When I woke up sometime later, Zip was already gone, the impression she left in her mattress cold. I mean, I expected as much; she had things to do, being acting-commander and all that shit, while I didn’t. Which, after all the shit I went through yesterday, was a good thing, I supposed. At least they wouldn’t have me doing menial shit. Maybe I could practice my pyromancy before the big fight.

A quick glance at the clock on Zip’s nightstand told me that it was just past thirteen in the morning. I guess five or six hours of sleep would be good enough. Besides, I was starving. I hadn’t eaten anything in almost sixteen hours. I’d kill somepony for food if it came down to it.

I shifted in bed, about ready to roll off of the mattress, when I felt the unnatural weight of the cast around my hind leg. Doctor Hacksaw’s warning came back to me, and I more gingerly slid out of bed, landing on my three good legs while keeping the fourth in the air. I still had to hobble around like this for six more hours, according to his orders, but considering I was getting a completely broken leg fixed in three days instead of like three months, I wasn’t going to complain (too loudly).

I’ll be honest, it was more than a little annoying trying to navigate the Bastion on only three legs, especially when it came to the stairs. Going down a few flights was slow and agonizingly tedious work. But the sortie hangar wasn’t on the C block, and I wanted to see Sig return with his flock. Of course, he could very well have already been here on the first teleport in and gotten medical treatment already, but I wouldn’t really know. Best place to find out would be the center of the action, though.

And holy fuck was it busy. I could hear the commotion even before I got there. Lots of support staff ran to and fro, and a few armored Sentinels walked past me to the hangar. Slipping through the door before it could close, I immediately hobbled over to the railing overlooking the hangar floor and blinked in astonishment. There were so many griffons here, and the Sentinels were doing their best to organize them all, take stock of their belongings, and have them sent off to their quarters. In just a few hours of teleporting runs, the population of the Bastion had about doubled, and it was only going to get larger as the day wore on.

I saw Dacie hovering about, looking a little bit lost, and I waved her over. “They take care of you?” I asked when she got close enough.

She alighted next to me and nodded. “Yeah, once they got everything sorted out, they turned me loose. They were just worried about who I might be and that sort of thing, given how you just showed up out of the blue with a ringbird and a griffon.”

“Good to hear,” I said. “I hope they at least gave you somepony to follow until you know your way around here. It’s really stars-damned huge.” Chuckling, I added, “I’ve gotten hopelessly lost a few times before.”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s been alright,” Dacie said. “I followed a few ponies around, asked a few others where things were. Supposing I can find the central stairs, though, then the important stuff isn’t too hard to find.” Her eyes darted over my cast and the stitches in my forehead. “They fix you up?”

I shrugged. “More or less. Doctor says my leg will be good in three days while the enchantments in the cast do their thing. He wouldn’t do anything about my ear,” I said, flicking the stub on my forehead. “But, well, not much I can do about that. Apparently my stomach was the worst, though. He spent like an hour manually growing tissue with his magic. He said another inch deeper and those talons would’ve killed me.”

“Oh, spirits, I’m glad you’re alright, then!” Dacie exclaimed. “I didn’t know it was that bad when I treated you!”

“You saved my life with the Stabil-Ice. Stopped the bleeding long enough for it to get looked at.” Smiling at her, I nudged her shoulder. “Thanks for that, by the way.”

She brushed it off with a wave of her hand, and we went back to watching the Sentinels try to sort out her flock. Another group of griffons had just arrived, and they were trying to clear the teleportation area before the unicorns went back for the next group. I noticed that they had quite a few soldiers standing guard around them; I guess I’d left a lasting impression or something. “See Sig yet?” I asked Dacie. “I’ve been sleeping since I got out of the infirmary.”

“No, I heard he’s staying behind to make sure everygriffon makes it over here in one piece,” she said. “Same with the rest of my siblings. I even asked one of the ponies in charge of the thing, this older blue mare, if they could take me back, because we always do everything together, but she wouldn’t let them. In fact, she seemed a little bit annoyed that I bothered her.”

