The filly woke up with a jolt, her form shivering as she sat upright, heart pounding in her chest with the force of a sledgehammer. Each pulse of blood shooting through her veins hurt, clouding her senses with a thundering boom that came and went with each and every beat. Her bare wings shot wide open, talons gripping the blanket tightly and holding the cloth to her naked chest.

Her ears fell flat against her skull, and she felt tears forming and stinging at the corners of her eyes. Glancing around, she noticed that the place she’d been in had darkened, with only meager strands of moonlight breaking the sable veil with their liquid silver rays. Letting her watery eyes adjust to the black, she spotted curled up forms not too far away. Some had horns, some had wings, and one had a small frame with really long ears atop its head and a grumpy expression.

Angel hopped over to the foal, and his sour look melted when he saw her face, leaving just the faintest glimmer of concern in his little eyes. He extended a paw outward, not breaking eye contact with the child as he did so. The child, in turn, looked at him with trembling lips pulled into a frown, her forming tears twinkling in the gossamer strands of silver as they threatened to break free from her eyes.

“Don’t… wanna see another… hippogryph stallion again,” the child whimpered, shutting her eyes tight and letting the tears fall from her eyes and stream down her face. The bunny lowered his paw and hopped closer to her, long ears falling back like loose hair as she dropped the blanket and set her claws down to the floor. He frowned as he got closer and threw his front legs around the child’s forelimb, just inches shy of her talon.

The child began sobbing uncontrollably, raising her talons and pulling the bunny close to her bare chest as her breathing hitched with incoherent words and hiccups laced throughout. Angel shifted his paws to hug her chest, yet the foal only continued to cry, her mournful sounds causing her own body to shudder once more.

Harry shifted, blinking dazedly as he came to. His eyes widened when his brain registered the crying after a moment, and he turned to the sobbing foal. Raising his head, he inched his nose closer to her until it touched her shoulder, only to stiffen as the filly flinched and jerked her terrified gaze towards him. The bear let off a soft growl and nuzzled the child affectionately, taking care to avoid touching her wings.

The filly leaned back to rest her head against the bear’s fuzzy bulk, still clutching Angel as her sobs began to finally hush. The bunny gave a silent sigh of relief, and turned to Harry whilst using a paw to gesture to the discarded blanket. The bear nodded and leaned over to clutch the cloth with his mouth, being mindful of the filly who had snuggled up next to him with the bunny in claw as he draped it over her form. He nestled his head in his front legs after covering the child up and dozed off.

The child’s crying fully ceased a few moments later as she opened her mouth to yawn, folding her wings against her sides while her breathing slowed. Her grip on Angel loosened as she drifted off, though her form betrayed a shudder, barely visible in the moon’s soft light.

Fluttershy opened one eye and watched the sleeping filly, allowing a small smile to spread across her muzzle as she took in the sight of Angel letting himself be cradled by her. The bunny turned to the pegasus and gave her a thumbs up and small grin of his own, and the pony’s smile only widened further.

“I… hope we did the right thing,” the pegasus whispered, her tone so hushed she could hardly hear herself speak. “I wonder what color her feathers are… maybe they’ll compliment her messy violet mane and pale greyish-pink body,” she pondered aloud, but her tone had still been near-silent.

Nearby, however, a bloodstained mare tossed about in her sleep.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

“This is… this is odd,” Rarity murmured, turning around to glance at every possible direction she could. No matter where she looked, mirrors spanned as far as she could see, forming an elongated hallway of reflective glass. The hallway stretched wide at the sides and high on above; it could’ve fit three airships and three Valkyries side-by-side and would still have had some room for a pony to trot between the vehicles.

Strangely, the mirrors on the floor did not reflect the lone unicorn mare who stood right atop them, nor did the ceiling mirrors reflect what was below. Even the mirrors making up the walls showed no image except for the opposing bits of reflective glass, as though Rarity wasn’t there at all.

The unicorn, quirking a brow, trotted up to one of the walls and gently put a hoof on the glass. “That’s funny. These mirrors aren’t dirty, and I am standing in front of one and on top of another. Why do I not have a reflection?” she mused aloud, her words echoing down both ends of the hall.

The mare took a glance down both ends of the hall before facing the wall she stood closest to and closing her eyes. Taking in a deep breath, she turned her head one way but began to blindly trot in the other direction. She went on like this for a few moments before her eyes snapped open as the distinct sound of a malicious laugh graced her ears. Whipping her head around, she spotted an ivory hoof much like her own emerging from one of the walls, the mirror rippling as if it were water.

