Almost half an hour passed before somepony finally came to find me. Of course, out of everygriffon, it was Dacie. The gray hen moved with lethargic steps, and she navigated the back of the ringbird more with her talons than her eyes, which her hung head kept to the ground. Once on the ramp, though, she grabbed ahold of the side of the ringbird’s hull and looked up at me. “Sig said to help you figure out how to fly this thing.”

I flicked the tiny butt of a used cigarette away and crushed it under my hoof. “How’s… is everything going okay down there?”

Dacie sighed, and her wings drooped until they touched the floor. “It’s going. Sig’s explaining what’s happening while we treat our wounded and get ready to burn the dead. At least there’s no more fighting, but if we’ll ever be the same after this…” She shook her head. “I don’t know. Family killed family. Those wounds will take a long time to heal.”

I solemnly nodded. “Yeah. But at least you’ll be able to heal.” I stood up and limped to her, my broken leg held off the ground by her splint and some bracing from my armor, my stomach wrapped up around my midsection with gauze and feathery auranoak leaves. “I... I know how you feel,” I said, joining her in staring at the floor. “And I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry that just me being here made this happen. I understand if you completely hate me or whatever for this, but…”

I trailed off, and Dacie looked up at me. “No,” she said, shaking her head, and I thought I could see fresh tears in her eyes. “This is Kerzin’s fault. Not yours. Not Sig’s.”

The best I could do was give her a nod. Even if she was doing her best to hide it, I knew she was in a lot of pain. I knew that pain from when the Crimson killed Mom. But at least they could rebuild. I couldn’t. Assuming we even beat Carrion in the first place, what was going to become of Blackwash once everypony was free? Were we going to move into the Bastion permanently? Were we going to try to rebuild on the mountaintop? Maybe go somewhere else? I didn’t have a clue.

Dacie looked over her shoulder to the glow of the quarry, now all lit up after the chaotic events of the night. “We still have a chance to get everygriffon out of here in one piece,” she said, trying to move the topic to a lighter note. “We still have a chance to take back our home once you Sentinels win. We have a chance for normalcy when this is all over…”

Her words trailed off, but I finished her thought for her. “But it’ll never be the same,” I said, looking down at my hooves. At least she’d be able to almost go back to how things used to be once the Crimson were gone. My chance for normalcy died the moment I heard a message from deep space, the first signal from Equestria in over two centuries. That’s when I realized that this whole thing wasn’t just affecting me—the signal had changed everything on Auris, even if most of the population didn’t know it yet. With that code we picked up from Equestria, the Silence was over. One hundred and ninety cycles of loneliness and confusion, and now it was over. It felt strange to be a part of the generation witnessing its end. But what that end would mean to Auris’ future, well, I couldn’t even begin to know.

Of course, philosophy has its own time for discussion, and that certainly wasn’t now. We still had shit to do before we ran out of time, so I stepped forward and hugged Dacie. “I’m sorry that he’s gone,” I said, patting her on the back. “I didn’t know him that long, but he seemed like a good griffon.”

Dacie sniffled and leaned into my embrace. “He died trying to save his flock from Kerzin. He… I don’t think he would’ve asked for more.” We parted, and she wiped tears from her eyes. “Sig’s probably… well, I think he’s taking it the hardest. He’d been gone for twelve years, and then he comes back only to get his brother killed for his war…” She took a deep breath. “Poor guy. We’re all feeling the same pain right now… but he’s feeling it the hardest.”

I nodded, imagining how Sig must’ve been feeling. “Let’s just make sure it wasn’t for nothing, okay?” I asked her, and she nodded. “Once we move the ringbird, then we can mourn those we’ve lost.”

I opened the door to the cockpit of the ringbird and stepped inside with Dacie following a few steps behind. Once again I found myself standing between the four seats, unsure of just what exactly any of the flashing lights on the panels meant. When Dacie shuffled up behind me, I shrugged and sat down in one of the two forward seats. “Pilot and co-pilot should be fine, right? We won’t need anyone sitting in those seats for weapons and electronics.”

Dacie crammed herself into the tiny seat opposite me and managed to squirm her limbs under the controls. “Let’s hope, though I can barely move.” She grunted and batted the flight stick away. “It’s like Equestria specifically made this thing to not be griffon compatible.”

