Grace sat patiently across from the still body of her friend. Freefall, according to some of the doctors, had finally regained some sort of consciousness. Though it only seemed to come and go as it pleased, while the colt still has a long way to go before he was running and galloping around with the other guards.

Sadly, this only started after Iron had already left that morning, however he’ll be happy to know that is longtime friend is well on the path to recovery. Quietly enjoying the serenity of his light smile while he slept. Grace remained quiet to her own thoughts while watching the Pegasus’ chest gently rise and fall.

Though even in her own little world, she can’t help but look at the many bandages and scars that he will now wear because of the actions of others, and her own. ‘All this for a little more land, goods and ore,’ the princess shook her head at the trivial circumstances that lead her nation to war with its neighbors.

A war that with what the others have at their disposal, Seren may not win, should the bonfire be lit up completely and not the few little fights here and there. ‘No pony, dragon, gryphon, dog, zebra or any of those under either of our commands deserves this…’ Grace told herself over and over again. Mentally making a note to try and reason with the new leaders of the DDR, should Iron and Egyes prove successful on their own mission. ‘I just hope that whoever takes over, is at least a little more negotiable than Reinhart.’

Should their efforts succeed, then they can move on to the same means of negotiation with the kingdom. Rhorkin always was more willing to talk than the DDR, if it hadn’t been for this mare digging her ‘talons’ in to the kings’ mind. He might still be willing to talk to Grace and settle things out with words, and not weapons.

‘Though whoever she is, she certainly is good at what she does,’ the princess’ eyes trail across the wounds of war that Free had sustained as she took it in yet again for the night. “I hope you’re being careful out there, Iron… I, admittingly, would like you to stay out of this place…” she said out loud in a whisper.

“You were an utter pain in my flank when we first met, and probably one of the most uncouth colts I’ve ever seen…” Grace kept going as she talked to herself in a silent prayer for the guards’, turned teacher, safe return, “though dare I say it… I would miss your true nature, should you wind up hurt… or worse.”

Though with a stir, the bed in front of her began to move, and silenced the mare.

“Ugh…” Free groaned out as he came too a bit from the long rest he was taking, “…why does it still feel like I got hit by a train?”

“Well… that’s what happens when you live up to your name,” Grace eerily chuckled across from him, watching as his ears perked up from the words of another, and his soft eyes found her own.

“Well then, didn’t know I had company…” he tried to sit up in his bed, though was quickly pushed back down on his back by the mares’ wing.

“No, stay put… you’re still very weak ya know,” she urged the guard to help himself, while easing her own mind at the same time.

“That much is certain…” he trailed off, looking over himself at the mess he’s become.

Wings shattered and likely to still be removed, body torn up here and there, with probably several other smaller fractures along his body that haven’t been detected. Yet after lying in a coma for the better part of a few days. Somehow, he’s still alive. ‘I can work with that much at least,’ the ever confident Pegisy told himself once again.

“Does it hurt?” Grace asked simply, knowing full well the answer she would get. She silently regretted ever even asking such a thing, but in the end, it’s the thought that counts.

“The meds they gave me are pretty damn good…” Free started to snicker from some of the very, very vivid dreams he’s had off in the night time realm while being pumped full of drugs, “then again, I already know what the doctors are planning on doing to them…” he said while gesturing to his wings.

“That will take some getting used to I know,” she said solemnly, knowing that to take a Pegisys’ wings was like to cut the horn off a unicorn. You rip a part of their very soul out of them, and while it may heal physically… mentally, some can’t deal with the loss. “Though if our mutual friend makes good on his work, you should still be able to get air born… to some extent.”

“Don’t tell me, Iron’s working on a project,” he waited for the mare to smile and nod his way before he bothered continuing, “whelp, they may shoot lightning bolts from their feathers by the time he’s done with ‘em, though at least I’ll have some sense of normalcy.”

Grace simply chuckled at the comment, knowing that there would likely be a whole new set of bells and whistles for the colt to uses when Iron’s done. Though as she looked her eyes back to him, she noticed his head pivoting back and forth around the room as he got a lay of the land.

