Why did the Griffon Empire fall from grace? A lot of the old geezers back at home say the kingdom collapsed when we lost that silly Idol of Boreas. But that was the Griffon Kingdom, which is only a tiny sliver on a larger continent. When the Griffon Empire was around, we had the whole continent. Our rule was the law of the land. What happened to that?

The scholars aren't quite sure. We have the ruins to prove the empire existed, and archeologists keep on finding written records of all the amazing things we did. But there’s nothing definitive pointing to what brought the whole ship down. Some say it was pressure from raiders from the east. Others say it was a collapsing bureaucracy taking everything with it to the grave. Many more say it was the griffon’s greed getting the better of them.

As a descendent of that mighty Griffon Empire, I have the real answer to what really happened. It was the greed. Definitely greed. Kind of obvious in hindsight.

The whole greedy griffon stereotype is not completely untrue. Actually, it’s pretty true. I bet those Empire griffons would call us modern griffons a disgrace. They’d be hypocrites, but they wouldn’t be wrong. Griffonstone is a third world country, a far cry from the once proud Griffon Empire. A bunch of shanty huts and a lost idol are all that’s left of that epic legacy. But I like to think some of that Empire blood still runs through us. We all still have pieces of the old legends inside ourselves, waiting to come out.

As my Gilda sense grows stronger the closer I get to that bug lady, I can feel those legend pieces coming out of me, yearning for glory. Those pieces are screaming at me to squash that bug!

After a few minutes of constant running, the mega trees thin out and open up to a clearing. Now that I’m out of the darkness of the forest, the two suns light up what I couldn’t see, and I wish they didn’t. The goop covering the forest floor doesn’t stop at the edge. It keeps going into the clearing. In fact, I think the goop is covering a good chunk of a continent. The stuff looks like rotting skin.

Farther in the clearing, there are giant structures jutting out of the landscape. These seem to be about as big as the Protoss buildings, but these are not those elegant art pieces. The structures all have a fleshy, insect quality to them. They look like giant alien pimples that are about to burst, supported by massive skeletons and rib cages. Ew, makes my skin crawl just looking at it all.

If the scenery didn’t give away the fact I’m at the Zerg’s doorstep, then all the Overlords drifting in the sky does it. They all float aimlessly in the air, keeping watch of everything below them. I eye them carefully as I continue to run over the goopy landscape, making sure they don’t drop any Banelings on me. Not letting that happen again.

It’s not long before the a swarm of Zerglings surge over a nearby hill, all of them scurrying for me. The Tyranid blade morphs out of my arm, and I run for the Zerglings head on. The blade cuts into the crowd. With one swing, I slice through eight Zerglings at once. It cuts them right down the middle, right between their upper and lower jaws. Their top halves go flying in the air while the bottoms go flopping on the floor.

There has to be around fifty Zerglings in this swarm. They all surround me, leaping for my throat from all sides. Anything that jumps, I slice it in half with the Tyranid blade, and chop apart a few others as well at the end of each swing. When I’m finished, all that’s left around me are the severed halves of a lot of dead demon hoppers.

Done, let’s run. The blade shifts into a normal claw and I keep on running, leaving behind the carnage. My monster sense is growing stronger as I approach. Bug Lady is deep in this alien mire. I bet she’s in the heart of it all.

The bug lady’s voice pops in my head. “Is pigeon brain looking for a worm to eat? We got plenty of those here.”

“Come out and face me!” I yell. I wish she’d get out of my damn head.

“But you’re already on your way to my throne. I see no reason why I have to move. Just keep running for the big hive. You’ll get here soon.”

I lock on to the large structure in the middle. It resembles the other blobs and boils in the landscape, but it’s much bigger. It’s a large maw sticking high in the sky with massive, barbed tendrils curling above it. Overlords are clumping around it, along with bat monster things that are flocking around the tendrils. Looks like a giant mutant kraken sticking out of the landscape.

