10th day of Sun's Height
455 Years after the Defeat of Discord by the Sisters

Pallas wasn’t good at staying still and quiet. She was good at being huge and violent and scary, and none of those things were useful when she was stuck behind cover.

“What are we going to do, sit here and wait for her to run out of ammunition?” Pallas growled, looking at the old griffon reclining against a tree near her.

“Hm. I doubt she’d be dull enough to do that,” he said. “She is a professional, after all.”

“I’m asking what you think we should do!” Pallas snapped.

“Well, I know my first choice,” the old griffon said. “Hey! Can you hear me?!” He yelled towards where they’d stuck the bolt with the message crystal into the ground, far enough away that they could whisper to each other without the sniper hearing them.

“I’d hear you even better if you stood up in the open,” Abrolhos said, her tone light.

“How much are you getting paid for this?” The old griffon picked up his booze-filled gourd and sipped from it. “I’d be willing to match it if you walk away and just tell my good-fer-nothin’ father that I’m dead.”

“It’s not about money,” Abrolhos sighed.

“So what is it about? Doing favors for the Emperor thinking he’ll give you some nice desk job? I don’t know how to tell you this, but there aren’t any.”

“It’s about revenge,” Abrolhos said. “Not on you, I’m afraid. This is just tying up loose ends. I would be tempted to let you go, but that pony with you, she’s more interesting prey. She evaded my arrows before, and her friends humiliated me in Everfree.”

The old griffon glared at Pallas. “Dammit, girl, I should’ve known you had enemies all over, from the way you tried to kill me as soon as you met me.”

“You were annoying,” Pallas mumbled.

“Fine. Here’s the plan. She doesn’t like you, so you’re going to get her attention. Once she shoots, it’ll take time for her to reload, and we can use it to move closer.”

“I don’t like this plan.” Pallas said. She glanced towards the peaks of the mountain. “She has to be up there somewhere. We can duck down into the ravine to give us cover, fly around, and come up on the other side of the mountains.”

“She’ll see us coming from a mile away. This is the only cover for a long way.” The old bird sighed. “It’s why I came here.”

“I have a better idea,” Pallas said. “We split up and try to flank her. She can only shoot in one direction at a time. Can you teach me to catch arrows?”

“Girl, you have hooves, not talons. You couldn’t catch a cold.”

“I’ll have to get lucky then,” Pallas mumbled.

“Fine,” the old bird agreed. “You go that way.” He pointed behind himself. “I’ll go the other way. She won’t expect it.”

Pallas nodded. The griffon held up three talons. Two. One.

She took off., flying past him, and broke through the brush. She looked back, expecting to see him coming out through the bushes on the other side of the clearing. Instead, he was waving to her from where he was still sitting safely in cover.

“That feathering old beakfaced-” Pallas swore. She strained her ears, wings going still as she listened for it. It was already close. Too close. She tucked her wings close to her body, dropping as the huge bolt closed in on her.

Pallas’ eyes went wide. She had no time to think. Her wings snapped in front of her in a scissoring motion, closing like a huge set of jaws. The bolt vibrated in the grip she’d made, holding it in her wings as she dropped from the sky, the tip only a hoof-width from her snout.
“I did it!” She yelled.

“Might want to do it again really quickly!” The old bird yelled. He raised his gourd up to sip from it.

Pallas dropped the bolt, flying towards where it had come from. Even with her camouflage cloak, there were only so many places the sniper could be hiding. Pallas pumped her wings, struggling for quick altitude and speed, two things she wasn’t good at. Another whistle pierced the air.

She could do it. She could catch it again. She tensed, readying herself.

The bolt crackled with magic, splitting into dozens of duplicates in midair, multiplying like well-fed parasprites.

Pallas made a strangled sound of frustration. She spun in a wide windmilling motion, knocking bolts aside. The wide spread meant most of them of them were poorly aimed, and she only needed to cut a path through them.

One slipped through her defenses, going through her left front leg. Another bounced off of her metal leg. A third scraped along her face, cutting open her cheek.

“BUCK!” Pallas yelled, trying to block out the pain as she rose towards the mountain peaks. She’d never seen anything like that before. An attack like that could wipe out a small army in one shot.

“You’re totally unprepared for this,” said a calm voice from the arrow embedded in her leg. “You don’t even have your armor on. You were a lot scarier when you were fighting Chinook, and he took you down without even trying. This time, you don’t have your pegasus friend around to protect you.”

“Your tricks won’t help once I get my hooves around your neck!” Pallas snapped, her blood boiling.

“Better hurry,” Abrolhos said. “Pretty soon you won’t have hooves left to strangle me with.” Pallas just barely saw it. A bright patch among the rocks, the same color but not quite catching the sunlight correctly.

She angled towards it, flying in a series of bends to try and throw off the sniper’s aim. With a triumphant yell, she dove straight towards it at the last minute, swinging her blades hard at the cloaked form.

She winced with pain as the edges hit solid rock, the cloak falling away to reveal a pile of rocks.

“Buck!” Pallas yelled.

“I didn’t think you’d fall for such an obvious trick,” came the voice from the bolt. Pallas grabbed it with her teeth, trying to pull it out, annoyed, but stopped as the wide head caught and started to tear. “Careful. You’ll bleed more if you rip it out like that.”

Pallas nipped at the iron shaft, unable to snap it. She swore and looked around.

