidens squabbled, Ping wished he could see their expressions. It would have given him more of a clue how to proceed than the waver in the shieldmaidens' voices, and the suppressed panic in that of the sergeant, alone.
"-graves don't do anything but hold rotting corpses! The only thing producing night-hags are the guilty consciences of grave-robbers!"
It was a sign of how badly confused the lines of authority and division between the military world and the dream-world had become, that they were even meeting like this, corporals and sergeants and shieldmaidens and ensigns and spear-stallions. Even if many of those present wore two or more hats in the two hierarchies.
"What difference does it make!" the sergeant snarled. "We're still leaking mares left and right, and you can hear the screaming and yelling out there among the day-ponies. You're losing your grip, you-"
"What we have to keep in mind," Ping interrupted, firmly, trying to keep his indecision out of his own voice, "Is that we are not the only ones stumbling around in this darkness. We have to preserve our force, and keep our formations intact until the Return. All will be well, then. We only have a few short hours until midnight, and we no longer have to hide from the rest of the squadron. They don't know where we are, we are safe for now. I can assure you that none of the day-ponies will think in a thousand years of looking for us in the-"
"Oh, hey, what are youse guys doing up here?" said a very unwelcome voice. "I was just coming up to pull some of our rope stock for the - whoop! Easy there, filly. You nearly pinked me with that pig-sticker of yours."
What specific sin against the Mother of Dreams had Ping committed, that she afflicted him with an annoyance like-
"Has anyone seen Purse Strings?" Gilda yelled into the corridor, and one of the runners looked up from his station against the bulkhead, rising from a slouch.
"Saw 'im twenty-five minutes ago, fussing over the mess you- er, we left in the launch bays, Sarge."
Gilda glared at Mickle Joe. "Well, go get him, winds damn you! I want to go over the ship schematics, we're forgetting something, and I can't remember what!"
"Oh, yar, that's a rough 'un, sarge. Will do, marm."
"And put a civil tongue in your maw, private, before I find a rank below that to bust you down to!"
"What's that, civvie? Me marm would kiss you for it, sarge. Always 'ated me goin' into the service, marm did."
"Fly, you fool!"
"I'm flown, your flockship!"
Gilda turned back to Martingale.
"You were saying, lieutenant ma'am?"
"I'm down three griffons, and five ponies. All of them unresponsive, and three, a griffon and two ponies, are screaming and carrying on. We're restraining them in the stockade-"
"Brig, ma'am," corrected the lieutenant's adjutant.
"Brig, whatever, we've had to restrain them, and the doctor is beside herself trying to figure out what's going on. I think it's some sort of thestral trick. They're sabotaging us!"
"I've never heard of such a thing," Gilda objected, cautiously. "Is that a thing?"
"Can't be sure," Martingale conceded. "But there's always been rumors. If they're mutinying, they might be pulling out the secret tricks to overwhelm us. Where's the Major?"
"Checking her books for quick tips on batpony-handling," Gilda said, henfully resisting the urge to roll her eyes in front of Gleaming's subordinate. "Maybe we can get a leg up on the problem."
"She should have those books memorized by now!" Martingale snarled.
"Look, Lieutenant, get your griffons in talon, and mind your own wind. We need to find those missing ponies. The batponies aren't attacking us, so far as I can tell. They're just hiding. Find them, and we find the solution to what's going on."
Purse Strings, where did you disappear to?
Strings couldn't see very well in the darkness of the stowage closet, once they'd busted his lantern. And what he could see, moved strangely, as if there were serpents in the darkness, just out of his lack-of-vision.
"You know, it ain't easy to replace the glass in those things, this far from civilization!" he complained.
"Shut up, Strings", said the ensign. At least he thought it was an ensign. Hard to tell from just voices, and a brief, startled flash of lighted closet, before they'd tackled him and broke his lantern. The dead space below the spine of the envelope, around the access crawlspace between the cells, made a lovely place for stowing spars, rope, and other long-ish luggage that couldn't comfortably fit down in the bays.
And, apparently was ideal for thestral conspiratorial convocations. The ensign left, closing the hatch behind him.
There was a pinkish spot in the now-less-populated darkness to Strings' right, among the coiling, slithering nothings which Strings was fairly sure was just his suppressed panic manifesting in hallucinations, phantasms. The pink phantasm turned to him, and a beak formed just brightly enough in the dimness for him to see the smile, under a white stripe that must have been a blindfold.