“See it? Impressive, is it not? I’ll make things easy for you. My servants won’t attack you on your way over here. Yes, what a benevolent ruler I am!”

Oh joy, I get the red carpet treatment. Or would this be the goopy carpet treatment?

The big kraken boil thing gets bigger and bigger the closer I get too it. Jeez, look at the size of that thing. Did the Zerg build it or did it grow on its own? That question poses two different ideas. The first idea is these alien bugs are intelligent enough to construct mountain sized structures. The second idea is these alien bugs can just grow whatever they want, including mountain sized structures. Both ideas do not sit well with me. I’d hate to see what the Zerg could do if they came to Equestria.

I shudder at the thought. From what I’ve seen, Zerg coming to Equestria would be an absolute disaster. Total chaos. The Hydralisks would take our jobs and drive out working griffons for cheaper labor. The Zerglings would run around campaigning for better civil liberties, which is more than what griffons get. Banelings would sit around and drain all the social programs because they can’t do any hard labor or else they’ll literally explode. Zerg construction would out-compete local construction, since the aliens can either build better or grow their own buildings. Equestria would become a Zerg haven with mindless drones taking all our jobs and leaving us griffons to bite the dust.

Whatever I do, don’t let the Zerg get back to Equestria, or Grover forbid Griffonstone. Gotta keep them out, just like the hippies.

As the bug lady promised, my run is mostly Zerg free, apart from that one swarm of Zerglings I slaughtered. Occasionally I’ll see a shadow slithering behind a rock, or a bunch of menacing eyes staring at me from a crevice, but it’s mostly quiet. That is until I get to the base of the massive kraken hive.

A mass of tentacles erupts from the ground. I skid to a stop before I ram into those tentacles. They uncurl, and the figure of the bug lady ascends on a rising, pulsating throne. Her mouth twists into a jagged smile when she looks down at me. “Welcome to my lair,” the bug lady says. “I’m glad you found your way… to my trap!”

In a circle around me, several Banelings burst out from the ground. Their bulbous bodies rumble and surge as they verge on the brink of exploding. They pop out so fast I have no time to react. The only thing I have time for is to clench my eyes in anticipation of the acid bath.

The Banelings all go off at once. They all crack like fireworks, followed by a sloshing of goop. Crap, crap, crap! Of course the bug lady would try something like this. She saw how one Baneling wrecked my day. She must have figured out a whole ring of them will finish me off! This was stupid, Gilda, so stupid!

I wait for the inevitable melting agony, but it doesn’t come. I open one eye. The Banelings are gone. I’m standing in the middle of a green, sizzling puddle. I check my body for any damage. Everything is intact. I’m covered in green goop, but I’m not dissolving.

Bug lady seems to be just as confused as I am. “How are you not dead?” she asks. “You should be a screaming in agony right now.”

I shrug. “Dunno, this is a new one for me.” I scrape the goop off my arm, flicking a thick glob of it to the ground. My arm looks to be intact, except it looks a bit different. Instead of my normal griffon arm, I’m looking at a tree branch covered in bone. “Yep, really new.”

As I brush more of the goop off, I reveal more and more bone. It's thick stuff, with a bumpy, thorny texture. Hey, it’s that Chitinous Plating from the Tyranid. I guess it came out in the nick of time to protect me.

“New toy,” I say out loud. “I’m figuring out how to play with it.”

“No matter,” bug lady says. “I’ll just kill you the old fashion” –

I jump at her. The Tyranid blade morphs out and slashes for her neck. I’m done talking. All I want to do is kill you and go home. No more bull crap!

Bug lady steps back. Before I lob her head off, she flicks a hoof up in the air and her leg morphs into a long, straight blade. My curved blade strikes the edge of the straight blade, making a loud clang that rings my ears.

I pause for a moment. “Uh, what’s with that sword thing?”