“If you’ve seen what their shooting ranges look like, you wouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “They didn’t seem to like anyone that wasn’t a pony.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t eject me for being a griffon then,” Dacie joked, and I snickered. Then, turning her attention to the controls, she frowned. “So… I guess the first mystery is how to turn this thing on.”

I stared at the panel in front of me. That’s basically all I had, apart from the flight sticks and the pedals in the floor. I guess that most of the other controls were holographic and shit, but I needed to turn the damn thing on first. “Couldn’t your siblings have kept the pilots alive or something?”

“That would’ve been nice,” Dacie muttered. “Tsala loves to fight, and if the pilots shot first, then she definitely wouldn’t hold back.”

I groaned and bashed my head against the panel, and the thing beeped at me. Blinking, I sat back up and stared at a simple horseshoe symbol. Frowning, I put my hoof against it, and was rewarded with an angry squawk and the screen flashing red. I looked over to Dacie, who saw the same thing on her screen, and pointed at it. “Think we need their hooves?”

Dacie grunted and all but fell out of her seat as she tried to escape it. “I’ll go get them,” she said after she stood up and dusted herself off. I acknowledged her with a wave and tried to sit back in my chair while she was gone. It certainly wasn’t easy or comfortable; I don’t think the seat could move in the first place. But it didn’t really matter anyway, because a few minutes after I gave up trying, Dacie returned with a bunch of hooves.

Yes, literally a bunch of hooves.

“What the fuck?!” I shouted as she dumped them on the floor. Gray, green, blue, and white severed limbs oozed blood onto the floor. I picked one up with my magic and pointed at it. “Was that really necessary?”

Dacie crossed her arms. “I wasn’t going to drag the four of them in here one at a time until we figured out whose hoof worked!”

“Still probably would’ve been faster and cleaner than actually cutting their hooves off. How did you even do that in the first place?” When she opened her beak, her red beak, I held up a hoof—my own hoof, that is, not one of the pilots’. “Never mind, I don’t want to know, even though I’m pretty sure I unfortunately already do. Let’s just see if this stupid idea works.”

I took the four hooves in my magic and held them in front of the symbol on the screen. The first hoof didn’t do anything, and neither did the second, so I violently tossed them through the door as hard as I could so I wouldn’t have to look at them anymore. Just when I was starting to worry, though, the third hoof made the panel turn green, and a lot of numbers and messages began to pop up on the panel in front of me.

A lot of numbers and messages.

I just stared at them all like a retard, my jaw probably slack, as an overwhelming number of messages decorated the holographic display in front of my face like fireworks. I looked at Dacie, who seemed equally confused, and groaned, putting my head in my hooves. “I fucking hate computers.”

“Well… there has to be some sort of method to this madness, right?” the hen said, squinting at her display. “Let’s see here… ‘Commands’… ‘Diagnostics’? No, we don’t need those. Umm…” She began moving things to the edge of the display space with her talons, and I mimicked her example, clearing up the space in front of my face in a few moments. Then she snapped her talons and pointed at an option in the center of the screen. “Hey, here we go! ‘Rotor Controls’. That’s a good place to start, right?”

“Good as any,” I said, holding up my hooves in defeat and trying (and failing) to recline some in my seat. Seriously, Equestria, just a little bit of adjustment to these seats would’ve been great! They were killing my back, and I was wearing armor too!

Dacie poked around in the menu for a few seconds more, before grinning and dramatically poking her talon into the screen. I jumped as the ringbird shook, and something clunked into place in the superstructure above my head. Within seconds, a whining noise began to fill the cockpit, and the aircraft started to vibrate.

“I got it!” Dacie shouted, clapping her hands together. “There we go! Now we’re ready to fly!”

I grinned and looked down at my screen, noticing that most of the annoying pop-ups on the holographic panel had gone away. In its place were a few core gauges and readouts—heading, fuel, engine temperature, shield integrity, airspeed, those sorts of things. The display also had a simplified model of the ringbird in the center of it, with the surrounding terrain mapped around it, offering a sort of third-person look at the thing. Certainly useful for maneuvering this monstrosity, and we were definitely going to need it. Even the metal panels between the windows had seemingly disappeared, replaced by images of the outside taken by cameras. It looked like me and Dacie were sitting in chairs over nothing; the display even stretched to the floor, so I could actually see the ground underneath of the ringbird.

“That’s fucking neat,” I said.

