“No actually it’s fairly normal.” Vadim shook his head.

“What do you mean it’s normal?!” Schmitt gestured wildly at herself with her claw. “I’m huge!”

The grey falcon griffon pinched his beak between two talons and bit back an annoyed growl. He very much wanted to get back to his cabin and home-schooling Andy, but the Chief Engineer had banged on his and Micha’s office door shortly before noon claiming it was absolutely necessary.

So he’d taken the orange dragoness to the infirmary and sat her down for a chat. He even took her vitals, if only to calm her down and give himself some time to formulate an explanation. Not like a dragon’s vitals weren’t weird to begin with.

Had to, given it was actually healthy for the bloody reptiles to walk around with their body temperature above seventy degrees. Celsius. And depending on how active they were, their fire, and their nutrition, it could reach much higher than that.

He spun around on his stool, one decently thick plastic-bound book in his talons. Dragon anatomy. Both the stuff they’d obtained from the Equestrian relief team in Copenhagen, and what he and other medics in the fleet had learned overtime.

“Dragons like you are supposed to keep growing like that.” He sighed, quickly flipping to a scanned gravure that showed dragons at different stages of their life. “Last I checked, the likes of you and Artyom certainly weren’t adults. Human-sized? Yes. But that’s early teens for a dragon. Barely past puberty.”

“Growing up doesn’t happen overnight!” She insisted, standing up from the medical bed the Medical Officer in a huff, thin plumes of smoke escaping her nostrils.

Oh, she certainly did grow up. One of the first things Vadim had done after the vitals was to take her weight and measurements.

As numbers went, the dragoness standing in front of him had breached the two-meters mark in height and gained roughly forty kilos in the span of a few hours. Her new height may not have been the tallest on board just yet (that title went to one minotaur called Angelo), but that didn’t mean she wasn’t impressive with her new bulk.

She was now taller than any Abyssinian or Diamond-dog, and the only species for which she wouldn’t have to look down were female Ornithians (the lithe parrots being actually pretty darn tall), and minotaurs where bulls grew to 2.2 meters in height (horns not included), and 2.5 for cows.

And adult members of any of the two species known to grow throughout their entire lives of course. Not that they had any actual adult sphinxes and dragons on hand.

They probably wouldn’t fit within the ship’s passageways anyway.

That said… he could understand Schmitt’s shock. He had her file close-by. Human height before the Event? Just over 1m80. After the Event? She had shrunk a bit and gone down to 1m76.

“Dragons do, in fact, grow up overnight. Provided certain circumstances are met.” Vadim calmly enunciated. He brushed a talon against a paragraph he had underlined in the text. “Premature hoarding syndrome, they call it. It doesn’t even look like it’s acute in your case, no biggie.”

Schmitt’s maw parted slightly in confusion, her blue eyes staring straight ahead.

“Waat.” She blurted dumbly after a few seconds.

Vadim rolled his eyes.

“Okay, KISS principle then. Dragons at your age aren’t really supposed to start a hoard. You don’t have to bother with that until your age hits the three digits, and even then you’ve got a while to get started before the lack of hoard impacts you negatively. Your uh… dragon magic, is prone to tie itself to a hoard and use it as a battery of sorts, to boost its own power. Like getting interest from your savings. You Chief? You started…” He trailed off, quickly checking her human age on the file. 42. “... more than half a century early.”

Without accounting for a youthening factor when she transformed… but he wasn’t quite to the point where he’d gauge the age of a dragon at a glance. It’s easier to tell someone’s been youthened in extreme cases like Captain Lorelei’s.

He craned up his neck and looked the orange dragoness in the eye.

“Congrats, you overloaded yourself. Your body is just using the excess power to grow up faster and adjust to a size matching the output of your hoard.”

“How do you even know I have a hoard?” She replied quickly in a defensive tone.

Greedy griffons trying to steal her gems and touch her hoar-

She caught that train of thought in its tracks, eyes going wide in surprise. She sat down on the hospital bed behind her and held her head in her claws.

Judging by Vadim’s look, he knew exactly what had just gone through her mind.

“Instincts are a powerful thing, aren’t they?” His beak creased in a smirk, but the griffon’s eyes were sympathetic. “And no, I do not want your gems. I have a treasure of my own, and it’s a mate that loves me dearly and a cub to care for. And before you think about it… Yes, separating yourself from the hoard might shrink you back to your previous size, but again: instincts. You are no more able to separate yourself from your hoard than I am from my mate, and if you care enough to look inside yourself, you know you’d hardly be able to attempt it.”

He flipped through the dragon anatomy book and stopped at a page showing a picture of a fifteen-meters-tall green and purple dragon rampaging through a village.

“I have a case-study of a dragon going through an acute version of your syndrome… There’s an erudite that wrote it, a pony called Twilight Sparkle. She does raise some good points, but the method they used -more by luck of her own admission- is way too finicky and reliant on tiny factors compounding each other to be feasible in your case.”

