Author's Notes:

Done reading this and Arika's fight? Decide who wins right here!

She stood amid a world of shattered beauty.

A world of broken black spires and jagged, crumbling towers—their original purpose long lost, but now draped with long, glittering icicles of dark glass. Surrounding her on all sides was a seemingly endless field of sickly green, pockmarked with grey craters—as if the landscape itself was diseased and slowly unravelling. Above, the blue sky was darkened by thin strips of unnaturally twisted clouds which glowed a poisonous purple and swayed with a haunted life of their own.

“It’s sooooo pretty!” Hoax shouted, hopping about in a circle as she surveyed the landscape. The lithe, grey unicorn paused to blow a strand of bright red hair from her face, only for a brief breeze to ruffle her mane further. She scrunched up her nose and snorted in annoyance, but her attention was quickly drawn back to the scenery, specifically the long grey path that wound its way through the fields before her.

“Well lookit that! I didn’t expect the Master of Chaos to make this so easy!” she said as she skipped down the path.

“I suppose I shouldn’t have expected Discord to make this easy,” Arika conceded to herself with a gruff, but not unfeminine snort. To a pony, it would have sounded rough and typically griffon-like. But there was something special about this particular griffon. It wasn’t the armor, which she wore as if it were a second skin, nor was it the katana at her side, sheathed in a well-worn dark brown scabbard that had seen many battles.

It was the icy flame of determination in her eyes. This was a griffon on the hunt.

She scanned the terrain, eyes ready to catch even the slightest whisper of movement, but her stoic watch was met only with a distant, somewhat ominous rumble of thunder. She clicked her beak in annoyance. Too many hiding places below—her plan to stay high and wait for a moment to strike was already falling apart, much like the strange world she now found herself in. After a moment's contemplation, she spread her wings wide and leaped from her perch with the grace only experience could teach.

Quickly and silently, Arika glided to the ground. She landed gently, only for the ground to crunch in protest. The griffon looked down, bemused, to see that the withering grass was not grass at all, but glass.

She muttered a curse under her breath, but was relieved that she had cut neither her talons nor her paws. A pair of flaps from her muscled wings carefully lifted her back into the air and over to a stony path nearby. With no sign of her foe and no better options presenting themselves, she followed it.

She met little in the way of obstacles, though the path was littered in places with broken bits of glass. It led her to a long, shallow ravine littered with boulders and piles of yet more shattered glass. Beyond that, she could see a rolling forest of tightly-spaced obsidian spires reaching up for the sky.

She carefully regarded the tunnel-like ravine that beckoned her. The walls were not made from rock, but the same polished obsidian as the spires. The opening to the fissure felt uncomfortably like a gaping maw—clumps of crystalline glass, colorful but dangerously sharp, protruded from the black walls like teeth waiting to devour any unsuspecting mortals foolish enough to enter.

“What was it father always said?” she muttered. “Fortune favors the brave and the foolish?”

She walked forward into the canyon, stepping carefully to avoid making unnecessary noise. About halfway to the other side, a prickle crept up the back of her skull—a shiver that ruffled her feathers.

Her instincts had never failed her before. She was being watched.

With the speed and grace of a dancer, she spun on her hind legs and drew her blade, her keen eyes focusing on a tangle of opaque grassroots—glassroots?—half hidden in the grey soil. More specifically, the slight movement of the shadow just behind it.

Silently, she crept forward, but as she neared the shadow launched itself into the air, bounding over the jagged wreckage with a shocking, awful wail. Arika froze. Like a spectral demon from her deepest nightmares, the creature crashed down on her with the force of a freight train, dragging her to the ground. The pony-sized creature attacked her with the madness of a rabid dog, gnashing and wailing while attempting to bite through her armor. She had no room to maneuver her sword, but once she recovered from her initial surprise and connected her fist with its face, it let out a shocked screech and leaped up and away from her. The shadow stumbled backwards, slamming into the wall of the ravine and slipping to the ground with a pathetic mewl of pain.

