While on any other official occasion, the chariot used by her majesty would have been used to move her to another town. Though in this special case, Grace preferred to fly her way to see what had been done to her own citizens. Amongst her in diamond formation, with her in the center and her trusted drake next to her, were the royal guards. Free at the head of them all, led the pack as they all beat wind and flew farther south than most of them have ever gone.

“Coming up to our target, your majesty,” Free kept the formalities up while they were in the presence of other guards. The distance may have been a days’ journey for a good stout stallion to make on hoof galloping, though for a capable Pegasus, it could be made in just a few hours.

Looking down below, expecting to see several buildings standing as they approached, all Grace saw was rubble. Stretching around the perimeter of what she assumed would have been the town had it still be standing, all the princess saw was heaps of broken buildings, charred husks of homes, and amongst them all…

Many rotting corpses of her fallen.

Landing on the ground, Grace covered her mouth with her wings, if only to hold back some of the stench of decay that lingered around the area. Overall, there was nothing left standing. Any and all buildings that stood the test of time, were wiped out by whatever had torn through this town like a whirl wind.

“There doesn’t seem to be any sign of life, ma’am,” another soldier commented as they moved down what was left of the main street that cut through the town.

“Fan out your search,” Grace ordered as she looked at the destruction, “look for survivors… if any, they may be able to tell us what happened here. If none are found, look for things… out of the ordinary.”

Nodding, all of those that came with her went on the search for answers, except for three. Freefall and another guard stood by their princess in case she required their aid, just as they had been trained to do. As Silver followed his old friend, like he always had. Quietly, the group crept through what remained of the town, finding not much of anything amongst the many dead that lied about.

The guard that accompanied them, investigated a body close by to them as they walked. The stallion on the ground wasn’t a soldier, he looked to be just a regular working class colt. The decaying plank of wood upon his flank, with both a hammer and an axe gave some insight to his trade, though why any army would target this town the colt understood little of.

“Many of the dead have been left out to rot, and were likely fed on by some of the wild life…” he commented, drawing their attention.

“How can you be so sure?” Grace asked.

Holding his tongue at first as the princess approached the body, the colt pointed to the many tracks that surrounded them and the meat that had been laid out for the taking. “I was a young scout at one point in my early days, I learned different animal tracks fairly well,” he brought his head closer to the prints that were set out for him, “some of these are wolves, while there’s also a bear that made its way through here at some point… though eventually the flesh was too rotten for their liking and they stopped feeding…”

“Please,” the princess hushed him, “Stop…”

“My apologies,” the guard lowered his head, “I didn’t mean to offend… though you might like these tracks.” He pointed to the others that approached the body in one direction.

Upon inspection by Grace, it didn’t take her any formal training to figure out where those had come from. With the three obvious claw marks that dug in the dirt in front, and the single one on the back. Any grade schooler could tell her that they belonged to a gryphon.

The Gryphons had made their first move finally, officially on record that is. It couldn’t have been anyone else in her opinion. ‘This town was a trade route for the kingdom with its ease of access from the water,’ Grace thought as she took in to account to what reason they would have to attack.

Though her companion read her mind, just as the mare thought it all out, “There isn’t much for the kingdom to take from this place,” Silver said to her in hushed tones, as his tuned nose pointed towards the sky, “I don’t even smell any sign of the DDR, let alone the gryphons…”

“Never the less…” Grace replied to him as she looked back at the tracks, “the marks don’t lie.”

“What was that, Princess?” Free asked as he overheard her.

“Nothing, Freefall,” she waved him off, “just talking to myself…”

Free simply nodded, as he took his own look at the colt on the ground. Whatever took him down, it wasn’t pretty. He may have not been a guard, but the brick house of a stallion went down swinging. Though one thing caught his eye, as he looked over his wounds. A single hole, dug in to the side of the colts’ skull, beckoned more attention than the other guard would have given it as he noticed the exit wound.

“Grace, a word please,” Free muttered as he trotted up to her side after making the discovery.

“Yes Free? What is it?”

“What’s the name of this place?”

“It’s a back woods town, one that most of the nation doesn’t even pay attention to,” she humbly admits, though now wished that she put more protection for those closest to her enemies, “Riverton was only watched by a small group of guards in the area, most of them were reservists, activated by the impending fight… one that seems to have gone hot.”

“Riverton…” Free said once more, drawing a simple cock eyed glare from the princess, “the boat that me and Iron took in to the kingdom passed by this place, it was one of the markers that the Captain looked for on his way… though we never saw it.”

The news perked Graces’ interest even more than it already was by the events that had taken place here. She knows not when this attack was carried out, though with the last report from those guards here, combined with Iron and Frees’ accounts. It gives her at least some sort of time table, “if that’s the case,” she thought about it, “Then Riverton was leveled less than two weeks ago…”

“It would seem so… though that’s not my point,” Free recalled his memory back to fighting the gryphons that were armed with their new tech, most importantly, the marks they left afterwards, “upon that colts’ head, is a small puncture wound, one that was blown out on the other side,” he took a breath, taking in all the lives that were lost around them, “it’s the same wound that their new weapons might leave… do you know what I think?”