“Yeah it is,” Dacie said, grinning at me. Then she turned back to the controls and wrapped her left talons around a stick protruding from the panel in front of her. “Let’s test this baby out!”

She pushed the stick forward and the whirring of the rotors intensified. After a few shuddering moments, I felt a slight pressure on my shoulders, and I saw the ground moving underneath the ringbird, slowly lowering beneath us. In front of us, the derelict equipment around the ringbird seemingly fell away as we went up, until Dacie put it in a hover about twenty feet off of the ground.

“Holy fuck, we’re flying,” I said, my face all but pressed against the window. “We’re actually flying! Look at that!” Whooping and hollering in joy, I accidentally kicked one of the pedals on the floor with my good leg, and was nearly thrown from my seat when the ringbird viciously spun to the left. Thankfully, Dacie stomped on her own set of pedals, and the thing stabilized before we could slam into the rocks and probably violently blow up.

Wilting under her glare, I shimmied out of my seat and went to sit in the chair behind it. “Okay, no more controls for me. You seem like you’ve got it anyway.” That’s when I noticed a flashing red microphone symbol on that seat’s panel, and frowning, I poked it.

“Windigo 3-3, there you are! Fucking finally!” a voice blasted through the speakers in the panel. Biting my lip, I looked at Dacie, who simply gave me a concerned look. “Carrion’s about ready to kill somepony! What’s taking so long at that shithole?!”

“Uh… everything’s under control, situation normal,” I growled into the panel, doing my best Crimson bastard impersonation. “We, uh... had a slight weapons malfunction. But, uh, everything's perfectly alright now. We're fine. We're all fine here, now, thank you.” As an afterthought, I added, “How are you?”

I looked at Dacie, daring to hope that maybe these guys were stupid enough that I could call off the counterattack and buy some more time for the quarry. I mean, they noticed that I’d accidentally turned the comms on, so I really didn’t have anything to lose at this point, right?

There was a moment of silence on the radio save for the crackling of some static before the voice spoke again. “Who the fuck is this?” he shouted, pretty stars-damned angrily. “Answer me, you bitch!”

Well, I guess my voice wasn’t deep enough to pass for a stallion’s, but I honestly didn’t really expect it to work. Smirking, I leaned forward, closer to the panel. “Oh, I’m sorry, but your pilots lost their little toy,” I taunted him. “Tell Carrion that the Sentinels are going to make great use of it for him. It’s not like you guys were using it for anything good, anyway.”

There was some sort of scuffle on the other end of the microphone, and when it crackled to life again, it was no longer the radio operator’s voice, but one that was pretty hauntingly familiar to me. “Listen, whore, you might think you’re being cute and all, trying to steal one of my fancy little birdies, and that’s fine. No, seriously, I get it. You’re all mad and upset that you can’t stop progress, so you go around killing ponies and breaking things to feel better about yourselves. Now, you already broke one of my birds at the Fort, and now you’re trying to make off with another one, like that’s really going to help you. Well boo-hoo. I hope you’ve got your tantrum out of the way, because I’m about ready to put all of you in time-out.”

“Bite me, dipshit,” I spat back at him. When all I got was stunned silence, I laughed and all but put my muzzle right against the holographic panel. “That’s right, big boy, I’m not dead,” I taunted him in the most sultry voice I could muster. “In fact, I’m doing better than ever. Now the Sentinels are helping to reunite us. I can’t wait until I get to see your ugly painted face again and offer you some payback for all the shit you’ve put us through.”

I wasn’t expecting him to just laugh at me in response. I was expecting some anger or astonishment, but not laughter. “Oh, I remember you,” Carrion said, and I could just imagine the disgusting smile on his painted face. “You know, it’s not nice to turn a stallion on and then leave him alone. I was all looking forward to a cozy night together after our first meeting. What put you off? Was it my company? My cologne? I’m sorry if you didn’t like it, but I am a bit partial to gunpowder and blood.” He laughed again, and just that alone made my skin crawl. “Baby, next time we see each other, I’ll take you for the ride of your life. It’ll just be you and me, night after night, year after year after year. Maybe I’ll even let your friends watch. Maybe I’ll watch you fuck them when I’m feeling too tired. And even if you don’t come around to loving your new lot in life, I’ve got some friends who know a few spells that’ll help you out. They’ll make you do whatever I want, and they’ll fiddle with your mind to make you like it. That’s not so bad, is it? Why fight and struggle and die when I can just turn you into the perfect whore? One who loves the taste of dick in her mouth, who gets wet at just the thought of sharing a bed with me?”