Now that she could finally look at the creature that had assaulted her, she wished she hadn’t.

It was roughly equine, in a manner of speaking. Wrapped in a shroud of dark material, its featureless face gave way to two cavernous holes with eyes set so deep and so immersed in wrinkles that it resembled a newborn rat. Its gaping maw revealed yellow teeth growing from withered, diseased gums. The creature was hairless in places, its body scarred by jagged cuts crisscrossed with fresh ones.

“Identify yourself!” Arika roared, her blade ready to finish the sad-looking creature. “Are you my enemy? Answer!” The wraith-like pony made only pathetic whimpers as it used a diseased hoof to cover it’s face.

“I demand to know what you are, creature!” she snarled.

“They’re totally hilarious aren’t they?” a chirpy voice enquired. It sounded perfectly polite and friendly, but the effect on the creature was immediate. The beast tore at its own face and tried to push further into the dark corner where Arika had thrown it, as if the rock itself might swallow it up.

Arika cursed under her breath and spun back around. Laying comfortably with her forelegs crossed atop a jagged ledge halfway up the canyon wall was a unicorn mare. Her face was half-hidden by the ravine’s shadows, but her messy nest of a crimson mane and bright purple eyes were a stark contrast to the surroundings. A cheshire smile was plastered on her face, showing off perfect white teeth.

“Isn’t it kinda sweet when it squirms and mewls like a scared kitten?” she continued, her tone light and easygoing. “Totally adorkable! I could just moosh its widdle cheeks...”

Arika wasn’t foolish enough to take her eyes off the unicorn, but she could hear the continued scuffling as the…creature made vain attempts to escape. Instead she narrowed her golden eyes, her right talon tightening around her sword.

“It’s terrified,” she coldly noted over the wraith’s whimpers.

The unicorn tilted her head to the side, her smile unfading. Arika noticed how...young she looked. Young and skinny; practically on the edge of anorexic. Arika struggled to see how the scruffy mare could even be considered a threat, but the horrified reaction of the mutant told her that letting her guard down would be unwise.

“...why is it so scared of you?”

“Huh? Oh. No idea,” the unicorn replied with a disinterested, evasive tone. “We were just...playing.”

Arika bristled. As a practical griffon and a warrior, she understood the need for drastic action; a pragmatic attitude had helped her save the lives of her brothers and sisters in the past...but this? Torturing a witless little animal for naught but sadistic amusement?

The shuffling and sniffing of the wraith-like pony behind her grew more immediate and despairing. Arika snorted loudly, pushing thoughts of the terrified creature away, and pointed her blade up at the scruffy unicorn.

“Leave it alone,” Arika ordered loudly and clearly, taking a simple but meaningful step forward.

The unicorn’s stupid smile faltered slightly. She eyed Arika with a dubious expression, as if not quite understanding her reaction.

“But it’s fun?” she explained. Or questioned; Arika wasn’t quite certain which.

“Leave it alone or I’ll tear out your horn and beat you to death with it,” Arika said, letting just the right amount of her carefully concealed tension slip through her otherwise cold, emotionless tone.

“Aww come on! It’s not like they’re real...” the unicorn whined, rolling her eyes dramatically. “They’re just shadows of...stuff, y’know?”

The mare leapt from the ledge with surprising dexterity and grace for such a bony, fragile thing. Arika snarled and lifted her blade, but the unicorn didn’t seem to acknowledge it. Instead, she gave the griffon an excited grin, as her horn began to glow a bright purple.

“Hey, check this out! I can make him do the most adorable little wail—”

“I said STOP!”

Arika launched forward, blade poised to separate the mare’s head from her shoulders. Before the unicorn could so much as blink, the sword connected with her neck, but the blade slashed through as if she was made of air.

The effect on the mare however, was immediate. Bright cracks quickly danced over her form as she grinned widely at Arika.

Then she shattered.