“So I’m stuck like that?” Schmitt’s now not-so-diminutive wings sagged. Her wingspan was probably three to four times her height now, and yet the pale orange leathery material folded cleanly against her back.

“There was a lot of mental baggage that helped the dragon make the decision of relinquishing the hoard willingly in Sparkle’s case study. You don’t have that, and us taking away the hoard…” The griffon uttering the sentence made her clench her claws. “... would only make you go berserk. Sorry.”

“Shit… I don’t want to keep growing.”

“On the bright side… provided you restrict yourself to only adding to your hoard when it’s absolutely necessary, you won’t experience growth spurts like that. But you will still grow up. Forever. That’s just how dragons are. You won’t always be small enough to go inside ships and buildings. In fact I have accounts of dragons more than ten centuries old in this book, so you gotta live with the fact that by the time I will be long dead and my descendants will have forgotten my name, you’ll still be growing up.”

Schmitt looked down into her lap. She never really liked to think about that part. She liked to think she was still humans in her head… humans never think that far ahead. Hell… ten centuries… that made the ten millenia it would take for everyone to return not seem that bad.

She sighed. Those were the kinds of thoughts she liked to push aside. Not like keeping Amandine running as Chief Engineer didn’t offer more than enough opportunities to keep her mind busy. Schmitt stood up, one claw brushing against her now prominent hips at the motion.

She turned her head towards Vadim with a look of resigned annoyance.

“And that?”

“You were in the equivalent of your early teens before you went and started yourself a hoard. If that helps, according to the book, you’re shaping up to be a healthy dragoness. Nothing abnormal. Biggest difference is you could lay eggs before, but now with that width it should be easier.”

She glared. The griffon raised his talons apologetically. He was only saying that as a Medical Officer. Nothing pervy behind that: he was mated already, and griffons only ever love the one hen. Nogriff else.

Nogriff? Uh. Might keep that one.

Still… Schmitt bemoaned the loss of her somewhat human and plain appearance of the day prior, without those curves and everything that came with them. It was easier to dive in the drudgery of work-coffee-work with a body she could imagine as that of a human male if she closed her eyes and ignored the extra (and missing) appendages.

Now though?

When she had gotten up and hurried to Vadim’s cabin earlier, she’d quickly squeezed in whatever set of clothes still fit. That meant some thermal underwear that rode up mid-calf and looked as though it was painted on, uncomfortably squeezing the base of her tail, and a previously loose grey t-shirt, normally for sport, that now displayed her midriff.

Making it real hard to ignore the change.

She had ‘filled in’ for certain, partly blossoming towards the dragoness she was inevitably doomed to become by the time she grew up to be an actual adult dragoness. Late teens would now be her equivalent in dragon years. What had been narrow hips had bloomed into a rump and hips wide enough to force her to adjust her gait and which her claws kept brushing against, along with a significant increase to the diameter of her tail.

With a rear like that, you wouldn’t mistake her for a drake.

Fortunately that was only the most obvious sign. She’d seen in the mirror how her maw had prolonged into a smoother, narrow curve atop a thin sinuous neck and narrow shoulders. Unlike Artyom, hers would never grow very broad, and though she lacked breasts (thank God for small mercies), her ribs met at a sharper angle on her chest than on a drake’s. Even her voice had changed a bit. Raspier. Huskier. Subtle signs, yet telling.

Compared to that, her previous form may have been a bit ungainly… yet she missed its utilitarian nature.

It didn’t stop at that. Other things signaled how she might grow up, like how her bronze-colored spikes, ridges and horns were shaping up to frame the sides of her head, along with what might shape up to be a set of quill-like spikes sprouting like hair off the back of her skull and neck. The sharp ridges along her spine and tail were a bit more prominent too, particularly those at the tip of her tail.

Eh, maybe she’d have a thagomizer when she grew up to be a full-sized adult?

“I feel I need to warn you though.” Vadim said.

“Something wrong?”

“Physically? No. It’s the mental I’m keeping an eye out for.” Dilip’s order. The Captain liked himself as one to prize the mental well-being of his subordinates as much as the physical, so he made sure to tell Vadim to keep an eye out for mental issues. “Tell me, do you know how dragons grow up to be?”

“Vadim please. No circling the subject like a vulture. Swoop in and out with it.”

“Fine, fine.” He raised a claw. “Just trying to be tactful. The species we come back as, are very varied, as you know. Some are bipedal. Some, like me, quadrupedal. Dragons, like D-dogs and Abyssinians, lie somewhere in between.”

“You lost me there.”

He ignored the remark and continued.

“The dogs, you’ve seen the size of their arms?”

She nodded. Male or female, D-dog arms were always impressively beefy, and oddly proportioned.

“Consider it a bit of an issue. We were humans before, and in many places we still think as such. Turns out, D-dogs aren’t fully bipedal. They’re...” He wrung his talons, searching for words. “Intermediary, for a lack of a better word. Think gorilla. That’s the way they’re supposed to walk, but will any of them do it?” He scoffed. “Of course not. Not like I didn’t warn them, but pride is too important to bother with possible hip and lower back problems, long term at least. None of them would ever use their arms to help them walk, let alone the Captain.”