"First time being foalnapped?" it squeaked in the voice of the doctor's airheaded sister. "Don't worry, it gets better, eventually. And I've been promised. All things will be well. We're things, too, aren't we?"
Oh, it wasn't a phantasm, it was the doctor's airheaded sister.
"You may be a thing, little miss, but I'm a pony."
"Yeah, I've heard that one before. Don't try it on the batponies, they might think it's a suggestion they ain't ponies, by inference, yanno?"
Strings grunted, struck by the argument.
Then he was struck by a spear-butt from the darkness.
Strings hadn't even heard the thestral come through the hatch. He was really losing it.
"What's going on back here? Be quiet, the both of you!"
Why did she only hit him!
"It helps if you're cute. Cute gets away with lots when you've been captured!" chirped the doctor's infuriating, blindfolded sister.
Now that the hatch was open again, he could see that they'd clapped them in the aft hawser-hold, a closet within the bigger closet, and although Strings couldn't quite make out what the other bats were going on about out there in the larger space, he could see real movement, something other than the snakes in the dark.
He thought about asking the pink menace what was going on, but Strings was coming to understand that the lance corporal could say things that would get him-
"Ya wanna know what's going on?" Fish answered the question the earth pony hadn't asked. But she knew he was wondering.
She knew all sorts of things now. And could answer them, if she wanted.
"We're being held to keep their world going, Mr. Strings! It's a very important job, being a captive. And surprisingly helpful! You employ all sorts of guards, and keep them in jails where they can't hurt other ponies while they're jailing you up. Not that I mean you, Ambersweet. You wouldn't hurt a fly. Unless he landed on Mr. Strings' muzzle just before you whacked him one for talking out of turn."
"Eye, just… shut up."
"Oh, will you whack me one, too? Yes, ma'am. Shutting up now."
"You outrank me, Lance Corporal."
"Are we keeping to ranks now, Private Ambersweet?" Fish asked. If she outranked the guard, the guard could hardly give her orders.
"I… have no idea what we're doing anymore, Lance Corporal."
Fish Eye leaned forward in the darkness behind her blindfold, in the open space which must have been the hawser hold, a blindness within a box within a box within a balloon.
"That's the secret, Private. Nopony ever knows what they're doing in the dark. That's why we light a candle."
She could feel the thestral hesitating, on the cusp…
"Hey! No candles. We're in a flammable stowage space!" squawked the stores-master pony.
Fish Eye slapped her talons over her blindfold, frustrated. Everyone was stepping on her lines today!
"Hey!" squawked the thestral private. "When did you get untied?"
"Oh, this?" Fish Eye asked, wiggling her talons. "Oops? Sorry, I can't see where the rope got to… could you give me a hoof, and we can get me tied up a-"
"FRUITS BASKET! FRUIT SALAD! WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE! WE KNOW YOU'RE HOLDING CORPORAL PING HOSTAGE! COME OUT WITH YOUR HOOVES UP!" Sergeant Gilda's command-voice rattled through two hatches and was hardly muffled at all by all the coils of heavy rope and other stowage cluttering around Fish.
The squawks of dismay from Fish's captors were less muffled.
EVERYONE was stepping on Fish's lines today. She'd hardly gotten started, abyssal depths take it!
Trixie faced the setting sun, and watched as the last reddened hooftip crept across the limb of the wide, wide world. Her guns were in good hooves, her ensign on night-watch and, more importantly, the corporal riding herd on said ensign was both alert and on duty.
Her day was done, and she could take her rest.
Her dreams had been particularly bad for weeks, perhaps months.
And then, the other day, something broke.
Trixie hadn't dreamed since then. She'd entered the realm of sleep, and passed beyond knowledge of herself. She was just… here, again. Facing the sunset.
Facing the sunset with, perhaps, a bit less of that feeling of guilt and despair.
Having something of a psychotic break was, in a way, freeing. You could take all those bad feelings, and give them to your evil self. And if some insistent, drumming, throbbing something in the darkness took your evil self from you, didn't they take the bad with the… worse?
Trixie in the daylight still felt the twinges, still had to suppress the twitches, the bad reflexes.