“Where is that colt anyway?” Free asked, noting the stillness in the room, “I expected him to have at least dropped off a bottle of scotch for me, should I wake up.”

“Probably getting himself in more trouble than he can handle…” the mare rolled her eyes at first, before catching the quizative brow perking up from her words. “Iron had left this morning with Egyes and a small team,” Grace started to fill him in on what’s been going on sense he’s been out, “they’re headed to the DDR capital of Opal, in an attempt to cut the head off of one snake… so to speak.”

“Oh my,” Free faked a gasp, as he tried to stifle a chuckle, “well I almost feel sorry for them…”

“Don’t be, Iron was more than willing to go out to set things-”

“No no, not Iron and them, I mean the DDR,” Free corrected her before she got too far, “Seriously, you should see him when he’s in a fight… may get thrown around a lot and have the snot kicked out of him a few times,” he recalled the many times Iron has had to repair his suit after a fight from taking one too many punches, “but he’s sure to cause hell in the ranks of where ever he goes…”

“Exactly why I suggested it to him…” Grace held a hoof to her chest with all the regal poise of a proper princess, “I know he’s good at what he does, it just so happens one of his past times is figuring out how to make things that go bang.”

“Though I wouldn’t worry about him too much…” Free said, cutting her off, “he hates going to medical about as much as a four-year-old does going to the dentist.”

Grace froze where she sat, grasping the sides of the chair from the ever growing smirk on Frees’ face that he showed her. Her face spelling out sheer confusion, while his only played that he knew something she didn’t, as it finally dawned on her. “How much did you hear… exactly?”

“Oh… enough,” he mused with a chuckle, while he calmed her nerves down, “don’t worry, that will stay between you and I,” he let off with a little wink.

Silently Grace nodded in appreciation, while she fixed the one stray bang of hair that made its way across her face, if only to give her something to do, “Thank you… Free…”

“Not a problem at all, Grace…” letting out a yawn, sleep finally started to take over the colt once more as he laid there, “a little rough around the edges. Though all in all, not a bad colt, as you probably figured out by now…” Free passed her one last smirk, and in the dimly lit med ward at this time. Grace was thankful that it probably hid some of the ever growing amount of blood flushing her cheeks.

“Yes… yes I have,” she replied softly to him, almost saying it to herself more than any other present. “Take care Free, I’ll check up on you in the morning,” she ushered him to sleep with a simple blanket being brought up and over his chest, before making a hasty retreat from the teasing of the stallion.

While during the day the castle that she resided in would have been swarming with guards and other patrons of the crown going about and doing their bidding. At the wee hours of the morning, such as now, the halls were all but barren to the princess as she walked them tirelessly. Left to her own thoughts and devices.

Yet, even with the cooling breeze that brushed past her legs and ruffled her feathers. Grace couldn’t fight back the warmth in her face from the previous remarks. “Could I really be any more obvious with this?” she asked herself, before pondering some of the interaction she had with the lively colt, and finding it hard to keep a smile of her own off her face, “…Okay, so maybe half the time I would banter back and forth with him, it was for fun… and I might have been flirting a good bit of it…”

Pausing for a moment where she stood, the mare looked around her to make sure the coast was clear, she cocked back a wing and plowed it right in to her face. Giving her the mental reboot she hoped for to get her ducks in a row, or at least in the same pond.

“Alrighty maybe a tad more than half, in either case, you need a drink…” she groaned slightly from the smack, before stopping once more to realize what she said, “… and now you’re starting to sound like him.”

With one final groan from a deep part of her throat. Grace continued her walk back to her room. Going up stair case after stair case, she wondered why she didn’t just move her bedroom closer to the ground level, to prevent the long impending walks like these that would allow thoughts to plague her mind. But then whenever she thought of this, she remembered one simple truth…

The mare liked the privacy of having essentially a tower to herself.

Calmly trotting up to her door, Grace nodded to the lone guard that stood there on watch over the course of the night. “Good evening Leon,” she said to the gryphon, as he tightened the grip on his spear, “easy night, isn’t it?”