Yeah. She couldn’t really imagine Dilip walking around using those big bulky arms of his to support his weight. Not those paws she knew were routinely used to hold teacups.

“Abyssinians?” She asked, getting a feeling of where he was going with dragons.

“Intermediary too, but in another manner entirely. Their hip and shoulder structure is intended for them to transition from quadruped to biped on a whim. Need to scamper away? Run off all fours like a regular cat. Again: none will do it out of human pride. Not like there’s any shame in being a quadruped.” Vadim explained. “Still, I doubt any former human would resort to that. We’ll only see that in future generations, probably. I mean, not even the jaguar warriors ran around on all four, and we’ve all seen them fight.”

“Okay so… dragons are like them? The cats and the dogs?”

“Have you paid attention to your limbs today?” He pointed out.

She had. Her usual digitigrade stance felt a bit higher on the ball of her feet. Her hips, more than just wider, felt connected a bit differently, a different range of motion.

Her claws bent differently too, and the… ‘hand’ so to speak had grown longer, rougher.

She stood a bit hunched too.

“You don’t mean...”

“As dragons grow older and draw closer to maturity, they’ll shift away from a bipedal stance to one that favors a quadrupedal stance. You’ve ever been to a natural history museum? The end result works a bit like an iguanodon. They move around on all fours, but they can still go bipedal without trouble, and for dragons, use their claws to manipulate objects. The older you grow, the closer you’ll draw to that stage.” He told her, shuffling through the pages in his book before he showed her several pictures of house-sized adult dragons sitting, walking, flying…

“Verdammt...” She swore in her own tongue.

“Sorry Chief, that’s just the way it is. Now… it’s not that I’m too busy, but I got a kid to take care of you know? And cheer up. You dragons get plenty of time to process those changes, so just make sure you don’t loot too much jewelry unless you want to buy a new wardrobe every other year.”

And on that note, the griffon left her on her own inside the infirmary, handing the dragon anatomy book over to her. It looked oddly small in her enlarged claws.

Schmitt flipped through, absently. Some pages showed various kinds of gravures, some more modern scans done by Vadim and Doctor Delacroix, others more ancient sketches showing skeletons of drakes and dragonesses, charts on healthy scale thickness… She barely paid attention, her focus mostly lingering on adult dragonesses and details on the reproductive system.

Funny really. Officially, her name was still Pierre. She had yet to change it.

It was just so common where she was from everybody called her by her last name.

“So what are these things again?” Floyd dropped his binoculars.

He did have a scope on his M249. It’s just generally considered rude to point a belt-fed machine gun at something you’re not positively certain needs to die.

“Pukwudgies.” Skinner filled in. “Bestiary says they’re monsters.”

The whole team could see them. While they were walking around the edge of the seaport trying to find gaps in the fence they’d have to repair before Fugro could be brought alongside safely (and there was a fair number of them, thanks to the local vegetation accidentally toppling parts of the concrete wall that separated the seaport from the city). It wasn’t that long of a walk since the area was pretty small, only big enough to fit a grain terminal with silos, some container stacks, a fair few narrow warehouses, and the obligatory checkpoint with the customs office.

The latter was where they encountered the little monsters, right by the gates. It was Praveen who spotted them, stopping the whole group just in time before they were noticed and getting them to take cover and stack up behind a dumpster between two warehouses. The vegetation and the tall grass provided nigh-perfect concealment.

As for the pukwudgies? Those little monsters had reclaimed the customs office and set up their own furniture already. From a decrepit ruin of an office, they had used vines, twigs and palm leaves to add their own little platforms and ladders. Not so much materials the primitive creatures had shaped to fit their needs as much as branches that just so happened to be the general shape they wanted it.

In practice, it was as though an extremely unskilled scout troop had raised miniature buildings around and inside the customs. Dull colors garnished the structures much like graffiti, pigments that consisted of slathering mud and squashed fruits all over the walls, in addition to stray macaw feathers and anything colorful picked up in the ruins of Belem.

Overall? They behaved like neanderthals with the urges of a magpie.

“They look cute though.” Lilian quipped.

“Pull up your binos and look twice.” Floyd squawked back.

The pink dragoness complied, intently looking at the little creatures busying themselves around a firepit with a spit-roasted capybara.

“Oh...” The disappointment in her voice was palpable. “Nevermind they aren’t.”

That was pretty much how it was with pukwudgies. From a distance they were colorful little creatures the size of a garden gnome waddling around in their primitive little huts, little pastel blotches against an overwhelmingly green, brown and gray background.

A closer look would reveal beady eyes that gleamed with a disturbing red glint, a round wrinkled face with pale skin and a protruding lower jaw with needle-like teeth. Their paws had three long digits, lacking opposing thumbs. Each digit ended in sharp little claws meant to strip flesh off prey, and they coiled them around their own quills which they liked to pluck off their backs to use as tools.

