Boom!

That was the last thing I heard before the bandit fired. Even though I tried to steel myself for my death, I still flinched at the noise. Funny, I didn’t think I’d even be able to flinch before the bullet blew my skull to pieces.

Two seconds later I realized I was still alive, and my ear really hurt, though nowhere near as bad as my leg.

I opened my eyes and lowered my forelegs, which I’d hidden behind at the last second like they were really going to help me, to see that the bandit had dropped his revolver on the ground. Sticking out of his neck was the bloody shaft of an arrow, the tip dropping beads of crimson onto the moonlit stone beneath him. The unicorn gagged and clawed at the arrow in his neck for a second before he fell to the ground in a meaty, lifeless heap.

That’s when the shooting started.

Sig and I threw ourselves onto the ground as rifle flashes appeared in the bushes around us, cutting into the Crimson soldiers that’d taken us out to our execution. There wasn’t much cover out here by the ledge, and the focused fire from the bushes dropped the other four soldiers in a few seconds. They hardly even got the chance to return fire before they were all dead.

Trembling, I slowly raised my head from the ground as the bushes rustled around us. After a second, a hoofful of griffons emerged from the shadows; I immediately recognized Dacie, Jahlen, and Gatre, and a few others that I assumed were some of Sig’s siblings. Immediately upon seeing Sig’s dislocated wing and broken leg, Dacie cried out and fluttered over to him, literally hovering over him as she looked at his wounds. “Oh, spirits, Sig! What did they do to you?!”

“It’s… it’s fine,” Sig wheezed, doing his best to fight down the pain. I could certainly empathize with him; I also had a completely broken leg that made it hard to do anything other than lie on the ground and scream. “I’ve had worse.”

If he wasn’t going to do it, I sure was. “Fuck!” I screamed as I accidentally put some weight on my leg. Dacie turned her attention to me as Sig’s brothers gathered around him, and she steadied me with a hand on my back.

“Fucking monsters,” Dacie said, sparing a quick glare at the corpses on the ground. “Are you alr—?”

“They broke my fucking leg!” I howled, making her flinch. I knew at a glance that my leg was not supposed to bend like that. “Fuck! Fucking fuck fuck fuck!”

“I can see that,” Dacie murmured, and she turned back to her siblings. “Gatre, some sticks for splints, and some cloth.” The aforementioned griffon nodded once and flew off, and then Dacie turned her attention to Jahlen and Sig. “J, wait for Hoana to get here to set his wing. It only looks dislocated, thank the spirits. She’s the expert at that stuff anyway.”

“What about the ringbird?” Sig asked, pointing back toward the quarry. “They likely had more—”

“It’s taken care of,” Dacie said, waving her hand. “It was grounded and its transport bay was open. Pilots weren’t expecting a fight. Where else do you think the rest of our siblings are?”

“And Kerzin?”

“Probably holing himself up as we speak,” Jahlen said. “The whole quarry could hear the gunfire, I bet. It’s definitely not two shots in the night.”

Gatre returned a minute later with the supplies to make splints, and he and Dacie set about patching us up as best as they could. “They’re drawing fucking lines in the quarry,” he said as soon as he landed. “Kerzin’s pulling all the older flocks to him. Everygriffon else is falling in line because they don’t know what’s happening.” He looked to Jahlen and nodded. “If J didn’t tell us what was going on we wouldn’t have been able to save you.”

I gasped as Dacie straightened my leg and bound it in place with the splint. “So the rest of the quarry is against us?” she asked.

“Some of the younger flocks and the flocks around our age might join us,” Gatre said. “They knew us the best. They’ll be just as pissed at Kerzin as we are that he tried to sell Sig out to the Crimson.”

Dacie finished my splint and put her head in her hands. “Fuck… This can’t be happening…”

Jahlen swallowed hard. “There has to be some other way. I’m not going to fight family.”

“Do… do you think they’ll actually fight back?” I asked, still feeling dizzy from the pain in my leg. At least it was dying down now that I had it in a splint. “Kerzin’s insane, but the rest of you? Will they shoot if we don’t?”