“That’s Commander Fusillade for you,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know her all that well, but she’s apparently from a settlement east of the dam, and she came west to the Bastion when the Crimson organized. Kind of explains the accent I guess, but she’s just like that from what the other soldiers have told me.”

“Huh. Neat.” She leaned forward and draped her arms over the railing, simply watching the Sentinels move a group of griffons down one of the halls towards their quarters for the foreseeable future. “I wonder what it’s like outside of the valley. I bet she has stories to tell, if you could ever get them out of her.”

“It’s probably just like the stories inside the valley,” I said. “Small settlements struggling to survive on a planet that wants nothing more than to fucking kill them, and fighting off bandits and raiders and shit who are also trying to kill them for their shit.”

“I heard from one of the merchants once that there’s a whole bunch of cities outside of the valley,” Dacie said. “Big settlements of thousands of ponies and griffons and even zebras and dragons. They’re closer to real civilization than anything in the valley. And the closer you get to the center of the continent, the bigger the settlements become. That’s where most of the ponies are, because that’s where Equestria started colonizing before the Silence. The valley is actually, like, really young in terms of when it was settled.”

I simply shrugged. “Well, maybe for the rest of the valley, but not for me. My town was built around an old military installation that used to share messages with Equus. When the Silence happened, well, the ponies who were stationed there survived and expanded.”

Dacie started giving me a pretty weird look. “How many ponies were stationed there before the Silence?”

“I don’t know, like, forty? Fifty?” I shrugged again. “It wasn’t that big, if the size of the barracks was anything to go by.” I saw her look and I frowned. “What?”

“Oh, nothing, I’m just, uh, thinking,” Dacie said, tripping over her words. “Wouldn’t you be worried about your genes… cousins…”

It took me a second, but I finally understood what she was getting at. “Are you calling me inbred?” I asked her, probably a little louder than I intended.

“N-No!” Dacie recoiled. “I mean, I’m just saying that wasn’t that a concern for your settlement? If you give it enough generations, then bloodlines could get a little mixed. At the quarry, at least, we started with almost two hundred griffons, so we didn’t have it as bad as you would.”

“It was kind of an afterthought behind making sure we even stayed alive,” I said. “One missed harvest could doom us all. We weren’t really thinking about keeping blood clean when we were one famine away from being wiped out.” Then, shrugging, I added, “But I mean, the zebras would’ve been hit the hardest. There weren’t a lot of zebras to begin with, and they usually stayed within their own circles. Even then, my zebra friend Gauge probably has about as much pony blood in him as he does zebra, he just doesn’t show it.”

Shifting in place, I leaned myself against the railing like Dacie and rested my chin on my crossed forelegs. “But I mean, I’m probably better off than most from Blackwash, what with my dad and all.”

Dacie cocked her head. “Your dad wasn’t from your town?”

“I’m pretty sure he wasn’t,” I said. “My mom never talked about him, and because of that, other ponies didn’t as well, but I’ve heard a few things over twenty winters. Supposedly he showed up one day at the mountain, and nopony knew who he was or where he came from. Something something something, he stuck around for a few winters, I was born, then he disappeared without a trace. Haven’t seen him ever since. He’s probably long dead.”

“Oh,” Dacie said, and I saw her fidget with her claws. “Well, uh… sorry?”

“Don’t be,” I said. “He broke my mom’s heart. Fuck him.”

Dacie didn’t really have anything to say to that, so we just stood in silence, watching the hangar gradually grow more organized as the Sentinels filed the griffons out. I saw Fusillade a few times in that mess, ordering ponies about, and cussing in Prench loud enough for me to hear whenever somepony fucked up. I had a feeling just from watching her work that between her, Rampart, and Thunder or Zip, she was the one that most of the Sentinels dreaded falling under. Still, she’d probably bite a bullet and then some if it meant keeping the soldiers under her command alive. Though there’d be hell to pay afterwards.

I saw Dacie’s talons flex out of the corner of my eye, and I turned to see her beak open wide as she yawned. Smiling at her, I punched her shoulder. “You look like you could use some rest,” I said.

