Griffonstone labors under a terrible curse since the loss of the Idol of Boreas. Can Sunset Shimmer find a way to save the city, or will she be blown away like so many others?
Sunset Shimmer needs a vacation. She doesn't feel she can really match the accomplishments of the ponies around her, and even though she knows leaving Canterlot is just running away from her problems for a while, maybe it's what she needs to get her head back in the game.
Griffonstone needs someone to save it. The griffons won't ever admit that, but it isn't half the city it used to be. The birds still in town do everything they can to leave, and the whole place is ravaged by terrible gale-force winds.
The earth roars! The heaven howls! The crowds cry out for a hero! Can Sunset really end a curse that's lingered for generations?
“And it’s safe?” Princess Cadance asked, glaring blearily at the snowglobe floating before her in an aura of warm crimson magic. Inside, a tiny model of the Crystal Empire was caught in a perpetual snowstorm, and a tiny, very angry black figure stood in the courtyard of the plastic castle, shouting foul curses to the heavens that didn’t escape the hoof-sized bauble.
“Sure,” I shrugged. I gave the snowglobe a firm shake, sending Sombra tumbling to his knees. Was it cruel? Yes. Absolutely. I had a reputation to maintain. “It’s a flawless diamond. You could throw this thing right off the top of the castle and not even crack it.”
Cadance breathed a sigh of relief and pulled me into an unexpected hug. It was a good thing diamond was unbreakable, because I dropped the stupid thing when she did it, and it hit the ground and rolled across the room until Shining Armor stopped it with a hoof.
“Thank you so much, Sunset.” Cadance groaned with total exhaustion and the hug turned into me holding up most of her weight. “This whole mess has been utterly exhausting.”
“I’m just glad you called me,” I said, shifting my stance so my weight was on my good side. “You have no idea how boring it gets around the palace.”
“It just seemed more like a Sunset Shimmer problem than a Twilight problem,” Shining Armor said. “No offense, but I don’t like throwing my sister into danger. As a big brother, I’d rather have her doing friendship lessons that don’t involve ancient evil.”
He walked over and I helped hoof Cadance over to him. He let her lean into him, and because this was Cadance we were talking about of course she took the opportunity to kiss his cheek and neck him a little. This still technically counted as their honeymoon, I think.
“Give her some credit, she keeps saving the world,” I joked. “I think you could have held him off if you had a few decent soldiers.”
“I would have needed a legion, but sure,” Shining Armor allowed. “The problem is, there’s a word for marching a legion of your troops into another country.”
“Good thing I told the customs officer I was here for sightseeing and not as part of a military action,” I snorted. “Do you want me to take the little dork with me?”
“No, we’ll keep him here,” Shining Armor said. “It might do the Crystal Ponies some good if they see him like this.”
I nodded. Made sense to me. The best way to get over your fear was to see it crushed underhoof and dance on its grave.
“Why don’t you spend the night?” Cadance asked. “It’s getting pretty late.”
I shook my head. “It’s no big deal. There’s still a late train and--”
“Yes,” said the pony behind me. I rolled my eyes and looked over my shoulder at Shahrazad. The Saddle Arabian Princess-in-Exile was wrapped up in layers of blankets and furs and still looked cold. “We graciously accept your offer, especially if there’s a warm room, possibly with a very large fire and none of that… what was it called? Snow?”
“You’ve seen snow before!” I said, a little more harshly than needed. She was one of the most beautiful ponies in the world, and the sorrow on her face when I snapped at her was like the sea crying for the tide, like rain falling on a fallen oak, a thing of terrible primal loss and unearthly beauty and darnit she was making me have poetic thoughts again.
“Please, beloved? I am just so cold and tired from all this travel and the battle…”
I groaned. “Do you have a guest room?” I asked. I didn’t want to make this even more awkward by putting Cadance out of her bedroom. Or worse, being in the same room as a couple that had very recently gotten married and was starting to get touchy-feely right in front of me despite the fact that I could see them right there and no one was going to stop them or say anything because that would make it even worse.
“I’m sure the Crystal Ponies won’t mind getting another room ready for one of the ponies that saved the Empire,” Cadance assured me.
“A room with two beds,” I specified.
“Beloved!” Shahrazad gasped. “I did not think you were into that sort of thing! How indecent!”
“What?” I blinked rapidly. “What are-- I’m talking about sleeping in separate beds!”
“Ah, so you don’t mean…” she leaned in and whispered what she’d meant. It took almost a minute to explain, and I was left with almost as many questions as answers. My cheeks and ears both burned red.
“You know what?” I said, strained. “Separate rooms entirely. That would be best. On opposite ends of the palace.”
“But then you couldn’t protect me from assassins!” Shahrazad whined.
“If you get assassinated tonight, I’ll apologize profusely,” I said firmly. “Separate rooms!”
I lost the argument because even if I could maintain the willpower to say no to her, the servants in the palace were woefully underequipped to deal with it. She was manipulative and said the kind of sweet things that were just impossibly effective with ponies who were traumatized by tyrannical rule and would do anything for even a hint of kindness.
There were two beds in the room, at least, and we didn’t do any of what she’d implied might happen. She wasn’t really interested anyway unless she thought she could use it to manipulate me, and that meant teasing and never actually tail.
Not that I would have done anything even if she’d asked. Not because I wasn’t attracted to her, Shahrazad could seduce a boulder if she set her mind to it. I was just exhausted. I didn’t want to admit anything in front of Cadance, but defeating an ancient evil was the kind of thing to really tucker a pony out.
“We’re not staying for the festivities?” Shahrazad asked. Considering we were on a train leaving the Empire for Canterlot, she was really asking why and not if.
“I’m not a festivities type of pony,” I said. I tried to get comfortable on the train seat. Even first-class wasn’t all that great, though it did get us a private cabin.
“You should take credit where it is due, beloved. False modesty does not fit you well.” Shahrazad sighed.
“I was worried if we’d stayed longer you would have tried to overthrow the government,” I said flatly.
“I would never! It’s far too cold for my taste,” Shahrazad said defensively. “Of course you could have easily dispatched them had you wished, and claimed a land of your own…”
“I can’t believe this isn’t the first time I’ve had to tell you that I don’t want to overthrow a nation.” I sighed and watched the fireworks over the Empire. There were crystal ponies celebrating in the streets. There had been even before we’d left, but the party must have really been getting started now.
“Sunset Shimmer, please, look at it logically,” Shahrazad said, her voice losing some of the seductive edge and sliding into the tone she used when she was actually being serious. “They have no ruler. You personally defeated the tyrant that ruled their nightmares and locked them away from the world for a thousand years. You could have just declared yourself Empress, and they would have bowed before you!”
“Princess Cadance--”
“Couldn’t,” Shahrazad said, cutting me off.
“She’s the rightful ruler, not me,” I said dismissively.
“Why? Because of her cutie mark?” Shahrazad scoffed. “Cutie marks aren’t everything. You deserve more. It is… frustrating to see you walk away from this.”
“Would you really want to stay here?” I asked quizzically. “In the middle of the frozen waste? Where even in the warmest parts of the castle you were complaining about the chill?”
I watched her chew on that for a few moments. “No,” she allowed, though she sounded bitter about it. “But you still deserved more than a pat on the back and being told you did a good job.”
“I’m sure she’ll send a gift basket once she’s settled in,” I sighed, turning away from the window. Shahrazad’s mood had started to infect me and now I didn’t even want to see the celebration from a distance. “If she’s not too busy.”
“Oh, there you are!” Celestia said, looking around the corner of a bookcase. “I was worried you might have gotten caught in a bookvelanche.”
I blinked and looked around the Archive shelves around us. “Does that happen often?”
“It’s been a long time since I cleaned out the restricted section,” Celestia said. “Last time, well, we’re not sure if it was an accident or some kind of necromancy that we interrupted, but--”
“I get the picture,” I said, holding up a hoof to stop her. “You know, necromancy aside I’m not sure why some of this is even in here. Like, look at this.”
I held up a scroll I’d found.
“This is just a proof showing that the square root of two is an irrational number. There’s no evil magic, no hidden meaning, not even anything written in the margins. I’ve seen this same proof in textbooks! In grade school!”
“Ah, yes,” Celestia said, her cheeks turning just slightly pink. “This is a good time for a history lesson, Sunset. There’s a reason why that was shelved in the restricted section. You see, ponies died because of that scroll.”
I looked at it and frowned. “I didn’t think academia was that cutthroat.”
“It was back in the days of Old Unicornia,” Celestia said. “They were pretending to be in a golden age, but really they just stopped innovating. The rest of the world was passing them by, and when a burgeoning earth pony empire sprang up next door and produced scholars, they tried to ignore them.”
“That’s really not so different from unicorns today,” I said. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed the demographics of Canterlot--”
“The wizards of Old Unicornia,” Celestia continued, speaking over me. “Were shocked when they saw this simple proof. They believed that all numbers could be expressed as fractions. They’d believed it for hundreds of years, and hadn’t tried testing the belief. And so, enlightened, they invited the scholar who discovered the proof to their highest court.”
“And fostered understanding between ponies?” I guessed.
“No, they had him executed for spreading lies and confusion among the youth. Then they had this proof censored and banned.”
“Oh.” I frowned and looked over it again. “So why is it here?”
“Because when I first built the Archives, some of my librarians were very traditional. Anyway, this kind of thing is exactly why I need to clean this place out more often. Or appoint somepony to do the job full-time.”
She raised her eyebrows and looked at me significantly.
“Don’t even try it,” I warned. “I’d use the power for evil. That’s a promise.”
Celestia sighed. “But it’s… your sort of thing, isn’t it?”
“I can think of another one of your students that would be very excited to organize library shelves,” I pointed out.
Celestia looked away with an expression like I’d given her a lemon to suck on.
“I was hoping this would be something you’d enjoy. You used to ask me all the time to go and look at the restricted section of the archives…”
I felt a headache coming on. Celestia wasn’t wrong. I’d just gotten my fill of ancient texts when I was squatting in the Everfree castle with nopony to tell me not to look at the dark magic tome too closely or I’d go blind. Which I had, for almost a week. I’d eventually figured out how to bypass the defensive wards, and it had been extremely disappointing to learn it was more like a teenage sorceress’ edgy diary than a real spellbook.
Come to think of it, I’d have to track down where it went after I threw it into the woods in frustration.
I gave Celestia a smile. She was starting to look depressed and that was just unfair because I was the only one allowed to mope around the palace.
“How about we cast some disguise spells and go do something irresponsible?” I suggested. “I heard Hayburger Princess has a new Caramel Apple Big Bite Burger.”
Celestia very delicately did not lick her lips. I knew how she felt about food at the palace. It was designed to look beautiful and be as expensive and decadent as possible. It usually ended up as sculpted grey paste with a flower on it somewhere.
“What about all these archive documents?” Celestia asked. “We have to do something with them.”
I shrugged. “Let’s send them to Twilight. She loves sorting things. I think I saw a scroll from Star Swirl in there somewhere. That’ll keep her happy and busy for weeks.”
The crowds of cheering ponies outside went wild when she passed overhead on lavender wings.
“I can’t believe I sent her that scroll,” I hissed through a smile.
“Beloved--” Shahrazad started.
“I’m very happy for her!” I snapped.
“I can tell,” Shahrazad said. “You have reminded me of that many times. And you practiced saying it in the mirror.”
“I’m thinking of taking a vacation,” I decided. It wasn’t a lie because I was thinking of it right now. “Somewhere outside of Equestria. How’s Griffonstone this time of year?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Shahrazad admitted.
“Perfect. Start packing things. I want it to be a surprise.”
“This is so exciting!” Ruby Drop said. The filly looked adorable in the little cloak she was wearing to match mine. “I’ve never been to Griffonstone before!”
“Neither have I,” I said. “Actually, I don’t know if anypony has been there in a long time.”
“Really? But there are griffons in Canterlot.” Ruby Dropped and hopped down from the airship window and sat down next to me.
“I know, right?” I shrugged. Some of my friends are griffons. Distant friends, but still. “It didn’t make sense to me either until I asked around. So you know how you’ve got an allowance that you use for school supplies and snacks and stuff?”
Ruby nodded.
“Grad students also have a kind of allowance that they can use for school. Usually, they use it to buy supplies and books, but they can also use it to fund research trips. These allowances are… well, grad students don’t get a lot of money, and the ones with a lot of their own money would take a research trip somewhere like Prance.”
“So Griffonstone is too expensive to go to?” Ruby asked.
“Exactly,” I said. “I don’t really understand it much myself, but the locals aren’t as friendly as Equestrians, and demand payment in advance for… basically everything. They won’t even tell you the time unless you toss them a bit first.”
“They don’t sound very nice,” Ruby said. I ruffled her mane. She blushed and pulled up her hood to cover it.
“We’ll be fine. I made sure we had enough to cover any expenses.” And if they really tried to fleece us I knew some very convincing illusion spells that would make pebbles look like coins. And even more convincing evocation spells that could turn griffons into phoenixes, briefly.
“If their king is wise, they’ll host us graciously,” Shahrazad said. She’d been on her best behavior for most of the trip. I think she was actually trying to set a good example for my adorable little student. “Though…” She scrunched up her nose in annoyance. “I have no idea who their king actually is.”
“Neither do I.” I rubbed my chin. It bothered me to be ignorant about something that should have been a basic fact. “The only books I found on the place were about five decades out of date. Equestria found two more princesses--”
“Three,” Ruby Drop reminded me.
My eyebrow twitched. “Yes. That many. So many princesses.”
Shahrazad coughed politely. “Ah, Sunset? You’re…”
I belatedly realized that some of the train was currently on fire. What happened? It’s a mystery! Sometimes, when I was in a bad mood and trying to hold it in, things would spontaneously ignite! It was a beautiful expression of the enigmas of nature.
“It’s okay, Miss Shahrazad. I’ve got this,” Ruby Drop said. Her horn lit up, and the fire died down and stopped. “Miss Sunset made sure I knew lots of spells that put out fires!”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, embarrassed.
The most beautiful Princess in the world sighed. “If I didn’t already know you were in a bad mood, beloved, seeing you set things on fire without noticing would be a sign not even a Diamond Dog could miss.”
“I know.” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I had to center myself. Center myself. Twilight Sparkle flashed across my mind’s eye.
“Don’t worry! I’ll put that one out too!” Ruby said.
I really needed this vacation.
“I wasn’t expecting a royal welcome since we didn’t send word ahead,” Princess Shahrazad said, her voice strained.
“Good, because we sure as buck didn’t get one,” I said.
We weren’t alone on the platform, but only because the three of us had our luggage for company. One bag for me, one for Ruby, and five for Shahrazad. I couldn’t begrudge her that -- she was an actual Princess, after all. I could have asked for a few maids or servants to come with us.
I probably should have asked for at least a Royal Guard or two.
The station itself looked half-abandoned. It was the usual small building, just large enough for a ticket office and somewhere for the railroad workers to make a cup of tea. The roof was half-collapsed, and nopony had even made an attempt to clean in years.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Shahrazad asked. She looked around at the… nothing at all. The station was more or less in the middle of nowhere.
“Yeah. To actually get to Griffonstone, we need to walk a bit. This is just the closest station. Ruby?” I looked over at my student. She produced a map and unfolded it.
“The station is here,” she said, looking it over. “So… we just need to follow that road, I think.” She pointed at a trail that had been cobblestones at one point and was mostly mud now.
I glanced over the map and nodded.
“Looks right to me,” I agreed.
“But, um…” Ruby hesitated and looked at the trail. I followed her gaze. Even from here we could see how it rose steeply among the rocks and into the mountains. “It looks a lot more vertical in real life.”
“I guess it makes sense since griffons could just fly there,” I said.
“I cannot walk that whole way,” Shahrazad said firmly.
“I don’t think I could either,” I agreed. “Okay, everypony get in close.”
I grabbed the luggage with telekinesis, Ruby and Shahrazad took my front hooves, and we vanished in a flash.
And reappeared further up the trail. I looked around for a moment, picked a spot, and teleported again. And again. It took a half-dozen teleports until we reached what looked like the edge of civilization, a huge ornate hoop-shaped gate across the road.
Shahrazad wobbled and sat down firmly.
“That was… I need a moment,” she said.
“Sorry about that,” I said, not actually sorry at all. “Some ponies don’t react well to being teleported.”
She dry heaved for a few moments, then held up a hoof.
“It’s still better than the walk,” she said, her voice strained. “Thank you.”
“Couldn’t you have gotten here in one jump?” Ruby asked. “It didn’t look that far on the map.”
I shook my head. “Not without having been here before. You already figured out why - the map doesn’t show elevation, and it’s not perfectly accurate anyway. If I guessed wrong it could have been bad.”
“How bad?” Ruby asked.
“Nopony wants to end up embedded in solid rock,” I said. “It can really ruin your day.”
“Oh.” She started looking a little sick herself.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Now that we’ve made the trip I can go right from here to the station safely. We won’t have as much trouble when it’s time to go back home.”
“Miss Sunset?” Ruby asked.
“Yeah?”
“Is it rude if I say that um, this place isn’t what I expected?”
“No, child,” Shahrazad said. “What would be rude is if I said what I was thinking, but only because you would hear such language.”
I nodded, completely agreeing with the sentiment. Griffonstone was supposed to be a capital city, the seat of a small nation, the golden capstone shining out over these mountains. Books had shown a small city perched in the mountains, with buildings built anywhere there was room for it. Thick, stout trees supported tiny homes. Brick streets surrounded by tough mountain grass.
That must have been a long time ago because now it looked like the whole place had been left to rot. Buildings were half-collapsed, everything was dirty, and the griffons I could see glared at us from the shadows under ruined thatched roofs.
Ruby Drop was a tough kid. She could handle hearing the truth. I took a deep breath. “This place is a shi--”
“Well, well, well, looks like we got ourselves a fancy little pony,” a griffon rumbled as he and his two dumbest friends landed in front of us.
“--thole,” I finished. I raised my eyebrow. “You don’t look like a welcoming committee.”
“We got a comedian!” The griffon laughed and looked back at his friends. They laughed too. “You might say we’re here to rob you. Mostly because we’re here to rob you.” He grinned. “Toss us your bits and you can leave. Otherwise, you might end up a little less fancy, if you catch my drift.”
He held up a talon, showing off his sharp little claws.
“Oh wow.” I felt something wash over me. These griffons had no idea who I was. I was totally anonymous, with no weird spies or sinister plots or meddling princesses. Aside from Shahrazad, but she wasn’t doing any meddling right at this moment. I felt a smile stretch across my face. “Ruby Drop, do you have the camera?”
“Yeah,” she said, getting it out of her saddlebags. “Right here, Miss Sunset!”
“This is so cute! They’re so dumb!” I grinned and skipped over to them. The griffons looked extremely confused. “Take a picture. I want to remember this moment!”
“This is going to end poorly,” Shahrazad sighed.
Ruby held up the camera and snapped a photo.
“Uh, maybe you don’t understand what’s going on,” the griffon tried again.
“I know exactly what’s going on,” I assured him. “It’s just so quaint. Sorry. I know you’re serious about this. I’m not trying to make you feel silly.”
My horn blazed with magic.
“Close your eyes, little one,” Shahrazad said, covering Ruby Drop’s eyes with a hoof.
“You acted like I was going to kill them!” I said.
“You would have been well within your rights,” Shahrazad said. “I’ve ordered ponies to be executed for less.”
I stopped and gave her a look. It wasn’t a look of surprise or disbelief. It was the kind of look you gave somepony when both of you were well aware why they were getting that look and they knew they deserved it.
“It’s just a suggestion,” Shahrazad scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, who puts a castle in a tree?”
“Griffons do, I guess,” I said. “Do you think the castle is the whole tree and all the buildings in the branches, or just the biggest, fanciest one?”
I knocked on the door of the biggest, fanciest one, because either way, we were going to go full Rarity and demand to speak to the pony in charge. And then one of my more common nightmares came to life.
Some ponies have nightmares about their teeth falling out and showing up at school wearing way too much clothing. I have nightmares about losing control of my magic and destroying everything around me. They weren’t entirely unfounded. I had a bad habit of starting fires when I wasn’t paying enough attention and my emotions ran away with me.
The doors tore right off their hinges and slammed into the ground.
“Oh buck-- uh--” I instinctively wanted to run and make somepony else deal with this. “I broke the bucking castle!”
“I think you only finished breaking it, Miss Sunset,” Ruby Drop said. She trotted in and looked at the doors. “The wood is rotten.”
“This place has been looted,” Shahrazad said, following my student into what proved to be a rotting throne room with broken windows and mushrooms growing in the corners. “Ah, not entirely. Look! There’s the throne. Or nest. Whichever.”
“But… where’s the bird in charge?” I asked. “Where’s the king? Where’s anyone?!”
“There isn’t a king,” a gruff voice said. I looked up. A griffon flew in through one of the shattered panes. She set down next to us and looked around, even more annoyed with the palace than I was. “Why are you ponies even here?”
“I was looking for someone with some authority.” I offered her a hoof to shake. “I’m Sunset Shimmer. This is Princess Shahrazad of Saddle Arabia and my personal student, Ruby Drop.”
“Gilda,” the griffon said. She didn’t shake my hoof. I just held it there awkwardly for a few more seconds and dropped it. Maybe it wasn’t a griffon custom. “If you’re looking for a king, we haven’t had one since before I was hatched.”
“Why?” Ruby Drop asked.
“The last one bucked up, let a monster in, and it wrecked the place,” Gilda said with a shrug. “After that, the king just left and never came back. Not that we’d let a loser like that stay in charge.”
“Great,” I sighed. “So the government fell and nopony noticed?”
“Nopony cared,” the griffon corrected. “All you ponies ever care about is your own junk.”
“So much for my vacation,” I sighed.
“You came here for a vacation?” Gilda snorted, sounding amused. “You dweebs must be even dumber than the average ponies, and I know some real featherbrains.”
“That might explain why we didn’t find any police in the streets anywhere,” I sighed. “So if there’s no king, who’s in charge? I’m not here to cause trouble, but a couple of real geniuses tried to mug us and I wasn’t sure what to do with them.”
“Eh, we usually just run them out of town if they’re bad enough.” After a moment, she looked at us more closely. “They didn’t hurt you or anything, did they?”
“No, but--”
“Whatever then, no squawk no fowl.” Gilda turned away, immediately losing interest. “You should probably just leave. There’s a reason any griffon with the bits and brains takes off as soon as they can. This place is a dump.”
“Thanks for the advice,” I said.
“It’s the only thing you’re getting for free, and that’s because I had pony friends a long time ago,” Gilda said. She spread her wings and took off, leaving us alone in the dilapidated mess of a castle.
Something crashed to the ground behind me. I turned around to find Ruby surrounded by a cloud of dust and standing in front of a collapsed table.
“...I didn’t do it,” she deadpanned. She really had learned from the best.
“Okay, the train isn’t going to be back until tomorrow, so we’ve got to at least spend the night in this mess,” I sighed. “I thought I was done with camping out in abandoned castles, but here I am again.”
Shahrazad looked around. “Ah, beloved, as wonderful as that sounds… I do not sleep in filth.”
“Ruby, you took Basic Household Spells, right?” I asked. She nodded. “Great. Could you cast Luster Fussed’s Dust Buster and clean things out? I’m going to see what I can do with some repair spells. Between the two of us, we should be able to get the place presentable pretty quickly.”
“I will supervise,” Shahrazad decided. She produced a woven blanket from one of her suitcases and laid it on the cleanest part of the floor, then pulled out several silk pillows and lounged on it. “You may begin.”
I lifted the door into the frame and held it steady while the repair spell did its work. I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty about how these spells work, but I had a lot of practice with this kind -- it restored damage from neglect and age and was almost like turning back the clock and erasing the worst parts of its history.
I know you’re right now thinking about some kind of metaphor and fixing my own mistakes and stuff like that, but knock it off. I wasn’t unhappy with my life. I had it good. Really good! And that’s why I’d fled the country again.
“Good as new,” I said, cutting off my own train of thought before it crashed into its own tail. “If somebody wants to get in here, they’ll have to knock. Or break a window. We’ll hear it either way.”
“I like this place!” Ruby Drop said. “It’s like a treehouse and a castle at the same time!”
I trotted over to where she and Shahrazad were sitting, grabbing a pillow and settling down. I sighed in relief, glad to get off my hooves. “I just don’t get how things got so bad around here,” I said. “Gilda said the last king left, but why didn’t someone else take over?”
“May I tell you a story?” Shahrazad asked. She smiled in the way that meant she was going to do it anyway.
“I like stories,” Ruby said.
Shahrazad nodded because Ruby had given her the correct answer. “Stories can teach lessons. They explain why things are, and how things used to be. This place reminds me of the story of the Wounded King.”
Long ago, when the world was younger, a healer was on a journey. A call had gone out far and wide for the greatest apothecaries and wise ponies in the world, and she came to answer that call. The journey took her to a small, ragged, poor kingdom on the very edge of civilization. The soil was poor, and the ponies that lived there were sullen and unhappy.
The ruler of this kingdom of sorrow lived in a castle of crumbling stone and splintering wood. He was suffering, sick and weak and not long for the world, just barely hanging on to life out of habit in the same way his kingdom hung on at the edge of the world.
“So, you have come to try and heal my broken body?” he asked when the healer came before him. He had no attendants, no guards, so it had taken the healer some time to find him where he sat in a room with no windows, reading by candlelight.
“That is my hope,” she agreed.
The king, suffering from a malady none had been able to treat, sighed. “I tire of tinctures and diets and treatments. You will be the last healer to try their hoof. I will be healed, or I will die.”
The healer was a wise pony, and unlike the others that had come to see the king, she did not bring exotic ointments and bitter herbs. Instead, she took the king to tour the land. He had no real interest in it, but he had given her a chance, and he was a fair and honest king and stayed true to his word.
He saw the dusty fields and the grey lapping sea on the shore of sharp pebbles and the dark and untamed forest and his heart sank further.
“Perhaps it is better if this land is forgotten,” he said. “There is nothing for anypony here.”
“That’s not true,” the healer said. “Where there is life, there is hope. Let me show you.”
She took him to the home of one of the sullen peasants. It was in some ways the opposite of the ruined castle the king had lived in for his entire life. The house had never been grand or beautiful, but it was well-worn and cared for, repaired when it was damaged, and though it had sheltered as many generations as the castle, it did so with the warmth of the love put into it.
The peasant family welcomed the king into their home and offered him all that they had. He shared a meal with them, and though it was poor fare, thin soup and grainy bread, he could tell how proud they were of it.
“We grew the vegetables ourselves,” the farmer said.
“In those dusty fields?” the king asked. It was a rude sort of question to ask a farmer, but the king didn’t know that.
“It isn’t easy,” the farmer admitted. “The land is tough and rocky. But though the soil is thin, it can be tended with care.”
The king understood it, in the way the farmer spoke. Not the words, but the feeling behind it. He spoke of the land in the same way he spoke of his family, with the same familiar and happy tone that he used to speak of his wife or his ancestors. He loved the land, and the king was moved by it.
“Tomorrow,” he told the healer when they left. “I wish to visit another of my subjects and speak to them.”
The healer agreed. For a year and a day they traveled the small land, spending time with every family that stayed. The king, who had been alone in his castle, met with ponies that had never seen him before. Some did not even know the name of the kingdom. All they knew was that it was home.
He ate with farmers, with ponies that gathered wildflowers in the forest, ponies that fished in the streams. He learned all the little problems of life the ponies had. The land was poor, and had been for a long time, but there was no single grand solution. There were only a hundred tiny ones, little ways to make life better for a few ponies at a time. He ordered bridges built to help travelers because he knew them by name. He had canals built to bring water and trade to the farms that needed it.
The land slowly became green and prosperous, and so did the king. Perhaps it was the exercise. Perhaps it was eating fresh food. Perhaps it was simply because his sorrows were lifted. He no longer sat in a windowless room in the heart of a rotting castle but spent his days among the ponies of his land, and all of them were better for it.
“What does it mean?” Ruby asked.
“The ruler and the land are connected,” Shahrazad explained. “If a ruler loves their land, then like any garden it blossoms. If they do not, the land withers.”
“It’s true,” I agreed. “It’s not literally the power of love--”
“Except in the Crystal Empire,” Shahrazad added.
“Except there,” I said, nodding. “But rulers that make sacrifices for the betterment of their land and work to make it a better place are the best kind of ruler. Princess Celestia spends hours every day just listening to the problems of the ponies who come to see her. She cares enough to make the world happier.”
“And that’s why Equestria is okay even with all the monster attacks?” Ruby asked.
“That and monsters in Equestria usually end up having a really bad time because of ponies like me,” I said. “Sounds like the one here must have gotten away with it.”
“Do you want to hunt it down?” Ruby asked, sounding way too excited about the idea of running around the mountains looking for some kind of beast.
I gave her head a soft pat. “The trail’s a little cold by now.”
“It’s strange, though,” Shahrazad said. “Power abhors a vacuum. Even if there was no legitimate ruler, surely someone would have tried to take over?”
“Maybe there’s a curse?” I suggested.
Shahrazad nodded slowly. “Yes… yes. That could explain it. It does seem like the sort of tale that has a curse.”
“We’ve got some time to ask around about it in the morning,” I said. “Do you have enough blankets and pillows for all of us? I don’t care how many cleaning spells we use, I don’t want to try sleeping in the nests that are still around this place.”
I was getting annoyed by the book. I was trying to study history and the words on the page just kept moving around and changing. I couldn’t even put the book back and try another one because the history section wasn’t where I’d left it!
“It isn’t the only thing that became misplaced,” somepony said.
I knew, implicitly, without having to look or read a word, that the books on the shelf in front of me were full of recipes. I could tell the library was massive without seeing a map. I even somehow knew it was getting close to closing time, despite the lack of a clock. The voice didn’t belong. It wasn’t part of the world that I instinctively understood.
“Please, allow me,” the voice said. Somepony tapped my head and-- I was suddenly aware I was dreaming, and the book melted out of my hooves like it was made of wet sand. I looked up at Princess Luna.
“Oh, hey,” I said.
“Hey indeed,” she noted. “You vanished. Again.”
“I didn’t vanish, I left a note!”
Luna raised an eyebrow. One of the bookshelves faded to a pane of black rock, and I could see events play out in the reflection. I scribbled something on a scroll and tossed it at a guard with a request, well, really an order, to deliver it to Celestia.
“You told my sister you were going to take Ruby Drop on a field trip.”
I sighed. “Not my best moment, I know. But I did take her with me! It’s not even all that far. The train even goes here, so it’s… you know. It’s not running away that far.”
Luna rolled her eyes. “I see you are already aware that you have erred. Will you be returning with another tale of wild adventure and a fiancee?”
“No! Well. I mean, Shahrazad is with me and I tried to call things off with her but she still thinks she’s going to marry me at some point and I’m about ninety percent sure that’s just because she thinks she won’t get assassinated as long as she’s politically useful--”
“Mhmm,” Luna intoned, raising an eyebrow. “I’m going to get Sister.”
“Wh-- Celestia?! But--” I frowned. “You can do that?”
“I am the greatest and most powerful alicorn in the world!” Luna declared. “The dream world, I mean.”
“We don’t have to involve her, do we? How about I write a letter?”
Luna rolled her eyes, and a sphere of sunlight and rainbow appeared beside her and popped like a soap bubble. Celestia appeared, looking startled for a moment before she focused on me.
“Sunset!” she grabbed me, pulling me into her chest with her magic. My forehead slammed into her peyral.
“Ow,” I mumbled. “Why did that hurt? I’m asleep.”
“Because I am an artist,” Luna said. “Sister, tell your wayward adopted filly to come home.”
“Sunset, are you in some kind of trouble?” Celestia asked. “Did you overthrow a government? I knew that mare was a bad influence!”
I struggled out of her grip. “I’m not in trouble! I’m not even that far away! I’m just in Griffonstone. I needed to get away from things. And for the record? There’s not even a government here to overthrow.”
“Don’t be silly, Sunset,” Celestia said. “They have a monarchy. The ruler should be King G… Grouter? Grouper? I don’t remember his name.”
“It was King Guto,” I said.
“Right. King Guto.”
“And he’s gone, apparently. The government collapsed. I was going to leave in the morning but there’s something about all this that just bothers me.”
“Of course it does,” Luna said. “You’ve never seen the fall of an empire. I suppose Griffonstone went the way of the Holey Griffon Empire.”
Celestia sighed. “Things change so quickly…”
It was early when the first knocks came on the door. They were sharp and rapid. Not the heavy blows of an authority figure demanding access, but more like when somepony had made the journey out to the old Everfree Castle to visit me. Just being in the old Griffonstone palace was making me think back fondly on a time when the only real stress in my life was figuring out what to eat for dinner.
“Yeah, yeah,” I groaned, getting up and walking to the repaired front gates, pulling the tall doors open as I approached. “If you’re here to yell at us about spending the night--”
An older griffon with balding patches and a look of concern and confusion let himself in, walking right past me and staring at the interior of the castle.
“Of course you ponies would do this,” he grumbled quietly.
“If you want, I can break everything on the way out,” I snapped.
He turned to glare at me. “No one asked you to come here!”
“I didn’t think I needed permission,” I said. Behind me, I was aware of Shahrazad and Ruby Drop waking up.
“That’s what’s wrong with all you ponies! You never think you need permission! You just show up without asking and just start… fixing things!” He fluffed himself up and stormed over to the big empty display plinth in the middle of the room and kicked it. “Ow! I think I twisted my ankle. This is your fault!”
“Feathering--” Gilda rushed into the room, grabbing the older griffon. “I told you not to bother the ponies!”
He tried to shrug her off. “They bothered me first with all their… helpfulness!”
Gilda growled. “This is Grandpa Gruff. He’s even older and more busted than... “ she trailed off and looked around. “Wow. You really just went and made yourselves at home, huh?”
“Did you like it better when it was broken?” I asked.
“No! Don’t be stupid!” Gilda rolled her eyes.
“Do you want some tea?” Ruby Drop asked, rubbing her tired eyes. “I’m gonna make some for Miss Shahrazad and me.”
“Yes,” Grandpa Gruff said instantly.
“Nnnn---” Gilda growled, then sighed. “Yes.”
Ruby nodded and started getting things together, starting up the kettle and producing more teacups from one of the suitcases. Shahrazad helped direct her, quietly explaining the flavors of the various teas she’d brought with her. She was surprisingly good with foals. And everyone, really, as long as she could manipulate them.
We gathered around the short table in the middle of the room. It was the only thing I hadn’t had to repair. Even with all the damage and decay around it, the griffons had left it alone. Grandpa Gruff ran a talon over the surface carefully, with a distant look in his eyes.
“Have you heard the tragedy of King Guto the Terrible?” Grandpa Gruff asked. He looked at our confused faces and nodded to himself. “I thought not. It’s not a story my idiot granddaughter would tell you correctly.”
“Hey! First, we’re not related! And second, I told them already!” Gilda sat back, folding her talons. “Monster attack, useless bird on the throne, everything’s bad forever. The end.”
“See? You didn’t tell it right!” Gruff snapped, pointing at her accusingly. “These ponies are going to leave thinking we just rolled over for some monster and gave up!”
Gilda stood up, puffing out her chest. “Because that’s exactly what happened!”
“I’ll tell you ponies what really happened!” Grandpa Gruff said. He leaned over the makeshift table, looking at us with the kind of evil intent I usually only saw playing poker against Fluttershy and her rabbit. That thing was a card shark.
“I do still like stories,” Ruby Drop said. “But I have to warn you -- Miss Shahrazad is the best at stories, so I have a very high standard.” She put teacups on the table in front of us, settling down next to me.
“I am the best,” Shahrazad agreed.
Grandpa Gruff coughed and held out a talon. I rolled my eyes and dropped a few bits into his grasp. They vanished so quickly I almost tried giving him more just to watch the old bird scramble.
“It all started with Griffonstone’s first king, King Grover. He was handsome, brave, strong, a lot like me, in fact. He united all the griffons and brought us together around a symbol we could all be proud of, the Idol of Boreas!”
Gildra rolled her eyes again and shook her head. “Ancient history, Grandpa.”
“It’s important to know where you came from before you get to where you are!” the older griffon yelled. “It was the symbol of Griffonstone, something all of us could look up to in pride. Did I ever tell you I saw it once when I was a chick?”
“Yes. Every day. Every feathering day!”
“Everything was great until the fourteenth king took the throne. King Guto. I had a good sense for birds, and I could tell right away that I didn’t like the look of him!”
“You were a toddler. You still had down instead of feathers!”
“I was very mature and wise for my age,” Gruff said firmly. “And I was right! Because one night, a monster named Arimaspi came to steal the Idol! He smashed right through the guards and stole the Idol. Not that he got far. Even the heavens were offended by his act, and lightning struck the beast when it tried to cross the bridge out of town, sending it tumbling into the Abysmal Abyss! The monster and the idol were lost forever, and on that day, we lost all of our pride. Griffonstone collapsed into sorrow and ennui.”
“That’s so sad!” Ruby said.
“It’s not that sad,” Gilda mumbled.
“It means I won’t get to see Miss Sunset blast a monster!”
Gilda evaluated that for a moment. “You know actually I wouldn’t mind seeing a monster get thrashed but yeah, you’re outta luck. And Grandpa Gruff’s little story leaves out all the important stuff!”
“I told the story correctly!” Gruff grumbled.
“Except for the part where you explain why losing the Idol was so bad,” Gilda said.
“Oh not this again,” Gruff hissed.
“What this plucked turkey didn’t say is that no one in Griffonstone used to use bits. They all used to use Talons, but you know what? The value of Talons was backed by the Idol of Boreas! Every Talon was like owning a tiny bit of the Idol, and when it was lost…”
“The currency became worthless?” I guessed. “But why would the money be backed by a single artifact? That seems really…”
“Really stupid? Yeah! So when it got stolen, the whole economy collapsed!” Gilda yelled. “No one wanted Talons, so we all switched to Bits. You can use them practically anywhere and if you get enough, you can get out of this dump.” She sighed. “At least for a while.”
“I get that, but why would it matter? A lot of currencies aren’t really backed by anything.” I said. “There’s no huge pile of gems and gold that sets the value of a Bit.”
“It’s based on Princess Celestia,” Gruff said.
Gilda nodded in agreement.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, starting to get angry.
“Oh beloved, even I know this,” Shahrazad sighed. “Long ago, in the early days of her rule, Princess Celestia came upon a small tavern--”
“Skip to the end,” I said.
Shahrazad whined and looked away. “One does not refuse the money of an immortal that could end the world were she so inclined.”
“Equestria’s economy is not backed by the threat of magical annihilation!”
Everypony looked at me. Ruby Drop shrugged.
“Dangit,” I mumbled. “Maybe it is.”
“So this Idol of Boreas,” Shahrazad said. “It had magical powers? Perhaps some kind of terrible curse that makes it impossible to recover?”
Grandpa Gruff shrugged. “How should I know?!”
“I assumed if it was truly so valuable, someone would have at least made an attempt to retrieve it,” Shahrazad said. “Is your pride so worthless that you cannot even bear the burden of fetching it from where it had fallen into a hole?”