But when the sky stained red and purple and the darker colors of dusk, the twitches and the twinges went away.
Until tonight, she'd rushed to her bed, for vestigial fear of what she might do in this intoxication of self.
Not tonight.
Tonight, she turned from the sunsetting side of the ship, and walked, dreamily, towards the starboard.
Towards the stars opening their evening eyes upon the turning of the year.
The little perro crouched in her room. The cavalls were running around in the corridors, yelling at each other, and she could hear the sound of screaming, blows, and squeals of pain somewhere in the disorienting distance.
Then somecavall broke one of the lamps down the corridor to the right, and the noise got worse.
Reina closed her door a little further, but not so far that she couldn't peer out into the empty chaos with one wide eye.
She tightly grasped the long, heavy instrument she'd borrowed from her bruixa cavall roommate's side of their room. It wasn't a club, and the delicate cavall device probably would break if she hit someperro with it, but it would do in a pinch if whatever that was out there tried to come in here.
Behind her, the darkness coiled in the unlit corners of the cabin.
Gilda stared in frustration at the hatchway leading into the envelope stowage space. She couldn't believe she'd forgotten this part of the ship existed. Well, to be honest, it was an even bet whether she'd ever noticed it in the first place. There was always something else that had to be done…
Quartermaster Strings had known it was up here. It was part of his domain. And according to Petty Tie Rod, Strings had last been seen by a member of Black Gang's black gang, going up into stowage to pull out some line to replace some frayed sheets on the aft ropeways. He'd never come back.
She could just barely see a thestral eye peering out of the hatchway. There were at least two batponies in there, and neither of them looked like either the missing Fruit Salad, or the ensigns. Or, for that matter, Ping, although the - was that a male?
Gilda wasn't sure. They were doing a good job of forting up in there.
She didn't have enough ponies and griffons to get all of the batponies under control. She had sent a lance and a half of Apple with Martingale to confine the rest of Baker to quarters. Gilda wasn't sure if Martingale was going to be successful in disarming them or not, Gleaming had just left with a detachment of Charlie to reinforce the lieutenant, and replace the griffons who had fallen out of the ranks with whatever sleeping curse that was going around.
Gilda had just lost another griffon, passed out right in front of her while she was giving the tom instructions to hold a corridor junction. Two more had been taken out of the ranks, to carry the twitching, unconscious trooper down to the triage being run by a harried Hawk Eye in the brig.
Which left Gilda, half a lance of Apple, and another platoon's worth of Charlie to keep however many batponies were forted up in the envelope stowage-hold-closet-whatever-the-buck-it-was in there, from coming out here.
She turned to Tailwind, hovering anxiously in the air above the entrance to the stowage, along the aft keel of the envelope.
"You're sure that there are just two hatches into this space?"
"Yes, sergeant! This one, and the stern hatchway. The stern one is kept dogged and barred. I don't think you could get through it from inside without an axe!"
Gilda turned an eye towards the thestral eye - no, two sets now. Definitely at least two batponies, and neither looked like the missing sergeant, corporal, or ensign.
Possibly ensigns, she hadn't gotten word of how much of the batpony command structure was AWOL.
"I don't think I trust them to not have an axe in there. Or a battering ram. Let's go see what's going on at the stern hatchway. Gustav, you have control of this access point. Don't let them out. No matter how many batponies are in there, they can only come at you two at a time. Can you handle that?"
"Master sergeant, don't teach your grandpa to suck eggs. I'll crack any that come out of that hole, sure enough," the grizzled old bird said.
"Very well!" Gilda said, with all the nervy enthusiasm she could muster. She turned her eyes to the west, where the last pinks and reds of twilight were being strangled by the tendrils of dusk. "Be sure to get some more lights up here. They'll have the advantage in the dark."
And whatever it was that was taking her griffons out of commission, just as everything went to Hades.
Ping could feel the eyes upon him, in his darkness. Judging him, worrying at him, fearing his loss of control.
"Be calm, shieldmaidens, spear-stallions, sergeant. We have time on our side," Ping lied to the darkness. He could almost feel the others, but they were silent, and feeling was all that he had left.
The masquerade was coming to an end. They had run him down, the major and her huge, hulking griffon, and the rest.