Arika gave a cry as she leapt back, baffled as the mare disintegrated like a china pot smashing on the floor; pieces of white glass flying in every direction, which then turned to smoke themselves. The creature took its chance and broke out from it’s corner, but Arika ignored it.

“The griffon warrior with a heart of gold?” a curious voice chirped from behind her, breaking her out of her brief reverie.

Arika grit her beak and turned, finding herself confronted with the unicorn—untouched and unharmed from her previous decapitation. She was even smaller up close—barely an adult by pony standards. Under her short, blood red mane, her huge purple eyes drank in Arika’s expressions like a thirsty child. A purple choker was attached around her neck; a small necklace—ending with a skull shaped amulet—swung back and forth as she walked. She was indeed lithe to the point of looking unhealthy, and her flank was marked by a pair of masks. One was weeping, with tears running down its cheeks; the other was full of mirth, its whole face shaped with laughter lines.

There were also three of her.

“Magic...” Arika spat.

“It’s just sooooo...romantic,” the middle one said dreamily with half-lidded eyes.

“You kinda have to wonder why she’s here. Doesn’t seem the type for the whole…‘murder everyone to make your wish come true’ thing,” Right pondered aloud.

“Maybe she’s like us!” Left giggled. “Maybe she’s just here for fun!”

The unicorns glanced at the blade pointing towards them with polite interest. They laughed. The laughter echoed around the area as two of the unicorns faded from sight, leaving just the middle one, who gave Arika a huge wink.

The pair began to circle each other; Arika’s movements cautious and precise, while the mare sort of…skipped.

“So you were dragged along to this tourney too, huh?” Her voice was rather singsong in its quality. To some it might’ve been considered pleasant, but Arika found it grating at best. “Brought to you LIVE by the powers of imagination, death, and an old draconequus that has way too much time on his hooves…claws. Paws. Whatever.”

“And who are you?” Arika demanded as the pair continued to pace around each other, always equidistant, their eyes never breaking contact.

“Call me Hoax, my feathered friend! So very nice to meetcha! You and your talons.”

“General Arika,” the griffon offered only a tiny nod.

“A general?” Hoax’s ears pricked up. “Gosh, I am in fine company. Since my other toy ran away...maybe you’ll play with me instead?”

“I don’t play.”

Arika pushed forward without warning, slashing and stabbing. Hoax danced and waltzed, giggling as the blade narrowly missed her every time. Her movement was erratic and random, and to make matters worse she sometimes disappeared from sight—simply fading into nothingness in the blink of an eye—only to reappear a few seconds later somewhere else and stab forward with a small, sharp dagger strapped to her hoof.

The griffon snarled and was forced on the defensive as Hoax’s haphazard attacks left her with little chance to respond. She allowed herself to be forced backwards, concentrating, waiting for an opening to strike. The moment presented itself as Hoax appeared to her left. Arika feigned a slash, causing her to somersault backwards from an attack that would never come. Arika pushed her momentary advantage, launching forward and cutting into the mare’s exposed chest with her blade.

The moment the sharp steel cut her skin, Hoax evaporated into nothingness with a deafening crack.

Arika swore out loud. Silence fell, save for the griffon’s own labored breathing.

“My, how strong you are! Such speed! Such grace! I’m totally into you right now. Might get you to sign my collar.”

Arika’s head snapped up to see Hoax back on the ledge again, gazing down at her with a smile that threatened to split her face in two. She looked unharmed and entirely unruffled from the fight—well, no more unruffled than she already was.

“Will you just shut up and fight me already?” Arika shouted, a snarl forming on her sharp eagle-like face. “What’s the matter, tramp? Too scared to face me like a real warrior?”

Hoax chuckled wildly, her frame shaking. “Isn’t fighting in a dirty little tournament a little low for a reputable bird such as yourself? Aren’t you supposed to be, I dunno, leading the griffons to another totally glorious war somewhere?”