“You really don’t know anything about the Abysmal Abyss?” Gilda said. “Ugh. I thought if any dweebs came up here to bother us they’d at least read a book first. Ponies love reading books.”
I flicked a bit at her. It hit her in the beak and dropped on the table.
“So tell us about it,” I said.
Gilda said something very rude under her breath and snatched up the bit. “You do that again and I’ll do something you’ll regret.”
“Noted,” I said.
“Come on,” Gilda said, getting up. “I’ll show you.”
I looked down at the deepest hole I’d ever seen, and I’d dug myself some doozies. A blast of wind hit me in the face then immediately changed direction like it was trying to suck me down into the void. Standing at the edge of the broken bridge was probably stupid bravado, but I wasn’t going to back down right away and look weak.
“Are the winds always like that?” I had to raise my voice to be heard over the explosive force of the cyclone.
“Yeah,” Gilda said, she shielded her eyes with one talon. “It’s impossible to fly down there! Even getting close is dangerous!”
“I can see why you never got the Idol back!”
“Hey, if you want to jump in and look around, there’s no law against it!”
“What about at ground level?” I asked. “Is there any way to get in there at the bottom?”
“You wish. Actually, all of us wish! We never found a bottom. As far as we know it just goes forever!”
I could see why she’d think that. There wasn’t even a suggestion of a bottom. It just went down into shadow that seemed to stretch on forever, like the sun wasn’t welcome. I cast a simple light spell and tossed it down. The ball of light fell, ignoring the winds, and just kept falling. Even at the edge of my casting range, I couldn’t see any kind of floor. I dispelled the light and turned back, taking a few more steps from the edge.
“Definitely not going down there,” I said. I stopped and looked around. From the edge here, I had a good look at all of Griffonstone. “I guess I can see why griffons would want to leave.”
Gilda glanced around us, then sighed and sat down next to me. “Yeah. The only griffons here are the ones that don’t have somewhere else to go. Anybird with talent or money left and never looked back. Just a bunch of dweebs and losers now…”
“So are you a dweeb or a loser?” I joked.
The griffon scoffed. “I’m great. I just… came back temporarily. Until I can figure out how to land on my paws.”
“I’ve been temporarily embarrassed before,” I said. “This is like, the second or third time I’ve run away from everything instead of dealing with it.”
“Let me guess, some kind of dumb pony friendship problem?”
I grimaced. “Yeah. Basically.”
“You want some advice?”
“How much will it cost?”
Gilda held out a talon. She probably wouldn’t have bothered if I hadn’t asked. I dropped a bit into her grasp. “Running away sucks eggs. You shouldn’t do it.”
“Wow, I can’t imagine what kind of wisdom two bits would have bought me.”
“No refunds,” she said. “Why did you run, anyway? You fixed that whole castle in like, a couple hours. It’s the kind of thing only a pony would do, but I guess it’s pretty impressive for a dweeb like you. None of the unicorns I ever met could do that.”
“...I always end up feeling second-best,” I said quietly. “I get jealous really easily because any time one of my friends gets anything, all I can think is ‘that should have been me.’” I shrugged. “And then I mope around for a while and avoid them because I’m not happy for them even though I should be. I usually have to find some kind of big monster and thrash it before I feel better.”
“Huh.” Gilda said. “That sucks.”
“Thanks for the emotional support.”
“What do you expect? We’re not friends. I had a pony friend, once.”
“Did you eat her?”
“I’d never eat Dash!” Gilda snapped, horrified. She recovered quickly, looking away and trying to look angry I’d even asked. “I mean… griffons don’t do that kind of thing, duh!”
“Dash?” I frowned. “Wait, you don’t mean Rainbow Dash, do you?”
Gilda froze, the feathers on the back of her neck ruffling like she was afraid of being bitten.
“You know her?” she asked, trying to sound casual even though her body language looked like a spooked rabbit.
“Rainbow ‘always talking about the Wonderbolts’ Dash?” I replied. “Who claims being short makes her more aerodynamic but still makes a point of always hovering because she hates ponies looking down at her?”
“That’s the one,” Gilda groaned.
“Small world,” I shrugged. “She did mention she knew a griffon, come to think of it…”
“Yeah well, we had a falling out, okay? So don’t mention me to her. She turned into a dweeb and… I ended up back here.”
“Temporarily embarrassed,” I suggested.
“Right,” Gilda mumbled.
“Wanna talk about literally anything else?” I asked.
“Yes!”
“How about you show me where you live?”
Gilda narrowed her eyes. “I don’t date ponies.”
“You’re not my type, either. I was going to repair your house if it’s in the same sorry state as the rest of this mess, as payment for showing me around.”
Despite having a very limited range of expressions with that beak in the way, I could still read Gilda like a book. She was trying to figure out if I was tricking her. And now she was looking at the rest of Griffonstone, trying to decide if the other griffons would think she was weak for accepting help from a pony and doing some kind of basic upkeep on her property. The clouds above us -- but not all that far above us, with how high Griffonstone was in the mountains -- rumbled, and even I could feel a storm coming in.
“Think you can patch the roof before the rain starts?” she asked.
I didn’t even try to beat the rain on the way back to the castle. I let it come down on me for half the walk. I could have teleported, shielded myself, or a lot of other things but sometimes it just felt nice to be rained on.
I pushed open the door and stepped inside.
“Sorry I was gone so long,” I said. “I ended up fixing up Gilda’s house. I think if we wanted to make a bunch of money we could stick around just casting repair spells. These griffons… what’s all this?”
A pile of rotting books was sitting on the floor, organized into a few different piles.
“We found a bunch of books!” Ruby Drop said.
“Welcome back, beloved,” Shahrazad. “While you were gone, we investigated some of the castle’s outbuildings. There was a small private library, and because I care for you so much, I had your apprentice bring the books here.”
“I can’t fix them,” Ruby said, sounding annoyed. “I’ve been casting repair spells like you showed me but it’s not enough.”
“Let me see,” I said. I picked one up in my magic, and it almost ripped apart in my grip. “No wonder you were having problems, these are in terrible condition.”
I could have fixed it myself. I had a lot of experience restoring books. I put it back down carefully without casting anything.
“It’ll be good practice for you,” I decided. “It requires a lot of power and finesse in using that power. With your magical reserves, you might even have to dip into using blood magic.”
Ruby blinked in surprise. “You mean you’ll give me permission to use it?”
“It’s your special talent, it’d be cruel not to let you practice with it once in a while.” Even with the problems her talent had brought her, it was difficult for a pony to resist the call of their mark. She’d been a pariah in her old village for her natural talent with one of the most dangerous techniques in black magic -- turning life energy into magic and vice-versa. It could be used to heal, but most ponies who learned it just wanted to supercharge their spells at any cost.
Also, I knew for a fact she’d been practicing in secret when she was sure I couldn’t possibly know about it. If I’d learned one thing from my own experience, it was that if she felt like she could talk to me about what she was doing, she was a lot less likely to kill somepony on accident.
“I promise I’ll be careful,” Ruby said.
“I know you will be.” I ruffled her mane.
“Did you have any luck looking for the ancient lost artifact down the street, beloved?” Shahrazad asked, patting the pillow next to her. I cast a drying spell on myself before sitting.
“I’ve got a feeling it’s not coming back,” I said. “Maybe we can ask Daring Do to come and sort it out, but I’m not going to jump into a pit looking for something shiny on the way down.”
“Perhaps the griffons can send for one by mail order,” Shahrazad joked.
“The big problem would be convincing them to pay for it,” I countered. “They’d rather keep using a broken broom than pay a single bit getting it fixed.”
“Where did they get the Idol?” Ruby asked, looking up from the magic circle she was sketching on the floor. “It came from somewhere, right?”
“Well…” I hesitated. “Good question. I guess somebody had to make the Idol of Boreas in the first place.”
“Indeed,” Shahrazad said. “And yet it was so precious that its worth was that of an entire nation. Perhaps you can ask your Princess Celestia when we return to Canterlot?”
“...Oh right… Canterlot…” I mumbled.
Shahrazad raised an eyebrow. “You did say there was a train today, did you not? I assumed you wished to be away.”
I really wasn’t looking forward to going back. Not with nothing to show for it. I’d been hoping for a vacation but so far all I’d done was get some useful updates for a travel guide, and the notes would consist entirely of ‘don’t go to Griffonstone’.
I was saved by a knock on the door.
“Oh hey, let me get that,” I said. “It’s probably Gilda. I bet she wants to tell me how I messed up fixing her roof.”
I opened the door and found myself looking at a griffon I’d never seen before. Not that I had met a lot of griffons, but the point is it wasn’t Gilda or Grandpa Gruff.
“Are you the pony who fixed Gilda’s place up?” she asked. She tossed her head, moving the dangling ends of a dirty grey bandanna out of her eyes.
“Yeah, why?” I asked.
She looked around, eyes narrowed, wary of any kind of trick.
“My house is one bad storm away from collapsing. I’ll give you ten bits to fix it the same way you fixed hers.”
“Wait, I--”
“Twenty!” she snapped. “I’m not paying more than that!”
I’d been about to tell her that I would have done it for free if she said please. I wasn’t sure she’d have understood that. Still, she looked more worried than annoyed. If her house was in such bad shape it might fall apart, I could understand. Most griffons wouldn’t lift a talon to help.
“Alright,” I sighed.
“Great!” she said. “I’m Gretchen.” She turned around. “And all you birds better remember I got here first, so she’s fixing my house before anyone else’s!”
“All you birds?” I asked. Gretchen flew off, and I got a look at what had been behind her. A line of griffons stretched down the stairs up to the newly repaired doorway. I groaned. It was going to be a long day.
“Ah, how tragic,” Shahrazad sighed. “Behold, Ruby Drop. The mightiest sorceress in Equestria has been transformed into a slug.”
“Uungf,” I retorted, from where I was lying face-down on the floor. I was trying to tell her I wasn’t a slug but I was too tired to make words good.
“I think she’s just tired,” Ruby said. She prodded me with a hoof. “She’s not slimy. Slugs are slimy.”
“You are wise beyond your years, Ruby Drop. My beloved would never be slimy, indeed. She is just so wise and generous, having repaired so many buildings in a single day, as if she had no limit to her strength.”
“Umhmhg,” I interjected.
“Do you think she’s going to die?” Ruby asked.
“No, no,” Shahrazad assured her. “She is immortal. If she was not, she would not take such liberties with her health! Gabriella, my beloved requires a refreshing cup of tea.”
“Coming right up ma’am!” chirped a voice that was too energetic and happy to exist. I looked up, blinked a few times because I was absolutely sure I was hallucinating and then had to decide that despite all evidence I was actually seeing things correctly.
“Ruby Drop, is that griffon wearing a maid outfit?” I asked.
“Miss Shahrazad had it in her luggage,” Ruby Drop said. She was a good kid, and totally unaware of how little that answered and how many more questions it begged. Ruby helped me up so I could get a better look.
The griffon was humming to herself happily and practically skipping as she assembled afternoon tea. Something about her made me think of Pinkie Pie without the inexplicable and terrifying powers.
And she even managed to look good in a maid outfit.
“Tea is served!” Gabriella said, bringing over the tray. “Did I do it right?”
“Actually, it’s... “ I tilted my head. “It’s at least as good as the maids in Canterlot. How did you do that? Where did these pastries even come from?” I levitated one up to look at it.
“Oh, well, I’m not really good at anything in particular like ponies, because I don’t have a cutie mark,” Gabriella said shyly, adjusting her skirt like she was trying to cover up her bare flank. “But I’m super good at improvising, and I like trying new things!”
“It looks great,” I reassured her. I bit into the scone I was holding. I immediately regretted it. I’d had to eat a lot of pretty awful stuff, mostly my own cooking, so I didn’t gag. I even managed to swallow and keep it down.
The apologetic expression Gabriella gave me implied I hadn’t managed as good a poker face as I’d thought.
“Sorry,” Gabriella muttered. “I got them from Gilda. She’s pretty much the only bird that bakes anything around here.”
I put the rest down. “Don’t worry about it. I’m impressed you were able to get anything together at all.”
“If a job is worth doing right, it’s worth doing poorly!” Gabreilla said brightly.
I couldn’t help but crack a smile. “I don’t think that’s quite how the saying goes. It’s ‘if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.’”
The griffin smiled. “Sometimes! But you can’t always do something right. Like maybe you’re feeling sick, or sad, or you don’t have good scones. If it’s really something that’s worth doing, you still need to try it anyway, even if you know it won’t be perfect!”
I blinked. “That’s… huh. I like that.”
She brightened up even more, somehow. “Thank you! I just wish other griffons felt the same way I do.”
“Are you really trying to tell me they’re perfectionists?” I snorted. “I just spent all day fixing houses! This place is a disaster zone!”
“That’s the thing,” Gabby said. “Um, is it okay if…?”
I motioned to a cushion. “Go ahead.”
She sat down. “Before today, none of them even bothered to try fixing anything. They’d always talk about how there wasn’t a point, because they were going to leave and never come back.”
“Gilda mentioned something like that. Only dweebs and losers hang around, right?”
“Oh, no! It’s not like that, exactly.” The young griffon held up her talons. “It’s just that the grass is greener on the other side! They never felt like there was a future here. But if they’re getting their houses fixed…!” She clicked her talons together excitedly. “Maybe they think things are going to get better!”
“It will not,” Shahrazad said, very calmly. “I have seen it in my own land. Hope is a promise that tomorrow will be better than today. They have seen that promise broken too many times.”
“I don’t get it,” Ruby said. “Why are things different now?”
“Their old promise was with their king, symbolized by the Idol of Boreas,” Shahrazad explained. “In my kingdom, the promise was from the royal family, that we would provide for the people no matter what. In Equestria, that promise is fulfilled every morning when the sun rises.”
I snorted. “Equestria has hope because ponies work together. It’s not something that trickles down from Canterlot.”
“Maybe so,” Shahrazad allowed. “But in the living memory of the griffons living here, things have not gotten better. Not until a new ruler came to claim them.”
“What are you--” I frowned. “No. We’ve talked about this before! I’m not overthrowing the government!”
“There is no government to overthrow,” Shahrazad pointed out. “You have moved into the empty place where a king once sat, you have listened to the grief of the people. You have worked to make this land a little better. More than that, they see you doing it yourself.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Um…” Gabriella said softly. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if you stayed for a while? Just until things get better!”
“Won’t they all get sad again when Sunset leaves?” Ruby asked. “I know I would. Like when she ran off to Saddle Arabia without me, and I was stuck at school alone and didn’t have my special classes, and all my grades went down…”
“Okay, okay, look.” I held up my hooves. “Yes, sure. I could stay here and be a little warlord and take over. I’m aware that’s an option! It’s just really problematic, sort of speciesist, and I’d make a terrible ruler.”
“So how do you intend to avoid having all of this collapse again, beloved?” Shahrazad asked.
“It’s not like this is a problem governments haven’t solved before,” I said. “We just find some griffon who would make a good ruler, put them in charge, and back them diplomatically. At least then some local bird is in charge and it’s not some kind of weird Equestrian empire-building.”
“Even if Equestria backed somebird, they can only rule if the griffons listen,” Gabriella reminded me. “They’d need the Idol.”
I shook my head. “It’s gone.”
“Come now,” Shahrazad scoffed. “You expect me to believe that you cannot conceive of a way to retrieve it?”
“Alright fine, you really want to go over the options?” I sighed. “First off, the Abyss is probably miles deep. I wouldn’t be surprised if it went all the way down to Thestralia. If the Idol survived the fall -- and I’m willing to believe it might have since it was probably magical -- it’s not just a short hop down.”
“The wind is like, crazy strong, too!” Gabriella chimed in. “If you try flying into it, you’d crash and probably break your wing! Not that any of you have wings. Sorry. Sore subject? You kind of winced.”
“It’s nothing,” I said, only gritting my teeth a little. I just didn’t want to be reminded why I’d needed a vacation. Maybe working through the logistics would help me get my mind off it. I held up my hooves. “One thing at a time. We’re pretty sure it’s magic. So, Ruby, what’s the best way to find it?”
Ruby blinked at the pop quiz, but had the right answer immediately. “A detect magic spell?”
“Right. If it’s enchanted or made out of a magical material it should be easy to detect. But what’s the range on the standard spell?”
“About… forty meters?”
I nodded. “And if it was that close to the surface, someone would have found it by now. You could see it from the edge! So it has to be deeper. Maybe a lot deeper.”
“So…” Ruby thought. “You’d have to use a different spell. Maybe a divination effect? Those can go practically any distance!”
“Divinations won’t help much,” I said. “Without a part of the Idol or a personal connection to it, the best I could do would be a standard Scrying effect, and that wouldn’t show much around the Idol if I can even find it. All I’ll be able to see is what’s immediately around it, and that’s probably some variation of ‘a bunch of rocks that all look the same.’”
“So… what do we do?” Ruby asked.
I smiled and ruffled her mane. “We figure out something else. The Idol is just a symbol. I don’t believe for a second that the griffons here don’t really care about Griffonstone deep down somewhere. They leave and go to Equestria, but when things go south they come home.”
“I have no idea why they come back,” Shahrazad sighed.
“You’d go back to Saddle Arabia if you weren’t banished,” I pointed out.
“That’s different,” she said.
“Is it?” I asked. “It’s a wreck. The desert ate almost the whole country and the ponies there just hang on because of magic and trade.” I paused. “No, you’re right. There is one really big difference.”
“It’s flat?” Ruby guessed. I snorted, trying to hold back a laugh. Shahrazad soured, but still looked beautiful even when she was pouting.
“The ponies in Saddle Arabia don’t have much, but they do have each other,” I explained. “They come together, and that’s not just because they’ve still got their own little symbol of hope with the royalty. The griffons here aren’t like that.”
I looked at Gabby. She averted her gaze, looking away. “It’s complicated,” she said quietly. “I’m happy to share with everyone, but most griffons won’t. There isn’t ever enough to go around so they take anything they can because they don’t have what they need.”
“We could probably get more trade in here,” I said. “Maybe if there was more fresh food and clean water…”
Gabby shook her head. “It wouldn’t change how most griffons acted.”
I frowned and nodded. “Change has to come from them, not from the things around them. Even if I could magic up a feast…”
“Somebird would steal the buffet trays,” Gabby said. “I don’t like being negative about the birds around here because they’re all trying their best! Mostly. I think. It’s just bad habits and stuff, you know? That’s why I’m trying to break those habits! I just know if I work hard and be friends with everyone, it’ll make everyone happy and then I’ll get a cutie mark!”
“A…” I trailed off. “A cutie mark?”
“I know it doesn’t seem possible,” Gabby admitted. “But it could happen. Maybe if I learn enough about friendship…”
She trailed off and looked down, deflating. I could see a ghost of myself in her. A long time ago I’d had a big dream like that. Something impossible. Something nopony in the world could give me. It took me a long time to come to terms with my own limits. Letting a dream go wasn’t easy, and it still haunted me.
“Anything’s possible,” I said quietly. I stood up and walked over to her, taking her talon and holding it. “We don’t even know how ponies get cutie marks. Who’s to say you can’t be the first griffon to get one?”
“You really think it could happen?” she whispered. I could hear the hope in that voice.
“I have absolutely no idea,” I admitted. “I do know that no matter what a pony does, they can’t force themselves to get a cutie mark.” Three faces flashed in my mind’s eye and I shuddered. I could almost taste tree sap. “A cutie mark comes from the magic inside you finding a little bit of your destiny and showing it to the whole world. Or that’s what Celestia told me when I was a filly anyway, and she seems like she’s old enough to know.”
Gabby groaned. “Griffons don’t have magic.”
“You can stand on clouds, and you fly at least as well as a pegasus. You’ve got more obvious magic than most earth ponies.” I shrugged. “If you want my advice? Just live your best life. Destiny always finds a way, even if it takes a while.”
At least one griffon had to be part rooster, because I was woken up at the crack of dawn by the noise. I groaned and rolled over, covering my eyes with a hoof.
“Beloved?” Shahrazad asked groggily from the pillows next to me. “What is that infernal noise?”
“Go back to sleep and I’ll deal with it,” I mumbled, getting up and trying to rub the sleep out of my eyes. The sun had just crested the ragged horizon, the mountains keeping me from having any idea of the actual time.
I stumbled out of bed and to the washbasin, splashing ice-cold water in my face. Usually I was a morning pony, but I was still sore from all the work I’d done yesterday. It hadn’t even been all the work so much as the amount of detail I’d had to use repairing the houses.
“Sunset?” Ruby asked, trotting clumsily up to me.
I gave her a yawn and a wave. “Good morning.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” she muttered.
“What?” I blinked. “What happened.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just… had bad dreams. Being all alone here in a new place made me think about what happened back in my hometown, and my parents and…” She rubbed her eyes, very carefully not sniffling.
I pulled her into a hug. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want to be alone again,” she said, hiccuping.
“Tonight you can sleep next to me, okay?” I promised. “You’re not alone. You’ve got friends back in Canterlot too, right?”
She nodded.
“When we’re finished up here we’ll head back and I’ll treat all of you to… I don’t know. Some kind of fun day out. I honestly don’t know what kids like these days, so you’re going to have to come up with a plan.”
“Okay,” Ruby said, getting control of herself. It was hard to remember sometimes that she really was just a filly. She’d had to grow up really fast, but that didn’t mean she was an adult.
“Since both of us are up, how about a magic lesson?” I asked.
“Okay. Good,” I nodded, watching the break in the stick start to mend. “You’re getting it! Just hold it a little longer.”
The crack sealed up completely, and Ruby’s aura faded. She looked at the stick, turning it over in her hooves.
“Did it work?” she asked. She bent it carefully. For a few moments, it seemed like it would hold, but then it broke in exactly the same place it had broken before, cracking on the same lines. “Aww…” she dropped the stick and groaned.
“You had it right,” I said. “That was a good repair spell.”
“Then why did it break again?” Ruby asked.
I picked up the stick with my magic and put it back together with the same spell I’d been teaching her to cast.
“You repaired it, you didn’t make it invincible,” I said. “The stick broke once, it could always break again.”
“But it broke in the same way!” Ruby protested. “That means I did it wrong!”
“No, it means that was the weakest part of the stick,” I said. “Bending it that way was how you broke it in the first place before you cast a repair spell. Because you fixed it in exactly the same way, when you bent it again it snapped in that same spot again. You’ve heard about how a chain always breaks at the weakest link, right?”
She nodded, rubbing her chin. “So that crack is the weakest link in that stick?”
“Exactly. You did good work, kid. I think you’re ready for something more difficult.” I produced something that I’d found when we were cleaning the castle. “You know what this is?”
Ruby took it from me, spinning it around in her magic a few times. “I think it’s a candlestick?” she guessed. “That or a weird club.”
“Probably a candlestick,” I agreed. “It’s also rusty, twisted metal. That’s two ways that it’s broken. Fixing it means bringing it back into shape and repairing the corrosion from the rust.”
“But I don’t know what it’s supposed to look like!” Ruby said. “How am I supposed to make it the right shape?”
“Is that the right question to ask first?” I asked. “What’s going to happen if you reshape it while it’s rusted through?”
“...The metal might break?” Ruby guessed.
I nodded. “You need to fix the rust first. It’s not as easy as cleaning it because you have to reverse a chemical reaction. After that, the shape is easy. It’s the same idea as fixing a book. You don’t need to know the words in a book to fix it, do you?”
Ruby nodded. “Okay. Rust first…”
“As a tip, it’s basically the same feeling as undoing a burn,” I said. “But you don’t have to be nearly as gentle. The metal can take a lot more force.”
“Oh! I know how to fix burns!” Ruby said, getting excited. The aura around the candlestick started intensifying.
“Take it slow and easy,” I cautioned. “It’s not fragile, but it could take a lot of magic.” I didn’t say it, but I knew I had to be careful with Ruby. Her cutie mark was for blood magic, after all. It was the most primal type of dark magic, converting life energy into magic and vice-versa. If she pushed herself too far, she might instinctively tap into it and hurt herself.
“Don’t worry, Miss Sunset,” Ruby said firmly. “I won’t lose control.”
I smiled. It was like she could read my mind. “I didn’t think I was that obvious.”
“You worry a lot.”
“It’s a bad habit.” I’d also spent a long time being a paranoid wreck. “Everyone’s got a few.”
“Oh! Are you doing magic?” Gabby asked. I looked over to see her watching from the open doorway of the palace entrance. “Can I watch?”
“Only if it’s okay with Ruby,” I said. I looked down at my student.
“I don’t mind,” Ruby said. “Gabby is really nice.”
The griffon grinned and ran over, perching near us and watching intently.
“Ruby, can you explain what you’re doing so Gabby knows what’s going on?” I asked.
Ruby nodded seriously. “I’m going to remove the rust, and Miss Sunset says it’s like something that got burned. That means I have to fix it from the inside out.” She glanced up at me for confirmation that she was right, and I nodded. “If you try to fix the outside first, you just cover it up. I have to use a spell that starts where the metal isn’t rusting and then uses that to help the rest heal…”
I sat back and listened as Ruby explained the magic to Gabby. Fixing all the houses in Griffonstone, was that just fixing the outside first and letting the rot linger? In Canterlot, when I’d been in the orphanage, the windows had been clear and unbroken and the floors clean enough to eat off of, but it had been… bad. It was clean for the same reason a tomb is clean. It made ponies feel good that they’d done something to help the lost and unfortunate. It wasn’t for the ponies inside.
Ponyville had been different. Ponies there were sometimes poor, and places were messy, but that’s because they were lived in. As much as I feared some of the fillies that played in the streets, they were happy and laughing and had the kind of foalhood memories I wish I’d been able to make.
“Ruby, will you be okay for a while?” I asked.
She blinked and looked at me. She’d been deep in a conversation with Gabby. “What’s wrong, Miss Sunset?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just going to go down to the market and get us something for lunch. I might poke around at the other market stalls, too.”
“Um, maybe I should go,” Gabby said, sounding unsure. “It can be hard to find a fair deal, and there are some birds you shouldn’t talk to…”
I smiled. “If I shouldn’t talk to them, I definitely need to meet them,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I’m just going to get a little food and maybe a souvenir or two. I’ll be fast.”
The sunlight was just starting to find its way to the ground through all the high mountain peaks and scattered, twisted trees clinging to the rocks. It was chilly with that kind of damp and lingering mist that meant the cold wasn’t planning on sticking around. In some ways, it reminded me of the Everfree forest, as strange as that might seem. There was a sort of wildness to it that had the same feeling of unbound nature that couldn’t be found in a pony town.
Maybe some of that feeling also stemmed from being surrounded by predators. Griffons watched me trot down the street, and even if most of them ignored me I couldn’t help but feel like a few of them were thinking about taking their chances and taking a swipe. In the forest, I would have just blasted something as a show of force if I wanted the watching eyes to go away, but that wasn’t what passed as polite society here.
I stopped at the first market stall I saw that had something approaching food for sale.
“Hmm…” I looked over the badly-woven baskets full of scraggly, rough-edged greens. It all looked like weeds at first glance, but I recognized at least a few things. “That’s musk mustard, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Purple mustard, but close enough,” the bird behind the stall said. “I foraged it myself. Don’t ask where, I got my own spots and if you think I’m going to just tell you my secrets--”
I held up a hoof defensively and smiled. “Woah, woah. I’m just here to get breakfast, not to cause trouble.”
She looked at me for a few extra seconds and still seemed skeptical, so I produced a few bits and gave them to her. “I don’t know much about what grows around here. What would you recommend for breakfast?”
The griffon snatched up the coins and pointed to a few baskets. “The purple mustard is good. The curly shock is fresh and sour, and maybe some prickly lettuce if you want something sweeter, but you have to remember to take off the center stem with the prickles.”
I gave her a few more coins. “Can I have enough for three?” I considered, remembering Gabby. I put one more coin in her talon. “Make it four, actually.”
She hefted the coins in her grip and felt the weight of them before putting them carefully away like she was afraid they’d vanish. “You gave me a little extra, so I’ll toss in a couple deerberries. I don’t want you saying you overpaid.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
She started bundling things up when another griffon stepped over to look.
“You’re giving things away, Gretchy?” he asked, teasing. “That’s not like you.”
“Some of us like having repeat customers,” Gretchy retorted. Then she finished what she was doing and gave me the greens tied together with a strand of twine. “You’re in town where everybird can see you, Ghoshel? That’s not like you.”
“Come on, I show my face once in a while,” he protested. He looked down at me and smiled. “She just teases because she likes me.”
“I don’t tease,” Gretchy corrected. “I mock you because you’re the worst hunter in Griffonstone, and that includes the blind kitten Grizzy was taking care of who adopted a rat as her best friend.”
I snorted. Ghoshel’s cheeks turned red. “I’m not that bad of a hunter. I’ll have you know I’m actually here to--”
“Pay off your tab?” Gretchy asked.
“I was going to say I was here to trade some Rock Crawler meat for stone apples. But if you don’t want any Rock Crawler…” he rubbed his beak. “Or maybe you’re afraid the pony will run off if I start talking about eating innocent little creatures?”
“Oh, don’t mind me,” I said. “So what’s a rock crawler?”
“Hmmm…” Ghoshel thought for a few moments. “I’m going to try and explain it in a way a pony might understand. Pegasus ponies eat fish sometimes, and it’s a bit like a lobster. You know what a lobster is, right? It’s like one of those but instead of living in the water, they live in the mountains.”
He patted the bag he had slung at his side. Gretchy reached over and tugged it open so I could see the shiny grey chitin inside. They looked like the pill bugs that were always around in the forest but about as long as my leg.
“They’re bugs the size of your head that curl up into balls when they’re scared and live under rocks,” Gretchy corrected flatly. “He probably found them while he was hiding from all the birds he owes money to.”
“I don’t owe that much money,” Ghoshel whispered to me, winking.
“Really?” Gretchy asked. “Try explaining that to Geinhart, because he just spotted you.”
“Oh feathers,” Ghoshel groaned. A big bird landed next to him, looking much more like my mental image of a hunter than the griffon with the bag of bugs did. He was tall, strong, and looked like he wrestled with yaks as a side gig.
“Ghoshel, my favorite debtor!” Geinhart said, patting him on the back. “I thought you’d skipped town! Again! Without paying me back! Again!”
“I would never do that,” Ghoshel said. “Again.”
“Good,” Geinhart said. “So, how about those bits of mine that you’re holding onto? I’d like them back, along with the interest.”
“I, uh…” Ghoshel hesitated.
“You don’t have them,” Geinhart said, shaking his head sadly. “You’re really breaking my heart, Ghoshel. You owe me so much and here you are trying to cut a deal behind my back. I might just have to make myself feel better with a little thing I like to call ‘wrecking up the place’.”
He smirked and cracked his talons. I stepped in front of him before he could get any closer.
“I don’t want any trouble,” I lied.
“That’s fine,” the big griffon said. “You’re not involved. This is a private dispute. Why don’t you prance off and sing some kind of impromptu musical number about the magic of friendship?”
“Or we could try to resolve this without violence,” I said. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll buy everyone a cup of whatever people around here drink in the morning to wake up and we can fix this without anyone’s market stall getting thrashed or anyone getting hurt?”
“I think I’d rather-- oh, you’re stronger than you look.” Geinhart wiggled in my magical grip, trying to break free. I flipped him over onto his back.
“Thanks!” Ghoshel said. “I really owe you one. You can let him go in a few minutes, I just need to--”
I grabbed Ghoshel by the tailfeathers.
“You’re not going anywhere either,” I said. “I am absolutely not the pony to say this, but you can’t run from all your problems. We’re going to talk about this and fix it and… what do griffons drink in the morning anyway?”
“Black coffee,” Gretchy said.
“Great! Could you grab me a cup?” I tossed her a bit. “Sorry. I know it’s not your job, but I have to babysit these two foals and make them play nice.”
“I’m not a foal,” Ghoshel mumbled.
“Try not to kill either of them,” Gretchy said. She gave Ghoshel a worried look, then flew off.
“Okay look, if it gets me out of here without you yanking out my primaries, yes, I owe him a lot of bits,” Ghoshel said, before I’d even prompted. “I’m really not that bad of a hunter, it’s just been a few bad seasons! A lot of bad seasons.”
“The seasons are always bad,” Geinhart said, rolling his eyes. “Every year you owe more than you bring in. It’s your own fault for not being ambitious! You could go further out and find something better than bugs!”
“I work just as hard as you do!” Ghoshel protested.
I sighed. “So this is really just about him not finding enough prey?”
“There used to be tons of prey. It’s harder to find it every year. He might make fun of me for having Rock Crawlers instead of red pigeons or giant peak badgers, but he’s eaten plenty of crawlers and nobird has even seen a decent peak badger in a long time.”
“Tough times make for strong birds,” Geinhart retorted.
“Strong birds who take all my crawlers and then pretend they don’t understand why I need to pick up food on a tab.”
“Let me see if I understand this, because I can read pretty well even between the lines,” I said. “You’re in debt. You were trying to hide from him because you can’t pay him back and if you pay what you can, you don’t have enough left over to eat.”
Ghoshel shrugged.
“It’s not like I’ve been letting him starve,” Geinhart said. “I keep letting him run a tab.”
I rolled my eyes. “So talk to each other like adults and work out a payment plan! If he pays you some of his earnings every month, it’s better for both of you because you don’t have to track him down and shake bits out of his saddlebags and he doesn’t have to live in fear that he’s going to have his beak pulled off.”
“I guess we could do that,” Geinhart sighed. “The other birds are going to call me soft.”
“It’s a start.” I let them go. Gretchy appeared over my shoulder and offered me a paper cup. I took it and sipped at it. The coffee had no sugar in it, but some bird had added lemon zest and what I think was a sprinkle of chili powder. It wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever had to drink, even if I was pretty sure it was made of roasted dandelion and not beans.
“Is it okay?” Gretchy asked.
“It’s great, thanks,” I said, nodding. The bitterness was helping me wake up a little more, that was for sure.
“Excuse me, um, Miss Pony?” A tiny talon tugged at my tail. I turned to see three tiny little griffons. What was the right word? Hatchlings was for dragons, foals was for ponies…
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Since you helped him, could you help us too?” they asked. “We found a really cool rock in the mountains and we don’t know who should get to keep it.”
The griffon held up a piece of shale that was cracked open, revealing the curve of an ancient fossil.
“This is pretty neat,” I agreed. “How did you find it?” I turned it to look at the way it caught the light, revealing more details. I was pretty sure there was some kind of chemical wash you could use to make it more visible, but it was already a nice specimen
“We were playing by the steam and there’s a spot where the rocks come apart in layers like a book,” the lead griffon said. “I’m the one who found it, but Dottie is the one who wanted to go to the stream in the first place, and Ducky gave both of us some of the candy his grandpa gave him last week and he says we owe him.”
“And we can’t share because there’s only one,” the white and green griffon that I assumed was Ducky said. “They owe me because of the candy, right?”
“Did you tell them they’d owe you something before you gave them the candy?” I asked.
Ducky shook his head.
“It was nice of you to share the candy, but you can’t ask for something in return after giving it to them,” I said. “Otherwise everyone will only think you’re being nice to them so you can be mean later.”
My back leg was starting to ache. Something must have shown in the way I was standing, because a crate was put behind me.
“Here,” Gretchy said. “You might as well sit down.”
“Thanks,” I said, settling my flank on the crate.
“Hold on, hold on,” I begged, waving a hoof for mercy. “You’re all talking at once and I’m already totally lost.”
“It’s simple,” Ginger said. “I need a magnifying lens. Garth has one, but he wants a dragon scale. That’s no problem because Guppy has a scale, but they won’t give it up until they get their grandma’s necklace back from Galoo. Galoo will trade it but they want a new fishing lure that Gutenberg promised them. Gutenberg can make the lure but not until his wife cleans out his shop, but she can’t because she loaned the broom to Garthe, and he’s got it because he’s been cleaning his place every day waiting for a letter from the bird he’s got a crush on, but nobody’s been getting mail…”
“And that’s because of something with flowers?” I asked, my head starting to hurt.
“Yeah! The mail bird is all laid up because of allergies and there’s stuff that cures it but the only bird who knows where it grows wants a pineapple, and Garin gets those in from a hippogriff he knows. Garin is willing to trade one, but they need a new beehive because theirs got crushed in the last dry season storm. That wouldn’t be so bad, but it has to be reinforced so it won’t just happen again, right? And Gigi could do that but all her lumber is bad and she was supposed to get it from Gale. Gale won’t do anything until they get paid back for the bananas they gave Gunthest, but he can’t pay anything because he’s been spending all his money on pet for for the annoying little crow he’s raising, and maybe that wouldn’t be a big deal but the bird who knows where to get the nuts the crow likes is a kid and she’s trying to save up bits for a new bow, and she needs that because she wants to trade it for her friend’s Princess Luna doll.”
Ginger folded her talons, looking satisfied.
“Is that the whole thing?” I asked, exhausted.
“Yeah. I think that’s all.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Okay, uh… you know what, someone write me up a flowchart and I’ll get back to you on the specifics of what to do.”
“What, you can’t fix it?” Ginger asked. “That’s why we came to you!”
“Well the way it sounds is like everyone is waiting for someone else to make the first move,” I said. “And everyone in town is in debt to everyone else and it’s like a big tangled web and I have no idea how you keep track of everything.”
“Eh, it’s not like we have anything else to do for fun,” Ginger shrugged.
I rolled my eyes, but to be honest she was probably right. There really wasn’t a lot going on in Griffonstone. I think if someone had a board game they’d end up owing half the pieces to one bird and half to the other and then nobody would get to play anything because they’d all refuse to share on the basis that they didn’t even have enough for themselves.
“It wasn’t always this bad,” Gilda said. I looked up at her.
“Where’d you come from?” I hadn’t even noticed her walking up, and that was a bad sign of how distracted I was. At least I hadn’t gotten spooked enough to set her on fire. I’d never have lived that down.
“I walked over while you were trying to figure out how to order a Princess Celestia doll in the mail,” Gilda retorted. “Don’t bother. For most birds it’s not about the stuff, it’s about the principle of the thing.”
“You’re probably right,” I sighed, discarding my idea to try and solve everyone’s issues with some kind of massive and complicated chain of trades and swaps. “Otherwise one of them would have just solved it themselves.”
Gilda nodded. “Maybe if things weren’t so tight they’d be okay with it. It’s not like Equestria. Everbird here just hangs on by the edge of their talons, and if you let them get dull you lose your grip and the wind takes you.”
“Why are things so bad?” I asked. “There’s no way they’d build a whole city here if it was always like this. I saw what the food is like in the market. It’s all hunted and foraged. Why hasn’t anyone made a farm or something?”
“A farm?” Gilda laughed. “Here? Yeah, right!”
“I’m serious. There are crops that grow on mountains. Rice, uh… olives? I think barley but nothing’s flat enough for that… I’m not a farmer, but I know if you asked a farmer they could give you a list. You could at least have some gardens or something.”
“There used to be farms,” Gilda said. She pointed out to another peak. “See those steps carved into that mountain?”
I could barely make it out. Her eyesight was a lot better than mine, but that made sense since she was half eagle.
