17th day of Rising Sun
455 Years after the Defeat of Discord by the Sisters

Bianca carefully picked the thick ring of keys out of the bloody mud, trying not to get it on her lips. The prisoners crowded around her, all of them wanting to be the first released from their chains.

“It’s okay, everypony,” Bianca said, raising her hoof. “You’ll all be free soon.” She looked around at the crowd and knelt down to where a foal was chained. Other ponies backed away respectfully as she opened his cuff first, his fetlock red and raw around where he had been restrained.

“T-thank you, miss,” the foal whispered.

“You don’t need to thank me,” Bianca smiled. “You’re a brave little stallion for hanging on this long. You’re in charge of making sure everypony gets unlocked, okay?” She passed him the keys, and the foal took them, smiling and nodding, and started opening the fetters on the ponies around him.

“How cute,” boomed a voice from above. The prisoners froze where they stood, the foal dropping the ring of keys in a silence so profound that the metal hitting the dirt echoed across the desert valley between the rocky bluffs.

Standing on top of the highest tower in the complex at the north end of the camp, a griffon half again as large as the others smiled down at the ponies with a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. His feathers were a solid blue-black, gleaming like iron.

“I was hoping I’d have the chance to fight, but it looks like you’ve only brought a talonful of soldiers. Hardly enough to even make my time worthwhile.” The griffon, Brise, had a heavy accent, spitting half of his words with spite, the others dripping with false amusement.
Behind him, Fluttering Moth silently approached, apparently unnoticed.

“I’m not surprised you defeated the guards, but my student was at least halfway competent.” Brise considered, rubbing his chin with a talon. “I’ll tell you what - if you can even wound me, I’ll let all of these prisoners go.”

Moth reared up and flapped her wings, the air distorting in two semi-circular waves, crossing each other in a tight ‘X’ centered on the griffon’s back, the pressure waves hitting him with flesh-shredding force.

It didn’t even mess up the griffon’s featherstyle. The stone of the building cracked around him, a flag exploding into scraps of fabric, but Brise was totally unaffected. He turned to look at Fluttering Moth.

“That won’t do anything against the Eisentopf Body Technique,” the griffon snorted, before plucking one of his own feathers and throwing it like a dart, the steel-hard feather hitting Moth’s wing and knocking her out of the sky. She fell until another feather hit her other wing, piercing it and pinning her halfway up a wall.

“Such defenses are worthless against magic,” Shadow said, her voice coming from all around Brise. Tendrils of shadow grappled around his limbs, trying to tie him down. “Armor can save you from a sword, but even the toughest bone and flesh will fail against my curses.”

Resplendent Shadow stepped out of the darkness, her horn pulsing with energy. She launched a death curse at Brise, the spell taking the form of a horrific, skeletal pony, swinging a scythe.

It hit his chest, right above his heart, and exploded into sparkles and smoke.

“Idiot,” Brise snorted. “There’s no such hole in my defenses.” He rolled his shoulders, wings spreading and straining as he snapped the spell tendrils trying to hold him down. Shadow took a step back, too slow as Brise lunged forwards, using the back of his talon to bat her aside like a cat playing with a mouse, the crystal unicorn crashing halfway through a window, going limp.

Brise looked around, sighing and displeased.

“Is that the best you’ve got? Two assassins who can’t even manage to kill their target? I’m disappointed you all think so little of me.” Brise looked down at the ponies. “Well, how about this - in one minute, I will kill any pony that isn’t in hoofcuffs. You have that long to decide if you’re going to fight me or just lie down and accept your fates.”

“I have a counter-offer,” Pallas said, panting. She stepped out of the tower behind Brise. “I kill you and… well, that’s it. That’s pretty much the offer.” She took a deep breath. “And seriously, buck you for putting all those stairs in to get up here. It wasn’t half as hard back when I had four hooves.”

“You didn’t consider flying?” Brise raised an eyebrow.

“I thought attacking from inside would be more stealthy,” Pallas admitted. “But stealth didn’t work out so well for the others, and I’ve got my own style.”

Brise opened his beak to say something, and Pallas slammed a wingblade into the side of his face, his head snapping to the left from the force. There was a hissing, sputtering sound from where the edge of the sword hit Brise’ face, and he turned back to look at Pallas, forcing the weapon away as if it was no more dangerous than a blade of grass.