“You’re fucking disgusting,” I said. “Fuck you. Fuck you fuck you fuck you!”

Carrion just hummed on the radio. “You make it sound like fucking me is a bad thing,” he almost sung. Then, chuckling, he shouted something I couldn’t make out to ponies presumably standing near him. “I’ll see you soon, filly.”

There was a sharp click as Carrion hung up, leaving me staring blankly at the panel in front of me. I didn’t notice that Dacie had set the ringbird back on the ground until I felt her hand on my shoulder.

“You alright?” she asked, obvious concern in her voice.

I shakily nodded and waved my hoof through the holographic screen, scattering notifications everywhere. “Y-Yeah,” I said, still struggling to catch my breath. I forced a frown to my face and stood up, sliding out of the chair and walking into the cargo bay on shaky legs. “He’s just a fuck, that’s all.”

Dacie followed a few steps behind me. “That was him, wasn’t it? Carrion?” When I nodded, she shuddered and flicked her leonine tail. “Just knowing that Kerzin had allied us with that…” She noticed that I’d gone and sat back down on one of the chairs and taken another cigarette out, and cautiously approached me. “Are you sure you’re alright? How many of those have you had tonight?”

“Too fucking many,” I muttered, lighting it and setting it between my lips. When she only continued to stare at me, I waved her off. “Go tell Sig that you can fly the ringbird and that we need to start moving now. We won’t have long before Carrion sends more soldiers here.” I blew some smoke from my nostrils, and when I saw her still standing in front of me, I yanked her tail with my magic. “Go!”

Dacie stumbled forward, nearly tripping over herself as she got to the ramp, but ultimately sighed and disappeared. Good. I wanted to be alone right now. As soon as she left, I plucked the cigarette from my lips and curled into a ball, trying to hold the warmth in my lungs for as long as I could. I didn’t want to show it in front of Dacie, but Carrion’s threats had shaken me. Even when I thought I’d be unfazed by talking to him, seeing as how I was part of the Sentinels and had stolen one of his ringbirds, it seemed he still had some sort of power over me.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop imagining myself splayed out across Carrion’s bed, pinned underneath the stallion’s weight, and moaning in ecstasy as he fucked me. I had no idea whether Carrion actually had unicorns that could completely fuck with my mind and turn me into a willing fuck toy, but I really didn’t want to think about it. It freaked me out more than I care to admit. And perhaps more than anything, it scared me that this monster could reduce me to a shivering panicked wreck with his voice alone. How could I really beat him if he held that much power over me?

But I had a job to do. Ponies (and griffons) were counting on me to play my part in helping the Sentinels triumph over Carrion and the Crimson. And so long as I did my job, I wouldn’t have to worry about becoming a thing, like I’d screamed at Kerzin about. We would prevail, and I would put a bullet in Carrion’s brains once this was all over.

Sitting up, I stuck my cigarette between my lips and finished it off. I’d need the energy for the rest of the night.

The quarry was the definition of chaos. Everywhere I looked, griffons moved about in flurries of feathers. All the hollows were being turned inside out, their contents dumped onto the ground to pick through as the flock tried to scavenge what it could take before fleeing from the approaching Crimson. The fledglings, eyes wide and shaking with fear, had been protectively corralled near the top of the quarry by some of the elders, while the more able-bodied griffons helped move things from the hollows outside of the quarry. Black smoke rose from the very bottom of the pit; I assumed that they’d just finished taking care of their dead.

I found Sigur directing traffic near the main hollow, making sure that everygriffon got to where they needed to be and serving as the executive voice over what could go with them and what had to stay behind. At the moment he was busy arguing with a younger tercel about what he and his siblings could take with them from their hollow. After sorting that out and forcing those griffons to dump a few overstuffed bags on the ground, I approached him and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Sig grunted back. Scratching around his beak, he sighed and sat down. “Dacie told me the bird works. She also told me that you spoke to Carrion on the radio.”

I shuddered at the reminder. “Yeah…”

Sig placed his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t let him get to you. He’d have to get to all of us to do the things he said he’d do to you. We’d never let that happen.”