“That used to be a farm back when Grandpa Gruff was a chick. I think they grew berries, because you can find some little wild strawberries if you look around carefully and get to them first.”
“So what happened to it?” I asked.
“Same thing that happens to everything around here. It went bad.”
“Can you be a little more specific?” I asked. “Just saying ‘it went bad’ doesn’t tell me much.”
“She can’t tell you much because she wasn’t here to see it!” a scratchy voice cackled. Grandpa Gruff pushed through the crowd of birds that had gathered to listen to me fumble my way through trying to be an impartial arbiter. “I heard her say my name and I know that means she’s trying to steal my stories and tell them wrong!”
“I’m not stealing anything!” Gilda snapped, her hackles rising.
“Let’s all calm down before things get set on fire,” I said. “Here, Grandpa.” I flipped him a bit. “Maybe you could tell me properly?”
“Hmph.” Gruff snorted and looked down his beak at us before gesturing to the mountains around us. “Years and years ago, before the bad times, these mountains weren’t scraggly little rocks poking up through the mist, they were covered in green! It was practically a paradise! There were animals to hunt, fruit to eat, and soil to farm.”
“Sounds nice,” I prompted.
“It was nice,” Grandpa sighed. “But when the Idol was lost, our fortunes reversed. The night it was taken, a storm started. That storm didn’t go away for three years! The rain and wind just kept coming and getting worse and worse every night. The soil washed away, the prey left for better pastures, and griffons left every day for somewhere better. My parents told me it was divine punishment from the winds themselves.”
Gilda snorted. “Yeah right.”
Grandpa Gruff shook his head. “Believe what you want. Other griffons thought the ponies did it to us! The pegasus ponies control the weather in Equestria, maybe they were using it as a weapon to attack us!”
“Equestria wouldn’t do that,” I said.
Gruff waved a talon dismissively. “Of course not! But that’s what birds start to think when nothing makes sense for years on end! Equestria sent teams of expert weather ponies to try and solve the problem, but they couldn’t do anything.”
“They’re not all-powerful,” I said. “There are places in Equestria where they can’t manage the weather, too. The Everfree is close enough to Canterlot that you can see it from the castle, but the storms that roll out of there are impossible to contain, and even breaking them up is more trouble than it’s worth.”
“Even ponies fail sometimes,” Grandpa Gruff agreed, smirking. “The storm had to work itself out, and like I said, that took five years!”
“You said three years the first time,” Gilda mumbled. “Telling me I’m making a mess of the story when you can’t even keep the century right.”
“The point is it took years!” Gruff snapped. “Griffonstone was practically a ghost town after the rain stopped. Half the buildings collapsed and everything was damaged. The birds who stayed are the ones stubborn enough that the winds couldn’t blow us away and clever enough to find some way to survive.”
Gilda sighed. “I don’t know how true it is, but the weather is really bad around here. In the rainy season it rains basically every day, and then in the dry season we get chaotic winds.”
“What are chaotic winds?”
“Stick around a few more weeks and you’ll find out,” Grandpa Gruff mumbled.
“I took you to the Abysmal Abyss,” Gilda said. “You remember what that was like?”
“Yeah. It was constant hard gusts from every direction. Half of them didn’t even seem possible, like they came out of thin air.”
“That’s what it’s like, but everywhere,” Gilda motioned to encompass the whole town. “It sucks! And blows. And twists around in little tornados. There’s so much wind shear that you can’t fly half the time!”
“Hmmm…” I rubbed my chin, thinking. It couldn’t have always been that bad or they wouldn’t have built Griffonstone in the first place. I had a feeling Grandpa Gruff was telling the truth. If the weather went bad after the Idol was lost, maybe it stabilized the weather somehow, and that let them found the city in a place no one else would claim? It made enough sense on the face of things that it could be the truth.
“The windy season is why most birds are in debt,” Gilda sighed. “You need to stock up for the times you can’t go out, but no one actually has the bits to get it all at once, so they get loans or promise to pay the hunters and gatherers back later, and later never comes because they don’t finish paying off last year’s debt before they need to start stocking up all over again.”
“But they still let them get in more debt?” I asked.
“We’re not gonna let each other starve!” Gilda snapped. “We’re not monsters!” She looked away. “It just gets hard because the second you have even a little more than you need to survive, you have to use it to pay down debts because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Huh.” I sat back. “So it’s like the doll. It’s about the principle of the thing.”
Gilda nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly!”
“And you can’t just forgive the debts?”
“If you do that, it’s insulting to everyone that owes you! It’s like saying they’re a little chick that can’t take care of themselves! Besides, it would make you look weak. If you don’t ask birds to pay what they owe, they’ll just take advantage of you!”
The other griffons nodded, looking at each other in agreement. From the outside, it seemed obvious. They couldn’t ever get ahead if they had to keep looking back and trying to fix past mistakes, but they had too much pride to let go on their own. In Ponyville they’d just trade a token favor or two and call each other square and become better friends for it. That wasn’t part of the culture here, and I couldn’t just expect them to act like ponies.
But they’d come to me to arbitrate their problems precisely because I wasn’t caught in their web of debt. I didn’t have a personal stake. I could be the excuse they needed to fix things. Maybe they didn’t even care how I fixed it or how fair I was, just as long as they weren’t the ones looking weak. It wasn’t about justice, it was about saving face.
That meant what I really had to do wasn’t create a ledger and really try to understand who owed who. I had to solve things all at once and make them happy to be out of debt, and I knew just how to do it.
I was going to have to throw the biggest party Griffonstone had ever seen.
“It’s going to be the biggest party they’ve seen in decades,” I said. The others didn’t look really enthused about my plan.
“I think it’s a great idea!” Ruby said, clapping her hooves with excitement. Okay, she was enthusiastic, but Shahrazad and Gabby both looked skeptical, and Gilda was trying to act cool and disaffected.
“Beloved, normally I adore your wild ideas,” Shahrazad said. “But perhaps this is… unwise?”
“I don’t even know if most griffons have ever been to a real party,” Gabby said. “Grandpa Gruff would sort of do something special once in a while but…”
“That’s why we’re going to do it,” I said. “They haven’t had parties around here because everyone is just doing their best to survive day by day. Even in Equestria, a party is fun and special and exciting, and that’s in a place where they have one practically every day!”
“I mean, I’d love an Equestrian-style party!” Gabby said. “I just… don’t know why you want to throw one.”
“When I was talking to the griffons at the market, it seemed to me like the biggest problem for everyone in town is that they’re in debt,” I explained.
“And what, we’re going to sing happy pony songs together and forget our problems?” Gilda scoffed.
“Nope! We’re only going to let people in if they swear to forgive all debts owed to them,” I said.
Gilda’s eyes went wide. “That’s crazy! Do you know how long these birds hold a grudge?! Just yesterday Greta was annoying me about the time she shared half an apple with me when we were both chicks!”
I nodded. “Yeah, griffons seem to have really good memories…”
Gilda nodded firmly. “And it means we don’t forgive and forget easily.”
“That’s why you need an excuse to do it. I think a lot of griffons would be happy to let things go if they knew everyone else was doing it.”
“It would mean losing a lot of money for some griffons,” Gabby pointed out. “Especially the most generous ones.”
“How many of them are actually going to collect?” I asked.
“Probably none of them,” Gilda admitted.
“We can probably send a letter back to Equestria and have party supplies shipped in,” Ruby said.
“Might as well write to Ponyville and have those nerds send confetti and a cake,” Gilda said, snorting dismissively.
“No. The whole reason we’re doing this is so we can help get the griffons out of debt. If we can inject some bits into the local economy, that’s good for everyone. Besides, I want this to be a Griffonstone party, not a pony party.”
“That might be the smartest thing you’ve said so far,” Gilda snorted. “I’ve been to pony parties. They’re so bright and cheerful and… even when they’re for adults it feels like a chick’s fifth birthday party.”
“Great! I’m glad you agree!” I smiled and trotted over, patting her on the back and shoving a bag full of bits into her chest. She grabbed them instinctively, blinking in surprise.
“What’s all this?” she asked.
“I need someone, or really somebird, to do the shopping for me. I bet you can get some good deals, and you know which birds have the best products. Besides, I don’t know what griffons like to eat!”
“I can’t… you shouldn’t trust me with all these bits!” Gilda snapped. She tried to give them back to me, and I just pushed it deeper into her grip.
“Gilda, I know you’re one of Rainbow Dash’s best friends. You might not know it, but she talked about you a lot. Mostly because she wanted us to know how cool she was for having a griffon friend, but also because she thought a lot about you.”
“I was one of her friends,” Gilda said, heaping some emphasis on the was. “We, uh… had kind of a falling-out.”
“She totally messed up and yelled at her friend’s friends,” Gabby whispered, leaning in like only I could hear her when she was barely below a normal speaking tone. “When she came back from Equestria she was really upset and she doesn’t like to talk about what happened.”
“Gabby!” Gilda snapped, her cheeks red.
“Whatever happened, I know I can trust you,” I said. That took the wind right out of Gilda’s sails, and she looked down at the bag of bits in her talons. “I know Dash pretty well too, and she’s got a nose for loyal and trustworthy friends. Sometimes friends might argue or fight, but there’s still something that drew them together in the first place. If you haven’t let go of that part of yourself, it means that you can still be friends someday.”
“Yeah, but…” Gilda hesitated. “Friends don’t always stay friends. Ponies change. So do griffons.”
“They do,” I agreed. “But I don’t think one of Dash’s friends would ever change so much that I couldn’t trust them.”
Gilda was silent for a moment.
“I’ll get all the stuff I can,” she said, when she’d collected herself enough to say something. “I’ll make sure to get enough for the whole town.”
“Let them know what it’s going to be for, too,” I said. “It’s not going to be a surprise party.”
“Everybird in town will know,” Gilda said, before taking off.
“Ah, beloved, look at that sight,” Shahrazad sighed. “All of your bits, flying away, never to be seen again!”
“She’ll come back,” I said.
“Last time she had anywhere near that many bits she went off to Equestria and said she’d never come back and that we were all losers and dweebs who deserved to sit in garbage with our garbage lives,” Gabby said.
I looked at her and raised an eyebrow.
She shrugged. “I’m just quoting her!”
“Look, I know it’s a risk,” I said. “But you have to be willing to take a risk sometimes. I think Gilda is the type of griffon where she won’t let me down if we put our trust in her.”
“We did not do very much,” Shahrazad said. “You decided to trust her without even discussing it with us.”
“If I thought it was risky enough that we had to talk about it, I wouldn’t have done it in the first place,” I said.
Shahrazad sighed. “As long as you are insisting on this, help me decorate while we await for her to never return.”
“No, to the left a bit,” the Saddle Arabian princess said, tilting her head. “A little more… yes. Now straighten it.”
“It’s perfectly straight,” I said.
“It is crooked,” Shahrazad countered.
“I think it is crooked,” Ruby agreed. “You need to tilt it a little clockwise. No, the other clockwise. No, that’s too far, go the other other clockwise now.”
I rolled my eyes and fixed the banner to the wall. “Look, I’m not even happy with hanging these things in the first place. Why do you have giant banners with my cutie mark on them?”
I motioned to the massive maroon flag, easily two stories tall and with my cutie mark prominently emblazoned on them. There were six of them around the throne room, along with silk curtains and pillows that Shahrazad had produced from her luggage. I didn’t even want to know why she was carrying all of it around with her.
“Just putting them up like this makes me feel like some kind of conqueror,” I said.
“Oh, wonderful!” Shahrazed smiled, pleased. “That is exactly the feeling I wished to capture, beloved! After all, have you not conquered this castle? It was abandoned, and you have made it your own!”
“I didn’t come here to conquer anyone,” I said. “I’m worried it’s going to send the wrong message.”
“Come on, Miss Sunset,” Ruby Drop said. “Princess Celestia is always saying you’d be happier if you weren’t so mean to yourself all the time.”
“Princess Celestia says that?” I asked.
“Uh huh! She gives me lessons when you’re out doing missions. She’s really nice but she seems kinda sad sometimes too when she talks about you.”
“I… didn’t ever want to make her sad,” I said quietly.
“She’d probably be a lot less sad if she got to see you when you were happy,” Ruby said. “Maybe you should invite her to the party!”
“Next time,” I said. I wasn’t even lying. Maybe I did need to make more of an effort. Princess Celestia tried, but I always ended up feeling awkward and ruining it.
“There may not even be a first time,” Shahrazad sighed. “It has been several hours and I have not heard the beating of wings burdened with purpose and a delivery of party supplies.”
“That’s because I had to walk,” Gilda said, slamming the front door behind her. “This stuff is too heavy to carry in the air.” She dragged a big burlap sack in behind her. “It took a while because I had to get promises from everybird about prices before I started actually buying anything. If I flashed bits around, they’d have taken me for everything I was worth.”
“And they still honored the prices after they knew you had money?” I asked.
“Sure. They wouldn’t go back on it, or else nobird would deal with them next time. Besides, they got the prices they wanted! I didn’t cheat anybird.” Gilda opened the bag and started taking things out. “Acorn flower, berry juice, all the fresh fruit I could find, and a bunch more stuff.”
“We can definitely throw a great party with all this,” I said. “We just need someone to turn the ingredients into food that griffons might like.”
“Is that meat?” Ruby asked, pointing at something wrapped up in brown paper.
“Uh…” Gilda hesitated and looked at me.
“I’m going to guess it is,” I said. “It’s okay, Gilda. Griffons eat meat. If we didn’t have any, I bet they’d complain about it, and I already said I wanted to do this griffon-style.”
“It’s nothing that used to talk,” Gilda promised. “Griffons don’t do that kind of thing. It’s just from rock crawlers, mountain trout, and some crayfish.”
“I know how to cook those!” Gabby said, excited. “I can’t do much with the acorn flour, but I know you can bake, Gilda!”
I remembered what the scones had been like. “Uh…” I hesitated. “You know what? I’ve got some tips on baking, as long as you don’t mind me giving you some secret recipes from Pinkie Pie.”
“I, uh… I wouldn’t mind that,” Gilda said. “Oh, right. I got one other thing.”
She pulled a folded newspaper out of the bag. It looked like the Canterlot Times.
“Why’d you get that?” I asked.
“Take a look at the front page news,” Gilda said. I took it from her and opened it up. I felt my heart skip a beat.
“Oh no,” I groaned. The headline was there in stark black and white right in front of me.
Sunset Shimmer: Queen of Griffonstone?
“Half of the ponies in the paper seem to think you came here to conquer us,” Gilda said. She seemed halfway between angry and amused and very solidly annoyed. “The other half think you’re on some kind of secret mission like… what’s a Crystal Empire?”
“A place north of Equestria,” I sighed. “It reappeared after a thousand years. Cadance is sort of ruling it now.”
“They elected her?”
“Not… exactly,” I admitted. “But she has the symbol of the Empire as part of her cutie mark, and with King Sombra gone, they need somepony to lead them. It’s okay! He was evil, and when I took him down--”
“You took him down?” Gilda asked. “So a bunch of ponies walked into a kingdom, got rid of the old king, and then declared themselves in charge?”
“Uh…” I hesitated, then shrugged and nodded. “I guess it’s something like that.”
Gilda looked around the room, at all the banners with my cutie mark on them. “I can’t imagine why some reporters might get weird ideas,” she said.
“Good work, Ruby,” I said, unable to hold back a grin. “I didn’t know you were that good with illusion spells!”
“It’s nothing special,” Ruby said, scuffing her hoof on the ground and looking embarrassed at the praise. It was a lot more endearing than I’d been when somepony had praised me at her age, and she’d definitely earned it.
Ruby had taken it upon herself to provide music for the party, and in my opinion, she’d really outdone herself. She’d created several overlapping illusions playing phantom instruments on repeat, along with glowing, sketchy outlines of a griffon band. It was a little like the neon signs plastered all over Las Pegasus, but right next to the dance floor.
“I only know a couple songs, so it’s probably going to end up looping a few times,” she apologized. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, this is great! I hadn’t even thought about entertainment.” I gave her a pat on the back. “I’m really proud of you. I think you did a better job with it than I would have. I’ve never been any good with illusions. If we needed something set on fire, I could be all over it, but that’s not usually a great party trick.”
“Thank you,” Ruby mumbled.
“Let’s get something to drink,” I suggested. “The berry juice punch that Gabby put together looked pretty good.”
She nodded, and we made our way across the room. The griffons hadn’t relaxed into things enough to actually start dancing, but once enough of them had started to show up they opened up a bit and little knots of conversation had formed, mostly joking with each other about the state of the old castle.
I grabbed two cups of bright red punch and found Ruby staring at a tray of little crackers with a curl of something pink and a dollop of white on top.
“Is that the meat stuff?” Ruby whispered.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think it’s crayfish and some kind of cheese.”
“Is it safe to try?” she asked.
I raised an eyebrow at that, but shrugged. “Sure. It won’t hurt you or anything, but it’s an acquired taste.”
“I should at least try it, right?” Ruby said, clearly trying to justify it to me and herself. “It’d be rude if I didn’t eat the local food.”
That was logic I couldn’t argue against. I motioned to the platter, giving her the go-ahead, not that she really needed my permission. She picked one up gingerly and sniffed at it. I decided to show some solidarity with my student and took one too, tapping mine against hers and winking.
“Bottoms up,” I said, popping it in my mouth. For something basically thrown together with what was in the market that day, it was pretty impressive. It would have passed muster at a party in Canterlot, not that anypony in Canterlot would actually eat meat. Unless they saw Princess Celestia do it first, in which case it’d be the new fad and the nobility would start opening steakhouses.
“It tastes like…” Ruby looked a little grossed out, but she swallowed it without complaint. “Sort of like weird stringy mushrooms and mud. And cheese. The cheese is pretty good.”
“Try some punch,” I said, giving her a glass to wash the taste out of her mouth.
“There you are. I was expecting you at the door!”
I turned at the chipper, clipped voice with more than a touch of that upper-class Canterlot accent. I knew right away it was a pony, but I was less happy to find that they had a press badge.
“Graphite Paper, I’m with the Canterlot Herald,” she said. I nodded. I knew what the paper was basically like. In a world with papers that ranged from paranoid worrying about everything Princess Luna might do to reporting purely on the movement of stock prices, they’d carved out a niche for themselves as having near-religious devotion to the crown.
“I didn’t expect anyone from Equestria to show up,” I said. “This was sort of announced and put together quickly.”
“Yes,” she said, sniffing haughtily and looking around. She seemed to approve of the decor even more than Shahrazad did. “I was rather expecting you to be greeting guests at the door.”
“Like Celestia does at the Gala?” I asked. She nodded. I could see the notebook and pen hovering at her side and recording every word. I was going to have to be careful with what I told her if I didn’t want to end up causing some kind of international incident. Again. “I understand why you might expect that. It is the biggest night of the year in Canterlot, and this is similar in some ways. But the key difference is, ponies go to the Gala to meet the Princess and other ponies of note, and just getting to talk to her and shake her hoof is practically worth the price of the ticket.”
I didn’t mention that they could also try writing her a letter and seeing if she’d show up. Celestia enjoyed randomly appearing at foal’s birthday parties. Watching the parents scramble to accommodate her was half the fun.
“Speaking of that, I understand that to attend this party, all attendees are required to swear an oath to forgive all debts owed to them?” she asked. “Can you explain that?”
“Oh sure,” I said. “I’m going to guess that you and your readers don’t know much about the current state of Griffonstone -- and I’m not blaming you for that, I don’t think anypony knew outside of the local area. They’ve been dealing with an environmental crisis that has destroyed livelihoods and made life difficult for the last few decades, and because they’re a proud and resilient people, they’ve survived everything.”
“Yes, I did note the town was somewhat… lacking in amenities.”
“Right,” I agreed. “They’ve survived, but they haven’t been able to thrive. They’ve all been helping each other, because they know the greatest resource they have is the griffons around them.”
Graphite nodded and jotted down what I was saying.
“Over the years this has created a kind of massive web of debt. We can’t see it, but the griffons are acutely aware of how much they owe each other, and it ties them down. No one can get ahead because they’re all stuck in the past, in a way.”
“And you think making them forgive these debts are going to help them?”
“I sure hope so!” I said. “It’s the best idea I’ve had so far on how to help.”
“Ponies in Canterlot are very interested in what you might be doing here,” Graphite said. “So Princess Celestia sent you here to help Griffonstone?”
“Princess Celestia didn’t send me here,” I corrected. “I came here on my own. Actually I was just taking a vacation.”
“After all the excitement with the coronation of Princess Twilight Sparkle?”
I forced myself to keep smiling. “Something like that.”
Another pony forced herself past what I realized was a growing ring of griffons watching us. She held up a tape recorder, pointing the microphone towards me. “Late Edition, with the Pressgang Press! Is this related to the recent regime change in the Crystal Empire? Rumors say that you were present there and had a hoof in putting Princess Cadance into power!”
“It’s really not related to that at all,” I said. “That was an emergency situation. The ponies of the Crystal Empire were in immediate danger. There’s no such danger here. Griffonstone has been here for generations and it’s going to be here for generations more.”
“And will you be the new ruler?” Late Edition asked. “Your flag and cutie mark have been very prominently displayed around the castle! Can you really assure our viewers that this is not yet another territorial claim by Equestria like the Crystal Empire and Appleoosa?”
“I’m just visiting,” I tried to assure her. And all the griffons listening and pretending they weren't paying attention. “I don’t think the griffons need a pony to come in and save them. They can solve all their own problems. They’re also our friends and allies -- plenty of griffons visit, work and go to school in Equestria. If anything, we’ve been poor friends to them by not coming over to visit, and I’m trying to make up for that by throwing this party with their help! You should try some of the food -- it’s all local specialties and we don’t get to experience griffon food enough in Equestria.”
I really hoped nothing I said was going to be taken out of context later. I was using the kind of boilerplate and deflection that Celestia had always used with the press, but they were usually kind to her even when she misspoke.
I made a few more excuses and managed to get away from the press before I said anything too awful. I spotted Shahrazad and made my way over to her, knowing that if the reporters did follow, she was overqualified to twist them around her hoof.
“Ah, Sunset,” the princess said. “I was just speaking with these two fine griffons.” She motioned with her cup to the two griffons she’d been chatting with. “May I introduce Gravin and Grable?”
Gravin was tall and thin, reminding me of some kind of egret. Grable was owl-like and almost entirely grey with age, though he carried it better than Grandpa Gruff. “It’s nice to meet you,” I said, shaking their talons.
“You know, when I heard about this party, it seemed like darned fool thing,” Grable said. “Do you know how many of these birds owe me their lives? I was telling my wife that half of the birds in town still owe me bits that their grandfathers borrowed from me!”
“It’s generous of you to come, considering,” I offered.
He made a sound at the back of his throat. “No, I was in the middle of telling her how much of a fool idea it was when I realized just why you were doing this. There really are birds here who’ve inherited debt from their grandfathers, like this youngling here.” He nudged Gravin. “It shouldn’t be their responsibility but that’s just how we thought of things. I loaned those bits to help other birds. It doesn’t help anybird if they’re in debt for a hundred years that they didn’t even take on themselves.”
“It was an easy decision for me,” Gravin joked. “I never had the bits to loan anyone!”
Grable laughed and patted him on the back. “And you still won’t after this, but at least you won’t be deep in the red from me!”
“I’m hoping other griffons understand things as well as you do,” I said.
“There are always going to be a few holdouts,” Grable said. “Bunch of grumpy old birds. They probably think they’re smart because they’ll be able to demand everybird pays them back since they don’t owe bits to anybird else. But what about after that? Who’s going to want to take a loan from them ever again knowing how greedy they are?”
“Maybe if this becomes a regular thing, they’ll have to come to the party just so other birds won’t shun them,” Gravin said.
“That can be a powerful motivation,” Shahrazad agreed.
“Making it a regular event is a pretty good idea,” I said. “The griffons who don’t come will be able to see that it made things better for the ones who did.” I gave them a smile. “And more importantly, it’s nice to just come together and have a celebration once in a while.”
Grable snorted. “Just don’t expect us to call it Sunset Shimmer Day!”
“Please don’t,” I begged jokingly. “Even something like ‘forgiveness day’ is better, and that’s a terrible name. I’m sure someone around here is better at naming things than I am.”
“Of course we are,” Grable agreed. “Pony names all sound the same. It’s either horse puns or rhyming words. Or both.”
“Sometimes there’s alliteration,” I said, pretending to be defensive. We all laughed. I was starting to think that everything had gone off without a hitch, which of course meant that everything was counting down to the next disaster.
I spotted Gilda carrying a tray out of the back, and made my escape to go and check up on her. I slowed as I approached and raised an eyebrow when I saw what she was wearing. I’d caught a glimpse of something and assumed it was an apron from baking in the kitchen, but there was significantly more lace than anything designed just to be practical.
I raised an eyebrow, opened my mouth to say something, and Gilda moved like a cobra, jamming something in there before any words could escape. I bit down on instinct and was pleasantly surprised with a delicate crunch and the flavor of roasted nuts and pepper.
“Mmm!” I nodded in approval.
“It’s my great-grandma’s pepper cookie recipe,” Gilda said. She hesitated. “Sort of. When I got the recipe, it didn’t have baking powder or anything, so they were a little different.”
“More like bite-sized peppery rocks?”
“Yeah,” Gilda admitted. “You know how it is. We didn’t have some of the stuff in the original recipe my great-grandma used, so we’d use a different flower, or half the sugar, or…” She gave me a shrug. “One thing changed at a time and eventually it was rocks.”
“These are a lot better,” I said. “It’s sort of like gingerbread.”
“Those tips you gave me helped out,” she admitted. “Maybe I’ll try some of it when I’m making scones. If they’re good enough, birds will actually buy them and not just complain at me.”
“You should thank Pinkie Pie. I didn’t know anything about baking until she pulled me aside and made me learn.” I smiled at the memory. “She said it was to help with a big order but I slowed her down way more than I actually helped. I’m pretty sure she really just had a ton of extra ingredients and got permission from the Cakes to teach me how to make something besides stew.”
“Stew’s good, though,” Gilda said.
“Sure. It’s hard to mess up even if you just throw all your odds and ends into a cauldron and boil them until they’re soft enough to eat.” I looked around and saw Gabby holding a tray and offering delicate glasses to guests. “Wait a minute, is that wine?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Gilda shrugged. “We have to preserve a lot of food for the bad months, so that’s a lot of pickles and a lot of wine. It doesn’t sound so bad until you’ve been stuck eating pickled wild onions and beets for a month and drinking watered-down berry wine.”
“That sounds…” I hesitated.
“It’s better than starving,” Gilda shrugged. “Sometimes there’s salt trout. You have to boil it, but I like to sneak a little bit raw.”
“It’s preserved by basically mummifying it with salt, right? Wouldn’t raw just be like… a fish-flavored salt lick?”
“Exactly,” Gilda agreed, licking the edge of her beak.
I shook my head and held back a laugh, but my amusement was cut very short because a second later, a harsh gust of wind hit the castle hard enough to rattle all of the recently-repaired windows, a draft finding its way inside and making the drapes and curtains ripple.
Every griffon quieted and looked up and around, holding their wings tight to their sides and seeming nervous. When the wind died back down to nothing, they started to relax, but there was a tense edge to the atmosphere.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s nothing,” Gilda said. “It’s just getting close to the dry season. You don’t have anything to worry about, this castle is the toughest building in town. I bet every bird who had you fix up their place is feeling pretty smart right about now.”
“Is there anything we should do?” I asked.
Gilda shrugged. “Smile more. Ponies usually smile all the time.”
The party went on pretty far into the night, and it was technically morning when the last few griffons left. Gabby had wanted to stick around and clean, but I’d told her to get some rest. She’d worked harder than anyone else in making the party a success, and I was going to have to figure out how to repay her for that.
“It was an exceptional event, beloved,” Shahrazad said. She looked down at my lap and smiled. Ruby was snoring softly. Somehow she’d ended up with a glass of wine and that had sent her right into an early bedtime.
“It did go well,” I agreed. “I think most of Griffonstone showed up. If they stick to the promises they made, it might help things in the long run.”
“Yes,” Shahrazad agreed. “You may have saved something of worth here, merely by throwing a party.”
“It’s not just throwing a party, the party was an excuse.”
“An excuse they needed. Every culture’s ideas and values are different. In my nation, debt does not truly exist. Not as it does here, enumerated and counted. Things are given as gifts and repayment is expected but not demanded. Instead of trading bits, we trade favors and aid. Here, it seems they want repayment in kind.”
“Yeah. And unlike Equestria, debts never go bad. What that one griffon, Grable, said? About how there were griffons in his debt who’d inherited it from their ancestors? That kind of got to me. We’d never do things that way in Equestria. Children don’t inherit debts.”
“Indeed. It is cruel and archaic in the way rules are when they are made to protect the strong and not the weak,” Shahrazad agreed. “Ponies are prey animals by nature. Our societies formed because we needed each other for protection, and our laws and traditions come from a desire to protect the weak because we are so often weak.”
“Griffons aren’t prey,” I noted. “They’re predators.”
“Yes. But not apex predators. Their ancestors hid from manticores and dragons and other beasts. There are books here of ancient griffon history that your student has been repairing and they are fascinating to read. The first griffon tribes were something like cults of personality, growing around strong leaders who demanded tribute for protection. Their laws reflect that to this day.”
“I guess that’s one reason things fell apart so badly when the king left,” I suggested.
“And why they reacted so poorly to the loss of a symbol of power,” Shahrazad agreed. “The spirit of the griffons demands a strong and powerful leader that can protect them.”
“That might be what some of them want, but what they need is to stick together and help each other. They’ve mostly figured that out already by themselves.”
“Yet they needed an outsider to come in and tell them how to better themselves,” Shahrazad pointed out. “They needed an outsider strong enough to lift their spirits and make them listen, but with the wisdom to know that cooperation and community are the key to a stable life for all the griffons here.”
“Shahrazad--”
“They needed you, beloved. And do not pretend otherwise! You have been raised by a ruler, to rule. You have the power and the right to do so! The griffons would be happier for it, and you would have the respect you deserve!”
I rolled my eyes. “I am not conquering a nation for you, Shahrazad.”
“Beloved, in some ways you already have and I am just waiting for you to realize it.”
I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I sure remember waking up. I snapped from completely out of it right to emergency mode at the sound of shattering glass. I jumped to my hooves, shoving Ruby off my lap, and I was instantly scanning the room and ready to throw a fireball at the first thing that moved.
It took a few moments for raw alertness to be replaced with thought. The panic dropped away and I let the spell fade when I saw there were no intruders.
A gust of wind blew through the room and I followed it to a broken window, a long board stabbed through the frame. Another massive wash of air pushed through, strong enough that I almost felt like it was trying to knock me over. I shielded my face and pushed the debris away before casting a repair spell on the window, the glass shards re-fusing into solid panes.
“This is one heck of a storm,” I mumbled.
“Sunset?” Ruby groaned. “Is everything okay?”
“Go back to bed,” I told her. “It was just the window--”
Someone started pounding on the door, the pace frantic and panicked. I rushed over and pulled it open. When I saw the griffon outside, and the expression on their face, I knew there was trouble, bad trouble.
“Explain on the way,” I said, before they even started. I saw surprise in their eyes and they nodded, turning and running down the street. I chased after them through the dark, wind tearing at me from all angles. One moment, it would be pushing us to the left, and then a moment later we’d stumble as it veered right.
“One of the old houses collapsed!” the griffon shouted over the wind. “Greta and her father are trapped inside!”
“It’s not one of the ones I repaired, is it?” I asked, worried if I’d somehow messed it up.
“No, and that’s the problem! All the ones you fixed are fine, but this storm is early! We usually do some work to prep everything for the bad season, but nobird bothered yet!” They turned and skidded to a halt, shielding their eyes as a zephyr kicked up around them, throwing sand and rocks around in a tight spiral. I used a burst of force to rip the cyclone apart before it could reach me.
“Is that it over there?” I shouted, pointing to where griffons were trying to move a house-sized pile of debris.
They nodded, and I bolted over to see what I could do. I just needed to figure out who was in charge.
“There you are!” Grandpa Gruff yelled. “We need to get them out of there, but if we move anything, the rest might crush them! What do we do?”
Everyone was staring at me, and I realized with growing anxiety that in fact, I was the one in charge. Great. There wasn’t even time to stand around and dither and make someone else do all the thinking.
“Take a step back!” I called out, before letting out a pulse of magic, gently touching everything in the pile with telekinesis. I had to lift it all at once. Things were leaning on each other and tangled up, and I could feel where it was already starting to slip.
I could also feel something alive and moving down in there.
There really wasn’t time to second-guess myself. I just lifted up the whole house, letting the magic flow through me and just riding the torrent, focusing more on locking everything in place than being clever or conservative. The night burned with my magic, red and cyan washing over each other in waves.
“I’ve got it!” I yelled, hefting it above roof height. “Get them out of there!”
Grandpa Gruff and another griffon ran in, pulling the two injured birds out, letting them lean on their sides for support as they limped away.
“Is everyone out?” I called out. I had to hold it up and keep it still. There wasn’t anywhere to put it down unless I wanted to crush another house with what was left of this one.
“We’re good!” Gruff yelled back. “You can put it down!”
I eased the wreckage down to the ground, gently putting it back in the same hoofprint before letting go, a few loose pieces of debris crashing down when the magic faded away.
I wiped my brow. “Okay! Take them to the castle! There’s plenty of room there and it’s sturdy! Anyone else who needs shelter, send them too! I don’t want anybird getting killed in this storm!”
“Will do!” one of the griffons shouted, saluting. I rolled my eyes at that.
“Wait!” The younger of the two griffons they’d pulled from the wreckage ran over to me, favoring one of her legs. “It wasn’t the wind! There was something that tore the house down trying to get to us!”
“Something?” I asked. I’d hunted more than enough monsters that I wasn’t going to discount what she was saying as just the same panic a child might have of the darkness in their closet. “Did you get a look at it?”
“No, we were taking shelter, but…” She looked around nervously.
“Hey, pony!” Grandpa Griff shouted. He held up a board. There were huge claw marks across it, wider than his talons and scorched around the edges in a zig-zag pattern like a tree had been etched into the wood. “I think she’s right about the monster.”
I nodded, taking the board and giving it a closer look. All I could tell was that I didn’t want to have to hoof-wrestle whatever had done it.
“Get everyone inside,” I said. “If it was trying to get inside, it couldn’t get them while they were in there. We’re in more danger standing around out here and waiting for it to come at us. It’s probably just waiting for--”
Lightning crashed across the sky. There wasn’t even a trace of rain, and with the winds blowing like this, the clouds should have been torn to shreds.
“Go!” I shouted, not having time to tell them all the reasons they shouldn’t be in the middle of the street when a monster might be running around in the dark. I scanned the black sky, trying to spot anything out of place. I couldn’t imagine anything had come here on foot. It was hard enough getting here even if you knew exactly where Griffonstone was.
There was another flash of light, a bolt slamming down only a street away, hitting an old weathervane and blasting it apart. The sound was deafening, but in that strobe of bright light I’d seen it. A huge bird in the sky, like an eagle hovering overhead. The lightning had come from it, outlining its wings before lancing to the ground.
“It’s a thunderbird,” Grandpa Gruff said, looking up with me. “They’re one of the only things that can fly when the weather’s this bad. It’s when they come out to hunt!”
“You get inside too,” I told him.
“You ever fought a thunderbird?” he asked. “You know anything about them? I didn’t think so! I’ll have you know--”
Another bolt of lightning came down, this time right on top of us. It hit the wall of magic I threw in front of it, a wide spherical section that deflected most of it down into the ground and faded back into near-invisibility once the strike had faded.
“Everyone go!” I yelled, loud enough that I could be heard over the ringing in my ears. They didn’t need more prompting. Griffons ran for the nearest shelter, and I stayed at the rear, keeping an eye on where I thought the next attack might come from. I was pretty sure there was only one thunderbird up there, but the pre-dawn darkness blacker than midnight was making it impossible to tell.
Another forked bolt came down, and I threw a shield over the griffon it was aimed at, just barely making it in time, grounding the lightning just hoof-widths from them. The force of the thunderbolt knocked them back, and I caught them, getting them back on their feet and ushering them along. They were probably half-blind and deaf, but they kept moving on instinct, running for the castle.
“Okay you vulture, come on,” I growled. “You must be getting pretty annoyed that I’m not letting you fry any chicken! Come down here and fight me!”
I lit up my horn brightly, making myself the most obvious target in Griffonstone.
The wind started to pick up again, whipping past me. It felt like it had an evil purpose, like it was carrying malice along with dry leaves and straw ripped from thatched roofs. It would have been really dramatic looking if I’d grabbed one of my many black cloaks before stepping out, but I’d been in too much of a rush.
“Come on,” I whispered, looking around. “Where are you? I’m right here!”
I was listening for the beating of huge wings, but what I got was a scream. I spun around, and the thunderbird was on top of someone’s house, ripping through the thatched roof with a talon as big as I was. It pulled a griffon chick that couldn’t have been any older than Ruby out like it was picking a berry from a bush.
“Get away from her!” I didn’t have time to run, so I tore a hole in the universe and teleported on top of the roof, surprising the bird with a burst of bright light right in its face. I’d fought plenty of giant birds before, and this one wasn’t even made out of rocks or half-bear. It didn’t scare me just because it had a wingspan as wide as a city block and feathers crackling with lightning.
And from this angle, I could blast it without catching anyone or anything in the line of fire. Literal fire. I threw a burst of blue flames into its face, and it scrambled, spreading its wings for a quick take-off, still holding the griffon chick.
I jumped onto the talon, stomped on its knuckles, and it let go, still confused and reeling. The griffon screamed and fell. I jumped after her, catching her in midair and teleporting again, reappearing in a burst of magic next to the castle.
“Here,” I said, putting her in the hooves of a very surprised reporter who opened their mouth to ask a question. I was gone before they could start distracting me. I hadn’t hit the monster anywhere near hard enough to kill it, and I only caught a glimpse of it flying back up into the air before it vanished behind the haze the winds were carrying.
The thunderbird was probably more angry than afraid, and my experience in the Everfree told me when an apex predator like that got upset enough, it always reacted the same way. I was challenging it, and it had to establish dominance.
I stood out in the open, my horn glowing. It had always been an obvious challenge but now it would take me seriously.
Lightning struck from the side, crashing against my shield with enough force to make me take a step away. I threw a bolt of fire into the sky in that general direction and didn’t hit anything. A second later, another thunderbolt raked my shield from the other side, almost breaking through because of my distraction.
I swore under my breath and tossed a bigger fireball into the sky, a burst that was way off target but for an instant I caught a glimpse of the thunderbird circling me. With how dark it was, I couldn’t pinpoint it well enough to hit it with any spell worth using.
“You can’t hide from me that easily,” I said. Not that it could hear me even if it could understand me. Were thunderbirds smart enough to know when they were in trouble? I’d find out in a minute.