Sigur looked at Jahlen. “How much does anygriffon else know about Kerzin’s deal with the Crimson?”

Jahlen shrugged. “Not much, as best I can tell. Maybe some of the other elders know, but I’ve never heard anygriffon speak of it before. He didn’t even tell me why he needed me tonight, only that something important was going to happen.”

A pair of griffons fluttered over from somewhere near the quarry and landed in front of us. “We have the ringbird,” one of them, a hen, said. “The pilots weren’t expecting an ambush.” Seeing Sig’s wing, she immediately set her rifle on the ground and rushed over to him. “Did they do that to you?!”

“Yeah, Hoana,” Sig said as she put her talons around his dislocated wing’s crest. “If you could just—gah!”

“Just what?” she asked, letting go of Sig’s newly relocated wing. The wet popping noise it made was kind of unsettling.

“Ungh… Never mind. Thanks.” Sig stretched his relocated wing, wincing as he put it through the full range of motions. “That’s going to be sore for a week.”

“Stay off it until the ligaments heal,” Hoana warned. “They need rest to strengthen and repair.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Grunting, Sig attempted to stand up, and Jahlen and Gatre lent him their support. His makeshift splint kept his broken leg off of the ground, and he staggered across the stone on three limbs. “This is going to be difficult to fight with.”

I managed to stand up as well, though a sudden bout of dizziness from changing positions nearly sent me staggering off the cliffside. Dacie yanked me back to her and held me safely against her side—a little too close for my comfort. I nodded to her and waved her off once the world stopped spinning, and broke free from her hold to go tot over to Sigur. “How long do you think we have before Carrion realizes something’s wrong?”

“He’ll probably radio in within the hour,” Sig said, frowning at his talons as he thought. “He’ll respond violently if he thinks he’s going to lose another ringbird. Letting one of his trump cards fall into our hands is not something he’ll tolerate.”

“How violently are we talking about here?” I asked, warily eyeing the distant dam. It probably wasn’t even an hour’s flight, maybe two, as the pegasus flies from here to there. And I’d seen firsthoof what one of the Crimson’s pegasus assault forces could do. I didn’t want to turn Sig’s home into another Blackwash.

“He may respond with another ringbird if he thinks the stakes are high enough. Not sure how many he has left, but we’ve only ever counted three, so it’d likely be his last. At the very least, given our size, he’ll probably send two hundred fliers.” Sig looked down at the glowing lights of the quarry just on the other side of this stony outcrop of rock. “And if we’re as fractured as Gatre says we are, there won’t be a fight.”

“Only a slaughter,” I murmured, images of Blackwash flashing before my eyes. I stomped my hoof on a tuft of grass to try to relieve some stress. “So we have at best like three hours to get everyone out of the quarry. At worst, a little over an hour.”

Sig nodded, but Jahlen sputtered and flew up to us. “Evacuate the quarry?! Are you insane?!” He grabbed Sig by the shoulders and lowered his head until their beaks were almost touching. “This is our home, Sig! Our home! We can’t just leave it!”

You want to fucking die?” I asked, limping up next to him. “The Crimson are going to kill your cat asses if you try to defend this shithole. They’ve got better guns, more soldiers, and Carrion isn’t afraid to send hundreds to die to wipe you guys out. He’s got a ringbird, and even though we stole one of his, I bet that nobody here knows how to fly it.” I took a step back and nodded toward the dam. “You want to try to fight that tonight? Or would you rather live through tonight to take your quarry back when the Sentinels kill his ass?”

Jahlen leered at me. “There it is. I bet you two played this out to force us to join the Sentinels, didn’t you?”

“If I was going to try to trick you, J, I would’ve done so without nearly getting executed,” Sig said. “Technically speaking, it wasn’t me or Ember who killed all those Crimson bandits.”

Jahlen looked like he was about ready to explode, but Dacie stopped him with a hand on his shoulder and another against his cheek. “J, we have to do it. There’s no other way.”