The bug lady smirks at me. “How did you think Changelings shapeshift, with magic?” With her other forehoof, she punts me in the chest, shattering my rib cage without any effort. A glob of red goop flies out of my beak, and I go tumbling back down to the ground. The bug lady’s blade breaks apart into a mass of tentacles. These tentacles slither back into her leg and form a hoof. “If you bothered to listen to my gloating, you’d know that you and I are both Blacklight. I can do anything you can, but better.”

The bones in my chest realign with help from the tentacles. I push myself up and look the bug lady dead in the eye. “I don’t give a damn what you are. You’re just getting in the way of me going home.”

“I don’t have to get in your way to change that,” the bug lady says. “There is no way home. Trust me, I’ve tried. You and me, we’re trapped here in this accursed realm. There is no escape.”

“I don’t care what you say. I’m going to go home, one way or another. I have a scone shop to run.”

The bug lady smirks. “You’re very one-track minded. Is there anything else you care about other than your precious scones?”

My blade swings for her neck, but she steps out of the way. “Sure, but what does it matter to you?”

“I just told you we’re both Blacklight. In fact, I believe you were created from my own blood. Don’t you care about that?”

“I don’t see why that’s relevant.” Another swing. She avoids it without trying. “If you’re trying to say you’re my mother or something I got news for you. You have to smell a lot worse before you’ll even get close to my mom!”

“In some ways I am,” she says. She frowns for a second. “Minus the smelling. But I don’t think you’re grasping what I’m telling you. We are both Blacklight! You’re a walking hive of Blacklight. Your old body, that’s gone. You’re just an imitation of your old foolish self. Your mother isn’t even your mother anymore. How do you feel about that?”

Slash, slash, slash. Dodge, dodge, dodge. Why won’t she stand still!? “Sounds pretty stupid.”

In the middle of one of my strikes, her wings spring into action and she flies over my blade, over my head, and lands right behind me. Her tails flicks my flank when she lands. “More intelligent people would be perplexed by this news. ‘Am I really me? Am I a completely different person? Do memories make me who I am or is there more to me than just my thoughts?’”

The blade arcs around me as I twist back. The bug lady steps out of the arc long before it cuts her in half. “Do you ever stop talking? I swear you’re doing this for attention.”

Bug lady’s hoof erupts in a green flame and shifts into a sword. I look close, and I can see tentacles moving around behind those green flames. Ah, just for show. “You’re probably right. I think I’m in need of some attention. The Zerg aren’t good conversationalists.”

She lunges for me. Her sword slides for my neck. I parry with my Tyranid blade and throw a punch with my free claw. The punch aims for her stomach, but the bug lady grabs it with her free hoof. Tentacles sprout out of the hoof and envelope my claw. My claw goes from normal to monster, and my scythes shoot out and rip her tentacles apart. She shouts in pain and jumps back to her throne.

I stick my rear paw into the ground. A moment later, the bug lady’s throne erupts in a cluster of blades. She jumps in the air before the blades tear her to ribbons. Her bug wings flutter, and she goes higher in the air, almost as high as the Overlords above us, far above where I can reach. “This fight is futile. Submit yourself to me and I’ll show you mercy. I might even make you my most trusted servant.”

I super jump towards her, winding up my blade for a slice. Her horn glows green and she fires magic bolts at me. They all hit me and knock me out of the air. I go tumbling back, but my wings shoot out and I’m able to stabilize myself for a glide back to the ground.

She continues to fire magic bolts at me. I draw out my shield and block her volley from hitting me. The bolts pop and fizzle safely on the other side. My feet touch down on the ground and I run towards the remains of her throne. When I get there, I grab the largest throne section I can find and, with my monster strength, chuck it in the air towards bug lady.

Bug lady darts out of the way and the throne piece whizzes by her. It collides with an Overlord, which explodes in a gooey red cloud from the impact. Mmm, that was satisfying.

“If you’re anything like me like you say,” I yell up at the bug lady, “then you’d come down here and fight me for real!”

“Give me a break,” she says in my head. “If you could shoot spells, that’s all you’d be doing. You’re always taking the easy route. But if you want a ground fight, I’ll give you a ground fight.”