“I’m waiting for Sig,” she grumbled, crossing her arms and doing her best to look awake.

“Sig’s probably not going to be back here for another few hours,” I told her. “He’ll be the last one back, knowing him. You have plenty of time to rest before then.” When she didn’t move, I added, “You know he’d hate to find out that you kept yourself up just waiting for him to get back. A nap isn't going to hurt anybody.”

Sighing, she bowed her head. “Alright, fine,” she said. “But I want to know the moment he gets back, okay? I know he’ll be looking for me.”

“And I’ll make sure somepony tells him exactly where you are,” I said. “He knows his way around this place, he’ll find where you’re passed out. Just go to whatever room they gave you so he can be directed to the right place, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, stepping away from the railing. “I’m down at the A block, room… twenty-four, I think? Somewhere around there. Just let him know.” Then, as she staggered back towards the central stairs, she called out over her shoulder, “Seeya.”

“Take care,” I said, waving after her, watching as her feline tail disappeared down the hallway. Then, grunting, I pushed off of the railing and stepped away from the hangar. I figured it was time to check in on a zebra and a colt who I knew were surely missing me by now.

After I got something to eat, of course.

A short walk later found me in the maintenance hangar, which was unusually busy due to a big recent addition. Somehow the Sentinels had moved the stolen ringbird down here, right next to the tank, and the place was way more crowded because of it. But the Sentinels weren’t wasting any time; even as I entered the hangar, there were a whole bunch of ponies crawling all over the thing, doing telemetry and diagnostics and that sort of shit. If there were any weaknesses in it, they were going to find them to keep this bird in the air, and hopefully shoot down any the Crimson threw at us.

I found Gauge and Chaff sitting on the back of the tank eating lunch. Somehow they’d managed to find some sandwiches, and were happily working their way through them, idly chatting as they ate. But, of the three of them, it was SCaR who noticed me first. With a chirp and a whistle, it hovered over to me, excitedly spinning around my head while I just grinned.

“Nice to see you too, little guy,” I said, winking at the drone, which immediately flew back to Gauge. “You giving SCaR enough attention, there, Gauge?” I called out to him. “He seems kinda lonely.”

Gauge jumped and looked my way. “Ember!” he exclaimed, tossing his sandwich down on a plate and hopping off the back of the tank. “You’re back!” He galloped up to me for a hug, but stopped when he saw the stitches in my head, the missing part of my ear, or maybe it was the cast on my leg. Eyes wide, he placed his hooves on my shoulders. “Stars, Em, what happened out there?”

“It’s… it’s a long story,” I said, feeling tired just thinking about what all I’d been through in the past twenty-eight hours. “I’m fine, though. That’s all that matters.”

“Ember!” Chaff shouted moments before slamming into my forelegs and wrapping them in a hug. “Did you really steal that ringbird? That’s what all the Sentinels are saying! That’s awesome!”

I mussed Chaff’s mane and nodded at him. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. We had a run in with some Crimson, and we ended up stealing their ringbird. With that and the tank and the griffons we brought back from the quarry, there’s no way the Crimson can stop us now.”

“I should’ve known you couldn’t stay out of trouble,” Gauge said, smirking at me. Then, leaning forward, he hugged me, and I hugged him back. “It’s good to have you back.”

“After all the shit I went through out there, it’s good to be back.” I shook out my mane, feeling it dance over the still-raw flesh of my left ear, and I pointed to Gauge’s head. “Guess we’re twins now, eh?”

“You’ve still got half of yours,” Gauge said, rubbing at the spot on his skull where his entire left ear was missing. “The Crimson ripped mine off when they dragged me out of the listening post back in Blackwash.”

“Yeah, I saw,” I said, remembering that horrid night. “But that’s why we have two, right?”

“Something like that,” Gauge said. Then, stepping aside, he pointed to the tank, which I realized was hovering a few inches above the ground. “Check out what we got to work while you were gone.”