They were figuring it out, out there, somewhere in the darkness with the night-haunts and the nocnice, and whatever was disappearing their shieldmaidens whenever a bat's back was turned. Coming for his bats. Cornering them, in this ironwood-and-canvas cave in the heart of the infinite dark.
All Ping and his bats had was their faith in the Mother of Dreams. In prophecy, and promises.
But Ping had seen the heart of the Mother, the heart of the dream.
He had to trust in his bats' faith, because he no longer trusted in his.
His heart beat like a failing drum, one more strike, one more thump, one more measure with the drum-stick…
Lyra and her griffon chauffeur cruised cautiously in a wide circle around the spot where the Turul princess and her victim had plunged below the waves. Well, the approximate area, more or less.
It was hard to keep track of exactly what was what, out here over the waves. The sharp rocky spires towards the broken flank of the mountain mass to the west were dubious landmarks, when you were spinning around in a fragile bit of balsa wood, thunderforged steel plates, and vegi-leather strapping.
Especially as the dazzling rays of sunset were fading to the sullen bruise-fruit of twilight-racing-into-dusk.
And twice so, when you were dodging the half-hearted swipes of a monster, circling the same empty stretch of turbulent water as you, cawing piteously like a demonic foal who had lost her mother.
Had she lost her mother? What was the relationship between these monsters, anyways? The princess had talked about her monsterified cousins as if they were shambling, demonic ghouls, mindless and voracious. Did rocs have their own nests, their own young? Or were they just appetite on the wing, destruction without creation or a future?
To be honest, Lyra had only interacted with a roc once before, and had spent most of her time on the Burostani marches with that beast running from it, in between trying to observe the militia's fight with it at a distance. This one seemed… now that it wasn't trying to eat her, it was obviously half-grown.
Or was it a male? Did rocs, and by extension, turuls, have pronounced sexual dimorphism? She'd never been able to get close enough to one in Burrostan to sex them. Or find a nest, for that matter… Lyra tried to think through the shuddering after-effects of an equally pronounced adrenaline crash, and remember her notes from that half-written paper…
Where was the princess? Was she drowning the other roc, putting the poor mindless pony-eater out of her misery?
Was she drowning in her own right? How long could a turul hold her breath under the waves? Did her new goddess-given artifact…
And then the ocean erupted with a shocking suddenness, right under Lyra's rushing gig, as the other roc turned about in her - or his - circuit.
Two great black-and-white heads broke the surface with a great gout of seawater and foam, soaking Lyra's contrivance to the gunwales, and dousing poor, put-upon Gillie.
Lyra watched in awe as an enormous orca turned on its side, lifting a much smaller one into the air, and clearing the second one's blow-hole with her lip like a mother-whale removing the caul and after-birth from a newborn foal.
An enormous killer whale, wearing a white-brown-and-gold choker with a strikingly familiar cracked-milky pearl the size of Lyra's hoof.
The second, smaller whale moaned in a voice that was halfway between a roc's roar, and a foal's wail.
The circling roc answered that cry with her own unsettling yarble.
The princess-whale swam her charge around in circles, echoing the confused circuit of the remaining roc, and the outer orbit of wary, onlooking griffon flocks, and Lyra.
The moon crested the peaks of the mountains beyond the eastern side of the Haydriatic Sea, and moonlight lit the darkening waves upon which a reborn orca found her sea-flukes.
And then the greater whale gathered herself in the water, and at the peak of a cresting wave, lept into the crowded air between Lyra, the griffons and the remaining roc.
And miracle lit up the world to rival the moon's bone-cold glare.
The light of a shapeshifter becoming, a great brown raptor-queen on the rise where there had been a leaping whale, one milky-white eye-blink before.
And the up-rushing turul was upon the second roc before the startled monster was able to pull up, or break away from their glide.
And the mother hen took her second child down through the darkened, moon-glit waters of life.
Trixie stood among the screaming, yelling, and alarums, the silent dreaming heart of chaos. Her hooves rested beside a swivel-gun on the starboard side of the Princess's Bit, and watched the stars greet the rising moon, full and its mare's-head shadow stronger and more distinct than it ever had been.
Four stars swam in motion, like a school of fish gathering in the wake of leviathan. Four glowing lights, like lamps in the hornlight of unicorn priestesses, to greet the emergence of a luminescent goddess from her long exile.