“Thanks,” I said, bowing my head. Whether or not that made me feel any better, well, I couldn’t say. After seeing just a small taste of what Carrion was like at Blackwash, the mere idea of what he could do put me into an irrational panic. I didn’t think I’d be free from that until he was finally dead.

But the less I thought about that, the better. “How are you doing?” I asked, almost whispering. “I know you two were close, even if it’d been years since you last saw each other.”

Sigur’s talons scraped across the stone. “I’m dealing with it,” he said, his voice sounding hollow and dead.

When he didn’t say anything more, I turned to the side and wrapped my forelegs around his midsection in the biggest hug I could manage. “I’m really sorry,” I said, nuzzling his feathery neck. “I know what you’re going through. If you need anything, just ask, okay?”

I felt a shudder run through Sig’s body, and when he didn’t move, I gave him another squeeze and a nuzzle before separating. “How’s… this going?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

Sig sighed and shook his head. “Well enough, sadly.”

“Sadly?” I raised an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that they never should have had to do this,” Sig said, watching a group of like ten or twelve siblings embrace outside of their now-emptied hollow on the other side of the quarry. “All we wanted from this were a few good volunteers to help fight Carrion. We never wanted to drive the flock from the quarry. And yet, here we are.” Shaking his head, he bitterly added, “Rampart will have all the griffons he could possibly want now.”

“How many is that?” I asked, looking at the ever growing mass of griffons at the top of the quarry.

“Somewhere around six hundred,” Sig said. “If the number of inhabited hollows are anything to go by, at least.”

“Can the Bastion even support that many? That’s like, twice the number of ponies already living there or something like that.”

Sig nodded. “Water’s not an issue, because the Bastion is built over an aquifer. As for food, I’m sure there’s plenty to hunt around the canyon. I’ve gone hunting before when I feel like getting something other than the mush they give us, and it’s almost like the moss lemmings don’t even know they should hide from me.” He smirked, but it died away just as fast. “It’ll hold everygriffon for two weeks, spirits willing. Enough time to stomp out the Crimson and move back to the quarry.”

I nodded, and after a few seconds of silence, I nudged his elbow and smiled. “Think of this like a big vacation for the flock, then,” I said. “Everygriffon gets to go and hang somewhere else, do a little shooting, then come back when it’s all over.”

Sig snorted. “I’m sure the fledglings will love it, at least. The Bastion’s a big place to play in and explore.”

Just then, Gatre fluttered down from the top of the quarry and landed in front of Sig. “Just about got everygriffon organized up there. We’ll be heading out pretty soon.”

Nodding, Sig step forward and gave Gatre a one-armed hug, which his brother returned. “Good. Let’s make something of it, eh?”

They stepped apart, and Gatre turned around to look at the now almost hauntingly desolate quarry. “I’ve lived here all my life… and now I’m leaving to somewhere new.”

He shivered, and Sig stepped forward to stand by his side while I just hovered awkwardly in the back. “We’ll come back,” Sig said. “Once Carrion’s dead and the Crimson dismantled… we’ll bring the flock home.”

“Spirits protect me long enough to see it,” Gatre said, balling his right hand into a fist and placing it over his heart.

“They’ll watch over us,” Sig assured him. “They always have.” Then, patting his brother on the back, he nodded toward the top of the quarry. “Make sure the others are doing alright. Hoana especially. You know how they were. I’ll be up once the last griffon is out of the quarry.”

Gatre nodded and wordlessly stepped away before spreading his wings and heaving himself off the ground with a few powerful flaps. When he was gone, Sig turned back to me and gestured for me to follow. “I’m just going to check the nesting hollows, make sure we didn’t forget anyone. Then we’ll be out of here.”

I bowed my head and fell in at the griffon’s side, the two of us limping along on our broken legs. As we passed by the first of many empty hollows, I looked up at Sig’s face. “So what’s the plan for getting everyone out of here?”

“The plan, if you could call it that,” Sig said, peering into another abandoned hollow, “is to fly everyone out to the forest and lay low until sunrise. No lights, no fires, no noise that could give our position away. We’ll fly a few miles away from the quarry just to be out of the immediate area and hope that they don’t find us. At sunrise, we’ll scout to make sure that they’re gone, then go back to the rapid transit zone and meet with the mages that are supposed to teleport us out of here, explain to them what’s going on. If all goes well, we should have everyone back at the Bastion by the end of the day.”

