The farm was in the middle of nowhere. Marble hadn’t ever thought about just how far it was from anything important until now, pulling into a train station miles from anything except a post office and a general store. They didn’t even have a Hayburger Princess within a day’s travel, which was hardly an impressive beacon of civilization but...

She dragged her luggage from the train.

“You shouldn’t get off here, Ma’am,” the conductor warned. The stout earth pony tried to lift up her trunk, almost throwing out his back. “What the heck? Are you carrying bricks in this thing or something?”

“Mm…” Marble looked away, easily hefting it.

“Look, the thing is, the Imperial Army is going to be coming through here soon. You don’t want to be here when they do. If you want, I’ll take you to any other stop up the line. It isn’t safe.”

“Thank you,” Marble muttered. “But I have business here. Family matters.”

She would have said nothing ever changed, but that was only true for somepony who didn’t have her careful eye for detail. Marble could tell that the west field hadn’t been worked in too long, and the fence they’d put up to mark the trail to the crystal cavern was broken, and had been for a while if the foliage growing around the weatherbeaten boards was any indication.

It should have been fixed. The fact it hadn’t been worried Marble, and she hurried her steps, barely feeling the heavy luggage on her back.

A shadow passed over her, and she reacted without thinking, dropping and rolling, her trunk falling to the side. Marble grabbed a rock when she hit the ground and threw it blindly.

“Woah!” A rainbow-maned pegasus dodged the stone, the rock barely missing her. “Easy there, I’m a friend, not foe!”

Marble stood up, feeling stupid now. The pegasus mare was in an EUP uniform, and she looked like she’d been gnawed on by a dragon. One of her wings was missing entirely, replaced with a steel prosthetic.

“I’m Sergeant Dash. I’m guessing you’re the one Pie sister I haven’t met. Maud and Pinkie are part of my squad.” She landed and offered a hoof to shake

Marble shook it gingerly.

“I really hope you’re here for the same reason we are,” Dash said, glancing towards the farmhouse.

“I came to get my parents out,” Marble said, nervously.

“Good,” Dash said, nodding sharply. “Maybe you can talk some sense into ‘em. They’ve been acting like a couple of foals! Your sisters are inside. I decided to stay out here and keep an eye on things from up top.”

Marble tilted her head.

Dash coughed. “Alright, I skipped out because all this family junk is super awkward. Please just go and help them? If it was my folks I’d just drag them out by their tails or push their house somewhere safe but, uh, it’s harder to push a house that isn’t made of clouds and I don’t think your folks would like being foalnapped to safety. My parents would probably give me a bucking award for being the number one foalnapper.”

Marble sighed and moved to grab her trunk.

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll get it.”

“It’s kind of heavy…” Marble waned.

“I said I got this!” Dash snapped, struggling to try and lift it.

Marble backed away and stepped up to the door, knocking and glancing back to see Dash pushing it, an inch at a time, grunting and struggling for traction.

The door opened, and Limestone glared out.

“Of course you show up now when we don’t need you,” she muttered, spitting the words.

Marble didn’t say anything, just staring down at her and letting the silence become awkward.

“Fine!” Limestone snapped, looking away. “Just-- don’t cause trouble! Maud and Pinkie are doing enough of that already.”

Marble waited for Limestone to back up, then walked in, stalking past her and into the kitchen, where she could hear the sounds of cooking and quiet conversation.

“You have to leave, Dad! There’s an entire army coming this way!”

“We must trust in faith to protect us.”

“Celestia isn’t a Goddess, and even if she was, she’s the one who ordered ponies to evacuate! Dash, tell them--”

Marble stepped into the kitchen in the middle of the argument, Pinkie looking at her and expecting somepony else.

“Marble?” She asked, surprised. "Wow. You got taller!"

"Mm." Marble smiled a little.

Their mother looked up from her cooking.

“She’s here to try and kick us out too,” Limestone muttered, trying to shove past Marble and failing to move her. Marble stepped aside after giving her a chance to ask nicely, which Limestone decided not to take, preferring to seethe internally instead.

“I heard about the evacuation,” Marble said, quietly. “Why aren’t you leaving?”

“This is our land,” her father said. “We aren’t going to be forced off of it by anypony. Not even an army. They may well pass by entirely. There is nothing to forage here, and nothing of military import.”

“They want ponies,” Maud stated. “They use mind control and make you part of their army. With no defenses, this farm would be a minimal gain, but at no risk. They aren’t going to just ignore you.”