Trixie bowed her head to greet the coming of Night.
Gleaming and her detachment of Charlie Troop met up with Gilda and her Apple griffons at the stern hatchway.
She had no idea where the major had found the axe.
The hatch didn't last long, before the panicked fury of the Equestrian unicorn's magic.
Gilda led her griffons in a headlong charge through the shattered hatch. Gleaming's shining axe-head barely got out of the way of the huge griffon's bulk before Gilda had burst into the darkness along with the tumbling splinters and bits of hatch.
The toms behind her back raised up an unearthly yowl, that old Trottish yalp that Martingale had tried, and failed to train out of her birds. Gilda's wings were too wide to give her hurling mass any further momentum, and she lost the tip of one feather as her instincts caused a spasmic twitch to put it in the way of whatever was hiding in this hatchway.
Her legs drove her forward, far further than she'd expected when she'd psyched herself into charging into this hole
But eventually, her run came to an end - the Bit's envelope was only so long, after all. And her blunted club met pony-flesh in the darkness, at the same time that an unseen haft met Gilda's neck in a stinging, terrifying blow.
The unseen blade of the spear clanged off of something above Gilda's head. The thestral had seen her coming, but hadn't time to set himself - or herself? - before the collision.
The groaning when Gilda's left rear paw found a sudden stop in the pony's crotch settled that one - stallion.
Suddenly, Gleaming's horn-light lit up the darkness, and Gilda's stunned eyes were once again equal to the much-more-stunned thestrals who had been hiding in the stowage-passage.
No sign of Ping, but there were two mares guarding another hatchway, and a swirl of others moving about as the griffons filled the corridor, driving all before them, the ponies of Charlie coming in behind, filling that space to overflowing.
Gilda forced herself to keep moving, and bowled over the two mares, holding them against some coils of rope with her own considerable body-weight.
A tom wrenched open the inner closet hatch revealing a blindfold above a pink beak, and a yellow muzzle. The missing quartermaster, and a hippogriff that Gilda hadn't even noticed was missing.
Gilda was just opening her beak to demand an explanation of Lance Corporal Fish Eye, when the Bit heaved like an earthquake, knocking every griffon, pony, or person in the tight quarters off their feet.
Gilda looked blindly up as every hackle she owned rose in horrified unison.
There are moments when the song of the world stutters.
When the choir of all life loses their place, and the music stops.
When Harmony breaks, and chaos stills.
When the world breaks, and the stars align along the crack, the seam.
And something new enters the world.
On the dying of the strongest day of the thousandth year, the intensely reflected light of the strongest moonrise of a thousand years washed over the Princess's Bit like a tidal wave, a tsunami, a tumbling, tearing, destroying, intense rushing, without pity, without mercy, without empathy or love. Everything that light touched, froze. The light stopped what it touched, locked up, stilled, frozen like a fugitive in the spotlight.
But not everything was still. As the lit world was pinned by the merciless moonlight, the shadows behind everything boiled. As if the imprisonment of our choir had freed them, the things which hide behind us rioted in their sudden freedom. From every pony, every griffon, every creature, a thousand rage-eyed shadows coiled, flared, flamed - lashed into life by that sharp light.
The light, the moon, the stars didn't flicker - but the shadows did.
And the shadows screamed like a million demons birthing.
The alchemists call it the confusion. The conductors call it the dissonance. The prophets call it the moment.
It calls itself nothing at all, because it has no voice. It doesn't, in fact, exist.
Harmony exists, harmony breathes, harmony is us. We speak for harmony, harmony speaks through us, in our failures, our successes, our loves, our hates, our triumphs and our defeats.
But harmony does not exist in the moment. We are alone in the moment.
This is terrifying. The moment is fear, itself. It is the fear of ourselves, alone in the dark, alone with that bright, alien light; alone without ego or identity or empathy or connection, alone with that loneliness shining in our eyes, blinding us to the rest of the world around us.
In the moment, every living thing on the Bit breathed, in and out, dark-dazzled eyes twitching left and right - every pony, every griffon, every thestral, every hippogriff, and even one tiny, terrified perro - stock still and quivering.
Equestrian and Trottish, magus and soldier, sailor and bound quartermaster, every living thing waiting and keeping still, knowing the fear of every Everfree critter that's ever hidden in the darkness, quivering for fear of that unseen terror looking for a pony to eat, that terror on the hunt for our hot heart's blood.