“Slow and calm ones always go by the slowest,” he started to yawn a bit, while the third hour of his watch struck. As he watched the princess canter up with a little more pep in her step than she should have had for this time of night, “Though you seem a little spryer than I was expecting for this hour.”

“Oh… It’s just been an, eventful few days,” the princess responded with a slight smirk as she kept her eyes off to the side, hoping that some of the warmth in her face had died down on her way here. “Why don’t you go down and get some coffee?” Grace offered to him, mostly to give her some time to calm down, “I doubt we’ll be having any trouble here tonight, so I think you can afford the walk.”

“…Thank ya kindly princess,” Leon said with a tip of his helmet, before extending the same courtesy to her, “anything I can grab you while I’m down there?”

Thinking about it now, she may have wanted to go to bed, but then again a good cup of tea always helped to put her mind at ease. “Hmm… Mint Tea? Could you?”

“It will be done, your majesty.”

With a light bow, Leon made his way down the hallway, as Grace turned herself and walked in to her room. Closing the door behind her, she noticed the same ghostly chill in the air, as if a window was left open during her absence. Turning around though, the princess looked around the room, and only saw from the flicker of the fire place a lone figure there residing in her chair.

The light of the flames waved across the various metal plates that dotted along the mares’ body, as they made up the frame for her prosthetics and held them in place so she could function normally. While the false wings on her back remained folded up for comfort, and with an eerie glow. From around the metal horn, the decanter beside her rose off the table and filled the glass next to it.

Snapping her eyes to the princess that just disturbed her, the shadowy mare slowly started to grow a toothy grin on her face at seeing the prize she had been waiting for, quite literally walk right on in through the door. All the while, her metallic eyes took on a new shimmer to them from the flickering flame.

“Princess Saving Grace…” Bronze rose up from her seat, “A pleasure to make your acquaintance…”

Tasting the venom in those words, Grace made an attempt to beat feet and run while she was still close to the door. However, a pair of heavy hooves put a stop to that thought instantly as Grace found herself lifted off the ground and dropped in to a chair facing the other mare.

Looking over her shoulder, the princesses’ eyes met only the empty visor of those that followed the one before her, while they remained silent and draped in full combat armor. “A pleasure indeed…” Grace tried to say simply, without sounding too bitter as she talked to the mare that caused so much trouble for her already from behind the curtains, “… to who do I owe the visit, Miss…?”

“Bronze…” she stated flatly, “Bronze Bolt.”

“Well, Miss Bolt…” Grace treaded her hooves lightly, “I know the who now, so to what then do I owe your visit?”

Bronze started to smile at her once more, not the venomous smile that Grace was expecting, but one that was full of pride and sincerity. “You and I have… unfinished business, to attend to…” she started to explain, watching as the confused face on the mare in front of her grew with every passing second. Reaching down on to the table with her talon, Bronze lifted up a glass steadily, “Care for one? I have to say you do have rather good taste…”

The princess sat there for a moment, but then graciously took the glass in a hoof as she eyed it curiously. If the mare went through all this trouble to sneak in here just to kill her with a poisoned drink, then she would have outright killed her by now. Sipping gently on the brim, the mare knew the beverage all too well, having shared a recent glass with a colt that’s been on her mind more as of late.

“I know not of any business you and I have to discuss…” Grace said, “After all, this is the first time we met.”

“The first time you and I met, yes… but not the first time our paths have crossed…” Bronze hissed at her, watching as Graces’ eyes peered at her talons that started to dig in to the chair that she sat in, “and I’ve been waiting a long time for this, dearie…”

Gulping down a third of her glass in one go, Grace swallowed with it the lump in her throat before she even dared speak, “Is that why you’ve been helping those two neighbors of mine? To get back at me for something that I didn’t know I did?”

Taken back by the response, Bronze started to chuckle, “Actually, they’re just a part of the plan… you’re why I’m here though, you… we’re my drive…” once again, the princess face painted itself the pure expression of confusion at its finest, “Allow me to elaborate… lets go back quite a few years, shall we?”