“The military can’t hold all the empty land in this part of Equestria. There aren’t any forts or walls or anything,” Pinkie explained. “They’re pulling back to cities and some of the larger towns.”

“If you don’t go, you’ll die,” Marble said. “Please listen to them.”

“I will not leave, and that is final,” her father said, folding his hooves. “If I die, then I will be buried with my ancestors.”

“And you want mother and Limestone to be buried with you?” Marble asked.

He glared at her, having to look up. Marble didn’t visibly react. She’d been scared of him, a long time ago. He wasn't so intimidating after the things she'd seen.

“Can somepony give me a hoof with this?” Dash yelled, from the front door. "I changed my mind about being able to do this myself!"

Marble turned and stomped off towards her, the windows rattling with her deliberate steps.

The pegasus was sweating, having somehow managed to get the trunk up to the door and halfway through. Marble put a hoof on it and pulled in a way that should have been impossible without grip or leverage. The suitcase moved easily, like it was weightless.

“Thanks,” Dash said. “I bit off more than I could chew there.”

“Mm…” Marble set it to the side.

“What’s in there, anyway?”

Marble considered answering but was saved from having to decide what to say by her mother.

“Marble, you have to understand,” she said. “We can’t just leave. This farm is like part of the family. I know you and Maud and Pinkie are all trying to find your way in life, but what about Limestone? Running this farm has been her dream. Would we even be able to come back after the war was over?”

“Lady, you’re all crazy,” Dash said. “It’s just a bunch of rocks! Tell you what, come to Canterlot and I’ll get you some rocks myself! All the gravel you want! I'll even throw it in your bucking yard so you can farm it! I just wanna get my squad out of here before the feathering Imperial Army comes and they have to end up fighting you because you’re a crystal slave!”

“Young lady, in this house we do not swear.”

“I’m not part of your family and I don’t give a flying feather if you disapprove or not,” Dash retorted.

“If you want dinner tonight, you’ll apologize.”

“I’ll survive without boiled rocks, thanks,” Dash said. “Pretty sure I saw a Hayburger Princess a town over. Hey, tell you what, I’ll buy all of you a Big Sun Burger if everypony comes with me -- they’re pretty great!”

“We aren’t going to leave.”

“Your loss. I’m gettin’ one for Maud and Pinkie since they’ve got some common sense.” She hopped into the air and took off, vanishing into the distance in seconds.

Marble’s mother closed the door.

“Dinner will be at the usual time,” she said. “There will be a plate for you if you wish it.”

Marble sat in front of the open suitcase, tugging lightly at cables and tubes on the armor within, making sure nothing had come loose on the train ride.

Somepony whistled from the doorway, and Marble looked back at Dash, the pegasus leaning casually against the doorframe.

“I’ve never seen armor like that,” she said. “Where’d you get something like that? EIS?”

“It’s my job,” Marble said, quietly. “Doctor Sparkle told me to take it in case there was trouble.” More accurately, she’d insisted Marble take it, because she had been absolutely sure there would be trouble.

“You want a burger?” Dash asked, holding up a bag.

Marble blinked. “You were serious about…?”

“Of course I was. I love these things.”

“...But the town is…”

“Pretty far,” Dash finished for her. “Yeah, but I happen to be the fastest thing in the air.” She flexed her prosthetic wing. “Even this doesn’t slow me down.”

“Mm.” Marble took the bag. It was cold, naturally, but there was a certain guilty pleasure in eating it. She wouldn’t have to show up to the dinner table later. Maybe the empty seat would remind her parents that she didn’t support their decision to stay.

“So since I’m bribing you,” Dash grinned, waiting until Marble was halfway done with her hayburger. “You wanna go on a quick patrol? I got a feeling in my primaries that something’s wrong and I won’t be able to sleep until I check it out.”

Marble kept chewing. She tilted her head and looked significantly down the hall.

“Maud and Pinks? I’m relying on them to yell at your parents enough to make them listen,” Dash admitted. “And if that trouble comes here while we’re gone, I trust them to fight it. You, you’re kinda quiet and I got no idea if you’re any good in a fight, but you know the land, your head isn’t rammed up under your tail, and you’re an extra pair of eyes.”

Marble stomped down the passage, feeling more secure with her armor on, an inch of alloy plating between her and the world did wonders for her confidence.

“Gotta admit this wasn’t what I had in mind,” Dash muttered, as she followed along, the crystals providing a dim glow. Marble looked back and down at the pegasus, the mare seeming smaller now. Maybe it was just her stance, lower than usual like she was afraid the ceiling would collapse.