Our airship sat, half-undefended, awkwardly up on a chilling hillside, far enough from the tree-line that ponies could have spotted an assault or a boarding-party coming out of those gloomy, piney woods, even in that darkness.
If they were looking.
If we had thought to look, instead of fighting, or screaming, or staring into the suddenly infinite darkness within our shadows, blinded by the brilliant white light of the moment.
Despite everything, the moonrise took us by surprise.
You don't know the hour or the day, pony, and neither did any of us.
It was just as well that we were the only things on that hillside - not things of the earth, nor hostile ponies, nor predatory griffons, nor even ravenous rocs. It was good that the only thing threatening the Princess's Bit was us, because we were sufficient to the riot in ourselves.
We were alone on the hillside, alone in the world, alone in the dark. And as the world forgot who she was, we forgot with her.
These are the moments when the world forgets who she is, and for an hour, a minute, a second, an instant -
We could be anything. We could be anywhere. You could be anyone.
Anyone at all.
These moments, that the prophets speak of, they come in darkness, by dark of night. They come without a herald, without a trumpet, without a warning.
The prophets say otherwise, but prophets are without honor in their own countries for a damn good reason: nopony who actually knows a prophet would trust them to guard the latrine, let alone the secret workings of fate and destiny. Prophesy is bunk, and you can trust a prophet about as much as a back-alley chandler, or a dockside pimp.
(Even so, Celestia keeps an entire library to hold dragons-hoard of prophecies, the product of centuries worth of earnest prophecy, because all other things aside, Celestia isn't a fool.
And she knows all about moments.
And it is because Celestia isn't a damned fool, that she can't do much about the moments when they came.
Because, you know, when the moments come, only fools matter.
From Well Burn to our mountain's side, all the dead gods know, is three days ride.)
Look, over here, our ship of fools sits out on an open mountainside. We had all been looking inwards, and only one pony was looking up when it happened.
She's not a fool, for all she talks like one, so that pony won't be able to do a damned thing with the moment. She's already had her little moment, and it broke her like a twig. She's done nothing but be carried downhill, downstream, by every little trickle and rivulet that cared to wash her broken twig down from dry land into puddle, swamp, or creekbed.
But the broken twig knows a hoofsaw from a hawk, and the wind is north by northwest tonight.
Let's leave behind that blue, broken bough, bless her heart. She won't be what we remember from this.
(There's another pony looking up, looking towards us, when the moment comes. She's brought all Tartarus burning behind furious blue eyes, and a horn full of power and talent. The ship she stole from Celestia is tearing its own heart out trying to get this mare where she knew, all too late, she had to be.
From Well Burn to our mountain's side in the Bitalian wilds, is three days ride.)
Others, ponies, griffons, turuls and former goddesses who might have mattered, are away from the ship, off on a mortal quest of great import and worldly value.
Tonight, though, is no longer about things the world prizes. Tonight is when we find out what the world should prize. Tonight is when the definitions are re-made in the darkness and the light. Tonight we're naked, without a guide, without a metaphor. No apples, no swords, no books to guide us, no herd to move in.
Just ponies, griffons, and people of every feather and fin, hock and hobble, hoof and paw and talon.
Who is our moment's bellwether, who will form the herd, who will give us the antiphon, who will sing the call to restart the refrain?
The moment's here, but it hasn't gone. We won't know until the end.
Here is the pony who should have been the one, the pony who would have said what it meant, who could have sang it into a song.
Two Pings of the thestral nation isn't who he should have been. His own little moment came days too soon, and he failed but good. He looked, but didn't see. Heard, but didn't understand.
And because he couldn't be one or the other, he'll be neither. He has pissed it away, wasted his gifts and his talents. And, as the prophets said they would have, they were given to somepony else, someone else.
That other one, she doesn't know that she has them, yet.
(The orange unicorn mare knows that the moment is coming. She’s paid the price, learned the secret. Is rushing, even now, too late, too late, but she’s spending every last measure, every last bit, every secret and tool she has to get to the crux-point, this moment in time and space.
But from Well Burn to our mountain side, no matter what bargain you strike, is three day’s ride.)