“I am fighting for the future of my species,” Arika said firmly. “You wouldn’t understand these matters, nor do they concern you.”

“Oh, so you are in a war.” Hoax giggled. “I was just kidding, but you’re kind of a walking cliche, aren’tcha?”

“No, I am not,” Arika’s grip on her sword tightened. “Many of my kin seek only war and conquest for their own greed and glory, or revel in conflict itself. I wish to unify the tribes before they tear themselves apart.” She regarded the unicorn as a tiny smirk formed at the base of her beak. “I doubt you can claim you’re here for noble reasons. Do you need more dye for that whore’s mane of yours?”

“Izzat it? That’s all you’re here for?” Hoax rolled her eyes. “Geez. Selfish. Not to mention boring with just a little dash of weaksauce.” She stood abruptly, teetering a little as she balanced on her hind legs and spread her forehooves wide. “You need to think bigger, y’know? Get some ambition!” she shouted the last word to the heavens, its sound echoing off the walls of the ravine. “And I’ll have you know I’m a natural redhead.”

“You’re a natural bitch.”

The mare practically beamed with glee. “Now you’re gettin’ it!” Hoax said, her horn once again glowing a bright purple.

“What is wrong with you?” The griffon shook her head even as she spread her wings wide and began to cautiously advance on the unicorn.

“I’m Hoax—conveyer of tricks and hilarity!” the unicorn announced with a flourishing bow. “My performances are places where the only real truths are comedy or tragedy…sometimes both!”

“I think I’ll skip the show...and go straight for the throat!” Without hesitation, Arika launched forward, using powerful wingbeats to close the gap, sword pulled back to her hip and ready for a killing thrust.

For the first time, Hoax’s eyes betrayed the slightest hint of fear. The glow evaporated from her horn as she stumbled back a half-step, only for her back to press up against the uneven surface of the cliff, her gaze fixed on the gleaming edge of the blade speeding toward her neck.

A sudden gust of wind, dozens of times stronger than the weak breezes Arika had felt in this place up to now, blasted through the canyon with howling ferocity. Hoax was bowled over and scrambled to try and maintain her hold on the ledge, her eyes squeezed tightly shut against the chaotic wind. Her horn glowed and she began pushing away with her telekinetic force, deflecting the glassy debris.

In mid-flight, Arika was even more at the gale’s mercy. She tumbled head over paws, struggling to keep her wings pumping in the right direction. Her eyes were also closed, and thus the sensation of slamming back-first into the unforgiving ground made her gasp as the air blasted from her lungs. She bounced once and crashed back to the ground in sidelong roll, as the world faded away to inky blackness.

The horrible screeching made by the wind as it whistled through the jagged canyon died down almost as suddenly as it had arrived, leaving Hoax’s ears ringing in pain. Slowly, the unicorn forced one eye open, then the other, taking in the scene around her. The ravine was still mostly empty, save for the sound of a few shards of broken glass tumbling down its walls. Arika was nowhere to be seen.

Hoax rose shakily to her hooves, knocking glass shards from her tousled mane. “What in the hell was that?” she asked the silence.

No. Not silence, she realized. There was something else, a low rumbling that sounded like it was coming from nearby, yet she couldn’t tell from what direction. Ears swiveling to try and pinpoint the source, she turned around completely, looking up into the sky above the crest of the canyon. Eyes wide open, she felt her mouth drop.

“Whoa…” Hoax breathed. She scrambled up the wall of the ravine, levering herself over the top as the wind hit her in the face again. It wasn’t as strong as before, and was growing weaker, so Hoax forced herself to stand, shielding her face with one hoof as she looked to the sky.

Spiraling up into the clouds was the most tremendous tornado she had ever seen; its violent winds lashing outward in every direction as it swept across the fragile, glassy plain leaving a trail of shattered destruction in its wake. Hoax stared for what seemed like minutes, mesmerized by the dancing glints that sparkled through the core of the vortex as fragments of razor sharp glass whipped around at hundreds of miles an hour.

