Epilogue

“Failsafe”

    “Report.”

    The gryphon general saluted and stepped forward, “All dragons accounted for.”

    Goldtalon nodded slowly and continued to stare out of the throne room, his eyes distant and southward, over his new conquest. The cold mountain breeze ruffled his feathers, even as the sun kissed at the glittering snowy tips of the mountains that surrounded his aerie. He carefully ignored the fact that he had a group of the upper caste in his throne room, as well as all his senior generals, in celebration of the successful invasion. Personally, he found it a silly waste of energy, but couldn’t find fault with their desire to celebrate the largest gryphon victory in history. “What of the escaped Princesses?”

    The general blanched slightly and dipped his head, “It is as if they vanished from the face of Equestria.”

    “Gryphia,” Goldtalon corrected, “we will be renaming this land Gryphia. What do you think?”

    “It… it’s perfect, my liege,” he answered.

    “No, it stinks, you’re just kissing my tail,” the gryphon king noted with a smirk. “Is the destruction of the pony capital, Canterlot, complete?”

    “The razing was finished before you left, my lord,” the gryphon said quickly, trying to smooth over his misstep. “Hours later, the dragons finished boring out the base of the rise and managed to collapse it into the crystal mines beneath. It now forms a crescent shaped lake where the mount once stood.”

    “Interesting. Let’s name it… Talon Lake. Yes, I like the sound of that,” the king mused, stalking along the edge of his throne room and crossing behind his own throne. He paused and look at the attentively blank face of his secret weapon, Godkiller, before continuing, “Make sure that the pony newspapers and media know about this, and what we’ve done to their base of power. It will make for a powerful image… reminding them that Canterlot and the Princesses will never return.”

    “As you command, my liege.”

    “How many casualties did we sustain?” Goldtalon asked as he stalked past, moving to stand before his general. The gryphon generally really wasn’t all that impressive, but he was one of the three generals he had, and was appointed to control and care for the dragons. The others had their own specialties, of course, fields of which they reported specifically on.

    “We only lost a claw-full of riders, five in total. We also lost four dragons, and three more are severely wounded. The remaining forty-two dragons have been stabled and fed,” the general answered smartly.

    “For a total of forty-nine dragons?” Goldtalon asked, caught up short. “That seems an odd number. Did we leave any behind when we left for the invasion?”

    “No sir, all dragons left with us,” the general answered carefully.

    “Did we lose an egg when they were first brought in?” the king asked, frowning.

    “Of course not,” the gryphon stated firmly, “I personally whipped any servant who looked so much like they might even come close to dropping one!”

    “So you are telling me that we only brought in forty-nine eggs?”

    “Yes sir,” the general responded smartly, but frowning. The King was seeing something wrong, but what?

    “And you never thought to bring this to my attention?” Goldtalon asked, his voice rising slightly. A hush spread across the throne room, all eyes turning to fall upon the pair.

    “B-but my liege, this was all the eggs that Eclipse provided us with…” he said, drifting off uncertainly.

    “You don’t see what’s wrong, do you?” king demanded, and the other gryphon began to stammer. “It’s going right over your head, isn’t it?”

    “My Liege, I don’t know --”

    “Shut up,” he commanded in a dark growl. He turned away from the guard to look at… anything else, really.

    “Yes, my liege, sorry, my liege,” the general continued, and Goldtalon sighed and pinched the bridge of his beak with a claw.

    “Shadow, silence this fool,” the gryphon king ordered. The next sound anyone heard was a squeak from the general, followed by a choking sound. The gasp rippling through the other ‘guests’ informed him that his servant did indeed do as he ordered. Silently, he turned to face the gryphon again, who was pulled up on his rear legs and scrabbling at the shadowy gryphon behind him. His claws passed completely through the shadow-like gryphon and her glowing amber eyes, but the deadly claws choking out the general were definitely solid enough. Goldtalon smiled and looked to those gryphons gathered in attendance. “Well then, it seems we’re about to have an opening. So, rather than just picking whichever one of you kisses up the best, I’m going to quiz you. What, exactly, did my general get wrong?”