Light spells were one of the easiest things in the world to cast. Even a foal could light up a whole room. Celestia brought light to the entire world every morning, and she made it look easy. All I needed was something in-between the two extremes. I threw a light spell into the air, overcharged with as much magic as I could put into it, the spell eating most of its own energy just keeping itself together against the pressure of how much I was forcing it to output.
A red sun dawned over Griffonstone, and miles of mountains saw an early daybreak.
The thunderbird was clearly visible in the bright sky, slowing and looking around with obvious confusion.
“Got you now,” I said. I probably should have just scared it off. Predators like that wouldn’t come back around if they knew something bigger and badder had claimed it as territory. But… it had gone after a kid. That just rubbed me the wrong way.
It threw another bolt of lightning and I met it halfway with a thin lance of blue plasma. The electricity bent around my spell, the heat and pressure shoving the ionized air away and forcing it to ground far off target, shooting past me and cracking into a peak on another mountain.
My spell stayed right on course, hitting the thunderbird dead-center in the chest. It froze in motion. The black feathers faded to bone white, and its cry ended in an empty echoing screech as it totally calcified, my spell petrifying it.
In mid-air.
It had enough inertia to keep going on a long ballistic arc, smashing into a mountain peak and shattering, the pieces cascading down in a landslide.
“That’s what you get,” I said. Now I just needed to make sure no one else was in immediate trouble. I walked back up towards the castle, and even with the wind whipping around us there were still griffons and ponies standing outside, all of them staring at me in the red light.
“That was…” one of the griffons started, trailing off.
“Oh, right, sorry.” I looked up and dismissed the light spell, letting it fade away and bleed off. “I don’t think it crushed anything important? If it did, we’ll move the rubble in the morning, okay?”
He nodded, speechless. I really hoped there hadn’t been anything important over there like someone’s secret vegetable garden.
“Ah, Miss Sunset Shimmer?” I vaguely recognized the voice. I looked over at the knot of reporters that had arrived for the party.
“You’re Late Edition, right? With the Pressgang Press?” I asked. “There’s plenty of room in the castle for guests. Just don’t ask for a refund from whoever rented you a room before.” I gave her a smile. “Refunds aren’t really a part of the local culture.”
“We were camping, but-- it’s not about that.” She cleared her throat. “I was watching what happened. Well, all of us were watching.”
“Oh,” I said, getting a sinking feeling. This was probably about the way I’d handled the situation. Anypony else might have done a better job. If Twilight and her friends had been here they probably would have talked the thunderbird down with Fluttershy’s help, found out that it had some starving chicks somewhere, made a new friend, and everyone would be cheering.
“That was one of the most incredible magic displays I’ve ever seen!” Late Edition said, her eyes wide with… awe? “I know that in the past you’ve rarely spoken candidly with the press, but can you confirm the rumors that you’re Princess Celestia’s biological daughter, or a secret alicorn, or an ancient fire spirit--”
“Woah, woah!” I blinked in surprise. “I’m just a regular unicorn.”
“No regular unicorn can perform spellcraft like that!”
“Twilight could,” I shrugged.
“You’re referring to Princess Twilight Sparkle, the alicorn? Who wields an ancient artifact of incredible magic power and was tutored by Princess Celestia herself? Are you claiming that’s really your basis for an average unicorn’s ability?”
“Maybe not the best example,” I admitted, trying not to let anything slip. “It’s just not easy thinking of a pony you tutored like royalty, even somepony as obviously special as--”
“You also tutored Princess Sparkle?!” Late Edition asked.
“I mean… yeah,” I said, shrugging. Was this not common knowledge? I mean, we’d hid it at the time because I was literally a paranoid wreck hiding away from the world, but I’d assumed that after the Nightmare Moon thing it had eventually gotten to be public. “I met her when she was a filly and taught her a few tricks. Obviously she’s outgrown me, and I’m very proud of her and how far she’s come.”
And I meant that. I didn’t hate her. I wasn’t jealous. I was disappointed in myself for not having the same kind of talent.
I didn’t really sleep for the rest of that night, even after the winds started to die down around sunrise. I was just too wired with adrenaline and the worry that some other monster might be lurking out there in the dark. More than that, part of me felt like I had to keep watch over everyone in the castle. I owed it to them to give up a night of sleep to make sure all of them could rest safely.
Nobody else slept too well, but they at least slept safely, and when the sun peeked over the jagged horizon I got a look at what the storm had done to Griffonstone. I’d thought that the griffons had just been lazy or didn’t care about how broken and damaged their homes were, but the windstorm had undone almost all the work I’d done. If it was like that for months on end...
“That wasn’t so bad,” Grandpa Gruff said, yawning and stepping up next to me. “Looks like nothing got blown clear off the mountain. That happens sometimes, especially with early storms when nobird’s expecting it. Just wake up one day and the house next to yours is gone like it never existed.”
Grandpa Gruff was not helping the mood, and I tried to give him a look that communicated the fact. He laughed and gave me a slap on the back hard enough to sting.
“You ponies are as soft as milk pudding,” he chuckled. Then his eyes strayed to the pile of rubble clearly visible on the mountainside. “Well, maybe not entirely soft.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”
“You did enough,” Gruff said, patting me a little more gently. “The bad nights like that end with birds missing in the storm and all of us hoping it was quick. The only thing we lost was some stuff, and all our stuff was junk anyway. We can get more.”
“I was thinking about what you told us, how this place didn’t used to be so bad. Until that storm I thought you might have exaggerated things. That storm didn’t feel at all natural.”
“Natural, unnatural, nothing we can do about it! We don’t have a fancy pony weather team here to keep the skies clear, and the last time any of them showed up all they did was apologize and leave. You’ve already done more than any other pony ever has.”
He gave me one last slap on the back for good measure and started walking away. “I make a decent cup of tea. Ain’t like how you ponies do it, but you’re welcome to try it as long as you don’t complain. I won’t even charge you for the first sip!”
I smiled and shook my head. I hadn’t even noticed it until then, but Grandpa Gruff hadn’t even tried asking for bits the whole time we’d been talking. Maybe he thought he owed me for sheltering him, or maybe I’d really gotten on his good side.
“Thanks for the save last night,” Late Edition said. “To be honest, some of the rumors about you, even the ones we printed… some of them haven’t been kind, and you probably know that.”
I shrugged. “I don’t care all that much, but I know Luna took it personally when you said the thestrals were cursed by Nightmare Moon.”
“We all owe you, and after the way you protected everyone here, we want to correct the record. As far as we’re concerned, you’re the savior of Griffonstone, a real hero, with no magic trinkets or prophecy to help you.”
“The griffons are the real heroes,” I said. “They’ve been hanging on for dear life with weather like last night’s going on for half the year. Equestria hasn’t been helping them because just like me, they’re too stubborn to ask for it when they really need it.”
“I’d hate to see a situation where you’re the one outmatched,” Late Edition said.
“Just about anything where diplomacy is involved,” I joked. “I’m guessing most of you are going to be heading back on the train?”
Late Edition nodded. “Hopefully. If nothing happened to the tracks.”
“If you get there and you need debris shifted, you know where to find me,” I said. “If there’s anything I’m good at, it’s heavy lifting.”
“Thank you again, Miss Sunset or… what is your official title?”
“I don’t even know at this point. Ponies keep trying to hang new ones on me, but I’ve been able to keep them from sticking.”
Late Edition gave me a small, tired smile and nodded before walking off, speaking softly into her tape recorder as she trotted away. I’d have to pass the tip along to Twilight. With her new title, she’d probably need to find a way to deal with the press, and if a monster attack got them on my good side, well, they were practically a weekly event down in Ponyville. Seeing her fight off a Hydra might make even the most hardened reporter decide not to run a hit story.
The rest of the griffons eventually got up, the noise and sunlight starting to make them stir and everyone snapping awake when a rooster’s call crossed with the croak of an eagle echoed through the hall. It was immediately met with yelling.
An hour later, when I’d broken up the fight, begged the biggest chicken in the world to sleep in the next day, and gotten the rest of the griffons moving on home, I was finally able to sit with a cup of coffee and let the warmth soothe me from inside-out.
“All the papers are going to be calling you a hero,” Shahrazad noted. “Not undeserved, either.”
“The griffons--”
“Please, beloved. Saying they are the real heroes is good press, but the simple truth is you defeated a terrible foe. Surviving is not heroic, it is what a victim does. The griffons are victims, and we should help them and pity them, but we should not want to be them.”
“You could be nicer to them,” I said.
“I find them admirable,” Shahrazad said. “They are independent and strong. They are much like you, beloved. You might not want to rule them, but they need a ruler more akin to your strengths than those of Princess Celestia.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for somebird who fits the bill,” I said, emphasizing the bird part of that word. “Actually, I should be asking around. Someone in town must know more about the Idol of Boreas. This place went to Tartarus when it was lost, and I want to know why.”
“I know someone who might help!” Ruby Drop called out. “But… I’m only gonna tell you if you let me have a cup of coffee!”
“There’s no way this stuff is good for foals,” I said.
“It’s basically roasted bean juice,” Ruby said. “Come on, please?”
“One cup,” I conceded. “But you’d better really have something.”
Ruby grinned and poured herself a cup from the tin percolator and put a big book on the table. She started sipping at the coffee before explaining herself. “This is the journal of King Guto, the last king of Griffonstone! I’ve been using the repair spells you taught me to fix it, and now it’s practically good as new. Well, you know. Not new new like a blank journal you’d get at the store. It’s new like all the pages are clean and the ink is un-smeared!”
The more coffee Ruby drank, the faster she spoke. It was almost up to Pinkie Pie speeds by the time she’d emptied her cup.
“It doesn’t just stop when he lost the idol,” she says. “It keeps going for a while after that. I didn’t read it in a lot of detail but I had to flip through the pages when I was repairing it to make sure I got it all right.”
“This could be a big help,” I agreed, picking up the book and opening it up.
King Guto’s writing at the start of the book was strong and terse, more like he was writing a book of advice for future descendants than just keeping a journal for himself. Since it had been stored in the castle library, or what passed for one, maybe that was exactly what he expected, to pass down what he learned as king from one generation to the next. It detailed advice on crop rotation, the markets, their allies… I was amused to find notes on Equestria and Princess Celestia.
“Sounds like he might have had a little crush,” I muttered, as I read his glowing praise and descriptions of her cutie mark and the surrounding areas.
“Does he say anything about the wind?” Shahrazad asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “Not until…” I trailed off as the style of writing changed.
The letters became lighter, scratchier, not painted onto the page but just scribbled in wavering lines, with some of it scratched out and more notes written in the margins.
“Here we go,” I said. I scanned the page, skimming what he’d written. “It looks like there really was a years-long storm after the Idol was lost. It says here he decided to offer a huge reward to any griffon who retrieved the Idol. A title, a fortune, land, anything they wanted.”
“And they did not get it, even when a reward was offered?” Shahrazad asked.
I turned the page. It was a short entry. “The three best fliers in Griffonstone braved the winds to go after it. Two of them died. One got back to the surface but his wings were so badly broken he never flew again. Then some griffons tried to force a child to go down with the idea that a smaller wingspan would make it easier for her to avoid the walls. He called a stop to it then.”
“Ah yes. Why not risk a child’s life to enrich the family?” Shahrazad scoffed.
“After that… it seems like he tried a lot of things,” I said. I flipped through the pages. There were long stretches where he just railed and despaired against the forces of nature and the typhoon around them. He detailed attempts to use ladders, complex arrangements of rope and pulleys, and even carving stones into the rock. None of it worked, and eventually, he blamed the griffons who had left for greener pastures and took so much with them.
“Did anything work?” Ruby asked. “Oh. I guess not, or he would have gotten it back…”
“The last thing he tried almost bankrupted Griffonstone and emptied the royal treasury,” I said. “He had the railroad extended up here into the mountains just so he could get something he called the Iron Egg delivered. It was something like a deep-sea diving bell, and he thought it would be heavy enough that the wind couldn’t do anything to it, and tough enough that it could survive a descent and being banged against the walls.”
“That nearly sounds like a good plan,” Shahrazad commended.
“He decided since good birds had died, he was going to be the only griffon inside,” I continued.
“Ah, and there is where the idea falls apart,” she said, nodding.
“Guto says he was sure there was a safe eye in the storm around where the Idol had fallen, and if he just got close enough, retrieving it would be easy. He has all these calculations about the wind with the speeds and direction, and he thought he found a pattern.”
“What happened?” Ruby asked.
“The journal goes right up to the day he had set for his mission,” I said, flipping to the last entry. “He mentions there’s no time left, and that he thinks the Idol is damaged from the fall. After that it just… ends. There’s no next day.”
“We can guess what happened,” Shahrazad said. “There are no tales of brave King Guto returning from the abyss, just the last king who lost the Idol, spent all of Griffonstone’s treasury trying to get it back, and vanished.”
“It’s not exactly a happy ending,” I agreed. I put the book down and rested my chin in my hoof, thinking.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Ruby Drop said. “This wasn’t that long ago, right? Grandpa Gruff is old but he’s not super-duper old like Princess Celestia, and he was around when they had the Idol. He said he even saw it himself!”
“Indeed,” Shahrazad said. “And King Guto extended the railroad as part of his scheme. As dilapidated as the station was, it was still modern.”
“I just don’t understand how all this could happen without anypony finding out,” Ruby Drop said. “Why is this a mystery?”
“Of all the virtues of Equestria, curiosity is the most rare,” Shahrazad said. “Most ponies rarely know anything that happens outside of their home town.”
“Princess Celestia has some bad habits too,” I admitted. “She’s immortal, and sometimes a few decades… slip. It’s like borrowing a book from the library, and you know you should return it the next time you go out, and you forget and it stays on your desk and then other books end up on top of it and by the time you find it again it’s because you’re throwing everything out of your room because you’re having a panic attack and you can’t stand being around anything that reminds you of the old you and you suddenly remember you were supposed to return it ten years ago!”
I panted, trying to catch my breath after that very normal explanation.
“That seems extremely specific and personal and you told me if you do something weird like that, I should remind you to talk about it with a therapist,” Ruby said.
“Thanks, Ruby,” I sighed.
“So what will you do?” Shahrazad asked. “All the griffons here are asking themselves that question. What answer will the great Sunset Shimmer give them?”
“I can’t just leave them like this, that’s for sure,” I sighed. “It’s selfish of me to think I can just walk in and solve a problem by myself that they couldn’t fix on their own, but I still want to try. I’d feel worse if I didn’t try.”
Shahrazad nodded and smiled with approval.
“Can you imagine how much of a jerk I’d be if I saw people getting hurt and just walked away?” I laughed.
“Of course,” Shahrazad agreed. “You would much prefer to risk your life in some incredibly dangerous, foolish way that would be certain death for any other pony. And when you survive whatever you’re planning, you will assure everyone around you that it really wasn’t that impressive.”
“That’s what I’d normally do,” I agreed. “But instead I’m going to do something I’ve never tried before. It’s going to be difficult, risky, and I wouldn’t even think of trying this if there was any other method.”
Shahrazad sighed. “Sunset, we can all tell when you’re being sarcastic.”
“I’m going to write a letter to Princess Celestia,” I admitted. “She probably knows something. Even if she doesn’t know it off the top of her head, she’s got the entire Canterlot Archives and as many grad students as she wants to do the research for her.”
“Truly a solution that any pony could use,” Shahrazad said. “Merely enlisting the aid of the immortal ruler of a nation, who would do almost anything to win your approval.”
“Huh?” I frowned, confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing, beloved.”
“I’ve got quills and ink here, Miss Sunset!” Ruby said. “What should we write?”
“It would probably be a good idea to explain everything that’s happened. Otherwise, she might get some weird ideas from what’s going to end up in the papers.” I thought about the best place to start. “Okay, let’s start with when we arrived…”
The reply came a few hours later, a swirling mote of flame and smoke dancing through the air and stopping right above me before flashing with light, a scroll dropping down and almost into my lunch before I caught it.
“That was fast,” I said. “She must have written this as soon as Day Court ended.”
I cracked the wax seal and unrolled the scroll. Ruby ran over and reared up to peer over my shoulder.
My Most Ambitious Sunset,
I was pleased to receive your letter, and it sounds as though I’ve kept Griffonstone at hoof-length for too long. I was aware of King Guto’s death, and left the griffons there alone to find their own path. I regret it now that I know how they’ve suffered, and I am sorry you have to clean up a mistake that should have been within my power to resolve.
The Idol of Boreas is, or was, a powerful artifact, but beyond the simple fact of its power, I do not know much. I know it had some control over the winds, and it far exceeded what pegasus magic would allow. It was enough that the Kings of Griffonstone were a force on par with Luna or me, and more than once it was instrumental in fending off attacks from marauding dragons.
I don’t know the origin of the Idol. I do know the first King, King Grover, used it to unite the griffons under his rule. Having met him personally, I don’t think he truly needed the Idol for that. He was a powerful, influential griffon and whatever trials he went through to get the Idol forged him just as much as it did the Idol itself.
I will investigate more to see if there is more information on anything similar in the Archives. Please don’t hesitate to write again. I would love to receive updates from you and not filtered through the somewhat biased lens of the press.
Always,
Celestia
“That’s what I was afraid of,” I said. “But a promise to search the greatest library in the world is about the best we could hope for, and now she won’t be worried about us doing anything crazy. I was half-convinced that if we didn’t tell her something, she’d fly down here just as a ‘surprise visit’.”
“And now she won’t?” Ruby asked. “Having her around wouldn’t be that bad.”
I smirked. “What, you don’t think I can take care of things?”
“I think having two really super smart ponies working on a problem is better than one,” Ruby said, showing a remarkable talent for recovering smoothly from even the most awkward situation.
“I happen to have a possible solution already in mind,” I said. “Gabby picked up these boxes for me this morning,” I said, moving my lunch to the side. It was just leftovers from the party, sort of a sandwich stuffed with horderves.
“And these wooden boxes are going to save Griffonstone?” Ruby asked, poking one of the simple oak caskets.
“You got it,” I said. “So when I went to the Empire to help out Cadance, they actually had sort of a similar problem. The weather there is awful. The Empire is sort of like an oasis in the middle of the tundra, and they use magic to hold back blizzards and the cold. They had an artifact for it, but it took a while to find it and get it working again, so Shining Armor and Cadance were casting some spells to do it themselves.”
“Like the big bubble that was around Canterlot for that wedding where you blasted a big ugly bug?” Ruby asked.
“Exactly!” I nodded. “Shining Armor gave me a few tips on large-scale shields as sort of a favor. These four boxes are going to be the cornerstones of a big ritual shield spell that should keep the winds out. It’s a combination of zebra hoodoo, traditional runic magic, and just a touch of Cloudsdale weather factory company secrets.”
“Can I help you set it up?”
“Absolutely. Grab a shovel and let’s get started.”
I checked the compass again. “Okay, this looks like it’s the most westerly point around the city,” I said. I marked the spot with my hoof. Ruby came over with the shovel and started digging, wiggling the blade into the rocky ground and struggling to actually shift the earth. It was less like dirt and more like digging through a brick wall.
“This is really tough,” she complained.
“Let me dig this one. You got the last one,” I said. I took the shovel and used some strengthening magic along with some really powerful telekinesis to shove it right through the rock
“The weather is starting to get bad again,” Ruby said, sounding worried. I paused to look up at the sky. The winds were starting to shift, and the clouds above us were twisting and being torn apart by invisible claws.
“You’re right,” I replied. It was probably just bad timing, but I couldn’t shake the idea that the sky didn’t like what I was doing and it was working itself up to stopping me. I redoubled my efforts like I was bailing water from a sinking ship. “Ruby, box!”
She levitated over the box, carefully placing it in the hole. I covered it up, tossing shovelfuls of dirt and rock over it and tapping them down securely.
“Just one left!” I had to raise my voice to be heard over the gusts of wind. “Just the north! Then the shield will activate!”
“Let’s hurry!” Ruby yelled back. “I don’t like this!”
We ran for it. Griffonstone wasn’t a huge city. It was really only about the size of Ponyville, and more thinly populated. With the way the weather was picking up, it felt like we had to run a marathon to get where we were going. Dead leaves and dust blew around us, a storm that seemed focused and centered right on us.
“Sunset!” Ruby yelled in alarm.
I slowed down a little, letting her catch up. I knew the only thing worse than running through a disaster was being abandoned by someone who was supposed to be taking care of you.
“Don’t worry, it’ll all be over soon!” I promised. I looked at the compass. We were nearing the edge of town. “When we get there, I’m going to start digging right away. Can you cast one of the basic shield spells around us until I’m done?”
Ruby nodded. “Yeah!”
I skidded to a halt and stabbed the shovel into the ground. I worked fast, and Ruby’s shield shimmered around us, deflecting stray sticks and dirt. I dug a shallow hole and jammed the last box into it before tossing a layer of soil and rocks over it and stepping back.
“Here we go!” I shouted. I started casting, closing my eyes and focusing on the box right in front of me. The other boxes were connected to it in a way, each containing a lock of my mane. Sympathetic magic like this used symbolism to make each box the same box, in a certain metaphorical way.
I used that metaphorical connection to draw a line between the boxes in my mind’s eye, forming a circle around the whole city. I started putting the shield spell together, runes echoing from one end of the circle to the other. A wavering field of magic started washing into the sky, rising like the tide and fighting against the storm.
The sound of the wind started to fade, and as the spell reached its peak, everything went silent.
Ruby dropped her shield spell and looked around. “Did it work?”
I took a moment and looked around. It all looked okay, but… I closed my eyes and cast a spell, delicately feeling at the inner edges of the shield I’d made.
“Yes and no,” I sighed, disappointed. “It’s working for now but it won’t last forever. There really is some kind of magic in the storm and it’s a lot tougher than normal weather. We’ve got maybe two or three weeks before it fails entirely, and that’s me being really hopeful and pretending it won’t get worse.”
“So what do we do to fix it?” Ruby asked.
I sighed. “We come up with a new idea. But we’ve got some time to do it.”
“I can’t believe this,” I groaned. “Three days going through bad penmanship and worse poetry and there’s really nothing from King Grover himself? He founded Griffonstone! Didn’t he have anything to say about that?!”
“Perhaps he was too busy doing the work of founding a nation?” Shahrazad suggested. She hadn’t been much help at all with the bulk of the research, but she was compiling some of the better poems we’d recovered, and I couldn’t entirely discount her suggestion that there might be something wrapped in metaphor or hidden in a riddle.
“I’ve made enchanted items before,” I groused. “You know what I did? I made a blueprint before I started and then took notes along the way! I definitely wouldn't try to wing something like a weather-controlling trophy!”
“I don’t think we’re gonna find a user’s manual, Miss Sunset,” Ruby said. “I think this is the oldest book in the whole royal library, and… it’s got some bad news.”
“Bad news?” I asked.
“It’s from King Grover the Third, and it starts with a long dedication to his grandfather. I think it was written before anyone invented spelling.” She passed the book along to me, and I saw the page she was talking about.
It had the clear marks of being professional work, not printed but scribed by someone who wrote things down for other people as their primary job. It was centered, written carefully on the parchment with faded ink, and it started out with a lovely dedication to a beloved ancestor and then descended into complaining about how no one left any written instructions for future kings and how they expect him to just figure things out on his own. Grover the Third went on to call himself extremely wise and forward-thinking and so he created the royal library and started keeping private records for the royal family.
“Okay, maybe this guy’s not so bad,” I sighed. I could feel his frustration radiating off the page even through centuries and someone else transcribing his words. “Looks like we’re not the first people to want answers about the Idol. He even talks about how he can’t experiment with it much or even ask for help because everyone in Griffonstone thinks he knows exactly what he’s doing! He must have really trusted the scribe who wrote all this down.”
I flipped through it a bit, but really most of the journal was about crops and trade, and it was a window to a past where they had farms on all the surrounding peaks.
“Here we go!” I said, excited. “I found something!”
“Really?” Ruby asked.
I put the book down flat on the table so she could see it. “Look at this. Someone got the bright idea to try and steal the Idol of Boreas. I guess it was sort of a minor rebellion. They used the Idol to cause storms, terrorize an entire army, and then…”
“And then?” Ruby asked.
“I guess there was some sort of backlash? Grover the Third called it the ‘wrath of typhoon’ or maybe ‘the typhoon’? It’s not super clear. Even without all the details, I can recognize what happened here. She was using the Idol, tapping into more and more of its power, and then it started going wrong and all the energy in it grounded through the griffon trying to control it.”
“Total thaumatic reversal,” Ruby said sagely. It was something I’d warned her about. Her talent put her at risk of experiencing it even without an ancient artifact in her hooves.
I nodded. “Apparently there wasn’t enough left to hold a trial, but it served as a deterrent for anyone else who wanted to try stealing it.”
“Ah good,” Shahrazad said. “Cosmic power and incredible danger. Truly, beloved, we are operating firmly within your comfort zone.”
“I wish you were wrong,” I sighed.
“Incoming!” Ruby warned. I looked up at a twist of fire weaving through the air. I leaned back and let it pop in the air over my head, a scroll dropping onto the book I’d been looking at.
“I hope this is good news,” I said, cracking the scroll open to see.
My Little Sunset,
It seems King Grover kept his secrets well. As far as I can tell, there are no reliable accounts of the creation of the Idol of Boreas in the Archives. All information we have about it comes second- or third-hoof.
I was afraid I would be giving you only bad news, but I found another source of information. Luna heard about your search, and she informed me that long ago, she’d visited King Grover’s dreams. She did not make herself known or interfere, but part of keeping Equestria safe in those early days meant knowing what potential allies or enemies were planning, and Luna’s methods were relatively harmless.
She wants me to warn you that what she saw was wrapped in dream logic, and it was a long time ago. She remembers a mountain reaching above the clouds and a castle hanging down with only the sky under it, as though it was the highest point in the world.
We both believe that the mountain she saw in his dreams lies within the Dragon’s Spine, an area of tall peaks to the south of Griffonstone and separating it from the Dragon Lands. The mountains were and still are largely unexplored, and several travel journals note a mountain at least as tall as the Canterhorn. I do not believe anypony has ever climbed it.
It is possible that the secret to the Idol of Boreas lies somewhere near there, but it is impossibly dangerous. It is wild, undeveloped, full of cliffs and deadfalls, and since nopony has ever summited the peak, a safe path to the top is unknown.
I know it is pointless to tell you not to go, but instead, I will ask you to be careful, and I will append a list of supplies recommended to me by experts. I also suggest you find local expertise. Griffons are excellent at rock climbing, and it should be possible to hire a few to help.
Be Careful,
Celestia
I flipped the scroll over, and there was a list of supplies. I’d have to go over it later. I was glad Celestia understood that I wasn’t going to just let it go.
“I guess that’s a lead,” I said. “The tallest mountain in the world…”
“If it’s between here and the Dragon Lands it’s a long trip,” Ruby said. “Why would there be anything all the way out there?”
“Good question. Most of the time when we think about magic, it’s something that’s scientific and practiced and studied. It wasn’t always like that. Historians think the first fires were caused by lightning and other natural phenomena and then ancient ponies learned to keep the fire going and use it to keep them warm. Magic was the same way. Primal magic came from wild energy in the world and ponies learned to use it to help them survive. Places like high mountains, the deepest parts of the ocean, magic collects there. If King Grover went there, he might have found a way to channel it and use it to forge the Idol.”
“It sounds really dangerous,” Ruby said.
“It totally is!” I agreed, excited. “But that explains why no one knows about the Idol! If it’s primal magic, you can’t recreate it in a lab or make it in a factory, you have to go where the magic is and try to play with fire and not get burned.”
Shahrazad sighed. “Beloved, as much as you are lovely when you are working yourself up to doing something likely to get yourself killed, I am afraid that I am far too delicate and wise to climb such a peak, even in the name of love.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t make you come along,” I said. “I need you and Ruby to stay here and keep an eye on things while I’m gone.”
“Aww…” Ruby groaned. “But why can’t I come?”
“I need you to keep the shield going,” I told her. “You’re the second-best sorcerer in these mountains. I’m going to write up some instructions and troubleshooting on keeping it up if something happens.”
“You can count on me!” Ruby said, saluting.
“What are you planning on doing if you do find something?” Shahrazad asked.
“Well…” I took a deep breath. “Sometimes the only thing you can do is fight fire with fire. I don’t like patting myself on the back too much, but if King Grover went up there and managed to figure out how to make the Idol, I should be able to work it out too.”
“You’re going to make a new Idol?” Shahrazad asked. She smiled. “I see. It is one way to secure your rule.”
“For the thousandth time, I am not taking over a country for you.” I said it calmly but firmly. “If you really want to rule a nation you should apologize to your dad for betraying him and trying to get everypony between you and the throne of Saddle Arabia killed.”
“It would have worked,” she grumbled, leaning on the table and pouting.
“Did I hear someone say they’re making a new Idol?” Gilda asked, closing the window behind her. It reminded me of how Rainbow Dash would let herself in, and I wondered who’d given whom the bad habit. “And also some stuff about murder?”
“Don’t worry about the murder,” I assured her. “But I’ve got a lead on where the Idol might have been originally made.”
“Really?” Gilda blinked in surprise. “That’s something.”
I nodded. “I could use some help. I need at least one or two people who can fly, climb rocks, and aren’t afraid of danger.”
“That could be almost any griffon,” Gilda snorted. “What you need is a griffon who can do all that and won’t stab you in the back and run off with the first shiny rock they see.”
“Good point,” I agreed. “So somebird loyal?”
“Right. And smart. And who can fly in bad weather, because if it’s anything like this place in the dry season it’s going to be absolutely nuts.”
“Great, when can you leave?” I asked, grinning.
“Was it that obvious?” Gilda asked.
“You were a little more subtle than Rainbow Dash.”
“That’s a low bar to clear.”
“Credit where credit’s due.” I shrugged. “You were able to help with the supplies for the party, think you can round up what we’ll need for a climb in the middle of nowhere?” I showed her the list that Celestia sent me. She flipped it over after reading over the short grocery list and scanned the letter from the Princess. When she got to the signature, she froze up and started being a lot more careful with the scroll.
“Uh, yeah,” she said. “But copy that onto another piece of paper. The other griffons will be weirded out if I’m carrying a note from a pony princess around with me.”
“Sure,” I said. “I don’t know how many bits we’ve still got with us, but we should be able to cover the essentials.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Gilda said. “We can probably get most of this for free. The birds in town like you and they’ll be willing to extend some credit. You come back a hero and they might even forget to ask for their bits back.”
I laughed and gave her the copy of the list, holding it out. “I have to warn you, this could be really dangerous.”
“I’m not worried about the danger,” Gilda said. “You know, if you go out and do something big and dangerous and exciting, that’s what living is really about. It’s what Dash always said anyway. I just know that sitting here on my fat butt and selling scones and never getting anywhere isn’t a way to really live. I wanna do something that matters and then I can hold my head high and…”
She trailed off, lost in memory.
“It’s easier to make amends when you’re on top of things?” I guessed.
“I don’t want to go crawling back looking pathetic. If I come back as a big shot… I won’t feel like I’ve just been making bad scones while she joined the Wonderbolts.”
I knew that feeling all too well.
“I hate this place!” Gilda shouted over the biting wind.
“I hate it too, buddy!” I yelled back. It was so cold my mane and tail had ice at the tips even with a temperature control spell fighting against the chill. It was no normal blizzard. I’d come in search of primal magic, and I was starting to see the signs. I just hoped it wasn’t going to kill us both.
“I’m not your buddy!” Gilda snapped. “We need to get out of this cold! I’m freezing my feathers off!”
I looked around. There was a heavy snowfall around us. Or… not really a snowfall so much as just snow being blown around, like a sandstorm in the desert but colder and wetter. It was blowing around us in every direction and forming drifts and piles around anything that broke up the terrain.
“We can’t put up the tent here!” I said. “It would blow away if we tried getting it set up!”
“I’m not talking about the tent, I’m talking about that!” She pointed with a talon and I frowned, peering through the snow and trying to make out whatever she’d spotted. It was almost invisible in the storm, and I stared for a few seconds wondering if she’d just seen a mirage when I caught the glow of light coming through shuttered windows.
We hustled over to it, a sign of hope turning it from a slog through the weather into fleeing the storm like it was chasing us. With the wind ripping at us, it sure felt like a predator was coming for us.
The little building was some kind of a hut, made with wood and brick and stone that had all frozen together into a single mass like it had become part of the permafrost. It would have been polite to knock or try to make ourselves known, but it was just too tempting with the light streaming around the edges of the door, and Gilda and I just popped the door open and walked in, the sudden blast of heat as soothing as a massage. She pulled the door closed behind us, leaving that storm outside to beat against the walls.
I looked around, catching my breath. If there was an opposite of minimalistic design, this was it. It was cluttered with little tables and knick-knacks and little trinkets and shiny bits hanging from the ceiling. An elderly griffon wrapped up in layers of patterned cloth looked up at us with an expression of happy surprise.
“Sorry for barging in,” I apologized.
“No, no, it is wonderful to have visitors!” the griffon ushered us further in, taking us to one of the cramped tables closer to the fire pit burning in the middle of the circular hut. “Please, rest and warm yourselves.”
“You’re too kind,” I said, taking off my saddlebags and sitting down in one of the lashed-together chairs. “It’s brutal out there.”
“Are you sure we’re even going the right way?” Gilda asked. “I think the weather’s gotten worse every day we’ve been out here.”
“It has gotten worse,” I agreed. “I’m sure that means we’re getting closer.”
“Are you two going to the Taranau Uchaf?” the old griffon asked. He put two clay cups on the table between us and carefully poured steaming green tea into them, finishing them with a dollop of butter.
“I have no idea,” I said. “What’s a Taranau Uchaf?”
“It means ‘Highest Thunder’ in an ancient language,” the griffon said. “It’s the tallest mountain in the world. Ponies and griffons and even a few dragons come through here once in a while seeking it. It’s about all people bother with, out here.”
“That’s not good,” Gilda mumbled, staring at the butter melting in her tea. “Maybe we’re not the first after all?”
“Oh, if you’re trying to be the first up the peak, you still have a chance,” the old griffon assured us. “None of the others ever came back.”
“That’s even worse!” Gilda groaned. “And what’s with the butter?”
“When you’re on the mountain you need more energy to keep warm,” the old bird said, patting her on the back. “Butter is good for that! It’s the traditional way to make tea in Yakyakistan.”
“Bottom’s up,” I said, shrugging and taking a sip. It was a strange experience, a little like tea and milk but with a completely different texture. If it had been a strong black tea instead of green and brewed from plants that had absolutely no relationship with a real tea bush, it might have even been good.
Gilda shuddered but kept the drink down. “Got any tips on how to avoid dying?” She asked. “Aside from buttered tea.”
The old griffon smiled kindly. “Oh, plenty. The best advice is not to try climbing the Taranau Uchaf. I’ve never climbed it even once, and I’m still alive even at my age!” He laughed.
“Sounds like good advice,” I admitted. “Do you know anything about the mountain?”
“It’s the kind of mountain that shouldn’t exist in the real world,” he said. “There should be a limit to how high nature should be able to stack stone on top of stone without it all falling down. You can see it from the ridge nearby on a clear day, but I’ve never gotten a look at the peak.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“There’s a storm that lives on the mountain like a dragon lives in its lair. It circles the spire and shrouds the top of the Taranau Uchaf from the eyes of those of us stuck down here below it.” He poured us a little more tea, and a cup for himself. “A long time ago, it was believed that gods lived on mountains, and that’s the kind of mountain where I can believe they still live.”
I nodded. “Gods do sometimes live on mountains,” I agreed, thinking of Canterlot. Celestia wouldn’t like being called a goddess, but it was the way a lot of ponies thought about her.
“There has to be a reason it’s so deadly,” Gilda said. “Big, tough mountain? Sure. I can believe that. Maybe it’s even impossible to climb. But if no one ever comes back, that means no one ever gave up and decided to turn around and try another day. That’s impossible.”
“If it was just the mountain, you might be right,” the old griffon agreed. “It doesn’t want to be climbed, but there are many peaks that hate being scaled. Rockslides, ice-covered cliffs, sheer winds, all of them are dangerous, but all of them have been conquered. All except the Taranau Uchaf.”
“So what’s special about it?” Gilda demanded.
“Hmmm…” the old griffon thought for a moment. “If you wanted to rob a bank, the vault door is an obstacle, but if you had time and the right tools, you could open it. The door can be overcome. But banks aren’t robbed every day.”
“Because they’re guarded,” I said carefully.
He nodded. “Yes. I have seen footprints in the snow. Something lurking that isn’t like any other creature. Grasping claws and cloven hooves, a huge creature, probably twice as big as a griffon. I’ve only caught glimpses and heard noises out there in the dark.”
“Well that’s good news,” Gilda said.
“Monsters in the dark are good news?” the old griffon asked, surprised.
“If they’re guarding something, it means there’s something worth guarding,” she said. “And to be honest, I wasn’t hopeful about our chances at mountain climbing. It’s not one of my hobbies and she’s a pony.”
“A pony who happens to be pretty darn good at monster hunting,” I reminded her.
“Yeah, as long as you don’t blow up the whole mountain because you let loose,” Gilda joked. “I don’t want to get buried alive in an avalanche because you’re throwing fireballs everywhere.”
“I’ll be careful,” I promised. “Can you sell us some supplies and point us in the right direction?” I asked. “We could use some fresh food.”
I produced a bag of bits a put it on the table.
“I’d be happy to help,” the old griffon said. “I’ll make sure to pack you some tea. A warm drink can save a life, you know.”
“You think this is it?” I asked, looking up at the mountain. It loomed in a way that made it seem almost like a child’s drawing of a mountain, just going up and up and up forever. A ring of clouds circled it, and I could hear the rumble of distant thunder.
“If this isn’t it, I don’t even want to see the one that’s even taller,” Gilda said. “This is crazy! You feel those winds?”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure why she’d think I could miss them. The wind was a constant, twisting presence, whipping in every direction at the same time.
“It feels like that because it’s all downdrafts!” she explained. “It comes down, hits the ground, and then goes in every direction. It’s like, uh, if you pour water on the ground it just splashes in a big circle, right? That, but with the wind.”
“It’s going to be impossible to fly against that, right?” I guessed.
Gilda nodded. “No way I could get any lift. We’re gonna have to do this the hard way.”
“Cool,” I sighed. “I sure wasn’t hoping to fly the whole way up to the top.”
“Don’t be stupid. You knew we weren’t going to do that already. If anyone could fly to the top they’d be there all the time!”
“Yeah, but I could still hope,” I said.
We slogged through the snow. With the way the rocks and slopes worked, there was one obvious pass through the rugged terrain, and even if it acted sort of like a channel for the wind it was still better than being out in the open and totally exposed.
I almost tripped over something just buried beneath the surface.
“What the…?” I asked. I brushed some of the snow away and revealed a bare toothy grin set in ivory. It was a skull. A pony skull. The crown was cracked and broken, and with how the cold preserved things it could have been a year old or a century.
“That’s not ominous,” Gilda muttered. I barely heard her over the wind. “Hey, check this out.” She pulled something out of the snow. It was a huge spear, the tip forked into two tines, the shaft longer than her whole body.
“Definitely not a pony weapon,” I said.