Sitting calmly at her work bench, Bronze looked over the many text books that she had acquired on the subjects of magic and their properties, keeping ‘Magical theory of the ancients’ close to hoof should the need arise. Everything was set just as it should be, she had her new limbs that would help carry her a little better. She had the right incantations and runes on the sides of the slot that the gem would go in, to better transfer its energy to the limb.

While on top of all this, Bronze even managed to get a hold of a unicorn willing to help her out and charge a gem for her. She wasn’t sure if it was because news of what happened to her father got around the school, or that a short time later Bronze was hobbling about a broken filly with her head hung low everywhere in town she went. Yet something about her situation, made the one unicorn she would have never expected, help her out in her time of need.

“Thank you, Marble…” Bronze silently gave some simple words of appreciation to the one that sought to help her.

He hadn’t been nearly as mean to her in the later month or two sense her incident. For the most part, he just hung his head as low as hers, and kept to himself. Maybe he felt guilty for all he had done to her over the school years, maybe her life falling off the deep end finally gave him the smack in the face he needed to right himself, maybe things weren’t all right in the young stallions life and seeing Bronze like this brought it a little closer to home. Whatever the case may have been, when Marble saw her drawing out some designs with her teeth one day at school, the curious colt swallowed his pride and asked what she was up to.

Bronze was hesitant to respond at first, and while even for being a unicorn, Marble may have not been the sharpest knife in the drawer. He at least listened long enough to get the grasp on the concept when she explained it to him. To which after a few minutes, she was more than happy to go in to her little project, and some of the details. Even if he had made her life a living hell for most of her education, talking to him did bring some sort of smile to Bronzes’ face, if only for the connection.

Later on the next day, Bronze went to her locker, and found a small envelope taped to the outside. In it, was a pair of emerald fragments, giving off the ambient glow of the energy coursing through them… the smile she got from Marble that day, told her all she needed to figure out who dropped it off.

Gently placing the gems neatly in their holders, Bronze crimped the metal pegs on the side up and over the gem to hold them in place. Looking over to make sure everything was set for them, the young mare used what she could with her teeth to unhinge the old legs she had been given to make way for the new. It was a troublesome process, and while she could have easily asked her mother to help her. Aurora was passed out at this time of night on the couch, getting some much needed shut eye before the early shift at a local dinner.

Eventually though, with a decent level of effort, Bronze managed to get both limbs off of her. Swapping them out with her new ones to replace them. “Okay… let’s see if this works…” she cleared her head, focusing all of her mind on the one action she wanted most right now. Move, she told her limbs. Trying to bend all of their spirit against itself to do her bidding.

However, after several minutes of sitting there meditating in anticipation. Bronze sat their defeated, as she looked over the limp legs still on the table. Leaning her muzzle over, she tilted the pages of one of the books to another section that she skimmed through earlier. Looking for anything she may have missed.

“Let’s see here…” she continued skimming, ‘with gems in place, the pure power of will is needed to force ones’ magic inside them to do their bidding…’ Bronze read to herself in the back of her head.

Will… that was a strong word in itself. The young filly would still have to find a way to drive her pent up magic inside her to flow how she wanted it to flow. Though what could she use to poke and prod it in the direction she needed? A simple strong mind wasn’t going to make it happen, she needed something else, something that took her mind and put it in a place where she didn’t want to be…

A place where she felt scared.

A place where she felt angry.

A place where her own will, would be driven by those emotions alone.

“Hey small stuff”, “You little twerp!”, “Ain’t nothing natural about you! You hear me?!” slowly but surely. The various insults that had been thrown at her over the years started to get to the mare, fueling a fire inside that she seldom had ever seen. Whether they came from classmates, ponies walking past her and mumbling, or even some of her own teachers. The years spent under the constant barrage of affronts hadn’t done much to help the mare along, other than give her something to cry herself to sleep at night over.

Though now… she may have a way of directing all that pent up anger.