    “He didn’t report everything to you. You need to approve everything!” One large gryphon stated, his expression confident as he stepped forward. At a glance, he would be everything that you would want in a general, large and imposing with a sense of authority just at a glance.

    “Morrow, show him what he’s won,” Goldtalon sighed. Chaos erupted behind the group of “noble” gryphons, and they scrambled away from the disturbance. The confidence slipped from the large gryphon’s face as he turned, his gaze falling upon a bony, underfed looking gryphon. The surprisingly small gryphon shrieked and leapt at the larger, and with supernatural strength, bore him to the ground. The smaller “cursed” gryphon opened his beak wide, exposing a number of very sharp un-gryphon like teeth, which he sunk into the neck of the speaker. One cut off scream later, and the bony gryphon literally drank the blood from the larger one. One of the other gryphons began to scream, but was silenced by a quick thinking neighbor as all bore witness to the bony gryphon the king called “Morrow” leave the massive gryphon nothing more than a desiccated corpse. “That’s two down,” the king noted, glancing at the bugging eyes and lolling tongue of the gryphon the other cursed gryphon choked out, before dropping his lifeless form to the floor. “More’s the pity. I hoped the fool might know the reason he died. Ah well. For the record, I can stand a great deal of things. I can even stand failure, to some extent… but one thing I will NOT stand for is stupidity. Kissing my flank is all well and good, but unless you have some modicum of brains, don’t expect to have a long life expectancy. So, does anyone know what our dead general did wrong? You all know the price of answering incorrectly….”

    “Forty-nine is an odd number,” a gryphon stated from within the group. There was a mass migration from the heavyset gryphon sitting in place, and the two powered gryphons began to circle his corpulent form like sharks. Still, he ignored them, his eyes meeting that of the King’s as he continued, “If Eclipse had brought through every egg, with no casualties, it would be a rounded, even number. Forty-eight would be odd, but believable. Fifty or forty-five would be even better, but forty-nine indicates that there is a dragon missing, an egg that Eclipse held back from the arrangement. As I recall, Eclipse did not reveal the exact location of this hatchery he discovered as well, which means we cannot go back and verify or confirm. Since Eclipse claimed that all eggs survived, and dragons were notoriously meticulous about their numbers, the idea of there being only forty-nine eggs strains credulity.”

    Goldtalon looked carefully at the heavyset gryphon, two of his nine remaining champions circling behind him, each eager to strike. “You are Silverthorn, if my memory serves me.”

    The gryphon in question climbed to his claws and sketched a bow, probably the best he could do with all that weight, “Guilty, as charged.”

    “You orchestrated your own father’s death at the hands of your former servant,” Goldtalon continued, sounding less than pleased with the corpulent gryphon, “and let’s not forget the gryphon who sponsored Eclipse himself so that he would appear in my throne room. You have the stones to speak now?”

    “Why not,” the duke asked with a smile that made Goldtalon long to wipe it off, “after all, you have an obvious opening, and despite what my peers may think of me, I seem to be the only one capable of rational thought.”

    Goldtalon frowned visibly and stalked forward until he was standing just before the much larger, but hardly imposing, gryphon. His two cursed champions stood ready, inching closer and closer in hopes of beating the other out for this kill. Goldtalon suddenly held up a claw and smiled. “You’re correct, that is exactly the reason I was so angry. So tell me, General, what do you think the reason is?”

    “I cannot say,” Silverthorn answered, straightening himself a little with the new title, “but I could guess that Eclipse held one dragon back to use as a fallback of some sort. Given his knack for returning from situations that should have killed him, I would wager that we will see him again, perhaps sooner than we are comfortable with.”