Two bug lady clones erupt from the ground next to me. They flutter their wings and hiss at me. Is she really sending her minions after me? I can slaughter them by the dozens. What are two clones going to do to me?

“You said you wanted me to come down there, so I did.”

“Smart ass roach,” I mutter under my breath.

My Tyranid blade slashes at the hissing clones. It cleaves through the first one, and then bangs against something hard and invisible. The blade stops, leaving one clone bisected, although the clone doesn’t seem to notice. It’s still hissing despite the fact the top half of its body is floating an inch above the bottom half. Huh?

The clones erupt into green flame, and the green flames plume out into a firestorm. When the flames die out, I find myself standing between the massive blades of two gargantuan Tyranids.

My pupils shrink to pinpricks. “There are more of them?!”

“Isn’t that something you should already know? One of my Queens told you directly there would be more. You’re terrible at listening. Why do I even put in the effort in talking with you?”

“Shut up” – I jump mid sentence when the Tyranids slash at me with their blades. I land on the crest of one of them, and shake my fist up at the air – “you fat ass tick! Get out of my head!”

“Temper, temper. It boggles my mind how that rainbow pegasus thought you were a good friend with that mouth of yours.”

The Tyranid I’m on flicks its head. I’m not prepared, so it flings me a mile towards the giant kraken hive thing. I recover mid air and manage to hit the ground without tripping. “You have no right to talk about Rainbow!”

A green magic bolt blasts me in the face. The Chitinous armor protects me, but the force flips me on my back. “Why are you upset about that? I think I played a pretty good Rainbow Dash. If anyone has the right to talk about her it’s me.”

“You used her to trick me!”

“Be honest with yourself. That’s not hard to do.”

Tentacles burst out of the ground and wrap themselves around me. I try to escape, but they lasso me before I have the chance to do anything. They tighten their hold against me, keeping me hard to ground. I struggle against them, but they’re too strong to shake off.

The bug lady comes flying down, smirking as she watches me try to escape these tentacles. “In a way, I pity you,” she says as she lands next to me. “You have no idea what’s going on and you’re not smart enough to figure it out. You’re just as clueless as the day you broke out of that lab. You’re a dog, Gilda. You roam the world without a care, following your nose to the next plate of food. But you don’t have the intelligence to realize how much power your masters have over your life, and how little you mean to the world.”

My cluster of blades sprouts from underneath the bug lady, but she’s out of the way before they impale her. I bet my Griffon Empire ancestors didn’t have to fight monsters this annoying.

Bug lady draws out her sword again with a flash of green fire. “Of course pity won’t save you now.” She points the blade at me, then jabs it in my throat, piercing the Chitinous armor. I cough up globs of red black goop. The sword breaks up inside me and splits into a bunch of tentacles, all of which dig through my neck. “You know what comes next. This is the part where I eat you.”

I twist and turn to try to break out of the large tentacles holding me down. No luck. I try cutting them with the Tyranid blade, but the ground tentacles press it down so it can’t move. All the while, the bug lady’s tentacles dig under my skin. My own tentacles try to fight them off, but bug lady bats them away. It’s a little mini battle inside me! Feels like snakes are fighting it out inside my veins. It’s making my skin crawl, literally

Crap, crap, crap! This is what I get for breaking out a bug lady, death by tentacles?! My lungs are going stiff as my monster body works overtime to try to stop the invaders from eating me. Ugh, it’s like worms, just all worms. Yep, it’s bad, but in a different way than I expected. It’s not total agony that I’m feeling, it’s violation. Just feels wrong having something all up inside your grill. I’ve done this a lot to Blackwatch goons, and I’m getting an idea of how they felt.

I never was a fan of ironic deaths.

While the cosmos is laughing at my doom, something catches my eye. Up in the sky, something with a blue glow flies past the Overlords. It dips down towards us, and I see more detail. It looks like a cluster of blue, transparent petals, all folded in a neat pattern. It also has some gold trim. Oh hey, it’s got a gold and glowing blue color scheme. Jeez, I wonder who it belongs to.