“These tunnels need to be checked,” Marble said, her voice echoing, the silence and darkness making her voice sound loud and booming by contrast.

“At least if there’s something down here I can just hide behind you.” Dash rapped a hoof against the thick armor.

Marble nodded, taking it as good tactical thinking instead of a joke.

“When Pinks and Maud told me it was a rock farm this is definitely more of what I was expecting,” she said, changing the subject and stopping to look at a huge crystal. “Most ponies call it a mine, though.”

“It is a mine,” Marble said. “The farm is on the surface.”

“Okay, but… you know you can’t grow rocks, right?”

Marble smiled knowingly. “Mmm.”

“Is this some kind of family secret or-- you know what, forget it. I don’t wanna know. I’ve gotten too many answers I didn’t want from your sisters.”

Marble nodded.

“So I don’t know anything about tunnels. Is there anything different or weird or evil? Because I’m gettin’ the creeps down here and I really don’t like being stuck somewhere I can’t fly.”

“They haven’t worked down here at all since I left,” Marble said, mostly to herself. A pick rested against the wall just where she’d left it, the minecart still half-full.

“Hey, take a look at this!” Dash said, from the other side of a wall of crystals. Marble trotted around to look and stopped in place.

“Don’t touch it,” she warned.

There was a black crystal erupting from the ground, as wrong as a boil or broken bone, the stone cracked from its unnaturally quick growth.

“I’m guessing this is new,” Dash said, keeping her distance.

Marble nodded, feeling a chill rush down her spine.

The black crystal made a sound like a leaden bell when Marble threw it into the middle of the table.

“We are having dinner,” her mother said, glaring.

Limestone growled, her front covered with soup and her bowl overturned.

“We found this under the farm,” Dash said.

“What is it?” Pinkie asked sitting up to see.

Maud leaned closer to look. “This isn’t a natural crystal. It’s unstable except in the presence of dark magic. I’ve seen this before in the north. It’s a very worrying sign.”

“That does not give you the right to be rude,” her father said. “Any business about this, if it is to be discussed at all, can wait until after dinner.”

“After dinner might be too late. You need to leave,” Marble said.

“Don’t talk back to your father,” her mother said, glaring at her.

“Fine, I’ll talk back to him,” Dash snapped. “You’re sitting here eating dinner while enemy troops are close enough you can practically smell them! Are you gonna sit on your flanks while they drag your daughter away to be a slave soldier?”

“What happens is what is fated to happen,” Marble’s father said. “If you cannot give us peace while we eat then you are not welcome in this house.”

“You could have convinced him to let you stay,” Maud said, with concern that only somepony very familiar with her could have detected.

“I won’t back down,” Marble muttered. She stopped at a fork in the tunnel and looked both ways, picking one at random.

“Have you been well since we left?” Maud asked. “I hope you didn’t worry about us too much. Princess Celestia--”

“I don’t want to talk about Celestia,” Marble cut in, interrupting Maud.

They walked in silence for a while, the loudest sound Marble’s heavy footsteps.

“You’re not okay,” Maud said, quietly.

“I’m fine,” Marble assured her. “This is where we found the crystal.”

Maud nodded and gave Marble a sideways look as she passed her to start checking every corner of the room for more.
Marble looked at the reflective face of one of the huge glowing crystal spires -- quartz and a few impurities, here for longer than she’d been alive and left in place not because they were beautiful but simply because the light they provided was useful enough to be worth the trouble of working around them.

“This tunnel wasn’t here before,” Maud said.

Marble looked away from her snake-eyed reflection and followed Maud’s voice around a corner to a shadowy alcove. Maud was looking into a rough hole in the wall, the edges left jagged and ugly.

“This was done with claws, not tools,” Maud noted, pointing at marks in the rock. Marble nodded in agreement.

“Mmm...” Marble stopped, turning even before she really heard the sound, moving more on intuition than anything else.

A dozen diamond dogs, in rough armor and poorly-fitted steel helms, tore out of the floor and came at them, screaming.

Marble acted first, slamming the first aside with her hip before it could reach them. It fell, and she picked it up, the dog surrounded by acid-green magic as she threw it into a wall, snapping bones. She didn’t let it fall again, using it as a weapon to bat others aside before they could reach her sister.

“Be careful,” Maud warned. “You might--”

Marble snapped its neck and threw the corpse aside.