Another Rarity tumbled out, landing with her face hitting the floor. The first Rarity gawked and shook her head as the second staggered to her hooves and dazedly looked around. The mare who came out of a mirror shot a glance at the mare staring at her and instantly locked eye contact with her, and the first noticed there had been something different: the irises were crimson instead of blue.

“Um, hello?” the blue-eyed Rarity ventured, the corners of her mouth twitching as she suppressed a frown.

The red-eyed Rarity donned a friendly smirk, one stretching from ear to ear. “Oh, my, I apologize for staring! How rude of me! How do you do?” she greeted, extending her hoof out with such speed it’d been like she’d known her blue-eyed counterpart for some time.

“Oh, no no no, I should be the one apologizing for staring. I didn’t do anything but watch as you tumbled head first into the floor! I am sincerely sorry for not helping you up like I should have,” the blue-eyed unicorn chortled, raising her own hoof and gently shaking the hoof that’d been offered to her.

She stopped mid-shake, though, upon looking at the hoof she held. Now, something had been different—namely, the hoof she’d been shaking had somehow gotten covered in sticky wet blood. Next thing she knew, the other Rarity had retracted her hoof and bolted before the blue-eyed unicorn even had the chance to look back up, leaving a trail of bloodied hoofprints in her wake.

“Oh, that was rude,” Rarity mumbled under her breath, turning back to her now-stained hoof. “But… where did the blood come from? Could that have something to do with my… doppelganger’s sudden change in behavior?”

Setting her hoof down, she scanned her surroundings once more. Aside from the trail of blood that led onward, nothing had changed. The unicorn took a moment to lower her head, slump her shoulders, and draw a heavy sigh before straightening her posture and following the crimson hoofprints. She attempted to be careful and avoid stepping upon the red stains that blemished the polished mirror floor, her trot little more than a slow gait.

Her heart began pounding in her chest as she continued to follow the path of vermillion, but all Rarity did had been little more than attempt to gulp down her growing trepidation and press on. Strands of her mane and tail began sticking out of place as she briefly paused, ears folding back as a malicious laugh filled the reflective corridor with a series of echoes following moments after.

Adrenaline coursed through her veins, forcing the mare to squint her eyes as the mirrors almost instantly turned so sharp they looked to be near-white while the natural chemical coursed through her. She continually winced as she trotted on, the delicate clip-clop of her hooves almost as loud as the frantic beating of her heart. Her horn started glowing, soft blue for a moment before turning a dark, grayish-maroon. Its light reflected off of the mirrors as Rarity followed the trail of red hoofprints for minutes—perhaps even hours—on end, only pausing once she finally took notice of her glowing appendage.

“Unicorn magic doesn’t happen without reason,” she mumbled under her breath, quirking a brow. “And yet, I did not will my mana to conjure a light spell… this is certainly odd.” She turned her attention to the trail she had—until this point—followed, and let off a heavy sigh. “Now that I think about it, this trail… it stretched on for quite some time. Does it even end somewhere?” The unicorn shot a cross-eyed glance at her horn again and went on, “My magic is blue, not a hideous, desaturated red… now I know something’s quite wrong with this… wherever it is I am standing.”

Turning her attention back to the trail of blood, she leaned forward a bit and squinted her eyes, raising a hoof above them to keep the light spell from distracting her. “Claw marks? That other me with the red eyes didn’t have claws…” her voice died in her throat, her out-loud train of thought immediately halted, and her hoof shot down and slammed into the floor with a thud loud as thunder as soon as the words left her mouth. Rarity recoiled, backpedaling a ways from the trail with semi-flailing legs that writhed like the floor had been thoroughly greased.

“Blood… claw marks… red eyes…” Rarity mumbled, shuddering as she drew uneven, hitched breaths. A loud cry snapped her from her thoughts as it shook the reflective corridor, and immediately, she bolted the way she’d been going up until her momentary pause. As she galloped madly, she chanced a glance to the nearest wall, and gaped as a perfect image of herself ran in tandem with her form through the glass.