“Didn’t feel a thing,” Brise said, smiling.

Pallas roared, spinning to strike from below, wingblade rising from the floor to try and get through his defenses.

Brise caught it under his shoulder, the blade hissing against his feathers. A talon gripped Pallas’ wing, and the other grabbed her helm, starting to squeeze. She could hear the metal squealing against the pressure, the left lens cracking.

Pallas shoved, pushing both of them off of the tower. Her free wingblade slammed into him again and again, with a sound like a blacksmith’s hammer hitting hot steel.

They slammed into the ground together, the griffon underneath Pallas and hitting hard enough to bounce back into the air and through the roof of the mess hall, coming to a stop in the remains of a table.

Brise’ grip had loosened, and Pallas pulled herself free, stumbling to the side drunkenly, dazed by the impact. Prisoners who had been preparing food rushed out to look, the ponies’ mouths open with shock at the sight.

“I admit, that was a little better,” Brise said, flapping his wings and sending the debris he had been buried in flying across the room like shrapnel. “But it still didn’t hurt.”

“No?” Pallas turned to glare at him. “Then what’s that on your cheek?” She nodded to it, and he raised a talon to find a trickle of blood working its way down his iron-hard feathers.

“You… you actually managed to pierce my Eisentopf Body?” Brise whispered.

“From what I remember you screaming about, I think that means you were going to let all the prisoners free,” Pallas said, raising her head proudly.

“Don’t be stupid,” Brise spat. He lunged towards the watching kitchen workers, a cook screaming as he grabbed her, holding the pony in front of him like a shield as he kept his eyes on Pallas. “We need them to make food! They’re not going anywhere!”

“Put her down,” Pallas growled.

“Why should I do that? While I’m holding her, you can’t attack me!” Brise grinned. “You ponies are all the same. You don’t do what’s really necessary. That’s the difference between you and us. We deserve to survive, even if the world itself is trying to kill us, because we’ll fight for it!”

“If you don’t put her down, you won’t survive the next five minutes,” Pallas promised.

“You know, I read a book a pony wrote on war, once. ‘Commanding the Ideal Celestial Army’, by some armchair general named Sirocco.” Brise snorted. “It was a bunch of bullshit. You know what it was about? It was about logistics and all the planning to do before a battle.”

“Shut up and put the damn pony down!” Pallas shouted.

“Ponies always fight just to avoid losing!” Brise said. “You can’t win if all you focus on is your losses! Being a warrior means being bloodthirsty! It means being a killer! You have to fight to win, and not give a shit about what the enemy is doing!” He squeezed the pony in his talons, the mare squeaking in pain, the breath driven from her lungs. “You gotta fight with your life on the line!”

The doors to the mess hall burst open, and Bianca ran in at the head of a group of freed prisoners.

“Stay back!” Pallas yelled. In her moment of distraction, Brise threw a clutch of hardened feathers at her, the quills striking through the gaps in her armor and digging into her flesh, blood trickling through the hollow vanes like water in a pipe.

“Hah! Gotcha!” Brise sneered. “I don’t care how tough you are, you won’t be doing much fighting once you pass out from blood loss.”
Pallas grit her teeth, trying to ignore the small wounds. They didn’t really hurt, but her limbs were already starting to feel heavy.

“And you can’t even fight!” Brise laughed. “Once I kill you, I think I’ll string the three of you up so the rest of these ponies don’t get uppity again!”

“I’ll kill you…” Pallas growled.

“You can’t,” Brise said, confidently. “You’re too busy trying to avoid losing, so you’ll never win.”

“You sound just like… that arrogant beaky bastard…” Pallas growled, her stump aching. For a moment, all she could see was Chinook’s horseapple-eating grin, the gleam of his sword, how helpless she’d been against him. Red rage surged through her body, her vision focusing into a single point.

Pallas roared, slamming into a table like a bull and throwing it across the room, the destruction not even beginning to sate her. She charged the griffon, Brise taking a half step back to better hide himself behind the pony he’d taken captive.

Pallas couldn’t even see her anymore. It was just something in the way. She swung her wingblade with abandon, the weapon going right through the pony with a wet sound like a water balloon exploding before hitting Brise’ hardened feathers with the dull sound of iron on iron.

“No!” Bianca screamed, trying to run towards her and getting held back by the crowd of prisoners.