    “Yes, that’s much the same as I was thinking,” Goldtalon mused and stepped away. He then arbitrarily pointed at two of his guests. “You two, clean up this mess,” he ordered, sweeping a claw at the dead gryphons.

    Silverthorn followed as quickly as his heavy form could, smiling coldly.

    “Everything seems to have calmed down, finally.”

    Discord offered a smile and spread his arms. “I can’t complain, this has been the busiest, and most chaotic, it’s been here since… well since I first arrived.”

    “Speaking of which,” Celestia countered, “we still do not know where we are.”

    Discord smiled and stepped around the large desk of the conference room, using one arm to push a monitor out of his way. “You are correct, you don’t. Once your sister arrives, I think it only fair to show you. You wanted to know about supplies, where the supplies we do have are coming from, and even where in the world we are so you can set up supply lines. I’m sure, in due time, you’ll want to regroup and try to retake Equestria back from the gryphons too. But for now, I’m going to preach something that is perhaps totally out of character for me, but I’ve had to learn a lot of over the years: Patience.”

    Celestia snorted, “Indeed, very out of character.”

    “Oh, don’t be like that, Celly,” the draconequus teased, leaning closer to the alicorn, “You know you love it.”

    The alicorn shook her head and smirked. “While I may not bear the weight of a crown anymore, Discord, I’m not the young filly you made swoon with your bad boy act all those centuries ago.”

    Discord snapped his fingers and, much to his pleasant surprise, conjured a pair of sunglasses, which he donned and looked over at the alicorn. “I was never ‘acting’.”

    “Ah, there you are,” a new voice added, and Luna trotted in obliviously, “did I miss anything?”

    “Not yet,” Discord answered with a broad smile, tossing the sunglasses off in a random direction, “I was just discussing the past a bit with your sister while we waited for you.”

    “Ah, so you were flirting with her again,” Luna noted with a smirk.

    “What?! I… pfft… no!” he stammered in response, much to the amusement of both mares in the room.

    “You have kept us in suspense long enough, Discord,” Celestia cut in before her little sister and the draconequus could really get into it, “show us what secret you’re so eager to reveal, but kept from even your own team.”

    Discord smiled crookedly. “I don’t plan to keep it much of a secret after this, though we will have to seal off part of this structure.”

    “Why is that?” Luna asked curiously, falling in line behind her sister as Discord led them from the conference room and up a spiraling passage.

    “Because there are some areas you won’t want disturbed,” Discord answered, “and even if you don’t mind, I don’t want them disturbed. I made a promise.” A curious glance ran between the two ousted Princesses at the oddly melancholy tone in his voice, and they followed quietly. The rocky, cave-like environment didn’t change much as they continued to walk, until they reached what seemed to be a dead end.

    “Did you get lost?” Luna teased.

    Discord just smiled and placed a gryphon claw atop the lunar regent’s head, turning it to face the entry behind her. Celestia turned to look as well, and frowned at what she saw. The hallway curved outward at an impossible angle, one that shouldn’t possibly exist, if one assumed a uniform structure like a mountain. Without a word, Discord led them into this new hall. While he stayed focused ahead, both Celestia and Luna noticed the slow changing of their environment, as rock gave way to an odd blue glass, or…

    “Crystal,” Celestia said breathlessly, her eyes widening as they traced the thread of pink through it, “it cannot be.”

    “Sister?” Luna asked questioningly. She frowned at the same thing Celestia saw, but it only gave her an odd sense of déjà vu, like she had been here before.

    The hallway came to an end at an impossibly big door, one that easily stood twice as tall as Discord himself. And yet it opened to Discord’s touch, and he escorted the alicorn’s into the dimmed room beyond. The room was massive, a wide open space with an antechamber and a large room with a complex looking throne sitting at the head. And yet everything was surprisingly simple, kept open and oddly airy, but the sharp crystalline features made it seem harsh and severe to their eyes.

    “Do you recognize it now?” Discord asked with a smile.