But as she ran, the reflection changed. The first look only had the red eyes, but the second that came moments after sported the wings, slit pupils, and talons belonging to that of a gryphon. The third glance yielded a trussed-up mane, ending in stringy, bloodied spindling strands that whipped behind its head. The fourth glance at the reflection procured a lion’s tail, a crude beak where a muzzle had been, an engorged belly, and fresh blood dribbling from the mouth all the way down to the barrel of the chest.

The reflection laughed, the tone belonging to a masculine something and a feminine mockery of Rarity’s voice, as though there’d been two entities laughing simultaneously. The horrid sound persisted for a moment longer as the unicorn immediately skid to a loud halt and backpedaled away.

“A rock in the corridor!” Rarity squeaked, jerking her gaze to the wall closest to said rock as it began to violently ripple in a manner akin to pond water that had gotten disturbed. The thing that had been her shapeshifting reflection clambered out and started growing in size, perching itself upon the rock and towering over the mare with a feral, predatory gleam in its eyes. The monstrosity easily dwarfed the airship and the Valkyrie as it spread its wings wide, leaning in closer to the frantic unicorn as she kept trying to shimmy away.

“You fool!” it cried, an acrid stench of blood, flesh, and rot halting Rarity as it assaulted her nostrils and set her stomach churning. “You took that little slut and doomed her! Had she stayed in her town, she could have been spared from your barbaric hooves and those equally hideous cutie marks! No matter. I shall rectify that mistake, here and now!” The thing hissed as it reared up, raising a talon and thrusting it towards the miniscule unicorn in a blindingly fast blur of movement.

Rarity sat upright, screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs for a few moments. When her outcry died down, everyone in the airship looked at her, including the featherless hippogryph filly, Spike, and the animals. The drake rushed to her side in an instant, clasping an ivory hoof still stained in dried red with his claws. The shaken mare took no notice of Spike for several long, tense moments, staring straight ahead with a vacant gaze.

A timid voice snapped the mare out of her stupor, “Nice horn-pony, are you okay?”

The ivory mare blinked and then flinched, her gaze falling upon the hippogryph filly who stared back at her with wide eyes and ears flattened on her skull. “I’m…” Rarity paused to swallow thickly before answering, “I am… I’m okay.”

“What happened? Why’d you scream? Are you really okay?” the filly asked, frowning as her rear legs shifted beneath her blanket. Rarity stilled, her mind filling with images of the foal’s torture at the claws of Frostbite’s elder, but her paralysis had been brief.

The bloodied unicorn shook her head vigorously in an attempt to clear her mind of the horrid scenes, her mane flailing every which-way and becoming more unkempt and spindly in the process. When she ceased her head-jerking, she took a deep and uneven breath before answering the child, “I just had… a bad dream. A very bad dream.”

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The boarding dock of the airship landed with a thud the next morn, and as soon as it touched the snow-laden ground, a black-and-white form briskly trotted into the ship via the dock. Matt’s gaze met that of Twilight’s as he paused upon finding himself in the lounge. He asked, “How’s the filly holding up?”

Twilight shot a glance at the foal, who anxiously scratched at her bared chest with a claw. “She’s been fidgety,” the mare replied as she turned back to the stallion. “Not in a self-harming way or any other way that would drive me and everypony else on the ship up the wall, but she’s still worrying us.”

“Pardon us. It’s still our second day in Fantasia, and we’ve been on edge since we left that town full of bloodied yahoos,” Rainbow chirped in a sarcastic tone, which garnered a roll of the eyes from the half-Clydesdale unicorn.

“I get what you mean,” Matt nodded, a small smile on his face. His grin fell, though, when he glanced at the filly. The filly stared back, naked wings cringing in such a way it looked like they had invisible vibrators tied to them.

“Where are you taking me, nice horn-pony?” she asked, her voice faltering. In the same moment she had spoken, the ship fell silent, and all stilled on the spot.

The stallion swallowed thickly, but his gulp did not break the silence. He glanced at the Mythonian mares and their dragon friend, but all he received were either shaking heads or worried gazes. Rarity in particular shuddered, her mane spindly, frazzled, and draped loosely past her withers as she mouthed, “I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

Twilight closed her eyes, her mind scrambling to formulate something even resembling an idea. “Would the filly really be safer with us, the Fantasians, or in a temporary home?” she thought, creases forming along the seams of her closed eyelids as she drew a near-silent sigh. “On one hoof, she’d be in a spot where, if I left her with the right pony, she’d be safe and could receive therapy, food, shelter… maybe even flight training once her feathers grew back.”