“No, it’s not,” Gilda agreed. “And way too heavy for a griffon to fly with. There’s something else here…” She trailed off and used the tip of the spear like a crowbar, prying at the ice and grunting with effort before the snow shifted. She revealed a much larger skull, with tusks and fangs and horns that were almost as wide as her wingspan, all with one empty eye socket.
“A cyclops skull,” I whispered.
“I think this is what that old bird was hearing. Well, not this one. One that’s still alive and stomping around.”
“You might be right. That spear looks like it’s about the right size for a monster like that,” I agreed. “I bet a lot of the explorers and adventurers were all ready with rope and blankets and tea and weren’t prepared at all for fighting a giant monster.”
“Glad we’re trying something different. Neither of us knows anything about mountains.”
“Hey, both of us basically grew up on mountains!” I joked. “This really is good news. If there’s a path big enough for something like that cyclops, it means we’ll be able to use it too!”
“What if it doesn’t go all the way to the top?” Gilda asked.
“Then we’ll figure it out when we get there, pal,” I said, patting her on the back. Gilda rolled her eyes and gave me a glare, but there wasn’t really any heat behind it.
“I’m not your pal.”
“We’ll figure out a good nickname at some point.”
“Ugh. You ponies and your nicknames,” Gilda muttered, tossing the spear back down. “Just keep your eyes open. If there are monsters around I don’t want them to get the drop on us.”
“I’ll try, but your eyes are better than mine,” I said.
“If you can’t see, then listen for them!” Gilda snapped. “I don’t like this. The clouds up there aren’t natural. They look too much like the structural support clouds under Cloudsdale. I got a feeling that we aren’t looking at a storm on a mountain, we’re looking at a fortress.”
Something moved in the corner of my eye. I froze and turned, horn glowing. After a moment, there was a break in the driving wind and I could see it was a ragged, torn scrap of brightly-colored fabric held in place under the top few stones of a rock cairn.
“Don’t start blasting everything,” Gilda scoffed. “If you get us buried alive in snow, I’ll dig you up myself just so I can kill you!”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just on edge. I don’t like it when I can’t solve a problem with violence.”
“That’s one of the first things you’ve said that makes me think we’ve got something in common,” Gilda laughed. “We’ll be okay for now. Head between those rocks.” She pointed. I could see what she meant. We’d been following a gulley, and there was a path out of it in that direction.
The further we got, the more we found signs of other expeditions, everything just left in place on the mountain like they were only a little bit ahead of us and we’d see them any second. There were pitons driven into cliff faces, ropes that had gone stiff with age but were still sturdy enough to climb, and even marked trails.
All those ponies and griffons had gone on ahead planning on coming back. They’d thought they were just cutting a path for the next team and making sure they had a safe way to get home, and they’d been taken by the mountain or whatever lived on it.
The next few hours were tense. Gilda and I both kept sensing danger around us, but there was just nothing visible. We’d seen the cyclops skull below, so we knew there was something here, but had we escaped notice, or were they just holding back and waiting to see if the mountain finished us on its own?
Meanwhile, the mountain really was doing its level best to kill us, and it didn’t feel impersonal. I’ve read plenty of stories where they talk about the sea or the tundra or a desert as a huge force, too big and profound to care about any one pony. Dying to it was like an ant being crushed by a plow. That pile of rocks hated us. It was taking a personal vested interest in making sure we didn’t leave. If we were ants, we were ants that had crawled into somepony’s picnic and ruined their perfect day.
We stumbled through a narrow crack in the rock and onto a wide plateau, and we weren’t the first to get there.
“Look at all this,” Gilda said, peering around.
It had clearly been used as a base camp, and more than once. There were signs of old firepits, half-buried tents, paths shoveled out, flags and poles stuck in the frozen ground. There was trash everywhere, just left among abandoned saddlebags and supplies.
“I hate to say it, but we might need to camp here,” I said. “The storm is picking up and we’re not likely to find anywhere better to set up our tent!”
“That’s probably what everyone else here thought!” Gilda retorted. “You might not have been able to figure this out, but nothing good happened here!”
“You want to keep going and try getting a tent pitched when the weather is even worse and we’re stuck on a narrow ledge?” I countered. “I don’t like it either but I can set up some wards to let us know if anything gets close!”
Gilda looked like she wanted to argue, but a wind cut through like an icy knife, and both of us shivered even with the layers of clothing we were bundled up in.
“Fine!” she agreed. “Help me clear out a space for the tent!”
We decided the safest thing would be to set up next to one of the tents that was still standing. Even if it was shredded and useless, it had remained standing for a long time, so it had to be at least somewhat shielded from the wind.
I was snapping together the tent poles when Gilda stopped me with a silent talon on my shoulder and motioned with her beak. I followed her gaze. There was a huge hoofprint in the snow, as big as a royal guard’s shield and split in two. A massive cloven hoof had made the mark, at least as big as my body.
“They’ve been here too,” Gilda said quietly. “And it’s recent. Anything older than a day or two would get erased by all the wind and snow blowing around.”
“We’ll take turns being on watch,” I said.
“What about your spells?” Gilda asked.
“I trust my magic with my life,” I said. “I don’t trust my ability to wake up and not just set everything on fire.”
“I’m starting to think setting everything on fire isn’t such a bad idea,” Gilda said. “My beak’s chattering!”
“Calm down, I’ll turn up the heat,” I said. I adjusted the flow of magic through the crystal array in the middle of the tent, making the temperature a little more tolerable.
“That’s a cute gadget,” she said.
“It’s a Crystal Empire design,” I said. “They don’t have a lot of wood to burn, so they invented crystal stoves like this to cook and heat their homes. It’s really efficient and won’t fill up the tent with smoke or anything.”
“It takes forever to heat up food,” Gilda complained. “And your food stinks up the place.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Gilda do you really want to throw stones on that? Sure, I know Saddle Arabian curries aren’t everyone’s favorite food, but you’ve been eating nothing but canned beans and tins of sardines and tuna.”
“You mean I’ve been eating safe food that won’t make me sick.”
“It’s cat food.”
“I’m at least half cat,” Gilda countered. I had to concede victory to her on that point, so I nodded and lowered my head. She huffed. “Look, my stomach gets upset easy with weird food. Flight camp in Cloudsdale was the worst. You ponies eat so much grass and leaves and it always made me bloated. Plus your water is like… weird.”
“The water in Cloudsdale is pure rainwater. When you say weird do you mean… clean?”
“Yeah, it’s clean, but it doesn’t have minerals in it. You need some… salts and stuff from rock. It makes water healthy and good for you.”
“I… hm. I’m not sure clean water is unhealthy, but I do like mineral water. You’d probably hate the fancy brands at the palace but I can appreciate where you’re coming from.”
“Yeah well… the point is I don’t want to get the flaps. If we don’t mess up and die I’ll celebrate on the way back. I might even try some of your awful curry stuff.”
“It’s a deal,” I agreed.
The winds picked up around the tent, and I paused and checked the wards, glancing towards the tent flap. Even with the crystal stove all the way up at maximum it was getting colder. I could see Gilda’s breath. There weren’t any monsters out there, or at least none close enough that I had to worry about them.
I sneezed and shivered, holding my hooves near the stove and trying to warm them up.
“Is it just me or is it freezing in here?” Gilda asked, her beak chattering.
“It’s not just you,” I said. “Hold on, I can cast another layer of heating spells.”
I tried to ignore the chill and put together another ring of warming runes to keep the cold away, but the spell almost immediately fizzled out. I blinked in surprise. Frost started crawling along the tent fabric, forming flowers and tracers of ice.
“Sunset!” Gilda warned.
“I see it,” I said. “It’s not natural cold! It’s some kind of magical effect!”
“Do something!” she yelled. “We’re gonna turn into ice sculptures!”
“I got this,” I said, totally unsure if I actually had this or not. “Stay here!”
“Of course I’m going to stay here! Wait, does that mean--”
I opened the tent flap, and a blast of frigid wind smacked me in the face hard enough to really wake me up. I stepped out into the cold, my whole body tense and shaking. It was like all the muscles in my core were pulling up and knotting and trying to get away from the chill. I shielded my face and looked out into the darkness, searching for whatever was doing this.
“Come on!” I shouted. “If you want me that badly, come and get me! I’m right here! I’m not afraid of you!”
The wind howled wordlessly, as big as the whole sky. I could feel it trying to worm its way in through the clothing I was wrapped up in, ice worming its way between folds of fabric. It was unnatural, alive in its own way and absolutely hostile to anything not already frozen solid.
“Do you know who I am?!” I shouted. The cold was starting to make me delirious. “I’m Sunset Bucking Shimmer! If you don’t stop right now, you’re gonna find out what it means to really piss me off!”
For some reason, the storm didn’t listen to me. That was a mistake it wouldn’t make twice.
“You think you don’t have to pay attention because I’m a unicorn?!” I yelled. “You think you’re safe just because I don’t have wings?! I’ll show you! I’ll show you all!”
I braced myself, digging my hooves into the snow and pulling magic together. I was angry enough that I wasn’t thinking clearly about my limits or what was safe or what spells were actually supposed to do, and that meant I was at my most dangerous.
I fired a beam of twisting crimson and cyan right into the heart of the storm, blasting back the wind. The air exploded in front of me, shooting up two hundred degrees and washing past me like a sauna. The snow instantly melted and then the water turned to steam, blowing a wide path around my beam just from the heat leaking from the edges. Right under the beam’s path, rock turned red and soft.
Above me, the stormcloud exploded from within. My spell punched a hole in the clouds and kept going, clearing a path all the way to the stars above.
I panted, catching my breath. The clearing was so warm now it was almost tropical.
“That’s what I thought,” I said.
“Remind me not to get you angry,” Gilda mumbled from behind me, staring out of the tent.
“Don’t get me angry,” I reminded her, half-jokingly. The winds apparently decided it was a good idea to stay away, because the air stilled, steam rising from the ground in front of us, a wide path carved up the mountainside, punching right through a few unfortunate rocks and glaciers and leaving a black scar in its wake.
“Look at that!” Gilda pointed.
I looked up, past the destruction. For the first time, we could see the peak. Or what should have been the peak. There was a massive stone castle perched on top of the mountain, outlined against the dark sky. It wasn’t a delicate twist of stone and gilding like Canterlot. It was solid, blocky, like it was meant to house an army and keep out a siege.
“I think we’ve found our final destination,” I said.
“We might be able to fly up there,” Gilda said. “If the weather stays clear--”
“I don’t know if it will,” I said. “There was a lot of magic in that storm. I think I’ve dissipated it for now, but there’s no telling how long it’ll last. It could come back when we’re halfway up with nowhere to land.”
“And that would be bad,” Gilda sighed.
“Really bad, and you know it,” I said. “I’d try teleporting us, but that’s even riskier. I don’t know where to land and my instincts are telling me something’s off about all this. Trying to pop right up there might end up with us splattering like a rotten tomato meeting a brick wall the hard way.”
Gilda shuddered. “So we have to go the hard way?”
“Come on, you’re a lot stronger than some weak little pony like me, and you don’t see me complaining, do you?” I joked.
Gilda glanced along the line of destruction I’d carved into the mountain. “Weak little pony?”
“I can’t bench press nearly as much as half my friends. More than half, actually. Fluttershy is absurdly strong and she doesn’t even know it, I swear.”
“Okay, but let’s get going now while the going’s good,” Gilda said. “We can pack this up real fast and get out of here.”
“Good idea,” I agreed. If we moved now we might be able to figure out a safe way up to the top. We got maybe halfway through packing up before it happened. A loud bell rang out over the area, like a ghostly alarm clock going off.
“The feather is that?” Gilda asked.
“My wards,” I said. I dropped what I was holding and prepped a reflexive shield spell to go off the second anything dangerous popped up. I didn’t have to wait long. Two cyclopses stepped out into the open, holding huge metal spears and wearing light armor that seemed more ceremonial than protective. Each one of them stood as tall as a house.
They didn’t approach closer when they saw me standing there with my horn glowing, and between that and having clothing and weapons I had to assume they were sentient.
One of them pointed their spear at me and started talking. I didn’t immediately recognize the language but I knew it was a threat from the tone. I was not in a mood to be threatened. Before I’d even started to come up with a real plan, I’d focused magic on the tip of the metal spear being pointed at me. The tip flashed to white-hot, the edge going runny and dripping. The cyclops holding it let go almost instantly, but not before the heat had scorched its palm. It screeched in surprise and pain, holding its burned hand close to its chest.
“That was a warning,” I said slowly and clearly. “I don’t like it when a date starts to get pushy. Take me to your leader.” I pointed up at the castle on top of the mountain, still visible through the hole I’d punched in the clouds.
“Is… where… we were… to take.” The other cyclops said, sticking the point of its spear into the exposed dirt and holding up open hands to try and seem like less of a threat. He must have been the smart one. I was surprised he spoke any Equestrian at all, to be honest.
“Great,” I said. I thought about apologizing, but if there was anything I’d learned about diplomacy it was that starting from a position of strength was usually a winning move. If they thought I was dangerous, unapologetic, and possibly unstable they’d treat me with care and avoid offending me. If I said sorry, they could use it as an excuse to start making demands of me. “Lead the way.”
The cyclopses, or cyclopsii (or maybe cyclopsen, it seemed like one of those words that might have a funny plural) led us up paths that I would never have spotted on my own. Maybe Gilda would have, but they were disguised among the snow and ice, steps and clear ledges and winding paths that hid behind cliff faces and frozen waterfalls. It was like using the back entrance to the mountain, enough of it under cover that it was clear of the wind and weather.
It was also clearly a patrol route, and when I thought about all the ponies and griffons and other people that had gone missing here, I was a lot less sympathetic to the cyclops that I’d lightly burned.
“You don’t think it’s a trick, do you?” Gilda whispered to me.
“If it’s a trick, they’ve got a lot of guts trying to pull it on us,” I said. “No, I think they’re really taking us to whoever is in charge. They know this is above their paygrade so they’re going to hand us over to their superiors and make it someone else’s problem.”
Gilda snorted. “You seem awfully sure about that.”
“I’ve worked with the Royal Guard,” I said. “I know a little bit about how soldiers think.”
The path we were on dove deeper into the mountain, twisting inwards towards the core. The whole way had been fairly gently sloped, no worse than climbing a really long set of stairs, something I had experience with ever since Saddle Arabia.
“Something’s weird,” Gilda said.
“I can feel it too,” I said.
When the path turned inward and we lost all sight of the outside, it started to become disorienting. It wasn’t like it turned into a maze, it was more like my hooves and my inner ear were starting to disagree about which way was down. It was the kind of sensation that could make a pony seasick.
The cyclopses seemed to notice our discomfort, or at least they were aware of what was happening, because they stopped the march and talked to each other for a few moments in a language I couldn’t identify.
“The way is… hm. Falling up?” one of them offered, clearly struggling with the words. “I go ahead, you watch.”
“Okay,” I said, raising an eyebrow. He nodded and went on ahead. A few more twists and turns with my sense of balance really starting to struggle, and we saw something unusual. There was a haze hanging in the air, and when we got a little closer I could see there were snowflakes and small stones mixed in with the fog. Not enough to make it dangerous, but definitely not normal.
“Watch,” one of the cyclopses said. It approached the fog layer and jumped, passing through. Once it did, it twisted in midair, turning around and landing on the ceiling, where the path continued, inverted above us.
“The gravity changes?” I asked, surprised. I knew there were a couple of spells that could do something similar.
“That makes sense,” Gilda said. She wiggled her hips like a cat and pounced, going through the mist and coming out the other side, flaring her wings and breaking her fall, landing safely. “That’s why the storm is always out there! It’s some kind of weird temperature inversion trapping the clouds!”
I looked up and lifted myself with levitation. When I hit the mist, there was a moment of zero gravity, somewhere between floating and falling, but I could feel how narrow that zone was. When I passed through it for a moment I felt myself tugged gently in two directions, like I was on top of a hill and a movement in either direction would send me tumbling that way.
It only lasted for a heartbeat, and then I was out the other side and setting myself down next to Gilda. Using levitation almost made me seem dignified compared to the cycloses acrobatics and Gilda’s catlike reflexes.
“Shall we?” I asked, setting down like it was no big deal.
The one-eyed guards led us further, but now instead of going up a long staircase, we were descending down into the depths of the earth. Or at least that’s what it felt like. The stone staircase led down to a huge set of doors made of petrified wood and flanked by crystal torches that burned with a magical blue light. The first cyclops, the one without a burned hand, pushed the doors open and gestured for us all to enter.
“I think we’ve arrived,” I said, walking in.
“I sure hope you're right about this not being a trap,” Gilda mumbled.
“So do I, but stay on your best behavior in case I'm an idiot and they're throwing us in jail,” I said. I looked around as we entered, the natural stone around us now smoothed and carved into something that definitely resembled a real castle, pretty similar to Canterlot, but at an even larger scale. That castle had been built for Princess Celestia, so everything was three or four times bigger than if it was just for the average pony. This one made even the cyclops leading us inside seem small.
“The gravity shift probably makes it impossible to fly up here,” Gilda said. “If I hadn’t known what was going to happen, I would have crashed like a total loser.”
“I don’t know if I’ve ever been up this high,” I said. “Think it’s like this everywhere?”
“Nah,” Gilda said. “Otherwise there’d be that permanent cloud layer all over the sky. It’s gotta be local to the mountain. Just don’t ask me what would happen if we tried to fly around it, because that’s weird magic junk.”
“Fair enough,” I said. I looked at the decor as we were led around. I don’t think they got a lot of visitors. It had the kind of stark, strictly functional look of a military base. A castle might have some little tables and mirrors and artwork everywhere to break up the hallways a bit, but these were just stone with an occasional worn banner.
Eventually, we got to a room that was actively being guarded, with two cyclopses standing to either side of another massive door. They raised their weapons as we approached, and the ones that had come with us said something. There was a short discussion, and then the cyclops I’d injured nodded and left, clutching his burned hand, probably to get some medical attention. The door was pulled open, and the guards stood to either side as we walked into a throne room ringed with windows.
“That’s one heck of a view,” Gilda said, peering around.
I guess someone has to go and get the boss,” I mumbled. There was no sign of anyone in charge, just that big, open space. I stepped closer to one of the windows to look. The sky hung below us, and you could forget there even was a ground at all.
“Check this out,” Gilda said. “I think that’s Equestria!”
She was leaning a little out of one of the open windowframes, craning her neck to look up at the ground high above.
“That’s impossible,” I said, but I stepped over to see what she was looking at. I could make out the terrain, though from this height it was almost like a map.
“No, check it out. That’s Las Pegasus, and there’s Reino…” she pointed, and I started to make sense of it.
“But we shouldn’t be anywhere near there,” I said. I trotted over to the next window, looked up, and saw only the ocean. The next one in the circle was over the desert. “All of these open to different places!”
I narrowed my eyes and just felt the room, like listening for soft sounds but instead feeling the magic flowing around with my horn.
“There’s a space distortion here,” I said. “I almost missed it with the altered gravity. It’s not quite connected to things the way normal space is. Those windows don’t just look like other places, they really are other places!”
“Most of them are the ocean,” Gilda said, as she made her way around the room. “If I was making a room like this I’d have it over something neat to look at. Why would you just have it in the middle of nowhere?”
“Because most of the world is ocean, and the sailors need my winds more than most,” a new voice boomed.
It was the kind of voice that could be heard across a room full of ponies. The kind of voice that made soldiers salute on instinct. The kind of voice that belonged to someone used to giving orders and having them followed.
The wind was still circling around him, and he seemed to flicker around the edges like he was still being put together, like erosion working in reverse. The being was twice as tall as the other cyclopses, though I don’t know if it was right to call him a cyclops any more than it would be to call Princess Luna a normal pony. Countless eyes circled his head, a crown looking out in every direction and floating in the wind, focusing on me as they orbited around.
“It has been a long time since I had a visitor,” he said. “Welcome to my palace. I am Typhon, the lord of the sky and ruler of all storm giants.”
“It’s a pleasure,” I said. It probably wasn’t a good time to ask about all the griffons and ponies who had died on the mountain. I doubted I’d like any answer he might have about why they hadn’t been allowed in. “I’m Sunset Shimmer. This is Gilda.” I motioned to her.
Exactly one of the dozens of eyes glanced over at her before immediately discounting Gilda and focusing on me. I guess I had made sort of a spectacle of myself so I couldn’t blame him for being wary. Gilda wasn’t likely to throw a fireball at him when he wasn’t paying attention.
“Ponies,” Typhon sighed. “I am tired of always seeing ponies in my skies. If you merely flew through them like the birds and dragons and griffons, perhaps you would be among my favored, but no. If you respected the winds and shaped them yourselves like in the old days, I might respect your work and devotion. But no.”
I frowned, keeping my mouth shut and letting him talk, but I knew he could see my expression, given how many of his floating eyes were looking.
“You turned the weather and wind into industry.” He waved a land, one of the windows shifted, the angle of light changing and showing Cloudsdale, hanging upside-down outside the castle.
I could tell it was really there, but also that we weren’t really there. Like a pegasus looking over the edge of the city wouldn’t spot us, but if I stepped through that window I’d be falling to the ground right outside the largest pegasus city in the world.
“Weather factories,” Typhon sighed, sounding disgusted and also somehow sad. “Awful. Turning something beautiful into something put together by untrained, uncaring hands and given to ponies that think only of how to exploit my sky. They turned every inch of the blue into a walled garden and can’t even be bothered to learn the names of the winds they cage!”
“The names of the winds?” I asked, confused.
Typhon shook his horned head, obviously a little disappointed.
“Why have you come here, scion of the Sun?” Typhon asked mildly, walking past us to step over to one of the windows. He reached out, and a hundred ghostly hands appeared out of the air, gently moving and shaping the clouds before vanishing again. “You destroyed part of my castle’s defenses. I forgive you for the intrusion since you did not know what you were doing.”
“I don’t need forgiveness,” I said. “I was defending myself.”
Typhon’s floating eyes fixed on me. It was hard to read an expression from them when his face was turned away, but I could tell he was mildly annoyed I wasn’t just being servile and polite. “If you turned around, the storm would have allowed you to leave.”
“There are a lot of dead ponies and griffons who might disagree with that. From everything I hear, setting hoof on this mountain is a one-way trip.”
“And yet you are here regardless of the rumors, regardless of the danger, and regardless of my defenses. So again I ask: why?”
“We came here following rumors and stories,” I said. “A long time ago there was a griffon named Grover who went out to the highest mountain in the world and captured the dust of golden sunsets, blown across the mountains by the north winds, forged it into the Idol of Boreas, and so on and so on,” I said, getting a little tired of formal poetry by the end.
“Yes. I remember him. He was one of the few mortals that showed proper respect and more than the usual amount of talent. Either one is rare, both at once is almost unheard of.”
I’m pretty sure that was a slight against me, but I was here to ask for a favor so I was going to have to let it go like I didn’t notice.
“I heard he was a pretty amazing person,” I agreed mildly. “So he really did get the Idol of Boreas here?”
“It was a boon he was granted, and I thought he would use it wisely. I was wrong. It is why I no longer receive guests from the world below.”
“So the cyclops that went to steal the Idol, it really was under your command?” I asked.
“Arimaspi was foolish. A pony came to him one day and convinced him that he would gain my favor by retrieving the wayward Idol, but the pony was only using Arimapsi's loyalty and desire to please me for her own ends,” Typhon said.
"That sounds like somepony I know," I muttered under my breath.
“I did not order him to attack the griffons, but I would not have been upset by the return of the winds in the Idol. His greatest mistake was to call on its power. Mortals were not intended to use the full power of the Idol in that way, and he could not control it, and so he died, a tool of the agendas of others.”
“And the Idol was lost,” I said. “You said you’re not a fan of ponies, but I’m here on behalf of the griffons. The weather went wild after the Idol went into the Abysmal Abyss, and the entire kingdom of Griffonstone was basically destroyed.”
“I take it that you are concerned with their fate,” Typhon said, turning back to face me. “I shouldn’t be surprised. The Sun and Moon are known best for interfering in the affairs of the mortal world. They indirectly caused this disaster, and now you've come to again put your hoof into things. Their bad habits have made ponies think they are entitled to be stewards of all things in the world.”
“People are suffering, and from what I understand, you’re not blameless either.”
Typhon took a deep breath, and it seemed like the wind rushed in and out of every window when he did.
“You are correct,” he decided, after a moment of introspection. “I do share some blame. I cannot fault you for wanting to intervene. I gave Grover a boon, and the results of that, for good or ill, are in my hands. I am not pleased about what he did with my gift, but the other griffons are victims as well, and wrath against mortals cannot be ever-lasting.”
“Right,” I agreed.
“When Grover came here and asked for my help, I set before him three challenges. He proved himself worthy by defeating them. If you wish to gain my favor I would ask that you face the same as he did. I want to see what kind of character and honor you carry with you.”
“We can do that,” I said. “Gilda is totally up for that!”
“I am?” Gilda asked. I shoved her forward and nudged her in the side.
“You are!” I said, trying to be enthusiastic. I leaned closer to whisper to her. “Just trust me on this, okay? Whatever he’s going to ask you to do, Grover did it, right? So it’s possible for a griffon to do, and you’ve actually got training and, uh…” I hesitated. “Gumption!”
“This is a terrible idea,” Gilda groaned.
“You want this griffon to face the challenges?” Typhon asked. The big guy actually seemed a little confused by that. I guess it was because I’d been doing all the talking. I couldn’t blame him too much. Humility wasn’t really one of my strong points.
“Uh… yeah,” Gilda said. “It’s to help griffons so… a griffon should do it?” She shot me a look that spoke volumes about how much she appreciated being put on the spot like this.
“Hm. I see.” Typhon said. He rubbed his chin. I must have really caught him off-balance, and I was pretty sure I knew how and why. Whatever challenges he’d given to King Grover, they’d probably involved flying. The castle being on top of the sky was a pretty big red flag that you needed wings to get around.
Actually, I wasn’t sure how Typhon got around, come to think of it. But he was some kind of immortal wind god, so I assumed he could fly if he really wanted. Pegasus ponies and griffons flap their wings, unicorns and storm giants make do.
“Gilda is a brave and well-traveled and seasoned, uh…” the only real answer to cap that off with was ‘semi-professional baker’ but I don’t think it would impress Typhon. “She’s well-known to the heroes of Equestria.” Technically true. “And I trust her as a loyal and determined griffon.”
“I cannot stop you from naming a champion,” Typhon said. “Perhaps you have a good point in doing so. The problems of the griffons and their abuse of the gift I gave them should be answered by the griffons themselves.”
He nodded to himself, apparently selling himself on his own logic.
“I was concerned because your champion needed your help. That may be a fault of my own. Perhaps I have let the defenses against the mortal world intruding into my sky grow too daunting for even a hero to overcome. They were intended to keep out the unworthy, not slay all those who dared show curiosity about my domain.”
“The biggest mountain in the world attracts a lot of creatures to try and climb it. I don’t think they even knew they were intruding,” I offered.
Typhon nodded gravely. “Yes. You are correct. I owe you some thanks for showing me the error of my ways. I cannot expect mortals to pay proper tribute when they do not even know there is tribute to be paid! It is all too easy to forget that we are not in the era of the beginning when the hands upon the wheels of the world were known to all. I will have to make this mountain more forgiving to the unworthy and find a new balance.”
He folded his arms behind his back. I had a feeling from the way he was talking that most of this was bluster, wind pun intended, and that he was justifying his actions in sort of a sideways manner. He wasn’t sorry about what he’d done, but he admitted he maybe shouldn’t have killed quite so many people.
It was probably the best I could ask for at the moment.
“As an apology, I will allow your champion to undertake three trials,” he said. “If they prove themselves, I will grant them a boon. If they fail…” He tilted his head. “In the old days I would have said that they would not live to try again, but perhaps that is something that can be changed as well.”
“I know that whatever you have in mind, Gilda is ready to rise to it,” I said, patting her on the back. “She’s totally ready for this!”
“I am not totally ready for this,” Gilda whispered.
“Sure you are,” I said, smiling with encouragement. “Don’t worry. I think he just wants a little show so he can give you his gift and honor will be satisfied on all sides.”
“And what if they’re real tests?” Gilda asked. “Ones that I’m not prepared for at all, by the way. I haven’t even stretched!”
I smiled and whispered as quietly as I could. “If they’re real tests, we’ll cheat like crazy and you’ll win by a landslide. I didn’t come all the way out here to lose.”
“We will require a different venue for the first challenge,” Typhon declared. He motioned to a window and ghostly hands surrounded it, twisting it in another direction. The angle of the light changed, and the vista looked out over a cloudbank. Typhon’s ghostly, detached extra hands swept through en masse and started reshaping it into something else, twisting and molding it.
“You’re making a stadium?” I asked after a few moments, starting to recognize the general shape. The hands pulled at the clouds, weaving them into rings and setting them into a rough course.
“Indeed!” Typhon said, pleased. “If there is one thing mortals do well, it is their contests of strength. Unlike we immortals, they can struggle at the very limits of their power and push themselves to new and greater heights.”
I thought about that ‘we immortals’ line. He was absolutely right. I’d only met three or four immortal beings like Typhon, and any of them could have wrecked the world. Nightmare Moon nearly did, Discord had been in the process of doing it, and Celestia had to hold herself back so far that ponies forgot entirely that she was a burning star in the shape of a pony.
“That’s pretty much the same reason everyone likes sports,” I agreed. “The athletes can really be inspiring. It’s exciting when a dark horse comes out of nowhere and breaks a record!”
“Of all the events, I enjoy races the most,” Typhon said. “The first challenge I gave to King Grover was to set him to race the wind. To show me that he was worthy of shepherding the sky, he had to fly alongside it.”
I nodded. That made some sense. Typhon stepped through the window, his edges blurring and twisting like he was a movie being projected onto fabric that was being blown by the wind. When he walked onto the clouds, his hooves never touched them. He moved like he was still walking, but the ends of his legs blurred into invisibility.
I walked to the edge of the window with Gilda and looked up at the landscape hanging over us.
“Don’t be so negative,” Gilda joked. “We’re so high up that you’d have plenty of time to save yourself before you hit the ground.”
Gilda braced herself and jumped out. The altered gravity held, and she dropped down to the floor of the cloud stadium. I saw her breathe a sigh of relief and she looked back at me and nodded.
I cast a quick cloudwalking spell and hopped down after her. The cloud felt different than some of the other packed clouds I’d been on when I’d visited Rainbow Dash or the odd pegasus city.
“Huh,” I said, poking it with a hoof. “It’s a lot softer than I’m used to. More bouncy.”
“Wild clouds are like that,” Gilda said. “It took me a while to get used to Cloudsdale because all the streets were practically as tough as rocks. You know. Relatively speaking.”
“This would make a good bed if my spell wouldn’t wear off halfway through the night and dump me on the ground,” I said. I enjoyed the springy feeling under my hooves and looked around. “So, uh, King Typhon? How is the race going to work? I’m sure you can see the wind just fine, but it’s more or less invisible to me and Gilda. How do we tell if she’s winning or not?”
“Her opponent will be very visible,” the giant rumbled. He gestured at the sky. “It is arriving in response to my summons.”
The breeze around us picked up, whipping my mane back as the thing arrived. It was difficult to parse even when I was looking right at it. Imagine a thousand flapping wings, all attached to each other in a kind of spiral fractal, looking something like an entire flock of birds crashed in one spot.
It also moved like absolutely nothing should be able to. It didn’t turn in the air, it just moved in whatever direction it wanted, going instantly at full speed and taking angles that no living being should have been able to manage at that velocity. It flew the way Rainbow Dash imagined she did.
“What the feather is that?” Gilda asked.
A distant memory clicked into place. “I think it’s a Chichimec, a kind of greater sylph,” I said. “They’re supposed to live in the most open, highest parts of the sky, as far from anything else as possible. No one knows for sure what they eat or drink, because it’s basically impossible to study them.”
“How am I supposed to beat it in a race?” Gilda asked. “You saw that thing flying!”
“We’ll figure something out,” I said. “Let’s make sure we know the rules first.”
“The rules are simple,” Typhon said. He reached out and gave the Chichimec a loving pat, like greeting a favored pet. “No doubt you have noticed the rings I have created.” He motioned to the cloud rings he’d formed. “All you must do is pass through each of the rings before your opponent.”
Gilda looked around. “Great, so I just have to fly better than something with perfect maneuverability in every direction, instant acceleration, and that flies faster than anything else I’ve ever seen.”
“It wouldn’t be a proper challenge otherwise,” Typhon said mildly.
“Let me just give my, uh, champion a quick pep talk,” I said. “I’m sure you want to encourage yours, too.”
Typhon nodded, and I pulled Gilda aside to speak to her.
“This is impossible,” was the first thing she said. Normally I’d agree, but I couldn’t just tell her it was hopeless and she was outmatched in every way or she’d lose hope.
“It’ll be fine,” I whispered. “Look, you’re one of the best griffons to ever fly. I know that for a fact, because you can keep up with Dash, and she’s always telling me she’s the best pony. She might exaggerate a little, but she’s faster than a Wonderbolt and twice as arrogant, and you’re right up there with her. You can do this!”
“Are you kidding? Did you see how that thing was moving? It’s unreal!”
“It does move more like it’s flying with magic than actually using wings,” I agreed. “Half of them are pointed in the wrong direction no matter which way it goes. It might look impressive, but I think that’s just because you’re used to things that fly like birds, and no bird would fly like that.”
“That doesn’t help me win,” Gilda pointed out.
“No,” I admitted. “I do think technique is going to matter a lot, but there’s nothing wrong with getting a little help.”
I glanced at Typhon to see if he seemed distracted, and he was at least looking away. I quickly cast a few spells, weaving them over Gilda.
“What was that?” she asked, looking down at herself. There was nothing visible because I wasn’t that careless.
“I just cast a few little quick spells on you,” I said. “Nothing big. Just some weight reduction, extra strength, that kind of thing. Sort of a mix of everything that might help you in the air.”
“That sort of seems like cheating,” Gilda muttered.
“It’s not cheating,” I said. “When did he say I couldn’t cast spells on you? I don’t remember hearing that. And I’m not going to ask him if it’s against the rules, either. If he wants to tell a unicorn not to start throwing magic around he has to say it in advance.”
“If we get in trouble--”
“We’re not going to get in trouble,” I assured her. “He’ll never even know! Let’s get you lined up for the big event.”
I gave her a soft punch to the shoulder and led her back over to Typhon.
“The finish line is two leagues in that direction,” Typhon said, once we’d arrived. He pointed. “The rings show the way. Do not miss any.”
“Got it,” Gilda said.
“The race will begin when the thunder strikes!” Typhon declared. “Ready yourself!”
Gilda crouched, ready to pounce. The air thickened with anticipation, the Chichimec buzzing and spasming as it hovered in place. A bolt of lightning struck down behind us, and they were off, flying ahead of us.
I could tell something was up right away, and I wondered if I’d made a mistake. Winds buffeted Gilda as she neared the first ring. The weight reduction made her faster, but it was also making her more vulnerable to being shoved. I almost accused Typhon of cheating until I saw the sylph struggling against the same gusts, thrown around even more than Gilda was.
“To race the wind is to race against the wind unless it is your friend,” Typhon said, picking up on my expression. “I chose the Chichimec as an opponent to your champion because it preys on the breeze, and so it can never befriend the winds.”
“You say that like those gusts are alive.”
Typhon frowned. “Of course they are. The wind is the very breath of life.”
Gilda bullied her way through the storm, so at least the strength enhancement I’d put on her was doing something. She slipped through the first ring just behind the Chichimec, and they stayed neck and neck right through the second.
“Your champion is quite skilled,” Typhon noted. “You chose well.”
“I was lucky I asked her to come along with me,” I said. “She’s a good griffon. All of them are. That’s why I’m here. They don’t deserve to suffer.”
Typhon tilted his horned head. “Shall we move to the finish line? I can carry you so we arrive before they do.”
“Nah, I got this,” I said. Two leagues wasn’t all that far to teleport through a clear sky with nothing that I had to worry about hitting. I popped there in an instant, and found one last ring that just had to mark the end of the course, bigger than the others and charged with electricity like a thunderhead, making it glow with a static aura.
Typhon appeared next to me a few seconds later.
“You beat me here,” he noted.
“Nothing’s faster than instantaneous,” I said, unable to hold back a little bit of a smirk. I swear I wasn’t trying to be smug, but it felt good to surprise someone like Typhon. He folded his arms but didn’t say anything back to me. I might have embarrassed him a little by getting there before him even after he’d offered to give me a ride.
There wasn’t really time to think about that, because Gilda and the Chichimec were approaching fast, both of them carried on unseen winds that almost seemed determined to keep them from getting through the rings. The ball of wings beat Gilda to one cloud ring, and a gust shoved it to the side before it could go through, forcing it to circle around and letting Gilda get ahead.
“Come on, Gilda!” I cheered. I could see how hard she was pushing herself to fight those hard gusts coming at her from every angle. It was like white-water rafting in the air, and she was going right through the worst parts. I wasn’t a pegasus, so I probably couldn’t appreciate it the way one of them would have, but even I could tell she was really pulling it off.
The Chichimec was right next to her, and I could see why it was having trouble. Where Gilda was bullying through the sky, it was constantly adjusting itself, being blown to the side and moving back into place instead of pushing through. With how much it had to zig-zag, it was really going two or three times as far as it had to.
It was still a lot faster than her, though, and every time they hit a clear patch, it pulled ahead without even trying. It was going to come down to a photo finish, and I hadn’t even packed a camera!
The final ring loomed, and I leaned forward, watching intently. The two approached the glowing ring of clouds and just at the last moment, Gilda strained, reaching forward with both talons and-- they both shot through the ring, Gilda and the wind spirit rushing through almost at once. Gilda lost control in the last moment, spiraling out of control before she managed to catch herself.
The aura of static electricity surrounded her in a sparking, glowing aura.
“What does…” Gilda asked. “Did I win? Does this mean I won?!”
“Indeed,” Typhon said, but he didn’t seem all that happy about it. I couldn’t blame him for being disappointed. He’d pretty much set Gilda up to fail. The Chichimec was probably the fastest-flying creature in the sky, and he’d also made it a test of maneuverability and agility with the rings, giving the creature another advantage.
I’d come into this half-expecting that he was going to give us sort of perfunctory challenges just to say he’d done it, something more about tradition and formality than anything else. I’d been wrong about that. He wanted to challenge us, and he wanted us to lose.
I watched him soothe the ruffled feathers of the wind spirit he’d set against us. The ball of wings didn’t really have a face, but it was clearly upset. I think Typhon was, too.
“I’ve never flown like that before!” Gilda said, landing next to me. The aura around her discharged into the cloud and faded. She wiped the sweat from her face, drips still working their way down her sides. “That was unreal.”
“You did great,” I said. “I told you that you were the bird for the job! All that training you put in paid off.”
“Yeah,” Gilda said, but she didn’t entirely sound like she agreed. She frowned and leaned closer to whisper. “Thanks for the help. I don’t… like what you did, but I would have lost without it.”