Unlike how it was with hedgefogs where their quills worked as foci for electric magic and actually were rather supple and only covered head and neck much like a mane, the pukwudgies’ quills were sharp. Wickedly so, as the bestiary carried several warnings about their ability to fire them like weapons and their propensity to roll in baths of poisonous oils to coat their quills before setting off on hunts. They were covered from head to toe in them, leaving only their eerie faces exposed.

The bestiary had tales of how their little red eyes would glint like rubies in those dark nights where entire clans would sally out on hunts. Traveler beware: few ponies had the skills to calm down monsters such as those without resorting to violence, several of which were on the Mane Six.

“The what?” Floyd interrupted Skinner’s explanation.

“Shut your gob and keep an eye on the buggers. I’m reading.” Skinner growled. “The Mane Six are a group of heroes in Equestria. All mares, all ponies. ‘least that’s the way the books put it.”

For the common mortal that couldn’t get them to stand down? Do not underestimate their craftiness. Pukwudgies love their traps and ambushes, and their preferred construction materials make them that much harder to detect.

“Can confirm. Tripwires in the brush.” Praveen noted, the Abyssinian waving a paw at a few twine lines visible in the underbrush.

“So what do we do?” Marcos inquired.

Up on his perch where Floyd had set up the M249, the kestrel griffon turned to look at the parrot with a ‘are you fucking serious?’ look on his beak. Skinner’s expression wasn’t that far off either.

“Eh, just making sure is all.” Marcos shrugged before twisting his head to look at the still unaware pukwudgies. “So how do we go ‘bout it, Cap’n?”

“Floyd, you got a good shot there or you need a better position?” Skinner asked the griffon.

“I could open up from here, but if we want to finish properly I’ll need to move the ‘249 to that container stack over yonder...” He pointed with a talon. “Or maybe the roof of that warehouse.”

“Aight. Stay here for now. The rest...” He looked at the buildings surrounding them. “Praveen, you’re with Marcos. You stay here and take Floyd’s spot when he leaves. Stay off the ground and don’t advance on them. Too many traps. Lilian, you’re with me. We’re climbing on those containers to the south. If we need to close in, we’ll do it. I can shift to fog and your scales can take the hit. Everyone got that?”

There was a chorus of muted ‘aye’s before they set the ambush into motion. Skinner quickly shifted to fog form and slipped through the tall grass that surrounded the customs, Lilian following a few steps behind as her immaterial superior pointed out the traps. They walked in a wide circle, keeping a healthy distance between them and the monsters before they were out of sight again and rose up from their kneeling position, hidden behind some containers. Then, Lilian opened her wings and flapped once to propel herself just high enough to grab the edge of the lower stack and hoist herself up before helping her superior up.

They were in position. Both groups positioned north and south around the customs, and then Floyd would move to the west to flush out the stragglers and get them out of the seaport. Skinner took hold of his radio and gave the order.

Tracer fire lit up the overgrown city and peppered their targets like supersonic hail.

Of all the shots fired, only those of the ‘249 could be called decent, and that was because Floyd was a vet. Otherwise… Skinner turned out to be more of an ‘accuracy by volume’ type as he only hit a pukwudgie every ten shots or so. The others were hardly better, and at that range Lilian didn’t even bother firing her pistol. She just watched his back as he laid fire into the tiny monsters.

Tiny enough that 5.56 was more than enough to blow them off their feet and send the whole clan into a panic. They tried to fire their quills at random, unable to detect their attackers fast enough, to little effect. One of them even went into a frenzy and accidentally charged in its own traps, some springed plate contraption that sent it flying off into the sunset with a little shrill scream of rage.

Kinda sad really. Yes, they were devious little carnivores willing to eat anything and anyone they could throw their quills at, and monsters brought to hamper any attempts at reestablishing civilization courtesy of the Four Horses, but being ambushed like that and outright massacred could hardly evoke anything other than pity regardless of how bad the victim was.

Little bodies fell off their makeshift primitive platforms and in the overgrown ruins below, squealing, their organs perforated by light gunfire. In their attempts to fight back and then, to escape, one of them even knocked down the roasting capybara in the center of the camp, spilling embers in the ruined customs office and setting fire to what little paperwork remained, which the little monsters had been using as kindling.

A grand entrance into Belem. If there was anyone intelligent in the overgrown city, then they’d have heard the gunfire, seen the rising smoke. And if the first shots weren’t enough, Floyd complemented them with one long burst of his 249 when he relocated and finished the last group standing, five small pukwudgies assembled around a larger one wearing a coif. That was the last of them.

Skinner stood up from his prone position atop the container, the look on the hedgefog’s snout was stern as he ejected his third spent mag and reloaded his G36. After a failure like Dominica, there would be no more messing around naively.