She grimaced as her train of thought churned on, “But on the other, I don’t know what the Fantasians would do with her—or to her, Celestia forbid—since she’s not in the best condition. Then again, they’ve taken in a legless cat and a changeling that shouldn’t be able to trot at all… and what if I brought her to Celestia as she is now? Since Rarity pretty much lost it the other day, with how things are now, I doubt the Princesses would be amused…”

Twilight opened her eyes after a few moments and looked at Matt with as level a look as she could muster. “I’ve weighed our options regarding the foal,” she said.

The Fantasian stallion quirked a brow. “And that would be…?” he asked, tilting his head a little.

“The filly stays within the line of sight of everyone got involved with the mess yesterday, Fantasians and Mythonians alike. She cannot be left alone. Even if she recovers from her ordeal, she’ll still need some sort of adult figure who won’t go and… hurt her for simply wanting something as simple as a cutie mark. While I still have my doubts about you and your folk—I mean no offense when I say that—I, as the leader of my group, have little choice,” Twilight answered, ears flattening on her head.

Matt thought over the lavender unicorn’s rather long-winded reply for a moment before asking, “No offense taken. However, I need to ask: why do you feel you have little say in… this matter of sorts?”

“If we left her here, in this frozen patch of land, she’d die. If we left her somewhere on Mythos, she could be guaranteed some safety, but how much I couldn’t be able to tell you with finality—what if I left her in an orphanage ran by a horrid pony? What then?” Twilight began, shuddering at the implications of her own words. She steeled herself and added, “What I’m saying is, it’s best if she sticks with either one group, the other, or both.”

The blond-maned stallion nodded slowly, letting the mare’s words sink in. “I see,” he said simply. “The hippogryph mare with the harp-halberd-thing told us last night that you fed the filly fruits and veggies, but she went green in the face.”

“The meanies made me eat parts of mommy and daddy… and then made me eat their—” the filly could not finish as Spike rushed over to her and clasped his claws on her muzzle. She began jerking her head wildly, raising her talons in an attempt to shake the drake off as well as scratch him. The half-Clydesdale turned his attention to the struggle and noticed that, despite suffering some fast slashing action from the talons, the drake seemed unfazed.

“Please, please, please don’t finish that sentence around Rarity,” Spike pleaded, his words causing the filly to halt her onslaught. “We don’t want her flipping out again.” When the filly nodded her understanding, the drake relinquished his hold on her mouth and patted her head with a claw. “Sorry for grabbing your mouth. It’s just that there’s a time and a place for everything, even if it’s just talking. And talking about... the meanies now isn’t a good idea.”

The filly nodded again, and shot a glance towards Matt. “Sorry, the dragon’s right, little girl. I’m afraid that talk is gonna have to wait,” he sighed, his tone level. He trotted over to her and ruffled her mane a bit with his hoof, a smile curling his lips as he added, “But in the meantime, we’ll keep the big nasty meanies away from you. Okay?”

“Okay,” the filly chirped, nodding once more.

Matt nodded back and ruffled the filly’s mane some more before turning back to the Mythonian tourists. His smile faded yet again, and he sighed, “Whichever one of you suggested that party, your proposition got me thinking since we left Frostbite yesterday.”

“About what?” Pinkie asked, jolting up onto her back legs. She crossed her front ones as she eyed the Fantasian stallion with a curious glimmer flickering about in her irises. “You want to have that party?”

“Not right yet, all things considered. What I meant was, I’m starting to think the whole ‘end of the worlds’ gig has gotten to me pretty good, since the source was vague and we just found out he was a complete fucking lunatic yesterday. I talked with the others in the tank—including Anna’s supposed sister and the diamond dog—about it for quite a bit,” Matt answered, frowning.

“And…?” Applejack ventured, quirking a brow.

“Oh, I think I get it!” Pinkie piped up, garnering the attention of everyone as she spoke. “You’re starting to think the vague legend or whatever it was you heard is a big hunk of baloney!”

“Something to that degree,” Matt replied, nodding as his horn started glowing a soft gold. A smile resurfaced on his muzzle as he kept speaking, “Sure, it couldn’t hurt to check, so I’ll propose something in return. Me and my group gets to check everywhere we’re able to, and if we find nothing regarding the ‘end of the worlds’ maybe-nonsense, we’ll punch ourselves silly because an old crazy geezer fooled us and have that party, yeah?”