The thing makes weird, metallic gurgling sound when it flies close to us. When it’s almost overhead, the nose flips up and stops mid air. The petals unfold out and a beam of light emits from the center of the thing. A glass ringing fills the air, similar to the ringing of the giant Protoss crystals, and two balls of energy appear next to us.

The bug lady flips around to face the energy balls. Her horn glows green and she fires off a large magic bolt at one of them. The magic bolt splashes off the left one, and the right one raises a hand and fires a bolt of lightning at the bug lady. Lightning and bug collide, and the bug lady goes flying off me. Her sword rips out of my throat, leaving behind her mass of tentacles inside me. Without the source, they lose their strength, and my body quickly consumes them.

One of the energy balls comes up to me. From it, a deep voice resonates in my head, far deeper than the other Protoss voices. “Do you need assistance?”

I struggle against the tentacles holding my body some more. Nope, not getting out of those on my own. “Yes, please.”

The energy ball raises its hand. Lightning shoots out and blasts the tentacles apart. I jump up on my feet and kick the writhing tentacles into the ground. Once I’m done ensuring those tentacles won’t ever try something funny again, I give the energy balls a thumbs up. “Thanks for the save. How’d you know I was in trouble?”

“We followed the screaming of a tiny girl, and that led us to you,” one of the energy balls says.

Oh, now I’m a tiny girl. Could be worse. I could be a tiny boy.

A familiar voice sounds off in my head. “Why didn’t you leave the creature trapped?” Behind the energy balls, a group of Protoss soldiers comes around. The lead soldier glares a me. “Now you unleashed her and made her our problem again.”

“I think you’re over exaggerating how much of a threat this griffon is, Ceretel,” the energy ball says. “And with all due respect, we’re all getting sick and tired of your complaints.”

“How can you be so careless?” Ceretel says. “If you give this creature any inch of mercy, she’ll turn around and attack while we’re not looking!”

One of Ceretel's soldier buddies speaks up. “We know. You’ve reminded countless times already. And for another countless time, yes this could turn into another Kerrigan, yes we are all cautious about it, no we’re not going to persecute someone out of fear alone. The Protoss are above tribal judgment.”

As they’re all bickering about my life, the bug lady is getting up a ways from us. The lightning bolt didn’t look like it did much. In fact, I can see tentacles in her chest patching up the wound. “Uh, guys…”

“As you said, this could turn into another Kerrigan! We should not allow any chance of that happening!”

“And if all the Protoss had your mindset when the Queen of Blades first arose, then we would have killed the Dark Templar when they came to our rescue! Should we slay all creatures we encounter, whether they’d be friend or foe just because there’s a chance they’re foe?”

Once the tentacles finish patching bug lady up, she looks at us with a snarl. Her horn ignites with green magic, and she takes to the air with her bug wings. “Hey, everyone, we still have” –

“That’s different! The Nezarim are fellow Protoss. They don’t have rows of teeth or bat wings or barbed tails or anything like that! They’re elegant and proud, just like us. This griffon creature isn’t one of us. She’s a Zerg monster, waiting for the right time to strike.”

The bug lady’s voice screams in my head. “I’m going to wipe your friends off this planet!”

Oh for Grover’s sake! I grab Ceretel by the shoulders, whip him around in front of me, ignore his protests, and point at the flying bug lady about to fire her horn. “Look! Big bug in sky. Shoots pew pews. We go squish squish. Is that too hard for you to understand?!”

The bug lady fires a beam of green magic at us. I shift out my shield and block the blast. Magic bolts go flying all around us, scorching the ground and leaving an awful smell behind. From behind me, the energy balls fire lightning blasts at the bug lady. She dodges and weaves around them, leaving without a scratch.

“What in Tassadar’s name is that monster?!” Ceretel shouts.

I shrug. “Some crazy bug lady. I think she thinks she’s my mom. I don’t know. Point is she’s controlling the Zerg and if you want these attacks to stop you’ll help me put her six feet under.”