“You probably would have won either way,” I said. “The wind shear looked like it was blowing you all over the place. I didn’t expect that or I wouldn’t have bothered with weight reduction.”
“I managed better than that thing,” Gilda said with a shrug.
“We’ll just be more careful with the details next time,” I decided. “However King Grover did it, you can do it the same way. You’re smarter and you’ve got me to help.”
Gilda perked up a little at that and nodded. “Yeah. I’d rather do the next challenge the right way. It’s about the honor of Griffonstone.”
“Right,” I agreed. I gave her a pat on the back. I was still intending on cheating to make sure we’d win, but she didn’t have to know that.
“Your champion did well,” Typhon declared. He gave the Chichimec another careful pat and waved to it as it flitted off, buzzing past us with obvious annoyance. “Despite everything else in the race, she does have talent.”
“Everything else in the race?” I raised an eyebrow.
Typhon didn’t elaborate. “We shall move on to the second challenge.”
“Uh, I’m still pretty wiped out from that first one,” Gilda said, raising a talon. “Can we get a few minutes to rest?”
“Have no worry, mortal,” Typhon said. “The next challenge is no race. It can be undertaken at your own pace. In fact, it would be best for you to spend some time planning how to defeat the challenge. You will have as much time as you wish to rest.”
“That works,” I said. “We can get the details and figure it out while she recovers. Uh, as long as you don’t mind me offering advice?”
“It is no concern,” Typhon said. “Come. The next challenge awaits!”
He fluttered off in the wind, his body collapsing and flying through the open window that hung in the sky like a doorway with no frame, the dozens of eyes following after in a stream. I shrugged and helped Gilda stand up, and we went through after him, ending up in his throne room again.
“This challenge took Grover days to complete,” Typhon said. “His solution showed his wisdom and guile.” He walked right across the room and adjusted a window, warm orange light showing through. The three of us passed through onto a tiny wisp of cloud, compared to the stadium-sized mass we’d been on before. It was somehow thin and oddly gritty.
“Those are the Badlands, right?” Gilda asked, looking at the landscape hanging inverted above us. I looked up and nodded.
“Yeah. Look at those canyons!” I frowned and narrowed my eyes at a black blotch on the landscape that I knew wasn’t on any map, a heap of black that caught the light and seemed almost wet. I’d swear the edges shifted when I looked at them closely. I was gonna have to check that out at some point.
“Your second challenge!” Typhon declared. I was going to have to worry about whatever it was that looked halfway between a castle and something organic when I got back to Equestria.
Typhon produced a bag, small in his hands and a little bigger than a saddlebag, a simple kind of light cloth bag with a cinched-up top to allow it to close by tugging on the long rope trailing from the seam. He gave it to Gilda.
“This is the very same bag Grover used to complete this challenge. All I ask of you is to capture a wind within it. You may take as much time as you wish.”
“Capture a wind?” Gilda asked.
Typhon nodded. “I wish you luck. I must attend to my duties. The portal will remain open as long as you are here.” He went back through into his throne room, leaving us alone in the middle of nowhere with no idea what to do.
“Uh…” Gilda hesitated. “I don’t have any idea how to do this.”
“Is there anything special about the bag?” I asked. “Maybe he gave us that specific bag for a reason. It could be special or have a clue or something.”
Gilda opened it up, looking inside. She frowned. “No. It’s just some kind of cotton or silk or whatever.”
I touched it with a hoof. “Linen,” I corrected. Gilda gave me a look and I shrugged. “I’ve spent more than five minutes around Rarity. It’s a real education on all the finer points of dress design.”
“Anyway, it’s not airtight, obviously,” Gilda said. “Even if the fabric was, there are two big problems. This won’t ever cinch tight enough to keep air in, and there’s also this little tiny problem.”
She inverted the bag. The seam on the bottom was ripped almost entirely apart.
“There’s a feathering hole in the bottom! You can’t carry anything in this useless piece of trash!”
I cast a detection spell just to be sure. “It’s not magic, either. It’s just a broken bag.” I scowled at it, then shot a look back at the open window. I couldn’t see Typhon but I could imagine him laughing at us trying to do the impossible.
“I don’t get how we’re supposed to do this. Did Grover really catch the wind with this?” Gilda flipped the bag around. “Maybe I’m just not seeing something…”
“No, it’s probably impossible,” Sunset said. “Think about it. He didn’t even stay to watch, he told us we can take as much time as we want, the bag is ripped… Typhon probably expects us to give up. I bet he’s still upset that we beat his race!”
“I don’t know, he seemed like he was trying to play fair,” Gilda said.
“Sure, he seemed like that,” I scoffed. “Princess Celestia used to do stuff like this all the time. She’d tell me to do something that was absolutely impossible to do, and she wouldn’t tell me it couldn’t be done until I’d frustrated myself to tears trying to make it work.”
“That doesn’t seem like her,” Gilda said. “I never met her, but ponies all seem to love Princess Celestia.”
“Yeah well, there was always some dumb trick. She liked to say she was trying to make me think outside the box, but what she was really doing was showing off how much smarter she was because she gave me a riddle where she already knew the answer.”
“Oh! I get it!” Gilda said. “So there’s some kind of trick we’re supposed to figure out, and by having the exact same bag, it’s a clue!”
I scoffed. “Yeah. The clue is that we’re supposed to struggle and lose. No, we’re not going to waste time. You know what Princess Celestia really taught me with all those riddles and lessons?”
“To ask for help when you need it?” Gilda guessed. “He didn’t say we couldn’t ask how Grover did it.”
“No, she taught me that when you’re backed up into a corner, you can solve just about any problem if you’re willing to force your way through,” I said. “Here, give me the bag.”
Gilda reluctantly gave it to me. “I kind of wanted to do this the right way…”
“This is the right way,” I assured her. The first thing to do was to make the bag airtight. There was no point in repairing the hole in the bottom, so I left it there and used something like a shield bubble to create a purely magical container inside the bag.
“What are you doing?” Gilda asked.
“It’s simple,” I explained. “The wind is really just a pressure difference, right? It flows from high pressure to low pressure. So all we have to do is compress a bunch of air and hold it in place like I’m filling an air tank."
I drew in more and more air, compressing it all into a ball. The pressure differential started to make it shimmer like the heat on a sidewalk.
“Carefully…” I mumbled, placing it in the bag and closing it. The sides of the bag bulged, the shield straining to contain a few cubic meters of air.
“Is that safe?” Gilda asked.
“I mean, uh…” I hesitated then gave it to her. “Sure! Just don’t look inside. Or jostle it. Or squeeze it. Be careful.”
She frowned, deeply unhappy. I gave her a smile and motioned for her to lead the way back into the castle. Gilda gingerly held the bag out at talon’s length and flew through the window.
“You’ve already returned?” Typhon asked, surprised. He was sitting on a throne that he must have pulled out of nowhere. “I did not expect you for some time.”
“Haha, yeah…” Gilda said, nervously.
“So, have you arrived at the same answer as Grover?” Typhon stood up. “For some time he believed his task could not be accomplished, and he came to a conclusion that both amused and pleased me!”
“Er…” Gilda looked at me.
I stepped forward. “I don’t know if we have the same answer that he came up with. I think you’ll find we did exactly what you asked.”
Typhon motioned, and a hand phased out of the air and took the bag from Gilda.
“Be careful with that,” Gilda warned.
Typhon tilted his head and brought it closer, taking it in his two normal, attached hands. He felt the outside, clearly surprised that there was anything to feel. “This is really a surprise,” he said, before using one huge finger to pry open the cinched top.
“Wait--!” Gilda warned.
It was way too late. By the time she said anything he’d already ruptured the magical seal I’d put on it. The compressed air shot out, blasting him right in the face with a hurricane-strength gust of hard wind. His many floating eyes were scattered like leaves, blowing to the far corners of the room.
He sat in shock, frozen in place. I did my best to hold back a snicker and smirk, even though with his eyes rolling around the floor he’d never spot it. It took over a minute for his detached hands to find all the eyes and bring them back, setting them into their orbits again, and by the time he was finished every single one was glaring at us. At me.
“Was that enough wind?” I asked, trying to sound innocent and curious instead of like I’d just pulled one off and given a huge windbag a huge windbag.
“You…” Typhon growled. His expression darkened. I don’t mean that figuratively. It actually changed color, going down a few shades until it was the same tone as an active thunderstorm. “You mock me? In my own home?!”
“We’re completing your challenges,” I countered. “If you wanted this done in a more specific way, you should have said something in advance. I know some of my friends would have been a lot worse about it. I don’t know if Pinkie or Dash would have been more likely to fart in the bag and call it their personal wind.”
“Probably not Dash,” Gilda sighed. “She’d put herself in the bag and say she was the wind.”
“You are nothing like Grover,” Typhon said. “He had honor! Ability! Wisdom! All things that you lack! All you have is the typical pony cleverness, weaseling around problems.”
“Well then tell me what you wanted!” I snapped. “What did Grover do?”
Typhon stood up, dismissing his throne. It vanished like a sandcastle in the tide, blowing away in the breeze through the open windows. “First, Grover did not feel a need to cheat his way through the first challenge.”
Gilda winced at the word cheat. I couldn’t tell if that made Typhon angrier or mollified him a little. It didn’t make him less angry at me, that was for sure.
“Grover realized the point of the race. It was racing the wind. Not just the Chichimec. He used the wind, asked it for aid, and it gave lift to his wings and pushed him to victory while trapping the spirit I set against him! He befriended the wind, because he understood that was always the object of the race.”
“Gilda won by being fast. I think that deserves at least some recognition,” I countered.
“It does,” Typhon agreed. “That is why I held back my wrath, even though you upset my pet so badly with your pony magic. You couldn’t allow it to be a test of raw strength, nor could you try to see through the surface. Instead, you just put your hoof where it didn’t belong!”
I huffed. “What about catching the wind? It’s not possible! Unless you’re going to tell me that Grover asked nicely and some breeze just hopped in the bag?”
“If he had asked nicely enough, one might have done just that,” Typhon said. “No, he found another solution. I gave you his bag to see if you would come to the same answer. He thought outside the box--”
Just hearing that made me clench my teeth. That was the same phrase Princess Celestia said every time she put a riddle in front of me with no logical answer. I’m clever. I’m smart. I’m wise. I also hate it when someone tells me to think outside the box and pulls an answer from were the sun doesn’t shine. It turns it from a test into a game of trying to guess what the other person is thinking.
“Grover used the bag as a kite, flying it with the wind,” Typhon said. “It amused me, and it was a clever solution to catching the wind.”
“That doesn’t even make sense!” I snapped, so angry that I was just entirely done with decorum. “A kite?! How is that catching the wind at all? And how were we supposed to figure that out at random?!”
“If you had made an honest effort or at least tried something before making a mockery of my trials, I would have perhaps given you a hint,” Typhon said mildly. Smugly. I was starting to really dislike the big guy.
“Well, you know what? While you’re standing there judging us for trying to beat your trials, there are griffons suffering! They’ve been suffering for generations because your servant went and tried to take back the gift you gave them and completely destroyed the weather around Griffonstone! Instead of helping fix the mess you made, you’d rather use any excuse you can to avoid doing anything and taking responsibility!”
“All I ask is that your champion prove their worth of the power I can grant--”
I cut him off, stomping closer so I could glare at him better. It wasn’t easy to try and match the weight of his gaze. He had a few dozen more eyeballs than I did and he was also a giant.
“No one should have to prove they deserve to be helped when they’re suffering!” I yelled. “I don’t care who or what they are! You’re saying they don’t deserve to live because you don’t think they’re wise enough? Because a few generations ago one of them might have made a mistake? How dare you?!”
“You have no idea what you speak of,” Typhon said. “You don’t understand what they did, the gift they squandered!”
“So what? You gave them the Idol and that should have been enough forever? People make mistakes! Maybe they’re like foals to you, but when a foal makes a mistake you explain what they did wrong and you help them avoid making it again! You don’t abandon them because they’re not perfect! You don’t just toss them aside for somepony else who bows and scrapes at your hooves and worships you!”
“Uh…” Gilda hesitated. “Are we all still talking about the same thing?”
“You have come into my house, made a mockery of my fair challenges, and there can be only one resolution,” Typhon said. “I will prepare an arena for us, and we will duel. If you wish to prove that you’re right, prove it on the field of battle.”
He started to move over to one of the windows. I might have lost control of my anger slightly and maybe I wasn’t thinking entirely clearly at this point. I snap-cast a spell, and a wall of fire blazed in front of him, cutting him off before he got there.
“I think this place is just fine!” I yelled. “You want to fight me? Then fight me!”
Typhon reached towards the fire and I saw him visibly recoil from the heat. He rubbed his fingers together like he’d actually been burned and turned to look at me.
“This place is not appropriate for a battle between us,” he said. “This is my throne room. If you have an arena in mind, name it and I will transport us there so you can be assured there are no tricks or guile--”
He was talking and that meant he was scared. I don’t know what kind of horseapples he was trying to pull with having me name an arena, but I’m sure he had something up his sleeve. I wouldn’t put it past him to throw us through a window into the middle of nowhere and make us walk back home without even trying to fight.
Besides, I had him right where I wanted him. He might have been some kind of immortal wind god or whatever, but he also had a hundred unblinking eyes, every single one looking right at me.
“SOLAR FLARE!” I yelled. I cast a light spell that collapsed almost as soon as I’d put it together, overcharged and shattering into an incredibly bright flash of light, more blinding than a lightning bolt and going right into a hundred unblinking gazes.
Typhon cried out in pain and reeled back, stumbling blindly away from him. He really hated that. No one expected a flashbulb right into the eye socket.
Ghostly hands appeared out of the wind and tried to feel around and grab for me. I blasted them with fire bolts as they neared, and they exploded, popping like balloons when I applied any force.
“Sunset, this is a bad idea!” Gilda yelled.
“Just keep at a safe distance,” I warned her. “This is between me and him!”
“That’s great and all, but did you forget we came here to ask him for a favor?! Trying to kill him is not gonna help, and if I’m saying that…” Gilda paused. “Wow, we’ve really gone off the rails on this.”
“Do not underestimate me!” Typhon shouted. His vision must have been clearing already. I should have followed up with an attack, but Gilda had distracted me for those few critical seconds.
Typhon raised his arms and lightning cascaded towards me, a torrent of bolts like a whole thunderhead discharging at once. I tossed a shield in the way, then a second behind it, letting the first barrier shatter to eat some of the energy of the attack and give me time to make a better shield. I deflected one entirely and the second barely cut through, only enough to tickle.
“Is that all you’ve got?!” I asked, unwisely.
Typhon roared, and the power of his lightning tripled. I put together another shield, pouring energy into it. The force against it pushed me back, the spell’s energy creating a force like magnets repelling each other, my hooves slipping and sending me sliding a few steps even while I tried to hold the deadly attack.
“Is that all you have, Scion of the Sun?” Typhon asked, tilting his head up to look down at me even more than he already was. “You mock me, then hide behind shields? You use tricks because you know how badly you’re outmatched?”
“You have no idea what I can do!” I snapped.
“I don’t need to know every cowardly ruse you can bring to bear! It’s no wonder you’re here on behalf of such lowly mortals. You can’t even live up to your own potential. Pathetic!”
I saw red. If he’d been trying to upset me, he’d just found the fastest and easiest way to do it. Typhon wanted to see what I could do when I wasn’t holding anything back and didn’t care if I was risking burning out my magic or exhausting myself? His servants were going to have to figure out how to put him back together after I was done with them.
I cast a spell to steady myself and started channeling magic. One of the first things I’d been taught about magic is that there were limits to what you could safely do. Trying to use too much magic at once was like pouring too much water into a cup. It would spill out and you’d have a mess everywhere.
I turned on the tap and let it rip. A ball of energy formed at the tip of my horn and I just streamed magic into it, focusing it tighter and tighter. The air started to vibrate around me. Sparks cascaded randomly, tiny discontinuities in the containment releasing magic explosively before they sealed themselves.
“I’ll show you what potential looks like!” I screamed. This was the same kind of spell that I’d tried using on Nightmare Moon, and it had been enough to spook Luna. I wanted to put the fear of Sunset into him, too.
He must have sensed something because he stopped shooting lightning. I unleashed my spell, and a pencil-thin line of ultra-dense magic tore across the room at him. He didn’t even try and block it. Typhon threw himself aside with obvious panic, and I cut sideways with the beam, trying to track him and following him up and around to the side of the room. Stone evaporated before the beam even touched it, the air explosively combusting and leaving a trail of fire and explosions a moment after I’d swept the beam across the throne room and up into the ceiling.
The whole castle shook when the beam went up into the roof. My attack sputtered out, and I panted, trying to catch my breath. The temperature in the room was like an oven.
“How was that?!” I demanded. “You want me to keep living up to my potential?!”
“Sunset, I think you broke something important!” Gilda yelled. The castle shook again. Typhon picked himself up off the ground and looked around in alarm.
“Oh horseapples,” I swore, powering down my spells and looking around. The floor lurched like we were on a ship instead of standing in a castle that was very firmly attached to the rock. At least, it was supposed to be firmly attached to the rock.
“You damaged the foundations of my realm!” Typhon yelled. He dropped what he was doing with lighting and even stopped looking ready to fight and gazed around in panic. Cracks shot through the stone, dust falling from the ceiling and getting worse with every rumble and shake. The direction of gravity seemed to change again, sliding sideways for a moment before snapping back.
“It’s not my fault!” I shouted defensively. “You’re the one who wanted to fight me!”
The door to the throne room burst open, and three cyclopses ran in, yelling about something. I couldn’t understand what they were actually saying, but with the way they were extremely panicked and pointing up and around, I had a pretty good guess that they’d noticed that the castle was starting to fall apart and they were very worried about what was going to happen to them in regards to being in a gravity-reversed distorted space that was on the verge of collapse.
“What do we do?” Gilda asked.
“Well, um…” I looked around. One of the cracks going through the walls reached the frame of a window-portal and shattered it, the space within collapsing, the sky outside replaced by a swirl of chaotic rainbow light before vanishing and leaving a very mundane view of the sky outside in its place.
“How did you break a whole fortress?” Gilda asked.
“It depends on what I hit,” I admitted. “He was using lightning, which is pretty safe with something grounded like rock. My spell, uh…” I wasn’t entirely sure how to put it. “It’s less safe. He got me really angry and I wasn’t thinking, okay? At least I didn’t hit a lake and cause a steam explosion or anything.”
The floor shook hard enough to make everyone in the room except Typhon stumble. A spiderweb of cracks worked their way through it, the stone wanting desperately to move. A chunk the size of my whole body managed it, dislodging and falling down into the void below us. I looked down into the open air and felt terrible dread. What would happen if one of us fell down there? Would we just keep going forever?
“This is why immortals cannot fight each other,” Typhon said. “This is why the wisest among us seclude ourselves away from the world! Even the Sun and Moon nearly destroyed everything, and that was merely a spat between jealous siblings!”
“Hey, Luna is a great pony!” I yelled. “She wouldn’t have killed everypony! Probably! And she was just upset!”
“Someone who was merely upset and whose merest whim was enough to overthrow the natural order,” Typhon corrected. “Look around you! I did not wish to fight here because this nexus is the place where all the winds of the world are centered! It is the eye of the storm, and now it is breaking apart!”
“Well, I’m sorry if I broke your stuff!” I snapped. I was still sort of angry, but I was starting to feel really bad about it. He hadn’t seemed like a bad person overall, and I really had been in the wrong, but he’d gotten me angry and I didn’t think clearly when I was emotional. I ended up doing things like throwing myself off a moving train or fleeing the country.
“The whole world is at risk!” Typhon lamented. He reached out, hands appearing and wrapping around the worst damage, literally trying to hold the entire castle together. “If the nexus is lost, the wild winds of the world will run rampant!”
“Sunset, he’s saying if we don’t do something, the whole world is gonna end up like Griffonstone!” Gilda yelled.
I paled at that, because I knew she was right. Those chaotic winds hitting from every angle, every one of them filled with a kind of wild hate like wounded, rabid predators. That could be the whole world. There would be countless deaths, the collapse of civilization, and I’d definitely get scolded for it.
“We can fix this!” I declared, because I wanted it to be true and the first step in making something true was to believe in it. Magical nexus of the winds or not, it was made of stone, and I knew a few things about that. I saw a crack start to widen, and I started spraying repair spells at it, starting with weak ones just to stop the damage for a moment and let the others take effect. It was a technique I’d developed myself, and it was the magical equivalent of building a scaffolding to hold things in place before starting work.
The crack reversed, the stone fusing. A faint scar was visible because of minor conflicts in the multiple overlapping spells causing the grain of the granite-like material to warp. It didn’t matter. That was just appearance, and it could be fixed later. Probably. He could paint over it if it really bothered him.
It was proof that I could fix things, and that was enough. I started with the more delicate-looking parts of the room, the window frames holding the portals in place. I started fixing them, trying to judge which were the closest to total failure.
“Hurry!” Typhon yelled, as another one snapped and shattered into un-space before vanishing. “I cannot hold this forever! I am the spirit of wind, not stone!”
“I’m working on it!” I said, changing tactics and casting the first level repair spell across a wider area. It slowed me down with the actual repairs, but it kept the damage from spreading further. The remaining windows seemed stable after a solid minute of casting high-level spells at them and banishing detail work to a nebulous later.
One of the cyclopses babbled something at me in its language.
“Equestrian!” I snapped, starting to get a headache. I tried to calm myself just a fraction. It wasn’t yelling, it was trying to tell me something. I forced myself to sound less angry. “Sorry. I don’t speak whatever language you’re using!”
“He will lead you to the foundations you damaged,” Typhon translated, grunting with effort. “You must hurry! Our argument can wait!”
I nodded in agreement and followed the cyclops, running out of the room at its heels and up stairs, taking a different route than we’d used to get here. A whole section of one staircase was missing, the rock melted and still magma-hot around the edges where my spell had cut through it. I teleported past it, following the line of damage.
Eventually we reached the highest (or lowest depending on your perspective) part of the castle. It was right where the gravity discontinuity lay, marked by a layer of mist and dust slowly orbiting around that slice of zero gravity between the two directions of gravity. My spell had blasted into a pillar of solid stone and torn it apart right at that layer of mist, and something about the warped and distorted space was acting like a lever and prying at the castle and the remaining supports, the stone beginning to fail from shearing stress. Rock was great at holding a heavy load pressing it down, but not great with the kind of twisting sideways force it was getting.
“Okay, uh…” I hesitated. This was beyond a mere repair spell. There was a whole section of the stone missing. I looked up past the gravity discontinuity. We were down in the foundations, so everything up there was just the mountain.
For one whole second, I thought about just hopping up there and walking away from the whole mess. It was so tempting, to just leave it behind.
Instead, I grabbed a loose boulder and yanked it with telekinesis, forcing it into the gap where the support beam had broken. I tossed heat spells into it, and the stone started glowing and running, going as soft as taffy. I pulled and stretched it, using the magma like caulk and filling in the gap.
There were right ways to use repair spells, and there were wrong ways. I used the spell the wrong way and forced the magma and the cold stone of the foundations to fuse together like they’d always been one seamless mass, relying on the structure of my casting to cool it down quickly and weld the rock, repair spells fixing cracks before they could really form. The sound was like ice cracking apart in boiling water, all sharp pops and snaps. Steam rose out of the rock itself.
The rumbling stopped.
I wiped my brow and turned back to the cyclops that had led me here. “Well that wasn’t so bad,” I said. “What’s next?”
That had proven to be the worst damage the castle had sustained, though on the way back to the throne room I tossed more spells at any damage I spotted. It wasn’t great work, and felt more like pushing things under the rug and hoping nopony would notice. Eventually I had to admit I was sort of wasting time because I didn’t want to go back and have to talk to Typhon about what I’d done.
It wasn’t until I was actually back in the throne room that I realized I’d really wanted to avoid Gilda. She was sitting near the hole in the floor where that chunk of rock had fallen into the sky and just looked despondent.
“We’re never going to be able to save Griffonstone like this,” she mumbled, and I winced. She was right.
“I messed up,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“The danger is passed, for now,” Typhon sighed. He summoned his throne and sat down, looking as exhausted as I was. “The world is far easier to break than to hold together, and once broken it sometimes cannot be repaired without leaving a mark.”
He motioned to the hole in the floor.
“Until now, I have spoken well of Grover,” Typhon said. “That is because when he and I parted company, I believed he was a good griffon, worthy of doing the right thing with the boon I granted him. While you were away, I spoke with your friend, Gilda. She told me some of the history of Griffonstone.”
“I thought you knew all about it,” I said.
Typhon shook his head. “I knew the Idol was being abused, but not the details. Do you know anything of the nature of the Idol of Boreas?”
“It had some kind of power to control the weather,” I said. “There really wasn’t much written about it. Most of its abilities were kept secret by the Kings of Griffonstone.”
“Yes, and that is the problem. Things were kept too secret. The Idol of Boreas contained the names of half of the winds of the world, their true and secret names. You understand?”
I nodded slowly. “Knowing anyone or anything’s true name is part of sympathetic magic. You can do a lot with it. Binding, controlling…”
“Yes. The Idol was given to him so he could share its power with the griffons. Each of them was to receive a part of its power, a name of the wind that would be their own. They were to steward them and guide them, but instead Grover kept all of the power for himself, and it made him formidable.”
“I had no idea,” I said.
“No one did,” Typhon lamented. “I told him how to use it, and instead of doing what I asked, his greed and lust for power consumed him. He hoarded the power like a dragon does gold, and I did nothing because I thought to distance myself from the world of mortals.”
“He stole from every griffon that came after him,” Gilda said. “He told griffons they should be proud just to have such a powerful ruler. And we were! But we could have had something for ourselves…”
“We want to make things right,” I said. “The whole reason we came here was to find a way to stop the damage the lost Idol is causing. If you forged the first one, you could make another, and we could use it to negate whatever the Idol of Boreas is doing and--”
“No,” Typhon said, very firmly.
“What? Why not?” I asked. “There are people suffering!”
“Yes, the lost Idol has brought much suffering into the world,” Typhon agreed. “It would have been better to give Grover some other boon. I gave it expecting him to use it wisely, and he did not. I do not have such expectations of you, and here you ask for more power when you have so much already?”
“It’s not about power,” I said.
“Nor is my refusal entirely about mistrust. The lost Idol is disrupting the very balance of the world. When I gave the griffons the true names of the winds, they left my control. Fully half the winds of the world were tied to the gift I gave.”
“So to make another one…” I groaned.
“I would have to give the rest of the winds of the world to you, and that is something I cannot do. Even if the first idol was destroyed, I cannot take back a gift once given. Those nameless winds run wild like wolves, savage and growing all the worse with time.”
“There’s nothing we can do about that, though!” I protested. “Your servant tried to steal the idol back and it was lost in the Abysmal Abyss, which is apparently bottomless and even if it wasn’t, the wind makes it impossible to traverse!”
“Consider this the true third trial I set before you, then,” Typhon said. “If you wish to make amends for the damage you’ve done here, and to save the people you claim to care about, do the impossible and retrieve the Idol.”
“I don’t think you understand how impossible I’m talking about,” I said. “You’re probably not bothered by wind at all. Tornado? No big deal. Hurricane? Just part of the job description. We’re talking about trying to go down some huge distance in a narrow gap with winds doing their best to kill us.”
“Griffons have been trying ever since the Idol was lost,” Gilda said. “If they couldn’t figure it out in generations, we’re not gonna just do it on our own, especially if it’s only getting worse with time.”
“It would not be a trial if it was an easy task.” Typhon leaned forward on his throne. “You showed that you have strength, now show that you can use strength for the right reasons.”
“If we could do it on our own we wouldn’t have needed to come here for help!” I rubbed between my eyes, my headache starting to grow. Some of it was magical exhaustion, some of it was regular exhaustion from climbing a bucking mountain, and the biggest part of it was frustration at myself and everything else around me.
“I can tell you are unhappy with this,” Typhon said, showing he was master of both the winds and understatement. “You must imagine how I feel. To you, it is a land being ravaged by savage winds. To me, someone I trusted as a friend betrayed me, hoarded the power I gave him, and abused the beloved breezes that I gave him to care for.”
I frowned and nodded. “I get it, I guess. None of it is really your fault. Someone else made the mess and I’m asking you for the same thing he did.”
“Yes, and far more rudely,” Typhon sighed. “I would be well within my rights to send you on your way with nothing, if not try again to strike you down for your insolence, but I fear that even making an attempt such as that would lead to the destruction of nations.”
I shrugged and nodded. I could be humble. Besides, he probably meant that if he did me any serious harm, Celestia and Luna would come down on him like a ton of bricks. Cadance might even chip in, but she wasn’t much of a fighter. If Twilight got involved he’d be better off not even trying to fight back. As much as I was jealous of the girl she had one heck of a record for taking out beings of cosmic power.
“I will give you a boon.” He held up a finger to forestall my question .”A small boon. I do not do this for your sake but for the sake of the winds trapped by being bound to the Idol. I do it with the understanding that when you do retrieve the Idol, you will use it wisely, as it was meant to be used. Do you understand?”
I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to say anything that wouldn’t get me killed. My mind rushed as I tried to imagine what he might give us. Hopefully not a broken linen bag with a big bomb of compressed air in it. It’d be kind of ironic but he didn’t seem spiteful in that way.
Typhon breathed in deeply, and the world seemed to breathe with him. A breeze blew through the room through the damaged windows, traveling from some faraway place to reach us and carrying the hot air of sunbaked sand with it. Typhon’s hands weaved through the air, swirling and kneading the air and the wind itself. A second breeze blew from another window, this one scented like ice and winter, and more hands appeared to guide it. I could almost see the wind in the places the hands weren’t, like a picture made up entirely of gaps.
I could feel the magic in what he was doing. It wasn’t like the kind of spellcasting we unicorns usually do. This was real primal magic. The way I cast spells, when I wasn’t so angry I was just throwing power at the universe and forcing it to choose to either bend or break, was sort of like writing instructions for the magic to follow. Runes told the magic what to do, and in combination they made up words and phrases. Some unicorns chanted or used other mnemonics to help them remember the runes they needed to use.
What Typhon was doing wasn’t like writing, it was more like a blacksmith working a forge. He folded the wind over itself, worked it and shaped it. If I closed my eyes and just felt without looking, I could almost understand what he was doing. Not enough to do what he was doing -- it was like watching an artist at work. I might be able to see the techniques they were using, but matching them was beyond my ability.
He shaped the winds into rings, blowing endlessly in circles, chasing their own tails, then slowly shrank them, making them smaller and smaller, the wind speeding up as it collapsed. It reached some critical point and then… I don’t know how to describe it. That’s the thing with primal magic. It would be like trying to describe what happened when Discord snapped his talons. Something just happened, and I wasn’t equipped to understand it.
Typhon was holding two beads, each of them the size of a small marble and glowing faintly from within with the orange, red, and teal of the evening sky. It sort of matched my usual look. Did he do that on purpose?
“I give each of you stewardship of one of my winds,” Typhon said. He held the marbles out to us, pressing them into our chests firmly. I felt it for a second, rubbery and hard and tough, before it suddenly popped, like it been forced through some tiny opening. When I looked down, there was nothing. The marble had somehow vanished.
“That felt weird,” Gilda shivered. “Was it supposed to be that cold?”
“The antarctic winds often are,” Typhon said. “They are lonely and cold, from a land where they are the only movement in all the world.”
I rubbed my chest. “I didn’t feel cold.” Or much of anything at all.
“I granted you a wind from the sand-blasted and deadly desert. I believe it recognized you.”
“I mean I have spent some time in the desert,” I admitted. “It’s a long story.”
“It is a wind that has seen destruction, death, and the ending of things. It seems fitting for you,” Typhon said.
I wasn’t sure how to take that, so I decided I was going to assume it was a compliment. “So how do we… use them?” I asked. I really couldn’t feel anything at all different. He might as well have done nothing at all.
“Learning will be part of your trial,” Typhon said. “But you will not find the answer if you think of it as something to be used and abused, and not as an ally.”
I frowned and nodded. I didn’t like not being given the whole answer, but I’d take a clue and some hope over absolutely nothing any day of the week. It was another teaching method Princess Celestia used, and one that was a little less intolerable than logic puzzles and mind games. She’d give enough direction to point me the right way, then stand back and let me figure it out.
Sometimes I think she had lessons like that just so she could take a few days off and just check in with me, but I was older and wiser now and I understood that she was trying to teach me how to learn on my own. Anypony could memorize a lecture if they really put their mind to it, but it took real effort to know how to use the resources at your disposal to find an answer instead of being given one.
“Thank you,” Gilda said. “We’ll, uh. We’ll try to get the Idol back.” She didn’t sound so sure that we’d be able to do it, and I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t looking forward to trying my hoof at something I’d called so impossible and difficult that I’d rather go into the middle of nowhere and climb the highest peak in the world.
“Remember, it isn’t something meant for a single person to wield, especially not a mere mortal,” Typhon cautioned. “It was dangerous even when it was merely unused and contained. Now it is savage and deadly. Trying to tame it would be like taming a hydra. Even if you calmed one head, another would bite.”
“I knew somepony who could sweet-talk a hydra,” I said. “It didn’t make it less wild, but she calmed it down and kept it from hurting anypony.”
“Take a lesson from her, then,” Typhon said. “Treat the winds like the life of the world that they are. Now, I have given you a boon, I have seen my castle nearly destroyed, and I am not used to having visitors again. I am tired.”
“Right, yeah,” I said. “Thanks for having us.”
“Do not return,” Typhon said firmly. “Please.”
“Hey, as long as you said please,” I joked. “I’m sure you can find us if you change your mind and want a visit.”
He gave me a look with a hundred eyes that said he was definitely not going to change his mind. Two of the cyclops that had run in screaming about the castle falling apart were still in the room, and he motioned to them. The smaller, but still pretty large, giants escorted us out. They were careful not to actually point their spears at us, but they carried their weapons in a way that reminded us that they definitely had spears and they were choosing not to use them out of politeness.
“That didn’t go as well as I wanted,” I sighed, as we started up the stairs back towards the mountain. It was just my luck that we’d find the only mountain that was uphill both ways.
“Mmph,” Gilda mumbled. She gave me a side-eyed look.
I rolled my eyes. “What?”
Gilda and I didn’t talk much on the way back. It was a lot easier going down than going up, for a lot of reasons. The wind wasn’t trying to freeze us or tear us apart, so we could make our way down in a series of short flights and teleportation hops instead of having to walk the whole way. Since we were each making our own way to the bottom, it was hard to tell if she was upset at me or if it was a natural distance.
Even when we met up again, we just talked about the way back and discussed the direction we needed to go instead of what happened or what we were actually going to do when we were in Griffonstone.
That isn’t to say I didn’t think endlessly about it. A sense of dread washed over me every time I thought about it. How was I going to get the Idol back? No one had ever even come close, and the last person who tried seemed to have died in the attempt. It didn’t seem like the kind of problem I could just brute force with magic, and almost the whole way back I spent my time alone thinking in circles, coming up with ideas, discarding them, picking them back up, trying to make them somehow work, tossing them aside again, and on and on.
Eventually we made it to the nearest train station, ten days after we’d left Griffonstone and with basically nothing to show for it. We quietly bought tickets, got on board, and sat in the private cabin we’d rented.
And then we had hours with nowhere to go and nothing to do except finally talk to each other.
“At least it didn’t take long to get back here,” I offered when we’d settled in. “I thought Typhon might throw a storm at us just to push us out of the mountains. I guess he wasn’t as angry as I thought.”
“Yeah I can’t imagine why you’d think he might be angry,” Gilda grumbled, staring out the window at the desolate station. The only other people to get on the train were a few yaks and a few ponies whose cutie marks suggested they were geology students working on their rocktorates. “It’s almost like someone tried really hard to get him peeved.”
I sighed. “Yeah. I might have lost my temper a little. I really should have been more careful with that one spell. I’ve never actually tried cutting through a major geological structure with it and I didn’t know it would do that much damage.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Gilda said. She turned back to me. She was scowling, but she always scowled. There wasn’t a lot of heat to it. It was more like emotional exhaustion. “I thought you were supposed to be a genius or something. This whole thing was your idea!”
“Being a genius doesn’t mean I don’t make mistakes! Even Princess Celestia messes up sometimes. A lot, actually. Most ponies just don’t get to see it.” I sighed. I needed to change the subject before this turned into a shouting mess. “Were you able to figure out anything with the windy thing?”
Gilda shrugged. “A little, but it’s not enough to help.”
“A little is more than I’ve got. Can I see?”
“Wow, asking for help already?” Gilda smirked. “I thought a genius would have gotten it down pat already!”
I raised my hooves in defeat. “Are you able to use it in here? There’s not a ton of room.”
“Yeah, it’s cool. It’ll be easier since the air is kinda still,” Gilda said. She opened the window a crack. “I thought it was gonna be like pegasus magic, you know? There’s some basic stuff I could always do like standing on clouds, but that’s normal. I couldn’t shoot lightning out of my flank or turn rain into snow. That’s what a pegasus does, so I wasted a ton of time trying to figure out how to zap you, then I tried making clouds, but none of that happened.”
“So what did work?” I asked.
“When Typhon was yelling at us about all the things we did wrong, he said during the race I was supposed to use the wind. And he always talks about the wind like it’s alive. So I, you know. I tried asking nicely.”
“You tried… asking nicely?”
“Don’t look so feathering surprised, I’m one of the nicest griffons in Griffonstone!”
“Having spent time in Griffonstone, I believe you when you say that,” I admitted.
That seemed to mollify her a little. She closed her eyes and whispered something under her breath, and a breeze picked up, a draft coming through the open window and starting to spin in circles around us.
“Are you doing that?” I asked.
“No, Foehleen is doing it.” Gilda blushed. “Uh, I mean…”
“Foehleen?” I paused. “Is that… you named it?”
“I didn’t name it, exactly, it always had a name!” Gilda’s blush had no signs of fading and was starting to creep along her neck. “Y-you heard what Typhon said! Every wind has a name and the Idol was full of their names and that’s why it had power!”
“Right, right,” I agreed. “True names, like in sympathetic magic. I just didn’t think of actually naming them like pets.”
“Look, it works, okay?” Gilda pointed out. She whispered something else, and I couldn’t quite catch the words but I did get the feeling behind it. It was somewhere between asking a friend for help and giving orders to a pet. The wind picked up, kicking up a tiny zephyr, then the draft reversed and the wind vanished right back out of the window.
“Huh,” I said, tapping my chin. “There was magic there. I could feel it around the edges.”
“I don’t know how to make it do anything useful,” Gilda sighed. “Even if it’s just the wind, it should help me fly, right? But I don’t know how to get it to give me a good headwind for lift or tailwind for speed.”
“If it was pony magic I’d assume you’d need to just practice a lot. This might be more like training a pet.” I paused. “Is this a bad time to mention I’m not good with animals?”
“It could be worse. When I lived in Cloudsdale somepony got me a goldfish and I ate it because I thought it was a snack. I, uh, didn’t make a lot of friends.”
“Yeah well, don’t tell Fluttershy but fish make awful pets anyway. They’re more like a decoration that you have to feed and clean.” I sighed. “I don’t even know where to start with trying to figure out a name. Did you just come up with it, or…?”