“Now you’re talking!” Pinkie beamed, eyes glittering in delight as she bounced over to Matt and wrapped a foreleg around his neck. She turned to Twilight—unaware that Matt’s horn ceased glowing—with a grin as she asked, “What you say, Twilight? Deal or no deal?”

Twilight let a smile appear on her muzzle. “I guess we have ourselves a deal,” she answered. “But would the General of the Fantasian Gryphon-Changeling Army approve of it?”

As if mere spoken words could summon the devil himself, her ears caught the sound of another set of hooves clip-clopping on wood. She turned to the entrance of the ship, and stiffened as she witnessed Lance trotting right inside with his head held high. “As a matter of fact, I would. And before you ask, I stood outside the ship the entire time, and Matt just sent me a telepathic message explaining the whole thing,” he stated matter-of-factly.

“Though, I’d like a day to make further arrangements with my own group and my army, seeing as we have just one airship, yet two groups. Speaking of, I do wonder why you and your friends crossed the atmospheric threshold to land in a sub-zero-at-night hellhole,” he added, shooting Twilight a cursory gaze.

“The friend who lent me this airship… well, she’s a leader, like you,” Twilight began, suppressing the urge to grimace. “She wanted to know how Fantasia’s operated, and to bring back any natives if necessary—” she faltered as Lance’s eyes narrowed just a little bit, “—not-not by force, mind you! She’s not that kind of leader!”

“Hrm…” the red-eyed stallion rose a hoof to rub his chin before setting it back down. He quipped, “If this friend of yours was a terrible sort of leader, then I wonder how the hell she managed to snag an airship. Faulty leaders don’t manage their power for long before their entire system plummets into the darkness that is complete anarchy.”

The lavender unicorn let out a nervous laugh before speaking again, “I-I see… wou—” a rising hoof adorned with a horseshoe had been all it took to silence her before she could finish speaking.

“After my arrangements have been made, me and my group would like to come along. I, too, need a vessel of the sky. Which, obviously, the Valkyrie isn’t. Would tomorrow, noon sharp, be good?” the general asked, though his words sounded more like a statement.

Twilight frantically nodded. “Y-yes, we can m-manage that,” she stammered.

Lance nodded back. “I guess that settles it,” he said. He heard a masculine chuckle and shifted his focus to Matt, immediately noticing that the featherless foal had pranced up to the half-Clydesdale and grasped one of his furry legs with her claws.

“Why do you have a lot of hair on your hooves?” the child asked, tugging at the thick fur for emphasis.

Matt looked at the foal with a wide grin, laughing heartily as she stared back with curiosity alight in her eyes. “One of my pals—the nice pony with the black hat—thinks I’m part mammoth,” he answered with another chuckle.

“What’s a mammoth?” the child inquired, her ears flicking for the barest of instants.

“It’s a big fuzzy thing like I am, except three times bigger and it has horns at the corners of its mouth and a really long, bendy nose. It also has big ears, large enough that I could fit one of the other ponies inside it with no problem, and it’s brown all over,” Matt replied, his smile widening.

“It’s good to see that… the filly’s doing alright today,” Rarity murmured, shuddering as she found herself under the concerned gaze of Applejack. She flinched as her companion leaned in close to her ear.

“No argument there, but you need a nice and long bath, Rares. And after that, one of them spa treatments. Land sakes, you need those things so bad I don’t know how much longer you could do without,” the blond-maned earth pony whispered to the trussed-up ivory unicorn in a matter-of-factly and worried tone of voice.

“I’m going to need much more than that, although those things would indeed be nice,” Rarity whispered back, grimacing as another shiver ran throughout her body. “I hope Celestia doesn’t banish me to the sun or moon or turn me to stone if, and possibly when, she finds out I’ve killed a Fantasian hippogryph with my bare hooves.”

“Maybe she’ll understand that you’ve just snapped and did the… it hurts me to admit, the best possible thing in that mess,” Applejack sighed, nodding her head and closing her eyes as if in grim resignation. “Sure, it cost somepo—somegryph his life, but he was gonna end that filly while everypony else had been rightly petrified by what he’d done.”

The earth pony recoiled, blinking with widening eyes as her tied mane stood on end. She looked behind her, only to spot Angel yanking at the end of her tail with his front paws and a sour look on his face. The bunny pointed behind himself with an ear, and Applejack followed where his ear had been pointing to the entrance of the lounge. There’d been hooves hitting the wood once more, although this time it came with a scritch-scratching sound that got louder as the green-maned hippogryph trotted on board.