“That’ll take a while,” I observed. “Twenty-five griffons per run at like half an hour apart? If there’s six hundred like you said, that’ll be twelve hours.”

Sig nodded. “I’ll have them bring in a security team of a few off-duty Sentinels to secure the area while we get everyone out of here. Just to keep everyone in line, make sure that the local wildlife doesn’t bother us. At least we’re not in tolan territory.”

“The fuck is a tolan?” I asked, peering into yet another empty hollow. At least we were getting close to the top of the quarry now.

“Big, scary, violent reptiles,” Sig said. “That used to be one of the Sentinels’ big jobs before we got pushed out of the valley: tolan control. Imagine… you know what a dinosaur is?” he asked, and I hesitantly nodded.

“They were super big lizards that existed before ponies or something like that. All we knew about them at Blackwash came from a foal’s book that somepony found. Not exactly the most useful place for information.”

“Right, so tolans are something like that,” Sig said. “They’re about fifteen or twenty feet tall and like thirty feet long. Their tail is spiked and hard enough that it can smash through steel. They’ve got six legs, each with a pair of claws, plus two more with long claws that they use as arms. They also have an enormous maw full of razor sharp teeth reinforced with iron, like a shrike’s.”

I stopped dead in my tracks, my jaw hanging wide open. “…The fuck, Auris?!”

Sig chuckled and shook his head. “Add some armor plates that can stop most bullets and a top sprinting speed of fifty kilometers per hour, faster than even the fittest pony can gallop. They can eat entire settlements if they’re not kept in check. Thankfully, they keep to the plains, but the valley used to be full of them when Auris was first settled, if the stories are to be believed. That was before the Sentinels started doing something about them.”

“And how the fuck do you kill something like that?” I asked, trotting back up next to him.

“Either a lot of high caliber armor piercing rounds or one pegasus brave enough to land on its head and sever its spinal cord with their laser blades.” Sig said. “The last way tends to be the cleanest, if the more dangerous option. Two of their four eyes have a little bit of rear vision in their field of view, and if it sees you coming, you’ll land in its mouth instead of on its head.”

“I’m glad I didn’t run into any of those while I briefly wandered the valley,” I said, shuddering. “What about you? You ever fight one?”

Sig shook his head. “No, they were pretty under control when I joined, and we had to start looking at the Crimson as the bigger threat. Zip, though,” he said, then smirked at me. “Ask her about it sometime.”

“Wait, Zip?” I asked, cocking my head. “She fought a tolan?”

“If her story is to be believed,” Sig said, and I could just feel him teasing me. I didn’t even know if he was telling the truth or not. “She’s one of the few left today that can say they’ve killed a tolan before. Old soldiers like Platinum Rampart and Thunder Dash have their share of kills, too. Plural.”

“Yeesh. Well, I hope I never run into one of them.” It’d probably end horribly for me anyway. I imagined some reptilian monstrosity thundering along with a long orange and yellow tail sticking out of its mouth before comically slurping it down. That’d probably be a pretty bad way to go. Then I imagined a certain orange pegasus landing on its head and driving her wings into its neck. That I had to ask Zip about when I saw her again.

“We’re sure going to have one hell of a story to tell Zip when we get back,” I said as we finally made our way to the top of the quarry.

Sig nodded. “Tonight has certainly been a night I won’t forget,” he said, somewhat ruefully.

“You and me both.” We stopped at the edge of the quarry, just looking at the mass of griffons crowded onto the rocky ground around it. Perhaps more important than that, however, was the metal aircraft, still perched on the rocks where Dacie had left it. “What are we gonna do with that?”

“We’ll have to move it before the Crimson get here, obviously,” Sig said. “I don’t know if it has any tracking devices or not, but we’ll want to keep it away from the rest of the group at all costs.”

“So we’ll find a clearing to set it down a few miles away from the group then?” I asked. “Just have a small guard watching it?”

“That still risks it being retaken if the Crimson do have a means to track it,” Sig said. “So, I’ve got a better idea.”

“If you say so. I’m all ears.” Then, shrugging, I added, “Or, like, an ear and a half.”

Sig rolled his eyes (hey, I thought it was funny!) and pointed to the northwest. “You and Dacie are going to take the bird and fly it back to the Bastion. Even if it’s got a tracker on it, Carrion can’t take it back if it’s locked away inside of millions of tons of steel and concrete. The rest of us will meet up in the morning once the teleportation train starts.”