“Alright people, good job. The aiming could use some work, but it gets the job done.” He called aloud, brushing bits of moss off his coveralls. That’s what going prone gets you. “Now let’s secur-”

He didn’t finish his sentence before he was interrupted by a bellowing roar, so loud Skinner could swear he saw some hanging vines shake in the overgrown city. Off in the distance, a car alarm sputtered weakly from what little electricity remained in an abandoned battery, in tune with the sound of glass being crushed and debris being pushed aside.

Predators far deadlier than mere pukwudgies resided in Belem now. The ground shook.

“Everyone in position! Gun line, on the customs office! Now!” Skinner barked.

This would not be a failure like Dominica. He grabbed his radio.

“Fugro, Skinner here. Got a big ‘un comin’ for us. Grab tae otha’ lifeboa’ an’ send in a fiddy cal. Out!” He called.

And there was the Scottish accent rearing its ugly head. The pukwudgies hadn’t gotten to his nerves. That? It did. The monster drew closer.

Rodrigo backpedaled quickly. Sir Roland’s sword cut through the air in a flash of iridescent steel a fraction of a second later, shaving a few hairs off the pony’s tail. Roland’s shade was fast. Inhumanely so. Either the sword powered him up like no one’s business, or Charlemagne’s Paladins really were that powerful. He needed to put some distance between him and the larger warrior.

Nearby, a Basque chief swung his woodcutter axe down at one of the remaining Franks hiding behind his round shield. But instead of delivering a powerful blow with the tool to shatter his opponent’s guard, naked knuckles brushed against the shield, making him look at his palms in confusion.

A second later, the axe floating in Rodrigo’s telekinetic grasp chopped his head off before the unicorn threw it at Roland, hoping to distract him, wound him if he was lucky.

It wasn’t as clever as he’d imagined. Or effective for that matter.

The paladin did a pirouette and deflected the incoming axe into yet another Basque who receptioned it with his forehead. The circle of angry locals was tightening around them as more Franks died by the second. Rodrigo gritted his teeth. Not only were the warriors periodically interrupting their duel, but the lack of breathing room was hurting his fighting ability more than it did Sir Roland’s: with telekinesis he needed some space. And his injured hind leg wasn’t helping either. The entire limb with the arrowhead still embedded in it near his rump felt numb.

He’d really have to take a look at it once it was over. If he survived.

On the edge of the battlefield, the green pony remained. Observing. Rodrigo met his gaze for an instant.

The lapse in attention cost him. He clumsily rolled away from a sword strike as Roland feinted and got past his shortswords. A Basque warrior stumbled between them the next moment, only to get promptly bisected by Roland’s sword, earning Rodrigo a fraction of a second to get his hooves under him.

Not fast enough unfortunately.

His teeth were introduced to the taste of Roland’s ghostly sandals and he was sent sprawling on his back, seeing stars and tasting copper in his mouth.

“Not quite knightly then?” Rodrigo chuckled darkly. His stolen ethereal shortswords twirled in the air around him, retaking a more defensive position. “Guess we’re too far into the battle for that.”

His opponent didn’t reply. The shades on the battlefield were mute as far as Rodrigo witnessed, and a dead frankish paladin from over thirteen-hundred years ago wouldn’t know modern Spanish either way.

“Really have no idea why I’m fighting you to begin with...” He paused and spat some blood to the side. “… but at this point I’m too far into following a hunch to begin questioning it. Nothing personal to that.”

No reply either, but the paladin waited until he stood up on his hooves before resuming the onslaught. He twirled his enchanted blade expertly, swiping down at the white unicorn who raised both his swords to block.

One of Rodrigo’s blades snapped with a light metallic sound that hung in the air for a few seconds, longer than it took for the broken ethereal weapon to dissipate into green wisps of magic. The Spaniard's eyes widened, and he swung his one remaining blade in a desperate counterattack to buy time. Maybe steal a weapon.

But Roland was unfazed. The iridescent blade cut through the air once more, casually deflecting the next blow, and then the Paladin kept on with his momentum, ducked under Rodrigo’s blade and retaliated by delivering a solid blow in his temple with the pommel of his sword, so hard that his vision went blurry for a fraction of a second, a tremor of pain going through his horn and earning a gasp out of the stallion.

His vision went back into focus just in time to parry the consecutive strike that would have beheaded him. Both blades ground against each other in a shower of sparks and magic, and then he once again retreated at a safer distance. Or he would have, but Roland had the stamina advantage and was willing to use it. He didn’t stop, and Rodrigo, forced to rely on the one weapon by then, found himself slowly driven back, towards the line of Basque warriors that had formed a circle around them.

Weirdly enough, they had stopped bothering either of them. Of the entire frankish rear guard, Sir Roland was now the last one standing in Roncevaux Pass, and it looked like some of the Basques had moved on to pillaging the wagons, no longer hindering their duel.

The swords would clang against one another repeatedly, though forced on the defensive and with little hope of replenishing his weapons, Rodrigo found himself having to be mindful. He didn’t block outright, trying to deflect and redirect the paladin’s blows (which, even though his telekinetic grip, felt strong enough to blow a grown man off his feet) to avoid breaking his one remaining weapon. Balancing on three hooves, he hopped and danced around the blows, ducking under one sweep he couldn’t block in time, rolling, and overall trying to pull his opponent into a circle instead of letting him push him into the crowd of observing Basques.