Ceretel pushes me away and holds out a plasma blade at me. “And what will you gain out of this? You’re going to take control of this brood once we do kill her, isn’t that right.”

My eyes roll. “What I get out of this is the good grace from you guys to send me home so you never have to think of me again.”

“Hmpf, or you have an ulterior motive you’re hiding.”

“What ulterior motive could I possibly have? I want to go home. I want a long hot shower to get rid of all the gore and Baneling juice I got on me today. The only reason I want this chick dead is so I can” – I stop. I just realized how ridiculous this is. Why am I arguing with this guy? I’m more or less on the good side of all the other aliens, so why am I trying to justify myself against him?

“So you can take this brood for yourself,” Ceretel says.

None of this is going to be over soon if I don’t do anything about it. That’s the way things are right now. I sigh. Got to put some elbow grease in this if I want to speed things up. “Ceretel, what’s your opinion of that bug lady?”

The Protoss glances up at the flying insect horse circling around lighting strikes. “A vile monster, just like you. Make no mistake, she is no better than you, but that doesn’t change my stance towards you.”

I look up at the bug lady as well. Ceretel is super paranoid about me, but at least he’s smart enough to realize bug lady is a threat too. “Good to know.”

“Why is that relevant?”

I shrug. “Oh, just thinking. I can probably kill her myself, if she didn’t have those wings.”

The Protoss’s brow rises a bit. “Are you going to say what I think you’re going to say?”

“What am I going to say?”

“That we should team up. Because I’ll have you know we can take her out without your help.”

The bug lady loops around a few more bolts. She stops for a moment to blow a raspberry at the energy balls, then zips out of the way before another blast nabs her. Yeah, you’re all doing an excellent job on your own. “Could you cut off her wings?”

“Of course.” He holds up his plasma blade for me to see. “These will cut through anything.”

“Alright. Can you do that from down here?”

“I can’t fly. What do you think?”

“Oh, you can’t fly?” With monster speed and strength, I grab Ceretel by the waist. He yelps when I heft him over my head. “Let me help you with that.”

Ceretel screams when I chuck him at the bug lady. It’s a loud enough scream to grab everyone’s attention. Soldiers, energy balls, and even bug lady all turn to see what the heck is screaming like a little girl. Hehe. Since it doesn’t sound like my screaming voice, it gives the bug lady enough pause not to dodge the flailing soldier.

By the time Ceretel slams into the bug lady in mid air, he gained his bearings of what was going on and straightened himself out. His plasma blades jab under bug lady’s wings right before their heads and chests smack into each other. They make a loud clack sound, followed by a quiet zap.

Ceretel and the bug lady bump off each other and fall to the ground. Above them, two pairs of transparent bug wings flutter gently down. Sweet, two problems with one angry Protoss.

Bug lady smacks into the goop covered ground. Ceretel is more prepared, and he lands with a graceful roll. Bug lady pushes herself off the ground. Green goop is dripping from her nose. Oof, that did not look pleasant.

Before bug lady can recover, she receives a body full of me plowing into her at full monster speed. Her exoskeleton cracks from the force of me bear hugging her, and she coughs green goop all over my face. I smirk at her. “What’s the matter? Can’t you walk away from a fall like I can?”

She pushes her nose right up against my beak and looks at me with narrow eyes. “Fool. I can defeat you. I can regrow my wings. What pathetic attempt of a plan are you trying to accomplish?”

“The one where I squash you like a bug!” Bug lady tries to get off a spell, but the ancient Griffon Empire ancestor in me roars in her ear. The spell fizzles when the roar stuns her. The ancient Griffon Empire ancestor in me is excited!

We fast approach the giant kraken hive in the middle of all this. Bug lady tries to regain her senses, but the wall is going to come before she can do anything. Hope you’re ready to get squashed, you dirt beetle dweeb!

We hit the wall at well over lethal speed. The Zerg wall splatters when we plow in -