“Nah, it just kinda came to me,” Gilda said. “I think it’s more like they already have names, but you have to figure them out.”
“Mm. That reminds me of a theory in cutie mark science. It’s called Pilot Mark Theory and the idea is that cutie marks are as predetermined as your coat and mane color. There’s only one cutie mark you can possibly get, so trying to force a particular mark will never work, but it’s impossible to know what that destined mark is until it actually manifests.”
“Please don’t compare this to getting one of your stupid pony tramp stamps,” Gilda groaned. “I got enough of that trying to tell Dash that griffons don’t get cutie marks. She was convinced I could get one if I tried hard enough.”
“Is that where Gabby got the idea?”
“Who knows? She’s just obsessed with Equestria. She keeps asking me to go on a trip with her and show her around, but she’d just end up disappointed if we actually went.”
“You know, it might not be a bad idea to visit,” I said. “Dash would probably let you crash on her couch if you asked.”
“Yeah sure, and all I’d have to do is crawl back to her and beg for forgiveness,” Gilda sighed. “I never told her this, but I wasn’t having a great time when I went to see her in Ponyville. Some stuff happened and… I didn’t know where else to go. It was just like old times for a while, and then it all crashed down. She wouldn’t stand up for me, her friends are all crazy…” Gilda shrugged.
“Well, I can’t disagree with the part about her friends all being crazy. I can’t see her not standing up for a friend.”
“It’s what happened,” Gilda said firmly. “I lost my temper because of a bunch of junk, and she kicked me out of town.”
“Sort of like how Typhon kicked me out.”
Gilda frowned. “No, it’s completely different, because all I did was screw up my own stupid life, but you have birds counting on you in Griffonstone and this hurts them, too!”
I groaned and sat back. “I know. You’re right. I should probably throw in the towel and tell Twilight to come up here and fix everything. Heck, she could even bring Dash.”
“That would even be worse,” GIlda muttered. “I don’t want her to see me like this.”
“How do you think I feel?” I asked. “It would be like the third or fourth time she’d be bailing me out because I was in over my head. I think I’d rather jump down into the Abyssal Abyss myself and hope for the best. Then if she has to save my bacon, at least I’ll actually be in trouble and not just a loser and a failure.”
“Oh yeah, you’re the failure. All you’ve got going for you is living in a palace and hanging out with royalty every day.”
“When you say it like that it sounds great, but in practice? It’s spending all day around ponies who didn’t make the same mistakes I did. When I walk next to Celestia, the grace and beauty and awe doesn’t rub off on me. It’s like being a stain on a dress. If it’s a really nice dress, that just makes the stain worse.”
“Ugh. Talking to you is exhausting,” Gilda groaned. “You’ve got all these idiots eating out of your hooves and you’re complaining because things aren’t perfect. Nothing is ever perfect! You think you’ve got it bad because you’re not absolutely the most amazing pony, but any time you want you can just pack up and go home with your hot Saddle Arabian marefriend and your student and cry on Princess Celestia’s shoulder!”
“She’s not my marefriend, it’s really complicated and political. But that’s not the point.”
“No, the point is you’re always being, feather, what’s the term? Self-deprecating. You put yourself down and then want everyone around you to tell you you’re awesome. Constantly. That’s why it’s so annoying.”
I sighed. “Sorry.”
“Whatever.”
“I’m not going to give up on Griffonstone,” I said. “I don’t know how to fix it, but I’m going to try.”
“Good, because otherwise I’d have to do it on my own. I need you there, but not as a dumb pony friendship thing. I need you there so I can point you at problems and make them explode.”
“Gilda if you figure out a way to turn this into a problem that I can explode, I will absolutely become your new best friend. It’s the one thing I am a hundred percent confident about.”
“If it wasn’t so close to Griffonstone you could just take some wild shots down into the Abyss until the winds stopped, but after the mess in the castle I’m pretty sure you’d end up exploding the entire city.”
“Hmm…” I hadn’t considered the idea of carpet-bombing. It was probably more trouble than it was worth. The Idol was almost certainly too tough for me to just break, and I’d end up burying it.
“Hey! That was a joke! Please don’t actually blow up Griffonstone.”
I rolled my eyes and huffed, trying to look like she’d ruined my plans for lunch.
Griffonstone was burning. The thatched houses blazed like torches and I saw griffons trying to escape the flames by flying into the air, but it was like they hit some invisible wall and exploded into fireballs, lighting up the sky like horrible fireworks.
I knew somehow it was all my fault, just like the fire tornadoes swirling around the plateau. Every step I took made the ground scorch and blacken. They were all dying because they’d counted on me. All I’d done was replace the wild winds with a firestorm and made everything worse.
“Stop right there!” somepony yelled. It was one of those dreams where you know who it is even before you look. I turned around anyway, because I had to, and there she was. Princess Twilight. There were other shapes behind her, less distinct, and I was vaguely aware that they were her friends. Our friends. They weren’t in focus, just suggestions of a presence being there, part of the background.
“Twilight,” I whispered. She was as big as Princess Celestia. A purple goddess that could defeat any evil.
“I can’t believe you’ve done this,” Twilight said. “I trusted you. You taught me so much, and you still turned to evil and destruction in the end.”
“It’s not my fault!” I protested. “I was trying to help!”
“So many griffons are suffering because you weren’t good enough,” Twilight said. “I’m here to set things right!”
She was wearing the Element of Magic. I don’t know if it had just appeared or if it had always been there or if it mattered in the dream logic. It started glowing with the most powerful magic in all of Equestria, and it was joined by a glow from the other elements.
A rainbow beam slashed through the air towards me, and I just knew in my heart that it was impossible to stop or dodge and even if I tried, it was what I deserved. I had to pay for everything I’d done.
“No,” somepony said, very firmly. The rainbow wave dissolved in midair. The fires burned down to embers. The chaos calmed.
Above me, the moon glowed brightly and opened like a portal, Princess Luna flying through and landing in front of me.
“You have rather distressing dreams, Sunset Shimmer,” she said. “Even if I were not an expert and the bringer of hopes and sorrows away from the waking world I would be able to tell with certainty what was troubling you.”
I blinked a few times, taking the last few steps to actual lucidity. The city was destroyed around us. Princess Twilight stood twice as tall as Luna, looming even larger than Celestia in my mind’s eye. A trail of destruction that led to me as the culprit.
“I guess my dreams aren’t big on abstract symbolism and just go right for the throat,” I admitted.
“Indeed. Yet most ponies would have dreams that reflect the real world. Failing tests at school. Arriving late at work. Running out of grape jelly.”
The last one caught my attention. “...Grape jelly?”
“Twas a private matter for the pony and it is not my place to speak of the circumstances, but let it be known that as absurd a thing to have night terrors about, it was far more dire and realistic than this.” Luna motioned at the dream around us. “May I?”
I nodded, and she spread her wings. Her horn glowed softly for a moment, and the whole world changed, not to the Griffonstone I recognized, but to one that must have come from her own memory, whole and lively and surrounded by green peaks and hardy trees that clung to the rocks. It was a far cry from the decaying city and barren rocks of the real thing. Even Twilight snapped back to her real size before vanishing like mist.
“That’s better,” Luna said. “The news I bear isn’t the type that should be given in the midst of a nightmare.”
“Does that mean it’s really good news and you don’t want to spoil the mood?” I guessed. Then I saw her expression. “It’s not really good news.”
“I am afraid not,” Luna sighed. “‘Tis a problem my sister and I should have found a way to forestall, but she was slow to act in hopes that it would resolve itself, and to my shame I was afraid to act on my own for fear of overstepping bounds in this modern age.”
“Just tell me,” I sighed. “Whatever it is, it can’t be worse than what went down with Typhon. I really messed that up.”
“You met Typhon?” Luna asked, changing the subject immediately. “I would love to hear that tale! What happened?”
“No, no, you first,” I insisted. “I need to know what kind of trouble is waiting for me. Some kind of old claim from former Griffonstone nobility? Somepony opening a Barnyard Bargains in Griffonstone and not paying minimum wage? Did they declare war against the Yaks?”
“Tis worse than all of those in some ways,” Luna grumbled. “You must take caution, Sunset, for this is a problem that attacks at your weakest point. You see--”
“Bugh!” I jolted awake at a sudden motion from the train.
“Calm down, dweeb,” Gilda scoffed. “There’s just some pebbles on the tracks or something. It always happens in the mountains.”
I rubbed my eyes and looked around. Nothing was on fire, so that was a good start. I didn’t need to start spontaneously combusting in my sleep again. Adrenaline had surged through me like a splash of cold water to the face, and I was wide awake in that blinking, confused, disoriented way you get after a nap that went on a bit too long.
“Uumph...” I rubbed my eyes again. “I was… never mind.” I didn’t need to worry her. She had enough on her shoulders and most of it was my fault to begin with. There was no point telling her I’d been woken up before Luna could finish her warning. At least I knew there was something I had to be careful about. Even if I didn’t know the nature of the danger, it was far better than thinking things were safe.
Gilda looked at me for a long moment. “Are you okay? You look kind of…”
“I’m just groggy,” I said. “I’m gonna grab something to drink from the dining car. Do you want anything?”
“As long as you’re paying, sure,” Gilda grinned. “Grab me some peanuts.”
“I’ll do you one better and get the fancy mixed nuts,” I joked, stepping out into the narrow train corridor and closing the door behind me on Gilda’s snicker of laughter.
I looked outside. We were getting close to Griffonstone, less than an hour away now if I had to guess. If there was some kind of danger on the train, it would have to be in the pretty immediate future or Luna wouldn’t have tried to change the subject and stall. From what she’d said I could guess it wasn’t the train derailing or the whole thing falling off a cliff. That wasn’t something she could have stopped in Canterlot.
My own train of thought was interrupted for a moment as I navigated the complex social dance of passing another pony in the narrow hallway, each of us apologizing, trying to go on the same side, and laughing awkwardly when we finally managed to coordinate not running into each other.
I didn’t think much of that, or the other pony I passed by, until I opened the door to the dining car. It was almost packed full of ponies, standing room only.
“What the buck?” I asked. On the first train I’d taken up here there had been absolutely no one else on the train with us. This looked practically like the commuter train from Ponyville!
“Is that her?” One of the ponies in the crowd whispered, pointing at me. I realized that most of the cutie marks I was seeing involved writing and newspapers and I had stumbled right into the danger Luna had wanted me to avoid, hadn’t I? There couldn’t be much worse than a surprise visit from the press. The ones that had gone home after that stormy night must have told their friends that a story was brewing.
“Oh no,” I groaned.
“Sunset Shimmer! Here, here!” One of the reporters reared up to be seen over the crowd. “Can you tell us where you’ve been and why you haven’t been seen in Griffonstone since the Griffonstone Gala?”
“The what Gala?” I blinked. I certainly hadn’t called the party that. “Look, I’ll be happy to answer questions later, I just came in here to get some tea.”
I gave the pony behind the counter a pleading look and they shrugged.
“Sunset Shimmer, what are your opinions on the current events in Griffonstone? Are they why you’re returning now?”
“I was investigating a lead regarding the abnormal weather conditions present in the city,” I said carefully. “I was able to get some answers, but I was out of contact because of the remoteness of the location. Until I know what’s actually happening, I’d prefer not to comment.”
“So you’re unaware of the privately funded venture to retrieve the Idol of Griffonstone?” one of the ponies asked.
“The what?!”
When we arrived, I looked up at the banners and signs and balloons and upgraded my statement slightly.
“What the buck?” I asked. “What is all this?”
Someone had decided it was time to have a whole festival in Griffonstone. Tents had been set up. Bits were changing hooves. The smell of cotton candy and hot oil carried on the breeze. I walked through the street in a daze. I was wrong. Luna hadn’t wanted to warn me about the reporters.
The whole thing was leading to a central stage and halfway there I started to see the cracks around the illusion. All the tents were cheap and threadbare and patched together. The prices listed were two or three times higher than they should have been. It was the kind of pricing you only got when you had a captive audience and no competition. The carnival games were the kind that were all transparently scams.
It wasn’t a festival with vendors and snack stalls. It was more like a theme park. They were all working for the same pony. No. Not the same pony. As I approached the stage I realized there wasn’t one pony behind it all.
There were two ponies.
“Welcome, one and all, to the veeeery first Grand Glorious Griffonstone Gathering!” the first pony proclaimed.
“The most amazing, stupendous, and value-filled festival that Griffonstone has ever seen,’ the second one continued.
“And it has been brought to you today by…” the first started. The two ponies took off their hats and posed.
“The Flim Flam Brothers!” they declared together.
It was going to be a long day. They had a whole song and dance routine but I was not in the mood to listen to it. I could smell the huckster on them from a block away and I needed to do something about this before they scammed the griffons out of every bit in Griffonstone or got themselves killed in the attempt. Ponies might just run them out of town for being scam artists, but griffons seemed like the type to throw them off the side of a cliff.
I scowled at them and trotted around backstage. A pony with a black shirt and sunglasses tried to stop me, and I very gently lifted him up and walked under him without listening to what he had to say about where I had a right to be.
Their backstage setup was really nice, I had to admit. The dressing room was just the way you’d imagine one as a foal. It was stylish and open and not at all like the cramped and functional spaces that you’d actually find in theatres that had spent more time as janitors closets and storage rooms than anything involving actors.
I was digging through a bowl of candy when the two brothers arrived. I looked up into the mirror and watched them come in having clearly known I was already in here. The security guard had probably warned them I was around.
“There are no blue pieces in this Rainbow Brittle,” I said instead of a real greeting.
“Blue is Flim’s least favorite flavor,” Flam said.
“We always ask for a bowl without the blue as part of our contract terms. It tells us if the ponies in charge are actually reading what we give them to sign,” Flim added.
“I suppose that is pretty important,” I agreed. “You need to know how careful everypony is before you start pulling off a scam.”
“Now, now, Miss Sunset, we’ve never been convicted of anything!” Flam joked. “The most terrible thing we’ve ever done is get ponies excited about our fabulous products!”
“Never convicted but even I’ve heard some stories. What you puled in Ponyville is basically nothing compared to what you tried in Seasaddle and Neigh Orleans. I have to admit that selling certificates of authenticity to various public buildings is technically legal, even if the ponies involved didn’t quite understand they didn’t get any real ownership.”
I turned around to face them.
“And then the thing with secret jewelry hidden inside bars of soap! Even the ponies who bought it knew going in that only one in a hundred bars had anything more valuable than a foal’s costume jewelry for playing dress-up, but everypony involved was absolutely sure they had the winner in their hooves.”
Flim and Flam doffed their hats politely.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Sunset,” Flim said.
“It’s also a pleasure to see some of the more extreme rumors about your temper and attitude are unfounded,” Flam added.
“Are you saying that because I didn’t set your guard on fire, or because I didn’t jump up on stage and shut everything down?” I asked.
“Oh, six of one and half a dozen of the other,” Flam said.
“Though I would like to note that you don’t have any more authority here than we do,” Flim said. “We at least asked permission before we set up our little festival. We’re told you didn’t ask at all before you took over the castle!”
“It was an abandoned ruin,” I said. “If any of the griffons have a problem with me staying there while I’m in town I’m happy to leave and find something else.”
“I’m sure they’d feel very comfortable coming over and ordering you to leave after seeing what you do when you’re upset,” Flam said. “The reporters had all sorts of pictures of your misadventure with the thunderbird.”
I sighed. “Look, you’re here for a reason. You’re running every sort of normal carnival scam there is. Fixed games, overpriced food, souvenir T-shirts that are going to fall apart the second anypony tries to wash them. I don’t care about any of that.”
“Is that so?” Flim asked.
“I’m sure your margins are as tight as possible and you’re going to pull a profit from this even if you walk away now,” I shrugged. “I’m a little peeved because you’re giving ponies a bad name as exploiting the locals, but I do recognize that at least some of your costs are higher coming out here. You must have reserved practically a whole train shipping all this junk out to Griffonstone.”
“It’s a very wise investment,” Flam said. “May I?” He motioned to the dressing room table and I stepped aside to let him and his brother pass. They sat in the chairs set before the vanity mirrors and pulled bottles of water out of a cooler.
“Would you like one?” Flim asked. “Free of charge, this one time.”
“We always pack plenty, because my stomach gets a bit fragile when I have to drink tap water,” Flam explained. “One of the many dangers of traveling as much as we do!”
“No thanks,” I said. “So what are you investing in? No, let’s call it what it is. What are you speculating on and trying to get other ponies to invest in before you pull the rug out from under them?”
“Griffonstone!” Flim said grandly, motioning to the world around them. “It’s the next big thing! All the papers can talk about these days is our neighbor to the east! We didn’t even have to stretch the truth to our investors to get funding to come out here. They were excited just to be involved!”
Flam nodded. “More to the point, we wanted to get in on the ground floor. More ponies are going to be coming out here, but there’s nowhere for them to stay and nothing for them to do!”
“We’re already working on building a luxury resort, but that takes time.”
“And there’s the other matter,” Flam said.
“The other matter?” I asked.
“The Idol of Boreas, symbol of Griffonstone! And the first pony to retrieve it from the Abysmal Abyss will become the new ruler--”
“--or rulers,” Flim noted.
“Of Griffonstone!” they said together.
“You think if you just go and pluck it out of that hole it means you’re the kings?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.”
“You’d be surprised,” Flim said. “A ruler is in charge because they’ve won the popularity vote! You’ve got us beat in terms of feats of power and I commend you for that! You’ve played to your strengths!”
Flam nodded. “But we can play to ours. You’ve avoided the press and we’ve embraced it! We’ve given them a show and spectacle they can’t ignore, and when we get the Idol back, we’ll ride that tide of fame all the way to fortune!”
Flim and Flam turned to each other and high-fived.
I rolled my eyes. “You don’t even know what you’re getting yourself into,” I said. “Have you even seen the Abyss? You can’t just stroll down there and find the Idol, and I promise that if you even try to pull a fake Idol out of your flanks it’ll backfire. The real one was a magical tool, not just some glit and glitter.”
The two grinned. “So you haven’t seen our arrangement, then?” Flam asked.
“I think it’s getting close to time anyway, brother, why not go down a few minutes early so we can explain our brilliant plan to her?”
“Oh yes, I’d love to see this ‘brilliant plan.’” I scoffed.
“You’ve got to be joking,” I said, when I saw it.
The two had somehow gotten an old steam crane up to Griffonstone. It must have been the largest thing they could fit on the train, but it also had to be close to a century old. It was so old it predated welding, and the riveted metal was obviously rusty and scarred under the fresh paintjob they’d slapped on it.
But that wasn’t the part that had me questioning their sanity. No, the real bow on the Hearth’s Warming present was what was attached to the crane. A metal bell with windows on the sides and just big enough to hold a pony or two. A submersible diving bell.
“Sunset!” Ruby ran up to me and slammed into my legs, hugging me. “You’ve got to stop them!”
“Beloved, I am glad that you’ve arrived back in time,” Shahrazad said. “I have been trying to tell Ruby that there is no great rush. It seems to my eye that events are on their way to playing out on their own.”
“Miss Shahrazad, this is exactly how…” Ruby lowered her voice. “It’s how King Guto died! He tried this exact thing and he never came back!”
“Yes,” Shahrazad agreed. “As I said, things are quickly resolving themselves. There’s no need for us to interfere.”
“I am sorely tempted to agree with you,” I sighed. “Part of me is half-sure the press would try and find a way to blame it all on me, though.”
Flim and Flam had gotten ahead of me, the security pony getting them through the crowd and onto the wooden platform holding the diving bell. The crowd went wild when they waved.
“One and all, you’re about to see the most heroic act of the century!” Flam called out.
“Somewhere below, the Idol of Griffonstone waits, the precious treasure that defines your nation!” Flim continued.
“With our amazing and reliable, time-tested technology, one adventurous and fearless pony will descend into the Abyss using our patent-pending reinforced environmental capsule!”
“This craft, the indomitable, invincible, incredible Excelsior II, will descend down, with the pilot able to see everything around him thanks to these armored windows made of the same real sapphire-style artificial mineral composite!”
“And when he spots the Idol, he will be able to retrieve it using the patent-pending Extendo-Grab remote retrieval unit!”
“Get one for you or your foals today!” Flim exclaimed, holding up a hook on a stick.
“Okay, time to call this to a halt,” I sighed. “Step back, Ruby.”
I popped up on stage with a burst of teleportation. “Okay, that’s enough. I hate to break it to both of you, but this won’t work. It’s been tried before.”
“If ponies gave up after a single failure, we’d never have built a civilization,” Flam said.
“This operation will use the latest and greatest technology for exploring extreme environments!” Flim said.
“And our pilot is a trained and experienced adventurer!” Flam waved, and a pony walked up on stage in a red, white, and blue jumpsuit decorated with stars and stripes. It might have been dashing, if he hadn’t been wearing a beaten-up sailor’s hat, sporting a thick and snarled beard, and generally looked exactly like what I thought of when I pictured a rough fisherpony.
“Yar,” he said calmly.
I rolled my eyes. “You and I both know this is doomed,” I said. “If you really thought this was going to work, you’d be inside the diving bell--”
“We prefer the term ‘expedition craft,’” Flim corrected.
“You’d be inside the ‘expedition craft’ yourselves instead of sending this stallion in your place. You’re not willing to put your money where your mouth is because you know how risky it is and you don’t like taking risks.”
Flim and Flam actually seemed offended by that. They looked at each other and had one of those almost-instant silent conversations that two ponies could only have when they knew each other really well.
“You’re right, Miss Sunset,” Flam agreed.
“We’ll go down there ourselves!” Flim exclaimed, waving to the crowd. “It’s a brilliant idea! Twice as exciting, twice as many experts!”
“Though unfortunately, we don’t have the same kind of stylish expedition clothing as our expert pilot,” Flam sighed. “But such is the price of discovery! Not only will we find the Idol, but we’ll also be the first to go down into the depths of the Abyss and return!”
“Explorers, heroes, kings of industry!” Flim declared.
“And maybe kings of something else soon,” Flam whispered to me. “You might think you have the griffons wrapped around your hoof, but we’ll be the ones in charge soon enough. Our own little kingdom and tax haven!”
“Don’t do this,” I warned. “You have no idea how dangerous it could become at any time.”
“She might be right, brother!” Flim said. “If there’s anything we know about the weather in Griffonstone, it’s that it can do practically anything without warning!”
“Indeed,” Flam agreed. “And you know what that means!”
“It means we need to strike while the iron is hot and the winds are calm! Pilot, to the crane controls! You’re reassigned to engineering for the duration of this venture!”
The sailor grumbled, trotting back towards the crane. “Don’t even know how t’ use the derned thing. Wanted t’ go down in th’ bell…”
Flim pushed a door inward on the bell-shaped diving capsule, and held it for Flam. I got a glimpse of the interior, and I could tell it was going to be very, very cramped for the two lanky stallions. I wouldn’t care at all if it wasn’t starting to look more like an iron coffin than a safety vehicle. They managed to get inside and closed the hatch.
“Pilot, begin the ascent!” one of them declared boldly. I couldn’t tell which of the two had said it between the distortion of the loudspeaker they were using to communicate from inside the diving bell and my own dread starting to overtake my senses.
The steam crane roared and rumbled, the engine turning over with an uneven bass thump that made me think it was already on the verge of failure. The winch whined, and the capsule rose into the air, high over the stage and the crowd. Flim and Flam waved from the small windows. The ponies in the crowd went wild. They loved a spectacle. I couldn’t help but notice the griffons were mostly shaking their heads and making bets, probably about if the idiots would survive. From the bits changing talons some of them were even more pessimistic than I was and didn’t think it’d even get this far.
“Now, into position!” one of the brothers ordered. The crane’s boom swung wide over the Abyssal Abyss. The iron pod hung over the drop down into nothing, swinging slightly from the motion, the sheer mass of the metal making it act a little like a pendulum. I could practically smell the coming disaster in the air.
No, more than that. I really could feel something. It was a feeling that crept along my spine, like a voice whispering in my ear about all the things that were going to go wrong.
“The wind is going to change,” I said, before I even knew what I was going to say. I don’t know where the idea came from. It was like reading something out loud before you’d really parsed what you were doing, the words coming before the understanding.
The griffons nearest me heard it and frowned, looking up, not at the crane, but the sky. It took them a moment later, but they seemed to come to the same conclusion. I saw some of them start to back away, towards shelter, not wanting to miss seeing the coming excitement but wary that they might get caught in it.
The ponies were, of course, oblivious.
I groaned and looked up at the capsule, shouting and hoping they could hear me. “Flim! Flam! Stop being idiots and get back down here!”
“Flim, deploy the patriotic music to drown out the doubters and hecklers!” Flam ordered.
“Will do, brother!”
The loudspeakers crackled and the worst rendition of the Equestrian national anthem started. It sounded like a record that had been left in the sun, scuffed up by animals, and then somepony else dug it out of the trash and polished it and used it anyway because it was free. It was also being played loud enough to blow out the speaker and completely drown out any shouting I tried to do. I was going to have to find some other way to keep them from killing themselves.
“We’ve got to stop them!” I said. I ran towards the crane operator. “Hey! You! You have to get them back! Things are about to get bad and they’re in the middle of it!”
The old pony shrugged. “Ain’t my call to make, lady. I’m just here to fiddle the sticks.” He motioned to the controls, then pulled on one, yanking it back. The timbre of the winch changed, the entire crane rattling as brakes were released and the bell started sliding down into the Abyss.
“Are you deliberately trying to get them killed or is that just an extra perk?” I demanded. “Get them back up!”
“Hey, lady, I’m the hired help! I don’t do what they want, I don’t get paid!” he said defensively. He paused. “Darnit, might not get paid anyway. Operatin’ this crane ain’t in my contract.”
He adjusted his hat, grabbed a brown bag lunch from the other side of the chair, and stood up.
“All yours, lady. Me hooves are off the controls until I talk to the bosses an’ make sure I’m gettin paid.” He hopped down and walked away. I groaned and rubbed my temples.
“Okay, sure. I just need to know how to use the--”
The wind shifted. I heard a pop. Then another one. Metal started to groan.
“As we descend into the depths of the earth, we remain resolute, brave, unshakable!” one of the brothers said, the music fading to a more acceptable volume.
“We can see various rock strata that we are, sorry to say, completely unqualified to describe in great detail,” the other one continued. “They should have sent a geologist, but all they got were two poets!”
“Poets, gentlestallions, explorers, and entrepreneurs!”
“This may already be deeper than any living being has ever traversed into the Abyssal Abyss! Who knows what amazing discoveries and sights lie in wait for us?”
The wind started to pick up, the sinister breeze starting to blow stronger with every passing moment. I heard another ping from the crane. I’d been looking down, trying to trace the path of the bell. When I looked up at the crane, I could see the boom shaking. Another rivet popped loose, dropping into the Abyss.
“Oh no,” I whispered.
I had just enough time to feel the chill down my spine again and not enough to actually do anything about it. The line started swinging in the wind, and the poorly-maintained, improperly-braced crane shook. The tracks shifted, the entire crane leaning.
I tried to grab for it with my magic, but I only made things worse. I acted without thinking and tried to steady it at a single point, holding the tip of the boom and doing what I could to keep it from falling further. That put more strain on other parts of the weakened boom, and fatigued metal snapped and broke. I let go, but the damage was done. The crane’s arm collapsed entirely. There was a thunderous boom as the crane went nose-first into the dirt.
A cloud of dust exploded up, but the growing wind wouldn’t let it linger. I shielded my face against the blast of sand and dirt, and when it cleared, I could see the fallen boom, reaching all the way to the other side like a makeshift bridge, just barely holding itself together.
“Oh no, are they dead?” Shahrazad asked, walking up next to me to look. “Oh well. So, now that the excitement is over, should we get something to eat? I saw something called a deep-fried carrot dog on a stick that seemed interesting.”
“Do not worry! The invincible Flim-Flam Brothers are doing just fine!” the loudspeaker declared. “However, conditions do not seem to be entirely optimal for the descent! Pilot, raise us back up!”
There was a significant pause.
“Pilot?” the brother asked, more meekly.
“These idiots,” I mumbled. I reached out for the line with my magic and tried to pull them up. With the cable in my grip I could feel the strain on it, and the moment I put any real tension on the line it immediately began failing.
“Can you get them?” Gilda asked, landing next to me.
“Not like this,” I said. “The cable is too weak. It was never intended for anything as heavy as that diving bell. Maybe if conditions were perfect and we went really slowly I could lift it out that way, but…” I shook my head.
“This is about as far from perfect as it’s going to get,” Gilda mumbled. “So what are you going to do?”
That was when I became aware of just how many ponies and griffons were all looking at me. It was the same kind of look they’d give Celestia. Something terrible was happening and they needed a leader and I’d been elected as the only adult in the room.
I cleared my throat and pretended I wasn’t starting to sweat. Not from the danger, but the attention. I was going to mess this up and get them killed and everypony was going to see it happen!
“Hey!” Gilda snapped. “Come on! You’re a pony, and the one thing ponies are good at is showing up out of nowhere and being big dumb heroes!”
“I’ll cast repair spells on the crane to keep it in one piece!” Ruby volunteered, running out of the crowd and raising her hooves.
Even Ruby had more of a plan than I did. I took a deep breath and started thinking out loud. They needed help from a Princess or something but there wasn’t one of those on hoof except Shahrazad and she was more likely to push the rest of the crane off the cliff and call the problem solved.
“I can’t lift them out by the main cable, and for some reason there’s no safety line.” It probably would have cost a few extra bits, so they’d gotten rid of it. “I can’t reach the diving bell from here either or I’d just lift it out directly to avoid putting more strain on what’s left of the cable.”
I looked down into the Abyss, and put a hoof on the boom. It absolutely wasn’t sturdy at all, but my weight wasn’t much compared to what it was already dealing with. I had to hope it wouldn’t be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“I’m going to follow the line down and have them evacuate the bell,” I said. “If I cut it free, it should stabilize everything, and the winch might be able to work well enough to lift us out.”
Gabby flew up out of the mass of ponies. “I volunteer to get the crane working again!”
“Just be careful with the boiler,” I warned. “Some of them don’t like being tipped over like that.”
“Will do, Miss Sunset!” Gabby saluted and flew over to the crane, perching on it and starting to examine it like the curious bird she was.
“Everypony else, the weather might only get worse from here. I strongly suggest finding some shelter. There’s some room in the palace for those of you with nowhere else to go.” I hopped up into the fallen crane’s boom. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck, beloved,” Shahrazad said. “I would tell you not to do this, but you already know it is foolish.”
“No kidding,” I mumbled, so the crowd couldn’t hear me. I nodded to her and started out on the narrow walkway towards where the cable hung, swaying in the wind. I couldn’t even see the bell from here. It had to be really far down, or else something else was blocking my view. A hard gust slammed towards me, and I could see the leaves and sand caught in it, but at the last second it deflected away, like a wild animal scared off by something.
I blinked in surprise, and it happened again. The boom rocked in a hard wind, but the gust never actually reached me.
“Typhon’s gift!” I realized. Even if I had no idea how to actually command the wind he’d supposedly given me, it was protecting me. “Maybe I really can do this,” I said, suddenly less unsure about myself. Then I slipped and almost fell right off the boom, which would have been a terrible way to die.
I steadied myself and took the last few steps over to the cable, grabbing it with my hooves and easing myself down, the whole thing rocking with the pendulum motion of the heavy weight somewhere below me.
“This might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done,” I said to myself, as I started inching down. “But there’s still plenty of time left today to beat that record.”
If there’s one things hooves are really great at, it’s holding on to a steel cable that was swaying side to side in the wind, with the occasional very exciting jolt of sudden motion that made me wonder if it was coming from above me and the rest of the boom was about to give up or below me and I was going to find a broken and frayed cable at the end of this trip because I was too slow to save anypony.
Then the wind picked up and my hooves slipped and I fell a full body length and learned that rope burn was a secret third option also here to ruin my day. All I wanted right now was to be somewhere warm, with no responsibilities, no one counting on me, no disasters. I could have been on a beach right now. I could have decided to run away to Maremuda or Manaco, or, heck, just gone to Las Pegasus and had some strong mixed drinks at poolside.
Maybe that’s what I’d do after all of this, as a treat to myself for living through another huge mess.
The air around me roared, and I knew another blast of wind was coming at me, with the sound and fury and strength of a freight train. I winced as I felt it near and-- it just went around me. The protection was still working, even against hurricane-force winds.
“I am going to send a letter to Typhon and apologize for doubting that his gift was going to be useful at all,” I said to myself. Just being able to hear my own voice over the wind was a surprise.
A breeze circled around me, warm and gentle and pushing some of the chill away. It was like a warm breath, like the soothing feeling of warming your hooves on a cold day, the kind of wind that didn’t have any force behind it but fought off the stuffy doldrums of a room and made things feel alive.
“I sure wish I knew your name,” I said quietly, looking around. Even if it had been brightly lit I wouldn’t have been able to see the air moving, but I could feel it twist in ways the wind didn’t do on its own. “I know I can’t just give you a name. I have to learn it. I just hope you’ll be patient enough with me to give me a chance.”
The cable rocked, and my breath caught in my throat. I could self-levitate, sure, but could I get out of here that way without being smashed against the stone?
“It doesn’t matter if I can or can’t,” I grumbled. “The problem is if I come out of this alone I’m going to look like a huge idiot.”
I didn’t have time to faff about and play with the wind like it was a pet. The more I delayed, the bigger chance something was going to go wrong.
I slid down inch by inch, wishing I had a better way to do this. The cable started to chafe at my skin where I was holding it, and the constant strain was taking a toll on me. Around me the absolutely gloom was oppressive, with no sign of the sunlight from above. I cast a light spell and pointed it down, trying to see how close I was.
And that’s when I saw the problem.
The cable was obviously caught on an outcropping, pinching it in place. I looked to the other side of the tunnel and found a ledge. A brief moment of self-levitation put me over there, because I didn’t trust the rock where the cable was caught. It looked like a recently-dislodged boulder and I could guess what had done the dislodging.
Just on the other side of the outcropping, I could see the diving bell dangling at a slight angle.
“Hey!” I called out. “Are you two alive?”
I moved my light to shine into the windows. I saw the two inside, and they waved frantically.
“Ah, a rescue party!” Flim said, his voice muffled by the steel walls of the capsule. “We’ve arrived at a small bit of trouble because of Flam, I’m afraid!”
“Don’t push the blame on me, Flim! This is clearly your fault for not taking the weight of two ponies into account when coming up with the safety margins for our expedition!”
“I admit, we should have expected a need to come down ourselves,” Flim conceded. “After all, our hired help is so unreliable!”
“Perhaps that’s the real nub on the pencil there,” Flam said. “It’s not your fault or my fault at all! It was that pony we hired who was behind the controls of the crane when it went bad!”
“By golly you’re right! We’ll have to make sure to dock his wages for the cost of any damaged equipment!”
“Don’t forget emotional damages!”
I groaned. “I’m the one getting emotional damages. Can you two be quiet for a second? I’m trying to see how to unstick you so we can get back to the surface.”
“The wind kicked us into the side of the cliff and there was a minor rockfall,” Flim said, looking up. “We tried clearing it with the grabber, but…”
The short metal claw extended out of the bottom of the diving bell and tried to reach around, but it couldn’t even get halfway up the capsule. At least they’d tried something. I took a close look at where the line was caught. Maybe I could break the rock? I tossed that idea when I saw the condition of the cable. It was fraying, rubbing against the rock with that much tension on it was snapping the strands.
“Okay, we need to get you two out of there,” I said. “I don’t think we can safely free the capsule. If I put any real pressure on the cable it could break.”
“There are two very real problems with the standard escape procedure for the Excelsior II,” Flam said. “First, we would be escaping into the open air over quite a long drop.”
“And second, perhaps more relevantly, the door is facing the wrong way and we can’t get out. The space is too narrow.”
“Wonderful,” I sighed.”There’s only one thing we can do, then. I’m going to very gently nudge your stupid iron coffin and try to turn it around so you can get out. I can lift you with my magic and put you over here on the ledge, then we’ll send a signal up to the surface and they’ll lift us out. Easy.”
It wasn’t actually easy and there were a bunch of places where it might fail, but they were sitting in a ticking time bomb that might send them down into the depths at any moment, so they didn’t have a huge amount of room to complain. They really, really found a way to fill that space, though.
“That doesn’t seem terribly safe, my dear,” Flim said. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the light draft running through this canyon wants nothing dearer than to push us around, and that ledge you’re on seems awfully narrow and significantly less armored than this pod.”
“If you stay in there, the line will break and you’ll fall and that’s going to turn into a giant can of pony jelly,” I said. “If you don’t want help I’ll leave.”
I shrugged and turned around, taking two steps before one of them called out to me to--
“Stop!” Flam yelled. “You’ve made your point. You can imagine that we’re simply not excited by the prospect of taking on further risk.”
“I’m sure,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. I reached out with my magic and tried casting some repair spells on the cable to keep it together, but it wasn’t going to matter much. It wasn’t designed to carry anywhere near the amount of weight it was bearing. If they’d actually done calculations about safety margins, somepony had misplaced a decimal point somewhere. All the repair spells in the world weren’t going to hold the rigging together if it was constantly breaking from the strain.
I very gently gripped the iron diving bell and tried to turn it. The mass wasn’t a problem. I could heft it easily enough. The problem was that much mass combined with sudden movements. Something perfectly still was easy to lift even if it was the size of a house. Something twisting in the wind, fragile, and as heavy as a house but packed into a smaller space? Much harder.
The bell started twisting, and the cable suddenly had slack in it. My repair spells had only reached so far. Somewhere far above us, the cable had given way. The diving bell slipped, and coils of steel cable fell past me.
I tried to get a better grip, and the wind caught the Excelsior II, breaking it away from my magic. I jumped for it, clinging to the bell and trying to keep it in that tiny eye of the storm around me. Everything came loose at once, and we started falling.
The cliff faces loomed, the rock rough and ready to tear us apart. I cast a shield spell and a bubble appeared around us. We hit the wall and bounced like rubber, from one side to the other. Flim and Flam were screaming. I was yelling in a more dignified and less terrified way, and no one was having fun.
We bounced from one side to the other over and over again like being in a pinball machine down into the dark.
When we finally hit the bottom my first thought was that I was very thankful there was a bottom. My second thought was that I was sore, cold, and wet.
I sat up and re-cast my light spell. I was sitting on soft sand, but not the kind of beach I wanted. It was the silty, dirty, pebbly sand that you’d find at the bottom of a river. Glacier-cold water soaked through it and slowly filtered its way through.
The diving bell was lying on its side next to me, having narrowly avoided crushing me when we finally landed.
“Not dead yet,” I groaned. “That’d be too easy.”
I trotted over and knocked on the side of the bell, which rang in a pleasing way.
“Are you two alive?” I asked. “Sorry for the rough ride.”
There were groans from inside.
“We’re going to have to find a way out of here,” I said. “With all the bouncing I’m not sure where we ended up or how to get back.”
“We could use a little help,” Flim sighed.