“You’ll amount to nothing, Bronze… remember that”, “Poor little Bronzy, crying over in the corner like the worthless snot she is!”. After every one came to her mind, she felt a new sense of energy surge up in her. Like a wave crashing against the beach, it slowly started to grow and grow. Going from a low tide, to a high tide, and eventually reached what she could only describe as a hurricane on the shores of her mind.

Traveling through the years in her head, Bronze relived every insult over and over again, twitching as she felt them hit her in her very heart. While some of the times, she simply recalled the beatings she would get from other kids at school… another string of thoughts came to her mind.

Ones of a different sort.

“That a girl, Bronze,” she heard her father call to her, as if he was standing right behind her. “A wonderful job there dear,” Aurora said to her daughter once after helping to fix a cabinet that was broken. The simplest of memories, brought up the biggest pain in her body as they were all taken to the fore front of her mind. “Child of mine, you’re going to do great things in life… you just don’t know it yet.”

There in her mind, stood her father getting ready to walk out the door for the last time, as he looked down to her little eyes. “I love you,” she heard from her father that day, “I love you, my little Bronzy,” she recalled her mother saying many times while she rested in the hospital. So much pain, over nothing at the time.

One scuffle, that tore a family to bits.

Bronze clenched her teeth in her mouth, grinding them down to what felt like her gums. She didn’t care if she was crying at her workbench, she didn’t care that she had lost her limbs, she didn’t even care for the pain that was building up in her stumps from where they were fused to her ‘limbs’. All that mattered to the mare, was mending the pain that her family had felt. Her father, for losing his life, and her mother, for doing more than her health should have even allowed. All to ensure that Bronze herself was taken care of, over her own wellbeing.

“Mom… Dad… I love you,” Bronze said quietly to herself, all the while the pent up energy in her started to surge around.

She could feel it, the storm raging on and on in her small frame. The hurricane was growing, and it needed more than a swimming pool to contain what it had to offer. Snapping her eyes open, the young filly looked to her limb that had been thrown together from whatever she could get a hold of. All of her ambition, all of her focus, and all of her will… driven in to one simple word, and goal.

“Retribution…”

And with that, the hoof moved.

“You see now why I’m here?” Bronze asked to Grace as she finished up with a synopsis of what was likely the turning point in her life… or at least one of them.

“You blame me…” Grace hung her head with guilt, not for herself, but for what had happened to the young mare.

Clearly the pony sitting across from her had a talent that she couldn’t, and very few others could likely, shake a stick at. Perhaps, under different circumstances, Bronze may have wound up teaching at a college or being a famous inventor. Though the cards she was dealt gave her a different story to be told.

“In a way, yes,” Bronze answered flatly, “your parents saw to it that a fight would have been adverted, though one still broke out… and helped to take probably the only colt I ever loved, away from me.” The mare clenched back her own tears for a moment, trying to remain strong in front of who she saw as her enemy, “it tore me apart… and watching what happened to my mother over the years, as she worked more and more to try and make up for it, did nothing to help.”

“What of your mother?” Grace tried to reason with her on a different level, “What would she say to you about what you’re doing now?”

“Nothing… My mother died just before I graduated high school,” the mare said hollowly without a hint of emotion in her eyes, “she stuck around for a while, longer than I was expecting her to, seeing how she would work herself to the ground nearly every day… but we all have our breaking point,” a deep sigh passed her lips while she rested back in her seat, taking a drink from the glass, “she died, and considering I didn’t have anything to go home to anymore… I moved on too much bigger things.”

Grace bit her tongue, trying to gauge the expression on the mares’ face across from her, “I did none of this though,” one last ditch card was thrown on the table by the princess, “I didn’t send your father out there, I had nothing to do of that. Even now I tried to stop the fighting, and stuck to the treaty!” she let her tongue loose for a moment, before quickly reeling it back in.

“Tut-tut…” Bronze snapped from her mouth, “it’s not polite to yell you know? Especially not now, someone might-” The sound of a handle turning set them all on alert in a moment, with in a second, the door swung open and in stepped a single dragon made up of pure silver.