I blinked, then blinked again. “Uh… Sig? Are you sure that’s a good idea? We just figured out how to get that thing off the ground. Are you sure we can take it for a cross-country flight?”

“It should have an autopilot in it,” Sig said. “If you can figure that out, just have it fly itself to the Bastion, at least until you get close.”

“Yeah, but I have no idea where the Bastion is from here. Or if they’ll even let us get close before trying to blow us out of the sky. I mean, it’s not like they know that we stole a ringbird.”

Sig’s response was to hand me a scrap of paper with some numbers written on it. “Those are the coordinates of the Bastion, if they aren’t already in the ringbird’s computer as a place to avoid. As soon as you get within a mile, set the ringbird down out of sight of the Bastion and try to raise radio contact with them. All mission-critical transmissions are held on 364.2 MHz. If that doesn’t work, well, I guess you’ll have to do some walking.”

I fidgeted in place. “I don’t know if this is a good idea.”

“Ember, I trust you,” Sig said. “Me and my siblings can handle keeping everygriffon safe down here, but we need to get this ringbird out of here before we lose it for good. You and Dacie know more about flying the thing than anyone else here, so I’m asking you two to handle it. I already told Dacie what I was thinking when she came to find me earlier. She’ll be waiting in the bird for you.”

Sighing, I hung my head. “Alright. I’ll do my best,” I said. I wasn’t too thrilled at trying to navigate the mountains in the dark, even if we did have the moonlight to guide us. I just hoped that the ringbird had good night vision cameras. And that it’s autopilot knew not to crash into the mountains. “See you at the Bastion, then?”

Sig nodded and placed his hands on my shoulders. “You can count on it.”

“Stay safe,” I said as we leaned in for a hug. “I’ll make sure everypony’s ready to give you a hero’s welcome when you get back.”

“I’d certainly appreciate it,” he said, smiling at me. Then he slapped me on the helmet and pointed to the ringbird. “Now get going. The sooner you’re out of here, the sooner this thing’s safely in our hands.”

Nodding, I turned around and trotted up to the ringbird, skirting my way past crowds of griffons as I did so. I looked over my shoulder to see Sig fluttering over to Gatre and Hoana and some more of his siblings, and they briefly looked in my direction before going back to organizing the rest of the flock. Then they disappeared into the mass of bodies, and sighing, I climbed up the ramp and limped into the cockpit.

Dacie was already seated in the pilot’s seat when I got in. “Ready?” she asked, cocking her head to the side as I entered.

I flopped down in the seat behind her and tried to familiarize myself with the instrument panel. At least I’d have a long flight to figure out how to get the radio to work and do more than just accept incoming transmissions. “Ready whenever you are,” I said, tossing my helmet to the other side of the cockpit and putting a headset on my head so we could communicate over the noise of the engine. It stung my half-ear ever so slightly, and I ended up sliding the left ear cup back a bit and off of that ear.

Dacie nodded and turned her attention to the controls, poking around in the holographic screen for a few moments before gripping onto the throttle and revving the engine up. Within seconds, she’d shakily lifted us above the ground, and I looked through the floor to see a mass of griffons waving at us. Dacie waved back, and I couldn’t help but raise my hoof as well, even though I knew that they couldn’t see into the cockpit from down there.

“Got a waypoint?” I heard Dacie’s voice crackle through the headset.

“Something like that,” I said back to her. “Sig gave me the coordinates. I’ll get them punched in as soon as I figure out how to get the damn autopilot working. In the meanwhile, just go northwest. The more distance we put between us and the dam, the better.”

“Got it,” Dacie said, and with her left hand on the throttle and her right hand on the flight stick, she pivoted the ringbird in that direction and haphazardly set us along the way. It wasn’t perfect, and I figured that if she flew the thing herself for more than an hour I was going to start hurling, but she did the best that she could. At least we were going up and forwards, not down and backwards.

And as for me? Once I figured out how to put in the coordinates Sig gave me, and once I confirmed with Dacie that the waypoint was showing for her and the autopilot was engaged, I told her our plan for once we got near the Bastion. With that all sorted out, and with a promise from Dacie to let me know once we got within five miles, I promptly took my headset off, shed my armor, got as comfortable as I could in the tiny cockpit, and passed out.

It had been a long day.