“Neither of you are hurt, are you?” I asked, trying to look through the portholes. I couldn’t get a good view of the inside.
“No,” Flam said. “But we’ve managed to come to rest with the only hatch facing down into the sand.”
It only took a few moments to set it upright and help the two out, and it was a distraction that I missed a few moments later because anything was better than looking around at where we’d ended up, and three light spells only made it more obvious how bad the situation was.
The caves around us must have been carved by water, but not in any directed way. Tunnels snaked in all directions and the whole place looked almost melted, the dampness turning every surface into a slick, slimy mess. The wind whistled through the darkness, those tunnels acting like the pipes of a pipe organ and turning the sound into deep moaning coming from all around us.
“Well, brother, I didn’t think we were going to end up in Tartarus,” Flam joked, trying to lighten the mood.
“Who knew that we’d end up here just for some light tax evasion and a bit of exaggerated advertising,” Flim agreed.
“I’ve seen Tartarus,” I said. “It’s not as bad as this.”
“All we need is a little ingenuity and common sense,” Flam decided.
“Indeed, brother, a calm head and steady heart does more to help a pony escape a bad situation than anything else,” Flim agreed.
“You’re right,” I added, nodding. “You’re both idiots and this whole thing is your fault, but you’re right that the best way out of this is to think out way out.” I cast my light around, trying to decide what to do.
“We’ve had to survive any number of potentially deadly encounters,” Flam said.
“Some of which were admittedly of our own making, but others where nopony would find us anything but victims,” Flim conceded.
“Angry mobs, monster attacks, being lost in the woods after taking a shortcut…”
“Sometimes multiple dangers at once!”
“The usual wisdom when a pony is lost is to stay in one place, but that’s never worked well for my brother and me.”
“It assumes that ponies are looking for you.”
“Indeed. Flam, and as we typically travel alone, ponies don’t know to go looking! We’ve stepped off the trail more than once seeking a shortcut. Sometimes it doesn’t work out.”
“When a pony is lost, and no one knows to look, or no one can look as in the current case, they must find their own way.”
“And fortune of fortunes, we have some direction already!” Flim said. He motioned at the ground. “Running water!”
“Streams lead to rivers, and those lead to the sea,” Flam said. “Ponies almost always build their towns near water, so following a stream can often get you back to civilization.”
“Not that it’s likely we’ll find a town this far from the surface,” Flim mumbled, much more quietly.
“No, but your theory isn’t wrong,” I said. “Come on.” I started following the direction of the flow. “The water has to go somewhere. It probably leads outside at some point. I mean, look at how much water must go through here during the rainy season!”
I motioned to the carved and eroded rock walls. It would take a massive torrent to wear down the rock this much.
“Since it has to lead outside, we should be able to just walk out of a cave somewhere and then start finding our way back,” I said. “The only trouble might be tight passages and underwater spaces, but I’ve got spells that will take care of both if they come up.”
“That does sound something like a real plan!” Flam agreed, smiling.
“Certainly it’s hopeful that we won’t spend too long in this pitch-black pandemonium,” Flim said. He looked back, as if the howling, wailing wind whistling through the tunnels might turn out to be from some beast stalking us.
It would be nice if it was a monster, just so I could relieve some stress by blasting it with fireballs. Instead, we were alone, just waiting for things to go wrong. Again. What would happen? A rockfall? A sudden flood that gave no time for a water-breathing spell? Some kind of ancient evil slime monster?
“So you two are pretty infamous,” I said, trying to stop the torrent of my own thoughts before I was jumping at shadows and throwing fire around because I was spooked. “I happen to have some friends in Ponyville, you know.”
“It was a nice town, until we were run out of it for just pursuing a legitimate business opportunity,” Flim said. His tone still seemed light but there was some grumbling behind it.
“Why don’t you tell me about it?” I asked. “I got one side of the story, I might as well hear yours.”
“The fair and honorable Judge Shimmer,” Flam joked. “It would have been nicer to be tried by somepony who would listen to our side of the sordid tale.”
“Instead we were cast unjustly into the court of public opinion, a place where even the most upstanding and decent ponies can find themselves with no defense and presumed guilty at every turn,” Flim continued.
“If you know a bit about what happened, then you must be aware we came to town with a marvelous invention, a terrific business opportunity, an amazing chance for everypony to come out ahead!”
“Our Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 was one of the most advanced devices ever created in the realm of self-propelled agricultural processing equipment!”
“It made darn good cider, too!”
“Even the Apple family maven had to agree that our cider was in the same realm of quality as their hoof-pressed method. It could have changed their lives!”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“They wouldn’t bite the apple,” Flam said bitterly.
Flim scoffed. “Every pony in that family refused to even consider our offer of buying the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000. We ran demonstrations, we showed that it did exactly what we said it did! Say what you will about some of our other ventures, this was just good, honest, door-to-door sales.”
“We didn’t want the cider press ourselves,” Flam said. “We don’t have a farm or aspirations of starting one. We thought we had the perfect client, but they didn’t want it.”
“Towards the end, we tried a bit more of a high-pressure sales tactic. I’m not particularly proud of trying to corner them, but…”
“Was that when you forced them into a competition with the farm on the line?” I asked.
“Forced is a stronger word than I’d use,” Flim said. “Even if we’d won, we wouldn’t have taken the farm. As I said, we didn’t want it. It’s a booby prize for ponies who want to stay on the road!”
“We would have traded them the farm for a few bits or sales percentage until the cost was made up and, wonder of wonders, we’d even throw in the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 as collateral!”
“Essentially we’d just force them to buy the thing,” Flim shrugged. “Still not terribly honorable but we just wanted to wash our hands of the thing. It was supposed to be an easy sell! They had no equipment, we help them modernize, they enjoy a life of leisure!”
“And we make bank on maintenance and future sales to them and other ponies around them with custom device solutions,” Flam sighed.
“The Apple family was the wrong place to start with that,” I said. “You have no idea how stubborn Applejack is. Well, it’s not just stubborn it’s…”
“It’s what?” Flim asked.
I debated if I should tell them or not. It was something deeply personal to her, and these ponies weren’t exactly on good terms with her. Still…
“She tries to run the farm the way her parents did,” I said eventually, deciding it was better to explain it. “The way she remembers her parents doing it. They won’t get a new plow because the one they’ve got is the one her Dad always used to use. They don’t need help during harvest season because Mom and Dad never needed help. Sure, the farm is twice as big as it was back then, but in their mind’s eye, two ponies were enough to run the place and when you’re a foal… the farm probably seemed even bigger then than it does now, when your perspective is that much closer to the ground.”
“I have to admit that doesn’t make one half-bit of sense to me,” Flam said.
“Nor I. I admire the working spirit, but why not aspire to more?” Flim put in.
“Don’t ask me. I helped on their farm for years and the only reason they ever let me even touch the trees with magic was because I was a family friend. I’ve been trying for ages to get Applejack to at least hire seasonal workers during applebucking season.”
“We ended up having to sell the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 to a cherry farm down south,” Flam sighed. “At much less profit. It wasn’t optimized for cherry juice, so we had to tinker with it for ages to get it working right.”
“I’m still not sure we made any profit on the whole enterprise. Even counting cider sales!” Flim griped.
“And now you’re running some little scams here and there?” I asked.
“We learned a valuable lesson,” Flim said.
“We learned never to risk our own money in the game,” Flam clarified. “Always get investors, and always be ready to cash out.”
“If you stopped cutting corners like with the crane and pod, you could do good work,” I said. “I’d love to see what you could come up with if you tried making something else with the same quality as that cider press.”
“Find us a few investors willing to pay in advance and we’d be happy to show you,” Flim joked.
“If you two give up on this idea of trying to rule Griffonstone I might do that,” I said. “Maybe they do need a new leader but it shouldn’t be ponies coming in to turn them into Equestria’s newest conquest. Besides, wouldn’t you rather be on the road?”
Flam laughed. “You do have us there!” he admitted. “Still, being able to give the idol away for tax considerations and a large cash reward would have been nice.”
The flow of water under us was getting stronger. Instead of just a trickle through sand, other streams from other caverns in the twisty maze caves joined together, the stream getting larger as we went on, and now we were really walking along the banks instead of down an almost dry riverbed.
“The tunnel widens out up ahead,” I said, casting my light around. “We might really be getting somewhere!”
“Thank the stars and sun!” Flam groaned.
Flam nodded. “Yes, after that rough tumble down here, it will be comforting to see sunlight again.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We just have to go a little… hmm. Um.” I stopped and looked out ahead. I’d been hoping we’d start to see a way out, maybe a nice cave mouth leading to some woods outside. What I was looking at was, instead, a small underground lake.
“At least if we’re stuck down here for a while we won’t go thirsty,” Flim joked.
Flam looked less sure about it. Flim patted him on the shoulder and they gave each other a brave smile.
“Let’s go around to the other side,” I said. “There has to be an outlet that goes further.”
They nodded, and we started walking along the shore, sand and silt crunching under our hooves.
“I see something!” Flam said.
“Where?” I glanced at the wall, but after a moment I realized he was looking out onto the lake. His hornlight stretched across the pitch-black subterranean waters and just barely caught some rocks in its beam. It was some kind of small island, right near the center of the lake.
And there was something on it. Something with the glint of gold, obvious even in the poor conditions.
“No way,” I said, casting my own beam over to get a better look. There, on the barren rocks in the middle of the underground lake, was a trophy of twisted and flowing gold, surrounding something that caught the light and glowed from inside like embers.
“The Idol of Boreas!” Flim gasped.
“We actually found it!” Flam squeaked.
“Look at the marks on the wall,” I said. “This room must be flooded for half the year. The rainy season, when the winds aren’t so bad. In the dry part of the year, the waters recede, the Idol gets exposed to the air, and the winds kick up…”
“We can’t let this opportunity get away from us!” Flim declared.
“We’ll retrieve the Idol, and all three of us will be heroes!” Flam stated proudly.
“Or lucky fools, but there’s nothing quite like victory that turns foolhardiness into courage and makes ponies speak of a plan as bold instead of desperate!”
“We should take it back with us,” I agreed. “We’ll figure out what to actually do with it once we get to the surface, okay?” I gave both of them stern looks. “Don’t screw this up.”
“Of course not, Miss Sunset,” Flim said.
“Perish the thought,” Flam ageed, nodding solemnly.
“Say, do you know any water walking spells?” Flim asked.
“Not really,” I shrugged. I’d never felt a need to bother. Water breathing was one thing, but water walking wasn’t as useful as cloudwalking or self-levitation. I was about to explain the various faster methods we had to get over there when the two brothers grinned.
“We do!” Flam said. “Wonderful spell, many amazing uses!”
“Most ponies with pitchforks and torches won’t follow you over a river!” Flim added.
“Except for pegasus ponies,” Flam admitted.
Flim nodded. “But they usually stop when the rest of the herd does.”
“Okay?” I shrugged. “But--”
“And the most important thing in all of this is to always act quickly and to have a plan!” the two yelled together, sprinting off towards the Idol.
“Once we have it, we’ll be as rich as a pony that’s got being rich as a special talent!” Flam cried out.
“Or maybe we’ll have godlike power, which will also lead to said riches,” Flim concurred.
They both grabbed for the Idol, each of them taking it in a hoof and trying to pull it towards them.
“Give it to me!” Flim yelled. “I got here first!”
“I’m older and more responsible!” Flam retorted. “Give it to me!”
“Older by two minutes! I’ll split it with you once we sell it!”
“Then you won’t have a problem if I hold onto it!”
I rolled my eyes and watched them try to shove each other away from the idol, slap it out of each other’s hooves, cast a few little spark balls at each other that couldn’t do more than sting like a bee sting, and generally act like two foals fighting over a new toy.
I teleported over and yanked it out of their hooves.
“Good work not screwing this up,” I said. “What are you two thinking? If you want to fight, save it for when we’re outside and I’ll put on a striped shirt and act as referee! Don’t fight in here or else I’ll find my own way out and leave you behind!”
They both had the good sense to look ashamed.
“Yes, Ma’am,” they said quietly and almost in sync.
“I swear, the Cutie Mark Crusaders are better behaved than you.” That was a lie. They’d have already wandered off in three different directions trying to get spelunking cutie marks and I’d end up having to rescue them from various flavors of ironic danger. At least these two stuck together.
“I suppose you’re going to hold onto the Idol then?” Flam asked meekly.
“Until we get back to Griffonstone,” I said. “At which point I’m going to find the first trustworthy griffon I can and shove it into their talons and make it their problem.”
“The reason he asked is, he seems rather upset that we’ve woken him up,” Flim said quietly, pointing into the darkness behind me.
Son of a mule, there was a monster right behind me and I could feel it in my bones. A dozen better ideas than just turning around popped into my mind. Blast a fireball back behind me. Cast a shield spell. Teleport away.
But it was just impossible to avoid the simple instinct to follow a pointing hoof and see what they were scared of.
Water dripped from the thing’s form. It was a tangled, shambling mass, like a pile of garbage that had gotten up and started moving, all rotting feathers covered in mold, long and filthy hair, and way too many eyes, all of them bloodshot and blinking horribly at the light from our horns, nearly blinded even by the dim light they cast.
The thing coughed wetly, and I saw a mass of beaks in there, like a bunch of barnacles stuck in the mess, with dangling bits of raw flesh hanging around them. They clicked and struggled to form words, and it took the horror a half-dozen attempts to speak.
“Give… it… back!” it screeched between clicks and coughs.
“Is that a crown?” Flam asked, pointing. Indeed, his eye for anything shiny and potentially valuable was correct. There was a small crown enmeshed in the stumbling, slithering pile. I took a step back and flared my light, getting a better look at the whole mass. If I didn’t look closely at the details, I could see the outline of broken wings. Talons. Beak. A body that looked like it had been shredded by time and abuse and grew back wrong, refusing to stop moving.
“Is it… King Guto?” I asked, shocked.
“I thought he was dead!” Flim wailed.
“So much for our plan of becoming kings,” Flam said. “It seems the position is filled!”
“He’s welcome to it if this is what the Idol does to you,” Flim concurred.
“Give it back!” Guto screamed, a massive talon was far too many misshapen claws reached for me, and I grabbed Flim and Flam, teleporting us to the far side of the cavern along the shore. The shambling thing took a moment to find us, but it had eyes all over its body and it didn’t take long for it to spot us, just letting itself fall off the rocks and into the water, splashing towards us.
“The Idol must have kept him alive down here for a hundred years, even when this place is totally flooded,” I said. “The chaotic winds… is it really the idol, or is it this monster using it deliberately?”
“Does it matter?” Flim asked.
“Probably only in an academic sense,” I admitted. “I’d just like to think he’s a monster on the inside, too, because I don’t see how we’re getting out of here without blowing him away.”
“Maybe we could try talking to him and not causing a cave-in that will kill us all?” Flam suggested.
“It’s one of the most important skills of any salespony!” Flim agreed. “And we’ve heard rumors about the property damage you cause and don’t want to be in the middle of said damage. No offense.”
“None taken,” I mumbled.
Flam cleared his throat. “Oh, brave King Guto, who risked his life in pursuit of the Idol of Boreas, we greet you in your new home!”
“We didn’t expect you to be here, or we would have prepared tribute,” Flim continued. “We beg of you not to think less of us for our ignorance.”
“Like you, we came here to retrieve the Idol for… ah…” Flam hesitated. They’d come down here to retrieve it for themselves.
“For the good of Griffonstone,” I said, kicking his leg and leaning in to hiss. “And don’t you dare try asking him for a cash reward!”
“For the good of Griffonstone,” Flim repeated, nodding. “Where the griffons still remember and respect your name!”
“So for all those griffons counting on us to save them, we ask only that you allow us to return with the Idol to save the nation you rule!” Flam finished.
“Not bad,” Flim muttered. “Makes us sound practically heroic.”
Guto shambled almost all the way to the shoreline and I could see how the whole misshapen mass struggled to breathe, every part of it moving with each breath. The many eyes fixed on us and I thought I saw something almost sane in that gaze for the briefest moment before he roared loudly enough to shake the cavern.
“My Idol!” he screamed. “Mine! All the winds are mine!”
He grabbed for the golden Idol with a long, wasted claw with too many joints. His grip was like iron, trying to pull it out of my magical grasp. I felt the air pressure increase, the wind starting to pick up around us and swirling into a tornado. Something warm inside me flowed, lightly pushing the deadly gale away.
Guto looked shocked at that, like he could see the wind.
“What… you have… one of my winds?! One of my winds! Mine!” He let go of the Idol and screeched and wailed in a dozen voices, chattering and clicking and enraged beyond anything resembling reason. When he let go, I instinctively grabbed the golden totem in two hooves, pulling it to my chest. Broken wings flared out in every direction and he lunged for me.
The smart thing would have been to blast him with a spell, but the Idol reacted first. I felt power flow through me, primordial, ethereal power the likes of which I’d never experienced. I could channel any amount of magic and it would never feel the same way. It had a different timbre to it, a different flavor, something hard to put into words.
I felt connected to the whole world. No, not the world. The sky. The air around me. The breath in the lungs of the ponies next to me. The wind cascading through the pipe organ of caves and tunnels carved out by seasonal rains. The clouds some impossible distance above.
It was all connected, and I was connected to all of it.
I blasted Guto away from me, not with a spell but with a simple burst of air pressure. He flew for the first time in almost a century and slammed into the far wall, skipping right over the lake and hitting the stone. He wasn’t dead. I could feel his breathing. I could have sucked the air out of his lungs or crushed him into paste or cut him apart with jets of razor-sharp wind, but--
I could feel myself drifting away. This was too much power. Everything that was me was starting to dissolve around the edges. It was like pouring tea into an ocean.
It took everything I had to pull myself together. I dropped the idol and stumbled back, only stopping when I hit the rock.
“Okay, that was a bit much,” I said, my throat dry.
“Do you need a drink?” Flim offered. “We’ve got a whole lake.”
Flam cautiously nudged the Idol with a hoof, clearly expecting it to go off like a bomb.
“Thanks, but I don’t feel like drinking Guto’s bathwater,” I groaned. I forced myself to get up. When the Idol’s power left me, all my very mortal aches and pains had instantly returned in full force. I’d almost forgotten how sore I was -- it reached all the way down to my bones like a filly going through a growth spurt.
“What do we do now?” Flam asked. “I don’t relish the thought of staying down here for a hundred years like the good king over there.”
“It seems like a rather poor retirement plan,” Flim agreed.
“I sensed a way out,” I said. “While I was holding the Idol, I felt where the winds escape this place. I think I can still find it.”
A warm breeze surrounded me.
“Especially if I have some help,” I said with a small smile.
We left Guto there in the dark, and I held the Idol with my magic and kept it as far from my body as possible while we walked. It seemed like it was safe as long as I didn’t actually touch it.
“With all the winds together, it’s practically like being a god,” I said. “But even in the couple of seconds I had it, it almost had me. You’d need to have a real iron will to avoid losing your mind if you tried to use the Idol’s power.”
“Why is it that all the exciting things in life are so dangerous?” Flam asked.
“They wouldn’t be very exciting if it was safe!” Flim joked. “But fear not, brother! I spy something up ahead to lift even the darkest spirits!”
It had been less than a day since I’d last seen the sun, but even so, it was so warm and almost blinding in those first few moments when we stepped out into the open that it practically took me into another world.
“So,” I said after taking a deep breath. “Do either of you know how to get back to Griffonstone from here?”
It was a rough couple of days, but you know what? It turned out Flim and Flam were actually extremely resourceful and good at wilderness survival. I had no idea pinecones were edible until they showed me, and aside from one minor case of mistaken berry identity that ended with us all vomiting our breakfast back up, it was relatively uneventful.
I mean, uneventful for somepony whose major point of reference is the Everfree. The wilderness around Griffonstone was just regular wilds, and there weren’t even any decent monsters.
“It was one peryton,” I sighed. “I don’t know why you’re complaining.”
“Just one peryton,” Flim scoffed. “You mean it was a half-deer, half-eagle flesh-eating monster that wanted to devour our hearts!”
“And it very nearly succeeded!” Flam added, nodding in agreement. “We could have been lunch for a terrible beast of the black forest!”
“It’s like a three or four out of ten at best,” I said with a shrug. “I read they’re not all that dangerous outside of mating season. They need to eat the beating heart of a prey animal to reproduce. Some kind of magical thing, it’s not all that important.” I waved a hoof dismissively.
Flam shook his head. “It’s easy to say that when you’re not staring down a ravenous fang-filled maw!”
Flim nodded at his brother and pointed. “Not to mention the grasping talons and goring antlers!”
“I’m not going to rate it anything higher than a four until it can turn me to stone, shoot lightning from its eyes, or its blood turns into snakes,” I said firmly. “It’s not any more dangerous than an angry bear.”
“I’d hate to see what rates a ten on your one to ten scale,” Flim said.
I thought for a second about that. “Typhon or Nightmare Moon, if they were trying to seriously kill me. That’s a ten.”
“I see something else that’s a ten out of ten, but on the ‘thank goodness’ scale instead of the absurdly weighted scale of a pony with no proper sense of danger!” Flam said, excited. He pointed ahead of us. I took a few more steps up the path and saw it myself. Griffonstone. We’d finally gotten over the last ridge between us and the city.
“Finally,” I groaned. “Thanks for helping me navigate.”
“Never underestimate the usefulness of a simple magnetism spell!” Flim declared.
Flam smiled. “Turn anything into a compass! Trick vending machines when you’re out of bits! Organize your workplace!”
“Amazing that only one of those suggestions was criminal,” I quipped. “Come on. We’re almost there. I’m hoping I can get a hot bath.”
When we finally got onto the path, thanks to a few quick teleports, I thought for a moment that the festival had continued in our absence. I was sure the vendors Flim and Flam had brought along could manage without them, but I’d assumed there would have at least been a moment of silence after we fell to our apparent deaths in the Abyss.
My last teleport put us just off the main city street, just behind the line of tents that had been set up for Flim and Flam’s carnival of values. I didn’t want to risk appearing right in the middle of a crowd.
“I think there are more ponies here now than when we left,” Flim said.
Flam gasped and pulled his brother behind a tent. “Look!”
I followed his gaze. Two ponies in the golden armor of the royal guard walked down the street. They definitely hadn’t been around when we’d left.
“What the heck is going on?” I asked.
“Well, Miss Sunset, this is where we must part ways,” Flam said. “It’s been wonderful.”
“Especially the part where we didn’t die!” Flim agreed. “But we’d also like to avoid imprisonment for crimes which we have never been convicted of.”
“They’re not here for you,” I scoffed. “They couldn’t arrest you here anyway. They don’t have jurisdiction.”
Flim and Flam looked at each other and straightened up. “Well, that is true,” Flam admitted. “It can be difficult to convince a dedicated officer of that when they’re in hot pursuit.”
“I promise not to let them arrest you,” I said. “For anything I’m aware of, anyway. If you robbed a bank in Reino you’re on your own.”
“We’d never rob a bank!” Flim said, sounding offended.
“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about. Let’s go see what all the commotion is about. I need to let Ruby and Shahrazad know I’m not dead, and you two can tell everpony about your amazing adventures in not dying.”
I walked out into the street and followed the general flow of the crowd towards the palace. I was sure my student would be there, unless she’d been shipped back to Equestria, in which case I was going to need to send an immediate letter to let her know I was safe.
“Wow, this really is a lot of ponies,” I said. Whatever was going on, it seemed to be centered in the palace. It wasn’t even this busy when I threw the party!
I let myself get lost in the crowd and just walk in with them, and that’s when I saw the reason why there were Royal Guards, and why there were so many ponies.
“Thank you all for coming here,” Princess Celestia said, standing head and shoulders above the crowd. “We are still awaiting some construction materials before we can begin the rescue operation, but it is wonderful to see how many of my little ponies have come to help.”
I raised my hoof. “Who’s being rescued?”
Everypony turned to look at me. The ponies that had been standing next to me in the crowd blinked several times in what I had to assume was shock.
“Sunset?” Princess Celestia asked, confused. “But… you… the Abyss?”
“There was another way out,” I said, shrugging. “If everypony here just came to save me, I’m really sorry for wasting your time! It took a while to get back.”
“She even saved us from the terrors of the abyss!” Flam declared.
“Though the Excelsior II protected us during the descent. With some magical assistance from Miss Sunset,” Flim said.
“I should have known there was no need to worry,” Celestia sighed, and I saw relief wash over her face. “Some of the reporters and ponies that witnessed the accident immediately returned to Canterlot and petitioned me for aid.”
“It looks like you brought most of Canterlot with you,” I joked, walking up to stand next to her. It wasn’t polite to shout across the room at her.
“Only half,” Princess Celestia joked. “I left Luna in charge with the rest. She practically chased me out when she saw how worried I was.”
“I’ll have to thank her when I see her,” I said.
“Sunset!” a voice squealed, before Ruby slammed into my legs with the kind of strength only a foal moving at terminal velocity could manage. It almost knocked me right off my hooves. “You’re okay!”
“As I said she would be,” Shahrazad said, standing sedately and lounging against a sofa in a way that said she definitely had never been worried. With what I knew about her, that meant she’d been absolutely terrified that I might be dead.
Princess Celestia nodded. “I am sorry that your efforts were in vain, but at least your survived. In the end, that is far more important.”
“In vain?” I asked, confused.
“You went out to find the Idol,” she said.
“Yeah, I have it here.” I pulled it out of the bundle of cloth I’d been holding it in to avoid accidentally activating it. The gold gleamed unnaturally, catching light that wasn’t there, countless sunrises and nightfalls moving along the curved surfaces from windows that didn’t exist, giving the gold an orange tone and glow like it came from another world.
Gasps filled the palace.
“Tah-dah!” I said lamely. “Sorry, I probably should have planned out some kind of dramatic reveal, but I was more worried about just getting back here.”
“She brought back the idol!” a griffon yelled. “She’s saved Griffonstone!”
“Does this make her our new queen?” another one asked.
That started a heated discussion. I groaned and cleared my throat. Then cleared my throat more loudly. “I’m not taking over!” I yelled. “It’s never been a good idea to make anyone a ruler just because they have some trinket, and it’s definitely not the plan now. Besides, this Idol has done more harm than good for Griffonstone.”
“What do you mean?” Princess Celestia asked.
“The Idol of Boreas was granted to King Grover the Wise by Typhon, a primal elemental immortal of the winds. Half the winds of the world are bound to it. King Grover was supposed to use this to help every griffon, but he kept it as a weapon for himself. It wasn’t supposed to be used that way, any more than using a book as a bludgeon.”
Grandpa Gruff stepped out of the crowd. “Then what was it supposed to be for? He defended Griffonstone for generations using the Idol!”
“I’ll show you,” I said.
I took a deep breath and steadied myself before taking the Idol of Boreas into my hooves and calling on its power. This was the part I’d sort of planned, but I hadn’t really gotten any practice with the Idol. If I wasn’t half afraid that it’d end up stolen or locked up, I might have put it off for a day or two, but it was important to strike while the iron was hot, and while Celestia was there to bail me out if I started to explode.
The primal magic washed through me, and I had to focus on keeping myself together. I dove deep into the magic, down to the core of the Idol’s enchantment. There was so much power here, the kind of power that could do anything. Part of me was tempted to just hold onto it, to try and swallow it all down and become something more, to reach for that foalhood dream that had almost destroyed my life.
The rest of me was so ashamed of the thought that it was like poison.
The Idol’s enchantment had never been designed to stay together this long, and even though it was only loosely knotted together, the magic was burned deeply into the fabric of the world. I tugged at it in a few spots, and finally found where it would give.
I pulled on the loose thread with all of my might, and everything erupted around me, like I’d opened up a dam or smashed a beehive. If I’d felt like I was diving to the bottom of a sea of magic before, I’d just set it to boiling.
It took all of my focus and concentration to keep myself from getting caught up in it. I still felt myself bend around the edges, the primal force leaking in, seeking out everything attached to it.
I let go of the idol, and it fell to the ground, that magical glow gone. It was just worthless gold now. Everything felt woozy and strange, and I started to collapse. A golden aura caught me, and then Celestia put her wing around me and helped me sit more gracefully.
“The idol!” Grandpa Gruff gasped, picking it up. He looked dismayed. “All the magic is gone!”
“What did you do?” she asked.
“The magic in the Idol of Boreas was supposed to be shared with all the griffons. King Grover didn’t want to do that because he wanted it all for himself. I just… gave it all away. I shared it with every griffon alive, and… I don’t know where the rest went. I think those winds are waiting for griffons that haven’t been born yet.”
“Really?” Celestia raised an eyebrow.
“Hey, look!” Gabby yelled, flying above the crowd. She had a tiny tornado between her talons, and she was starting to juggle it. “Check out what I can do!”
“Of course she’d be the first to figure it out,” I mumbled.
I needed a few days after that to just rest and relax. My body was ninety-percent bruises by weight, and my magic felt weird around the edges. It still felt weird. I was starting to think it was going to be a permanent thing that I’d just have to learn to deal with, a little bit like the other change.
I held up a hoof. Feathers the same color as my coat but tipped with red and yellow sprouted from my fetlocks, and it would have been absolutely fascinating if it wasn’t something that had happened to my own body without my permission. Also, they itched.
“I’m going to need to use some kind of special shampoo or something, aren’t I?” I mumbled.
Celestia put a teacup in front of me because I hadn’t had a cup of tea in several whole minutes and she was hovering like a giant worried mother hen.
“They probably need to be oiled,” she said. “Regular mane and tail shampoo will dry feathers out and make them brittle. I’ll help you pick out a conditioner when we’re back in Equestria.”
“Thanks,” I sighed.
“What you did with the Idol of Boreas was reckless, and you’re lucky that’s all it did to you,” Celestia said. “Primal magic can do terrible things to anyone who wields it unwisely.”
“No kidding,” I said. “It was worth it. I can deal with itchy fetlocks if it means I leave this place a little better than I found it.”
“Far better already,” Celestia said. “The new bridge is nearly finished, and the Royal Guard Corps of Engineers is building a safer and shorter road to the train station. They had already been working on it to prepare to move supplies for your rescue, but there was no reason not to let them finish.”
“The griffons will be happy to have the infrastructure,” I agreed. “It was an annoying walk up here. They can fly here easily enough, but good luck moving large shipments of anything like that.”
Celestia nodded. “I think it will be healthy for everyone, pony and griffon alike, to improve relationships between our nations.”
“Speaking of Equestria, how’s Luna doing?”
Celestia smiled slightly and sat down. “She sent me a letter this morning asking me for advice.”
“Some kind of legal trouble she needs help untangling?” I guessed.
“No. She wanted to ask where she should put the new Sunbucks coffee shop. Apparently, she’s having one built into the palace so she can get her morning coffee made properly. Luna hates the way the palace staff brews coffee.”
“She should put it near the throne room,” I said after a moment of thought. “There are always ponies lined up waiting to talk to you. A coffee shop selling drinks there would make an irresponsible amount of money from the captive audience.”
Celestia raised her eyebrows. “Did those unicorn brothers give you a few tips on finance?”
I shrugged. “Maybe it’s all the griffons asking for bits. Are you going to rush back to stop her? I know you’ve got better things to do than oversee a rescue when nopony even needs rescuing.”
“It’s something of a vacation for me, as well. I also wanted to avoid involving other ponies. When the news of the events here hit the papers, there were a large number of volunteers who wanted to ride in like the cavalry. It took considerable effort to keep Twilight Sparkle from taking over.”
I tried not to make an expression at that, but Celestia clearly saw it.
“I didn’t think she was the pony you’d want to see rescuing you from trouble.” She didn’t say again, but I felt the weight of the missing word like an empty tooth socket that got sore when something poked at it.
“Thanks,” I said quietly.
“Have you had time to gather your thoughts on everything that happened?” She refilled my teacup. I’d been sipping on it without even thinking, just because it had been right in front of me.
“There’s not a lot to say,” I shrugged. “But you know, it felt… good.”
“Having all that power?” Celestia prompted.
“No,” I waved a hoof dismissively. “It felt good to fix someone else’s mistake. Every king Griffonstone ever had held onto that power and refused to share it. Maybe it was easier for me to decide to give it up because I never felt like I had any claim to it? It’s still no excuse for what the kings did.”
“The greatest responsibility a ruler has is to make their subjects stronger,” Celestia agreed. “I hold court to listen to problems and give advice, but rarely to step in and solve an issue wholesale myself. When a pony, or a griffon, is empowered to solve their own problems, they’re happier and more likely to continue being independent in the future.”
“Also, I definitely don’t need more power,” I said. “Getting into that fight with Typhon taught me that. I wrecked his castle because I lost my temper. If I need more magic than that, I’m probably in a situation where blasting something with magic isn’t the right answer.”
“Too true,” Celestia agreed. “In the first battles my sister and I had with Discord, much of the world was laid to waste because we attempted to destroy him with brute strength. The badlands remain a scar on the world where we let ourselves chase after victory at the expense of the land around us.”
“I don’t even know what I’d do with more magic,” I said honestly. “At some point it stops being useful in your daily life and starts just being bragging about the length of your horn. Metaphorically.”
“As somepony with a very long horn I’ll try not to take offense,” Celestia joked. “You’re certainly in better humor today.”
“I don’t feel quite as much like I’m going to collapse from exhaustion,” I said. “That does a lot to improve my mood.”
Celestia nodded. “So then you’re almost ready to return to Canterlot? I don’t want to rush you, but if my sister is going to put in a Sunbucks, I need to try and guide her hoof to including a Hayburger Princess in the renovation plans.”
“Really?” I raised an eyebrow.
“It would be nice not to have to escape my own castle in disguise merely because I want to eat irresponsibly unhealthy food,” Celestia said calmly.
I had to admit it would be nice to order a double hayburger with pepper carrot bacon in the middle of the night and not have to abuse the palace staff and Royal Guard to go out and get it.
“I’ll be ready to leave when the election is over,” I said. “It should be done by the end of the day, and then I’ll shake the talon of whoever becomes the new King or Queen of Griffonstone, and you can sign some fancy papers with them, and then they’ll somehow be legitimate because you said they’re in charge.”
“Introducing them to democracy was a bold choice,” Celestia said.
“The truth is I’d have just named somebird ruler on my own, but I don’t know them well enough.” I shrugged. “I think I convinced them pretty well when I said that the power of the old Kings belonged to all of them, and that also meant the power to choose.”
“You were very persuasive,” Celestia said soothingly. I rolled my eyes. She said it like she was calling a foal cute.
“If you had a better idea, it’s way too late to do anything about it.”
“Democracy has a way of surprising us sometimes,” Celestia said. “Are you sure you’re ready to respect whatever decision they come to when they elect a leader?”
That was a valid question. “I’m really hoping it’s going to be either Grandpa Gruff or Gilda, but I guess at worst it could be one of the birds that tried to mug me when I first came into town. They seemed like jerks, but who knows? Whatever happens, I’ll just grin and bear it.”
Celestia nodded. “That’s big of you.”
“Whoever it is, I’ll probably see them around the palace in Canterlot,” I said. “I don’t want to start off on the wrong hoof.”
The front door opened on its own, a breeze blowing it in just the right way to slide it open and swirl around the entryway without blasting Celestia and me with debris from outside. Gilda walked in, and the door closed behind her. She looked over her shoulder and whispered something that I assumed was a thank you to the wind.
“Look who it is,” I said. “So, did they count the votes yet?” I didn’t want to add a teasing question like ‘am I talking to the new ruler of Griffonstone’, just in case I wasn’t.
“Nah, but they’ll be accurate,” Gilda said. “If there’s one thing griffons have always been good at, it’s math. I spent half my time growing up counting and recounting my bits.” She walked up to the table with that natural grace a predator had and bowed a little to Celestia. “Uh, nice to see you too, Princess.”
“There’s no need for formality. I’m not your ruler, nor is this my castle. I’m merely a guest.” Celestia produced another teacup from somewhere, and I suspected she’d summoned it with a teleport spell. Gilda sat down in front of it, where Celestia obviously intended for her to go.
Gilda tapped her talons on the table for a moment and sipped at the tea. "So, uh, did you figure out, you know. What your wind is named?"
I looked away. "...Sally."
Gilda's expression was carefully flat. "Sally."
"I heard it when I was dismantling the Idol from the inside and-- look, don't give me that look, yours has a weird name too!"
"I didn't say anything." Gilda managed to avoid even a hint of a grin. "I was thinking it very loudly, but if you wanna know about that, you owe me two bits."
I rolled my eyes and changed the subject. “I know it’s too soon to tell, but any idea how it’s going?” I asked. “Who did you vote for?”
Gilda scoffed. “Come on, that’s obvious.”
I nodded. I totally understood. “I can’t blame you for voting for yourself.”
“Myself?” Gilda scowled. “No way! I don’t want to spend the rest of my life herding cats! I’ve got plans. Once things are patched up here, I’m going back to Equestria. I’ll show off some new tricks to Dash, and maybe try to get to know her friends enough not to scream at them.”
“Be patient with her,” I said. “You know how Dash is. She doesn’t like to admit problems. She’s got a lot of pride.”
“Don’t try that pony stuff on me,” Gilda warned. “I know you’re really making one of those double-entendres where you’re really talking about me! Not that you’re wrong. Admitting that I mussed up like a loser is going to hurt, but it’s gonna be better than feeling sore all the time.”
“Guilty as charged,” I smiled. “I learned from the best.” I tilted my head towards Celestia.
“It’s very difficult not to be sarcastic with some of the silly problems my little ponies bring before me,” Celestia conceded.
“Anyway, I voted for you,” Gilda said casually. “I mean, obviously.”
I spat out the tea I’d been drinking and the teacup shattered in my magical grip, the tea and porcelain compressing into a compact sphere under sudden massive pressure.
“You did what?!” I gasped. “I’m not even on the ballot! I made sure!”
“Oh yeah, they printed them wrong,” Gilda agreed. “That hot mare you’re always hanging out with made sure we got the updated ballots.”
“Shahrazad…” I growled.
“I figured it was the safe vote,” Gilda said, somehow still not noticing the steam rising from my coat. “We messed things up for decades trying to do it on our own. And now everybird is trying to figure out this primal wind magic stuff.”
“But…” I groaned, still unable to compose myself.
“Plus if you stick around we might be able to convince some of those pony engineers to help us get the mountains reseeded and some farms going again.”
“We’d be happy to assist you with conservation and restoration efforts no matter who becomes the new ruler,” Celestia assured Gilda.
I was just sorry she’d thrown her vote away. I had to remind myself that it was her vote to throw away. That was the whole point of an election. Maybe it even showed some humility that she didn’t vote for herself. It was restraint that I didn’t know I’d have.
The front door creaked open, somepony small pushing it open with obvious effort. Ruby struggled for a moment with the heavy portal before getting in and leaving it open behind her.
“Sunset, Sunset!” she yelled, excited. “You won’t believe it! They counted all the votes and… guess who won?!”
I looked at her face and felt the blood drain from my face. Celestia gently took the broken cup out of my magical grip and repaired it in a flash of light before setting it down on the table.
She was bouncing with excitement, with the kind of joy that only a foal with a secret could have, and I already knew the answer.