A moment after that, the diamond dog clambered on, his visage set with an unreadable look. “Does the filly have a name?” he asked, using a clawed, paw-like hand to gesture to the featherless foal.

The foal shook her head. “Nogryph got named until they hit a… something or other. I don’t remember what,” she replied.

“That about answers your question, Fenrir,” the hippogryph mare sighed, glancing at the diamond dog.

“Well, we can’t just call her ‘filly.’ One of my gryphons came up with a name for our wraith, so I can safely deduce he can do the same for the child,” Lance sighed, not turning his head to glance at Fenrir and the green-maned hippogryph.

“But, whichever gryphon that is, he’s still in the tank,” the mare with cat-like pupils pouted, sitting on her rump and crossing her front legs together.

Lance turned to the mare, sending her an incredulous frown. “Then, Sarah Lyregale, how about you name the filly? Don’t give me that look, I heard your complaint,” he hissed, eyes narrowing low.

Sarah stilled for a moment before setting her claws down, her wings betraying the tiniest of shudders. Hesitantly, she nodded, and stood up before darting around the pegasus general and making a beeline for the filly. The foal looked at her with a quizzical gaze, and the mare leaned in close before donning a rather forced smile.

The filly then began bouncing in place, flapping her naked wings as a giddy grin crept up on her muzzle. “I want a name, I want a name!” she cried, beaming as she kept on jumping.

“You mentioned a daddy, little filly. Did he want you to be named something in particular?” Matt questioned, his words managing to stop the filly’s bouncing.

The child turned to him with a frown. She replied, “Daddy wanted me to be named something or other, and now he’s gone…”

“What’d he want you to be named? Can you remember?” Sarah questioned, and the filly turned to her with a saddened look. The green-maned mare sighed and patted the foal’s head with a talon. “Listen, I know it’s probably hard for you to remember your dad and not feel bad for doing it, but could you please… try to remember what he wanted you named? We don’t wanna name you something that would make him… come back and haunt us.”

The filly nodded and closed her eyes, scrunching them so tightly it looked like she’d gotten a headache. Upon opening her eyes moments later, she looked at the adult hippogryph and answered, “He wanted a Maria.”

“Maria…” Sarah repeated as she raised a talon and rubbed her chin with it for a bit. “That’s a start… now we need a surname.”

“Well, she’s a gryph like you… maybe it should have something to do with wind? Maybe the skies, even?” Matt suggested, looking at Sarah with a level look.

“Maybe… but it also has to not be in direct relation to the big meanies who made her hurt and cry. Something simple, and as distantly related to the meanies as possible…” Sarah murmured, continuing to rub her chin with her claws. “Frost is out of the question, as is Snow… and needs something to do with the sky...”

“Chillclaw?” Lance piped in from where he stood.

“No… not what I’m looking for…” Sarah answered, shaking her head. She thought for a moment longer before her eyes lit up in a spark, and she removed the talon from her chin to snap her claws a moment later. “Aha! I think I got it!” the green-maned mare exclaimed, turning to the filly who still looked at her forlornly. “How’s Maria Icedraft sound?” she asked, and at once, the foal’s sad look melted into a happy grin, and she proceeded to jump around her with all of the grace of a grasshopper.

“Maria Icedraft, Maria Icedraft!” the filly chirped as she bounced about, laughing as she chanted those two words with very child-like glee.

“Now that we settled on a name for the filly, and it seems she enjoys said name, we’re gonna need to give her something to keep her warm. Not just a scarf, either, but it’d have to be loose enough that she can comfortably grow in her new feathers,” Matt stated, grinning as Maria stopped her leaping to look at him.

Lance also smirked, sitting on his rump as his grin only widened. “And fortunately for us, maybe that damn blind bag we have in the tank could yield us something of that nature. If not…” he paused, shifting his glance to Rarity, “we could always have somepony make Maria the needed outfit.”

“Beg your pardon?” Twilight asked, turning to the general with a brow quirked. He responded by raising a hoof and pointing it at Rarity.

“I heard one of you’s a dress designer. Surely, designing something for a featherless foal wouldn’t be a challenge?” Lance retorted, the coy smirk still plastered onto his visage. The ivory unicorn stiffened for a bit before hesitantly turning to him.