    “The throne room,” Luna whispered.

    “Discord, how… how are we in the Crystal Castle? How are we in Sombra’s throne room?!” Celestia demanded.

    “Simple,” Discord answered, “because we are in the castle. Welcome to the missing Crystal Kingdom, ladies. I’m sure you both have questions. To answer the one about Sombra’s throne room, that’s because Princess Cadance preferred not to use the throne at all, thus had it preserved as a reminder, as much to herself as to the crystal ponies, of what might happen should one let power go to their head. Beyond that, she was still working to decipher Sombra’s secrets, it seems that he had far more hidden away than that long set of stairs and the door at the bottom that Twilight Sparkle once had to deal with.”

    “Where is… where is our niece?” Celestia asked in a softer voice. Discord smiled sadly and motioned with his hand, heading back to the antechamber near the door and taking a side passage. Nothing had changed since the Princesses had visited decades ago, not even dust had intruded upon this trip down the hall of memory. The passage showed much of Cadance’s taste for decoration, as well as the devotion of her subjects, and was lined with beautiful artwork of sculpture and paint. After passing a number of doors, Discord paused and opened a large pair of double doors, leading to the master bedroom.

    The room was easily as big as the largest of bedrooms within the former Canterlot Castle. It was circular in design, with curved walls showing massive windows that were long since snowed over. With the dusky light through the snow they could see that the furniture had been strewn about, quite literally. The room looked like a wrecking ball had gone through it, a stark contrast through the well tended hall they just traversed. And at the center of it all was the massive bed that the sisters had given to Cadance as a wedding present, a bed that could easily hold her and her new husband, Shining Armor, and handle any “bedroom olympics” the pair could manage. Unfortunately, to the Princesses’ dismay, it indeed held Shining Armor, preserved under a thin layer of crystal, as was the figure of Cadance by the bedside, holding his hoof in hers.

    “Shining Armor died in the invasion,” Discord said softly. “His magic shield held for two days, and he did everything he could while Cadance sent message after message to Canterlot to beg for help. None of those missives ever left this kingdom, I found out later, blocked by the Nightmare herself. Finally he fell to exhaustion, and so did his shield. The imps besieged the castle, and targeted both Shining Armor and Cadance. They succeeded in taking his life, and thus here he lies, preserved only minutes after his death.”

    “What… what happened?” Luna asked softly, slightly worriedly given her sister’s fixed gaze upon their eternally grieving niece.

    “One of the places I went after splitting myself was here, to the Crystal Kingdom,” Discord answered, uprighting one of the tipped chairs and settling down on it. “I approached Cadance much in the same way I approached you ladies. Cadance, and especially Shining Armor, were suspicious of me at first, but over the next few months they softened, and I was able to warn them of the things I saw. Cadance was just starting preparations to contact you formally on my behalf when the Imp invasion began, which caught all of us by surprise. The Nightmare moved sooner than I anticipated, and the kingdom wasn’t ready. As such, I was here when Shining Armor died.

    “Now, I knew from talking with her that Cadance had spent much time studying the spells Sombra once used, trying to pry apart their secrets. I offered my help in that regard, and did what I could. However, she understood far more than I thought, and when the Imps killed her husband… in her grief, she enacted the curse Sombra once used upon this land.”

    “She… she buried the Crystal Kingdom?” Celestia asked softly.

    “In a sense,” Discord said softly. “I chose to stay free of it, despite her offer to include me, but the entire kingdom… gone. In one spell, she put all her charges to sleep, the snow came in and buried every last building, and the Crystal Kingdom once more vanished from Equestria. In a flash, only I was left, and I can hide with the best of them. The imps couldn’t destroy the crystal, and even the Nightmare couldn’t drag Cadance away to be her captive, so they left… and I made sure that all future attempts to find it again failed, the only individual who has haunted these walls was myself.”