“Like shit there isn’t!” Jahlen shouted, rounding on Dacie. “There has to be another way! We can… can…”

“It’s all fucked,” Gatre said from behind us, and even Hoana nodded. “At this point, we have to go. Otherwise we’re all dead.”

Jahlen’s beak moved, but no words came out. Eventually, he sighed and dipped his head. “Fine. You’re right.” Then he pointed to the quarry. “But what about all of them? They weren’t the ones that killed these Crimson fuckers, but Carrion will still kill them all if we leave them. We have to get them out of here!”

“We need to get rid of Kerzin,” Sig said, and the rest of his siblings looked at each other. “He’s the one keeping them at the quarry. If we get rid of him, we should be able to explain to the rest what’s going on. The other elders would know just what we’re up against.”

“And if that doesn’t work?” Hoana asked, brushing her swooping raven feathers out of her face.

“Then we get as many griffons to follow us as we can and we get the fuck out of here,” I said. “Seriously, three hours at best. We’ll have to disappear into the forest so that the Crimson can’t find us until the morning. That’s when we can all get teleported back to the Bastion.”

“Don’t forget the ringbird,” Sig said, pointing back in the direction of where it was landed. “That could be a huge game changer. We can’t let the Crimson take it back.”

Dacie crossed her arms. “So, how are we supposed to get rid of the old guy, get everygriffon out of the quarry, and hide a huge transport craft that none of us can fly in under three hours?”

“Fuck it, we’ll improvise,” I said, starting to limp toward the quarry. “All I know is that standing around here isn’t going to do anything other than waste time we don’t have.”

“Ember’s right,” Sig said, limping after me. “Let’s see if we can deal with Kerzin first. Is our armor still by the ringbird?”

Gatre nodded as the rest of Sig’s siblings fell in behind us. “Dumped in a pile, right where the bandits left it.” He swallowed hard before adding, “I hope you won’t need to use it.”

“I hope so too,” Sig murmured, with similar thoughts almost definitely bouncing around the other griffons’ heads. At the very least, not another word was spoken until we made it to the ringbird.

Just like Gatre said, we found our armor and guns in front of the ringbird, where another small flock of griffons were gathered. They waved to Sig as we approached, and Hoana flew ahead of us to the other group, presumably to tell them what happened. I simply began to float the pieces of my armor off of the ground and don them while Sig did the same. When I donned my helmet, I finally noticed that half of my left ear had been shot off when I’d nearly been executed. It hurt pretty bad, but nowhere near as bad as my leg. The worst part was simply the blood pouring off of it and getting into my earhole; hopefully that stopped soon. But, all things considered, I’d gladly lose half an ear if it meant I got to keep the rest of my head.

It felt strange to sit this close to a ringbird and not be shitting myself. The metal monstrosity loomed over my head, its rotor ring dormant and still, its cargo door open and forming a ramp to the ground. Tiny gun pods were affixed to the sides of the ringbird’s hull at various points, each one fitted with three short barrels—probably its point defense, if I were to take a guess. Carved into the nose were six gun ports, each one housing what looked like a 30mm cannon, and retractable panels that probably housed additional ordinance decorated the lower face of the hull. But most interesting, however, was the emblem emblazoned near the cockpit. It wasn’t the winged horseshoe of Equestria or anything red that I would’ve assumed would identify it as Crimson. Instead, there were three white rectangles of different heights, with the middle being the tallest, set within a ring of gold. What it meant, I hadn’t the slightest idea.

I noticed that Sigur’s siblings had started some conference on their own, and Sig was apparently content to let them resolve it without him. “So this is what they look like up close?” I asked him when he limped over to me. “It’s certainly a beautiful piece of metalworking.”