Grace stopped for a moment as she put the pieces together in her head, “this place… was nothing more than a test bed?”

“Precisely.”

The thought that a town was leveled by her enemy, would infuriate any leader on its own. Though the idea that it was all done, just to test the effectiveness of some new weapons, before sending them to the battlefield. That, was the final straw for the mare.

Clenching her teeth, Grace grinded away at the enamel while she hissed, “That rocket weapon that you’d seen. Could it have caused this level of destruction?”

Free took another glance around him. From what he saw, it only took one round to sink a boat, and several to level a pier. In theory, there’s no reason to him why it wouldn’t have been possible. “It might have, though they would have had to have an entire force here to level a town…”

“That’s all I needed to hear…” Grace continued to walk quietly amongst the ruins, with Silvertongue in tow.

Both Free and the other guard with them simply looked at one another in confusion. “Princess, what are you getting at?” Free asked while Grace stopped in her tracks.

“The gryphons had thrown down one of their cards… I think it’s time we did the same,” she remarked, considering they had sat on the side lines far too long by this point, “whatever kind of new weaponry they were using to cause all of this. It must be stopped…”

“So what are you proposing?” Silver asked.

“That, I will figure out when we get back to the castle, Freefall,” she called to him, watching as the ever loyal guard popped to attention, “you and Silver take to the skies, document what you see so it can be brought to the council later on. That will force their hooves…” nodding to her, the pair took off instantly. Leaving only the princess, and the other guard with her, “you and I will go to meet up with the others. See what they may have found…” without even a word, the guard saluted her and followed her lead down the road.

Amongst the craters that dotted the remnants on the town, Grace and her guard walked. The eerie silence between them, only seemed to further the dreary outcome of this war should she fail her nation. With the new tech that the gryphons had displayed to her little scouting party, who knows what else they had up their talons.

‘The DDR will just have to be put on the back burner for now…’ the mare thought to herself.

The likely hood that the two separate nations had gathered the same tech may be slim to nil, but then again, Grace must take all things in to account. They already would be working together, against her, for their own benefit. Who’s to say that they haven’t shared a little more than just a common enemy? Though with this attack against her own nation, the Gryphons will be the first to feel the backlash from it. The DDR will have to wait their turn.

Rounding about what looked to be a desolated dinner, the pair ran in to the other group of guards, as they scavenged around the area. Looking for some sort of traces of the enemy that they had missed, the only thing that really was left behind were hundreds of metal casings lying about the ground everywhere they went.

“We found hoof-fulls of them, your majesty,” the scout deposited a pile of the metal cases in front of the mare.

The handy work was familiar to her, the same thing that Iron had shown her back in her room a nights’ back. How much time the attackers would have needed for such an operation, she couldn’t tell, though with these weapons at their disposal. It wouldn’t have taken much to wipe the town clean off the map. Dropping the spent round to the ground where it belongs, Grace looked around at the dozens of other cartridges that littered the remains.

“They were thorough…” one guard mentioned as he walked calmly out of the ruins of a building that barely stood together, “not a single creature was left standing. Yet the surrounding forest is untouched by whatever they used to do this.”

‘Methodical, calculating, concise…’ Grace thought for a moment, ‘the gryphons I know are usually more brash in their displays of power.’ She took another second to silently admire the precision of the attack that destroyed her own inhabitants, “Something else is in play here…” the princess muttered out loud as she walked past them.

Looking to each other, a majority of the guards were silent to their princess’s words. It took the higher ranking of the group to finally break the silence, “Ma’am, what would you have us do now?” he waited for her to turn a head to him, “there’s nothing left, no survivors, and not much else to go on about how they did this… what’s the next step?”

Before she could answer, Silver and Free landed amongst them. Giving the mare another moment to consider what had happened here, “Area’s documented, and destruction noted,” Silver said as he rolled up a parchment and tucked it in to small bag he kept under his wing, “with this I’m willing to bet my wings that you’ll get a declaration of war… if that’s what you’re seeking.”

Although this place was once a quiet and quaint little town, it now fell as just a test bed for the gryphons. The princess will just have to take the loss on it, as she accepted the defeat. A loss that won’t go unpunished, “Take to the skies, we’re headed back…” she ordered as they all started to stretch out their wings for the flight back, “this town was attacked unprovoked, and without warning…” she said to the guard that spoke out, “see to it that the guard posts in other outlying towns are set on alert, make sure that the unicorns there are ready to send a quick SOS message should trouble arrive at their door step.” The guard nodded as himself, and the others took off from there.

With that, the princess found herself on the ground, amongst her were only Free and Silver as they waited for her to make a move. ‘It doesn’t get any easier…’ she said to herself, catching one last look of the area, before taking to the sky to be rid of this place.