    “You kept it clean?” Celestia asked softly, stroking a hoof over the crystal cheek of her frozen niece.

    “I promised Shining Armor I would look after her after he was gone,” the draconequus offered with a forced smile and a wavering voice. To Luna, he looked about ready to cry. “So I did, never stopping work on how to oppose the force, the danger, I had seen coming. With the Imps here, I knew I couldn’t convince you that there was a bigger problem coming, so I set about finding my own help. I disguised a large portion of the lower floors of the castle as an old aerie, something that took my weakened magic a few years to do, and hid the entrance to the upper floors with a few suggestion spells that would just cause a pony to look the wrong way for the entrance. I set out my feelers after that, and learned patience the hard way. In the end, I came across Kaos, who became my right hoof in everything I’ve done since.”

    “Who else knows the truth?” Luna asked, placing a hoof on his shoulder. Discord smiled thankfully and took a breath.

    “Kaos knows, of course, I had to guide him here to find me. Zilch also knows, she had to so that she could teleport everyone accurately,” he said softly, “Verdigris figured it out on her own. I suspect that, if either of them had cause to question, Burner or Clockwork would figure it out on their own as well. But I think, with everything that has come to pass, we should tell them the truth. You would be able to remove that ugly rocky exterior I used to cover everything and reveal the truth easily enough and there should be enough supplies in town to survive at least a little while. The concern will be food, and quickly. I had a supply line open, but I don’t think Kaos can just pop by the local grocer for THIS many ponies, especially not with the gryphons hunting for us.”

    “I still have contacts in Fancee,” Celestia said with growing resolution. “Luna, do you still have your friend out in Neighpon? We should still be on good terms with Saddle Arabia as well, and we should put our feelers out to try and get as many who are willing to support us as possible.”

    “We should also speak to the gryphon homeland overseas,” Luna put in, “try and get a feel if they are supporting or standing apart from the Clans. We need to eliminate as many of their avenues for reinforcements and supplies as possible. We also need to extend ourselves to the Northern Reaches as soon as possible and evacuate as many as we can ahead of the gryphons invading.”

    Discord smiled as he stood up. “Good, I was hoping that this loss hadn’t sapped you both of your fighting spirit.”

    “We lost one battle,” Luna said simply, “and while it may be a major blow, we still yet live.”

    “And so long as we live,” Celestia concluded, “it is our duty to protect our little ponies.”

    Silence.

    Glorious silence and warmth flooded over him, a welcome change to the chaos and pain he endured reaching this place… reaching this small recess he hid from all prying eyes when he was stronger. The warmth was soothing, comforting his jagged temper. The small, nescient mind that had been there prior to him would have agreed, had he not devoured it. No chance that this one will challenge him now. It did mean he would have to weave his essence more fully into this tiny form than normal, but he had all the time he needed.

    No one would find him.

    The magic, powerful magic from the spells woven about this place would feed him, grow him stronger and stronger. The wild magic of the Everfree Forest would further fuel him, make him more powerful than anyone, pony or gryphon or dragon, could ever hope to stand against. Every line of this room was covered with spells of his own design, channeling every erg of magic into this tiny form… and with it feeding him, he would grow.

    Gryphon, Pony, Imp, Alicorn, Special, and now Dragon, all merged into one. The eggshell trembled with the power it contained, the warm sulfur vents keeping it prepared for the moment. No, don’t rush it, he chided himself, this body was still too young. He wasn’t ready.

    But soon… soon he would be ready. Soon, this egg would unleash him upon the world once more. Soon he would be free to feast and grow into his power. Soon he would not need to hide. Soon he would be so powerful that no force in Equestria could stop him.

    He tried to rule once, and failed. Now… now he will simply destroy it all. No need for lackeys, he will rule over a land of ruin, command an army of corpses. The end of it all! He grinned and the egg trembled with his excitement. In due time all would know his name…

    And Eclipse will destroy them all.

The End

A New Breed: Book 2