“If we can get her to fly then she’ll be much more than just pretty,” Sig said, climbing up the ramp. He gestured to me and I followed him into the cargo hold, then through a door into the cockpit. Apart from some drying blood staining the seats, I was impressed with how neat the inside of the war machine was. The ringbird’s cockpit could seat four, two on the left and two on the right of the door, the two seats on each side stacked one behind the other. It looked like the front two seats were for the pilot and co-pilot, and the rear seats handled weapons and electronics. Holographic displays still shimmered in front of each seat, and even with the cockpit’s weirdly angled construction, the windows offered good visibility of the land around us.

Sig clambered into the pilot’s seat and stared at the holographic display as well as the small arsenal of levers and buttons on the panel in front of him. “It’d be too easy to have a ‘go that way’ button, wouldn’t it?” he joked, his talons lightly dancing over the different controls and switches. “Not like I could fly it anyway,” he said, pointing to the floor where two large paddles moved in opposite directions when he pushed down on one of them. “Need both of my legs to work for that.”

I looked at my own broken leg, reminded once again of the throbbing ache that simply wouldn’t go away. I really couldn’t wait to get back to the Bastion and get a medic to throw some healing spells at it, but I’d probably still be in a cast for a little while. Unfortunately, I had to deal with it for the rest of the night. “We’ll get somebody else to take a look at it. Right now, we need to figure out how to deal with Kerzin,” I said.

“Right, right,” Sig said, using the panels to pull himself out of the seat. “Seat’s too cramped for me anyway. The cockpit was made just big enough for ponies to fit comfortably, and then they shrunk it down. Military, right?”

I snickered and led the way out of the ringbird to where Sig’s siblings had all gathered. “Well, what’s the plan?” Sig asked as he descended the ramp.

“We’re going to try to appeal to Kerzin first,” Jahlen said. “If he truly cares about the flock like he claimed he did when he made us turn you guys over, then maybe we can end this peacefully. Get him to come along with us so we can all evacuate with plenty of time before the Crimson get here.”

“And if that doesn’t work?” I asked.

“Then we try to get as many to come with us as we can,” Dacie said. “After everything that’s happened tonight, I know that some of them have to see Kerzin’s mad. He betrayed a flockmate. We don’t forgive that.”

“But if anygriffon shoots at us, then it’s fair game,” Gatre said. “At that point, we need to stop Kerzin by any means necessary. If we take him down, then the rest of the flock should follow us.”

I didn’t really like it, but honestly I didn’t have any better ideas. I could feel the clock winding down, time slipping away until I had another Blackwash on my hooves. “We’re betting a lot on hoping everygriffon else realizes that Kerzin’s insane,” I observed.

“They’ll do the right thing,” Dacie said, smiling at me. “Trust me.”

“I sure hope so,” I said. “I’d like to avoid shooting at your family and friends if I can.”

“Well the longer we stand here the more likely that’s going to happen,” Sig said, his flexing talons digging into the dirt. “We’re just giving Kerzin more time to tell his side of the story.”

Jahlen nodded and took up his rifle. “Right. So how about we get this over with?”

He earned a half-hearted cheer from the rest of us. To be completely honest, nobody really wanted to have this confrontation. It made me sick to my stomach just thinking about it, and I wasn’t the one who might have to shoot at family and friends if this whole thing went south.

As a group, we marched toward the quarry, Sig and I taking the lead with our powerful armor despite our broken legs. I felt myself trembling with each step I took, and I swallowed hard to try to fight down my anxiety. I really didn’t want to do this, not only because I might have to shoot at other griffons, but also because I knew that some of them had rifles that could pierce my armor’s shielding. I’d already nearly eaten lead tonight; I didn’t want to risk doing it again.

When we made it to the lip of the quarry, I felt my stomach drop. Kerzin stood in the middle of a huge crowd of griffons around the main hollow, basically preaching his story to the rest of the quarry. A lot of those griffons were armed, and they listened to Kerzin speak in rapt attention. The old griffon’s waving arms seemed tired but forceful and confident, like he truly believed that what he was saying was the truth.

Jahlen was the first to take wing and hover above that group. “Traitor!” he screamed at Kerzin, interrupting his preaching. Several more of Sig’s siblings took wing alongside Jahlen, while Sigur and Dacie and me started walking down the ramp into the quarry with the rest.