“You killed it.” Maud said, so shocked she nearly emoted.

“It was going to kill us,” Marble noted, shoving more away with a shield.

“How are you doing that?”

“I’ve grown up a lot since I left,” Marble said. Maud met her eyes and paled.

Marble glanced to the side and threw another dog at a crystal spire erupting from the wall like a spear.

Maud grabbed it in midair, barely pulling it out of the way of certain death. It bit her hoof as thanks, forcing Maud to kick it into unconsciousness.

“We don’t kill,” Maud said, blood dripping from her wounded leg.

Marble frowned.

Marble was still frowning while the barn door closed, cutting off her view of the mostly-unconscious diamond dogs they’d left tied up in there.

“We shouldn’t have left them,” she muttered.

“We didn’t leave them, we brought them here where we can watch them,” Maud said. “Dash is going to try and get a prisoner transport so we can move them somewhere safer.”

Marble gave her a look, making a sound at the back of her throat somewhere between a growl and a note of disapproval.

“I know. You meant to say we shouldn’t have left them alive.” Maud’s tone was even. She wasn’t even looking at Marble. But Marble could feel the judgment radiating off of her.

“You’re just as stupid and stubborn as Father,” Marble spat, feeling rage welling up from somewhere deep inside. It barely even sounded like her voice, more like somepony else speaking through her. “What if they escape? What if they get out and kill everypony in the house because you wanted to play at having mercy on a pack of mindless monsters?!”

“They won’t. And maybe Father will listen to reason now that the enemy is here.”

“He won’t,” Marble countered.

Maud stopped and looked at her carefully, the way she’d examine a rock, her gaze peeling it back layer by layer, imagining a history of dirt and dark and pressure.

“What happened?” Maud asked. “You changed.”

“You don’t know how bad it can get,” Marble whispered, looking down, her resolve breaking. Monsters were easier to fight than family.

“Let’s go inside,” Maud said, carefully leading her sister away from the barn.

Dash paced, hating the need to stay in one spot for hours at a time, just to make sure the diamond dogs didn’t escape. Half of her missions had the rest of the army right behind them to take care of the boring parts of the war, and the other half of her missions were griffon-style blitzkrieg strikes where they disabled opponents and left them where they fell.

“Rainbow Dash.”

The pegasus jumped, uneven weight and lift turning instinct into folly and throwing her into the barn wall when she tried to get into the air.

Something soft and cloudlike caught her, putting her down easily. It took Dash a long moment of panic to realize it was Marble’s mane, somehow a dozen times longer and moving like it was made of snakes instead of hair.

“What the buck?! You almost gave me a heart attack!” Dash spat, trying not to shiver from the adrenaline flooding her body.

“You should have been paying better attention,” Marble admonished. “If I can sneak up on you there’s no telling what your prisoners have gotten up to.”

“Let me guess, you’re gonna offer to check on them.”

“Maybe I should,” Marble said. Her eyes gleamed in the dark, glowing faintly.

“And when you go in to look, they’ll have gotten loose, and you’ll have to put them down to stop them,” Dash continued. “I’m not a feathering idiot, kid. I know what you’re thinking. You think I don’t get tempted to play for keeps? It’s against orders, and most of the ponies I fight are being mind-bucked by Sombra. If we start killing, it might be me that ends up dead sometime.”

Marble tilted her head. “You’ve put a lot of thought into it.”

“I almost got caught once already.” Dash rubbed her metal wing. “And I lost a lot of friends. Sometimes I think I see them out there, but I’m never sure. Just go back to the house, Marble. I got this.”

“Mmm… I have a better idea. You go for a walk.”

“A walk.”

“Mmm.”

“And when I come back it’ll be all over, right? And it’s not my fault?”

“I’m trying to make it easy for you.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I want you to understand this is the hard way for me,” Marble whispered. “The easy way is that I come back to the house with a story about how they escaped and killed you, and I had to stop them.”

Dash met her eyes. She saw something in them that let her know Marble was very serious. Dash looked down. Marble shoved the door open and stepped inside. When the sound started, Dash covered her ears and tried to block it out.

When morning came, it brought company.

“There are hundreds of them,” Dash said. “I took a quick look over the ridge. We’ve got maybe half an hour before they get here.”

Sometime before dawn, the army had crossed dozens of open miles of land and was at the outskirts of the farm.

“We’ll have to move the prisoners,” Maud said.

“Hmm.” Marble smiled.