No cover. Abrolhos could see her. And she’d set this trap to begin with. Why wasn’t she firing? Pallas looked down at the rocks. Something was leaking out of them. Something that was starting to spark and glow.

Her eyes went wide, and she jumped, taking to the air as the loose pile of rocks exploded.

Shrapnel tore holes through her wings as she fell backwards, coughing up blood. She could feel her ribs had re-broken in the same place as before. For a long few seconds, she couldn’t move, stunned, dizzy, her ears ringing and heart pounding.

“I’m impressed,” Abrolhos said, sounding amused. “I think you might have survived that. Did you even consider that it was a trap? Why would you stay there when you had to know I was going to try and kill you?”

“Shut up,” Pallas croaked.

“Ah, alive indeed. You’re lucky. If you hadn’t moved at the last moment, it would definitely have killed you. I suppose some of my supplies are aging, after all. It’s hard to get replacements ever since your precious little princesses destroyed my country.”

“What the feather are you talking about?” Pallas asked, trying to stand. She settled for crawling behind a small boulder, hoping it would provide some cover.

“I’m from the Crystal Empire,” Abrolhos said. “Do you know what your Luna and Celestia did there?”

“Sure,” Pallas said. “Resplendent Shadow told me. They stopped a bucking crazy pony from trying to sacrifice all of you to become immortal.”

“King Sombra wasn’t insane!” Abrolhos snapped. Pallas’ hearing was starting to recover. The ringing had faded. “He was a great leader! But you know what? That’s not even the issue. I was a child when your Princesses put all of us ‘refugees’ into prison camps while they were destroying the Empire.”

“They wouldn’t do that,” Pallas said, looking over the rock to try and figure out where Abrolhos was watching her from.

“They called it a refugee camp, but it’s not like we were allowed to leave,” Abrolhos said. “There was barely enough food and water to keep us from dying. They wouldn’t tell us if there were other camps, if our families were alive, if we’d be able to go home again. Then, in the dead of winter, with all of us huddled together for warmth, we heard the howling.”

“Howling?” Pallas asked.

“Windigos,” Abrolhos said. “Coming with the cold winter wind. The discontent and fighting in the north drew them to us, and we were helpless against them. Have you ever seen a windigo? Not many who are still alive know what they’re like.”

“They’re winter spirits, right?” Pallas said. “They feed on disharmony.”

“They feed on fear and hatred, and we were stuffed full of it, ripe for the picking. They tore through the camp, turning ponies into frozen sculptures of ice as they ate their warmth and their spirits. My mother froze to ice around me, holding me in her hooves. I had to break her legs off to get free, and her flesh shattered like glass.”

Pallas closed her eyes. With the air so still and stagnant, it was easy to hear everything around her. She could even make out her blood dripping onto the rocks at her hooves, a tiny patter like a leaky faucet.

“I was the only survivor, in the end, because my mother protected me. But I had nowhere to go, you see? I lived among the ice statues for a time. A childish part of me thought they might thaw out some day. It was silly, of course. They were dead, and nothing could change that.”

“Cry to somepony else,” Pallas said. “We’ve all got problems.”

“True,” Abrolhos said. “But you know what? My story has a happy ending. Some ponies came looking for us. A guard relief force. I used the weapons that had been used to keep us in line and I slaughtered those guards. I found out I’m a killer, and good at it, too. I held that camp and everything around it on my own for years! When the Crystal Empire fell, I kept fighting! Until that hippogriff found me…”

“Chinook?” Pallas asked, her ears perking up.

“Oh yes. He heard about me, somehow, and he came to test himself against me. I doubt you could understand how it felt, fighting somepony - someone who I couldn’t beat. He was amazing. Your bladework is sloppy and stupid, but his… I could be happy dying to a sword like that. But he didn’t kill me. He beat me, and told me about his ideals.”

“So what, he told you some soppy story about how he loved fighting you?” Pallas asked, ducking back down. “Because if you’re trying the same thing here, it isn’t working. I’m going to cut you apart.”

“You’re a barbarian and you couldn’t understand. Chinook wants to change the world!” Pallas heard it now. An echo of the sound coming from the bolt in her arm. Abrolhos was yelling loudly enough that she could hear her, now.

And that meant she could find her.

“That’s too bad, since I’ll be killing him, too,” Pallas said. “Maybe I can tell him about my ideals, Luna’s ideals. We’re going to carve a new nation out of this dying sandtrap and make it a place where ponies won’t be manipulated or used.”

Abrolhos laughed. “And how do you plan on doing that, when you’ve been tricked into coming here already? Pretty soon, Luna is going to run back to Equestria with her tail between her legs, minus all of her annoying supporters like you.”

“What?!” Pallas hissed.

“Oh, it’s nothing for you to worry about. You’ll be dead long before that. It’s wonderful, though. Celestia thinks she’s using Zephyranthes to quash her sister’s growing resentment, to give Equestria a more stable power base. Zephyranthes is going to use this to demand war reparations to save his people. And in the end, it’s not going to go how either of them have planned it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ll find out. Here I come!”

Pallas ducked, using the rock for cover. There was a flash of blue, and the whistle of a bolt cutting through the air. There was no way Abrolhos could hit her from this angle, not with the boulder in the way.

Pallas watched in terror as a bolt jumped out of the rock like a fish jumping out of a pond, not even leaving a mark from where it had passed through, missing her head by inches. The projectile had passed right through like the boulder hadn’t even been there.

“Oh buck,” Pallas swore.

“The next one has your name on it,” Abrolhos promised.