Kerzin calmly lifted his head toward Jahlen. “My child, you do not understand the dangers that we face living so close to the Crimson. How can I be a traitor to our flock if everything I’ve done has only been to protect it?”

“We’re a flock! We’re family!” Hoana shouted down at Kerzin and his followers. “We don’t sell each other out! We don’t try to kill each other when it’s convenient to do so!”

The elder noted Sigur and me walking into the quarry, and I thought I saw a tiny flash of anger in his eyes. It was hard to tell, though, because we were still pretty far away. “And is it any less horrible to try to drag your flock into the flames of war, a war that we can still avoid? When Sigur left years ago, I accepted his delusions as nothing more than the wanderlust and passions of youth. But now that he has returned to lead more of our flock astray, to drive us into a suicidal crusade against an entity that we could not possibly beat even under the best of circumstances, I could not remain passive.” He held at an arthritic talon toward Sigur, pointing with a shaky hand. “He has fought against our benefactor and killed his soldiers. Our only hope for survival now is to offer him to the Crimson and pray that they forgive what has happened here tonight.”

“You’re wrong,” Sigur retorted, holding a talon out in front of me and signaling for us to stop a safe distance away from Kerzin’s troops. “My siblings killed Crimson soldiers at the quarry tonight while trying to defend their brother. Do you think Carrion will actually care whose fault it is? There is only one way out of this, and that’s to leave now before he retaliates.”

“If my ears do not deceive me, then you freely admit that you and your siblings are the reason why our way of life faces extinction!” Kerzin hissed back. “I know what this is! You would turn the Crimson against us to drive us toward your side. You would spill blood in our name to lead us into a war, one we cannot hope to win!”

“And you would sell out a member of your own flock the moment it’s too dangerous to remember our ties!” Dacie shouted at him. Then, pointing to him, she puffed out her chest in a display to the other griffons. “And don’t think for a second that he wouldn’t betray you too if he thought it would save his hide!”

“Everything I have done has been for the good of the flock,” Kerzin growled again. Then, turning to the crowd gathered around him, he gestured to us. “As the wise and respected elder leader of this flock, I show you the only way which we can hope to survive the night. We must purify the threat that seeks to destroy us from within.” His eyes narrowed and I thought I saw his hand tremble for the briefest of moments as he pointed at us. “Kill them.”

I felt my mane bristle underneath my helmet, and we all collectively shuffled back a few steps as the crowd began to move. I saw rifles raise at us as a few of Kerzin’s faithful took aim—but just as many rifles were pointed at each other in the crowd. The griffons began to scream at each other as they took sides.

“They’re our family!”

“They’re traitors and they’re going to get us all killed!”

“Does the flock mean nothing to you?!”

“We’re no better than they are if we start killing each other!”

“The flock above all else! For the good of the flock!”

“The flock is our family! Family doesn’t kill family!”

I don’t know who fired the first shot. It broke the stillness of the night with a thunderous roar. In a split second, the dam had burst, and Sigur’s worst fears came to fruition.

I staggered backwards as I felt the bullet ricochet off of my armor’s deflectors right in front of my face. I actually saw the hot lead squash against the shield protecting me before it reflected somewhere into the night. Two yellow exclamation marks popped up in the corner of my vision alerting me that I was under attack, and the safeties on my guns toggled off in response.

All this happened in the blink of an eye. By the time I realized that I’d dodged death for the second time tonight, the griffons around me were already moving. Jahlen and his siblings in the air scattered to avoid gunfire and gain altitude as some of Kerzin’s loyalists rose to meet them. Sig shoved Dacie behind himself, presumably to let his armor’s shields protect her, and the laser blades on his wings crackled to life. Around Kerzin, gunfire broke out at point blank range, but most of the griffons down there began to fight with talons and beaks in a brutal, bloody melee. And in the middle of it all, Kerzin slunk back toward the hollow, his retreat covered by his handpicked bodyguards.