“She’s insane!” One hissed. “You can’t go out there! She’s even more dangerous than Brise!”

Pallas kept moving, picking Brise up with her blades and running him into the wall, the plaster and brick giving way as they pushed through into the kitchen. Brise stumbled away from Pallas, falling back through a table full of yellowing vegetables and to the floor while Pallas struggled to free a wingblade from where it had embedded itself in the wall.

“Beautiful,” Brise whispered. “So beautiful.”

Pallas jerked the blade free, flapping her wing once to lock the weapon back into place, and turned to growl at Brise, padding into the kitchen to circle the griffon like a wild animal stalking its prey.

She pounced, Brise catching the blade with a talon, the edge squealing and scraping before he shoved her back, the griffon several times stronger than she was. Pallas backed up into a cart of food, tipping it over as she scuttled away to avoid a strike from the powerful griffon.

“This is more like it,” Brise smiled. “A real fight. Not against assassins or ponies with some bullshit idea of ethics that holds them back! Give me everything you’ve got!”

Pallas charged, jumping up to strike from above, high enough that her armor scraped against the kitchen’s ceiling.

The wingblades slammed into Brise right at his wing joints, forcing him to the floor on his knees. Feathers bent and twisted with a screech of rending metal.

Pallas grabbed him by the neck with her teeth, a fang cracking as she threw him across the kitchen and into the stove, pots full of boiling water splashing onto the griffon and across the floor, the spilled soup washing away patches of blackness from Brise’ left shoulder and revealing the soft brown feathers underneath.

“You really are a monster,” he laughed, standing back up. Pallas howled and attacked again, shoving him back into the stove, Brise screaming as he fell onto the hot surface.

Pallas jumped onto the griffon as he tried to flee from the pain, hitting him right in the sweet spot where the water had washed away the sheen from his feathers. Blood sprayed into the air and Brise squawked in surprise.

“This is nothing!” Brise yelled, slamming a talon into Pallas’ chin, her head snapping back as she was launched back across the kitchen and through a rack filled with pots and pans, landing in a heap among them as they clattered across the floor.

Brise got up, taking a deep breath. The wound on his shoulder stopped bleeding, the spray fading to a trickle and then vanishing entirely.

“I’m impressed,” Brise said, calm again. “I like you, pony. If I could get a damn leash on you, I’d keep you around as a pet. Might have to break you in a bit so you learn not to snap at your master, though.”

Pallas exploded out of the pots and pans, tackling Brise and stomping on him hard enough to shatter the tile under his body. He opened his beak to say something, and Pallas stomped on his head again, bouncing it against the floor. Screaming in rage, she pounded again and again, the feathers deforming around her hoof, until her own fetlock broke, the bone snapping from the hammerblows.

“Y-you hit like… a… featherweight…” Brise spat, blood pouring from his beak. Pallas stomped one more time, switching hooves, and Brise went limp, a divot pounded into his head.

“Pallas!” Bianca yelled, in the doorway to the kitchen. Pallas spun at the sound, reacting like a cornered animal. Bianca’s eyes went wide as a wave of fear washed over her. It was like Pallas wasn’t there at all, replaced with a monster, a terrifying beast only vaguely in the shape of a pony.

Before Pallas could lunge, black tendrils wrapped around her, dragging her down against her own shadow.

“Calm yourself!” Resplendent Shadow ordered, as she pushed past the crowd, limping slightly. “Don’t lose yourself to the bloodlust!”

Pallas roared, struggling against the magical restraints, slipping as her broken limb gave out under her, unable to catch herself with both of her good limbs on the same side.

“Make a hole!” Moth yelled. Ponies scrambled out of the way, and she flew inside with a barrel clutched in all four hooves. As she passed over Pallas, the air distorted, and the barrel exploded into wooden staves, the water inside dumping out over the berserk pony.
Pallas sputtered and thrashed before lying still, groaning.

“Hah! Knew that would work,” Moth said. “That’s how we kept the sky-wolves from making little cloudpups back home.”

“I am certain sky-wolves don’t exist,” Shadow muttered.

“Pallas! Are you okay?” Bianca approached cautiously. The Dragoon groaned in pain, trying to get up again and collapsing even further into a limp mess.

“I feel terrible,” Pallas mumbled.