I hobbled a few steps closer to the tank. “Well shit, Gauge, you’ve been busy, haven’t you? When are you taking it out to the shooting range?”

“One of the Sentinels said they were gonna drive it around and shoot at stuff soon!” Chaff exclaimed, bounding over to my side. “They said they were gonna let me shoot the cannon!”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” I asked, looking to Gauge. “The cannon’s bigger than you are.”

“He’ll be fine,” Gauge said, waving a hoof. “They were going to take it out to the canyon in a few days, shoot at some targets and get the optics calibrated. Plus, we need to make sure that its engine can hold up under pressure. Right now we’re just having it run idle for some endurance testing before we have it do any real work.”

“Well, as far as I know, the Crimson don’t have any tanks of their own, so now we have the advantage over them,” I said. “I don’t think Carrion realizes just how fucked he is.”

Gauge hummed his agreement and slowly walked back to the tank, SCaR hovering around his head. “I can’t believe that all the pieces are falling into place,” he said, hopping onto the back of the tank and picking up his sandwich. “A week ago, I thought my life was over. I didn’t think I’d ever see Nova again. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” he said, looking at me. “But now here we are. We’ve got a tank, a ringbird, and an army to take down the bastards who did this to us, and we can finally get Nova back. The end to this nightmare’s finally in sight.”

“Yeah,” I said, a little shocked by that revelation myself. Were we really this close to ending it all? To finally going back to something resembling normal? I almost couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t have been able to believe it at all had I not been a part of the missions that made it possible. Even still, to think that it’d all be over soon… it was unreal.

“You think of what’ll come after?” Gauge asked, catching me by surprise.

“Huh?”

“After this,” Gauge said, slapping the tank. “When the Crimson are gone and Nova’s free… what then? Do we go back to the mountain? Do we stay here? Go somewhere else?”

“I…” I was at a loss for what to say. To be honest, I hadn’t really thought about it. Everything since coming to the Bastion for the first time had just been an insane whirlwind of activity, so much so that I didn’t really have any time to myself to just think about things like this. What would we do afterwards? Would I stay a Sentinel? Would I leave them behind so I could be with Gauge and Nova if they left? What?

In the end, I just shook my head. “We’re not the only ones who’ll make that decision,” I said. “That’ll be up to Stardust and everypony else once we get them free. But if I had to say…” I shrugged. “Maybe it’d be best if we just stayed here. The Bastion’s big enough for all of us, and there’s nothing to go back to at Blackwash.”

“We can rebuild,” Gauge said. “It’s our home.”

“Gauge, there’s nothing left,” I said, looking up at him. “There was hardly a building left standing. I…” I swallowed hard and felt some tears pricking at my eyes. “The Crimson just left the bodies sitting under the sun. I couldn’t bury them all. I… h-had to burn them so the flesh strippers wouldn’t maul them.” I shook my head. “I’m not going back to Blackwash, Gauge, even if everypony else decides to. I can’t. Not after that.”

Gauge just looked at me for a second, disbelief in his eyes. “You never said anything about that.”

“I didn’t want to talk about it,” I said, looking at my hooves. “I just want to pretend it never happened.”

SCaR made a sad buzzing noise, and Gauge slid off of the tank to stand by my side. “I didn’t know, Em,” he said, hugging me again. “I can’t imagine what you had to do just to get here. But don’t just keep it all bottled up, okay?” He lifted my chin with a hoof so he could look me in the eyes. “Just… if you ever need to talk… just talk, alright? To me, Zip, Chaff…” he chuckled. “Even SCaR. The little guy’s a great listener. I complain to him all the time.”

The drone made some sort of splatting noise and wobbled. I wasn’t as good at communicating with it as Gauge was, but I could only assume it was rolling its eyes or something like that.

“Thanks,” I said, nodding and wiping a tear from my eye before it could fall. “I just… want everything to go back to how it was,” I said. “But it can’t. It’ll never go back. And, well, there’s not a whole lot I can do about that. And it pisses me off.”