“Ember!” Sig shouted, pointing to the hollow. I immediately understood and lowered my head, charging right into the fray. Taking down Kerzin was my number one priority. The sooner I took care of him, the sooner we could stop the madness.

Bullets peppered the stone walls around me as I galloped as fast as I could on only three legs, which wasn’t very fast at all. A few quick thoughts redirected the majority of my shields to my front to try to repel higher caliber bullets at the cost of leaving my rear and flanks unprotected. It was a good thing I did that too, because I actually staggered from some of the hits my shields took Of course every griffon was trying to shoot at the pony! Really, who else would they shoot at?!

And then I was right on top of the melee. I could smell the reek of blood as the griffons tore into each other with their beaks and talons. Most of the gunfire had died down simply because of how huge the melee was, but that didn’t mean everyone was too preoccupied to notice me.

I figured that out when a huge weight slammed into my side, knocking me over and flat on my back. My panicked thoughts triggered a short burst from my six machine guns, shaking my entire body and actually providing enough recoil to jerk me backwards and move my neck out of the way of the beak lunging for it. When the griffon missed, I immediately responded by head-butting him. It hurt to use my horn like that, but I’m pretty sure it hurt him more when my horn when into his eye. While he howled in pain, I used my forelegs to clobber his face and force him back. He swung his talons in frustration, actually scoring hits on my unarmored stomach, easily ripping through the jumpsuit into the flesh underneath. I cried out in pain and with a burst of my magic propped my battle rifle under his chin and fired. The top of his skull blew outwards as the rounds went clean through his brains, and he fell to the side as a lifeless husk.

Well, so much for doing this without bloodshed, but I couldn’t dwell on that now. Grunting, I heaved the body off of me and rolled to my hooves, only to collapse again in pain as I realized my splint had come undone. Gasping in pain, I crawled away from the melee before attempting to stand again. My leg hurt like a bitch, and I could feel my blood spilling from my gut, but there was actually nothing I could possibly do about either right now other than try to stop my limp hoof from touching the ground and avoid exerting myself as much as I could.

By some stroke of luck, the path between me and the interior of the hollow was clear, so I bit down on my tongue and staggered away from the ball of screeching griffons. Throwing aside the curtain, I immediately raised my rifle and took two shots to the chest. One of the rounds actually managed to pierce my shields, though it must’ve been a hollow point because it just squashed harmlessly against my chest armor, though it did wind me a bit. I responded by unloading my machine guns at the first brown thing I saw, the terrifying screech of the Sentinels’ armament nearly deafening me and my one and a half ears. When I finally stopped firing, the griffon I’d shot at was merely a sack of meat full of lead, his body utterly mutilated by my concentrated firepower.

And that was enough to get the other griffons in the room to surrender. Turns out Sentinels are fucking terrifying if you’ve never seen them in action before. As they threw down their weapons and backed away from me, I sought out the one griffon sitting in the back of the hollow, eyes wide at what just happened.

“Make them stop!” I screamed at Kerzin, drawing my rifle and pointing it right at his fucking face. It took all of my willpower just to not light him up then and there after everything he’d done. “Make them stop or you’re dead!”

Kerzin’s shock turned into cold hatred. “You and Sigur and his siblings are all fools,” he spat. “The Crimson are too powerful to topple. They’ll outlast us all, even you Sentinels. Fighting them is a hopeless endeavor; do you not understand that our only course of action is to ally ourselves with them?”

“So you’d be willing to stuff your fucking conscience in a bag and turn a blind eye to all they’ve done, all the slaving and raping and pillaging of pony settlements just like yours, just like mine, in the stupidest fucking tiny hope that maybe, just maybe, they’ll think you’re worth keeping around?!” I advanced a few steps toward him, my gun almost close enough for him to touch. “And not only that, but you’re willing to kill anygriffon in your flock who opposes you to do it?!”