Sweat soaked his fur. His makeshift K9 armor was probably beyond repairs now. His lungs burned from exertion, muscles strained beyond anything he’d ever experienced. Wounds, accumulated over the course of the whole battle, weighed him down like a leaded cloak. He was tired. Exhausted even. His horn sputtered weakly, his magic only good enough to hold his shortsword close to himself, a mere arm’s length away.

The Paladin went for another assault, but he was starting to recognize a pattern now. He twirled his blade and started an overhead strike. Rodrigo recognized how he put his left foot forward. The right one would come about… now!

Before Sir Roland could put his right foot down, Rodrigo used his telekinesis. Nothing grand of course. He was far too exhausted for that. Instead, his horn flashed weakly and sent out a shockwave, a shove sent in one general direction with the sole goal of throwing off the paladin’s balance.

And it did.

Rodrigo pushed on his hooves to attack and try to regain the offensive, swing the duel in his favor.

He didn’t see Roland’s armored knuckles on the edge of his vision. The punch reopened the wound at the base of his horn and sent him sprawling. Fur and mane above his eyes soaked with bloodthat flowed down into his eye, blinding him on the right side. On the left side, he reached up to touch his cheek. The tip of Roland’s sword had grazed him, cutting deep through flesh and fur.

A grunt. He looked up, finding the shade’s eyes boring into him from behind his sword, poised to finish him.

“No you fucking don’t!” Rodrigo grunted out hoarsely, kicking out with as much strength as he could muster in his uninjured hind leg.

It caught Roland in the ankle. Rodrigo felt the bone break, and the paladin fell down to his knee.

Never underestimate how hard ponies buck. Even unicorns.

Rodrigo rolled away, but now he realized that in his fall, he had released the telekinetic grasp he had on his ethereal shortsword. Lacking any wielder, it had dissipated into thin air, leaving behind only wisps of magic.

Shit.

He threw his head around, looking for a Basque from whom he could steal a weapon or something… but the warriors were gone, oddly. The circle of magic, the dome that had formed around the pass and twisted the land, kept him there to witness the battle, everything was closing in around him.

The warriors were dissipating. The wagons were gone. The clock was ticking, he needed to finish this now, and without a weapon at that.

On one side, the war-weary shade of a paladin wielding an enchanted sword, his ankle broken, his scale armor chipped.

On the other, an equally exhausted white unicorn stallion. Soaked in his own sweat and blood. One of his hind legs hanging limply.

Rodrigo glared across the short distance that separated them. He bent his head down, as if his horn was actually a worthy weapon. He pawed at the ground.

Sir Roland went into a guard stance, the shade resting his weight on his unbroken ankle.

The magic was about to pop. Rodrigo’s ears buzzed.His horn sputtered. He breathed in. The air smelled like ozone and copper. Magic and blood. There was a tingling in his flanks, centered around either side of his rump, one that made his soul feel as though the strands of fate were coming together towards a crossroads.

“¡Ahora o nunca!” Rodrigo bellowed as his horn mustered what little magic he still had and he pumped his hooves, throwing himself in a wild charge.

To an outside observer, his eyes started glowing green. The air shimmered and formed a shield around him, with an extra prong in the shape of a lance centered around his crouched horn. Before reaching the paladin, he leaped.

Sir Roland tried to parry, a clumsy move in reaction to the surprising speed of the charge. To his credit, the enchanted blade was potent enough to pierce Rodrigo’s shield and slice a long, shallow cut along the unicorn’s entire flank, easily cutting through the armor.

Rodrigo did better. There was a chink in Roland’s armor he’d been eyeing since the beginning of the duel, and that was what he went for. He collided with Roland, the extended prong of magic, a lance that speared through the paladin, a perfect hit, right through the heart.

There was a moment of blissful elation in Rodrigo’s heart at the realization of his victory… and then gravity reasserted itself, his entire side lanced with the searing pain from his wound, and both he and Roland fell side by side, facing each other.

Surprisingly, the paladin had a wry smile parting his scarred face. He looked...oddly satisfied as his ethereal body slowly began to turn to wisps carried off in the mountain wind. Weakly, his strength fading, he offered his weapon to Rodrigo.

Not feeling like questioning the paladin, the pony just reached out with his hoof. When it collided with the sword’s pommel, the rest of Roland’s body faded away, leaving behind nothing but the sword and its scabbard. Then the circle finally closed in around Rodrigo, and the magic faded completely. Roncevaux Pass was still changed, the magic had done its work warping the land there, but the battling armies of shades, Roland, the Franks, the Basques, were all gone.

His wounds? Not so much. The cut in his side was still bleeding profusely and he was feeling cold. But he’d claimed his sword. The green flicker, the nudge that had been pulling him was sated. The sword, no… Durandal. He was its rightful wielder now. He’d won.