“Oh, that’s gorgeous,” Hoax breathed. “And deadly. Mooostly deadly.” The storm was moving away, but the trail of pulverized glass it left behind passed fairly close to one end of the ravine only a few hundred paces away. “Oh, like a funnel,” she whispered, realizing how the dangerous gust had come about. “Heehee! It was fun-nel, all right!” she laughed at her own joke.

A stifled groan from the canyon behind her, almost lost in the wind, drew her attention back to matters at hand. From her new vantage, she could see Arika below. The griffon’s battered form lay against the far wall of the canyon a few dozen strides downwind. Hoax grinned and leaped back down to her ledge, followed by another pair of bounds that brought her to the canyon floor.

“Though it looks like it wasn’t as fun-nel for you as it was for me, huh, birdy?” she chuckled. “You ok?” She prodded the still form with a hoof when she received no response, but the contact drew no reaction either.

“Aww, c’mon! It’s no fun if you die now!” Hoax frowned. “‘Newsflash! Big, tough griffon general taken down by a breeze!’” Her voice became a gruff parody of a sports announcer. “How stupid does that sound, huh?”

Arika stayed motionless, her breathing shallow and ragged. Hoax looked down on her for another moment with a disinterested frown before her face snapped back into a customary smile.

“Oh well! Looks like I win!” she hopped in a circle cheerily. “Although.” She paused, her eye catching sight of the katana on the ground a few steps away. Her grin turned darker as she wrapped the blade in her purple magic, lifting it into the air and giving it a cursory swing. “I suppose we could still have a little fun...”

She stepped closer, hovering the blade over the fallen griffon point down. Just as she pulled it back to strike, the prone Arika flipped, her hindpaws sweeping Hoax’s forehooves out from under her. She dropped, chin first, into the ground. As stars exploded across her vision, her TK grip on the sword vanished, dropping it harmlessly to the ground. She couldn’t see but felt the tight grip of a claw on her horn, holding her in place. She tried to cast a spell but felt her head jerk, breaking her concentration.

“Ah ah, no more of your cowardly tricks. Well then. You said you were a performer, didn’t you?” Arika said in a low, menacing voice as Hoax strained her neck to pull free from the griffon’s iron grip. “What did you think of my ‘injured and helpless’ act?”

“Get offa me!” Hoax screamed, flailing and striking at Arika’s arm to no avail. “Leggo of my horn! That’s cheating!”

Arika shook her head, smoothly reclaiming her weapon from where it lay. “This is no game, unicorn. You cannot ‘cheat’ in war.”

“Game?” Hoax said, momentarily going still and blinking as the word soaked in. “Y-you think I’m playing a game?” Her confusion evaporated as her face contorted into an expression nothing short of pure, feral rage. “Oh you stupid little rooster! You know nothing about me, got it?!”

With her last words she lashed out with her hoof-dagger, catching Arika at the elbow. The griffon let out a squawk of surprise and pain, reflexively releasing Hoax’s horn and giving her enough time to concentrate to cast a spell. Right away she vanished, completely.

Invisible to her foe, Hoax scrambled to her hooves and took off at a full gallop, feeling the rush of air behind her as Arika swung down at the spot where she had been a split second before. She bolted for the end of the canyon, her invisibility fading as she ran, the only thought in her mind that she needed to put as much distance between her and her opponent, lest she be skewered.

Arika spread her wings to pursue, but a sharp pain at the base of her primary feathers made her gasp, and a quick inspection revealed a jagged piece of glass impaled near the joint. Gripping the shard in a talon, she tore it loose with a snarl and hurled it against the canyon wall. Her prey now had a decent head start, so she sheathed her weapon and took off in pursuit on all fours.

As she emerged from the canyon she spotted Hoax just as she disappeared between a giant stone boulder with a split running down the middle and the tall obsidian spires nearby. Arika swore under her breath, standing on her hind legs once again and drawing her weapon as she strode slowly into the reflective forest.