Silvertongue had trouble sleeping, and while he was recently having issues, he knew very well that his friend had been going through the same thing lately. Hoping for a late night chat, with possibly a glass or two of her friends’ personal stash, the drake moseyed himself to this part of the castle. Opening the door without a second thought.

Until that is he found a blade held to his throat by a strange armored pony.

Looking around the room, Silver took in the sight to behold. Grace clearly struck with fear for his life as she shot up from her chair to see him, the various armored colts that stood about not even paying her any heed. All the while, a single mare sat in the same place she was when he first walked in, to now even half a minute later.

Resting is eyes on the mare across from him, he watched her grin start to grow ever more prominent, “good evening…Silvertongue…”

“Evening, Bronze,” he purred across his tongue to the mare, “I wish you had told me you were going to make an appearance tonight.”

Grace meanwhile, stood there in total disbelief, as she watched the dagger from his neck get placed back in its sheath. None of it made sense to her, here was her friend of years, sense she was but a filly herself. Now talking to a mare that sought to destroy her very existence, or at the very least, her country.

“But… how… wha-… huh?” she stammered out, while Silver took a few more steps inside.

“Don’t act so shocked now, Grace,” he replied to her simply, trying to numb his words as much as he physically could manage, “there’s been a lot that’s happened behind closed doors.”

With a quick contraction of her gut, Grace mustered up enough snot and mucus to spit on the one she considered a close friend. “How could you do this to me?!” she shouted at the top of her lungs in his face, before cranking back a wing and smacking Silver square across the face.

She may have not been the strongest of mares, not by a long shot, though her body she kept in shape with a regular workout routine and a preference to fly on her own to most places she had to go. Rearing up a pair of hind legs, her hooves met the muzzle of one of the ponies behind her. With a dull thud, the helmet was rocketed off of its seat, snapping straps of leather that kept it connected to the rest of the suit as it smacked the wall on its own. Turning around to try and get a drop on the stunned colt, Grace instead found herself staring at not a face.

But a hollowed shell.

Halting her advance, the mare fell to the floor on her flank as she tried to scoot away from the headless stallion, while her brain processed what she had just seen. As she still swore she could feel the piercing eyes staring back at her, “Wh-w-what are they?” she mumbled out.

Bronze calmly rose up from her seat, and picked the helmet up in her talons before depositing it back on the headless horse. “They, are my loyal subjects,” she answered, as the colt shook the helmet to ensure it was properly in place, “I call them Automatons… hollowed suits of armor, with nothing more than a rune place inside, along with a charged gem for energy, and an advanced level Possession spell bonded to it.” Bronze stroked the false mane on the back of the helmet, “The spell gives them a soul of some sort to run off of, while still allowing them to think on their own, being trained and imprinted to only respond to the one that created them… namely, yours truly.”

With a light pat on the head, the colt that quite literally just lost his, took his place alongside his brothers at the side of the room. “They feel not pain, nor remorse, and certainly not mercy… they’re the perfect soldiers,” she almost forgot about the others in the room for a moment, as she admired her creations, “with the power and intellect of an actual brain, but the obedience and efficiency… of a machine… rather fitting, wouldn’t you say?” she asked while looking over her own mechanical upgrades that adorned her body.

Grace looked at both Bronze and her subjects. Each of them created in her own mind, from her very soul, and if they were anything that she just described. Then each of them were capable of being a one stallion army in their own right. Slowly, the princess shook her head at what she just saw, while taking in to account everything else that she’s learned of the pony before her.

“You’re insane…” the princess muttered.

“No… I’m motivated,” Bronze said as she got closer and raised Graces’ chin up, so she could meet her own eyes, “that’s something I must thank your country for doing… giving me the drive I needed in life, to see what I was capable of.” Falling back to Graces previous statement, before they were interrupted by Silver, Bronze elaborated, “see you may have not been directly responsible for what had happened to my family, but you inherited the blame when you picked up the crown… I’m merely finishing the game.”