As his vision turned dark and wounds and fatigue claimed him, he saw a green hoof step in on the edge of his vision.

Then… darkness.

When Rodrigo awoke, it was dark. Hold on… no. He wasn’t awake. More like… dreaming? He felt like he was swimming in tar, not seeing anything. Then the darkness lit up, slightly. He could see some sort of little cloud next to a tree. Little pillars of various colors raised around it, and one that drew his attention. The green one.

The little cloud flickered.

Rodrigo ignored it. Still looking at the pillar with the green glowing gem. Why did it feel so important to him? If anything it was a more powerful feeling than the one that drew him to Roncevaux Pass.

Another form joined the little cloud. It was a unicorn mare, except with wings and… kind of a ghost? She didn’t look like the shades he’d just fought, she was purple instead, translucent, and shimmering as though covered in glitter.

Still not interesting enough to draw him away from the green pillar. What was the deal with that thing?

The mare seemed to converse with the little cloud for a while, gesturing with her hooves to instruct it. The cloud flickered too, and bobbed up and down as if to nod. It turned towards Rodrigo and flashed.

Information flowed into his brain. A place, far off to the North. Brittany? A forest in Brittany. He needed to go there, but why? Why… The cloud flashed one more time. The Elements of Concord? Or was that the cloud’s name? Apparently Rodrigo was important with the whole deal. Seven Elements. Seven Artifacts.

And they were needed to…

The cloud flashed again.

To combat evil! What evil? Two evils. Two demons. Charybdis and Scylla. Okay so that meant… Rodrigo slowly pieced it all together as more information was pushed into his mind by that thing… Concord. The spirit in the Golden Tree.

He was an Element Bearer. Integrity. The green one. Which explained the pull he’d been feeling and that had made him leave Madrid. One of a team of seven, as of yet uncompleted. The sword he had claimed, Durandal, wasthe artifact tied to his element.

But it wasn’t all fulfilled just yet. Something about fate, destiny and Element magic. Damn, the little cloud wasn’t being very clear.

Another flash. An apology. Concord was young. Not even a year old actually. Yeah that explained a lot. Concord wanted him to meet him and get in touch with his Element all the way North in Brittany?

Guess that was his next goal then. His mind was settled. Apparently, that was enough to satisfy Concord. The spirit wished him luck. Behind him, the mare spoke a few words. The little cloud went still, focusing.

One last brighter flash. That one came not in the form of raw information, but words spoken in a tinny, childlike voice. Concord’s.

“By the way, Harmony says congrats on getting your Cutie Mark! See you soon!”

Rodrigo’s mind immediately conjured the memory of his wild charge against Roland. The feeling in his rump.

Well that explains it then.

With the ongoing repairs around the refinery and some of Amandine’s vehicles stuck in repairs for the foreseeable future, there wasn’t a whole lot to be done while the fleet licked their metaphorical wounds. Even on Rhine Forest, where the damage to material and personnel was relatively limited (bar a few bullet holes in one of the torpedo escorts), crews were working overtime in the hydroponic gardens and lab to make extra potions and help the medical effort. Samuel’s militia needed to be brought back to fighting shape ASAP.

That didn’t mean it was completely gloomy however. The sailors weren’t alien to hard work, and they still could manage well enough to keep some free time. Rhine’s Cadets could still get together for their roleplaying (the nerdy kind) sessions, some couples could still date and get into roleplay (the not nerdy kind this time), and even Micha and Vadim managed to put together some family time with Andy between juggling Officer duties and squeezing in some homeschooling for the young griffon cub.

And while all of that was going on, one of Amandine’s unimogs was seen leaving the refinery. In the truck’s cab were three creatures: one dragon, an Ornithian, and an Abyssinian. Respectively: Artyom, Alejandro and Roberto.

Their goal wasn’t to cruise around at random however, because they joined up with a little convoy consisting of a bus and a pair of heavily armed trucks. None other than the daily commute for refinery workers because, after all, few people want to live on a refinery, secure or not.

When the three sailors saw the place they were sleeping at, they couldn’t fault the reasoning. It wasn’t very far, maybe a quarter of an hour away, off in the countryside. The first sight they got of the place was when the jungle and marshlands cleared up to make room for an oddly clear land clear of overgrowth. Meadows where cow herds grazed, lazily looking at the small convoy as they drove past.

Then came the fields: grain, orchards, vegetables, arrayed in a circle within the meadows around the settlement, which itself sat comfortably nested atop a short hill. It was a hacienda, a large farming estate with bright white buildings and red roof tiles all grouped up in a vague square pattern around a courtyard with tall walls. Up in a little tower with a bell, a sharpshooter watched them approach, casually waving at them before he focused back on the wider perimeter.

Pretty well-defended for a farmstead. The hacienda was entirely walled off,with extra barbed wires atop the outer walls out of caution, along with machine gun nests and grates blocking off the outer windows. Guards were keeping a tight eye on the gates, though they showed little concern when the three sailors in the unimog were allowed inside. They knew they were coming already.