A chilling, uneven breeze whistled between the towering, mirror-smooth obsidian spires. Arika’s keen eyes flicked left and right as movement surrounded her, only to realize that she was being stalked by her own reflection. Every motion she made came right back to her from a dozen directions. A giddy whinny drifted to her ears on the unnerving wind.

“Come out, you coward!” Arika shouted, her voice reverberating through the spires in disconcerting ways. The laughter came again, this time much more immediate. Much closer.

“If you want me that much…here I am,” a sultry whisper spoke into Arika’s ear. She whirled, slashing out with her katana only for it to find purchase in the reflective side of a spire. The mirror-like surface cracked, but Arika managed to catch a fading glimpse of Hoax’s likeness as it receded into the depths of the pillar and vanished.

“Oh,” her voice echoed from all directions, “but you didn’t say ‘please’.”

Arika snarled and ripped her sword free from the broken glass as Hoax’s mad laughter continued. She turned just in time to catch a blast of purple energy in her gut, knocking the wind out of her and slamming her painfully against the spire where she let out a strangled shriek.

She hung there even after the blast faded, her battered but unbroken armor sizzling, before she pitched forward, just barely catching herself by stabbing her weapon into the ground and leaning on the hilt. She inhaled sharply, forcing air back into her lungs and taking several greedy breaths. With difficulty, Arika raised her head only to freeze in place as her eyes went wide.

Hoax was standing right before her, but just like back in the canyon there were more than one. A lot more. Every mirrored surface the griffon could see bore the unicorn’s image. She was reflected over and over from a dozen different angles. And every one was laughing. Some chuckled softly, while others cackled with insanity. Still more giggled gleefully, while yet even more…cried? The sounds echoed around and within each other, assaulting Arika’s senses in discordant ways she had never experienced.

The sheer stimulation overload began to make her head throb. Arika clutched at her temple and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force herself to ignore it. She needed to focus. She needed to block out the illusions and the false noise and—

“It’s okay to be scared,” Hoax’s voice came to her as another whisper, softer and yet louder still than the cacophony behind it. “I’m afraid of death too, y’know.”

“I,” Arika forced her words through a gritted beak, “am not afraid…of death! I will face my end with dignity…like my mother and father before me!” The laughter grew quieter as rage bubbled in her heart. Long-forgotten hatred of these weak and pathetic cowards—these ponies—tore its way to the surface. “But my end won’t be today…and it will NOT BE TO YOU!”

Her howl reverberated through the forest, shattering illusion and sound alike, leaving only a single, stunned unicorn across the clearing from where Arika now panted, leaning even more heavily on her sword.

“Wow, I didn’t think you had it in you, sister,” Hoax said with an air of admiration. “You must have a brain in that feathered head of yours after all.”

“Enough,” Arika spat, pulling herself to her full height and tugging her blade free of the ground. “I have had enough of these silly distractions. Stand and face me! Meet your death like the worthless sack of meat you are!” Despite her ultimatum, Arika was hardly surprised when she was answered by yet another giggle.

“My my, aren’t you a plucky little thing.” Hoax rolled her eyes. “Well, you’re quite correct, of course… Us ponies are all silly. They all make me laugh. Silly, silly, silly!” she tittered to accentuate her point. “But you know what’s even sillier? The fact that you’re going to lose to one of them. Imagine that? Losing in the first round to such a silly sack of meat! I bet that’d make your parents just die of embarrassment—oh, wait.” Hoax paused, her smile widening. “They’re already dead.”

Arika’s eyes flashed, her restraint snapping like the unicorn bones she pictured breaking with her bare talons. “You dare to—”

She was cut off as the wind suddenly picked up again, whistling through the mirrored forest around them. Arika’s feathers ruffled about her as Hoax looked up, her eyes darting about in panic—and then realization.

“Oooooooh… The pretty and deadly thing!”