“Y-you want me… to make a dress…?” Rarity inquired, her eyes widening.

“For Maria, yes. Hell, make something for the wraith, too—considering your reactions when you first saw her, I’m gonna stretch my broken wings and assume that much of the population of Mythos is going to react in a similar manner. The less Mythonian ponies, gryphons, and whatever else sees her in her current state, the better—until we can figure out just what’s wrong with her and manage to rectify it, of course. She’d do well with a facial covering, among other things,” the general answered with a nod. “And yes, we’ll pay you handsomely for the outfits.”

Maria rushed over to Rarity and started to leap around the unicorn before managing a leap that got her high enough to land her on the ivory mare’s back. When the frazzled unicorn glanced at her new passenger, the foal donned a bit of a pouting frown and sparkling, wide eyes. “Pretty please?” she pleaded. “With an apple on top?”

“I’ll… need to take measurements after I get cleaned up and check on my little sister to make sure she didn’t hurt herself or destroy anything in my absence. But consider it done,” Rarity answered with a heavy sigh leaving her lips. At this, Maria beamed at her with a wide grin.

“Yay! Thank you, nice horn-pony!” the hippogryph filly chirped, flapping her bare wings excitedly.

“Oh, shoot! I’m gonna need to check on my sis, too! I hope she took care of Winona while I was gone!” Applejack exclaimed, looking at her haggard friend with widening eyes.

“And I need to check on Scoots! Who knows what she could’ve done in the last few days!” Dash cried, also turning to Rarity with dilating pupils. A feminine ‘ahem’ grabbed the attention of the trio and they darted their heads before their unified gaze fell on Sarah, who had been looking at them with a small smirk on her face.

“Worried about your sisters, I take it? Don’t worry; I understand, my own sister worried me a lot until yesterday,” the hippogryph chimed, her wings shifting a bit as she spoke.

“Why say that?” Applejack ventured, frowning.

“Me and my sis took separate paths upon gaining our cutie marks. It’s a long story, and I was worried she’d gotten hurt after we parted ways,” Sarah answered, standing up and angling her body whilst flaring the wing attached to the side that faced the Mythonians, revealing to them her cutie mark.

“It’s a… halberd with its shaft jutting between the strings of a harp? With what looks like a breeze weaving around the two? What’s it mean?” Rarity asked, eyeing the rather peculiar mark.

“Long story,” Sarah replied bluntly, closing her wing and sitting down on her rump.

“I just noticed that your feathers start out light brown, then go to a regular brown, and end in a green that’s a little dark at the tips of the primaries. Is there a rhyme or reason behind that?” Twilight mused, trotting over and pointing a hoof at one of Sarah’s closed wings for emphasis.

“It’s a hippogryph-and-gryphon thing. Unless the gryph is really old, or straight albino, they’re gonna have these kind of wing patterns. My wings are actually pretty dull, if you compared me to one of Mr. General’s male gryphon soldiers side-by-side. I guess it has to do with the fact that I have ovaries,” the hippogryph answered, briefly flinching for a moment.

“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be heading back to the Valkyrie now. The boarding dock let in too much cold air for my liking, and it’s bad for my broken wings,” Lance sighed, and with that, he turned around and trotted out.

“I guess I’ll follow him. Since his wings are broken, he has to be helped up into the hatch. Good thing I know levitation,” Matt sighed. He briskly trotted out of the airship, his mane and tail whipping about in a fleeting gale as he made his exit.

“I’ll go check on sis. I hope she didn’t go into heat,” Sarah groaned, standing up on her back legs and walking out. She’d been stopped by Fluttershy, however, before she could set hoof on the boarding dock. “Yes?”

“Um, why do you walk on your back legs, and is your sister’s heat cycles that worrying? If you don’t mind answering,” the yellow pegasus ventured, looking at the hippogryph with a frown on her face.

“In order, sometimes my talons hurt from walking on all fours for an extended period and I’d rather spare them more agony, and it makes it easier to fight with my harxe when push comes to shove. My sister’s heat cycles are… bad, to put it mildly,” Sarah sighed, grimacing.

“What’s a harxe?” Twilight questioned, quirking a brow. The hippogryph shot a glance over her shoulder and smiled.

“You saw the halberd with the harp tied to the shaft? That’s a harxe, and yes, I invented that word,” came the answer. Sarah resumed walking upright out of the airship, her tail and mane gently swaying as she went down the boarding dock.