The convoy stopped in the middle of the courtyard between stacked crates and trailers filled with produce before the bus’ doors hissed and disgorged the refinery workers. Those who had formed families and tightly-knit friend circles ran towards their companions. Near a small house, a D-Dog bitch wearing oil-stained coveralls wrapped her boyfriend – a short Xolo dog, hairless and all- in a hug and spun him effortlessly in the air with a laugh. After the assault, most were happy to see their loved ones again.

On the other end of the courtyard, a group huddled around an Abyssinian to ask about how the wounded were faring. Grim, but nothing that would warrant a burial. There were, thankfully, very few dead after the assault… all of them locals however.

Roberto averted his gaze when an Abyssinian fell down on his knees crying in grief. Not an easy thing to shut out when you’re an empath. He decided to focus on the buildings. Evaluate the state of the settlement. Colonial stuff.

Beyond obvious post-Event additions to the place like water tanks, generators and weapon emplacements to defend the settlement, the feline also got his first introduction on just how good D-dogs could be at burrowing. A bitch wearing nothing but dirty suspenders, an entrenching tool and a sports bra -and her own air of importance- presented herself as the head farmer and took it upon herself to show them the underbelly of the hacienda.

Warrens basically, but clean ones, and elaborate. When it came to digging, D-dogs had an intuitive understanding of the job, and they’d used it to expand the hacienda, not outwards, but downwards. That’s what the vent masts poking out of the ground in the courtyard were for. Across the hacienda were multiple stairways going down into an intricate network of burrows, tunnels and chambers. All of them were decently roomy, their round walls covered in terracotta panels the locals were still painting and the ceiling held up with freshly cut timber.

The intuitive knowledge of D-dogs was made all the more obvious by the cool air inside and the constant breeze circulating air through the tunnel. According to the head farmer, they had designed the system to pump air and cool it down against the aquifer which they used for freshwater. Add a few devices to dry off the now cold air, and the burrows soon became a shelter against the sweltering tropical heat outside.

And in case power failed, rainwater barrels above the surface could be released into the aquifer below, the height difference enough to run an alternator for emergency power for a short while. Pretty darn clever actually.

Overall, the burrows were designed with four main tunnels that spiraled down under the hacienda until they reached a main chamber just above the aquifer. All along were lesser chambers, ‘burrows’ used to provide lodgings for inhabitants. Then were the defensive tunnels, collapsible tunnels that reached out to provide firing positions camouflaged in the fields around the hacienda in case of siege. Lastly, utility and evacuation tunnels allowed for quick escapes, as well as letting wires and piping through, in addition to some auxiliary utilities like cargo lifts.

And the head farmer led them down into the main chamber. La Madriguera. A huge two-story tall chamber with intricate skull paintings all over, recessed LED lighting, pool tables, and right in the middle of that, where grates had been set to show off the cold waters of the aquifer (themselves hiding more LED’s), a fighting ring. Already, workers from the refinery had lined up at the bar, cats and dogs in greasy coveralls rejoicing after successfully defending the refinery or toasting to the rapid recovery of their friends. Glasses were already clinking and cheers resounding around the chamber when the three sailors and the head farmer came in.

“So we’re here to discuss what can be improved I suppose?”She asked rhetorically once all four were sitting down around a quaint round table on the quiet side of the bar. “You lads care to wet your lips first?”

“Beer on the tap?” Alejandro proposed.

“On the tap, aye.” She nodded with a smirk before raising her hand. She hollered a waiter over, and not a minute later the three sailors were introduced to the odd creation that was artisanal Mexican beer.

Artyom tuned out rather quickly. He was mostly there to provide security that clearly wasn’t necessary.

The fighting ring however, the dragon was eyeing with interest. Already a pair of Abyssinians had rolled up their sleeves and were about to hop in the ring. His draconic eyes also caught the sheen of gems, likely retrieved from jewelry stores in the region. The D-dogs were snacking on the smaller ones like peanuts, but the big ones…

Oh neat, a betting pool.

Author's Notes:

Hope you guys liked the duel with Roland, that one sure was fun to write. It's a gamble figuring out how a unicorn would fight with melee weapons through telekinesis, but limitations in endurance and skill might force them to keep their weapons close enough that they can clash blades in 'melee'.

Close enough to be stabbed back, that is.

On another front entirely, I hope the bit with Schmitt clarified some stuff on dragons. Dragons and sphinxes are the two races I'd count as the super heavyweights given their lifespans and ability to keep growing throughout their entire lives. The dragons are the extremely resilient ones, and the sphinxes are the magic powerhouses.

What I'm not quite sure about just yet, is what would be the sphinx equivalent of a dragon's hoard. I'd go with 'keepers of secrets/knowledge', and maybe something about enigmas, but unlike dragons it's a lot less clear, and intangible.

Hard to say so far, but it's not like the story is so far forward dragon characters need to start a hoard. Starting too early was precisely Schmitt's problem.