Arika had no time to question what that meant before the wind redoubled in strength, nearly lifting her off the ground before she tucked her wings tightly to her sides. The howling was now deafening and clearly coming from the sky, where she finally caught sight of the cyclone, its swirling, sparkling judgement scything through the obsidian forest toward her.

Her instincts kicked in. Arika turned and bolted as fast as her legs could carry her even as the force of the winds snapped the pillar beside her in half, splintering the spire and adding more sharp edges to the oncoming storm. She dared not look back, but behind her she could hear the forest being leveled. She needed somewhere to hide—somewhere that would offer shelter from the storm.

Somewhere like that split boulder near the edge of the forest.

She turned, feeling sharp pain slice across her back through layers of feather and down, and bolted in the direction she hoped was the way she had entered the forest. Dropping her sword, she fell to all fours, bounding around another spire as the boulder came into sight. She sprinted for it, her legs and lungs burning, and threw herself into the narrow gap. It was a claustrophobic fit, but Arika tucked her head under wings and arms, curling up as tightly as she could.

The wind screamed, tearing through the space around her with a ferocity that shook the earth itself, and Arika found herself screaming right back. Her wings and back stung as shards of glass peppered them. For one terrifying instant she felt the boulder shift and thought it was all over.

After an eternity that lasted barely a minute, the wind began to die. The roar of the cyclone receded, leaving Arika’s ears ringing in muted tones. Slowly, painfully, she inched herself free from the boulder until she stood beside it with one talon out to steady herself. Here she beheld the wrath of nature in its truest form.

The forest was simply gone. For almost a hundred paces in every direction, the spires of obsidian were no more; blasted from existence in a matter of seconds. The ground itself was nearly bare save for a few broken stumps of rough glass, the grey soil, and a littering of small reflective shards that made it sparkle in the weak light like an ashen sea. There was only one feature that caught Arika’s attention.

Limping on her hind legs, the griffon made her way to what remained of her former foe. She had deep, bleeding lacerations from muzzle to tail, with her legs—all three that were still attached—bent at unnatural angles much like her neck. Her horn had been snapped off at the base, and her once spirited eyes now stared up at Arika with a glassy, lifeless gaze.

Arika gazed right back, the sight of a corpse not an unfamiliar one. She drew in a deep breath, her ribs—and in truth, the rest of her—aching as she slowly released it.

“I would have preferred to kill you myself,” she said quietly.

“Me too.”

Arika felt something impact her back between her wings, and her insides suddenly turned cold. Her eyes focused on the silvery-red object protruding from her chest, but for some reason her brain couldn’t quite comprehend its purpose, nor did she truly register the body lying before her shattering into tiny motes of purple light.

Something came to rest on her shoulder. Arika twisted her head and found herself beak to muzzle with a battered and bruised—but very much alive—Hoax. One of her eyes was swollen shut, and a deep cut bled from just below her ear on the same side, but the excited grin and gleam of joy in her eyes had never been stronger.

“Hi!” the mare said cheerily.

Arika opened her beak, but instead of words only a bloody gasp rose up from her throat. Her vision darkened, and then the ground rushed up to meet her.

Hoax sighed as she released her magical grip on the handle of Arika’s katana and let the dead griffon slump forward to the ground, her own weapon serving as a macabre monument to her defeat.

“Everypony always leaves… Apparently every griffon, too,” she said with a pout and another quiet exhale. “Why do they always leave?”

A flash of light and a decidedly magical hum sprang up behind her, and Hoax turned to see the crack in the boulder where Arika had taken refuge glowing with a white light.

“Hm. Exit, stage rock!” she chirped, rearing up and kicking her forehooves in the air. She started for the boulder, only to turn back and lean down close to Arika’s body.

“Don’t you worry,” she said sweetly, tapping the dead griffon’s cheek. “When I’m done here, no one will be alone…ever again...” With that, she merrily headed towards the apparent exit.