“But if it didn’t happen then we wouldn’t be here,” Chaff said, trotting up to me. “You guys wouldn’t be stopping the Crimson!”

“You wouldn’t have met Zip either,” Gauge said, making me blush.

“Well,” I huffed, trying to hide behind my mane. “I mean, yeah. I just… well, I just wish it didn’t have to cost so many lives.”

Gauge hummed. “I know what you mean,” he said. “When they stormed the outpost, it was messy. They just started cutting ponies down until they decided they’d made their point. Still didn’t stop them from beating us senseless, though. Guess they really don’t like zebras or something.” He pointed to his missing ear for emphasis.

“I saw the bodies,” I said. “I’m just… just glad that you and Nova weren’t caught in the fire.”

That killed our conversation really fast, and the three of us just stood in awkward silence for a minute or so. “Get a chance to check out the bird?” I asked, looking for any way to break the silence.

Gauge shook his head. “No, not yet. They only want their top staff looking it over at the moment. I think they’re trying to empty its data logs, see if anything interesting is stored on there. Any little bit is going to help, you know?”

“Yeah. The fewer of us that die trying to take the dam, the better.” I groaned and stretched my leg out. I couldn’t wait until I could put my weight on it again.

“Are you gonna fight like that?” Chaff asked, seeing me move my leg around.

I shook my head. “No, at least I don’t hope so. The doctor said that it’ll be fixed in three days.” I looked at Gauge and grinned. “Ain’t that something?”

Gauge rubbed his right foreleg. “Don’t remind me,” he said. “I’m just happy that my leg mended fine. Sticks and cloth don’t make a very good cast, and I didn’t enjoy chewing on ice moss to dull the pain.”

“Well, at least you learned your lesson,” I said, remembering the time that Gauge broke his leg when he slipped and fell from the roof of my forge when we were kids. He was going to drop a bucket of machine oil on my head as I came out of the shop, but, well, the bucket wasn’t the only thing that fell when I opened the door. Nova and I still teased him about it occasionally. But he was right; given that we didn’t have any magical casts or any real medicine besides a few lingering Stabil-Ice packs, Gauge was lucky that his leg had mended fine.

Gauge was about to say something, but the tank suddenly made a sputtering sound and a screech, and the entire floor shook as it fell back onto the hangar. Sighing, he shook his head, while I just looked at the thing like it might explode any second. “And this is why we wanted to endurance test the engine,” he said, moving toward his toolbox as the entire hangar stopped what they were doing to look at the tank. Digging through the red box, he pulled out a few spanners and other tools and laid them out in front of him. “Well, I’ve got to take a look at this and see what went wrong. Chaff, you want to help?”

The colt nodded and bounded over to Gauge’s side. “Yeah!” he exclaimed, grabbing a wrench and beginning to undo the bolts on a panel at the back of the tank. Within a few seconds, he had the panel popped open—and got sprayed in the face with a whole lot of motor oil.

Gauge and I just chuckled while the colt made a face and tried to wipe the oil away with a rag. “Your apprentice still seems like he’s got a lot to learn,” I teased him, to which Gauge just waved his hoof. Then, taking a few steps back, I waved once. “I’m going to leave you two to it. Gonna wait for Sig to get back, maybe see what Zip’s up to in the meanwhile.”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Gauge said. “Dinner tonight?”

“You know it. It’s been a while since we had a nice family meal.” Then, smiling, I trotted toward the door. “Seeya!”

I had to wait quite some time before Sig finally made it back with the last group of griffons from the quarry. Most of that was spent lounging around the hangar anxiously waiting, but at least I could talk to Zip from time to time. The mare was still busy with all of her duties, and that even included showing griffons to their new quarters. I guess they were a bit understaffed with that, but they didn’t recruit me, even when I offered to help. Probably because I was wounded and technically wasn’t supposed to be doing anything. I had a feeling that Zip had put a few words in to make sure I didn’t end up helping out. I’d have to get her back for that at some point.