Fenrir made to stand next to a window and lean back into a wall, eying the Mythonians with an unreadable look still framing his visage. “It would seem you lot and the native ponies are, for a lack of better words, vastly different. The smells you exude as we speak are not ones I am familiar with, with the exception of the dried blood,” he murmured in a low tone, his ears jutting upright and standing as stiff as mountain peaks.

Applejack watched as the diamond dog crossed his arms and replied with worry flickering in her eyes, “How do we smell different from the Fantasian ponies? I don’t rightly get what you mean, except for the blood bit.”

Fenrir scoffed and closed his eyes, inhaling deeply before answering, “You all smell fresh and clean for starters, whereas the ponies in the tank smelt like they had dirtied their hooves so much I’d assume they’ve been doing just that since foalhood. The wraith reeks of… halted necrosis—she should be rotting to the very bones if she has them, yet she isn’t. The gryphons’ feathers, though, gave me… mixed results. I’d attribute that to meticulous preening.”

“By ‘dirtying their hooves,’ what do you mean?” Rainbow questioned, shooting a glance at her fellow mares. Her companions shrugged and shook their heads before turning their attention back to the diamond dog.

“They’re seasoned fighters, the whole lot, with the exception of the wraith. I doubt she could hold so much as a melting candle in a dampened cave filled with monsters,” the dog answered with another scoff. “A changeling that thin has little to no fighting chance; in fact, playing possum would most likely be her only means of staying intact for another day. The general… he had another scent wafting about him.”

“That scent being...?” Twilight trailed off, a frown worming its way onto her muzzle as she fell silent.

Fenrir answered after a few moments passed by, “He reeked strongly of metal—of blackened steel, iron, and brass. Whether it’s from his weapon and ammunition pouch, or something else entirely, I cannot say for certain.”

“Maybe his horseshoes had something to do with that scent. Perhaps they’re made of metallic alloys,” the lavender mare replied, raising a hoof and rubbing the side of her forehead with it. “But then, how’d he get his hooves on those shoes, let alone the Valkyrie?”

“I’ve asked him that myself. He would not answer,” Fenrir groaned, shaking his head. “The general asked me to spend the night with you bunch in the airship. He said something about a compromise.”

“It was my idea, but now he reversed it,” Spike piped up, immediately finding himself getting a glance from the dog.

“Oh? And what was the idea?” Fenrir mused, his lips curling into a half-smile. “Humor me, small drake.”

“Yesterday, when everyone started to fight and things began boiling over, I suggested that one of my friends spend the night in the tank. Rainbow Dash took that offer, and it seems Lance is having you spend the night with us,” the drake answered, grinning sheepishly. “When we first landed, things got off to a very rocky start, and it came to a head after some wraith unicorns showed up apparently looking for trouble.”

“They called one of the Fantasian unicorns—the one with the orange mane—something foul, and the wraith unicorns… got a thrashing they likely won’t forget, to put it in eloquent terms,” Rarity added, shuddering partly from the temperature in the ship dropping thanks to the open dock, and partly from a repeat of that scenario playing about in her mind.

“Wraith unicorns…” Fenrir parroted, blinking as the words left his mouth. “What did they look like?” he ventured, tapping a claw against his upper arm.

“They all had armor, black manes, pale coats, and those creepy glowing eyes like the dead changeling has. But one had greaves on his legs and carried a spear, and the rest had strange horseshoes sporting claw-like extensions,” Twilight answered, shifting her back legs so she could plop down on her rump.

“Are wraiths scary?” Maria inquired, getting another look from the diamond dog.

“Most wraiths are, usually, at least appearance-wise. As for fighting, it depends on the individual involved, and almost all wraiths I have met prior to this very week would go out with their heads held high if it meant taking down a single living pony, gryphon, or whatever else that so much as breathes,” Fenrir sighed, shifting his stance so he could stand upright without the aid of the wall. “How many got thrashed?”

The lavender unicorn made a rejoinder, “Around a dozen or so. The last one took off his armor and fled, but the dead changeling flew after him and killed him by clamping on his horn with her mouth. One of the Fantasian unicorns believes she cut off his flow of mana and it backfired on him with lethal results.”

“That is… something I have not heard of before. I find myself more perplexed by the minute,” the diamond dog remarked, his half-smile fading.