“The safety of my flock has always been my primary concern. Always!” Kerzin spat, allowing some anger to creep into his voice. “I will not let Sigur drag his family into a bloody war where dozens will die!”

“Sigur is fighting for what’s right!” I screamed back at him. “Anybody who doesn’t stand up to the Crimson, pony or griffon or whatever, is just as guilty as they are in letting them do what they want to the valley! You’re supporting the murder of stallions, the raping of mares, the slaving of foals!” I turned to the side and pulled back on my jumpsuit with my magic, pulling the gray fabric away from my flank enough to reveal the heart seared over my cutie mark. “Look at this. Look at it!” I screamed again when he wouldn’t. “You know what this means? This means I’m a fucking cum bucket for whoever will pay Carrion the most for me! I’m not even a fucking mare to them! I’m just a thing! A fucking thing for some stallion to stick his dick in whenever he’s horny! A fucking thing to tie up, beat, and throw away when I’m not pretty anymore! Do you know what that’s like?! Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a thing?!”

I released the fabric and jabbed my rifle into his chest. “I was lucky. I escaped before they could take me. But I’m only one of maybe thousands of mares that they’ve branded over the years. And if you keep this up, then you’re just helping Carrion make more mares like me into things. And who knows, maybe one day, the market will open up for griffon hens, and guess who will be an easy source to harvest from?”

Kerzin’s beak clenched, and suddenly he couldn’t look me in the eyes anymore. “So long as we stay with the Crimson, the flock will be safe.” It sounded like he was trying to convince himself. It certainly wasn’t convincing me or even the other griffons still in the hollow.

“For fuck’s sake!” I shouted at him, backing up just a step and pointing outside. “Your flock is killing itself out there! All because of you and your stupid fucking delusions! Make them fucking stop!”

Kerzin’s face twisted into something I didn’t expect. Was that… pain? Sorrow? “My flock,” he murmured. “Oh, my precious, beautiful flock. Why did it have to be like this?” He swallowed hard, and that’s when I realized he had a revolver in his hand. Not like that could get through my shields, though. “I only wanted to keep them safe. Safe and happy in their home. And if I had to turn over a son to the Crimson to ensure that they would leave us alone, then I would be the one to shoulder that guilt.

“You could never understand,” he said, and I thought I saw the beginnings of tears in his eyes. “Not until you have a family of your own. The things you do to keep them safe… even if that means handing over one of your sons so that hundreds of your children could live… You don’t know what it takes to do that.”

He raised the revolver, and I widened my stance in response. “They’re still fighting outside right now!” I shouted at him. “You can stop this! Stop your children before it’s too late!”

“It’s already too late,” Kerzin said, swallowing hard. Then he put the revolver against his head. “Spirits take me to my flock—”

My horn lit up to stop him, but I wasn’t fast enough. Gore spattered the wall to Kerzin’s left, and the elder’s body collapsed, lifeless. I simply stood there in shock, oblivious to what was happening around me, unable to tear my eyes away from the elder’s remains.

Then I remembered myself and just what was happening outside. I turned to two of the griffons in the hollow who were just staring at Kerzin’s body with wide eyes. “Get his body,” I barked at them. “Bring it outside.” When they hesitated, I stomped my hoof and brought my rifle to bear. “Go!”

Thankfully they didn’t need to be told again. The griffons in the hollow quickly picked up Kerzin’s body between them and began to move outside. I followed them at a distance until they set it down just outside of the hollow, and then I fired my rifle several times into the air to get everyone’s attention

“Stop fighting!” I screamed, stepping toward the body. Thankfully, that seemed to stop most of the immediate clawing and biting in its tracks for the moment, and I pointed to Kerzin. “Look what it’s doing to you! Look around you! You’re family, and you’re killing each other! Your elder might have been delusional, but he wanted to protect his flock, not rip it apart! And look what it’s done to him! He couldn’t bear to see so many of his children die!”