But at least I could finally use my leg again. Enough time had passed that I could put some weight on my broken leg, and it felt largely whole and sturdy. I didn’t even know how bad the break was, only that it was complete, but it felt like my bones were at least fused together again. The soreness was also starting to die away, which I was really happy about. Without anything to distract myself with, it’d been a long several hours.

Finally, just before dinnertime, the unicorns teleported back again, not even bringing twenty-five with them. A few of the griffons staggered about, looking horribly confused, disoriented, and sick, but the one in the center stood tall and hobbled forward unfazed. A smile on his beak and a spring in his step, only hampered a little by his broken leg, Sig strode away from the circle of mages and in my direction. I waved at him, and he half-heartedly waved back. When he got close enough, I could see why clearly enough: the griffon looked exhausted. I thought I had it bad when I got back here, but knowing Sig, he didn’t take any time to nap since I left him. All he had was a few hours of sleep before Kerzin sold us out, and by now, he’d have been up for almost sixteen hours.

I lazily saluted him and stood up, trotting forward to meet him. “Long day?” I asked, a little smile on my face from the dumb question.

Sig bumped into me, nearly falling over, and I winced when he used his talons to steady himself with my shoulder. “Sorry,” he said, taking his hand off of me. “I haven’t slept in a long time.”

“Understandable,” I said, looking past him to where his siblings were being directed to their quarters. “Let’s get you to the doctor first, then you can go pass out.”

“Sounds good,” Sig said, before yawning so hard his whole body shook. “I could use a cast like yours.”

We set off down the hall to the infirmary, which I kind of remembered how to get to when I was taken there this morning. Thankfully, Sig knew where he was going and corrected me a few times, despite being half asleep. When we got there, however, we found out that Doctor Hacksaw was busy treating the wounds some griffons had earned in the fighting at the quarry, so we sat off to the side and waited.

“The ringbird get back in one piece?” Sig asked.

“I mean, I’m here, right?” I asked back. “Dacie’s a good pilot. The autopilot did most of the hard work, but she did a little flying by herself once we got close.”

“Heh. Sounds like her,” he said. “My siblings and I are all looking forward to seeing her again, now that we’re all here in one piece.”

I chuckled. “C’mon, it’s only been several hours. Surely you don’t miss each other that much,” I said with a smile.

“I don’t know, we’re pretty damn close. We couldn’t even use the bathroom alone without somegriffon wondering where we went.”

We laughed for a few seconds at that. Oh, it felt so good to just laugh again and be happy after all of yesterday’s shit. Still, I had a few things that I wanted to know about last night. “What happened after I left?” I asked him. “Any trouble with the Crimson?”

Sig inhaled and closed his eyes. “No, thankfully, though it was a long night. Probably no more than half an hour after you and Dacie left, we heard the rotors of another ringbird approaching. We were already in the forest away from the quarry, so we were out of sight, but we could see its lights through the treetops. I had some of the elders move the flock deeper into the forest while me and my siblings stood watch near the quarry, just in case they decided to go poking around, looking for us.”

“Did they?” I asked.

“Half-heartedly, maybe,” Sig said. “They were almost certainly more concerned about the stolen ringbird than finding where we’d run off to. They didn’t spend too long at the quarry, only enough time to touch down and scavenge anything of value we’d left behind. Which was mostly our fusion generator and any fuel cores we still had for it. That’s going to be a bitch to replace.” Shrugging, he leaned back against the wall and massaged his sore wing. “The ringbird took off as soon as they’d put that in its hold, and the pegasi that were with it followed. They did some sweeping over the immediate area, but the forest is too dense for a ringbird to land, so I guess they figured we must’ve moved it somewhere else. Last we saw them, they were going south to check the river before they probably flew back to the dam.”

“Well, that’s good,” I said. “I was worried that when I woke up I was going to find out that the Crimson had caught you guys. Glad to hear that everything went alright.”

Sig just chuckled. “Well, mostly. We had to chase off a pack of wargs when we accidentally stumbled into their territory.” When he saw that I had no idea what those were, he elaborated. “Those six-legged wolf things you saw when the Crimson tried to execute us. Nobody got really hurt, though. Just a few bite marks that we bandaged quickly.”