Let's look back, for just a bit. The last time the world had one of these little fits, another pinkish girl-mare stood before an awful witch, a witch in a dark, lonesome wood. A wicked witch who had wronged the girl-mare's family, neighbors, friends. Done terrible things to her hometown. Had tormented ponies, tortured some, killed a few.
That girl-mare stood at the turning-point of the world, then, and that meant everything, everything she knew, everything your grandmother knew, everything Celestia knew.
One day, one night, the world will drop out beneath your hooves, filly. Leave your happy hills behind, leave behind your apple-trees. Send you into the lonesome valley.
Nopony else can go with you. You have to go by yourself.
Face yourself and the darkness, and find who you are in the dark, when even the world goes away.
That girl-mare, she met the dark, and she sang a new cadence, a new song. And in that dark wood a world away, she restarted that world. But harmony had laid a test in that darkness for her, and she'd failed it, failed her test. Her test of sympathy. She sang revenge instead of forgiveness, rage instead of love. She killed the witch, when she might have saved her. Let her wrath end the matter, end the moment. She meant all the best, she did. But she still failed, and gave in to the wrath, when the moment and her met.
And today the music - the music the world dances its measures to - it carries that note of fury, hate, and vengeance. A generation's song, sung to kill, sung in the key of fury.
(The orange unicorn-mare is a knight of this fury, a pony for this age of sorrows, maddened by that secret chord. It drives her, against the traces, against her fate, to her destiny.
But from Well Burn to our mountain's side, no matter how you strive, is three days ride.)
That was Cadenza's own test, nopony else's. Nopony else could take it for her, solve the problem for her. And we've all lived with the consequences since then. The Princess's Bit is on that hillside, that mountainside, because of the song that little pegasus sang in a dark wood half a world away.
Now, our little ship of fools sits over our own lonesome valley, on our naked hillside.
(Another ship of piratical fools is straining, surging - its failing engine screaming. For, from Well Burn to our mountain's side, try though you might, is three days ride.)
Look around, we're all here, fools alone in the moonlight and the shadows.
Here's another pony who, in another life, in another song, would have had a lifetime of moments. Of tests she feared, but always rose to the occasion for. She would have been what the smart ponies called a paragon of harmony, and virtue, and the wise ponies, a good friend.
This isn't that song. This is the song sung by a broken mare, and we're all bent accordingly. She's still a very good mare, this pony, but she's not this world's pony for moments.
It will be hard on her, and those of us, ponies and griffons alike, she's come to love.
But spare a thought for the pony who could have been great, once. She's still pretty good.
(The engine of the Sol Invictus flares, bursts, dies. Another ship of fools loses head-way, and drops out of the moment. Because, from Well Burn to our mountain's side, though great hearts break, is three days ride.)
And there's her griffon, and it's a great, grand griffon indeed. But this world doesn't love griffons, moments or not. There's something about griffons that harmony dislikes, and griffons, bless 'em, hate right back. That may be why all our myths are about how much the world hates us, and how the world has every reason for it. We are the Fledglings of Gestas, for Gestas was once rude to the Spirit of Harmony, and thus we will ever be the servants of our betters. But Four Winds, I always liked the Fledgelings of Gestas, they're good folk, if you can find them.
This griffon is perhaps the best of all possible herselves, but it won't ever be enough for her. She's never quite got the hang of friendship. She thinks she doesn't have friends; she believes she has subordinates, peers, and superiors. She's good to all of them, despite herself, and despite her low expectations of herself, but they aren't her friends. Maybe she's wrong, but you can't tell her nothing when she's full of self-pity and anger. And that's most of the time. But let it go, let it go.
Her problem is that this is her world, and it's only because it's so cracked and off-kilter that she's been able to be as good as she's been.
Leave that banner-hen of dodgy griffon virtue behind, this is not her moment, nor could it be, if she were up to it, which she… well she might, if she were a little worse than she is.
Moving on…there are various knights of harmonic virtue among us, on and off the ship, with the crew and the squadron. Great and good ponies, and virtuous griffons, and people who aren't either.
(And Celestia's most loyal traitor screams her heart out as her beloved ship begins to coast, their momentum dying in the face of the stubborn evening winds coming down out of the mountains to the west. And from Well Burn with a dying engine it doesn't matter at all that it could have been three day's ride.)