Dash couldn’t meet her knowing gaze. “I don’t think the prisoners are an issue. The problem is we can’t run. They’re too close and even if we got to the train station with the civs slowing us down, we can’t get away. Even if a train was waiting for us, they’d be able to wreck the track.”

“If we can’t run, we have to hide or fight,” Pinks said. “And we’re a little too badly outnumbered to fight.”

“They’re only ponies,” Marble said.

“So are we,” Dash reminded her. “Pinks, Maud, I saw a storm cellar. Is it big enough to hold all of us?”

Pinkie nodded.

“It has supplies too,” Maud added. “Mother does a lot of canning.”

“It’s more stone soup, isn’t it?” Dash groaned.

Pinkie shrugged. “I think there are some vegetables too.”

There weren’t any vegetables unless you were willing to count potatoes, of some varietal that closely resembled rocks and were, frustratingly, also mixed with rocks that closely resembled potatoes.

“We shouldn’t have hidden down here,” Marble mumbled, looking at the door leading out and trying to ignore the whispered arguments around her. Rainbow Dash hated being underground. Her mother and father refused to admit anything was wrong. Maud’s dry remarks were getting blunter and blunter and, somehow, at the same time, cutting. Pinkie was trying to keep everypony’s mood up and was just slowly driving them crazy.

“You haven’t taken off that armor since yesterday,” her mother said. “You’ve been acting crazy since you came back and it’s only been getting worse!”

Marble felt the ground shaking subtly under her hooves, the army coming at them, the impossibility that anypony would think the Imperials would somehow miss this tiny shelter.

“Suppose if one day you suddenly gained goddess-like power. How would you use that power?” Marble asked. “Would you become a devil and destroy the world with it? Or would you become a hero and save the world?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Her mother demanded.

“You can’t not use it,” Marble whispered. “If you have power and refuse to use it, you’re responsible for everything that you could have done. That’s even worse than being blamed for what you did.”

“Marble, you’re scaring me. Just sit down and we’ll wait it out. We’ll weather this storm like all the others-”

“Maud, Miss Dash, keep my family safe.” Marble’s horn lit up, and the trapdoor above the storm cellar tore open.

“Wait, where are you going?” Dash asked. “You don’t get it, there’s an entire army--”

“I’ll be back,” Marble said, before slamming the trap door shut behind her, leaving her family in the dark.

The noise didn’t stop for hours. Steel on steel. Screaming.

There was a lot of screaming.

“We should be out there helping her,” Dash mumbled.

“You just don’t want to be indoors,” Maud corrected, quietly.

“I don’t like being cooped up,” Dash admitted. “Remember when I was in the hospital--”

“Which time?” Pinkie asked. “You go to the hospital a lot.”

“No I don’t.”

“Well there was that time when you got hit by lightning. And that time you flew through a brick wall. And that time you lost your wing -- that was really scary. And that time you got angry at a stray cat and tried to kick it but it was a lot tougher than it looked and it bit your ear and wouldn’t let go--”

“For Celestia’s sake, Pinks--” Dash growled. “Shut up! Okay! I get it! But I was talking about the time after I broke both of my back legs!”

“Which time?”

“...The first time.” Dash hesitated. “I really am in the hospital a lot, aren’t I?”

Maud and Pinkie nodded.

“Dang. Anyway, do you remember how crazy I was getting looking for something to do? And then you brought me a cake and Maud brought a rock?”

“It was a nice rock,” Maud muttered. “Which you threw out a window.”

“I threw it through a window,” Dash corrected. “And made my escape.”

“You were heavily sedated and ended up with a concussion when you forgot how to fly,” Maud replied. “It wasn’t much of an escape.”

“The doctors were really impressed with how far I got on instinct. They said I had a great glide ratio.”

There was a heavy slam against the storm door.

Dash motioned for everypony to be silent, pushing the Pies back with her wing. They took what cover was available in the basement, half-hidden behind shelves. Pinkie and Maud formed up behind Dash, rocks in hoof.

The door, barred and locked, tore free.

Marble looked down at her family, blood dripping from her hooves. Very little of it was her own.

“It’s over,” she whispered. “Now get out. You’re leaving.”

“Marble? Are you--” Her mother started.

Marble screamed, a corona of green lightning surrounding her body. The floorboards splintered under her, as if her weight had multiplied.

Her family, wisely, fled the basement before it collapsed in on them. Marble stormed outside, and they followed.

The fields were planted from end to end with the dead. The ground had been trampled and burned and finally beaten into red mud that stank of iron and death.