“Eesh. Glad I wasn’t there,” I said, grimacing at the thought. Those things looked like they could move fast, and if they attacked the flock, they would’ve caused a lot of panic. “You didn’t sleep at all, though?”

Sig shook his head. “I was keeping watch.”

I frowned at him. “Others could’ve done that for you.”

“It was my fault anyway that the Crimson drove them from the quarry,” Sig said. “So I kept them safe, made sure that the Crimson didn’t find them. And it’s not like I was alone,” he continued. “Remember what I said about my siblings way back when? When one of us gets watch, we all get watch.”

I smiled and pressed his hand with a hoof. “I’m glad that you and your siblings are together again.”

“Certainly for the time being, at least,” Sig said, nodding. “I missed them, and they missed me. I might have been cruel in going so long without seeing them, but after what happened last night…” He sighed and shook his head.

“You all needed to grieve together,” I said, finishing for him.

Sig sighed and bowed his head. “J and I were the closest. It’s going to be a long time before the pain scars over.” He looked at me, and I could see the sadness in his eyes. “I wish you had more time to get to know him.”

“Me too,” I said. “And I mean…” I fidgeted, searching for the right words to say. “If you want to talk, I’ll listen, you know? And your other siblings…”

“Yeah… yeah,” the griffon said, staring vacantly at the floor. “I’ll be with them, helping to comfort them. We could all use some time to ourselves.” He looked at me and faintly smiled. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” I said, patting Sig’s shoulder. “I’m just trying to help.”

“You’re so good at it,” Sig said. “Maybe you should become a counselor.”

I snorted and shook my head. “No way. I hate talking about emotions. They’re messy.”

“Right. You just prefer to let your emotions do the talking.”

I caught Sig’s smirk and rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I’m impulsive, I get it. But I think life’s more fun that way.”

The door opened next to us, and one of the griffons from Sig’s flock stepped into the hallway. Spotting us, he hesitantly approached. “Hey, uh, where’s the A block?”

Sig began to speak, but I was faster. “Head down the hall to the central stairs and go up two flights. Everything there is numbered, so as long as you know where you’re going you shouldn’t get lost.”

The griffon smiled at me and bowed his head. “Thanks.”

I waved him off. “No problem.”

He left us alone in front of the infirmary, and Sig chuckled and shook his head. “A week ago, you couldn’t walk around the Bastion without getting lost.”

“A week ago, I wasn’t a Sentinel,” I said, shrugging.

Sig nodded and patted my shoulder. “You’ve come a long way,” he said, softly smiling at me. “And it’s almost over. Don’t forget that.”

“I hope,” I said, shrugging. “I don’t think I could do this the rest of my life.”

Sigur was quiet for a moment, but ultimately he stood up and moved toward the door. “Don’t worry about that now. We’ll focus on saving your friends and taking down the Crimson first. After that, well, we can think about the future.” Tapping a button on the wall, the door hissed open, and he looked at me when I started to stand. “You don’t have to stick around, I can take care of myself. It’s not the first time I’ve had Hacksaw take a look at me.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “I was going to go see if Gauge wanted to get dinner anyway. See you in the mess in a bit?”

“Sure. I’ll make sure to bring the family,” he said, smiling. I suddenly realized just how crowded dinner was going to be with a few hundred more griffons joining us. I’d have to be fast to make sure we got our usual table. “Take care.”

Then he disappeared into the infirmary, leaving me alone in the hallway. I turned around and moved toward the stairs, already imagining dinner. Hopefully it would be another feast like when we liberated the Fort.

I still couldn’t shake the feeling that this was finally happening, though. Like, it finally began to strike me. We had the numbers. We had the machines. We had the firepower. We were finally on the verge of striking down the Crimson for good. In another week, we were going to be storming the dam, ready to put an end to this thing once and for all. The valley would be a better place, and I’d finally avenge Blackwash. The day was coming when the nightmare was finally going to end.

So how come I was afraid of it?