In the end, none of these are for this moment, and it will go badly for many of them, because this is a moment that has been coming for a thousand years.
And here is the mare in the moment, if not of the moment - the reason for all the terror that is warping the minds of otherwise great and good ponies, and good enough griffons, and all the rest.
(Even Celestia’s rebel pirate-paladin, screaming her heart out against the failing of all of her hopes.}
And this great, ancient moon-mare, this once-princess is the reason we're no longer all alone in the terrible light and the dreadful shadows.
She was once a pony, and once a princess, and once, almost, a god.
And that last one was why she broke so badly that her best-beloved sister had to lock her in a heavenly vault for a thousand years.
Sometimes, when harmony returns, and you're gifted an answer, a part in the song, you might wish otherwise. The answer to your prayers is often, heartbreak.
If Harmony were a god, you'd have to hate her. It's for the best that she isn't.
You can't hate a mechanism, or a process, or a way of being. Though ponies often do, despite knowing better.
Harmony is all of that, and less, and more.
Harmony has no ego, no self. There's nothing to argue with, though the song can carry on more of a conversation than you'd think, reading the books they write about her. She's neither a creator, nor a singer, nor a builder, nor even a dreamer.
Harmony is song, it is the music we make together.
She's the sum of all of our parts, in unison, in dissonance, she's the call, and she's the refrain. If all goes right, then there's also something greater, but oftentimes, our parts clash, and the whole is less than the parts by ourselves.
Now, the mare in the moment, our once-and-future princess, is a singer of great repute, but her songs are dreadful, nasty, lowering. She's a one for villain-songs, this one. She only wanted to be loved, but was loved by almost nopony by the time she left this world, and one of them is the one who put her out in the cold.
She is far too much like that blind bat, her follower despite himself, Two Pings.
(She’s even more like her pursuer, her unknown hunter, Celestia’s once-student. But neither know this, nor will they, if they meet each other, as fate is coiling, planning, plotting. Fate is a blind wielder of brutal irony. Fate is harmony’s bane, the death of destinies. Neither is wise enough to fear fate as they should.)
Watch what the once-princess does, in her first moment of freedom after a thousand frozen, crystalline years in stir. Hurting like Hades, raging like Boreas the North Wind, and looking to share.
Watch her spread the misery around, flash-freeze everything moving, everypony watching.
Watch her lash out.
This story may end just like that, and be like Two Pings' worst nightmares, in a frozen apocalypse, because this isn't the Mother of Dreams, this isn’t the thestral dream of justice and redemption, it's just-
"Nightmare Moon!"
Somehow the words squeezed out of Fish Eye arrived in the world without spending any time in her mind. She had no idea what was going on, and then suddenly, her mouth had its way with breath and sense and understanding and-
"SOMEONE KNOWS MY NAME! MARVELOUS! I WOULD HAVE ASKED YOU, YOU SUN-LOVING TRAITORS IN MY SISTER'S TABARDS, WHO I WAS. BUT LOOK AT YOU! MY NAME ON YOUR LIPS - er. BEAK?"
Fish's blindfold suddenly unfolded from around her head, and she could finally see once again, after, it seemed, ages in the dark. She could now see the greater darkness, which she had heard tear open the envelope like a half-cracked egg, and it peered in at Fish Eye alongside a great, monstrous mare, that pony's glowing cats-eyes almost dazzling in the greater darkness of Her doubled presence.
"WHAT IS THIS? WHY IS THERE A CAPTIVE HIPPOGRIFF IN MY SISTER’S TABARD? WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?"
Fish Eye blinked at the great horror, so much like the Dark's mockery of the Equestrians' alicorn princess, and tried not to tremble. The chill breeze was turning into a gale, and the warm summer night was turning bitter and cold.
"BAH, IRRELEVANT. MY PONIES! WHERE ARE THEY? THEY SHOULD BE HERE!"
This was it this was it this was it this was it
She waited in terror for the inevitable, promised question.
"IS THERE ANYPONY HERE WHO REMEMBERS THEIR FIDELITY TO THEIR QUEEN? ARE ANY OF MY FOLLOWERS STILL HERE, TO GREET THEIR PRINCESS?"
"Yes!" Fish Eye screamed with a rictus-grin that threatened to break her beak.
"By all the crushing depths and by the darkest deepest abyssal plains, I will follow you -