In the still silence of her gratitude towards Grace, the princess had but only one question on her mind, and the more she thought of it. The more it nagged at her brain like a tumor, “Why…?” the whisper fell from her lips on to the nearly deaf ears of Bronze, “Why are you doing this? You were dealt a bad deck of cards in life, but so have so many others… so I ask you, why?” she looked up in to the brassy eyes of her aggressor, “why do you have the right to wage a war in the shadows against my country.”

Slowly but surely, Bronzes’ smile left her face, only to return with a different tune to it. All as if this was the one question that she had been waiting to hear from the mare, “because for the first time, I have the means to end the fighting… and prevent the loss of further life for all the-”

A twist of the knob garnered the attention of all those present once again, as the door slowly swung open to a gryphon walking in slowly on the scene, “Your majesty?” Leon said as he looked down at the tray to ensure none of its contents had spilled over, ignoring all that was going on around him, “I hope you don’t mind me barging in like this, but-” he stopped the moment his eyes caught on to the prospect before him.

Grace remained on her flank with Bronze standing mere inches from her. Silvertongue had his arms crossed over his chest as he watched the mares talking. While in the dim light of the fire, Leon could see several strange soldiers lined up on the side of the room, silently standing as over watch to them all. All eyes turned to him in an instant, though only the mares had their expressions change. Graces’ went to full fear in her eyes, while the other mares’ smile twisted itself in to something even more sinister than before.

The gryphon wasn’t the smartest one in his class, not by a long shot, but even he knew this was bad. Dropping the tray with a dull clack to the ground, he grabbed on to his rapier with a talon and drew it out to his side. “Weapons! Drop em’!” he shouted to the other soldiers there in the room, and towards the mare that clearly didn’t belong here.

“Oh come now…” Bronze rolled her eyes to the intruder, “what do you have to bargain with? You have no play here…”

Again, not the smartest one…

Looking off to either side of him, Leon realized that he was in fact, alone. He had no back up, and while he paid attention to those in front of him, he missed the two armored colts closing the door behind him. Silvertongue wasn’t reacting in any way to try and help, and even though in his mind gryphons were naturally stronger than ponies. Something didn’t seem right about those that stood around him.

With a soft sigh, Bronze steadily raised a claw to the male, “I don’t have time for this,” a simple flick of the wrist later, and a lone barrel was produced as it extended out of her fore limb.

Leon eyes widened just in time to meet his demise, at the short and quick execution of the mares’ own gun. Landing to the ground with a sound similar to the tray he just dropped. The only other sound there for the time being was the soft whimpers of Grace, as she looked at the remains of her fallen subject, and one she had known to some extent over the years.

Silvertongue lifted a foot up and moved it a step back, keeping it out of the ever growing pool of blood that started to stain the carpet of the bed room lounge, “I wish you hadn’t done that… now how am I going to explain this?” he asked to Bronze.

“Simple…” she replied, as her horn flashed quickly with a new silent command to her troops, and they started to move as ordered, “Tell them you came in, and found that guard dead, with the princess here… missing.”

Raising a scaled brow to her, “Where are you going with this?” the drake wondered her angle.

“Thanks to a nice little tip off…” Bronze winked at him, as she turned her attention to the mare still on the ground, “I know that some soldiers were dispatched to the DDR to eliminate Chief Reinhart… which means, when Seren hears of their beloved princesses capture… where will they go hunting?”

“…To the only ones that weren’t being dealt with at the time,” Silver answered as it dawned on him of her plan.

With a snap of her talons to one another, she made note of the light bulb moment her acquaintance had, “Bingo… Seren will come marching on the Gryphon Kingdom, all on their own, I just need you to stick around to strike the match,” with that said. Bronze made her way closer to Grace, who instinctively started to back up on the floor away from the mare, “don’t be afraid now… not when there’s much more to be fearful of later on,” she leaned down to eye level with the princess, “you’re coming with me.”

A second later, as Grace let out a slight squeal, a bag from one of the automatons was draped over her head and everything in her vision went dark. Not only because of the bag, but also because of the heavy hoof cracking against the back of her skull. Sending the princess in to a dream landscape that quickly became a nightmare.