I slung my rifle across my back and began to walk right into the middle of the crowd. “Please, I’m begging you, stop fighting before it kills anygriffon else. It doesn’t have to be like this. The Crimson will be coming soon, and we need everyone to be ready to work together. Not at each other’s throats like animals.” Swallowing hard, I stomped my hoof on the ground. “Don’t let this tragedy continue.”

Murmurs broke out among the crowd, and to my immense relief, the fighting didn’t start again. Griffons helped each other off of the ground, and some departed only to show up again with first aid supplies. In a complete flip of what’d been happening just minutes ago, the griffons were working together like one flock, apologizing and working together to help their wounded—and tend to their dead.

While they did that, I crawled to the side of the hollow and collapsed against the wall, tossing my helmet off and holding a hoof to my chest. It came away slick with blood, and I swallowed hard as I tried to put pressure on the wound. The griffon’s claws must’ve struck deeper than I thought. Between the blood loss, my shredded ear, and my broken leg, I was about ready to just keel over and pass out. It was very difficult to stay awake.

“Don’t go dying just yet,” I heard Dacie say, and I saw her crouch in front of me through the bleariness in my eyes. Something she held in her talons snapped, and she bit off the end of a silvery pouch before squeezing whatever was inside to the claw marks in my stomach. Almost immediately, a chilling numbness settled over the affected area, and after I blinked away my bleariness, I saw Dacie toss an empty Stabil-Ice pack aside before getting another.

I sighed in relief as the pain went away and my blood stopped pouring out. Stabil-Ice is some pretty neat stuff. “It over?” I asked, or more like mumbled; I didn’t want to know just how much blood I’d lost tonight.

“Yeah, it’s over,” she said, smiling at me. “Just take it easy for now. You’re more than a little fucked up, to be honest.”

“I figured that one out myself,” I said, closing my eyes and leaning back. While Dacie worked on replacing the splint on my leg, I winced and muttered, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Dacie asked. “For what?”

“I had to kill two,” I said, my head lolling to the side as I tried to avoid eye contact with her. “I didn’t want to… but I did it anyway.”

Dacie was silent for a moment, her work completely forgotten about. Then I felt her hand on my muzzle, her thumb talon gently stroking my cheek. “You did what you had to do,” she said. “I’m just glad you’re still alive.”

“You and me both,” I said, chuckling. “I’ve got too much shit to do to die now.”

We shared a small laugh, though that quickly died away when we saw the elders leading the fledglings out of the safer hollows in the quarry. The fledglings looked terrified, and the younger ones especially clung close to their flock fathers, who did the best to lead them around the blood staining the stone from the vicious fight. I noticed several elders trying to escort a seemingly lost group of fledglings, maybe only like five winters old. It was odd to see them led by elders instead of a single father griffon, but the heartbroken noise Dacie made in her throat told me all I needed to know.

“Dacie!” It was Sig’s voice, and both Dacie and me snapped our heads to the right. Dacie squawked and rocketed away from my side, hitting me in the face with her wing and blinding me for a second. When I stopped sputtering out her gray feathers, I saw her, Sig, Gatre, Hoana, and the rest of their siblings all forming a ring around another figure in the middle. I immediately recognized Jahlen’s white feathers, stained with blood.

I tried to stand, but my body was having none of that, so I could only watch, helpless, as Sigur and his siblings kneeled around Jahlen’s body. It looked like he’d been shot in the chest; it was slick with blood, and I couldn’t see any other marks on his body from where I was. I wanted desperately to go to Sigur and try to console him; the pain stood out so vividly on his face. But he had his siblings for that, and after they set Jahlen down, they all joined into a ball of comforting hugs with arms and wings, and using their beaks to preen each other’s heads and necks. It was probably for the best that I didn’t join them. This was a family moment between siblings at the loss of a brother. I would’ve just been hopelessly out of place.

Instead, I simply found the strength to limp away from it all. All the pain and suffering. All the blood that’d been spilled. All the needless death. I left it all behind in the quarry, instead making my way to the ringbird, where I sat down on one of the seats in the cargo hold, hung my head, and buried my face in my hooves.

And cried.