“Oh Celestia,” her mother gasped.

“Pack up your things and go,” Marble ordered.

“We can’t go!” Limestone protested. “Holder’s Boulder--”

“No one cares about it,” Marble growled, her mane whipping around as though she stood in the center of a storm.

It was amazing how Limestone could ignore the obvious signs of danger despite being literally surrounded by the recently dead.

“It’s important!” Limestone snapped, with the anger that only comes when someone knows they’re wrong and is getting frustrated at themselves and the world and isn’t sure which is to blame.

“Important.” Marble stared at her. “More important than your life.”

Limestone nodded.

Marble’s steel horn blared with acid-green light, and Limestone was dragged from the house. Not levitated, not pulled gently, dragged with claws of magic and light out into the light.

“You,” Marble spat, shoving Limestone across the field. She slid through what used to be an Imperial soldier, getting covered in rust-red mud. “Want to die. For a rock!” She picked her up again and threw her towards Holder’s Boulder, Limestone landing badly and crying out in pain.

“Marble Pie, you will stop this foolishness!” Her father yelled. Marble turned on him slowly.

“That’s what I’m doing,” Marble hissed. “I’m stopping. The foolishness!”

She stomped up next to her sister, her mane twisting around Limestone’s neck and forcing her gaze to Holder’s Boulder.

“Watch,” Marble ordered.

Tears trickled down Limestone’s cheeks as Marble cracked Holder’s Boulder in half, then crushed each half to gravel.

They’d never speak to her again, but at least they’d agreed to leave. Marble had made sure they’d gotten on a train somewhere safe before she’d done the same.

“Ma’am?”

“Mm?” Marble looked up. She’d been staring at her hooves and trying not to think about what she’d done. It required intense concentration, right now, just to force herself not to think of anything at all.

The conductor leaned in to speak quietly. “We’re being told there might be a delay on the line. There’s a security alert in Canterlot.”

“What kind of alert?” Marble asked.

“I’m sure it’s nothing to be worried about.”

The sky flared red and orange as it filled with fire.

Marble looked at the conductor.

“We might want to get to cover,” he admitted.

Something large slammed into the ground next to the train car. Marble could see windows and bricks.

“That’s a house,” she noted, dumbly.

The Conductor raised his voice to address the whole car. “Stay in your seats and don’t panic!”

Despite his words, when the other passengers saw part of the city sliding from the mountain towards the train, they spent the last few moments before it hit panicking quite a bit.

"Most ponies would have been smart enough to leave," the griffon said.

"I'm not like most ponies," his guest said. "I came here to learn."

"You won't like what I teach."

"I came here. To learn." Her voice was firm.

The griffon smiled and nodded.

"Well, I'd be a poor host if I turned you away without a conversation and a meal. I just never expected a pony to care about griffon magic. Some of them don't even think we have magic."

The griffon walked back to the other side of his home, stirred the bubbling pot over the woodburning stove. Most of the smoke made its way outside. The rest was a haze that hovered in the air and stained the ceiling black.

"I've met stupid ponies too. I heard you're a scholar, though."

"A scholar, yes. Of the Talon Logic."

The griffon fetched two carved bowls from beside the stove. They were old, stained, and had been made crudely even to begin with. The tool marks matched his claws, if anypony cared enough to look. His guest did, and she noticed, and said nothing.

"Talon Logic is the core of all griffon magic," the old bird said. "Your pony magic is all about friendship and special talents and fitting in. Griffon magic isn't like that."

He ladled soup out into the bowls.

"Talon Logic is about strength. It's about the struggle to exist. You have to be sharp to survive in the world, and the only way to become sharp is to prove it. You have to dominate others by force, to prove you're stronger than they are and to become stronger still in the struggle. Ponies try to deny it by controlling their world and making things live in harmony, but when you go somewhere wild, somewhere natural, you remember the truth of Talon Logic, that the world is eat..."

He put a bowl in front of his guest. There were things in it that a pony would eat. Potatoes. Carrots.

There were other parts, lumps of fat and meat, that he knew a pony would never touch. He'd left them in the bowl anyway.

"Or be eaten," his guest said, finishing his sentence for him.

"Griffons used to hunt ponies. Now we just hunt rabbits."

"You also used to have an empire." The pony stabbed a fork into the bowl, impaling a chunk of meat and pulling it free. "Tell me more about how you get sharper."

She bit into the meat, and the griffon smiled.